When I was small I sat and drew endless pictures in all colors on the walls; tomorrow the pictures should take life I would stalk down their long heroic colonnades.

When I was fifteen a red-haired girl went by the window; a red sunset threw her shadow on the stiff grey wall to burn the colors of my pictures dead.

Through all these years the walls have writhed with shadow overlaid upon shadow. I have bruised my fingers on the windowbars so many lives cemented and made strong.

While the bars stand strong, outside the great processions of men's lives go past. Their shadows squirm distorted on my wall.

Tonight the new moon is in the sky.

 Stuyvesant Square

IX

Three kites against the sunset flaunt their long-tailed triangles above the inquisitive chimney-pots.

 A pompous ragged minstrel sings beside our dining-table a very old romantic song:

 I love the sound of the hunting-horns deep in the woods at night.

A wind makes dance the fine acacia leaves and flutters the cloths of the tables. The kites tremble and soar. The voice throbs sugared into croaking base broken with the burden of the too ancient songs.

 And yet, beyond the flaring sky, beyond the soaring kites, where are no voices of singers, no strummings of guitars, the untarnished songs hang like great moths just broken through the dun threads of their cocoons, moist, motionless, limp as flowers on the inaccessible twigs of the yewtree, Ygdrasil, the untarnished songs.

Will you put your hand in mine pompous street-singer, and start on a quest with me? For men have cut down the woods where the laurel grew to build streets of frame houses, they have dug in the hills after iron and frightened the troll-king away; at night in the woods no hunter puffs out his cheeks to call to the kill on the hunting-horn.

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