 Sonnets from the Patagonian, the Street of Little Hotels. Part 1 Love in Patagonia. Forgetting her mauve vows the Fania fled, taking away her moonlight scarves with her. There was no joy left in the calendar, and life was just an orchid that was dead. Even our pious peacocks went unfed. I had deserved no treachery like this, for I had bitten sharp kiss after kiss, devoutly till her sleek young body bled. Then Carlo came, he shone like a new sin. Right way I knew Pearl Powder still was sweet, and that my bleeding heart would not be scarred. I saw a shop where shoes were sold within, and for two hundred francs made brave my feet, and then I danced along the boulevard. End of Part 1 Part 2 of Sonnets from the Patagonian, the Street of Little Hotels by Donald Evans. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Sets of Alan Norton. To Maybel Dodge. In the Vices. Gay and audacious crime glints in his eyes, and his mad talk, raping the commonplace, gleefully runs a devil-praising race, and none can ever follow where he flies. He streaks himself with vices tenderly, he cradles sin and with a figly fan taps his green cat, watching the round sun span, the wasted minutes to eternity. Once I took up his trail along the dark, wishful to track him to the witch's flame, to see the bubbling of the sneer and snare, the way led through a fragrant starlit park, and soon upon a harlot's house I came, within I found him playing at solitaire. On Menuchle. Turned with a monocle he stares at life, and sends his soul on pensive promenades. He pays a high price for discarded gods, and then regales them to renew their strife. His calm mustache points to the ironies, and a fawn-colored laugh sucks him the night, full of the riot mists that turn to white in brief lost battles with banalities. Masters are makeshifts and a path to tread, for blue pumps that are ardent for the air. Masters are fixtures when the faces fled, and we are left the husks of tarnished hair. But he is one who lusts uncomforted, to kiss the naked phrase, quite unaware. The Immortal Pose. Dim-eyed with gazing at dark veils as he, his drooping lackeys tangled in their lace, but he is groping for the final grace, undaunted in a deep despondency. A night of flame at last unleashed will be, beholding then the deathless, dazzling face, his hands will in that awful moment's space, from out the finite grasp infinity. To reach those heights what will he have to pay? Immortal poise bought with unceasing pain, the perfect pose that no man dare forget, a teasing mask that none can tear away, what matters it if he himself be slain? A star will rise, grow big, and never set. Loving Kindness Moscow Her flesh was lyrical and sweet to flog. For the whip blanched her blood, through every vein flooded with hate shot a hot flow of pain, and her screams were muffled by a brackish fog. He loved her, yet his passion could but fret unless he lashed her to an awkward rage. But when his hand wrote terror on her page he knew exultant joy of feigned regret. This was a bond that poured the wine of fear, and he drained her stiffened limbs with cruel art. He taught her that all tenderness had fled, till she would beg the hurt to taste the tear, and when she bent to kiss her crumpled heart it lit a Chinese candle in his head. Part 4 of Sonnets from the Patagonian, The Street of Little Hotels, by Donald Evans. She was tired to tears, and yet there were no tears, only the dead seas of indifference, leading the langers of a nerveless sense, for she had played the roles for twenty years. The queen called for her sentence, while the drab demanded love and the wild hunger tore. The woman raged to touch the flame once more, but the worn-out emotions could not stab. There were the thousand parts she had assayed, and the three thousand gowns that she had worn, into the rag-bag each frock found its flight, crumpled and ravished of a film-proud shade, and every script is wandering forlorn, gnawed by the mirage of an opening night. End of Part 4 Part 5 of Sonnets from the Patagonian, The Street of Little Hotels, by Donald Evans. There is what is, and what there is is fair, but most is yet to come to what is here. Here is the most to come from out of year, for from the year there comes all there is there, song for the minnow and a crystal pool, and all is said of all there was to say, yet all must say the all, since every day a nuptial kiss the wise man gives a fool. An ear of corn from the blind red sun-burnt earth, blanely lies in the sun divinely green, disowning what the earth and sun have done, kisses in corn and a pool to crown the birth, with once to come what never before has been, and here is there what there is here begun. Section 6 of Sonnets from the Patagonian, The Street of Little Hotels, by Donald Evans. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Portrait of Donovan Blades. To Fania Marinov. Behind Claire Burke at dinner. St. Valarie Seuch Sum. His lips must ever be but cold and mute, chilled are they with his being still a boy's. Not choosing he has made the lifelong choice to play in silence on his silver lute. Robbed even of that blossom-blighted fruit, the sad remembrance of forgotten joys, in one sound only finds his heart a voice in the low moaning of a lonely flute. O aching arms flung out to her in vain, O beaker brimmed with bliss he may not share, yet see him kneeling, tremblingly confess, O joy renounced for wretched, pale-eyed pain, as of white angels hushed in holy prayer, the calm, sweet grandeur of her girlishness. End of Section 6. Part 7 of Sonnets from the Patagonian, The Street of Little Hotels, by Donald Evans. This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Portraits of Mabel Dodge, to Louis Sherwin. HER SMILE, LOGIN. Her hidden smile was full of little breasts, and with her two white hands she stroked her fears. The wild, the serpent peered at her pink ears and night's grim hours stalked in, unbidden guests. A noise was in her eyes that sang of scorn, and round her voice there gleamed a nameless dread, as though her lips were hungry for the dead, yet knew the food of dawn would be forlorn. The cold hours ebbed, and still she held her throne. Across the sky the lightning made mad play. And in the scarlet screams stood forth revealed. She turned her back and grasped the monotone. It answered all. She lived again that day. She triumphed in the tragic turnip-field. The last dance at dawn, forensic. And she was sad, since she could not be sad, and every star flared amorous in the sky. Her pampered knees fell under her keen eye, and it came to her she would not go mad. The ghostries were turning the last screw, but there was still the island in the sea, the hered and chorus of eternity that let her smile because he saw she knew. She even dared be impudent again, and bit his ear the deaths were far away. The Bibles orgeed in the treasure vaults. She tried to rouge her heart, yet quite in vain. The crucifix danced in, berebent, gay, and lisped to her a wish for the next vaults. End of Part 7 Part 8 of Sonnets from the Patagonian The Street of Little Hotels by Donald Evans. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Portrait of Carl Van Vechten to Gertrude Stein. In the Gentlemanly Interest, Piccadilly. He polished snubs till they were regnant art, curling their shameless toilets round the hour. Each lay upon his lips an exquisite flower, subtly maligned and poisoned for its part. The path of victims was no wanton plan. He had bowed his head in sorrow at his birth, for he said long ere he came to earth that it was no place for a gentleman. But always a heart-skulled lurked behind the screen, and somehow he missed the ultimate degrees. He saw a beggar at the daylight's fall, and then he rose and robbed him for the scene, and when they called him cad he found release he knew he had used the finest snub of all. EPICEED. Wistfully shimmering, shamelessly wise and weak. He lives in pawn, pledging a battered name. He loves his failures as one might love fame, and listens for the ghost years as they speak. A fragrance bright and broken clasps his head, and wild wood airs sing a frayed interlude, while cloaked he comes in a new attitude to play grave-digger if the word be said. He swore he would be glad and only glad, and turned a broad way for the peace of God. He found it at the bottom of the glass, for where the drags lay it was less than sad, and mid the murmur when the dance was trod he heard the echo of a genius pass. IN THE FALCLANDS. For his soul went homeless then is at home, and in a paradise where shadows wane he draws droll figures on the window-pane to lower his vagrum fellow-souls to Rome. There is a potent rancor in the moon, hunting for those who love him still, and three gleam back, but with detached anxiety he vows that he will alienate them soon. He said that love had but two words, the last and first, and joy in flying laces lay. He watched each kiss to kill it at stark ease, his strangler's hands carve prayers for the past, and chastely he spins an hour every day erecting tombstones to carnalities. THE NOON OF NIGHT. The fictive tear he holds in reverence and studies heady griefs that wash the cheek. It is a dim dominion he must seek to gain some raiment for his impotence. Sorrows are numbered, the size have their strings, and barren smiles are trained for tragedy. He ties up parcels of mock gaiety and labels them with many worshipings. Grapes in the grass and every day a waste at scattered sources of lost loveliness with drunkenness to drain the ruined seats. Thus came the gems to purger glassy paste, but he thanks God aloof from all distress, for he knows sewers run beneath the city streets. FIFTH AVENUE. And when discovery marred the best disguise, he winced a sigh, bowed to a spoiled deceit, and donned the damest draperies of defeat to woo dishonor as an enterprise. His self-patrial had its tenderness, and reared an outland refuge for his pride. For all were baffled telling how he lied, since more than they could guess he would confess. He died a hero in Fifth Avenue, when yellow day saving a tattered man. But in the litter of his passing breath, a prayer lay lest one should misconstrue. It was an accident, and he began a last profound apology to death. FIFTH AVENUE. Her voice was fleet-limbed and immaculate, and like peach blossoms blown across the wind, her white words made the hour seem cool and kind, hung with soft dawns that danced the shadow fate. A silken silence crept up from the south. The flutes were hushed that mimed the orange moon, and down the willow stream my sighs were strewn, while I knelt to the corners of her mouth. She'd me afar from clamorous dissonance, for I am sick of empty trumpetings, and all the streets are sad with dusty noise. Here I have found her sweet sheer utterance, and now I seek the garden of the wings where I may bathe in sounds that life destroys. EXTREME UNCTION. Across the rotting pads in the lily-lake her gesture floated toward the iris bed, wrapped in a whispered perfume of the dead, and her gaze followed slowly in its wake. Now was the summons come she must obey, for beauty pleaded from the charnel-house, for violent nights and violent corrals to free her from the seriments of decay. Crapless hands reach out to strangle thee, and every moment is a winding sheet, with bats to chant corruption's litany. Be thou a torch to flash fawn for an aid, and as the earth crumbles beneath thy feet flaunt thou the glitter of a new brocade. THE JADE VACE PITZBURG. He had hunted for it to the alley's end, yet when he found the jade vase he was sad, eaten with ennui for the praise he had given where offerings merely did not offend. A wall of glass held back his worshipping, and his eyes the drink this miracle of stone knew the discovery was not his own, still the vase was there and that was everything. He thought back over all the songs he had sung, and all the hours his heart like waving grain had swayed to music, and the joys now dead seemed haunting coins to meager beauty flung. Poignantly he longed to call them back, in vain, but they were the last words that the poet said. END OF SEXION TEN END OF SONNETS FROM THE PATIGONIAN, THE STREET OF LITTLE HOTELS, BY DONALD EVANS