This may have been John Reed's last poem:

A Letter to Louise:

Rainy rush of bird-song
Apple-blossom smoke
Thin bells water-falling sound
Wind-rust on the silver pond
Furry starring willow wand
Wan new grasses waking round
Blue bird in the oak...
Woven in my word-song

White and slim my lover
Birch-tree in the shade
Mountain pools her fearless eyes
Innocent all-answering
Were I blinded to the Spring
Happy thrill would in me rise
Smiling half afraid
At the nearness of her

All my weak endeavor
Lay I at her feet
Like a moth from oversea
Let me longing lightly rest
On her flower petal breast
Till the red dawn set me free
To be with my sweet
Ever and forever...

 

******************

 

Love at Sea

 

Wind smothers the snarling of the great ships,
And the serene gulls are stronger than turbines;
Mile upon mile the hiss of a stumbling wave breaks unbroken--
Yet stronger is the power of your lips for my lips.

This cool green liquid death shall toss us living
Higher than high heaven and deeper than sighs--
But O the abrupt, stiff, sloping, resistless foam
Shall not forbid our taking and our giving!

Life wrenched from its roots-What wretchedness!
What waving of lost tentacles like blind sea-things!
Even the still ooze beneath is quick and profound--
I am less and more than I was, you are more and less.

I cried upon God last night, and God was not where I cried;
He was slipping and balancing on the thoughtless shifting planes of sea.
Careless and cruel, he will unchain the appalling sea-gray engines--
But the speech of your body to my body will not be denied!

 

 

First Published: May 1916, The Masses
Transcribed: Sally Ryan,, January, 2001