WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 1941
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
PAGE THREE
Communication From a Wanderer
(Editor's Note: This poem won first prize in the Carruth Poetry Contest.)
BY WILLIAM E. STAFFORD
"I will become a pilgrim And walk as wide as all the world lasteth . . ."
I. REPORT OF KANSAS IN WINTER
(To everyone passed in the crowd whose eyes said hello:
yes, he saw you.
To those hurt by the deeds and the talk every day:
it hurt him too.
To all who hinted what pride or convention or fear wouldn't let them say:
he heard you; he was there with you.
To whoever are wondering if he gets their hopes, fears,
insinuations:
he does.
He does from being winter-homeless in Kansas.
This is the high steppes of Siberia in his mind.
This is where the lonesomeness of the world shoulders in and stands.
This is to walk on a frozen dead street in a strange town,
and there in the graveyard night by the railroad yards,
and the cold steel wind, and the pitted cement of that doorway to lay a life down.
And they robbed him there in the secret ways, the bandits,
the ones with the final grasp on exhibit A, the swag.
They held him up with their cruel weird pistols—
the camouflaged ways of forcing the victim down.
II. REPORT OF THE NATIONAL FOREST
(No more alone, listening in the night.
Quiet, the jeweled brook sparkles back the stealthy star.
Quick with pain the owl cries
drift above snow-silent passes
more wool than sleep, more white than sudden fear.
No more along.)
He heard the owl cries in the long night there go undulating through the muffled night, and heard the multitude of trees go, proud, moon-elegant, go, white-leaved votaries, to swan their limbs before the steady sound of air-surf loose in sky-tranced limbs above.
He saw the skeletons of a cliffs in agonies of beauty by the moon, and one lone star riding an ice-torn wind by frozen peaks, and all the vacant hollow sky a rushing sound—escaping night pouring enormous coils of lean hard air out toward the far and cold of unknown space and wildling forest no
of unknown space and writhing forest sea.
He saw contorted land, an epileptic held rigid in the dark, awed by the sky, a blind and clumsy giant stumbling through a hazy star-smoke curtain billowing in eon watch ticks, a world they never have bound yet within the scrapbook minds of men.
Home Interests Meet Opens Here Friday
Conference on home interests sponsored by the department of home economics, the department of design, and the extension division, will be held on the campus next Friday and Saturday.
Registration and tours of Spooner-Thayer Museum and Dyche museum of natural history have been scheduled for Friday morning. Friday afternoon a general session will be held in the auditorium of Spooner-Thayer museum at 2 o'clock with Miss Marjorie Whitney, acting $ ^{ \textcircled{6}} $
chairman of the department of design, presiding.
During the session an address of welcome will be given by Harold G. Ingham, director of the extension division.
At 2:20 p.m. Miss Maud Ellsworth, supervisor of art in the Lawrence schools and instructor in art education at the University, will give an address on "Beauty Without Expense."
At 3 p.m. Miss Gladys Bate, instructor in ceramics, will give a lecture demonstration on "The Art of Pottery Making." A two-reel sound motion picture called "The Making of Spode China" showing complete processes of the work, will be presented at 3:30 p.m.
"Sculpture, A Fascinating Leisure Time Activity," a demonstration lecture by Bernard Frazier, instructor in sculpture, will be given at 4 p.m. and G. W. Stratton, professor of chemistry, will address the conference at the banquet at 6:15 p.m.
III. REPORT OF THE SOUTHWEST
(Trees on a hill in the sun!
The cry of yellow sunsets beyond Las Vegas.
A slowly-over tumbleweed on an empty street.
The sudden lift as a clumsy hawk leaves tame ground and with piercing beauty wing-hovers in a free wind.)
This is the tangy land of wide, strong, sunlit places.
Drums beat here under the earth, then silence.
The air fermented; tart; the sky tight.
Here the days flow, cliffs in the honey-sun.
Here he would stand by the far-apart trees looking out
and the wind blowing, here where the days breathe grass, drip flowers.
The friends here have sultry eyes, are dangerous people.
They have the dark strangeness in their minds, the suddenness.
The ears yearn in this land for the wild tunes.
There is no rest, for the rich world curves endlessly on.
The taste of tomorrow always on the tongue,
and the strange unrest.
And a flavor of lost uncaught stampeding time.
And a flavor of lost uncaused stamped time, and lawless eyes, and wild hosts in the mind.
IV. FINAL REPORT
(Who have only the hunger and not the means— the fingers clenching, the slow-turning head, the eyes far-wanting, but the hope not there—these are the men he will speak in silent air.)
Armed with the eyes, he marched across their land; and calm he stood alone, and arrogant, his hair the wind's way, there upon the sand
that grovels to the stumbling waves aslant like white wings on the slobbering, bullying sea. The eyes, caged up for armament till then, roamed out across that eye-wide prison, free—but soon by the horizon trapped again. No longer stern, the laughter loose in his head, the warm rain falling on his back, he turned, the whole world softly turning, visions dead, and nothing left but this that he had learned: Pilgrims turn back from what they can't quite see and seek in caves the blind for company.
Men's Dormitories Will Have Name Plaques
Says Templin
Alumni Place, Templin, and Carruth halls, will soon be adorned with name plaques, Olin Templin, secretary of the Endowment association, said today.
A bronze plaque bearing the name "Alumni Place" and other information about the grounds will be embedded in the sidewalk at the entrance of Templin hall. The plaque was designed by
Friday in the Memorial Union building.
Discuss Family and Food Markets
Discuss Family and Food Markets Saturday morning another general session will be held at 10 o'clock in Fraser theater. Miss Olga Hoesly, associate professor of home economics, will preside. Miss Esther Twente, assistant professor of sociology, will talk on "The Family Group Today" during the session. At 10:45 a.m. Dr. W. Henry Merritt, instructor in hygiene, will discuss "The Family as a Health Unit—what it can do to decrease the incidence of contagious disease in the community," and at 11:30 a.m. Miss Viola Anderson, associate professor of home economics, will discuss "Modern Food Markets and Our Diet."
Saturday afternoon a tour will be made of Lawrence, including the Arts and Crafts laboratory and the Log Cabin at Haskell Institute and cooperative houses of University students.
*Bernard Frazier, instructor in architecture and design.
Tour Lawrence in Afternoon
At 9 o'clock Saturday morning in room 116 of Fraser hall, there will be a group discussion of subjects pertaining to health and nutrition under the leadership of Dr. Florence Sherbon, professor of home economics; Miss Kathryn Tissue, assistant professor of home economics; and Dr. R. I. Canuteson, of the Student Health Service.
Alumni Place includes the square on which stand Templin and Battenfeld halls, and also the grounds in front of the halls where tennis courts are situated.
Name plaques are also being designed and made by Dorothy Wiggins, fine arts sophomore, for Templin and Carruth halls.
The plaques will be large enough to be read from the street.
Trojan Horse?
By UNITED PRESS
LONDON—Warn Britain Hess may be Hitler "trojan horse"; Churchill to interview Hess shortly; Eden attributes Hess flight in part to dissension and tension among Nazi leadership; Hess said to be talking freely; Winant says "freedom-loving" nations coming to realize this is not Britain's fight alone; British bombers raid Helgoland and shipping off Dutch and French coasts.
BERLIN—Nazis say Hess letter indicates he expected to return to Germany within two days; Hess papers also said to indicate he hoped induct Duke of Hamilton to lead a peace movement; say Hess had "no knowledge" of Nazi war plans; Hitler may explain "Hess case" to German people; report German patrols thrust 45 miles inside Egypt; claim British attack near Tobruk fails; declare northern part of Red Sea a combat zone.
VICHY—council of ministers unanimously approves Darlan-Hitler negotiations for French-German collaboration.
ROME—Italian planes raid Alexandria, claim hits on military objectives.
Loretta Preston
Young Foster
"LADY FROM CHEYENNE"
Thurs. - Fri. - Sat.
2 BIG FEATURES — 20c