Every few years I pick up Stephen Scobie's McAlmon's Chinese Opera (1980) and read it from start to finish. Last time I read it (five years ago) I recall thinking how lopsided it was, how well it started, but how so much of it (too much of it) was given over to his final "desert" years. Not so this time. This time I thought its proportions ideal.
Poetry has some McAlmon online. Here is his poem "White Men" (1920):
Before they died.
There would be no more white males,
None so clear a white as these;
Only some tinged with grey -- dusty.
But I could not watch them rush to the forest forever --
Not one did I see arrive there --
A cloud or night or blackness always intervened.
I saw them rush forward and disappear,
And then saw no more of them.
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