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diff --git a/old/60044-0.txt b/old/60044-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index da81f2e..0000000 --- a/old/60044-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2556 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Against This Age, by Maxwell Bodenheim - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Against This Age - -Author: Maxwell Bodenheim - -Release Date: August 3, 2019 [EBook #60044] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AGAINST THIS AGE *** - - - - -Produced by Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -book was produced from images made available by the -HathiTrust Digital Library.) - - - - - - - - - -AGAINST THIS AGE - - - - - AGAINST THIS AGE - - MAXWELL BODENHEIM - - [Illustration] - - BONI AND LIVERIGHT - PUBLISHERS : : NEW YORK - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY - BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC. - - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - - - - To - FEDYA AND MINNA - FOUR EYES WITHIN A BLIND WORLD - - - - -Some of the poems in this book have appeared in _The Century_, _The -Bookman_, _The Nation_, _The Dial_, _The Menorah Journal_, _Broom_, -_The Double Dealer_, _Shadowland_, and _Harper’s Magazine_. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - BABY 11 - - NIGHTMARE AND SOMETHING DELICATE 13 - - REGARDING AN AMERICAN VILLAGE 22 - - THREE PORTRAITS 25 - - DEFINITIONS 28 - - TO A CORPULENT SINGER 29 - - TOPSY-TURVY 30 - - REVILE THE ACROBAT 32 - - COMPULSORY TASKS 34 - - RHYMED CONVERSATION WITH MONEY 36 - - HIGHLY DELIBERATE POEM 38 - - POEM 40 - - REALISTIC CREATOR 41 - - CITY STREETS 42 - - DECADENT CRY 43 - - GIRL 44 - - COLOR AND A WOMAN 46 - - RELUCTANT LADY 48 - - PSYCHOLOGY FROM MARS 49 - - TO TIME 51 - - DECADENT DUET 52 - - POEM TO A POLICEMAN 54 - - INTIMATE SCENE 56 - - NEW YORK CITY 58 - - WE WANT LYRICS 60 - - A VISITOR FROM MARS SMILES 62 - - SURPRISE 63 - - - - -AGAINST THIS AGE - - - - -BABY - - - 1 - - The blue beginning of your eyes - Condenses the sprawling and assured - Blue with which the sky retreats - From those obscene confessions known as days. - - - 2 - - Again, your battling mites of blue - Try to stop the revolving monster of life - And find the indelible persuasiveness - Of single forms within the circling blur. - Sundered bits of a soul - Astonished at their shrunken estate, - They are not sure that they have still survived, - And plead for the conviction of sight. - - - 3 - - But when they recollect - The hugely placid manners - Of their life, before the earthly exile - Made them small and fastened - To one pathetic puzzle, - Their blue reverts to swelling reveries - Whose outward circles spurn the curtained jail. - - - 4 - - Upon your softly incomplete - Face, where germs of devils stir in curves - That tremble into questioning symmetries, - A thrust of darkness sometimes interferes - With secret, virgin places underneath - Your eyes and where your leaf-thin nostrils pause. - This darkness bends with helpless messages, - Like history admonishing a world - Personified in one, composite face. - - - - -NIGHTMARE AND SOMETHING DELICATE - - - You mutter, with your face - Pleading for more room because - It has scanned a panorama: - You mutter, with every difference - On your face an error in size - Mesmerized by the sight of a sky-line: - “Life is a nightmare and something delicate.” - Lady, they have made a world for you, - And if you dare to leave it - They will flagellate you - With the bones of dead men’s thoughts, - And five senses, five termagants - Snapping at the uneasy mind. - “No, five riotous flirts,” - You say, “and each one has - A thick blandishment to master the mind.” - Yes, lady, through the bold disarrangement of words - Life acquires with great foresight - An interesting nervousness. - But O lady with a decadent music - Somehow silent in lines of flesh, - Finding your face too small, - Finding the earth too small, - Have they not informed you - That crowding life into seven words - Is an insincere and minor epigram? - And have they not reprimanded you - Because you fail to observe - Their vile and fervent spontaneity, - These howlers of earthly shrouds? - And have they neglected to drive - The bluster of their knuckles against your face - Because you rush from the leg and arm - Anecdotes of microscopical towns, - Bandying with a fantasy - Which they call thin and valueless? - “Life is a nightmare and something delicate,” - You repeat, and then, “O yes, they have done these things - To me because I take not seriously - The interval between two steps - Made by Death, who has grown a little tired. - When Death recovers his vigor - The intervals will become - Shorter and shorter until - No more men are alive. - But now they have their chance. - The wild, foul fight of life - Delights in refreshing phrases-- - Swift-pouring tranquillities and ecstasies - Atoning for the groaning stampede - That desecrates the light - Between each dawn and twilight. - And those who stand apart - Use the edged art of their minds - To cut the struggling pack of bodies - Into naked, soiled distinctness.” - Lady, do not let them hear you. - You are too delicate-- - Deliberately, nimbly, remotely, strongly - Delicate--and you will remind them - Too much of Death, who is also - The swiftly fantastic compression - Of every adjective and adverb - Marching to nouns that live - Beyond the intentions of men. - Men are not able, lady, - To strike his face, and in vengeance - They will smear your face - With the loose, long hatred of their words. - I will wash your face - With new metaphors and similes, - Telling carefully with my hands - That I love you not for your skin, - And every bird at twilight - Will be enviously astonished - At your face now insubstantial - Indeed, you have an irony - That ironically doubts - Whether its power is supreme, - And at such times you accept - The adequate distraction - Of cold and shifting fantasy. - This is your mood and mine, - And with it we open the window - To look upon the night. - The night, with distinguished coherence, - Is saying yes to the soul - And mending its velvet integrity - Torn by one forlorn - Animal that bounds - From towns and villages. - The night is Blake in combat - With an extraordinary wolf - Whose head can take the mobile - Protection of a smile; - Whose heart contains the ferocious - Lies of ice and fire; - Whose heart with stiff and sinuous - Promises swindles the lips and limbs of men; - Whose heart persuades its confusion - To welcome the martyred certainties - Of cruelty and kindness; - Whose brain is but a calmness - Where the falsehoods of earth - Can fashion masks of ideas. - Welcome the wolf. - Bring lyrics to fondle his hair. - Summon your troops of words - And exalt his gasping contortions. - Lady, it is my fear - That makes me give you these commands. - Men will force upon you - The garland of their spit - If you fail to glorify, - Or eagerly disrobe, - The overbearing motives of their flesh. - And every irony of yours - Will be despised unless - A hand of specious warmth - Directs the twist of your blades. - O lady, you are flashing detachment - Clad in exquisitely careful - Fantasy, and on your face - Pity and irony unite - To form the nimble light of contemplations. - Men will dread you as they fear - Death, the Ultimate Preciosity. - Stay with me within this chamber - And tell me that your heart - Is near to a spiral of pain - Curving perfectly - From the squirming of a world. - See, you have made me luminous - With this news, and my heart, - Fighting to be original, - Ends its struggle in yours. - Turning, we trace a crescent - Of conscious imagination - Upon the darkness of this room. - Night and window still remain. - Night, spiritual acrobat, - Evades with great undulations - The moans and exultations of men. - His madly elastic invitation - To the souls of men - Gathers up the imagination - Of one poet, starving in a room - Where rats and scandals ravish the light. - With conscious combinations of words - The poet bounds through space with Night. - Together they observe - The bleeding, cheated mob - Of bodies robbed by one quick thrill. - Cold, exact, and fanciful, - They drop the new designs of words - Upon a vastly obvious contortion. - Poet and night can see - No difference between - The peasant, groveling and marred, - And smoother men who cringe more secretly. - Yet they give these men - The imaginary distinctions of words. - Compassionate poet and night. - You say: “With glaring details - Attended by the voices of men, - Morning will attack the poet. - Men will brandish adjectives. - Tenuous! Stilted! Artificial! - Dreams of warm permanence - Will grasp the little weapons - Furnished by the servant-mind. - Dreams ... ah, lady, let us leave - The more precise and polished dream - Of our sadness, and surpass - The scoundrel, beggar, fool, and braggart - Fused into a loose convulsion - Called by men amusement. - Laughter is the explosive trouble - Of a soul that shakes the flesh. - Misunderstanding the signal - Men fly to an easy delight. - Causes, obscure and oppressed, - Cleave the flesh and become - Raped by earthly intentions. - Thus the surface rôles of men - Throw themselves upon the stranger, - Changing his cries with theirs. - The aftermath is a smile - Relishing the past occurrence. - Lady, since you desire - To clutch the meaning of this sound and pause, - Laugh and smile with me more sadly - And with that attenuated, cold - Courage never common to men. - Another window is behind us, - Needing much our laugh and smile. - - - II - - That metaphysical prank - Known as chance--overwhelming - Lack of respect for bodies - And the position of objects-- - Gathers three men and arranges them - Side by side in a street-car. - Freudian, poet, and priest-- - Ah, lady, they have not lost - The unreal snobbishness - With which their different minds - Withdraw from one another. - Their thought does not desire - Only to be distinct - And adventurous. - They must also maintain - An extreme aloofness; - Throw the obliterating adjective; - Fix a rock and perch upon it. - Chance, the irresistible humorist, - Has lured their bodies together, - With that purity of intention - Not appreciated by men. - With a smile not impersonal - But trampling on small disputes, - We scan the minds and hearts of these men. - The Freudian is meditating - Upon a page within his essay - Where the narrative sleep of a woman - Clarifies her limbs and breast. - He does not know that men - Within their sleep discover - Creative lips and eyes stamped out by life; - That coarse and drooling fish-peddlers - Change to Dostoyevskies; - Morbid morgue-attendants - Snatch the sight of Baudelaire; - Snarling, cloudy cut-throats - Steal the shape of François Villon. - Men within their slumber - Congratulate the poetry, - Prose, and art that life reviles - Within their stifled consciousness. - Their helpless imaginations - Throw off the soiled and cramped - Weight of memorized realities. - The Freudian in the street-car - Ties this freedom to a creed, - Narrowing the broad escape - Until it fits the lunge of limbs. - We leave him, rubbing his nose - To catch the upheaval of triumph, - And look upon the more removed - Body of the poet. - Lady, poets heal - Their slashed and poisoned loneliness - With words that captivate - The bald, surrounding scene: - Words that grip the variations - Crowded underneath each outward form, - Governed by the scrutiny - Of mind, and heart, and soul. - Transcending the rattle of this car - And every other gibberish - Uttered by civilization, - The poet plans his story. - Life, an old man, cryptic and evanescent, - Tries to sell some flowers - To Death, who is young and smiles. - Lady, this poet is also young-- - Tingling, candid somersault of youth-- - And his words only catch - Surface novelties of style. - Different phrases drape one thought. - “An old man 3 thirds asleep” - Replaces “an old man completely asleep.” - Ah, these endless dressmakers. - They hang a new or faded gown - Upon the shapes of life: - They do not cut beneath the mould - And clutch the huddled forms that wait - For resurrection in the inner dungeon ... - Poet and Freudian leave their seats - To gain the sleek encouragement of supper, - And only the priest remains. - From the lumbering torture of years - Men have wrenched a double hope, - God and Christ, and sought to calm - The strained deceptions of their flesh. - Lady, the tarrying soul, - Patient and flexible, - Must often smile at the simple, - Crude anticipations of men. - This priest smiles and is sleepy, - Thinking of coffee with cognac, - And the warm, assuring duty of prayer. - The outer smile is ever - An unconscious obliteration. - Ah, lady, logics, masks, - And ecstasies forever - Spurn the pregnant, black - Mystery that lets them spend - The tense importance of a moment. - Only fantasy and irony, - Incongruous brothers, - Can lift themselves above - The harassed interval that Death permits. - - - - -REGARDING AN AMERICAN VILLAGE - - - I - - O local mannerisms, - Coarsely woven cloaks - Thrown upon the plodding, - Emaciated days within this village, - I have no contempt or praise - To give you--no desire - To rip you off, discovering - Skin, and undulations known as sin, - And no desire to revise you - With glamorous endearments of rhyme. - Slowly purchased garments - Of cowardice, men wear you - And aid their practised shrinking - From one faint irritation - Escaping nightly from their souls. - Night makes men uncertain-- - The mystery of a curtain - Different from those that hang in windows. - At night the confidence of flesh - Becomes less strong and men - Are forced to rescue it - With desperate hilarities. - Observe them now within the bland - Refuge of manufactured light. - Between the counters of a village store - They arm their flesh with feigned - Convictions brought by laughter. - Afterwards, as they roll along - The dark roads leading to their farms, - The grumbling of their souls will compete - With the neighing of horses - And the stir of leaves and weeds. - Night will lean upon them, - Teasing the sturdiness of flesh. - - - II - - The body of Jacob Higgins-- - Belated minstrel--sings and dances - On the edge of the cliff. - Once fiendish and accurate, - His greed has now become - Frivolous and unskillful, - Visualizing Death as a new - Mistress who must be received with lighter manners. - Preparing for her coming - He buys “five cents wuth of candy” - For a grandchild, and with a generous cackle - Tackles a chair beside the stove. - Another old man, like a blurred - Report of winter, seizes - The firmer meaning of a joke - About the Ree-publican partee. - Jacob, using one high laugh, - Preens himself for celestial dallying. - Old men in American villages laugh - To groom the mean, untidy habits - Of their past existences. - (They lack the stolid frankness - Of European peasants.) - - Behind a wire lattice - Bob Wentworth separates the mail - With the guise of one intent - On guessing the contents of a novel. - Forty years have massed - Exhausted lies within him, - And to ease the weight he builds - Mysteries and fictions - In the fifty people whom he knows. - Agnes Holliday receives her letter - With that erect, affected - Indifference employed by village girls. - The words of a distant lover - Rouse the shallow somnambulist - Of her heart, and it stares - Reproachfully at an empty bed. - Oh, she had forgotten: - Sugar, corn, and loaves of bread. - The famished alertness of her reading - Curtsies to a cheap and orderly - Trance known to her mind as life. - Then an anxious, skittish youth - Behind the counter invites her - To the weekly dance at Parkertown. - Concrete pleasures drive their boots - Against the puny, fruitless dream ... - And, Thomas Ainsley, they have given you - Chained tricks for your legs and arms, - And peevish lulls that play with women’s feet. - You stroke the paper of your letter-- - An incantation to the absent figure. - - The night upon a country-road - Is waiting to pounce upon - The narrow games of these people. - The power of incomprehensible sounds - Will cleave their breasts and join - The smothered gossip of trees, - And every man will lengthen his steps - And crave the narcotic safety of home. - Fear is only the frantic - Annoyance of a soul, - Misinterpreted by flesh. - - - - -THREE PORTRAITS - - - I - - Withdraw your hair from the simulated - Interest of the moon; - Take every tenuous shadow - From the aimless tongues of these trees - And darken your speech until it attains - A fickle and fantastic - Acquaintance with the eccentric night; - Disarrange your dress and make it - A subtle invitation to nakedness. - Remove your shoes and stockings - So that your feet may enjoy - An embarrassed soliloquy with the grass; - Place the palm of your hand - Lightly against your nose, - Following the slope of some grotesque feeling. - Devise these careful affronts - To the heavier intentions - Of thought and emotion, and gratefully - Accept your title of minor poet. - - Only trees with long roots caught by hills - Will recognize your importance. - - - II - - They worship musical sound, - Protecting the breast of emotion. - Their feelings pose as fortune-tellers - And angle for coins from credulous thoughts. - Shall we abandon this luxury - Of mild mist and wild raptures? - Your face refrains from speaking yes - But your poised eyes roundly - Reward the luminous question. - Greece and Asia have exchanged - Problems upon your face, - And the fine poise of your head - Tries to catch their conversation. - Few people care to use - Thought as a musical instrument, - Bringing ingenious restraints to grief and joy, - But we, with clasped arms, will descend - Daringly upon this situation. - The full-blown confusion of life - Will detest our intrusion. - - - III - - If you subtract a nose you add religion, - Supine, and in a glitter of explanation - Expanding the unreasonable second - Of chattering, pugnacious flesh. - The inquisitive elevation of noses - Does not fit into the smooth - Curvatures of faith. - If you remove the lips you add - Philosophy, for lips express the warm - Quarrel of emotions and become - Crimson antagonists to contemplation. - If you subtract the eyes you add - The fertile smugness of earth, - For eyes are rapid skeptics - Tossing light beyond the circles of earth. - Flesh will remain and vacillate - Between the cocaine of belief - And times of wakefulness - Designed to replenish the drug. - Then reconstruct the face - With shifting experiments - Of spirit, fantasy, and intellect, - Intent upon violating - The tyrannies of formal reiteration. - Men will revile you and bestow - The necessary background. - - - - -DEFINITIONS - - - Music is a treacherous sound, - Seducing emotions and marking - Their breathless faces with death. - Art is an intrepid mountebank, - Enraging philosophies and creeds - By stepping into the black space beyond them. - Religions are blindly tortured eyes, - Paralyzing the speed of imagination - With static postures of hope. - History is an accidental madness, - Using nations and races - To simulate a cruel sanity. - (In the final dust - This trick will be discovered.) - Psychology is a rubber-stamp - Pressed upon a slippery, dodging ghost, - But thousands of centuries can remove - All marks of this indignity. - - Men, each snuggling proudly - Into an inch of plausible falsehood, - Will hate the careless smile - That whitens these definitions. - The table has been broken by fists; - The fanatic has mangled his voice; - The scientist cautiously repairs the room - Beyond which he dares not peer. - Life, they will never cease to explain you. - - - - -TO A CORPULENT SINGER - - - I - - Bulging maturity - Constructs an unfair version - Of curves not visible - To eyes upon the outside face. - - - II - - If a soul is more - Slender than the motives of wind, - Flesh provides the necessary - Privacy, and in a rising voice - The soul proclaims its gratefulness. - - - III - - Who has watched a bear - Pawing his idea of a breeze? - The audience in this falsely walled - Room is pouncing awkwardly - Upon the small part of a singer’s voice. - The actual sounds swing easily - To eyes and ears beyond the edge of earth. - - - IV - - And if to this meandering - Of metaphysical remarks - I should add a face - Where tragedy experiments with lanterns - To aid a long, sharp nose and wondering lips, - And laughter is conscious of being - The excited, misunderstood child of a soul, - The singer would receive - Final details of her disguise. - - - - -TOPSY-TURVY - - - I - - If I insist that violets - Are intellectual eyes - Dotting with a wave of sight - The chained recalcitrance of earth, - Philosophers and scientists-- - Blind boys who bolt themselves within a room-- - Will seek to torture me - For the flashing witchcraft - That rides on thunderclaps - Called imagination. - The crystallized escape - Of fear is known as logic, - And men have used it to light - Small spaces in the wilderness of black. - But I prefer to mount - Huge horses of the wind, - Whose fantastic laughter - Separates to metaphors - And similes that hurl their decorations - Against the wide malevolence of space. - When I return to the morbid - Helplessness of earth - And shake off the dream of freedom, - Men ply their knives of gods - And creeds upon my skin. - Much traveling through space - Has made me immune to pain, - And metaphors and similes - Aid my counting of blood-drops, - Bringing color to mathematics. - - - II - - Lady upon whose head - I weave the motives of this poem, - Change your sex to a barely visible - Trembling that can match the fluttering charm - Of the wreath that I have made for you. - When this task is finished - We may saunter gayly - Past the cunning niches - That psychology has made for us. - - - - -REVILE THE ACROBAT - - - Maiden, where are you going, - With impudence that makes your arms and legs - Unnecessary feathers? - Your eyes have interceded - Between the flesh and soul, - And show a light of reconciliation. - For whom have you prepared yourself? - - I go to see an acrobat - Reviled by men, and acting - Within a lonely circus owned - By Mind, Soul, & Heart, Incorporated. - I love his limbs whose muscles - Compete with twirls of gossamer, - And Oh, I love him not - With the drooling, fevered weight of earth. - He turns my blood to one - Profusion of melted wings. - - Maiden, why is this acrobat - Better than men who stand within - The favored halls of mind and heart, - Playing, with lust and dignity, - Violins and trumpets? - - They are not better, and he, - Whose thoughtful quickness combines - The pliantness of mind and soul, - He is not worse--the thoughts of men - Stand still on high roofs of the mind, - Or borrow sorceries of flesh, - While he, with flimsy trails - Of ruffles on a gaudy jacket, - Springs into the air; assaults - Every stately, fierce, robust - Finality that men have made. - He cares not whether he is right or wrong. - He seeks a decorative speed - Of thought and soul, and he is not afraid - Of being insincere. - Men loathe him, but I clothe him - With magnificent, specific - Fabrics slighter than the remorse of a child - And bearing involved births of colors. - Strength is not alone - The size and thickness known to men! - - - - -COMPULSORY TASKS - - - Words, it is apparent - That you are crucified and fondled - By the pride of each new generation. - O words, whose sportive formations - Could make the courts of intellect - Belligerent and insane, - Men have sentenced you - To scores of endless drudgeries. - Weakened by the years, - You guard the dying bonfires - Of each nation and race. - Again, like hordes of cattle, - You drag the expectations - Of social theories and remedies, - Stopping only when the blood of men - Washes away your useless labours. - I have seen your bands - Of ragged courtesans - Marching in feverish lines - To rescue the rites of sex. - I have watched you rush - To repair the cracks - In breaking cathedrals and churches. - With gilded, exclamatory vowels - You garnish the cowering of earth, - And with recurring darkness - You spurn the peering mind. - Again you are hands of intellect, - Disrobing the flesh of men - And carefully preserving - Each discarded garment - With a pinch of powdered emotion. - Again you are driven forth - In lying mobs of sighs and laughs - To warm the evening hours of a nation. - (“They could never restrain themselves - To wait at home for the postman ... - Would Copperfield marry Dora or Agnes?”) - Sentimental breathlessness - Fleeing from the helpless decay of thought. - O words, brow-beaten bricklayers - Obeying the shouts of science - And raising walls upon whose top - The soul is perched, contemptuously - Squinting down at toiling pygmies: - O words, and you can be - Superbly demented skeptics, - Betraying the unctuous failures of earth; - Riding the wild horse of the mind: - Bringing spurs into play; - Summoning with pain the lurking soul. - - - - -RHYMED CONVERSATION WITH MONEY - - - How many planets have you raped, - Where only animals escaped - To scrape with melancholy needs - The bones of last men lost in weeds? - Since you are blunt and fraudulent - You must receive a bare treatment. - Adverbs and adjectives undress - When greeted by excrescences. - You are the stench on any street, - Thick with the vagaries of defeat: - The wench who plies her squawking crime - Within the alley-ways of time. - For men desire to guard with pain - The limitations of their brain, - And drag the numbness of their hearts - Within ornate and creaking carts. - And for these tasks they must be bold, - Clutching endurance from a cold - Squirming with you within the dark, - And rising blistered with your mark. - Again you give to doubting lust - An argument which it can trust. - Imagination spoils the scene - And needs a dagger, crude and mean. - For you were made by men to choke - A lyric with an obscene joke - And strike the mind when it is strong, - With whips methodical and long. - Men who are inarticulate - Desire to parody their fate - With gibberish of clinking coins. - When life, excited thief, purloins - The voice and energy of men, - They lead him to a mouldy pen: - They seek revenge and watch him wilt, - Finding importance in his guilt. - They do not know that they have made - The thief to revel in his aid. - And you are there to strain your cheek - Against imaginations weak-- - Coquettish counterfeit of strength. - I have observed your metal length - Of hands drop on the poet’s throat, - And yet he scarcely saw you gloat. - To certain men you merely feed - The stoics of creative need. - - - _Money_ - - I am the vicious test with which - Men find that they are poor or rich. - Without my challenge men might fail - To leave the blurred and murderous jail. - Utopias are merely death: - Men need the scorching of my breath. - - - - -HIGHLY DELIBERATE POEM - - - “Mother o’ mi-i-ine, mother o’ mi-i-ine, - Sweet as uh ro-ose in thuh spring-ti-i-ime”-- - - The man who bawls this song - Has the face of a spell-bound, hairless rat. - Entranced within a spotlight, - He borrows unconsciously - Another voice from despair. - The ordinary squeak of his life - Is paralyzed, and fear of death - Lends him a tenor voice - To supplicate the Catcher. - But the audience fails to understand - And makes flat sounds of glee - With hands ... Death, quietly - Disgusted at this blind approval, - Takes away the spotlight. - Now safe, the rat presents - Jerks of gratitude and scampers off - To gnaw at his wife within their dressing-room. - That squeezed-in bag of piteous - Mythologies described as heart - Has opened in one thousand people - And received a vision - Of past solicitude for other bags. - The rat repeats this feat and wins - Varieties of coarse sweetmeats. - At sixty the rat will be a gorged - Machiavelli, wondering - Whether he has not blundered. - Death finds no interest in killing rats - And often allows them to live, - Preferring instead the less buried souls - Of a poet or a child of ten. - But the rat has found a fear - Within the second eyes of whiskey - And relates it to his wife. - “Say, May, this thing is funny! - You won’t believe me, but tonight - Just before I started the act - I felt like I was gonna die. - What in hell is wrong with me? - This booze must be drivin’ me bughouse. - Well, move a leg, and get that thousand - Faulkner promised you, and stop - Sitting there and staring at me.” - Death, who has listened with fastidious - Ennui, strolls off to slay - A negro infant newly born. - - - - -POEM - - - A curious courtship in your brain - Regulates the movements of your limbs. - Remorse, the fanciful, abandoned - Child of madness, discovers its lips - Upon the breast of a hovering Madonna. - How many poets present - The crushed tips of their hearts - Pieced carefully together as a wreath - Upon the two heads of this wooing? - Imagination is a wound - Upon the adventures of thoughts, - And one scar left behind - Is known as reality. - Will they give you robes - Threaded with orderly shimmers of repentance, - Pardoning the scar in earthly ways? - - - - -REALISTIC CREATOR - -_A Sonnet Dedicated to T. S. Eliot_ - - - An intimate and playful accident - Common to life had placed him on a bench - Beside an old and stiffly wounded wench. - With erudite and careful eyes he sent - A sneer to tear away her feeble mask - And snatch the battered dullness of her heart. - He spied her only in the scheming part - Of soiled flesh bickering with some trivial task. - - The lacerated madness of her soul, - And delicate emotions kicked by life, - Did not invade the swift tricks of his mind. - Regarding her, he could not see the whole, - Or catch the psychic lunge behind her strife. - His eyes were savagely adroit, and blind. - - - - -CITY STREETS - - - This pavement and the sordid boast of stone - And brick that wins the pity of a sky - Are only martyred symbols made to buy - A dream of permanence for flesh and bone. - The jumbled, furtive anecdotes of lips - And limbs that bring their fever to this street, - They will subside to fragments of defeat - Within the cool republic where death trips. - - This is an age where flesh desires to shape - Intense hyperboles in prose and verse, - Transforming city streets and country lanes - To backgrounds aiding physical escape. - But city streets are waiting to disperse - With ruins the fight and plight of earthly pains. - - - - -DECADENT CRY[A] - - - Hill-flowers salute his feet - Upon the upward slant of a path. - His destination does not matter. - His legs divide the spacious tragedy - Of distance into the small translation - Of steps, and with their aid he reaches - The fraudulent temple of a pause or end. - Hill-flowers, important and unprejudiced, - Bow to this monster-clown. - His feet, ridiculous and neat, - Do not stop, for they must ape - A certainty and hasten to attack - Or praise fixed idols made by flesh and mind. - Hill-flowers, trimly polished - Devices hailing preciosity; - Rumpled by the wind - To scores of original caprices; - Bearing the transfigured skirmish - Of spiritual moods that men call color; - Swiftly and unassumingly - Deaf to lusts and traditions-- - They are not regarded - By the men who walk, flat-footed, - Or with scholarly exactitude, - In chase of an ardent chicanery - Known as flesh, and elderly - Quibbles of mind and emotion. - - Only an intellect clad in sprightly chiffon - Can spy the importance of flowers on a hill. - - [A] _Dedicated to a rare moment of intelligence on the part of The - Dial._ - - - - -GIRL - - - The words of men are not conjectures - Lunging toward your soul: - They do not wish you to leave - The fawning thefts of flesh. - When with covered formality - They tramp from actual pulpits, - They merely bring celestial nonsense - For one, uncurious, sanctified bed. - Ah, girl, the soul that they give you - Is a clumsy, white - Concert-master rebuking - The first-violin of your body. - Again they brand a word, - Sacredness, upon your breast, - Claiming that your soul is tied - To the pliant riot of your limbs. - - Girl, I can forget for a moment - That hairs upon the bulge of my chest - Must be praised or censured, - And I have no desire - To belittle you with one, - Hopeless, cynical, sententious - Group of words, while intellect, - Flavoring its tea-cup with a sneer, - Watches you from shaded balconies. - When you win the torpid illness - Known as virtue you are less important - Than a quest for daisies in the moon, - And when you merely ask - For one blow and inertness, - An old dream yells and ends - With the quietness of sprawling pity. - Girl, avoid the plentiful - Drugs of seriousness and spend - Pieces of your heart on every whim. - Give your flesh the light and sharp - Contacts of a thistle blown - Across the wincing cheeks of rogues. - Make your soul and body spurn - Each other with a swift impertinence, - And let your clawing griefs and joys - Be still a moment on the couch of thought. - And if at times you turn your head - To spy the hatred of philosophers - And panting realists, preserve the smile - Of one who takes a suitable reward. - - - - -COLOR AND A WOMAN - - - Cry the names of colors - And fail to reproduce - The brightly worried way - In which they burn ideas, - Sweeping hues of intangible blood - Into the conspiring fires of soul: - The darkly reticent manner - With which they embalm emotions, - Ending the spontaneous treachery - With a self-possessed attraction. - Chant the names of colors - And fascinate the brown - Coward, who surrounds himself - With crystal safeguards known as facts, - But likes the dangerous sounds - Of unattained realities. - Or, scorn this satirical advice - And storm the body of a woman - With words as deliberate as wind, - Yet heavier, and bearing - Colors without a label. - The substance of her hair-- - Ethereal stems that continue their quest - Beyond the warped confines of sight-- - Shows the darkness of intellect - Answering a miniature sunset - Whose dying light does not quite succumb. - The steep reserve of her forehead - Has been kindled by a flat burden - Pale as the cry of a child, yet carrying - The hint of trouble found in late afternoon. - Her eyes hold emotional evening, - With spurts of dawn remaining like anxious relics - Kept alive by unsatisfied designs - From that derided realm where logic dies. - Her breast is the color that a north wind - Would have if it were visible to eyes. - Upon her body, color in light and darkness - Subdues the ribald ponderousness of life - And brings the filmy, flashing seriousness - Detested by the prostrate toil of mud; - Hated in taverns at midnight; - Banished from every couch when morning - Rearranges the ancient jest. - - - - -RELUCTANT LADY - - - The widely bruised, shy beauty of a brain - That renders dogmas bashful with its breath - Will raise its last, wan offering to death-- - A poise of gossamer that takes the rain - Of darkness, with an unexpectant pride. - Your thoughts are old and yet too young for life - Whose ponderous sneer preserves their curling strife. - They wait for heavy spear-points, side by side. - - You are a wilted pilgrim on a road - Where hills and rubbish-pits receive alike - The skeptical remonstrance of your pace. - You pass through towns and raise your thoughtful load - To shield your loves against the words that strike - The sheer, elastic trouble of your face. - - - - -PSYCHOLOGY FROM MARS - - - Torban flattered the details - Of his festival in brown--a beard-- - With fingers that held a musical length, - And spoke of psychology. - The clever reproduction - Of a human being, - His appearance lacked - A hairsbreadth of reality - And barely failed to convince. - His eyes, assemblages of planets - Miraculously dwarfed, were small - But did not hold the shifting gluttony - Common to little eyes. - His lips were unsubstantial fibres - And the straight line of his nose - Gained an unearthly sincerity. - His body was muscular but failed to reveal - The smug delusion of superiority - That lives within physical strength. - With a voice in which pity and satire - Mingled bewilderedly with each other, - He spoke of psychology. - “Normal and average men - On Mars are charged with being - Insane and distorted oracles. - Because they desire to resemble each other - We force them to live together - On drably elaborate plateaus. - There they fashion cities-- - Geometrical madness - That censures shreds of dread and unrest - Within the spaces of its heart. - There they retreat to farms, - And the disciplined exhaustion - Of their lives reclines upon - Monotonous rewards known as harvests. - They cling to homes--slumbering alcoves - Plentifully supplied - With complimenting mirrors - And altars for the mind. - Sometimes a revolution - Seduces their living flatness, - And an original confusion - Follows rumours of creation, - But the sanity vanishes - Into the marching unison - Of their repentant madness. - We who are sane live below the plateaus. - ‘Home’ to us is a flitting answer: - Different spots inevitably - Transformed by our bodies garlanded with mind, - Or requests of the heart - That tarry a moment for shelter. - As we wander we tear - And rebuild ancient lanes and houses, - Leaving a sentinel of change - Behind to confront the next traveller. - We stroll in twos and threes - That endure for a day or an hour, - And we never linger - At one place to gloat over details. - Restless sanity, my friend, - Equips the changing cries within us. - Restless sanity - Prevents us from complacently - Dozing over miniatures, - With a dream of importance - Rocking within the rhythms of our hearts!” - - - - -TO TIME - - - O Time, you are an idiot’s fluid curse. - O Time, you are an uninspired hearse. - O Time, you kill beneath your robe of nurse. - - O Time, your eyes are cherubs drowned in pools, - O Time, your wisdom scorns the aid of stools, - O Time, your kindness blinds the life of fools. - - O Time, you blur pretentious intellect. - O Time, you break the thrones that thoughts erect. - O Time, your hands indifferently correct - - The incoherent sorceries of men - Who dance before a monstrous Axe and Pen, - Waving the fetiches of words, and then - - Censure the dance with pedestals of gauze - Cleverly imitating rock, and laws - Whose opaque sureness broods above their cause. - - When irony will cease to be obscure - To men whose eyes resent the cloudy lure - That ends their tiny clarities, with pure - - And forming mists of words, then men will climb - With restless regularity, like Time, - Who merely seeks a changing pantomime. - - O Time, you are too pure and swiftly wide - For men who try to check your colored stride - With opaque temples and a sleeping bride. - - - - -DECADENT DUET - - - _Torban_ - - Lightly sharp and even, - Your voice is the sound of an airplane - Darting high above your unreceptive face. - Your voice is unrelated - To the structure of your face, - And on your lips an echo merely rides, - The pagan shimmerings of your face - Receive the voice with a subtle disbelief. - Indeed, your intellectuality, - Speeding though spaces over your head, - Must seem of little consequence - To the nymph who listens far below. - That you are thus divided is not strange, - But you contain a third Self - And it regards the other two - With a grave and patient interest. - - - _Woman_ - - Phantasmagoria, - Ruling arabesques of words, - Your attenuated variations - Of thought and emotion will enrage - The blunt convictions of more earthly men. - The pagan rituals of my face - Distrust your words, and my mind, - Dropping its voice from fancied heights, - Resents the indirectness of your style. - But the third Self within me, - Generous and immobile of face, - Cares only for the skill - With which you elevate - Vainly celebrating shades - Of thought and protesting emotion. - Color, form, and substance-- - Three complaining slaves - Engraving the details of prearranged tasks - Within stationary brains and hearts. - My third Self would release them - To an original abandon - That exchanges intangible countries, - With a gracious, gaudy treason. - - - _Torban_ - - Lacking a better name - I will call your third Self “soul.” - The ancient, merry game - Of fighting over labels - Must not dismay our duet. - To most men soul exists - Only when their sensual weariness - Needs to be gilded with a religion - Or a deified memory of flesh. - We contain a lurking wanderer - Upon our inner roads, and he - Sometimes stops to drop pitying hands - Upon the forms of thought and emotions - Branded with scores of prejudices. - Men have hated him for centuries, - And hatred, symbol of sly cowardice, - Has draped its desire in false scorn - And named him Decadence. - Thus ends our decadent duet. - Come, there are roads on which we must pirouette. - The proper contrast will be furnished - By philosophers, scientists, and sensualists. - - - - -POEM TO A POLICEMAN - - - Marionnette-fanatic, - Your active club within this riot - Was once the passive integrity - Of a branch upon a tree. - Now without success - It tries to beat out fire - Writhing in human skulls. - The pause of nature, transformed - Survival of every memory and defeat, - Separates to bits of action - Aiding an inexplicable fever. - The hands of centuries press - These bits into another - Pause before corruption. - O pernicious circle, - I will not believe - That your parsimonious farce - Reiterates itself through space. - The souls of men achieve - An accidental dream - That seems important merely - Because the figures which it holds - Have invented small and almost - Non-existent divisions of time. - Yet, trapped within these months and years, - I turn to you, marionnette-fanatic. - You at least can bring - Diversion to my chained - Impatience as I wait for death. - How wildly you protect - The sluggish minds of men! - A calculating laziness of thought - Has created you to guard its doors, - While other men require - An outward expression of peace - Beneath which the inner struggle - Can revel in privacy. - And so, with buttons of brass - And blue uniform that lend - An incongruous dignity - To your task, you defend - The myriads of insincerities - That drape a mutilated need. - And yet, unconsciously, - And at rare times you save - The face of beauty from an old - Insult in the fists of men. - Yes, you are not entirely - Without extenuation, - Marionnette-fanatic. - - - - -INTIMATE SCENE - - - Bed-room, you have earned - The sympathy of dirt, - And bear upon your air - Malevolent and thwarted - Essences of men. - Many contorters of bellies - Have stirred an urgent travesty - Shielded by your greasy dusk, - And hearts have found upon your couch - A brief, delicious insult. - Cheap room within a lodging-house, - You are not merely space - For the coronation of flesh, - And your odorous bed-quilts - Need not only provoke - The casual jeering of thought. - - - II - - Woman and her master - Close the door too quietly. - With a mien of slinking - Insecurity, the woman turns - Within the dangling darkness of the room - And mumbles orders to her man. - Anticipation and disgust - Rout each other upon her face. - Then the gas-light brings - Its feeble understanding to the room. - Woman and man slump down - Within the chairs and regard - The tired amens of their feet. - For a time weariness - Banishes the theatrical - Divisions of masculine and feminine, - But returning strength - Calls to the untrue drama. - The man demands, with practised expectation, - Money squeezed from an automatic night; - Curses at the smallness of the sum, - And cuffs his woman without intensity, - Desiring only an excuse - For the slowness of his mind. - She is not a composition - Waiting for its orchestra of pain: - His fists can merely give - An inexpensive spice - To the apathy within her. - Soon the man and woman laugh, - To kill an inner jumble of sounds - Which they cannot separate-- - Nightly complaint of their souls. - He pinches one of her cheeks, - Like an Emperor deigning - To test the softness of a bauble, - And she finds within his fingers - An endurable compliment. - When morning light exposes - Each deficiency within the room, - Man and woman open their eyes. - Hallucination of fire - No longer streams over the moving screens. - Woman and her man - Stare, with disapproval, at the walls, - And their souls become - Querulous captives almost gaining lips. - Then emotional habits - Revive the earthly hoax. - Rising from the bed, - Man and woman use their voices - Reassuringly. - - - - -NEW YORK CITY - - - New York, it would be easy to revile - The flatly carnal beggar in your smile, - And flagellate, with a superior bliss, - The gasping routines of your avarice. - Loud men reward you with an obvious ax, - Or piteous laurel-wreath, and their attacks - And eulogies blend to a common sin. - New York, perhaps an intellectual grin - That brings its bright cohesion to the warm - Confusion of the heart, can mold your swarm - Of huge, drab blunders into smaller grace ... - With old words I shall gamble for your face. - - The evening kneels between your filthy brick, - Darkly indifferent to each scheme and trick - With which your men insult and smudge their day. - When evenings metaphysically pray - Above the weakening dance of men, they find - That every eye that looks at them is blind. - And yet, New York, I say that evenings free - An insolently mystic majesty - From your parades of automatic greed. - For one dark moment all your narrow speed - Receives the fighting blackness of a soul, - And every nervous lie swings to a whole-- - A pilgrim, blurred yet proud, who finds in black - An arrogance that fills his straining lack. - Between your undistinguished crates of stone - And wood, the wounded dwarfs who walked alone-- - The chorus-girls, whose indiscretions hang - Between the scavengers of rouge and slang; - The women moulding painfully a fresh - Excuse for pliant treacheries of flesh; - The men who raise the tin sword of a creed, - Convinced that it can kill the lunge of greed; - The thieves whose poisoned vanity purloins - A fancied victory from ringing coins; - The staidly bloated men whose minds have sold - Their quickness to an old, metallic Scold; - The neatly cultured men whose hopes and fears - Dwell in soft prisons honored by past years; - The men whose tortured youth bends to the task - Of hardening offal to a swaggering mask-- - The night, with black hands, gathers each mistake - And strokes a mystic challenge from each ache. - The night, New York, sardonic and alert, - Offers a soul to your reluctant dirt. - - - - -WE WANT LYRICS - - - Thousands of faces break - To one word called dramatic: - Thousands of faces attain - An over-worked, realistic - Clash of stupidities. - At first the mob spreads out - Its animated fights of lines-- - Butcher with a face one degree - Removed from the dead flesh which he cuts; - Socialist whose face rebukes - The cry for justice tumbling from his lips; - Five professors of English - Whose faces are essentially - School-boys coerced by erudition; - Bank-clerk with a face - Where curiosity - Weakly contends against - The shrewd frown brought by counting slips of money; - Girls whose first twenty years - Have merely shown them the exact - Shade of pouting necessary - For the gain of price-marked objects; - Boys with cocksure faces - Where an awkward lyric - Wins the vitriol of civilization; - Shop-girl whose face is like - The faint beginning of a courtezan - Prisoned by the trance of unsought labor; - Wealthy man whose face - Holds a courteous, bored - Reply to traces of imagination; - Housewife with a round - Face where dying disappointments - Flirt with hosts of angel-lies; - Old men with faces where a psychic doubt - Invades the ruins of noses, lips, and eyes - And dreams of better structures; - Old woman with a face - Like a bashful rag-picker - Rescuing bits of cast-off deviltries - Beneath the ebbing light of eyes. - Stare upon these faces, - With emotion cooled by every - Bantering of thought, - And they fade to one disorganized - Defeat that craves the smooth - Lubrications of music. - The mob upon this street - Reiterates one shout: - “We want lyrics! Give us lyrics!” - Space, and stars, and conscious thought - Stand above the house-tops of this street; - Look down with frowning interest; - Regard the implacable enemy. - - - - -A VISITOR FROM MARS SMILES - - - “Erudite and burnished poets seek - Pliant strength from Latin, French, and Greek - Phrases, finding English incomplete. - Or do they conceal their real defeat, - Like some juggler, faltering, who drops - Circling, rapid balls of words and stops - To relate obscure, pretentious tales, - Hiding nervous moments where he fails?” - Torban, visiting from Mars, became - Silent, and his smile, like mental fame, - Rescued the obscurity of flesh. - Then I answered with a careful, fresh - Purchase from the scorned shop of my mind. - “Men must advertise the things they find. - Erudition, tired after work, - Flirts with plotting vanities that lurk - Poutingly upon the edge of thought. - Languages and legends men have caught - Practice an irrelevant parade - With emotions morbidly arrayed.” - Torban gave the blunt wealth of his smile. - “We, in Mars, have but one tongue whose guile - Does not yield to little, vain designs. - Feelings are fermented thoughts whose wines - Bring an aimless fierceness to the mind. - And a row of eyes, convinced and blind, - But we sip them carefully, for we - Do not like your spontaneity. - Children babbling on the rocks in Mars, - Shrieking as they dart in tinseled cars, - Are spontaneous, but as they grow, - We remove this noisy curse and throw - Nimbleness to rule their tongues and ears-- - Juggling games that slay their shouts and fears. - Novelty to you is almost crime: - We decorate the treachery of time!” - - - - -SURPRISE - - -He knew that he was dead because his fingers had forgotten the art of -touching and were trying to regain their ability. They were no longer -able to separate different textures and surfaces, and everything -held to them a preposterous smoothness that suggested an urbane, -impenetrable sophistry. With a methodical despair they gripped one -object after another, disputing the integrity of their condition, and -when at last they capitulated he accepted the verity of his death. So -far he had not sought to use his eyes or ears--he had existed only as -a limited intensity of thought and emotion that directed his hands in -a fight for variations in feeling. Now he discovered his sight, and in -that moment avalanches of metaphors and similes--the detailed disguises -and comparisons with which two eyes arbitrarily brand a comforting -distinctness upon a mystery--rushed from his head and arranged -themselves to form a world. This was a reversal of life, since in life -the human eye detects and reflects the objects around it, as all good -scientists will testify, and does not first project these objects and -afterwards reflect them. But this man, being dead, found that his eyes -had thrown myriads of determinations upon a shapeless mass and changed -it to an equal number of still and animated forms. The desires within -his eyes were continually altering the objects around them, so that a -tree became shifting plausibilities of design and a red rose was merely -an obedient chameleon. Of course, this could never have happened in -life, since in life different shapes hold a fixed contour, appearance, -and meaning, but this man was fortunate enough to be dead, so his eyes -meddled incorrigibly with the shapes and colors which they imagined -that they had made. - -He sat in a room constructed by himself, and after he had become -conscious of the result he saw that it was a hotel-room located in -Detroit, Michigan. He examined the furniture, walls, and floor, -and they were to him the firmness of his imagination divided into -forms that sheltered the different needs within him. If he had still -been alive he would have accepted the reality of shapes made by the -majority-imaginations of other men, regardless of whether they pleased -him or not, but death had given him a more audacious vigor and the -room in which he was sitting did not resemble to his eyes the same -chamber in which he had once reclined during his living hours. He -knew that the power of his desire had returned him to a hotel-room in -Detroit, Michigan, and had disarranged everything except its location -and exact position. The floor was an incandescent white and suggested -a proudly prostrate expanse--it did not have the supine appearance -that pine and oak floors hold to the eyes of life. The furniture had -lost its guise of being too economically pinned down by curves and -angles, and its lines were more relaxed and disordered. The chairs were -comfortable without relinquishing an aesthetic sincerity of line--a -semblance scarcely ever held by chairs that figure in life--and the -top of the table was not flat but depressed and elevated in different -places, since the imagination of this dead man had dared to become more -unobstructed. The bed had an air of counseling as well as supporting, -and its posters were high and curved in above the center of a gently -sloping bowl that formed the bottom. Also, the walls of the room stood -with a lighter erectness in place of the rooted, martinet aspect that -walls present to living eyes, while the ceiling gave an impression of -cloth that could be easily flung aside and had not been spread by a -passion for flat concealment. - -As the dead man sat in this room which he had revised, his memory -began to distribute pains throughout his brain, and he realized that -the room had dominated the last third of his life. The room had been -the scene of his final meeting with a woman whom he loved, for a week -later she had died after being thrown from a horse. Within this room -they had spoken and touched for the last time on earth, and afterwards -the room had become to him a square world isolated in a possibly round -world--a continent in quality and not in size, where he could disrupt -the imaginative lines fashioned by other men, changing a rose to an -intellectual face if he so desired. Every visual detail and remembered -word of the woman had merged to a guardian silence, enclosing this -separate world with alert sentinels of understanding. He recollected -these affirmations with the satisfaction of a transforming creator, for -his experiences had become fantasies which his memory strove to make -real. This was, however, the result of his death for, as all good men -will tell you, the memory of living beings is entirely different and -often adds inaccurate touches to the reality of experience, making this -reality fantastic and untrue. - -His sense of hearing revived almost simultaneously with his memory, -for hearing is the foremost aid in a capture of past happenings since -its productions do not fade from the mind as rapidly as those of other -senses. He found that his hearing was inextricably a part of thought -and signified, indeed, the fragmentary release of thought, and this -alteration drove from him every vestige of disbelief in his death, -for he knew that in life hearing is almost always the sense used by -men to divert the fatigue of their minds (the servant of meaningless -ecstasies). Then his sense of smell, changed from an unseen drug to -a floating search, collided with the odor of a woman--an odor that -was less smooth and more candid than the natural ones held by women -who are alive. Turning his head to the left, for the first time, he -saw that the woman whom he loved was seated near him. Her naked body -still gave the appearance of flesh curved as it had been during her -life, but it was no longer a slyly prisoned invitation to his sense of -touch. It aroused within him a feeling of thinly langourous intimacy -and became a visible grave into which his thoughts could sink for -future resurrection. It was as though a desire, once coarse and reeking -with a defeated violence, had been transmuted to a longing for less -fleeting and frantic pressures, while one former thrill became more -diffused and deliberately sensitive, finding a possession to which the -sense of touch was incidental, and not inevitable. The hemispheres of -her breasts, imperfect and firm, and the long taperings of her limbs -were to him forms which he wanted to envelope carefully with earnest -refinements of motion, gaining in this way a less explanatory medium -for his mind, and anything resembling an invasion would have seemed to -him an abruptly senseless blunder. He saw that her face was still a -gathering of boyish bewilderments beneath a mass of hair that had grown -more cloudy, but these expressions were hugged by a light that made -them unnecessary survivals of experience. He secured the impression -that death was amusing itself with the trivialities of her features, -while they held a perfect comprehension of the jest without abandoning -their outward shapes. At this moment he became aware of the nakedness -of his own body and felt the loss of that snug assurance which his skin -had once given him. In its place there was a sheath that seemed hardly -more than a visual flutter. - -He looked up at the woman and their smiles were adeptly synchronized. -Living people are apt to smile when they have hidden too little and -weep when there is nothing left to hide, but the smiles of this dead -man and woman were informal exercises of candour--thought adopting more -perceptible and less evasive signals. - -“Have you been sitting here since your death?” he asked. “No, I’ve also -been creating on the streets of Detroit,” she said. “You manage it in -this way. First you drive all of the alertness out of your senses and -your mind, and everything around you becomes a vibrating, shapeless -substance, a little thicker than mist and hued with a gray that is -almost colorless. Then you give a moderate vigor to your senses and -your mind, and the substance breaks into hosts of shapes. You have -attained the perceptions of an ordinary, living person and you find -that you are walking on a street. During all of this time you have -held back the strength of your imagination, which is alone real, but -now you release it and it shoots from you and follows the commands of -your desires. An old man’s whiskers change to a weedy sprouting of -thought, and each hair is the dangling of a different idea. You can see -the decay of an empire crowding itself into a young girl’s green and -mean hat, and different events emerge and group themselves to seize or -obliterate the color. A woman’s leg becomes a fat blasphemy and within -its shaking famous jelly you can spy a saint, writhing in the effort to -free himself. A young man’s shoulders are two, dead, delicate thoughts -caught in a bulging tomb, with their ghosts speaking through each -unconscious movement of his arms. The street-pavement lives and is a -hard, detached hatred, sapping the strength of those who have enslaved -it.... Sometimes I’ve returned to this room, not to rest, for weariness -springs only from that thick weakness of imagination known as flesh, -but to find you here before the final emphasis of your death.” - -“Since I’m not accustomed to being dead I must ask questions whose -answers are obvious to you,” he said. “Why are living beings unable to -see you? How do you avoid their jostling and the rolling devices that -they have made? How can we sit in a hotel-room, which must at the same -time be occupied by living beings, without seeing or hearing them? -Treat me as an earthly school-boy for a moment.” - -“Living beings dwell in realms made by their imaginations,” she said. -“We do not fit into these realms and consequently we are not forms -that can be detected by the senses and imaginations of people who are -alive. The desires of these people have created a world of objects and -substantiations which does not match our own, and so our world is an -independent one placed over the world of living men. With different -intensities and designs of imagination we invade a shapeless substance -and give it the elaborate distinctness of our longings. This substance -is inert imagination, and when we make our senses and minds blank we -become a part of it. Of course, I use the word imagination because -death has not yet taught me a better one. Beyond the earth there are -stars and space which are not controlled and shaped by our individual -imaginations, and when the feet of our imaginations become light enough -to rise beyond the shapeless mass which gave birth to them, we shall -discover what greater imaginations in turn gave birth to the feeble -beginning which formed us. And so we shall be able to discard this -word, imagination, which only represents the boundaries of our desire -and its attendant senses and thoughts, and gain the words of greater -explanations. But before we depart from these boundaries we must make -ourselves entirely clear and untroubled, and it will be necessary for -us to reconstruct the last meeting that we had during our lifetimes. -This meeting troubles us with an unfulfillment of imagination, and if -we do not alter it the strength of our imaginations will be hampered -by a recollection of former weakness. All men and women who die must -return to the most swiftly vivid scene that their imaginations were -able to attain during the period known as life. In this way the scene -is gradually made perfect by understanding, and the imagination, -shaking off the terror of past weakness and indecision, is able to -float away from the substance that created it. Because our imaginations -were much stronger than the ones surrounding them, we can achieve this -task immediately, while other dead people must slowly grapple for this -emancipation, visiting their scene in those guises which living people -call ghosts.” - -“You must direct me,” he said. “I was never much in harmony with the -imaginative semblances and rituals of most living people, and now that -I am dead I can scarcely remember them.” - -“Make your senses heavy and tight,” she said. “Reduce them to a -condition that approaches a stupor--a hopeful stupor such as prevails -among those living men known as mystics and priests. When you have -accomplished this, make little rows of imaginative objects and force -your mind to squeeze itself within them, adoring some and hating -others. Then try to arouse your senses by concentrating them upon a -thickly plotting form that once was flesh, while still making them -retain a disturbing trace of their former coma. You remember this -form--separated into hairsbreadths of worship and laceration by stunted -men?” - -“Your description of living imagination is perfect,” he said. “It will -be minutely disagreeable to follow your orders, but let us complete the -task quickly.” - -They looked away from each other, immersed in the strain of their -inner labours. The room disappeared in large pieces that receded to -the background of a gray substance, and consciousness left their -bodies. Her body faded out while his solidified to flesh draped by the -clumsy fears of clothes. Then the gray substance slowly adopted the -shapes, colours, and details of a railroad station. Once more he was a -suffering and encumbered poet, standing in the battling race of people -and waiting for the train that would bring her to Detroit, Michigan. -He paced up and down the cement platform, erasing his thoughts with -the long strokes of his limbs and obsessed only by the belief that he -was walking nearer to her in this fashion, since he was weary of being -over-awed by distance. Because he did not associate her qualities and -thoughts with those of other people he could never convince himself -that she was real unless she stood beside him and spoke, and when her -body was absent she became the unreal confirmation of his desires--a -dream to which he had given the plausible tricks of flesh and voice. -Only the return of these two things could reassure him, for she was to -him far too delicately exact and mentally unperturbed to exist actually -in the sweating, dense, malaria-saturated revolutions of a world. - -The train arrived and he stood near the gate. People streamed out--a -regiment disbanded after a lonely and forced conflict with thought in -uncomfortable seats, or with diluted chatter that fascinated their -inner emptiness. They were the people whose vast insistence and -blundering control of the earth made him doubt the reality of the woman -whom he loved. Oh, to feel once more certain that she was human--that -her incredibly tenuous aloofness could stoop to the shields of flesh! -Yes, she would come now, an alien straggler passively submitting to -the momentum of a regiment of people. When she failed to appear he -still lingered near the gate, inventing practical reasons for her -absence--the packing of baggage, a delayed toilette. The iron gates -shut with a thud that was to him the boot-sound of reality against his -head. - -He bought a newspaper; sat down in the waiting-room; and sought to -submerge his distress in the hasty and distorted versions of murders, -robberies, scandals, controversies, and machinations that defiled -white sheets of paper. But he could see nothing save a hazy host -of men fighting against or accepting the complexly sinister fever -that made them mutilate each other, and weary of this often-repeated -vision he dropped the paper. His mind gathered itself to that tight -and aching lunge known as emotion, and morbidly he involved her in -disasters--train-wrecks, suicide, the assault of another person. He -began to feel that melodrama was the only overwhelming sincerity in -a tangle of crafty or poorly adjusted disguises, and his emotional -activity fed eagerly upon this belief. All of the paraphernalia of -fatalism rose before his eyes--the small, lit stage with its puppets; -the myriads of strings extending into a frame of darkness and pulled -by invisible hands; the sudden and prearranged descent of catastrophe; -the laughter of an audience of gods, examining the spectacle with a -mixture of sardonic and bored moments. But abruptly he felt that these -were merely the devices of a self-pity that sought to raise its stature -by imagining itself the victim of a sublime conspiracy. He whistled -some bars of a popular song, deliberately snatching at an inane relief -from the industries of his mind. Then he walked back to the gates and -waited for the next train, which was about to arrive. Once more the -importantly fatigued stream of people; once more her absence. He had -turned away from the gate when her hand questioned his shoulder. - -“And so you are real and I have not been deceived,” he said. - -“I am as real as you care to make me,” she answered. “I was hunting for -a comb in my valise when the train came in. Combs always elude me.” - -She mentioned the name of a hotel and they walked to it in silence, for -speech to them demanded an impregnable privacy that was violated by -even the swiftly passing eyes and ears of other people. When they were -alone in the hotel-room he watched her remove outer garments and don a -kimono, with a pleasure that coerced sensual longing into an enslaved -contemplation--a fire that glowed without burning. - -“When I see your flesh then you are most unreal,” he said. “It becomes -a last garment that you have neglected to unfasten because you wish to -pretend that you belong to the earth. The cupped appeal of your breasts -is the subtle lie with which something infinitely abstract evades the -weight of a world. There is a surprised element attached to your legs -and they never seem assured in their task of supporting your torso. And -yet, when your body is beyond my actual sight your reality is still -doubtful, for then I lack even the uncertain evidence of your flesh. I -am helpless--I cannot mingle you with cities and men, and even country -roads seem heavily unwilling to hold you.” - -“And is it impossible for you to accept this body as a necessary, -insincere contrast to my thoughts and emotions?” she asked, with -lightness. “You are tensely morbid, Max. Now I shall sit on your knee. -The scene is prearranged. You must promptly clutch me, in that involved -manner that has made novelists famous and blurred the integrity of -poets. The earth has anointed and pointed riots waiting for you!” - -His fingers studied the short brown curls on her head and his lips -touched the less obvious parts of her face--her chin, the tip of her -inwardly curving nose, her temples, the meeting-place of forehead and -hair. - -“I can see two men looking at me now,” he said. “To one I am an -emasculated fool who places a dainty overtone upon his weakness, and to -the other I am chaining strong desires with the lies of vain and pretty -gestures. Olga, the earth is bulky and profane, and dreads anything -that delicately, aloofly disputes its size!” - -She carefully fitted her head between his shoulder and neck. - -“This listening peace that you bring me, and the softer intentions of -your hands, they are more important than the lunges of men,” she said. -“We are spontaneous in ways whose breathlike intensity has not been -corrupted by the screaming of nerves, and Oh, we must prepare ourselves -for the indifference and ridicules of a coarser audience. They cannot -peer into this room, yet afterwards something within the buoyant -removal of our bodies tells them to punish us with poverty and little -food.” - -He grinned, and crowded flights of defiance were on his face. - -“I’ve been eating onions and bread for the last week,” he said. “I cut -the onions into various shapes, making them resemble different articles -of food. With an imaginative seriousness one can almost overcome the -sense of taste. Almost.” - -“It is only that word that keeps us here,” she said. “We are almost -free illusions.” - -She walked to the bureau and brushed her hair, for she did not want him -to see an expression on her face. He guessed it and became repentantly -merry. - -“Sold a poem two weeks ago,” he said. “The editor wrote something -about ‘great originality but rather tenuous’ and ‘this is not a -spiritual age.’ It isn’t.” - -“Let me hear it,” she said. - -It concerned a circle of men dumped into chairs in the lobby of a -cheap lodging-house--rag-dolls twitching now and then, as though an -outside hand were poking them with curiosity. Then the spirit of the -lodging-house, sallow and indecently shallow, sidled into the lobby, -correctly aimed its tobacco at a spitoon, and gave the dolls snores -to create a false appearance of life, whereupon one of them rose -and cursed the invisible intruder in his sleep. The spirit of the -lodging-house, frightened and angry at the appearance of a soul whose -existence it had not imagined, whisked them all off to the torture -of their beds. The poem had spoken to Baudelaire and Dostoyevsky -but within it a stunned hatred of the world was experimenting with -appropriate symbols. - -“Irrelevantly, perhaps, I’m thinking of a time when I washed dishes in -a lunch-room in St. Louis,” she said. “I was hunting in my mind for -something that could deceive the greasy monotone of defiled chinaware. -Suddenly the brown and turbid dish-water became a heavy wine, spiced -with the aftermaths of earthly pleasures--decay to which a spiritual -release had given a liquid significance. I became obsessed by the -verity of this idea, and finally, quite entranced, I raised the pan -of dirty water to my lips and was about to drink it when, at that -moment, the proprietor came in. He squawked ‘crazee-e,’ ‘crazee-e,’ and -discharged me. I wrote an excellent poem about it, though.” - -“Let’s see, what would they say about this,” he muttered. -“Neurasthenia, insanity, exalted paranoia, minor conceit, trivial pose, -empty fantasy--they have so many putrid labels to hide the inner rage, -damn them!” - -They swayed together in the chair, like two babies in a trap, taking -the small amount of room possible in the cramped abode. - -“Tomorrow we’ll look for work,” she said. “The breath-tablets that you -bought to hide the scent of onions have not been able to eradicate a -last melodramatic trace of their enemy. We must move our arms to ward -off such meaningless intrusions.” - -“With an excellent verbosity you mock the concentration of your -thoughts,” he said. - -They closed their eyes and grew still in the chair. When at last they -stirred, each one looked first at the room and then at the other -person, with a gradually slain disbelief. - -“We are not dead after all,” he cried. “The room does not fade away!” - -They sat without moving, while happiness and sadness sprang into combat -within them. - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Unmatched opening quotation marks on page 17 have been retained from - the original, as the transcriber could not ascertain exactly where - the closing quotation marks, missing in the original, should be - placed. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Against This Age, by Maxwell Bodenheim - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AGAINST THIS AGE *** - -***** This file should be named 60044-0.txt or 60044-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/0/4/60044/ - -Produced by Tim Lindell, David E. 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