O golden Aphrodite. The eye of the man from Weehawken slants away from the eye of the man from Sioux City. They stare at the unquiet gold dripping sky-signs. [p. 185] [p. 185] PHASES OF THE MOON I Again they are plowing the field by the river; in the air exultant a smell of wild garlic crushed out by the shining steel in the furrow that opens softly behind the heavy-paced horses, dark moist noisy with fluttering of sparrows; and their chirping and the clink of the harness chimes like bells; and the plowman walks at one side with sliding steps, his body thrown back from the waist. O the sudden sideways lift of his back and his arms as he swings the plow from the furrow. And behind the river sheening blue and the white beach and the sails of schooners, and hoarsely laughing the black crows wheel and glint. Ha! Haha! Other springs you answered their laughing and shouted at them across the fallow lands that smelt of wild garlic and pinewoods and earth. This year the crows flap cawing overhead Ha! Haha! and the plow-harness clinks and the pines echo the moaning shore. No one laughs back at the laughing crows. No one shouts from the edge of the new-plowed field. Sandy Point II The full moon soars above the misty street filling the air with a shimmer of silver. Roofs and chimney-pots cut silhouettes of dark against the milk-washed sky! O moon fast waning! Seems only a night ago you hung a shallow cup of topaz-colored glass that tilted towards my feverish dry lips brimful of promise in the flaming west: O moon fast waning! And each night fuller and colder, moon, the silver has welled up within you; still I I have not drunk, only the salt tide of parching
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