Poems by Evelyn Scott

Along the shore
A black net of branches
Tangles the pulpy yellow lamps.
The shell-colored sky ...

I Ruby winged pains flash through me,
Jewel winged agonies:
They vanish,
Carrying me with ...

Where I used to be
I could hear the sea.
The black ragged palm fronds flung themselves against ...

I am Will-o'-the-Wisp.
I float in a little pool of delirium,
Phosphorescent velvet.
My fire i...

Women are flitting around in their shells.
Pale dilutions of the waters of the world
Come throu...

The thin hill pushes against the mist.
Its fading defiance sounds in the umber and red of autumn...

Thick clustered wistaria clouds,
A young girl moon in a mist of almond flowers,
Boughs and bo...

In the city,
Storms of light
Surge against the clouds,
Pushing up the darkness. In t...

In the rain
Rows of street lamps are saints in bright garments
That flow long with the bend of ...

Gray water,
Gray sky drifting down to the sea.
The night,
Old, ugly, and stern,
Lies upo...

Oh, that mysterious singing sadness of youth!
Exotic colors in the lamplit darkness of wet stre...

White breast beaten in sea waves,
Hair tangled in foam,
Lonely sky,
Desolate horizon,
Pal...

Life wriggles in and out
Through the narrow ways
And circuitous passages:
Something monstrous...

The red fountain of shame gushes up from my heart.
I throw back my long hair and the fountain fl...

The moon is as complacent as a frog.
She sits in the sky like a blind white stone,
And does no...