His Carpets Flowered

By Lorine Niedecker

William Morris

I

—how we’re carpet-making

by the river

a long dream to unroll

and somehow time to pole

a boat

I designed a carpet today—

dogtooth violets

and spoke to a full hall

now that the gall

of our society’s

corruption stains throughout

Dear Janey I am tossed

by many things

If the change would bring

better art

but if it would not?

O to be home to sail the flood

I’m possessed

and do possess

Employer

of labor, true—

to get done

the work of the hand…

I’d be a rich man

had I yielded

on a few points of principle

Item sabots

blouse—

I work in the dye-house

myself

Good sport dyeing

tapestry wool

I like the indigo vats

I’m drawing patterns so fast

Last night

in sleep I drew a sausage—

somehow I had to eat it first

Colorful shores—mouse ear...

horse-mint... The Strawberry Thief

our new chintz

II

Yeats saw the betterment of the workers

by religion—slow in any case

as the drying of the moon

He was not understood—

I rang the bell

for him to sit down

Yeats left the lecture circuit

yet he could say: no one

so well loved

as Morris

III

Entered new waters

Studied Icelandic

At home last minute signs

to post:

Vetch

grows here—Please do not mow

We saw it—Iceland—the end

of the world rising out of the sea—

cliffs, caves like 13th century

illuminations

of hell-mouths

Rain squalls through moonlight

Cold wet

is so damned wet

Iceland’s

black sand

Stone buntings’

fly-up-dispersion

Sea-pink and campion a Persian

carpet

Copyright Credit: Lorine Niedecker, "His Carpets Flowered" from Collected Works. Copyright © 2004 by Lorine Niedecker. Reprinted by permission of University of California Press.

Source: Lorine Niedecker: Collected Works (University of California Press, 2002)