Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

First Growth

Richard Butler Glaenzer

THE NATIVES call this shadowless silence the grands-bois

And tell you these matted buttressed masses are trees—

Fromagers, chataigners, bois blancs and gommiers—

That solid darkness above, nothing but leaves.

No! I am creeping between the legs of monsters,

Mammoths and mastodons tangled in merciless vines.

It is their bellies that block the scorching sunlight:

The drops that fall are their sweat as they strain to the clouds.