Poems by Conrad Potter Aiken

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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Improvisations: Light And Snow: 08

Many things perplex me and leave me troubled,

Many things are locked away in the white book of stars

Never to be opened by me.

The starr’d leaves are silently turned,

And the mooned leaves;

And as they are turned, fall the shadows of life and death.

Perplexed and troubled,

I light a small light in a small room,

by Conrad Potter Aiken

Improvisations: Light And Snow: 11

As I walked through the lamplit gardens,

On the thin white crust of snow,

So intensely was I thinking of my misfortune,

So clearly were my eyes fixed

On the face of this grief which has come to me,

That I did not notice the beautiful pale colouring

Of lamplight on the snow;

Nor the interlaced long blue shadows of trees;

by Conrad Potter Aiken

Improvisations: Light And Snow: 10

It is night time, and cold, and snow is falling,

And no wind grieves the walls.

In the small world of light around the arc-lamp

A swarm of snowflakes falls and falls.

The street grows silent. The last stranger passes.

The sound of his feet, in the snow, is indistinct.

What forgotten sadness is it, on a night like this,

Takes possession of my heart?

by Conrad Potter Aiken

Duval's Birds

The parrot, screeching, flew out into the darkness,

Circled three times above the upturned faces

With a great whir of brilliant outspread wings,

And then returned to stagger on her finger.

She bowed and smiled, eliciting applause. . .

The property man hated her dirty birds.

But it had taken years—yes, years—to train them,

To shoulder flags, strike bells by tweaking strings,

by Conrad Potter Aiken

Improvisations: Light and Snow: 01

The girl in the room beneath

Before going to bed

Strums on a mandolin

The three simple tunes she knows.

How inadequate they are to tell how her heart feels!

When she has finished them several times

She thrums the strings aimlessly with her finger-nails

And smiles, and thinks happily of many things.

by Conrad Potter Aiken

Improvisations: Light And Snow: 04

On the day when my uncle and I drove to the cemetery,

Rain rattled on the roof of the carriage;

And talkng constrainedly of this and that

We refrained from looking at the child’s coffin on the seat before us.

When we reached the cemetery

We found that the thin snow on the grass

Was already transparent with rain;

And boards had been laid upon it

by Conrad Potter Aiken

Hatteras Calling

Southeast, and storm, and every weather vane

shivers and moans upon its dripping pin,

ragged on chimneys the cloud whips, the rain

howls at the flues and windows to get in,

the golden rooster claps his golden wings

and from the Baptist Chapel shrieks no more,

the golden arrow in the southeast sings

and hears on the roof the Atlantic Ocean roar.

by Conrad Potter Aiken

Improvisations: Light And Snow: 06

It is now two hours since I left you,

And the perfume of your hands is still on my hands.

And though since then

I have looked at the stars, walked in the cold blue streets,

And heard the dead leaves blowing over the ground

Under the trees,

I still remember the sound of your laughter.

How will it be, lady, when there is none left to remember you

by Conrad Potter Aiken

Discordants

I. (Bread and Music)

Music I heard with you was more than music,

And bread I broke with you was more than bread;

Now that I am without you, all is desolate;

All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,

And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.

These things do not remember you, belovèd,

by Conrad Potter Aiken

Morning Song Of Senlin

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning

When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,

I arise, I face the sunrise,

And do the things my fathers learned to do.

Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops

Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,

And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet

Stand before a glass and tie my tie.

by Conrad Potter Aiken

Knock On The Door

Knock on the door, and you shall have an answer!

Open the heavy walls to set me free,

And blow a horn to call me into the sunlight,

And startled then what a strange thing you shall see!

Nuns, murderers, and drunkards, saints and sinners,

Lover and dancing girl and sage and clown

Will laugh upon you, and you will find me nowhere…

I am a room, a house, a street, a town.

by Conrad Potter Aiken

Improvisations: Light And Snow: 02

I stood for a long while before the shop window

Looking at the blue butterflies embroidered on tawny silk.

The building was a tower before me,

Time was loud behind me,

Sun went over the housetops and dusty trees;

And there they were, glistening, brilliant, motionless,

Stitched in a golden sky

By yellow patient fingers long since turned to dust.

by Conrad Potter Aiken