Four Unpublished Poems by Maya Deren

Never Alone 

1. Never alone! Never alone!
There’s always somebody near
Someone will follow me close to my bone.
I’m never alone! Never alone!

2. You may think that you are alone,
But there’s always somebody near.
That somebody finds out your secrets with ease,
To your drawers he has all the keys.

3. And now I’ll tell you who I mean
I know you’ll be glad to hear
That its God, its God, Almighty God,
That keeps so very near.

Summer 1927

Untitled

When rains come down to flood the town
And earnest citizens really ought’er
try to make and keep things sort’er
dry…
 I make water.

When water’s rare and cattle’s dying
and I’m as thirsty as can be
and long for some water in me—
God-damn it!
 I still pee.

1938


To F.M. 

I waited for you in the fields of afternoon’
Eyes closed, I lay upon the grass
Listening for the sound of steps in the swaying of the trees;
Waiting for my lips to feel lips where the soft breeze had been;
Body tense to feel the warmth of hands where warmth of sun had shone.

You did not come. I went inside
Complaining that the suns go down
And that the wind is far too chill
And that trees make so much noise
A person’d better take her nap indoors.

1938


It Must Be Done with Mirrors 

It must be done with mirrors
my head that rests on nothing in mid-air.

Where is my body
where oh where?

I can see the stones
hidden in the hands.

O bring back my body to me, to me,
O miracle bring it back
before the mirrors break.

March 1942


My Day 

The idiot child with three eyes
who plays its senseless games endlessly
in my back yard
and stops suddenly to laugh or cry
for no reason at all
became enraged at nothing this morning
and drank up all the soup in the kettle.

Its two-legged dog peed all over my carpets.

When I went out to hang them up to dry
I found that the two of them had shed skin
all over the lawn. As I was raking this up
they set fire to the house, using it to cook
the spaghetti which they wreathed around them.

When I arrived in Asia, they were both contemplating
their navels. Upon closer inspection I discovered
that there were gold-fish bowls embedded in their bellies
in which they had caged two mating humming birds.
It was this which in truth held their attention.

In India, as I was swimming, they caught me on a line
and dragged me all the way to Paris, where they began painting
and became famous. They received tooth-picks in payment
and exchanged these for passage on a transatlantic whale.

After this arduous journey they both slept forty days
screaming from nightmare every seven minutes.
Then they went out into the back yard to play.

March 10, 1942

http://www.worldpicturejournal.com/WP_4/PDFs/Deren.pdf