Red Stains

By Allen Tate 1899–1979 Allen Tate

In a pyloned desert where the scorpion reigns

My love and I plucked poppies breathing tales

Of crimes now long asleep, whose once–red stains

Dyed stabbing men, at sea with bloody sails.

The golden sand drowsed. There a dog yelped loud;

And in his cry rattled a hollow note

Of deep uncanny knowledge of that crowd

That loved and bled in winy times remote.

The poppies fainted when the moon came wide;

The cur lay still. Our passionate review

Of red wise folly dreamed on . . . She by my side

Stared at the Moon; and then I knew he knew.

And then he smiled at her; to him ’twas funny—

Her calm steel eyes, her earth–old throat of honey!

Biography

Allen Tate was a well-known man of letters from the American South, a central figure in the fields of poetry, criticism, and ideas. In the course of a career spanning the middle decades of the twentieth century, Tate authored poems, essays, translations, and fiction. Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor James T. Jones wrote that his "influence was prodigious, his circle of acquaintances immense." Tate relished his "man . . .

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