II. Powhatan’s Daughter: 2. Van Winkle

Macadam, gun-grey as the tunny’s belt,
Leaps from Far Rockaway to Golden Gate:
Listen! the miles a hurdy-gurdy grinds —
Down gold arpeggios mile on mile unwinds.

Streets spread
past store and
factory — sped
by sunlight
and her
smile...

Times earlier, when you hurried off to school,
— It is the same hour though a later day —
You walked with Pizarro in a copybook,
And Cortes rode up, reining tautly in —
Firmly as coffee grips the taste,— and away!

There was Priscilla’s cheek close in the wind,
And Captain Smith, all beard and certainty,
And Rip Van Winkle bowing by the way,—
“Is this Sleepy Hollow, friend — ?” And he —

Like Memory,
she is time’s
truant, shall
take you by
the hand...

And Rip forgot the office hours,
and he forgot the pay;
Van Winkle sweeps a tenement
way down on Avenue A,—

The grind-organ says... Remember, remember
The cinder pile at the end of the backyard
Where we stoned the family of young
Garter snakes under... And the monoplanes
We launched — with paper wings and twisted
Rubber bands... Recall — recall

the rapid tongues
That flittered from under the ash heap day
After day whenever your stick discovered
Some sunning inch of unsuspecting fibre —
It flashed back at your thrust, as clean as fire.

And Rip was slowly made aware
that he, Van Winkle, was not here
nor there. He woke and swore he’d seen Broadway
a Catskill daisy chain in May —

So memory, that strikes a rhyme out of a box,
Or splits a random smell of flowers through glass —
Is it the whip stripped from the lilac tree
One day in spring my father took to me,
Or is it the Sabbatical, unconscious smile
My mother almost brought me once from church
And once only, as I recall — ?

It flickered through the snow screen, blindly
It forsook her at the doorway, it was gone
Before I had left the window. It
Did not return with the kiss in the hall.

Macadam, gun-grey as the tunny’s belt,
Leaps from Far Rockaway to Golden Gate....
Keep hold of that nickel for car-change, Rip,—
Have you got your “Times” —?
And hurry along, Van Winkle — it’s getting late!