Poems by Conrad Potter Aiken

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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The Tower

One, from his high bright window in a tower,

Leans out, as evening falls,

And sees the advancing curtain of the shower

Splashing its silver on roofs and walls:

Sees how, swift as a shadow, it crosses the city,

And murmurs beyond far walls to the sea,

Leaving a glimmer of water in the dark canyons,

And silver falling from eave and tree.

Conrad Potter Aiken

The Charnel Rose: A Symphony

She rose in moonlight, and stood, confronting sea,

With her bare arms uplifted,

And lifted her voice in the silence foolishly:

And her face was small, and her voice was small.

'O moon!' she cried, 'I think how you must tire

Forever circling earth, so silently;

Earth, who is dark and makes you no reply.'

She only heard the little waves rush and fall;

Conrad Potter Aiken

Miracles

Twilight is spacious, near things in it seem far,

And distant things seem near.

Now in the green west hangs a yellow star.

And now across old waters you may hear

The profound gloom of bells among still trees,

Like a rolling of huge boulders beneath seas.

Silent as though in evening contemplation

Conrad Potter Aiken

Herman Melville

‘My towers at last!’—

What meant the word

from what acknowledged circuit sprung

and in the heart and on the tongue

at sight of few familiar birds

when seaward his last sail unfurled

to leeward from the wheel once more

bloomed the pale crags of haunted shore

Conrad Potter Aiken

The Room

Through that window—all else being extinct

Except itself and me—I saw the struggle

Of darkness against darkness. Within the room

It turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw

How order might—if chaos wished—become:

And saw the darkness crush upon itself,

Contracting powerfully; it was as if

It killed itself, slowly: and with much pain.

Conrad Potter Aiken

Dead Cleopatra

Dead Cleopatra lies in a crystal casket,

Wrapped and spiced by the cunningest of hands.

Around her neck they have put a golden necklace

Her tatbebs, it is said, are worn with sands.

Dead Cleopatra was once revered in Egypt—

Warm-eyed she was, this princess of the south.

Now she is very old and dry and faded,

Conrad Potter Aiken

Exile

These hills are sandy. Trees are dwarfed here. Crows

Caw dismally in skies of an arid brilliance,

Complain in dusty pine-trees. Yellow daybreak

Lights on the long brown slopes a frost-like dew,

Dew as heavy as rain; the rabbit tracks

Show sharply in it, as they might in snow.

But it’s soon gone in the sun — what good does it do?

The houses, on the slope, or among brown trees,

Conrad Potter Aiken

Violet Moore and Bert Moore

He thinks her little feet should pass

Where dandelions star thickly grass;

Her hands should lift in sunlit air

Sea-wind should tangle up her hair.

Green leaves, he says, have never heard

A sweeter ragtime mockingbird,

Nor has the moon-man ever seen,

Or man in the spotlight, leering green,

Conrad Potter Aiken

The Dance Of Life

Gracious and lovable and sweet,

She made his jaded pulses beat,

And made the glare of streets grow dim

And life more soft and hushed for him….

Over her shoulder now she smiled

Trustfully to him, like a child,

The while her fingers gayly moved

Alonge these white keys dearly loved,

Conrad Potter Aiken

Annihilation

While the blue noon above us arches,

And the poplar sheds disconsolate leaves,

Tell me again why love bewitches,

And what love gives.

It is the trembling finger that traces

The eyebrow’s curve, the curve of the cheek?

The mouth that quivers, when the hand caresses,

But cannot speak?

Conrad Potter Aiken

The Dreamer Of Dreams

The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.

The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:

And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.

A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.

Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.

And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,

The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,

And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.

Conrad Potter Aiken

The Carver

See, as the carver carves a rose,

A wing, a toad, a serpent's eye,

In cruel granite, to disclose

The soft things that in hardness lie,

So this one, taking up his heart,

Which time and change had made a stone,

Carved out of it with dolorous art,

Laboring yearlong and alone,

Conrad Potter Aiken