Page:The Collected Poems of Hart Crane.djvu/33

I’m not much good at time any more keep
weakeyed watches sometimes snooze—” his bony hands
got to beating time . . . “A whaler once—
I ought to keep time and get over it—I’m a
Democrat—I know what time it is—No
I don’t want to know what time it is—that
damned white Arctic killed my time . . . ”

      O Stamboul Rose—drums weave—

“I ran a donkey engine down there on the Canal
in Panama—got tired of that—
then Yucatan selling kitchenware—beads—
have you seen Popocatepetl—birdless mouth
with ashes sifting down—?
                                          and then the coast again . . . ”

      Rose of Stamboul O coral Queen—
      teased remnants of the skeletons of cities—
      and galleries, galleries of watergutted lava
      snarling stone—green—drums—drown—

Sing!
“—that spiracle!” he shot a finger out the door . . .
"O life’s a geyser—beautiful—my lungs—
No—I can’t live on land—!"

I saw the frontiers gleaming of his mind;
or are there frontiers—running sands sometimes
running sands—somewhere—sands running . . .