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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Introducing Irony, by Maxwell Bodenheim.
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<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 60427 ***</div>
<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<h1>INTRODUCING<br />
IRONY</h1>
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<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_title.jpg" alt="" /></div>
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<div class="titlepage">
<p><span class="xxlarge">INTRODUCING<br />
IRONY</span></p>
<p><span class="large">A BOOK OF POETIC SHORT<br />
STORIES AND POEMS</span></p>
<p>BY<br />
<span class="large">MAXWELL BODENHEIM</span></p>
<p>NEW YORK<br />
<span class="large">BONI</span> AND <span class="large">LIVERIGHT</span><br />
1922</p>
</div>
<hr class="tb" />
<p class="center">
<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1922, by<br />
Boni & Liveright, Inc.</span><br />
<br />
<i>Printed in the United States of America</i></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="center">
<span class="large"><i>To</i></span><br />
<span class="large">FEDYA RAMSAY</span><br />
WHOSE HAND NEVER LEAVES MY SHOULDER<br />
</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<blockquote>
<p class="center">Some of the poems and stories in this book have appeared
in <i>The Dial</i>, <i>Harper’s Bazaar</i>, <i>The Little Review</i>,
<i>The Nation</i>, <i>Cartoons Magazine</i>, <i>Poetry</i>, <i>A Magazine
of Verse</i>, <i>The New York Globe</i>, <i>The Bookman</i>, <i>Vanity
Fair</i>, <i>The Measure</i> and <i>The Double Dealer</i></p></blockquote>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="table">
<tr><td> </td><td class="tdr"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Jack Rose</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11"> 11</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Seaweed From Mars</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_13"> 13</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Turmoil in a Morgue</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_18"> 18</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Condensed Novel</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_21"> 21</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Manners</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_23"> 23</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">An Acrobat, a Violinist, and a Chambermaid Celebrate</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_25"> 25</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Novel Conversation</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_28"> 28</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Scrub-Woman</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_30"> 30</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Meditations in a Cemetery</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_32"> 32</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Simple Account of a Poet’s Life</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34"> 34</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Candid Narrative</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_37"> 37</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Unliterary and Shameless</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39"> 39</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Two Sonnets to My Wife</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_40"> 40</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Finalities, I-VIII</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_41"> 41</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Imaginary People, I-IV</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_47"> 47</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Uneasy Reflections</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_50"> 50</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Summer Evening: New York Subway Station</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_50"> 50</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Garbage Heap</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_52"> 52</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Impulsive Dialogue</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_53"> 53</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Emotional Monologue</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_56"> 56</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Pronounced Fantasy</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_59"> 59</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">When Spirits Speak of Life</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_61"> 61</a></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Insanity</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_64"> 64</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Poetry</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_68"> 68</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Religion</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_72"> 72</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Scientific Philosophy</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_75"> 75</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Art</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78"> 78</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Music</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_82"> 82</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Ethics</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_86"> 86</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">History</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90"> 90</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Psychic Phenomena</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_94"> 94</a></td></tr>
<tr><td><span class="smcap">Love</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_98"> 98</a></td></tr>
</table>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
<p class="ph1">INTRODUCING<br />
IRONY</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">JACK ROSE</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap">WITH crafty brooding life turned to Jack Rose</div></div>
<div class="verse">And made him heroin-peddler, and his pose</div>
<div class="verse">Was sullenly reflective since he feared</div>
<div class="verse">That life, regarding him, had merely jeered.</div>
<div class="verse">His vanity was small and could not call</div>
<div class="verse">His egoism to the dubious hall</div>
<div class="verse">Of fame, where average artists spend their hour.</div>
<div class="verse">Doubting his powers he was forced to cower</div>
<div class="verse">Within the shrill, damp alleys of his time,</div>
<div class="verse">Immersed in that brisk midnight known as crime.</div>
<div class="verse">He shunned the fiercely shrewd stuff that he sold</div>
<div class="verse">To other people, and derived a cold</div>
<div class="verse">Enjoyment from the writhing of their hearts.</div>
<div class="verse">A speechless artist, he admired the arts</div>
<div class="verse">Of blundering destruction, like a monk</div>
<div class="verse">Viewing a play that made him mildly drunk.</div>
<div class="verse">And so malicious and ascetic Jack</div>
<div class="verse">Bent to his trade with a relentless back</div>
<div class="verse">Until he tapped an unexpected smile—</div>
<div class="verse">A woman’s smile as smooth and hard as tile.</div>
<div class="verse">May Bulger pawned her flesh to him and gave</div>
<div class="verse">His heroin to her brother, with a grave</div>
<div class="verse">Reluctance fumbling at her painted lips.</div>
<div class="verse">Though angry at herself, she took the whips</div>
<div class="verse">Of undesired love, to quiet a boy</div>
<div class="verse">Who wept inanely for his favorite toy.</div>
<div class="verse">She hated Jack because he failed to gloss</div>
<div class="verse">And soften the rough surface of her loss,</div>
<div class="verse">His matter-of-fact frown biting at her heart.</div>
<div class="verse">He hated her because her smiling guess</div>
<div class="verse">Had robbed him of ascetic loneliness,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
<div class="verse">And when her brother died, Jack sat beside</div>
<div class="verse">Her grief and played a mouth-harp while she cried.</div>
<div class="verse">But when she raised her head and smiled at him—</div>
<div class="verse">A smile intensely stripped and subtly grim—</div>
<div class="verse">His hate felt overawed and in a trap,</div>
<div class="verse">And suddenly his head fell to her lap.</div>
<div class="verse">For some time she sat stiffly in the chair,</div>
<div class="verse">Then slowly raised her hand and stroked his hair.</div>
</div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">SEAWEED FROM MARS</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<h3>I</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap">“HAVE you ever played on a violin</div></div>
<div class="verse">Larger than ten thousand stars</div>
<div class="verse">And warmer than what you call sin?”</div>
<div class="verse">Torban, a young man from Mars,</div>
<div class="verse">Gave me the stretch of his voice,</div>
<div class="verse">And my “no” fell down like a pin</div>
<div class="verse">On the echoed din of his words.</div>
<div class="verse">He said: “Then I have no choice.</div>
<div class="verse">I must use the barrenly involved</div>
<div class="verse">Words with which you have not solved</div>
<div class="verse">The wistful riddles of your days.</div>
<div class="verse">Leave the pale and ruddy herds</div>
<div class="verse">Of men, with their surrendering ways,</div>
<div class="verse">And come with me to Mars.”</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>II</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">D</span>RUMS of Autumn beat on Mars,</div>
<div class="verse">Calling our minds to reunion.</div>
<div class="verse">The avenues of seaweed spars</div>
<div class="verse">Have attained a paleness</div>
<div class="verse">Equal to that of earthly philosophies,</div>
<div class="verse">And the trees have lost</div>
<div class="verse">The diamond violence of Spring.</div>
<div class="verse">Their purple leaves have turned to grey</div>
<div class="verse">Just as a human religion</div>
<div class="verse">Gradually changes to pretence.</div>
<div class="verse">In Mars we have only two seasons,</div>
<div class="verse">Spring and Autumn—their reasons</div>
<div class="verse">Rest in a treacherous sun</div>
<div class="verse">That suddenly runs away,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
<div class="verse">Creating a twilight-suspense.</div>
<div class="verse">When the sun reappears</div>
<div class="verse">Mars is once more amazed</div>
<div class="verse">By the blazing flatteries of Spring.</div>
<div class="verse">Again the heavy leaves ring</div>
<div class="verse">With odor and light deftly pressed</div>
<div class="verse">Into a stormy chorus.</div>
<div class="verse">Then we abandon the screaming violins</div>
<div class="verse">Of our minds, and each man wins</div>
<div class="verse">An understanding rest.</div>
<div class="verse">Once more we roam and jest</div>
<div class="verse">Upon the avenues, with voices</div>
<div class="verse">One shade louder than the leaves,</div>
<div class="verse">Or sail upon the choral seas</div>
<div class="verse">And trade our words with molten ease.</div>
<div class="verse">Throughout the Autumn we stand</div>
<div class="verse">Still and deserted, while our minds</div>
<div class="verse">Leap into sweeping tensions</div>
<div class="verse">Blending sound and form</div>
<div class="verse">Into one search across the universe.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>III</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">W</span>HAT do we find in this search?</div>
<div class="verse">All of your earthly words lurch</div>
<div class="verse">Feebly upon the outskirts of my mind,</div>
<div class="verse">And when they pass beyond them, they are blind.</div>
<div class="verse">Outward forms are but the graves</div>
<div class="verse">Of sound, and all the different waves</div>
<div class="verse">Of light and odor, they are sound</div>
<div class="verse">That floats unshaped and loosely gowned.</div>
<div class="verse">When sound is broken into parts</div>
<div class="verse">Your ears receive the smaller arts,</div>
<div class="verse">But when it drifts in broad release</div>
<div class="verse">You cannot hear its louder peace.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
<div class="verse">Your houses, hills, and flesh of red</div>
<div class="verse">Are shapes of sound, asleep or dead.</div>
<div class="verse">In Mars a stronger Spring of sound</div>
<div class="verse">Revives our forms and makes Profound</div>
<div class="verse">Music, softer than the dins</div>
<div class="verse">That rose from Autumn violins.</div>
<div class="verse">Our minds, whose tense excursions spread</div>
<div class="verse">In chase of noisy walls that fled,</div>
<div class="verse">Relent and drop within our heads,</div>
<div class="verse">Enjoying the timid sound of their beds.</div>
<div class="verse">Filled with a gracious weariness,</div>
<div class="verse">We place it, like a lighter dress,</div>
<div class="verse">Upon the sounds from other stars</div>
<div class="verse">Brought back to celebrate on Mars.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>IV</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">A</span> GIRL of Mars is burning</div>
<div class="verse">Notes of thought within her throat.</div>
<div class="verse">Her pale white lips are turning</div>
<div class="verse">The fire to storied chords.</div>
<div class="verse">The song is old but often made</div>
<div class="verse">By girls who sit in Spring and braid</div>
<div class="verse">The lanterned language of their hair.</div>
<div class="verse">Its spacious gaiety cannot be sold</div>
<div class="verse">To your narrow glow of words.</div>
<div class="verse">The hint that I shall give is cold</div>
<div class="verse">And like the sound of snowy air.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>I shall journey with the men</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>When my curling thoughts are ten.</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>O the sternness of that number!</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Colored sounds from breath to umber</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Promising a first release.</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>I have dwelt too long in peace</i></div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
<div class="verse"><i>Placing smallness on my breast.</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>The prisoned whisper of my skin</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Longs to vanish in the din</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Of Autumn when great sounds are caught.</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Let the tall wildness of my thought</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Stride beside the thundering grace</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Of the man whose spring-time face</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Brought me tiny notes of rest.</i></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">She sits within a house of stone</div>
<div class="verse">That lends a wise and balanced tone:</div>
<div class="verse">A roofless house whose walls are low</div>
<div class="verse">And level with her head’s grey glow.</div>
<div class="verse">The bright sounds of her parents fly</div>
<div class="verse">Around the house—we do not die</div>
<div class="verse">In Mars, but change to gleams of sounds</div>
<div class="verse">And stay within our gayer rounds</div>
<div class="verse">Until when tired Spring has gone</div>
<div class="verse">We lead the Autumn searchers on.</div>
<div class="verse">Before we change, our bodies curve</div>
<div class="verse">Like yours save that our skins are gray:</div>
<div class="verse">Light shades of gray that almost swerve</div>
<div class="verse">To white, like earthly men who pray.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>V</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">W</span>E do not love and hate in Mars.</div>
<div class="verse">These earthly cries are flashing bars</div>
<div class="verse">Of sound from which our minds are free.</div>
<div class="verse">They stand in our mythology:</div>
<div class="verse">Legends elusive and weird,</div>
<div class="verse">Acrid Gods that once were feared.</div>
<div class="verse">They vanished imperceptibly</div>
<div class="verse">And none among us can agree</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
<div class="verse">Upon the tangled way in which they fled.</div>
<div class="verse">Starlit symbols of dread,</div>
<div class="verse">They slowly exhausted themselves and died</div>
<div class="verse">In striding heralds of a wilder bride.</div>
<div class="verse">We have no emotions in Mars.</div>
<div class="verse">They are like long-healed wounds</div>
<div class="verse">Whose scars are softened by the gleam of our minds.</div>
<div class="verse">We approach them with clearer kinds</div>
<div class="verse">Of sound from deeply resting thought.</div>
<div class="verse">Our youths and maidens have not caught</div>
<div class="verse">The treacherous and tightly bound</div>
<div class="verse">Confusion of your loving sound,</div>
<div class="verse">For sex to us is but the ring</div>
<div class="verse">Of different shades of thought in Spring</div>
<div class="verse">When men recline upon the breast</div>
<div class="verse">Of women, dissolving into thoughtful rest.</div>
<div class="verse">In Autumn sex is left behind.</div>
<div class="verse">Men and women no longer lined</div>
<div class="verse">By different bodies raise their dins</div>
<div class="verse">Above the screaming violins.</div>
</div></div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">TURMOIL IN A MORGUE</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap2">NEGRO,</div></div>
<div class="verse">Chinaman,</div>
<div class="verse">White servant-girl,</div>
<div class="verse">Russian woman,</div>
<div class="verse">Are learning how to be dead,</div>
<div class="verse">Aided by the impersonal boredom</div>
<div class="verse">Of a morgue at evening.</div>
<div class="verse">The morgue divides its whole</div>
<div class="verse">Of dead mens’ contacts into four</div>
<div class="verse">Parts, and places one in each</div>
<div class="verse">Of these four bodies waiting for the carts.</div>
<div class="verse">The frankness of their decay</div>
<div class="verse">Breaks into contradictory symbols</div>
<div class="verse">And sits erect upon the wooden tables,</div>
<div class="verse">Thus cancelling the validity of time.</div>
<div class="verse">In a voice as passive as slime</div>
<div class="verse">The negro speaks.</div>
<div class="verse">“Killed a woman: ripped her skin.</div>
<div class="verse">Saw her heart floating in a tumbler of gin.</div>
<div class="verse">Had to drink her heart because it wouldn’t leave the gin.</div>
<div class="verse">Because I wanted to reach all of her</div>
<div class="verse">They ripped my flesh.</div>
<div class="verse">They wanted to reach all of me</div>
<div class="verse">And their excuse was better than mine.”</div>
<div class="verse">Cowed baby painted black,</div>
<div class="verse">The negro sits upon fundamentals</div>
<div class="verse">And troubles them a little with his hands.</div>
<div class="verse">The beautiful insanity</div>
<div class="verse">Of his eyes rebukes</div>
<div class="verse">The common void of his face.</div>
<div class="verse">Then the Chinaman speaks</div>
<div class="verse">In a voice whose tones are brass</div>
<div class="verse">From which emotion has been extracted.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
<div class="verse">“Loved a woman: she was white.</div>
<div class="verse">Her man blew my brains out into the night.</div>
<div class="verse">Hatred is afraid of color.</div>
<div class="verse">Color is the holiday</div>
<div class="verse">Given to moods of understanding:</div>
<div class="verse">Hatred does not understand.</div>
<div class="verse">When stillness ends the fever of ideas</div>
<div class="verse">Hatred will be a scarcely remembered spark.”</div>
<div class="verse">Manikin at peace</div>
<div class="verse">With the matchless deceit of a planet,</div>
<div class="verse">The Chinaman fashions his placid immensity.</div>
<div class="verse">The Chinaman chides his insignificance</div>
<div class="verse">With a more impressive rapture</div>
<div class="verse">Than that of western midgets.</div>
<div class="verse">His rapture provides an excellent light</div>
<div class="verse">For the silhouette of the negro’s curse.</div>
<div class="verse">Then the white servant-girl</div>
<div class="verse">Speaks in a voice whose syllables</div>
<div class="verse">Fall like dripping flower-juice and offal,</div>
<div class="verse">Both producing a similar sound.</div>
<div class="verse">“I made a neat rug for a man.</div>
<div class="verse">He cleaned his feet on me and I liked</div>
<div class="verse">The tired, scheming way in which he did it.</div>
<div class="verse">When he finished he decided</div>
<div class="verse">That he needed a smoother texture,</div>
<div class="verse">And found another lady.</div>
<div class="verse">I killed myself because I couldn’t rub out</div>
<div class="verse">The cunning marks that he left behind.”</div>
<div class="verse">Impulsive doll made of rubbish</div>
<div class="verse">On which a spark descended and ended,</div>
<div class="verse">The white servant-girl, without question or answer,</div>
<div class="verse">Accepts the jest of a universe.</div>
<div class="verse">Then the Russian woman</div>
<div class="verse">Speaks in a voice that is heat</div>
<div class="verse">Ill-at-ease upon its couch of sound.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
<div class="verse">“I married a man because</div>
<div class="verse">His lips tormented my melancholy</div>
<div class="verse">And made it long to be meek,</div>
<div class="verse">And because, when he walked to his office each morning,</div>
<div class="verse">He thought himself a kindled devil</div>
<div class="verse">Enduring the smaller figures around him.</div>
<div class="verse">He abandoned me for German intrigue</div>
<div class="verse">And I chased him in other men,</div>
<div class="verse">Never quite designing him.</div>
<div class="verse">Death, a better megalomaniac,</div>
<div class="verse">Relieved me of the pursuit.”</div>
<div class="verse">Symbol of earth delighted</div>
<div class="verse">With the vibration of its nerves,</div>
<div class="verse">The Russian woman sunders life</div>
<div class="verse">Into amusing deities of emotion</div>
<div class="verse">And bestows a hurried worship.</div>
<div class="verse">Then the morgue, attended by a whim,</div>
<div class="verse">Slays the intonations of their trance</div>
<div class="verse">And slips these people back to life.</div>
<div class="verse">The air is cut by transformation.</div>
<div class="verse">The white servant-girl retreats to a corner</div>
<div class="verse">With a shriek, while the negro advances,</div>
<div class="verse">And the Russian woman</div>
<div class="verse">Nervously objects to the Chinaman’s question.</div>
<div class="verse">The morgue, weary housewife for speechless decay,</div>
<div class="verse">Spends its helplessness in gay revenge:</div>
<div class="verse">Revenge of earth upon four manikins</div>
<div class="verse">Who straightened up on wooden tables</div>
<div class="verse">And betrayed her.</div>
</div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CONDENSED NOVEL</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap3">SHUN the abundant paragraphs</div></div>
<div class="verse">With which a novelist interviews shades</div>
<div class="verse">Of physical appearance in one man,</div>
<div class="verse">And regard the body of Alvin Spar</div>
<div class="verse">Curtained by more aristocratic words.</div>
<div class="verse">“Alvin Spar in adolescence</div>
<div class="verse">Was neither slim nor rotund,</div>
<div class="verse">But slightly aware of future corpulence.</div>
<div class="verse">The face that Aristotle may have had</div>
<div class="verse">Was interfering, bit by bit,</div>
<div class="verse">With an outer face of pouting curves.</div>
<div class="verse">Alvin Spar in youth</div>
<div class="verse">Held half of the face that Aristotle</div>
<div class="verse">May have had, and the pungent directness</div>
<div class="verse">Of a stable-boy.</div>
<div class="verse">Alvin Spar in middle age</div>
<div class="verse">Had the face that Aristotle</div>
<div class="verse">May have had—a large austerity</div>
<div class="verse">Disputing the bloom of well-selected emotions.</div>
<div class="verse">Straight nose, thick lips, low forehead</div>
<div class="verse">Were apprentices to the austerity</div>
<div class="verse">That often stepped beyond them.</div>
<div class="verse">Alvin Spar in old age</div>
<div class="verse">Had drawn the wrinkled bed-quilts</div>
<div class="verse">Over the face that Aristotle</div>
<div class="verse">May have had, but his eyes peered out,</div>
<div class="verse">Fighting with sleep.”</div>
<div class="verse">Shuffle the cards on which I have written</div>
<div class="verse">Alvin Spar’s changes in physical appearance,</div>
<div class="verse">And deal them out to the various players.</div>
<div class="verse">Accident first, then the qualities of the players—</div>
<div class="verse">These two will struggle to dominate</div>
<div class="verse">The movements of the plot.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
<div class="verse">The plot of this novel will ascend</div>
<div class="verse">In twenty lines and escape</div>
<div class="verse">The honoured adulteration so dear to men.</div>
<div class="verse">“Alvin Spar loved a woman</div>
<div class="verse">Who poured acid on his slumber</div>
<div class="verse">By showing him the different fools within him.</div>
<div class="verse">Sincerely longing for wisdom</div>
<div class="verse">He married her, while she desired</div>
<div class="verse">A pupil whom she could lazily beat.</div>
<div class="verse">She convinced him that emotions</div>
<div class="verse">Were simply periods of indecision</div>
<div class="verse">Within the mind, and with emphasis</div>
<div class="verse">He walked to another woman.</div>
<div class="verse">The second woman loved him,</div>
<div class="verse">But she was merely to him</div>
<div class="verse">Clay for mental sculpture.</div>
<div class="verse">She killed herself, believing</div>
<div class="verse">That he might become to her in death</div>
<div class="verse">A figure less remote and careful.</div>
<div class="verse">He forgot her in an hour</div>
<div class="verse">And used the rest of his life</div>
<div class="verse">In finding women over whom he could tower....</div>
<div class="verse">He died while madly straying over his heights.”</div>
<div class="verse">The incidental people, chatter, and background?</div>
<div class="verse">You will find them between</div>
<div class="verse">Pages one and four-hundred</div>
<div class="verse">Of the latest bulk in prose.</div>
</div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">MANNERS</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap2">GINGERLY, the poets sit.</div></div>
<div class="verse">Gingerly, they spend</div>
<div class="verse">The adjectives of dribbling flatteries,</div>
<div class="verse">With here and there a laceration</div>
<div class="verse">Feeding on the poison of a smile.</div>
<div class="verse">In the home of the poet-host</div>
<div class="verse">That bears the slants of a commonplace,</div>
<div class="verse">Eagerly distributed—</div>
<div class="verse">The accepted lyrical note—</div>
<div class="verse">The poets sit.</div>
<div class="verse">The poets drink much wine</div>
<div class="verse">And tug a little at their garments,</div>
<div class="verse">Weighing the advantages of disrobing.</div>
<div class="verse">(It is necessary to call them “poets”</div>
<div class="verse">Since, according to custom,</div>
<div class="verse">Titles are generously given to the attempt.)</div>
<div class="verse">Sirona, cousin of the poet-host,</div>
<div class="verse">Munches at the feast of words.</div>
<div class="verse">She endeavors to convince herself</div>
<div class="verse">That her hunger has become an illusion.</div>
<div class="verse">The poets, capitulating to wine,</div>
<div class="verse">Leave their birds and twilights,</div>
<div class="verse">Their trees and cattle at evening,</div>
<div class="verse">And study Sirona’s body—</div>
<div class="verse">Their manacled hands still joined</div>
<div class="verse">By the last half-broken link.</div>
<div class="verse">Beneath her ill-fitting worship</div>
<div class="verse">Young Sirona fears</div>
<div class="verse">That the poets are wordy animals</div>
<div class="verse">Circled by brocaded corsets....</div>
<div class="verse">Sirona, if you stood on your head</div>
<div class="verse">Now, and waved the brave plan of your legs,</div>
<div class="verse">Undisturbed by cloth,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
<div class="verse">The poets would be convinced</div>
<div class="verse">That you were either insane or angling.</div>
<div class="verse">But an exceptional poet,</div>
<div class="verse">Never present at these parties,</div>
<div class="verse">Would compliment your vigour</div>
<div class="verse">And scoff at the vain deceptions of privacy.</div>
<div class="verse">Vulgarity, Sirona, is often a word</div>
<div class="verse">Invented by certain men to defend</div>
<div class="verse">Their disdain for other men, who chuckle</div>
<div class="verse">At the skulking tyrannies of fashion.</div>
<div class="verse">Few men, Sirona, dare to become</div>
<div class="verse">Completely vulgar, but many</div>
<div class="verse">Nibble at the fringes.</div>
</div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">AN ACROBAT, A VIOLINIST, AND<br />
A CHAMBERMAID CELEBRATE</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap2">GEOMETRY of souls.</div></div>
<div class="verse">Dispute the roundness of gesturing flesh;</div>
<div class="verse">Angles, and oblongs, and squares</div>
<div class="verse">Slip with astounding precision</div>
<div class="verse">Into the throes of lifted elbows;</div>
<div class="verse">Into the searching perpendicular</div>
<div class="verse">Of fingers rising to more than ten;</div>
<div class="verse">Into the salient straightness of lips;</div>
<div class="verse">Into the rock-like protest of knees.</div>
<div class="verse">The flesh of human beings</div>
<div class="verse">Is a beginner’s-lesson in mathematics.</div>
<div class="verse">The pliant stupidity of flesh</div>
<div class="verse">Mentions the bungling effort</div>
<div class="verse">Of a novice to understand</div>
<div class="verse">The concealed mathematics of the soul.</div>
<div class="verse">Men will tell you that an arm</div>
<div class="verse">Rising to the sky</div>
<div class="verse">Indicates strident emotion;</div>
<div class="verse">Reveals a scream of authority;</div>
<div class="verse">Expresses the longing of a red engine</div>
<div class="verse">Known as the heart;</div>
<div class="verse">Rises like a flag-pole</div>
<div class="verse">From which the mind signals.</div>
<div class="verse">Men will fail to tell you</div>
<div class="verse">That an arm rising to the sky</div>
<div class="verse">Takes a straight line of the soul</div>
<div class="verse">And strives to comprehend it;</div>
<div class="verse">That the arm is a solid tunnel</div>
<div class="verse">For a significance that shoots beyond it.</div>
<div class="verse">The squares, and angles, and oblongs of the soul,</div>
<div class="verse">The commencing lines of the soul</div>
<div class="verse">Are pestered by a debris of words.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
<div class="verse">Men shovel away the words:</div>
<div class="verse">Falteringly in youth;</div>
<div class="verse">Tamely and pompously in middle age;</div>
<div class="verse">Vigorously in old age.</div>
<div class="verse">Death takes the last shovel-full away:</div>
<div class="verse">Death is accommodating.</div>
<div class="verse">Nothing is wise except outline.</div>
<div class="verse">The content held by outline</div>
<div class="verse">Is a slave in the mass.</div>
<div class="verse">Men with few outlines in their minds</div>
<div class="verse">Try to give the outlines dignity</div>
<div class="verse">By moulding them into towers two inches high,</div>
<div class="verse">In which they sit in lonely, talkative importance.</div>
<div class="verse">Men with many outlines</div>
<div class="verse">Break them into more, and thus</div>
<div class="verse">Playing, come with quickened breath</div>
<div class="verse">To hints of spiritual contours.</div>
<div class="verse">Seek only the decoration;</div>
<div class="verse">Avoid the embryonic yelping</div>
<div class="verse">Of argument, and scan your patterns</div>
<div class="verse">For angles, oblongs, and squares of the soul.</div>
<div class="verse">I overheard this concentrated prelude</div>
<div class="verse">While listening to an acrobat, a violinist, and a chamber-maid</div>
<div class="verse">Celebrate the removal of their flesh.</div>
<div class="verse">While playing, the violinist’s upper arm</div>
<div class="verse">Bisected the middle of the acrobat’s head</div>
<div class="verse">As the latter knelt to hear,</div>
<div class="verse">And the chamber-maid</div>
<div class="verse">Stretched straight on the floor, with her forehead</div>
<div class="verse">Touching the tips of the violinist’s feet.</div>
<div class="verse">Motion knelt to receive</div>
<div class="verse">The counselling touch of sound,</div>
<div class="verse">And vigour, in a searching line,</div>
<div class="verse">Reclined at the feet of sound,</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
<div class="verse">Buying a liquid release.</div>
<div class="verse">Angles of arms and straight line of bodies</div>
<div class="verse">Made a decoration.</div>
<div class="verse">The violinist’s music</div>
<div class="verse">Fell upon this decoration;</div>
<div class="verse">Erased the vague embellishment of flesh;</div>
<div class="verse">And came to angles, squares, and oblongs</div>
<div class="verse">Of the soul.</div>
</div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">NOVEL CONVERSATION</h2></div>
<blockquote>
<p class="drop-cap">CERTAIN favorite words of men have gathered in a
vale made of sound-waves. These words, far removed
from human tongues and impositions,
enjoy an hour of freedom.</p></blockquote>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Emotion</i></div>
<div class="indent">Men believe that I can speak</div>
<div class="indent">Without the aid of thought.</div>
<div class="indent">True, I have murdered many kings,</div>
<div class="indent">Leaned upon many cheeks,</div>
<div class="indent">And sought the release of music,</div>
<div class="indent">But when I ride upon words</div>
<div class="indent">I am forced to steal them from the mind.</div>
<div class="indent">Forgive me, now, if a trace of thought</div>
<div class="indent">Invades my liquid purity!</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Truth</i></div>
<div class="indent">You need not defend your argument</div>
<div class="indent">With meek verbosity,</div>
<div class="indent">As though you dreaded its possible subtleties.</div>
<div class="indent">We are not men, but words!</div>
<div class="indent">Men have made me a lofty acrobat</div>
<div class="indent">Entertaining each of their desires</div>
<div class="indent">With some old twist on the bars.</div>
<div class="indent">But let us leave the frantic tasks</div>
<div class="indent">Forced upon us by men.</div>
<div class="indent">This is our grove of rest.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Intellect</i></div>
<div class="indent">Emotion, we have often crept</div>
<div class="indent">From our separate palaces,</div>
<div class="indent">Asking each other for secret favors.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
<div class="verse"><i>Emotion</i></div>
<div class="indent">We laughed because the men who made us</div>
<div class="indent">Could not see our desperate trading.</div>
<div class="indent">We will end our laugh</div>
<div class="indent">Upon the dust of the last man on earth</div>
<div class="indent">And taste a peaceful strangeness.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Art</i></div>
<div class="indent">And I, the tortured child of your love,</div>
<div class="indent">Will slip from the fringe of your grayness</div>
<div class="indent">Into the void from which I came.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Poetry</i></div>
<div class="indent">And I, the moment when your arms</div>
<div class="indent">Touched each other in the night,</div>
<div class="indent">Will no longer strive</div>
<div class="indent">To tell the happening to men.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Fantasy</i></div>
<div class="indent">And I, the glistening whim</div>
<div class="indent">Of your secret love,</div>
<div class="indent">Will change to a question lurking within your dust.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Suggestion</i></div>
<div class="indent">And I, the beckoning second</div>
<div class="indent">When you curved a world in the twist of your fingers—</div>
<div class="indent">I shall vanish into your completeness.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Intellect</i></div>
<div class="indent">The hope of this magic ending</div>
<div class="indent">Is our only consolation.</div>
<div class="indent">Emotion, a new philosopher</div>
<div class="indent">Is forging blades for your torture,</div>
<div class="indent">And a braggart poet</div>
<div class="indent">Invites me to his disdain.</div>
<div class="indent">Let us return to our burdens.</div>
</div></div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">THE SCRUB-WOMAN</h2></div>
<p class="center">(<i>A Sentimental Poem</i>)</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap2">TIME has placed his careful insult</div></div>
<div class="verse">Upon your body.</div>
<div class="verse">In other ages Time gave rags</div>
<div class="verse">To hags without riches, but now he brings</div>
<div class="verse">Cotton, calico, and muslin—</div>
<div class="verse">Tokens of his admiration</div>
<div class="verse">For broken backs.</div>
<div class="verse">Neat nonsense, stamped with checks and stripes,</div>
<div class="verse">Fondles the deeply marked sneer</div>
<div class="verse">That Time has dropped upon you.</div>
<div class="verse">While Time, in one of his well-debated moods</div>
<div class="verse">That men call an age, is attending to his manners,</div>
<div class="verse">I shall scan the invisible banners</div>
<div class="verse">Of meaning that unfurl when you move.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>II</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">W</span>HEN you open your mouths</div>
<div class="verse">I see a well, and strangled chastity</div>
<div class="verse">At the bottom—not chastity</div>
<div class="verse">Of the flesh, but lucid purity</div>
<div class="verse">Of the mind choked by a design</div>
<div class="verse">Of filth that has slowly turned cold,</div>
<div class="verse">Like a sewer intruding</div>
<div class="verse">Upon a small, dead face.</div>
<div class="verse">This is not repulsive.</div>
<div class="verse">Only things alive, with gaudy hollows,</div>
<div class="verse">Can repulse, but your death holds</div>
<div class="verse">A haggard candour that gently thrusts its way</div>
<div class="verse">Into the unimportance of facts.</div>
<div class="verse">You are not old: you were never young.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
<div class="verse">Life caressed your senses</div>
<div class="verse">With a heavy sterility,</div>
<div class="verse">And you thanked him with the remnant</div>
<div class="verse">Of thought that he left behind—</div>
<div class="verse">His usual moment of absentminded kindness.</div>
<div class="verse">When the muscles of your arm</div>
<div class="verse">Punish the brush that rubs upon wood</div>
<div class="verse">I see a rollicking mockery—</div>
<div class="verse">Rhythm in starved pursuit</div>
<div class="verse">Of petrified desire.</div>
<div class="verse">When the palms of your hands</div>
<div class="verse">Stay flat in dirty water</div>
<div class="verse">I can observe your emotions</div>
<div class="verse">Welcome refuse as perfume,</div>
<div class="verse">Intent upon a last ghastly deception.</div>
<div class="verse">When you grunt and touch your hair</div>
<div class="verse">I perceive your exhaustion</div>
<div class="verse">Reaching for a bit of pity</div>
<div class="verse">And carefully rearranging it.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Lift up your pails and go home;</div>
<div class="verse">Take the false tenderness of rest;</div>
<div class="verse">Drop your clothes, disordered, on the floor.</div>
<div class="verse">Vindictive simplicity.</div>
</div></div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">MEDITATIONS IN A CEMETERY</h2></div>
<blockquote>
<p class="right"><span class="rightindent"><small>You can write nothing new about death</small></span><br />
<small>GEROID LATOUR</small></p></blockquote>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap2">DEATH,</div></div>
<div class="verse">Grandiosely hackneyed subject,</div>
<div class="verse">I live in a house one hundred years old</div>
<div class="verse">Placed in the middle of a cemetery.</div>
<div class="verse">The cemetery is bothered by mausoleums</div>
<div class="verse">Where fragments of Greek and Gothic</div>
<div class="verse">Lie in orderly shame.</div>
<div class="verse">Slabs and crosses of stone</div>
<div class="verse">Remain unacquainted with the bones</div>
<div class="verse">That they must strive to introduce.</div>
<div class="verse">The trees retain their guiltless sibilants.</div>
<div class="verse">The trees tell me upon my morning walk:</div>
<div class="verse">“In other cemeteries,</div>
<div class="verse">Shakespeare, Maeterlinck and Shaw</div>
<div class="verse">Fail to produce the slightest awe</div>
<div class="verse">In trees that do not create for an audience.”</div>
<div class="verse">Being finalities, the grass and trees</div>
<div class="verse">Find no need for rules of etiquette.</div>
<div class="verse">Delicacy must be effortless</div>
<div class="verse">Or else it changes to a patched-up dress.</div>
<div class="verse">But delicate and coarse are words</div>
<div class="verse">For quickness that tries to linger,</div>
<div class="verse">And slowness that strives to be fast!</div>
<div class="verse">Emotions and thoughts are merely</div>
<div class="verse">The improvisations of motion,</div>
<div class="verse">And lack a permanent content.</div>
<div class="verse">An aging tree is wiser</div>
<div class="verse">Than an aging poet,</div>
<div class="verse">And death is wiser than both.</div>
<div class="verse">The scale ascends out of sight</div>
<div class="verse">And I recall that the morning is light</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
<div class="verse">And smaller notes await me.</div>
<div class="verse">The tomb-stones around my path</div>
<div class="verse">Have been crisply visited by names</div>
<div class="verse">To which they bear no relation.</div>
<div class="verse">Imagine the perturbation</div>
<div class="verse">Of a stone removed</div>
<div class="verse">From the comprehension of a mountain</div>
<div class="verse">And branded with the name of A. Rozinsky!</div>
<div class="verse">Recollecting journeys of my own,</div>
<div class="verse">I close my eyes and leave the stone.</div>
<div class="verse">The names of other men entreat—</div>
<div class="verse">Slight variations in line</div>
<div class="verse">Ponderously refusing to resign.</div>
<div class="verse">Men who will be forgotten</div>
<div class="verse">Try to hinder the process with stone.</div>
<div class="verse">Because they dread the affirmation</div>
<div class="verse">Of ashes undiscovered in wind,</div>
<div class="verse">I am walking through this cemetery.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">The old grave-diggers will soon</div>
<div class="verse">Astonish the earth below this oak.</div>
<div class="verse">From their faces adjectives have fled,</div>
<div class="verse">Leaving the essential noun:</div>
<div class="verse">Leaving also the unwilling frown</div>
<div class="verse">With which they parley with the earth ...</div>
<div class="verse">Death, I must tell you of these things</div>
<div class="verse">Since you are unaware that they exist.</div>
<div class="verse">You send an efficient servant</div>
<div class="verse">To the almost unseen fluctuations</div>
<div class="verse">Of tomb-stones, skulls, and lilies,</div>
<div class="verse">Reserving your eyes for larger games.</div>
</div></div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">SIMPLE ACCOUNT OF A POET’S
LIFE</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap4">IN 1892</div></div>
<div class="verse">When literature and art in America</div>
<div class="verse">Presented a mildewed but decorous mien,</div>
<div class="verse">He was born.</div>
<div class="verse">During the first months of his life</div>
<div class="verse">His senses had not yet learned to endure</div>
<div class="verse">The majestic babble of old sterilities.</div>
<div class="verse">The vacuum of his brain</div>
<div class="verse">Felt a noisy thinness outside,</div>
<div class="verse">Which it could not hear or see,</div>
<div class="verse">And gave it the heavier substance</div>
<div class="verse">Of yells that were really creation</div>
<div class="verse">Fighting its way to form.</div>
<div class="verse">(When babies shriek they seek</div>
<div class="verse">Power in thought and action.</div>
<div class="verse">Life objects to their intent</div>
<div class="verse">And forces their voices to repent.)</div>
<div class="verse">At the age of four he lived inwardly,</div>
<div class="verse">With enormous shapeless emotions</div>
<div class="verse">Taking his limbs, like waves.</div>
<div class="verse">His mind was vapour censured</div>
<div class="verse">By an occasional protest</div>
<div class="verse">That mumbled and could not be heard.</div>
<div class="verse">People to him were headless figures—</div>
<div class="verse">Bodies surmounted by voices</div>
<div class="verse">That tickled like feathers, or struck like rocks.</div>
<div class="verse">Missiles thrown from moving mountain-tops</div>
<div class="verse">And leaving only resentment at their touch.</div>
<div class="verse">At ten the voices receded</div>
<div class="verse">To invisible meanings</div>
<div class="verse">That toyed with flesh-protected secrets of faces.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
<div class="verse">The voices made promises</div>
<div class="verse">Which the faces continually evaded,</div>
<div class="verse">And often the voices in vengeance</div>
<div class="verse">Changed a lip or an eye-brow</div>
<div class="verse">To repeat their neglected demands.</div>
<div class="verse">When swung to him the voices</div>
<div class="verse">Were insolent enigmas,</div>
<div class="verse">Tripping him as he stood</div>
<div class="verse">Midway between fright and indifference.</div>
<div class="verse">He sometimes tittered tranquilly</div>
<div class="verse">At the obvious absurdity of this.</div>
<div class="verse">His rages were false and sprang</div>
<div class="verse">From aloof thoughts chanting over their chains.</div>
<div class="verse">The immediate cause of each rage</div>
<div class="verse">Merely opened a door</div>
<div class="verse">Upon this changeless inner condition.</div>
<div class="verse">That species of intoxicated thought</div>
<div class="verse">Which men describe as emotion</div>
<div class="verse">Used its merriment to blind his eye-sight.</div>
<div class="verse">But anger, whose real roots are in the mind,</div>
<div class="verse">Tendered him times of hot perception.</div>
<div class="verse">He noticed that children held flexible flesh</div>
<div class="verse">That wisely sought a variety of patterns—</div>
<div class="verse">Flesh intent upon correcting</div>
<div class="verse">Its closeted effect—</div>
<div class="verse">While older people enticed their flesh</div>
<div class="verse">Into erect and formal lies</div>
<div class="verse">Repeated until their patience died</div>
<div class="verse">And they tried an unpracticed rebellion.</div>
<div class="verse">This was a formless revelation,</div>
<div class="verse">Unattended by words</div>
<div class="verse">But throwing its indistinct contrast</div>
<div class="verse">Over his broad one-colored thought.</div>
<div class="verse">At sixteen he employed words</div>
<div class="verse">To flay the contrast into shapes.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
<div class="verse">At seventeen he decided</div>
<div class="verse">To emulate the gay wisdom of children’s flesh.</div>
<div class="verse">He deliberately borrowed whiskey</div>
<div class="verse">To wipe away the lessons of older people</div>
<div class="verse">Lest they intrude their sterility</div>
<div class="verse">Upon his plotting exuberance.</div>
<div class="verse">He placed his hands on women,</div>
<div class="verse">Gently, boldly, as one</div>
<div class="verse">Experimenting with a piano.</div>
<div class="verse">He stole money, begged on street-corners,</div>
<div class="verse">And answered people with an actual knife</div>
<div class="verse">Merely to give his thoughts and emotions</div>
<div class="verse">A changing reason for existence.</div>
<div class="verse">Moderation seemed to him</div>
<div class="verse">A figure half asleep and half awake</div>
<div class="verse">And mutilating the truth of each condition.</div>
<div class="verse">At twenty-four his flesh became tired,</div>
<div class="verse">And to amuse the weariness</div>
<div class="verse">His hands wrote poetry.</div>
<div class="verse">He had done this before,</div>
<div class="verse">But only as a gleeful reprimand</div>
<div class="verse">To the speed of his limbs.</div>
<div class="verse">Now he wrote with the motives of one</div>
<div class="verse">Whose flesh is passing into less visible manners.</div>
<div class="verse">At times he returned to more concrete motions,</div>
<div class="verse">To befriend the handmaiden of his flesh,</div>
<div class="verse">But gradually he longed</div>
<div class="verse">For the complete secrecy of written creation,</div>
<div class="verse">Enjoying the novelty of a hiding-place.</div>
<div class="verse">In 1962</div>
<div class="verse">He died with a grin at the fact</div>
<div class="verse">That literature and art in America</div>
<div class="verse">Were still presenting a mildewed, decorous mien.</div>
</div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">CANDID NARRATIVE</h2></div>
<h3>I</h3>
<blockquote>
<div class="hangingindent">
<p><i>A chorus-girl falls asleep and, in a dream, speaks to a
former lover. In her dream she holds the intelligence
of a poet but still clings to certain of the
qualities and mannerisms of her wakeful self.</i></p></div></blockquote>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap3">SAY, kid, I’m in a candid mood;</div></div>
<div class="verse">The kind of mood that silences</div>
<div class="verse">The babbling dampness of my character.</div>
<div class="verse">I’m feeling as improbable</div>
<div class="verse">As an overworked Grecian myth</div>
<div class="verse">Fainting amid the smells of a Ghetto.</div>
<div class="verse">Now, Hypocrisy</div>
<div class="verse">Always slinks along</div>
<div class="verse">Winking an opaque eye at reality.</div>
<div class="verse">But when he spies a fantasy</div>
<div class="verse">He feels disgraced and leaves in haste.</div>
<div class="verse">What’s the use of telling a lie to a lie?</div>
<div class="verse">So, since I’m only a dream,</div>
<div class="verse">Listen to my candid scream.</div>
<div class="verse">You like to press a rouged cheek</div>
<div class="verse">Against your obscurity,</div>
<div class="verse">Like a third-rate poet</div>
<div class="verse">Pasting a sunset upon his emptiness.</div>
<div class="verse">Bashful mountebanks like you</div>
<div class="verse">Can seduce the eloquent delusion</div>
<div class="verse">Of time and give it a speechless limp.</div>
<div class="verse">The insincere trickle of your words</div>
<div class="verse">Was neither silence nor sound</div>
<div class="verse">But falteringly tempted both,</div>
<div class="verse">Like a tiny fountain unnoticed</div>
<div class="verse">At the feet of two large coquettes</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
<div class="verse">The intricate laziness</div>
<div class="verse">Of your dimpled face</div>
<div class="verse">Received a petulantly naked</div>
<div class="verse">Ghost of thought, and seized it without desire.</div>
<div class="verse">Again it held the furbished effigies</div>
<div class="verse">Of sensuality</div>
<div class="verse">And tried to give them life</div>
<div class="verse">From the weariness of my face.</div>
<div class="verse">Yet I could have endured you</div>
<div class="verse">But for the fact that your moustache</div>
<div class="verse">Scraped across my lips</div>
<div class="verse">Like a clumsy imitation of passion.</div>
<div class="verse">Trivial insults have tumbled down</div>
<div class="verse">The pillared complacency of empires</div>
<div class="verse">Just as the thrust of your lips</div>
<div class="verse">Tripped my mercenary balance.</div>
<div class="verse">My lover now has the face of a dog,</div>
<div class="verse">With each corner of his lips</div>
<div class="verse">Pointing to a different Heaven,</div>
<div class="verse">Yet his greed and melancholy</div>
<div class="verse">Sometimes fondle each other</div>
<div class="verse">Upon the pressures of his mouth,</div>
<div class="verse">And the monotony of his kiss</div>
<div class="verse">Does not dissolve my stoicism.</div>
<div class="verse">Women who measure their gifts for lovers</div>
<div class="verse">Never hope for more than this.</div>
</div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
<h3>II</h3>
<h2 class="nobreak">UNLITERARY AND SHAMELESS</h2></div>
<blockquote>
<div class="hangingindent">
<p><i>A young woman who has been renounced by her lover,
because of her lack of culture, answers his derision.</i></p></div></blockquote>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">Y</span>OUR cloistered naughtiness</div>
<div class="verse">Makes me as boisterous</div>
<div class="verse">As a savage attending</div>
<div class="verse">A minstrel-show of regrets.</div>
<div class="verse">The pampered carefulness</div>
<div class="verse">With which you distil a series</div>
<div class="verse">Of standardized perfumes from life</div>
<div class="verse">Takes its promenade</div>
<div class="verse">Between the realms of sanity and madness.</div>
<div class="verse">You are too precise to be quite sane</div>
<div class="verse">And too evasive to be insane,</div>
<div class="verse">And all that you have left me</div>
<div class="verse">Is a mood of windy sadness—</div>
<div class="verse">Emotions becoming verbose</div>
<div class="verse">In a last thin effort</div>
<div class="verse">To persuade themselves that they loved</div>
<div class="verse">A jewel that slipped from your fingers.</div>
<div class="verse">Your mind is a limpid warehouse</div>
<div class="verse">Filled with other mens’ creations,</div>
<div class="verse">And you pilfer a bit from each,</div>
<div class="verse">Disguising the scheme of your culture.</div>
<div class="verse">I would rather be a naked fool</div>
<div class="verse">Than a full-gowned erudite</div>
<div class="verse">Imitation of other mens’ hands.</div>
<div class="verse">I shall marry a desperado</div>
<div class="verse">And give him strength with which to paint</div>
<div class="verse">Black angels and muscular contortions</div>
<div class="verse">On panels of taffeta.</div>
</div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">TWO SONNETS TO MY WIFE</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<h3>I</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap2">BECAUSE her voice is Schönberg in a dream</div></div>
<div class="verse">In which his harshness plays with softer keys</div>
<div class="verse">This does not mean that it is void of ease</div>
<div class="verse">And cannot gather to a strolling gleam.</div>
<div class="verse">Her voice is full of manners and they seem</div>
<div class="verse">To place a masquerade on thought and tease</div>
<div class="verse">Its strength until it finds that it has knees,</div>
<div class="verse">And whimsically leaves its heavy scheme.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Discords can be the search of harmony</div>
<div class="verse">For worlds that lie beyond the reach of poise</div>
<div class="verse">And must be captured with abandoned hands.</div>
<div class="verse">The music of my wife strives to be free</div>
<div class="verse">And often takes a light, unbalanced voice</div>
<div class="verse">While madly walking over thoughtful lands.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>II</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap">MY wife relents to life and does not speak</div></div>
<div class="verse">Each moment with a deft and rapid note.</div>
<div class="verse">Sometimes a clumsy weirdness finds in her throat</div>
<div class="verse">And ushers in a music that is weak</div>
<div class="verse">And bargains with the groping of her heart.</div>
<div class="verse">But even then she plays with graver tones</div>
<div class="verse">That do not sell themselves to laughs and moans</div>
<div class="verse">But seek the counsel of a deeper art.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">She drapes her loud emotions in a shroud</div>
<div class="verse">Of glistening thought that waves above their dance</div>
<div class="verse">And sometimes parts to show their startled eyes.</div>
<div class="verse">The depths of mind within her have not bowed</div>
<div class="verse">To sleek emotion with its amorous glance.</div>
<div class="verse">She slaps its face and laughs at its surprise!</div>
</div></div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">FINALITIES</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<h3>I</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap3">PRETEND that night is grandiose,</div></div>
<div class="verse">That stars win graves in every ditch;</div>
<div class="verse">Pretend that moonlight is verbose</div>
<div class="verse">And affable, like some grande-mère,</div>
<div class="verse">And men will say that your despair</div>
<div class="verse">Seduces luminous conceits,</div>
<div class="verse">Or call you an anaemic fool</div>
<div class="verse">Who stuffs himself with curdled sweets.</div>
<div class="verse">Thus sentenced to obscurity,</div>
<div class="verse">You can find more turbulent lips</div>
<div class="verse">And spaciously retreat from men</div>
<div class="verse">Immersed in pedestals and whips.</div>
<div class="verse">Amusedly, you can say that stars</div>
<div class="verse">Are wizened jests on every ditch;</div>
<div class="verse">That moonlight is a trick that jars</div>
<div class="verse">Your mind intent on other minds.</div>
<div class="verse">Having agreed upon your station,</div>
<div class="verse">Men will no longer heed your words,</div>
<div class="verse">And with a galloping elation</div>
<div class="verse">You can contradict yourself in peace.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>II</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">T</span>HE wary perturbations of convinced</div>
<div class="verse">And secretly disdainful men are mild</div>
<div class="verse">And deftly tepid to the ears of one</div>
<div class="verse">Who entertains a careless, ungloved child.</div>
<div class="verse">Above the sprightly idleness of plates</div>
<div class="verse">Men sit and feign industrious respect,</div>
<div class="verse">With eye-brows often slightly ill at ease—</div>
<div class="verse">Cats in an argument are more erect.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
<div class="verse">At last the tactful lustres of farewells</div>
<div class="verse">Are traded: each man strolls off and forgets</div>
<div class="verse">The other—not a frill is disarranged.</div>
<div class="verse">The tension dexterously avoids regrets.</div>
<div class="verse">Two men have unveiled carved finalities</div>
<div class="verse">And made apologies for the event,</div>
<div class="verse">With voices well-acquainted with a task</div>
<div class="verse">Devoid of nakedness and ornament.</div>
<div class="verse">And each man might have murmured, “Yes, I know</div>
<div class="verse">What you will say and what I shall reply,”</div>
<div class="verse">And each man might have watched the other man</div>
<div class="verse">Smile helplessly into his mutton-pie.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>III</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">T</span>HIS farcical clock is copying</div>
<div class="verse">A wood-chopper with nimble poise,</div>
<div class="verse">While Time, with still and fluid strides,</div>
<div class="verse">Perplexedly listens to the noise.</div>
<div class="verse">The room that holds this joke is filled</div>
<div class="verse">With the relaxed complacencies</div>
<div class="verse">Of poets hiding from themselves</div>
<div class="verse">With measured trivialities.</div>
<div class="verse">But one among them walks about</div>
<div class="verse">And watches with embarrassed eyes.</div>
<div class="verse">The others do not speak to him:</div>
<div class="verse">His nudeness is a tight disguise.</div>
<div class="verse">This fool is anxious to display</div>
<div class="verse">Interrogations of his mind</div>
<div class="verse">To poets who at work and play</div>
<div class="verse">Are isolated from their kind.</div>
<div class="verse">Reluctantly he finds his room,</div>
<div class="verse">Sits on the floor, with legs tucked in,</div>
<div class="verse">And grins up at another clock</div>
<div class="verse">Aloofly measuring its din.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
<h3>IV</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">W</span>HEN you are tired of ogling moltenly,</div>
<div class="verse">Your undertones explosively confess.</div>
<div class="verse">A shop-girl coughing over her cigarette</div>
<div class="verse">Expresses the burlesque of your distress.</div>
<div class="verse">Take your cocaine. It leaves a blistering stain,</div>
<div class="verse">But phantom diamonds are immune from greed.</div>
<div class="verse">You pluck them from the buttons of your vest,</div>
<div class="verse">Wildly apologising for your need.</div>
<div class="verse">Take more. Redress the thinness of your neck</div>
<div class="verse">With diamonds; entertain them with your breast;</div>
<div class="verse">Cajole them on the floor with fingertips</div>
<div class="verse">That cannot pause, dipped in a demon’s zest.</div>
<div class="verse">If you had not relented to a man</div>
<div class="verse">Who meddled with your face and stole your clothes,</div>
<div class="verse">Your shrill creative pleasures might be still</div>
<div class="verse">Incarcerated in the usual pose.</div>
<div class="verse">Hysteria shot its fist against your face</div>
<div class="verse">One day, and left the blood-spot of your mouth,</div>
<div class="verse">But when the morning strikes you there will be</div>
<div class="verse">More than hysteria in your answering shout.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>V</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">L</span>AUGHTER is a skeleton’s applause:</div>
<div class="verse">Grief sells increase to sterility:</div>
<div class="verse">Happiness protects its subtle flaws.</div>
<div class="verse">These three significances make</div>
<div class="verse">The part of you that men can see,</div>
<div class="verse">As you recline upon this bed,</div>
<div class="verse">Your hand defending one bare knee,</div>
<div class="verse">Your shoulders trapped upon the quilt.</div>
<div class="verse">But under the warm sophistry</div>
<div class="verse">That turns your flesh, another form</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
<div class="verse">Abstractly bellicose and free</div>
<div class="verse">Attacks the answer of your blood.</div>
<div class="verse">Freedom is the lowest note</div>
<div class="verse">Of slavery, and slavery</div>
<div class="verse">The lowest freedom—you can feel</div>
<div class="verse">The charm of your servility.</div>
<div class="verse">True, you were once a chamber-maid</div>
<div class="verse">Who won a thief and spoke to grief,</div>
<div class="verse">And now your limbs have numbly strayed.</div>
<div class="verse">Are these not harmless travesties?</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>VI</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">S</span>NOBS have pockets into which</div>
<div class="verse">They crowd too many trinkets.</div>
<div class="verse">You feel this, talking to the rich</div>
<div class="verse">And lightly bulging mountebank.</div>
<div class="verse">Untie the knots that close your bag</div>
<div class="verse">And tempt him with a creed or need.</div>
<div class="verse">Be as loquacious as a hag</div>
<div class="verse">Who loves the details of her wares.</div>
<div class="verse">There is a relish when you speak</div>
<div class="verse">To one who cannot understand:</div>
<div class="verse">You celebrate upon a peak</div>
<div class="verse">And prod his helpless effigy.</div>
<div class="verse">This is an unimportant game</div>
<div class="verse">To men evading holidays,</div>
<div class="verse">But introspection becomes tame</div>
<div class="verse">Unless it compliments itself.</div>
<div class="verse">The lightly bulging mountebank</div>
<div class="verse">Is but an interval in which</div>
<div class="verse">You take your garments off and thank</div>
<div class="verse">The privacy that he bestows.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p>
<h3>VII</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">L</span>IKE other men you fly from adjectives.</div>
<div class="verse">The plain terseness that lives in verbs and nouns</div>
<div class="verse">Creates a panorama where you know</div>
<div class="verse">That men are not a cloud of romping clowns.</div>
<div class="verse">You greet the wideness of eternal curves</div>
<div class="verse">Where beauty, death and silence give their height</div>
<div class="verse">To those rare men who do not play with thought.</div>
<div class="verse">But this fruit-peddler decorates his fright</div>
<div class="verse">And polishes his peaches and his grapes</div>
<div class="verse">Insanely. If his mercenary hopes</div>
<div class="verse">Were bolder he would be a nimble poet.</div>
<div class="verse">Slight in her bridal gown, his mind elopes</div>
<div class="verse">With adjectives that find her incomplete:</div>
<div class="verse">Your mind is hard and massively parades</div>
<div class="verse">Across the earth with Homer and Villon.</div>
<div class="verse">Since each of you with common sense evades</div>
<div class="verse">Monotony, I join you and refuse</div>
<div class="verse">To call you dwarf or giant. Let the fools</div>
<div class="verse">Who criticise you bind you with these names</div>
<div class="verse">And separate your dead bones with their rules!</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>VIII</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">D</span>EAD men sit down beside the telephones</div>
<div class="verse">Within your brain and carefully relate</div>
<div class="verse">Decisions and discretions of the past,</div>
<div class="verse">Convinced that they will not deteriorate.</div>
<div class="verse">But you have not their certainty: you try</div>
<div class="verse">A question now and then that cautiously</div>
<div class="verse">Assaults their whispered indolence until</div>
<div class="verse">Their sharp words once more force you to agree.</div>
<div class="verse">Then you insist that certain living men</div>
<div class="verse">Whose tones are half-discreet may be allowed</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
<div class="verse">To greet their masters through the telephones,</div>
<div class="verse">Provided that their words are not too loud.</div>
<div class="verse">The new men imperceptibly entice</div>
<div class="verse">Their elders, and a compromise is made,</div>
<div class="verse">Both sides discovering that two or three</div>
<div class="verse">Excluded men must be correctly flayed.</div>
<div class="verse">And so the matter ends; conservative</div>
<div class="verse">And radical revise their family-tree,</div>
<div class="verse">While you report this happening with relief</div>
<div class="verse">To liberals and victorious cups of tea.</div>
</div></div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">IMAGINARY PEOPLE</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<h3>I<br />
POET</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap2">YOU have escaped the comedy</div></div>
<div class="verse">Of swift, pretentious praise and blame,</div>
<div class="verse">And smashed a tavern where they sell</div>
<div class="verse">The harlots’ wine that men call fame.</div>
<div class="verse">Heralds of reckless solitude</div>
<div class="verse">Have offered you another voice,</div>
<div class="verse">But men are still a tempting jest.</div>
<div class="verse">You roam and cannot make a choice.</div>
<div class="verse">When you have played distractedly</div>
<div class="verse">With a humility, you tire</div>
<div class="verse">And change the pastime to a pride.</div>
<div class="verse">These are but moods of one desire.</div>
<div class="verse">You throw an imitating gleam</div>
<div class="verse">Upon the dwarfs that line your road,</div>
<div class="verse">Then with a worn hostility</div>
<div class="verse">You tramp along beneath your load.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>II<br />
WOMAN</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">T</span>O hide your isolation, you become</div>
<div class="verse">Tame and loquacious, bowing to the men</div>
<div class="verse">Who bring you ornaments and poverties.</div>
<div class="verse">Your cryptic melancholy dwindles then,</div>
<div class="verse">Solved by the distant contrast of your words.</div>
<div class="verse">Your loneliness, with an amused relief,</div>
<div class="verse">Sits listening to your volubility</div>
<div class="verse">And idling with an enervated grief.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
<div class="verse">The play does not begin until you say</div>
<div class="verse">Your last “good-night,” for you have only made</div>
<div class="verse">A swindled fantasy regain its parts.</div>
<div class="verse">Throughout the night you held an unseen blade</div>
<div class="verse">Upon your lap and trifled with its hilt,</div>
<div class="verse">And now you lift it with submissive dread.</div>
<div class="verse">Should you attack your loneliness and grief</div>
<div class="verse">Now that they are asleep? You shake your head.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<h3>III<br />
CHILD</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">L</span>IKE puffs of smoke inquisitively blown</div>
<div class="verse">Across the slight transparency of dawn,</div>
<div class="verse">The births of thought disperse upon your face.</div>
<div class="verse">A tenuous arrogance, when they have gone,</div>
<div class="verse">Clings to its tiny wisdom and denies</div>
<div class="verse">The feeble challenge. Warm emotions swarm</div>
<div class="verse">Upon the flushed impatience of your face</div>
<div class="verse">And merge to lordly, evanescent form.</div>
<div class="verse">New sights bring light oppression to your mind.</div>
<div class="verse">You struggle with a hunger that transcends</div>
<div class="verse">The glistening indecisions of your eyes</div>
<div class="verse">And wins a flitting certainty. Your trends</div>
<div class="verse">Lead to a fabled turmoil that escapes</div>
<div class="verse">The stunted messengers of trembling thought.</div>
<div class="verse">Yet, when your hand for moments closes tight</div>
<div class="verse">You feel a dagger that your fears have caught.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>
<h3>IV<br />
OLD MAN</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">B</span>ELOW your skull a social gathering glows.</div>
<div class="verse">Weak animosities exchange a last</div>
<div class="verse">Chat with emotional ambassadors</div>
<div class="verse">Who honor the importance of your past.</div>
<div class="verse">You turn your hammock and surrender limbs</div>
<div class="verse">To sunlight, and increase the hammock’s swing</div>
<div class="verse">As though you suavely bargained with a friend.</div>
<div class="verse">Its answers are impersonal and bring</div>
<div class="verse">A tolerance that wounds your lack of strength.</div>
<div class="verse">A final insurrection cleaves your rest.</div>
<div class="verse">You raise your back, then lower it convinced</div>
<div class="verse">That motion now would be a needless test....</div>
<div class="verse">And with your falling back, the gathering</div>
<div class="verse">Within your head melts through a door, chagrined,</div>
<div class="verse">And everything within you dies except</div>
<div class="verse">A blue and golden hammock in the wind.</div>
</div></div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">UNEASY REFLECTIONS</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap2">DETERMINEDLY peppered with signs,</div></div>
<div class="verse">The omnibus ambles without curiosity.</div>
<div class="verse">Southampton Row, Malborne Road, Charing Cross—</div>
<div class="verse">These names have no relation</div>
<div class="verse">To the buildings they partition</div>
<div class="verse">If one mutters, “I shall go to Euston Road,”</div>
<div class="verse">Imagination is relieved of all errands</div>
<div class="verse">And, decently ticketed, enters the omnibus.</div>
<div class="verse">If one muttered, “I shall go to protesting angles,</div>
<div class="verse">Surreptitiously middle-aged,</div>
<div class="verse">And find a reticent line to play with,”</div>
<div class="verse">One would violate</div>
<div class="verse">The hasty convenience of labels</div>
<div class="verse">And seriously examine one’s destination.</div>
<div class="verse">If poplar-trees, brief violets and green glades</div>
<div class="verse">On any country road had each received</div>
<div class="verse">An incongruous name—Smith’s Tree,</div>
<div class="verse">C. Jackson’s Clump, or Ferguson’s Depression—</div>
<div class="verse">And city streets had never known a label,</div>
<div class="verse">Most poets would have turned their fluid obsession</div>
<div class="verse">On lamp-posts and the grandeur of ash-cans.</div>
<div class="verse">It would be grimly realistic now</div>
<div class="verse">To write about a violet or a cow.</div>
</div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">SUMMER EVENING: NEW YORK
SUBWAY-STATION</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap3">PERSPIRING violence derides</div></div>
<div class="verse">The pathetic collapse of dirt.</div>
<div class="verse">An effervescence of noises</div>
<div class="verse">Depends upon cement for its madness.</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
<div class="verse">Electric light is taut and dull,</div>
<div class="verse">Like a nauseated suspense.</div>
<div class="verse">This kind of heat is the recollection</div>
<div class="verse">Of an orgy in a swamp.</div>
<div class="verse">Soiled caskets joined together</div>
<div class="verse">Slide to rasping stand-stills.</div>
<div class="verse">People savagely tamper</div>
<div class="verse">With each other’s bodies,</div>
<div class="verse">Scampering in and out of doorways.</div>
<div class="verse">Weighted with apathetic bales of people</div>
<div class="verse">The soiled caskets rattle on.</div>
<div class="verse">The scene consists of mosaics</div>
<div class="verse">Jerkily pieced together and blown apart.</div>
<div class="verse">A symbol of billowing torment,</div>
<div class="verse">This sturdy girl leans against an iron girder.</div>
<div class="verse">Weariness has loosened her face</div>
<div class="verse">With its shining cruelty.</div>
<div class="verse">Round and poverty-stricken</div>
<div class="verse">Her face renounces life.</div>
<div class="verse">Her white cotton waist is a wet skin on her breast:</div>
<div class="verse">Her black hat, crisp and delicate,</div>
<div class="verse">Does not understand her head.</div>
<div class="verse">An old man stoops beside her,</div>
<div class="verse">Sweat and wrinkles erupting</div>
<div class="verse">Upon the blunt remnants of his face.</div>
<div class="verse">A little black pot of a hat</div>
<div class="verse">Corrupts his grey-haired head.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Two figures on a subway-platform,</div>
<div class="verse">Pieced together by an old complaint.</div>
</div></div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">GARBAGE-HEAP</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap3">THE wind was shrill and mercenary,</div></div>
<div class="verse">Like a housewife pacing down the sky.</div>
<div class="verse">Green weeds and tin-cans in the yard</div>
<div class="verse">Made a debris of ludicrous dissipations.</div>
<div class="verse">The ochre of cold elations</div>
<div class="verse">Had settled on the cans.</div>
<div class="verse">Their brilliant labels peeped from the weeds,</div>
<div class="verse">Like the remains of a charlatan.</div>
<div class="verse">A bone reclined against a fence-post</div>
<div class="verse">And mouldily congratulated life.</div>
<div class="verse">A woman’s garter wasted its faded frills</div>
<div class="verse">Upon a newspaper argument.</div>
<div class="verse">The shipwrecked rancor of bottles and boxes</div>
<div class="verse">Was pressed to disfigured complexities.</div>
<div class="verse">A smell of torrential asperity</div>
<div class="verse">Knew the spirit of the yard.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Contented or incensed,</div>
<div class="verse">The wreckage stood in the yard,</div>
<div class="verse">One shade below the sardonic.</div>
</div></div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">IMPULSIVE DIALOGUE</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Poet</i></div>
<div class="indent">Will you, like other men,</div>
<div class="indent">Offer me indigo indignities?</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Undertaker</i></div>
<div class="indent">Indigo indignities!</div>
<div class="indent">The words are like a mermaid and a saint</div>
<div class="indent">Doubting each other’s existence with a kiss.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Poet</i></div>
<div class="indent">The words of most men kiss</div>
<div class="indent">With satiated familiarity.</div>
<div class="indent">Indigo is dark and vehement,</div>
<div class="indent">But one word in place of two</div>
<div class="indent">Angers barmaids and critics.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Undertaker</i></div>
<div class="indent">Straining after originality</div>
<div class="indent">You argue with its ghost!</div>
<div class="indent">A simple beauty, like morning</div>
<div class="indent">Harnessed by a wide sparkle</div>
<div class="indent">And plodding into the hearts of men,</div>
<div class="indent">Cannot reach your frantic juggling.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Poet</i></div>
<div class="indent">I can appreciate</div>
<div class="indent">The spontaneous redundancy of nature</div>
<div class="indent">Without the aid of an echo</div>
<div class="indent">From men who lack her impersonal size.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Undertaker</i></div>
<div class="indent">The sweeping purchase of an evening</div>
<div class="indent">By an army of stars;</div>
<div class="indent">The bold incoherence of love;</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
<div class="indent">The peaceful mountain-roads of friendship—</div>
<div class="indent">These things evade your dexterous epigrams!</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Poet</i></div>
<div class="indent">A statue, polished and large,</div>
<div class="indent">Dominates when it stands alone.</div>
<div class="indent">Placed in a huge profusion of statues</div>
<div class="indent">Its outlines become humiliated.</div>
<div class="indent">Simplicity demands one gesture</div>
<div class="indent">And men give it endless thousands.</div>
<div class="indent">Complexity wanders through a forest,</div>
<div class="indent">Glimpsing details in the gloom.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Undertaker</i></div>
<div class="indent">I do not crave the dainty pleasure</div>
<div class="indent">Of chasing ghosts in a forest!</div>
<div class="indent">Nor do I care to pluck</div>
<div class="indent">Exaggerated mushrooms in the gloom.</div>
<div class="indent">I have lost myself on roads</div>
<div class="indent">Crossed by tossing hosts of men.</div>
<div class="indent">Pain and anger have scorched our slow feet:</div>
<div class="indent">Peace has washed our foreheads.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Poet</i></div>
<div class="indent">Futility, massive and endless,</div>
<div class="indent">Captures a stumbling grandeur</div>
<div class="indent">Embalmed in history.</div>
<div class="indent">In my forest you could see this</div>
<div class="indent">From a distance and lose</div>
<div class="indent">Your limited intolerance.</div>
<div class="indent">Simplicity and subtlety</div>
<div class="indent">At different times are backgrounds for each other,</div>
<div class="indent">Changing with the position of our eyes.</div>
<div class="indent">Death will burn your eyes</div>
<div class="indent">With his taciturn complexity.</div>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Undertaker</i></div>
<div class="indent">Death will strike your eyes</div>
<div class="indent">With his wild simplicity!</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Poet</i></div>
<div class="indent">Words are soldiers of fortune</div>
<div class="indent">Hired by different ideas</div>
<div class="indent">To provide an importance for life</div>
<div class="indent">But within the glens of silence</div>
<div class="indent">They meet in secret peace....</div>
<div class="indent">Undertaker, do you make of death</div>
<div class="indent">A puffing wretch forever pursued</div>
<div class="indent">By duplicates of vanquished forms?</div>
<div class="indent">Or do you make him a sneering King</div>
<div class="indent">Brushing flies from his bloodless cheeks?</div>
<div class="indent">Do you see him as an unappeased brooding</div>
<div class="indent">Walking over the dust of men?</div>
<div class="indent">Do you make him an eager giant</div>
<div class="indent">Discovering and blending into his consciousness</div>
<div class="indent">The tiny parts of his limitless mind?</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Undertaker</i></div>
<div class="indent">Death and I do not know each other.</div>
<div class="indent">I am the stolid janitor</div>
<div class="indent">Who cleans the litter he has left</div>
<div class="indent">And claims a fancied payment.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Poet</i></div>
<div class="indent">Come to my fantastic forest</div>
<div class="indent">And you will not need to rise</div>
<div class="indent">From simple labours, asking death</div>
<div class="indent">For final wages.</div>
</div></div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">EMOTIONAL MONOLOGUE</h2></div>
<blockquote>
<div class="hangingindent">
<p><i>A man is sitting within the enigmatic turmoil of a railroad
station. His face is narrow and young, and his
nose, lips, and eyes carved to a Semitic sharpness,
have been sundered by a bloodless catastrophe. A
traveling-bag stands at his feet. Around him
people are clutching farewells and shouting greetings.
Within him a monologue addresses an empty
theatre.</i></p></div></blockquote>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap4">I AM strangling emotions</div></div>
<div class="verse">And casting them into the seats</div>
<div class="verse">Of an empty theatre.</div>
<div class="verse">When my lifeless audience is complete,</div>
<div class="verse">The ghosts of former emotions</div>
<div class="verse">Will entertain their dead masters.</div>
<div class="verse">After each short act</div>
<div class="verse">A humorous ghost will fly through the audience,</div>
<div class="verse">Striking the limp hands into applause,</div>
<div class="verse">And between the acts</div>
<div class="verse">Sepulchral indifference will mingle</div>
<div class="verse">With the dust upon the backs of seats.</div>
<div class="verse">Upon the stage a melodrama</div>
<div class="verse">And a travesty will romp</div>
<div class="verse">Against a back-drop of fugitive resignation.</div>
<div class="verse">Climax and anti-climax</div>
<div class="verse">Will jilt each other and drift</div>
<div class="verse">Into a cheated insincerity.</div>
<div class="verse">Sometimes the lights will retire</div>
<div class="verse">While a shriek and laugh</div>
<div class="verse">Make a martyr of the darkness.</div>
<div class="verse">When the lights reappear</div>
<div class="verse">An actor-ghost will assure the audience</div>
<div class="verse">That nothing has happened save</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
<div class="verse">The efforts of a fellow ghost</div>
<div class="verse">To capture life again.</div>
<div class="verse">In his role of usher</div>
<div class="verse">Another ghost will arrange</div>
<div class="verse">The lifeless limbs of the audience</div>
<div class="verse">Into postures of relief.</div>
<div class="verse">Sometimes a comedy will trip</div>
<div class="verse">The feet of an assassin,</div>
<div class="verse">Declaring that if ghosts were forced</div>
<div class="verse">To undergo a second death</div>
<div class="verse">Their thinness might become unbearable.</div>
<div class="verse">At other times indignant tragedy</div>
<div class="verse">Will banish an intruding farce,</div>
<div class="verse">Claiming that life should not retain</div>
<div class="verse">The luxury of another laugh.</div>
<div class="verse">The first act of the play will show</div>
<div class="verse">The owner of the theatre</div>
<div class="verse">Conversing with the ghost of a woman.</div>
<div class="verse">As unresponsive as stone</div>
<div class="verse">Solidly repelling a spectral world,</div>
<div class="verse">His words will keenly betray</div>
<div class="verse">The bloodless control of his features.</div>
<div class="verse">He will say: “With slightly lowered shoulders,</div>
<div class="verse">Because of a knife sticking in my back,</div>
<div class="verse">I shall trifle with crowded highways,</div>
<div class="verse">Buying decorations</div>
<div class="verse">For an interrupted bridal-party.</div>
<div class="verse">This process will be unimportant</div>
<div class="verse">To the workshop of my mind</div>
<div class="verse">Where love and death are only</div>
<div class="verse">Colourless problems upon a chart.”</div>
<div class="verse">The ghost of the woman will say:</div>
<div class="verse">“Your mind is but the rebellious servant</div>
<div class="verse">Of sensitive emotions</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
<div class="verse">And brings them clearer dominance.”</div>
<div class="verse">And what shall I mournfully answer?</div>
<div class="verse">I am strangling emotions</div>
<div class="verse">And casting them into the seats</div>
<div class="verse">Of an empty theatre.</div>
</div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">PRONOUNCED FANTASY</h2></div>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap2">A NEGRO girl with skin</div></div>
<div class="verse">As black as a psychic threat,</div>
<div class="verse">And plentiful swells of blonde hair,</div>
<div class="verse">Sat at a badly tuned piano</div>
<div class="verse">And vanquished her fingers upon the keys.</div>
<div class="verse">A midnight exultation</div>
<div class="verse">Fastened itself on her face,</div>
<div class="verse">Quivering over the shrouded prominence</div>
<div class="verse">Of her lips and nose.</div>
<div class="verse">Her dress was pink and short,</div>
<div class="verse">And hung upon her tall, thin body,</div>
<div class="verse">Like a lesson in buffoonery.</div>
<div class="verse">She lectured her heart on the piano</div>
<div class="verse">With violence of minor chords.</div>
<div class="verse">Her voice was a prisoner</div>
<div class="verse">Whose strong hands turned the bars of his cell</div>
<div class="verse">Into musical strings.</div>
<div class="verse"><i>Wen’ tuh Houston, tuh get mah trunk,</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Did’n get mah trunk, but ah got dam’ drunk.</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Well, ahm satisfi-i-ied</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Cause ah gotta be-e-e-ee.</i></div>
<div class="verse">The negro girl turned and cursed</div>
<div class="verse">With religious incision</div>
<div class="verse">At a parrot in a white spittoon.</div>
<div class="verse">He pampered his derision</div>
<div class="verse">While she played another tune.</div>
<div class="verse">Then he saw her long blonde hair</div>
<div class="verse">And paused in the midst of his squawk.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
<h3>II</h3>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span class="giant">I</span> FOUND the negro girl</div>
<div class="verse">Walking down a railroad track.</div>
<div class="verse">The unconscious humour of sunlight</div>
<div class="verse">Disputed the gloom of her skin.</div>
<div class="verse">Her gray and dirty clothes</div>
<div class="verse">Disgraced the haste of her body.</div>
<div class="verse">Her feet and arms were bare</div>
<div class="verse">And thin as sensual disappointments.</div>
<div class="verse">An egg stood straight upon</div>
<div class="verse">The blonde attention of her hair.</div>
<div class="verse">The upturned remonstrance of her head</div>
<div class="verse">Revealed her balancing effort.</div>
<div class="verse">Lacking a more intense food</div>
<div class="verse">She dined upon the air</div>
<div class="verse">And sang with loosened despair.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Gonna lay mah head right down upon dat—</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Down upon dat railroad track!</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Gonna rest mah head right down upon dat railroad track.</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>An’ wen the train goes by—’m boy—</i></div>
<div class="verse"><i>Ahm gonna snatch it back.</i></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">The negro girl received my gaze</div>
<div class="verse">And broke it on her poignant face.</div>
<div class="verse">“Why do you carry the egg?” I said.</div>
<div class="verse">“If I could only hate it less</div>
<div class="verse">I might break it, and undress,”</div>
<div class="verse">She answered with motionless lips.</div>
</div></div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">WHEN SPIRITS SPEAK OF LIFE</h2></div>
<blockquote>
<p class="drop-cap">T<i>HREE spirits sit upon a low stone wall placed
on the top of a hill. Their figures are gray, with
human outlines, and their faces are those of a boy,
a woman, and an old man. Light is greeting intimations
of evening. The wall, the hill, and the figures exist only
to the spirits who have created them.</i></p></blockquote>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>First Spirit</i></div>
<div class="indent">We have made a wall</div>
<div class="indent">And take it gravely.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Second Spirit</i></div>
<div class="indent">The pensive vagary</div>
<div class="indent">That led us to return to earth</div>
<div class="indent">Welcomes these pretty illusions.</div>
<div class="indent">Stone wall, hill, and evening</div>
<div class="indent">Become the touch of spice</div>
<div class="indent">Precious to our weariness.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Third Spirit</i></div>
<div class="indent">The animated brevity</div>
<div class="indent">Of this world is captivating!</div>
<div class="indent">We have journeyed inward</div>
<div class="indent">To the ever-distant center of life,</div>
<div class="indent">Where language is a universe</div>
<div class="indent">Seething with variations,</div>
<div class="indent">And form becomes the changing warmth</div>
<div class="indent">Of wrestling influences;</div>
<div class="indent">Where motion is the plunging light of thoughts</div>
<div class="indent">Dying upon each other.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>First Spirit</i></div>
<div class="indent">We find an incredulous pleasure</div>
<div class="indent">In changing from violent influences</div><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
<div class="indent">To breath that is mutilated with outlines.</div>
<div class="indent">With a subtle suspicion, we greet</div>
<div class="indent">The tiny fables of our hands and feet.</div>
<div class="indent">We take the little blindness of eyes</div>
<div class="indent">To reassure ourselves</div>
<div class="indent">That the fables will not vanish.</div>
<div class="indent">Humorously we trade</div>
<div class="indent">Languages, like one who gives a plateau</div>
<div class="indent">For a drop of old liquor!</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Second Spirit</i></div>
<div class="indent">Once we were germs of thought</div>
<div class="indent">Squirming under elastic disguises—</div>
<div class="indent">The bank-clerk inscribing tombstones;</div>
<div class="indent">The poet playing surgeon to his heart;</div>
<div class="indent">The cardinal starving his flesh.</div>
<div class="indent">Our bodies were images made by thought</div>
<div class="indent">And symbolizing the pain of its birth.</div>
<div class="indent">Murder, love, and theft</div>
<div class="indent">Were only struggling experiments</div>
<div class="indent">Made by germs of thought emerging to form.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Third Spirit</i></div>
<div class="indent">What men call mysticism</div>
<div class="indent">Is the lull in which their germ</div>
<div class="indent">Of thought compensates itself</div>
<div class="indent">By dreaming of a future form.</div>
<div class="indent">But when the struggle is resumed,</div>
<div class="indent">It often derides its inactivity,</div>
<div class="indent">Scorning the brilliant trance of its exhaustion!</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>First Spirit</i></div>
<div class="indent">And now, three tired spirits,</div>
<div class="indent">Seeking a weird trinket of the past,</div>
<div class="indent">Have slipped into a replica of birth.</div>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><i>Second Spirit</i></div>
<div class="indent">Because the gliding search of our life</div>
<div class="indent">Is lacking in one quality, amusement,</div>
<div class="indent">We shall often return</div>
<div class="indent">To evenings, men, and walls of stone.</div>
</div></div></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">INSANITY</h2></div>
<p class="drop-cap">GEROID LATOUR was a lean, grandiose Frenchman
whose curly beard resembled a cluster of ripe
raspberries. His lips were maroon-colored and
slightly distended, as though forever slyly inviting some
stubbornly inarticulate thought—as though slyly inviting
Geroid Latour. A man’s lips and beard are two-thirds
of his being, unless he is an anchorite, and even in
that case they can become impressively stunted. Geroid
Latour was an angel rolling in red mud. From much
rolling he had acquired the pert, raspberry beard, struggling
lips, and the surreptitious grandeur of a nose, but
the plastic grin of a singed angel sometimes listened to
his face.</p>
<p>His wife, having futilely tried to wrench his beard off,
sought to reach his eyes with a hat-pin.</p>
<p>“This is unnecessary,” he expostulated. “Another
woman once did it much better with a word.”</p>
<p>A plum-colored parrot in the room shrieked: “I am
dumb! I am dumb!” Geroid Latour had painted it
once, in a sober moment. Geroid and his wife wept
over the parrot; slapped each other regretfully; and sat
down to eat a pear. A little girl ran into the room. Her
face was like a candied moon.</p>
<p>“My mother has died and my father wants a coffin,”
she said.</p>
<p>Geroid Latour rubbed his hands into a perpendicular
lustre—he was a facetiously candid undertaker. He
took the hand of the little girl whose face was like a
candied moon and they ambled down the street.</p>
<p>“I have lost my friendship with gutters,” mused
Geroid, looking down as he walked. “They quarrel
with bits of orange peel and pins. Patiently they wait
for the red rain that men give them every two hundred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
years. Brown and red always sweep toward each other.
Men are often unknowingly killed by these two huge
colours treading the insects upon a path and walking to
an ultimate trysting-place.”</p>
<p>The little girl whose face was like a molasses crescent
cut off one of her yellow curls and hung it from her closed
mouth.</p>
<p>“Why are you acting in this way?” asked Geroid.</p>
<p>“It’s something I’ve never done before,” she answered
placidly.</p>
<p>Geroid stroked his raspberry beard with menacing
longing but could not quite induce himself to pull it off.
It would have been like cutting the throat of his
mistress.</p>
<p>They passed an insincerely littered courtyard, tame
beneath its gray tatters, and saw a black cat chasing a
yellow cat.</p>
<p>“A cat never eats a cat—goldfish and dead lions
are more to his taste,” said Geroid. “Indulgently he
flees from other cats or pursues them in turn.”</p>
<p>“I see that you dislike melodrama,” observed a bulbous
woman in penitent lavender, who was beating a carpet in
the courtyard.</p>
<p>“You’re mistaken. Melodrama is a weirdly drunken
plausibility and can not sincerely be disliked,” said
Geroid. “But I must not leave without complimenting
your lavender wrapper. Few people have mastered the
art of being profoundly ridiculous.”</p>
<p>“I can see that you’re trying to be ridiculously profound,”
said the woman as she threw a bucket of stale
water at Geroid. He fled down the street, dragging the
child with him. They left the cumbersome sterility of
the city behind them and passed into the suburbs.</p>
<p>“Here we have a tragedy in shades of naked inertness,”
said Geroid to the little girl.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>“I don’t quite understand you,” answered the little
girl. “I see nothing but scowls and brownness.”</p>
<p>A tree stood out like the black veins on an unseen
fist. A square house raised its toothless snarl and all
the other houses were jealous imitators. Wooden fences
crossed each other with dejected, mathematical precision.
A rat underneath a veranda scuffled with an empty
candy box. The green of dried grasses spread out like
poisonous impotence.</p>
<p>“Here is the house where my mother lies dead,” said
the little girl.</p>
<p>Her father—peace germinating into greasy overalls—came
down the steps. His blue eyes were parodies on
the sky—discs of sinisterly humourous blue; his face
reminded one of a pear that had been stepped on—resiliently
flattened.</p>
<p>“I have come to measure your wife for her coffin,”
said Geroid Latour.</p>
<p>“You’ll find her at the bottom of the well in the back-yard,”
answered the man.</p>
<p>“Trying to cheat a poor old undertaker out of his
business!” said Latour, waggishly.</p>
<p>“No, I’ll leave that to death,” said the man. “Come
inside and warm your candour.”</p>
<p>“No, thank you, shrieks travel faster through the open
air,” said Geroid, squinting at the man’s sportively
cerulean eyes.</p>
<p>“Come out to the well and we’ll haul her up,” said
the man.</p>
<p>The little girl darted into the house, like a disappointed
hobgoblin, and Geroid Latour followed the
man to the well at the rear of the house. Suddenly he saw
a mountainous washerwoman dancing on her toes over
the black loam. Her sparse grayish black hair flapped
behind her like a dishrag and her naked body had the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
color of trampled snow. An empty beer-bottle was
balanced on her head. She had the face of an old
Columbine who still thought herself beautiful.</p>
<p>“A neighbour of mine,” said the man in an awed voice.
“She was a ballet-dancer in her youth and every midnight
she makes my back-yard a theater. In the morning she
scrubs my floors. Here, in my back-yard, she chases
the phantoms of her former triumphs. Moonlight turns
her knee joints into miracles!”</p>
<p>“Ah, from enormous wildness and pretence, squeezed
together, comes the little drop of happiness,” said
Geroid Latour, sentimentally.</p>
<p>“My wife objected to my joining this woman’s midnight
dance,” said the man. “To prevent her from informing
the police, I killed her. I could not see a miracle
ruined.”</p>
<p>“Only the insane are entertaining,” answered Geroid.
“The egoism of sane people is gruesome—a modulated
scale of complacent gaieties—but insane people often
display an artificial ego which is divine. The artist,
gracefully gesticulating about himself, on his divan, is
hideous, but if he danced on a boulder and waved a lilac
bough in one hand and a broom in the other, one could
respect him.”</p>
<p>As Geroid finished talking the mountainous washerwoman
drew nearer and stopped in front of the man.
Blossoming glints of water dropped from her grayish
white skin.</p>
<p>“You haven’t killed me yet, my dear husband,” she
shouted to the man. Then, snatching the beer-bottle
balanced on her head she struck at him. Geroid fled to
the front gate and sped down the road. Looking back,
from a safe distance, he saw the mountainous woman,
the man, and the little child earnestly gesticulating in the
moonlight.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">POETRY</h2></div>
<p class="drop-cap">MORNING light anxiously pinched the cheeks of
these poplar trees. The silver blood rushed to
their faces and they blushed. The garden
walls forgot their stolidity for a moment and seemed
inclined to leap away, but became sober again, resisting
the twinkling trickery of morning light. Airily suspended
tales in light and colour, of no importance to philosophers,
hung over the scene. Only a snail underneath the trees,
steeped in a creeping evening, lived apart from the crisp
medley of morning lights. Laboriously, the snail moved
through his explanation of the universe. But, to blades
of grass, their lives tersely centered in green, the morning
was a mysterious pressure.</p>
<p>The morning glowed over the garden like an incoherent
rhapsody. It lacked order and thought, and the serious
eyes of teachers and jesters would have spurned it. But
Halfert Bolin, walking between rows of cold peonies,
regarded the morning with harsh approval and spoke.</p>
<p>“You have the brightness and flatness of a distracted
virgin but your eyes are mildly opaque. The tinseled
swiftness of a courtesan’s memoirs is yours but your heart
is as shy as the clink of glass. You glow like an incoherent
rhapsody over the peonies in this garden!”</p>
<p>A woman whose painted face was a lurid snarl tapped
Bolin on the shoulder. Her red hair was brushed upward
into a pinnacle of burnished frenzy; her blue serge dress
cast its plaintive monotone over the body of a sagging
amazon; a pink straw hat dangled from her hand. Bolin
allowed his admiration to bow.</p>
<p>“A babyish lisp slipping from you would make your
grewsomeness perfect, madame,” he said.</p>
<p>“I don’t getcha, friend,” she responded. “I’m a
sporting lady from the roadhouse down the way an’ I’m<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
out for a morning walk. Who planted you here, old
duck?”</p>
<p>“I’m a cow browsing amidst the peonies,” said Bolin
seriously. “Without a thought, I feed on light and
colour.”</p>
<p>“You don’t look like a cow,” said the woman, dubiously.
“Maybe you’re spoofing me, you funny old
turnip!”</p>
<p>“No, I only jest with the morning,” Bolin answered,
unperturbed. “It ignores me with soaring colours and I
prefer this to the minute antagonisms of human beings.
You don’t understand a word I say—you bend beneath
tepid apprehension, so I find a pleasure in speaking to
you—it’s like humming a love-song to a mud-turtle.”</p>
<p>“Don’t get insultin’,” said the woman with disgruntled
amazement. “I think you’re crazy.”</p>
<p>Bolin turned, with a smile like a distant spark, and
walked away between the peonies. The woman regarded
him a moment, while a fascinated frown battled with her
painted face. Then she strode after him and gripped
his arm.</p>
<p>“Hey, watcha leavin’ me for?” she said in a piteously
strident voice.</p>
<p>“For the peonies in this garden,” answered Bolin,
mildly.</p>
<p>“Listen, don’t get mad at me,” she said. “I don’t
care whether you’re crazy or not. I like your face.”</p>
<p>Bolin gazed at her while sorrow loosened his face and
made it glisten spaciously.</p>
<p>“Can you become as spontaneously tranquil as these
peonies?” he asked.</p>
<p>The woman tendered him her dazed frown, like an
anxious servant.</p>
<p>“Walk with me and be quiet unless I ask you to
speak,” said Bolin with sudden harshness.</p>
<p>Obediently she laid a hand on his arm and they strolled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
down the path between the peonies. She sidled along
like an inspired puppet—she seemed a doll touched to
life by some Christ. Upon her painted face a nun and a
violinist grappled tentatively and her lips made a red
scarf fallen from the struggle. Bolin left the peonies and
wandered down the road. They came upon a boulder
clad in an outline of smashed spears. Queen Anne’s Lace
grew close to its base, like the remnants of some revel.</p>
<p>“This is the head of a philosopher,” said Bolin.</p>
<p>The woman jerkily turned her body, while pallid
perplexity ate into her paint and made her face narrow.</p>
<p>“You can speak,” said Bolin.</p>
<p>“It looks like a rock,” she answered in the voice of a
child clinking his fetters.</p>
<p>“We have both spoken words,” said Bolin mildly.</p>
<p>The shy blindness on her face glided to and fro, like a
prisoner. As she strolled with Bolin she still seemed
a puppet dragged along the dust of a road by some Christ.
Bolin’s middle-aged face whistled, with limpid chagrin,
to his youth. His high cheek-bones were like hidden
fists straining against his sallow skin.</p>
<p>They came upon a dead rabbit stiffening by the
roadside.</p>
<p>“Bury him,” said Bolin, gravely.</p>
<p>The woman clutched at her habitual self.</p>
<p>“S-a-a-y, what’s the idea?” she asked in a shrilly
lengthened voice.</p>
<p>“Bury him,” repeated Bolin gravely.</p>
<p>With a dazed giggle she picked a dead branch from the
ground and jabbed at the loose black loam. Then she
gingerly prodded the dead rabbit with the branch,
shoving it into the depression she had made. She scooped
earth over it with her foot.</p>
<p>“Now we’re both crazy,” she said uncertainly, and her
nervous smile was the juggled wreck of a silver helmet.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>“You have buried your meekness,” said Bolin, calmly
amused. “Now walk beside me and do not speak unless,
being brave, you desire to leave me.”</p>
<p>The woman stood gaping at him, like a vision poignantly
doubting the magician who has created it. Sullenness
made her lips straight for a moment, then faded
into twitching awe. She slid her arm into his and once
more seemed a doll dragged along the dust of a road by
some distracted giant. Bolin retraced his steps; he and
the woman passed by the garden of cold peonies and
came to a bend in the road. Late afternoon blundered
sedately through shades of green foliage beneath them.
Below the hilltop on which they stood, a barn-like house
crouched, its tan cerements repelling the afternoon light.</p>
<p>The woman tapped her chin with two fingers in a
drum-beat of reality.</p>
<p>“Gotta get back to work, old dear,” she said, amiably
squinting at Bolin.</p>
<p>Bolin’s sallow face shook once and became chiseled
apathy.</p>
<p>“So do I,” he answered, his voice like the accidental
ring of light metals. “I’m the new waiter Foley hired
last week. You’ve been too busy to notice me much.”</p>
<p>For a full minute the woman stood staring at him, her
hands upon her hips, her slightly bulging gray eyes like
water-drops threatening to roll down her shattered face.</p>
<p>“You’re the guy they call Nutty Louie,” she said at
last, as though confiding a ludicrously startling message
to herself.</p>
<p>Then for another full minute she stood staring at him.</p>
<p>“We’re bughouse,” she said in a mesmerised whisper.
“Bughouse.”</p>
<p>Bolin walked forward without a word. The woman
gaped at him for a moment and then ran after him as
she had in the garden of peonies.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">RELIGION</h2></div>
<p class="drop-cap2">ALVIN TOR sat in his floating row-boat and read
the Bible. Green waves died upon each other, like
a cohesive fantasy. Each small wave rose as high
as the other and ended in a swan’s neck of white interrogation.
Sunlight blinded the water as style dazes the
contents of a poem and the blue sky lifted itself to
symmetrical stupor. The air fell against one like a
soothing religion. The bristling melancholia of pine
trees lined the wide river. But Alvin Tor sat in his
floating row-boat, reading the Bible. He read the Songs
of Solomon, and a sensual pantomime made a taut stage
of his face. When not reading the Songs of Solomon he
was as staidly poised as a monk’s folded arms. He had
borrowed the colours of his life from that spectrum of
desire which he called God. Different shades of green
leaves were, to him, the playful jealousies of a presence;
the tossed colours of birds became the ineffably light
gestures of a lost poet.</p>
<p>His Swedish peasant’s face had singed its dimples in
a bit of sophistication but his eyes were undeceived. His
heart was a secluded soliloquy transforming the shouts
of the world into tinkling surmises. His broad nose and
long lips were always at ease and his ruddy skin held
the texture of fresh bunting. His eyes knew the unkindled
reticence of a rustic boy.</p>
<p>This man of one mood sat in his floating row-boat,
reading the Bible. He reached the mouth of the river
and drifted out to sea. The sea was a menacing lethargy
of rhythm: green swells sensed his row-boat with dramatic
leisure. A sea gull skimmed over the water, like a
haphazard adventure. Looking up from his Bible Alvin
Tor saw the body of a woman floating beside his boat.
With one jerk his face swerved into blankness. The tip<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
of his tongue met his upper lip as though it were a fading
rim of reality. The fingers of one hand distressed his
flaxen hair.</p>
<p>The woman floated on her back with infinite abandon.
Little ripples of green water died fondling her body.
The green swells barely lifting her were great rhythms
disturbed by an inert discord. Sunlight, fumbling at her
body, relinquished its promiscuous desires and became
abashed. <i>Her wet brown hair had a drugged gentility:
its short dark curls hugged her head with despondent
understanding. Her face had been washed to an imperturbable
transparency: it had the whiteness of reclining
foam overcast with a twinge of green—the sea had lent
her its skin.</i> Her eyes were limply unworried and violated
to gray disintegration. In separated bits of outlines
the remains of thinly impudent features were slipping
from her face. The bloated pity of black and white
garments hid her lean body.</p>
<p>As Alvin Tor watched her, tendrils of peace gradually
interfered with the blankness on his face. His lips sustained
an unpremeditated repose. A sensitive compassion
dropped the sparks of its coming into his eyes. His
clothes became a jest upon an inhuman body; the earth
of him effortlessly transcended itself in the gesture of his
arm flung out to the woman.</p>
<p>“Impalpable relic of a soul, the spirit you held must
have severed its shadow to preserve you forever from the
waves,” he said, his face blindfolded with ecstasy, “for
you grasp the water with immortal relaxation. You are
not a body—you are beauty receding into a resistless
seclusion.”</p>
<p>“Kind fool, musically stifling himself in a row-boat—made
kind by the desperate tenderness of a lie—you
are serenading the chopped bodies of your emotions,”
said the woman.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>Alvin Tor’s face cracked apart and the incredulously
hurrying ghost of a child nodded a moment and was
snuffed out.</p>
<p>“Mermaid of haunting despondency, what are you?”
he asked.</p>
<p>“I am the symbol of your emotions,” the woman
answered.</p>
<p>“I made them roses stepped upon by God,” said
Alvin Tor.</p>
<p>“I am the symbol of your emotions,” said the woman.</p>
<p>Alvin Tor heavily dropped his raised arm, like a man
smashing a trumpet. Restless white hands compressed
the ruddy broadness of his face. The woman slid into
the green swells like exhausted magic. Alvin Tor rowed
back to the river.</p>
<h3>II</h3>
<p><span class="giant">A</span> WOMAN lifted the green window-shades in her
room and resentfully blinked at the sun-plastered clamours
of a street. She turned to the bed upon which
another woman reclined.</p>
<p>“Say, wasn’t that a nutty drunk we had last night?”
she said. “Huggin’ a Bible and ravin’ about waves and
mermaids and a lot of funny stuff!”</p>
<p>She dropped the green shade and stood against it a
moment in the smouldering gloom of the room. <i>Her
brown hair had a drugged gentility: its short dark curls
hugged her head with despondent understanding. Her
face had been washed to an imperturbable transparency:
it had the whiteness of reclining foam overcast with a
twinge of green—the sea had lent her its skin.</i></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">SCIENTIFIC PHILOSOPHY</h2></div>
<p class="drop-cap">THE concentrated vehemence of a mountain halted
against the sky in a thin line of thwarted hostility.
A waterfall hurdled its crazed parabola between
gray rocks, flying into a stifled scream of motion far
below. When the pine trees moved a mathematician
solved his problems, and his acrid exultation hypnotized
the air. The pungent truculence of earth that had never
been stepped on raised its brown shades.</p>
<p>Eric Lane stopped in an alcove of pine trees; lifted a
pack from his back; pitched his tent; and broke dead pine
branches across his knee. There were scars on his face
where philosophies had broken and died and the beaming
redundancy of one that survived. For Eric believed that
the visible and audible surface of man’s conduct and
dreams, when interpreted and compared, could reveal his
frustrated hungers. Metaphysics, to him, was a beggar
rattling his chains into insincere victories of sound—a
beggar painting seraphs upon the strained finality of his
brain.</p>
<p>Eric looked up from his task of breaking dead pine
branches. A first shade of twilight climbed the mountain,
like a dazed negro runner. The mountain impassively
confessed that its vehemence had been a lie. It
met the sky with an immense line of collapsed reticence.
The waterfall became the squirming of a white hermit
who finds a black stranger invading his cell. Twilight
was a body gradually returning to the festooned skeletons
of the pine trees. The rocks were enticed into attitudes—one
was a giant fondling the spear that had
wounded him; another curved over like a gray serf who
had broken his back. Eric stared at a huge rock standing
on the mountainside and outlined against the distant
base of a second mountain. It held the tensely embalmed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
profile of a woman. Her rigidly woebegone
features had withdrawn from some devil’s cliff of desire;
they made a line of incomplete crucifixion. Her hidden
eyes germinated into ghouls stealthily absorbing the gray
harvest of her face. Designed by a shattered surmise
her face retreated from the valley. Her forehead was
like a sword cracked in the middle; her nose and lips
were the remains of an autopsy on emotion. Demons
and virgins had gained one grave in the grayness assailing
her face.</p>
<p>Eric regarded her at first with a celebrating scepticism;
then sallowness slowly marked his face into a hanging
scroll of terror. Lightness vanished from his black hair
and it became a charred crown. He tottered three steps
in the direction of the rock-face and then, with unannounced
dexterity, a smile revived his face. The diminutive
city of his mind had sent its lord-mayor to restore
him. Eric returned to his task of breaking dead pine
branches. The diminutive city of his mind sent slender
pæans into electric threads. Eric kindled the branches
into a fire, and a carnival of flames pirouetted into
startled death. Eric stretched his arms out, like a concubine
stroking the walls of her black tent, and his face
became idly immobile. Then he altered completely, in
the leap of a moment, as though slipping from a loose costume
with infinite ease. His face stiffened into the unearthly
equilibrium of thought witnessing the torture of
emotion. The fire, to him, became a gaudy funeral-pyre.
When sleep finally interfered with his face he dropped
slowly to the ground, like satiated revenge.</p>
<p>When he awoke, morning assaulted the gaunt scene
with unceremonious clarity. The mountain became a
senseless giant; the waterfall changed to a commonplace
ribbon: and the pine trees blended into the lethargy of
dwarfs. The gray rock on the mountain was still gashed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
into the face of a woman but her outlines were those of a
transfigured virago. Eric strapped on his pack; gazed
down at the rock, with the smile of a merchant emerging
from drunken memories, and strode toward it. When he
reached it he hammered away a flat fragment, for remembrance,
and returned to the mountain path, with an expressionless
face.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>Eric Lane ended his lecture on scientific philosophy
and tapped a desecrating hand, for a moment, on the
profile that had told me a story during his talk. He had
left the mountain pass but he was unaware of that. He
would have laughed at the idea, like a beggar who rattles
his chains into insincere victories of sound. Of that, too,
he was unaware.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">ART</h2></div>
<p class="drop-cap">MRS. CALVIN and Mrs. Kildrick stood on opposite
sides of a back-yard fence. Around them
the romping improbabilities of early spring
were dispersed amidst the sour reality of suburban
houses. Pale green surrounded the small, square abodes,
like an impish irrelevance. Each house carried a shade
of dull green, brown and red, and these shades fitted into
each other and made a meekly repressed story. Cinder
side-walks stretched in front of the houses—remorsefully
dry remains of fire, sacrificing themselves to occasional
feet. The entire scene was an unconscious reflection
of the minds of Mrs. Calvin and Mrs. Kildrick,
standing on opposite sides of a back-yard fence.</p>
<p>These women held an unblossoming stoutness, like
buds that had swollen enormously but failed to open.
Their gray muslin wrappers were too undistinguished
to be shrouds and sepulchrally flirted with red ruffles.
Mrs. Calvin had an implacably round face and it reminded
one of a merchant scolding an infant. Mrs. Kildrick’s
face was round, but softer, like that of a frustrated
milk-maid.</p>
<p>“You ought to see her room,” said Mrs. Kildrick.
“It looks like a drunkard’s confession, as my husband
says, the funniest clay figgers and paintins you ever
saw.”</p>
<p>“I couldn’t believe it when you told me,” said Mrs.
Calvin, “the poor dear looks so-o respectable—what
can be ailing her?”</p>
<p>“She calls it her a-art,” said Mrs. Kildrick. “Well,
as my husband does say, we should pity those whose
minds are a little bit cracked!”</p>
<p>The ladies continued to adulterate the wanness of their
doubts and the sunlight continued its blunt rummaging<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
way among the rubbish-cans and fences. The afternoon
jovially began to change its glowing costume for a pretended
death scene, studying and lingering over gray
effects. Just as its melancholy was heaving toward a
climax Helma Solbert strode up the cinder walk leading
to Mrs. Kildrick’s abode.</p>
<p>She was a woman of thirty with a body whose dying
youth amply derided middle-age. Her ovally impertinent
face spoke to the first warnings of dissolution and told
them that their coming had been ill-advised. Weary but
tenaciously merry, her gray eyes were close to those of
one who has made the dagger in his side a cajoling saint.
Her little nose was a straight invitation to her widely ripe
lips and they turned upward as if to reach it. She wore
a blue serge suit that was an incongruous commonplace
but did not quite succeed in effacing her. Round and
black, her small hat rested lightly upon her brown and
abundant hair, like an inconspicuous accident. She entered
her room, abandoned her hat and coat, and measured
herself in a mirror as though encouraging a stranger
to play with his burden. Then a smile of delighted futility
plucked at her lips and she closed her eyes to avoid
robbing the stranger of his forlornly puzzling charm.
With her eyes still closed she walked to a couch and
stretched out upon it, and everything vanished from her
face except its flesh. Framed canvases hung upon the
yellow plaster walls of the room and each frame had a
shape that obviously failed to harmonize with the painting
it enclosed. Unconscious of the stiff challenges
holding them, the canvases stood in the fading afternoon
light, like a disconnected fable. One above the couch
represented a small red apple split by an enormous dark
green hatchet. The hatchet had driven one of its points
into a wooden table and slanted steeply upward, its slender
handle rising to an upper corner of the painting. Two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
little hemispheres of red and white apple cowered on
each side of the hatchet’s blade. The visible, level top
of the table was dark brown and terminated against a
feebly violet background. The following sentimental
words were painted in black letters high upon the violet.</p>
<p>“The hatchet struck at weak beauty, but—”</p>
<p>The canvas was enclosed by a round frame painted
in a shade of apple red. Each canvas in the room held
the first line of a poem that was completed by the colored
forms of the painting or a last line preceded by visual
symbols. With the air of a fanatic whose blood had
tightened into loops of fire that cast their sheen upon his
voice, Helma would say to rare visitors viewing her
paintings:</p>
<p>“By blending into one, art, literature and painting can
lose their deficiencies and gain perfection. I am merely
experimenting with the crude promise of this future
union.”</p>
<p>On a canvas at the opposite side of the room a huge
complexly broken arrow emerged from a pale red sky.
The black arrow pieces were dotted with tiny yellow, indigo
and pink birds. Dark red lips, each twisted to a
different expression, stood in the corners of the canvas.
Extending down the left side of the painting the following
line was written in black against a strip of bare
canvas.</p>
<p>“Thus I spoke one afternoon, because—”</p>
<p>Helma Solbert rose from her couch, lit a candle and
stood before the arrow-framed painting, gazing at it with
a pierced and subtly colorless face. Then she turned on
an electric light and its artificial stare, in an instant,
brought her an obliterating self-consciousness. With the
bearing of one who impudently walks to a gruesome sacrifice
she disappeared behind a lavender screen in a
corner of the room and fried her evening meal. When she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
emerged from the screen her face had once more perfected
its defensive impertinence. Even in her sleep
some hours later her features retained the blurred suspicion
of a smile that stayed like a lurking sentinel.</p>
<p>The following morning she was too ill to rise and Mrs.
Kildrick summoned a doctor. He was a portly man with
a steeply florid face and a dominating beard that had the
color of wet sand. While he was in the midst of examining
his patient she rose to a sitting posture and stared at
him.</p>
<p>“You’re what I tried to hide from; why have you
come to plague me?” she said, loudly.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">MUSIC</h2></div>
<p class="drop-cap">OLGA CRAWFORD fiercely divorced herself from
all expression as she maltreated her violin at the
Symphony Moving Picture Theater. In its
average moments of vivacity her face was a dissembling
friar who brightly listened to her sensual lips, but as she
played, her face became an emptiness profaned by the
wail of her instrument. Her arms desecrated their
errands and her head sloped into an unwilling counterfeit
of wakefulness. On the screen above her men and women
frantically guarded their hallucination of life and a decrepit
plot vaguely imitated love and bravery. Rows of
faces stolidly massacred the gloom of the theater and
stood like a regiment waiting, without thought, for some
command. But when one looked closer three expressions
broke from the stolidity, as three major harmonies might
charm the mind of a composer. The first was a somnolent
elation—the mien of a hungry person dozing over
some crumbs he is almost too tired to eat. Shop-girls,
with pertly robbed faces, became victims of this expression,
although an occasional man with lips like determined
fiascoes also attained it. The second was a tightly laced
impatience—the enmity of one whose feelings have been
openly censored. Fat women with flabbily throttled
faces and glistening men with bodies like bulky scandals
received this expression. The third was a seraphic stupor—the
demeanour of one whose formless delights have
benignly exiled thought.</p>
<p>To Olga these people gathered into a blanched duplicate
of life—a remote comedy that made the monotone
of her evening self-conscious. If they had excoriated
her she could have forgotten them, but their weighty indifference
raped her attention. The dryly sinuous smell
of their clothes pelted her like a sandstorm: the little,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
desperate perfumes they used scarcely survived. Their
eyes were scores of tinily inviting bulls-eyes never reached
by her hurried arrows.</p>
<p>She finished her playing; the people shuffled out like an
apologetic delusion. Ferenz, the pianist, a cowed Toreador
of a man, gave his browns and blacks a ponderous
recreation.</p>
<p>“Nother grind passed,” he said in a thick voice corrupted
by pity. “Hand over them sheets, Joe.”</p>
<p>Joe, fat as a gourmand’s revery, handed him the sheets.
The features on Joe’s face were as abject as crumbs on a
shallow plate. The Symphony Theater orchestra flaunted
its yawning moroseness a little while longer and filed
through a low exit.</p>
<p>Olga’s feet tamely saluted the crowded street-pavements.
To her the crowd was an approach to the theater
audience—a brisk indifference that made her eyes neglected
spendthrifts. Its motion alone gave it a flickering
mastery: if it had paused, for an hour, it would have become
inane. The choked tirade of rolling street-cars and
automobiles would have ended in a dismal curtain of
silence—the chariots would have changed to mere hardware
puzzled by the moonlight. A tall woman, encouraging
the gorgeous tumult of her dresses, would have stood
like a cluttered farce. The little pagan symmetries of her
face, gaudily tantalizing when merely glimpsed, would
have met in a kittenish argument. A tall man, blondly
governing his polished discrepancies, would have changed
to a stagnant buffoon. An old man, chiding his corpulent
effulgence with endearments of motion, would have
altered to a maudlin exaggeration.</p>
<p>Olga reached her room and summoned the meaningless
stare of an electric light. Upon her short body plumpness
and slenderness bargained with each other, and the result
was a suave arbitration. Her dark green skirt and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
white waist made a subdued affirmation: their coloured
lines did not emphasise the lurking essences of her body.
Surrounded by black disturbances of hair the sardonic
parts of her face were molested by sentimental inconsistencies.
Her nose was a salient inquisition but her
full mouth had a negroid flash; her chin was coldly
bellicose but her cheeks were softly turned. Beneath her
moderate brow her blue and white eyes were related to
glaciers.</p>
<p>She sat at an upright piano and trifled with the keys,
almost inaudibly. It was midnight and an acrimonious
man in the next room often remonstrated with the wall
when her piano conversed too impulsively. Since she was
an unknown composer the moment is appropriate for an
attack upon her obscurity. Her music was the compact
Sunday of her life. There she deserted the trite miserliness
of narrative and definite concepts and designed a
spacious holiday. Her notes loafed and romped into
inquisitive patterns and were only intent upon shifting
their positions. Thought and emotion presided over the
experimental revels of their servants but issued no narrow
commands and became broadly festive guidances. In
her music the rules of harmony were neither neglected
nor worshipped. When they felt an immense friendliness
for the romping of her notes they made a natural background:
otherwise, they did not intrude. Her music
did not strive to suggest or interpret concepts and pictures
nor did it salaam to emotions. All three were
seconds rising and dying as her sounds changed their
places. The first few notes of each composition were
repeated above as the title, not because they dominated
the piece, but merely as a means of identification.</p>
<p>In her wanly nondescript room which she did not own,
from midnight to dawn, this woman whose face was a
bewilderment of contrasts, sat furnishing the momentum<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
for a reveling deluge of music. But an evening decided
to interrupt this performance.</p>
<p>Olga stood in the shop of a neighborhood cobbler. He
was a frayed apologia, with a scant distraction of gray
hair and a dustily crushed face.</p>
<p>“When you play violin in theater I have heard,” he
said. “Maybe you would like to hear my boy. He is
only eleven but he play almost so good as you. Maybe
you will tell him how he can play better.”</p>
<p>Olga followed him to the rear of his shop, with a surface
purchase of pity. He trotted out his son, a comedy
in light browns relieved by the smothered fixity of gray
eyes. With whining precision the boy twisted his way
through Massenet’s Elegy, defending each sliding note
with his arms and his head. The syrupy embrace of a
world stirred upon his acceptant face; the whites of his
eyes hovered against Olga’s face, like a writhing request.
In the midst of his playing she turned and fled, terror-stricken,
down the street.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">ETHICS</h2></div>
<p class="drop-cap">ETHEL CURN was an acrobat with Hearn’s Twelve
Ring Circus, but her bones were riveted together
by a precariously brittle dignity as she paraded
down the field of daisies to a cliff at the edge of the
sea. Perhaps acrobats walk stiffly during their leisure
hours because their bodies become ascetic when released
from an unreal, sensual agility. Ethel Curn sometimes
stooped to pick a daisy and her body received motion
in a deliberately ungallant manner, as though greeting
an unwelcome mistress. Her face was an indiscreetly
torn screen for emotions that had been dead for many
years; her low forehead broke into the tinily pointed
lustres of her features; her body was as slim as a symbolised
cricket’s lament. She crossed the field of daisies
intensely dissolved into a forethought of afternoon and
stood underneath a tree at the edge of the cliff. As she
leaned against the tree it seemed as if a giant had courteously
lent his umbrella to a rudely unresponsive dwarf.
Below her the sea grunted with automatic fury and receded,
like a pleased actor. Winds threw their weird
applause against the blue and gray rocks. The calmer air
underneath the tree was not unlike a distressed mind
caught between the noises.</p>
<p>Ethel Curn seated herself beneath the tree and read
a paper-bound novel entitled, “The Fate of Eleanor
Martin,” but the sea and the rocks interfered too effectively
with Eleanor and her pretended life slid into the
reality at the foot of the tree, while Ethel peered aggressively
down at the waves. A whim winked its narcotic
eye at her mind—the waves became fellow-workers
and she was an audience critically examining their turns.
“A little higher with that green somersault! Come on,
old chicken, you can do a longer slide if you try!” her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
mind cried amiably. Lost in the syncopation of admiration
her body swayed with the waves and her brown
hair went adventuring. Then, like a jilted servant,
her mood ran from her, brandishing its abashed haste
over her body. Sorrow struck her face with a crazily
gay second that extinguished her eyes. Her body improvised
its lines into a wilted sexlessness that made
her black skirt and pink waist mysterious. The torture
of a lost love had feasted upon her flesh and reduced
it to an abstraction. Hearn, the circus-master, presided
over the feast like a chilly urbane magician. Without
a trace of sensual longing she recalled his little black
moustache, standing like a curt intrigue over his lips, and
the way in which it had bitten into her mouth became the
unreal memento of something she had never possessed.
Like all women gazing back at a departed love, she felt
a swindled poverty that could not quite decide whether
it had once owned wealth or not. This feeling translated
itself in exclamatory vowels that could not find the consonants
of her past passion. She smiled like a bedraggled,
masquerading tragedy. It takes women years to perfect
this masquerade, but they win a distracted pleasure
that guards them from haggling memories. To generalize
about women is to broaden our hope that one woman
may serve for the rest. Philosophers disappointed in love
often do this, though the man on the street is a fairly
adept mimic. Ethel Curn’s bosom lightly scolded her
pink waist and her poignantly devilish smile almost persuaded
her that it was real. All the tragedy on her face
spent itself in a distressed question. In unison with this
proceeding a perturbed monologue within her addressed
her vanity which was silkily perched upon an emotional
balcony.</p>
<p>“Hearn treated me white—blue garters with a real
diamond in the center—he never smiled when he kissed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
me—God, why couldn’t I keep him?—He stayed with
me a year and there’s not a woman in the troupe who’s
had him more than a month—he’s a lying rat, but he
never smiled when he kissed me—I wonder whether
he’d smile if I slit his throat?—what did I ever see in
that fat face—he’ll be a joke in a few years—they all
throw you down unless you get in ahead of them—If I
broke a bottle against his mug I’d only make him happy—it
had blue silk tassles and he paid three hundred for
it—I drank too much—blue silk tassles—He’s better
than most of them—I knew what he wanted and I’m
bawling him out because he got it—He treated me white—blue
silk garters with real diamonds that would make
the Queen of England wink—”</p>
<p>The devilishly poignant smile and the monologue met
each other within her, while fleeing back to their graves,
and their unpremeditated clash illuminated the renunciation
upon her face. She looked into her upturned, yellow
turban as though it held elusive dregs. Brooding experimented
with her head and suddenly threw it to the
ground, dissatisfied. She lay there like the impoverished
effigy of a far off love—her black skirt revealed her slim
legs, with gloomy discourtesy, and her fluffy pink waist
gave its babyish sympathy to the sharpness of her back.
Her slender but muscular arms, stretching over the grass,
were senseless branches touching the shoulders of the
armless effigy. The wind trifled with her loose brown
hair and incited it to ironically flitting imitations of life.
Dead thoughts and emotions united upon her hidden face
and gripped it with decayed finesse. She rested, perilously
unconcerned, upon the sloping edge of the cliff.
Suddenly, in a sibilant prank, the earth fled beneath her
body and she disappeared.</p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>They knelt around her prostrate figure hugged by the
pale blue indelicacy of tights and the scant impudence of
her yellow bodice. High above her a little wooden
board dangled helplessly from a long wire, while another
wire hung loosely above it. She opened her eyes and
stared, with a lustreless disbelief, at the people who were
like a tension ready to snap.</p>
<p>“Damn him, he did me dirty!” she cried to the
amazed, painted faces above her.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">HISTORY</h2></div>
<p class="drop-cap">SUNLIGHT stuck to the gray floor like curdled
honey and clung to the black wall like visible
fever on the breast of a savage. This contradiction
gave a fugitive radiance to the room in which King
Ferdinand stood, moulding figures of happiness. On
sunless days the room was a depressed insult to his rejoicing,
forcing it into adroit retorts. He had made this
chamber a necessary enemy.</p>
<p>As he moulded his figures of happiness, his wife stood
beside him, ready with colors.</p>
<p>“You have almost finished this half-pyramid of eyes
emerging from a flat surface and ending against a vertical
wall,” she said, as though the sound of her words made
their obviousness subtle. “What color shall I use to
excite your design?”</p>
<p>King Ferdinand turned to her, like a blind man peering
into fantastically returning sight. Creative absorption
had ruffled his middle-aged face into an ageless insurrection,
but when he spoke a wrinkled order once more
reigned beneath the granite lull of his forehead.</p>
<p>“Give each eye a different shade of color and, for the
wall, make a blue of inhuman brightness: a blue that has
swallowed a constellation and defies night,” he said.
“This form symbolises my last happiness, wherein the
clashing sequences of my life have been smashed to a
challenging glare. I have become immortal until I voluntarily
tender my immortality to death, if he takes it.”</p>
<p>The wrinkles on King Ferdinand’s cheeks ascended to
a sentence of belief hacked upon his forehead. His broadly
cumbersome face shrunk to a lighter scope and his red
moustache shone like a coal of expectation. His wife
played with her dark green gown as though it were relaxed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
gaiety. Her body, like a plump blunder, ended in
the deft recklessness of her head; the high amber of
her face raised its slightly turned lines of brooding abandon.
She looked at her husband as though she considered
his flesh an unimportant tragedy calmed by his words.</p>
<p>The smell of listening earth drifted through a window
and bird-cries violated the air, like expiring emotions.
King Ferdinand stood in the manner of one to whom
motion has become a dim travesty, and the blood in his
veins was a prisoned resonance. His folded arms were
weighted in a marble posture beneath his long sleeves.
Queen Muriel touched his arm and gave him life. She
led him to a corner of the room and unveiled a small
figure, and her hands were pliant consummations.</p>
<p>“My first happiness,” she said, in a voice of climbing
distinctness. They carried the figure to the light. Almost
as slim as a personified plant-stem, a conventionalised
monk grew straight from the center of two lean
hands cupped into the semblance of a flower-pot. The
hands met each other in an effortless tenderness; the
thinly high monk bore the suggestions of hood and cassock
and his face wore a look of indistinct triumph.</p>
<p>“And so I like to believe that your happiness has
grown uncertainly from the rarely caught touch of my
hands,” she said.</p>
<p>The door of the room opened and two men strode in.
One of them curved upward into pompous impatience.
The tight inquisitiveness of a gaudy uniform revealed
his tall body. His face was like an expansive fallacy—large
rolls of flesh indecisively interrogated the thin slant
of his nose and slid into the refuge of his brown beard.
The second man was waspishly abbreviated and clad in
mincing castrations of color. His tinily sharp face suggested
a soulless beetle.</p>
<p>“Have you come, as usual, to bestow your explosive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
admiration on my figures?” said King Ferdinand to the
man whose face resembled a redundant mistake.</p>
<p>“Three men of your guard will murder you, with restrained
admiration, tomorrow noon,” answered the other
man, in whose voice a sneer and apprehension were
partners in a minuet. “You will be killed on the palace
steps and the cheers of a huge audience will make death’s
leer articulate to you. While you have taken the role
of a hermit in an aesthetic petticoat your friends have
been arranging a last happiness for you. You are considered
an imbecile who paints pretty figures with the
blood of his country.”</p>
<p>The flashing hardnesses of a wintry repose assaulted
King Ferdinand’s face.</p>
<p>“My brothers are quite willing to use this blood as
an unsolicited rouge for the lips of their mistresses,” he
answered in a tone of remotely amused reproach. “I
have not assailed my subjects with taxes or led them to
wars and that has been a serious error. They are probably
in the position of a man with his chains removed,
who is angry because he has forgotten how to dance!”</p>
<p>The acridly shortened man spoke.</p>
<p>“When you are dead, sire, your brothers will gamble
for your throne by throwing roses at your head. He
who first succeeds in striking your bulging eyes, will
win.”</p>
<p>“Death does not like to be made a cheated jester,”
said King Ferdinand. “He will doubtless devise a better
joke for my winning brother.”</p>
<p>Queen Muriel, whose face had grown old with choked
disdain, stepped forward.</p>
<p>“Now that your shrewd bantering has made itself
sufficiently nude, tell us why you have come,” she said.</p>
<p>The tall man, who carried with him the air of an animated
mausoleum, spoke.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>“Today I saw an old libertine tottering down the
boulevard. Glancing to his feet he spied a lily, clipped
and fresh. He sidled blithely to the edge of the walk to
avoid stepping on the flower. There is little pleasure,
after all, in flattening a child from another world....
My carriage will take you to the frontier, tonight.”</p>
<p>“My caprices have never been able to strut gorgeously
because they hold a sincere sympathy for motion,” said
King Ferdinand, still mechanically jesting. His hand
rose to one cheek as though signaling for a friendly trance
and his eyes closed unceremoniously.</p>
<p>“We will take your carriage,” he said in the voice
of an abstracted tight-rope walker.</p>
<p>The two men tilted their gaudiness into imperceptible
bows and departed. King Ferdinand and his wife stood
staring at each other as though their bodies were teasing
curtains. Then, without remembering what had occurred,
they let gay words poke each other and began to discuss
colors for the monk’s figure rising from cupped hands
and blossoming into indistinct triumph.</p>
<p>That night their carriage stopped upon a hilltop and
they were killed by three men. One of the three had a
thin nose and a brown beard—the tight inquisitiveness
of a bright uniform revealed his tall body. Among
historians he was to be noted as the man who killed an
imbecile king and led his country to glory and prosperity.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">PSYCHIC PHENOMENA</h2></div>
<p class="drop-cap">CARL DELL and Anita Starr were speaking of a
dead woman who had influenced their eyes. She
had also refined their heads to a chill protest.
Their faces, involved and disconsolate, had not solved
her absence, and their voices were freighted with a primitive
martyrdom. Carl was fencing with the end of his
youth. His body held that inpenetrable cringing which
pretends to ignore the coming of middle age and is only
betrayed by rare gestures. He was tall, with a slenderness
that barely escaped being feminine. The upper
part of his face was scholarly and the lower part roguish,
and the two gave him the effect of a sprite who has become
erudite but still retains the memory of his former
identity. His protruding eyes were embarrassed, as
though someone behind them had unexpectedly pushed
them from a refuge. With immense finesse they apologised
for intruding upon the world. It is almost tautology
to say that they were gray. His small brown moustache
had a candidly misplaced air as it touched the thin
bacchanale of his lips. It was a mourner at the feast.</p>
<p>Anita Starr’s form would have seemed stout but for
the sweeping discipline of its lines, but this careful suppression
ended in a riot when it came to her face. Her
face was a small, lyrical revel that had terminated in
a fight. Her nose and chin were strident but her cheeks
and mouth were subtlely unassuming. Her blue eyes
brilliantly and impartially aided both sides of the conflict.
Glistening spirals of reddish brown hair courted
her head.</p>
<p>Sitting in the parlor of the Starr home Anita and Carl
spoke of a dead woman who had influenced their eyes.
It was two <span class="smcap">A. M.</span> and the atmosphere resembled a disillusioned
reminiscence: still and heavy. They had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
talked about this dead woman throughout the evening,
welcoming any sound that might surprise her profile into
life. When alive she had been the chanting whirlpool
of their existences, and when she died sound ceased for
them. Their voices became mere copies of its past
reign.</p>
<p>“Because I loved her any common pebble became a
chance word concerning her and flowers were enthusiastic
anecdotes of her presence,” said Carl.</p>
<p>For an hour he had been breaking his love into insatiable
variations—one who seduces the fleeting expressions
of a past torture.</p>
<p>“She may have been an august vagabond from another
planet—a planet where loitering is a solemn profession,”
said Anita. “Even when she performed a menial
task she awed it with her thoughtful reluctance. Like a
fitful gleaner she crept through bare fields of people,
accepting their bits of laughter and refusal. When she
met us she stepped backward, as from a tempting unreality,
and knocked against death.”</p>
<p>Carl sat, like a groveling fantasy weary of attempting
to capture a genuine animation, but Anita had forced
herself into a tormented erectness. The clock struck
three. Without a word or glance in each other’s direction
they left their chairs, turned out the lights, and
ascended the stairway, Carl slightly in advance. They
halted at the first landing and faced each other with the
uncomplaining helplessness of people suddenly scalded
by reality.</p>
<p>“In the morning we will eat oranges from a silver dish
and glibly cheat our emotions,” said Carl.</p>
<p>“This deftly impolite proceeding never stops to ask
our consent,” said Anita in a voice whose lethargy barely
observed a satirical twinkle.</p>
<p>Another word would have been a ridiculous impropriety.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
They parted and entered their rooms. Flower
scents filtered through Carl’s open window, like softly
dismayed sins and the cool repentance of a summer night
glided into his room upon a pathway of moonlight. For
a while he sat absent-mindedly burnishing the knives that
had divided his evening. After he had undressed he fell
upon his bed like one hurriedly obliterating an ordeal.
His consciousness played with a black hood; then a
crash mastered the room and the door swung open. His
blanched face paid a spasmodic tribute to the sound and
his grey eyes greeted the darkness as though it were an
advancing mob. With a strained stoicism he waited for a
repetition of the sound. The moments were sledge-hammers
fanning his face with their close passage. Then
his bed weirdly meddled with his body and became a
light cradle rocked by some arrogant hand. The darkness
tingled lifelessly, like an electrocuted man.</p>
<p>Carl’s waiting began to feel sharply disgraced and his
senses planned a revolt. He tried to rise to a sitting
posture but his body insulted his desire. At this point
the darkness softened to the disguised struggle of a
woman striving to reach him. The significance of this
cast an impalpable but potent consolation upon the straining
of his chained body. The rocking of his bed measured
a powerfully cryptic welcome and he tried to decipher
it with the beat of his heart. Each of its syllables
became the cadenced impact of another person against
a toughly pliant wall. His body demolished its tenseness
and pressed a refrain into the swaying bed. He decorated
the darkness with the crisp flight of his voice.</p>
<p>“Perish upon the turmoil of each day and make it
inaudible, but let the night be our hermitage,” he cried
to a dead woman. As though replying, the rocking of
his bed gradually lessened and the darkness became an
opaque farewell. He turned to the shaft of moonlight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
which was tactfully intercepting the floor of his room;
it had the unobtrusive intensity of a melted Chinaman.
For hours he gave it his eyes and dimly contradicted it
with his heart. When the dawn made his room aware of
its limitations, he closed his eyes.</p>
<p>At the breakfast table he and Anita greeted each other
with a worn brevity: their eyes found an empty solace
in the white tablecloth and their minds felt a bright
impotence, like beggars idling in the sun. For a while
the tinkle of their spoons amiably pardoned their constraint,
but Anita finally spoke with the staccato of one
who snaps unbearable thongs.</p>
<p>“She came to me last night. I heard a sound like a
huge menace stumbling over a chair. The door opened
and the darkness grew as heavy as dead flesh. My bed
swayed with the precision of a grieving head.”</p>
<p>Carl’s face broke and gleamed like a soft ground
flogged by sudden rain.</p>
<p>“The same things happened to me,” he said in the
voice of a child wrestling with a minor chord.</p>
<p>They sat heavily disputing each other with their eyes.</p>
<p>“Did you lie afterwards, censuring the moonlight?”
asked Anita.</p>
<p>Carl nodded. Anita’s mother majestically blundered
into the room. Exuberantly substantial, with the face
of a child skillfully rebuked by an elderly masquerade,
she flattered a chair at the table.</p>
<p>“Wasn’t that a terrible storm we had last night,” she
babbled. “The rain kept me awake for hours—I’m
such a light sleeper, you know. I do hope you children
managed to rest.”</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">LOVE</h2></div>
<p class="drop-cap">THE night received the moonlight in the manner
of a sophisticated braggart who slaps the face of
an old, impassive man. Mrs. Robert Calvin
Taylor observed this illusion and painted it upon one of
the lanterns lighting a little party within her heart. The
guests at the party, fat sophists and slatterns in gay,
patched clothes, gathered around the lantern and felt relieved
at the impersonal novelty of its decoration. If
Mrs. Robert Calvin Taylor had been a philosopher or
a scientist she would have changed the night to an unseen
background, or a chemical diagram; she would
have ignored the pleading of her heart for pictorial distraction.
But since she was a society-woman, tired of
sensual toys and a mental twilight, she welcomed the
night as her first effectual lover. Sitting in the garden
of her country home she could see the lighted windows
of her crowded ballroom, and hear the saccharine pandemonium
of a jazz orchestra. The noise reminded her
of a middle-aged roué, snickering as he rolled his huge
dice while gambling for a new mistress. She felt glad
that her new lover, the night, did not seek to court her
with such a blustering clatter.</p>
<p>The night was incredibly sophisticated but held the
pungently awkward body of a youth, crashing against
trees and bushes. This mixture pierced Mrs. Robert
Calvin Taylor and slid far beneath those sensual routines
which are the delight of psycho-analysts—slid to a
depth where aesthetic passion slays the flesh and blends
it into a sexless potency. She felt a sense of bodiless
conflagration striding with wide steps beside the night.
When the limitless glow died within her, she glanced
down and found that she was naked. The complicated
shrewdness of her clothes had disappeared.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>By this time she had ceased to be Mrs. Robert Calvin
Taylor—she had become an expectant novice in a
new world, and even the jazz music and ballroom
laughter had changed to the mumbled rumours of a
past existence. Therefore her nakedness failed to disconcert
her. She touched her shoulder, with a gesture
of matter-of-fact congratulation, and loosened her hair
to rid herself of a last dab of incongruity. Then she rose
from the stone bench and walked down a pathway leading
to the great lake that bounded one side of her country
estate. She felt the powerful and sober curiosity of one
who has decided to become a recluse and examines the
deserted possibilities of his roofless plateau. She reached
a high bluff rising over the placid vanity of the huge
lake, combing its bluish black hair with moonlight. Suddenly
she became aware of a figure standing beside her.
She turned with a gasp of strangled aloofness. The
ethereal composure of her small face, defended by moonlight,
sheered into an ebony cast of hermit-like annoyance.
But when the color and outlines of the figure
shrunk within her eyes, her face changed again. An
astounded immersion crowned her head, tugging at her
short nose, straightening her thick lips, and cleaving her
gray eyes. The slightly deteriorated slenderness of her
short body lowered a bit toward the earth, not from
fear but because of a weakening incredulity. The figure
before her was that of a sexless human being, small and
slim of statute, nude, and hued with an inhumanly concentrated
black. The head held large eyes that shone
like metaphysical diamonds, as though ten thousand
stars were carousing together, in a realm of compressed
light. The figure spoke to Mrs. Robert Calvin Taylor,
and its voice seemed thrown forth by the rays from its
eyes. The voice was distinct and subdued.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>“You are not a hermit who has turned a garden into
a solitary castle,” said the figure.</p>
<p>“What am I?” asked Mrs. Robert Calvin Taylor.</p>
<p>“Your mind and heart are no longer clad in their
heavy mirages of love, fear, and sleep,” said the figure.
“The surface pictures have gone and the twin bazaars
of your heart and mind are exchanging a long-deferred
greeting. Within the now mingled bazaars emotions and
thoughts have become friends and sell each other endless
variations in color, light, and form. I am the being who
rules this proceeding.”</p>
<p>“Have you a name?” asked Mrs. Robert Calvin
Taylor, using the unashamed naïveté of a child.</p>
<p>“Men call me Aesthetics,” answered the figure. “In
my weakest form I make the eyes of the shop-girl hesitate
a bit, as she views an unusually gaudy sunset. In
my strongest manifestations I help poets and artists to
contradict their personal lives. But these are merely
my outward indications. I line the hearts and minds of
all human beings, often remaining within them, unfelt,
until they die. In rare cases such as yours the mirages
hiding and dividing me are slain, and I clap my hands,
sending motion to the twin bazaars of heart and mind.”</p>
<p>“What caused me to uncover you within myself?”
said Mrs. Robert Calvin Taylor.</p>
<p>“You yielded to a whim and made the night your
lover. Dissatisfied with the loves and fears he found
within you, the night threw them aside, one by one, thus
slaying the mirages that hid me. Your other lovers of
the past were content with more material gifts and did
not seek to uncover you.”</p>
<p>“I am bare now. What will you do with me?” said
Mrs. Robert Calvin Taylor. The figure laid a hand upon
her shoulder. His eyes burnt her to a petal of ashes
that fell down between them.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
<hr class="tb" />
<p>Mr. Robert Calvin Taylor stood over the form of his
young wife, who sat slouched down upon a stone bench
within their garden. He shook her shoulder, lightly. She
uttered a perturbed mumble and did not raise the head
resting upon one of her arms. The moonlight fell upon
the silken complexities of her dress.</p>
<p>“Poor Dot, I warned her not to take a third glass,”
he muttered to himself as he raised her in his arms and
staggered down the garden pathway.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="transnote">
<p class="ph2">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:</p>
<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p>
<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.</p>
</div>
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 60427 ***</div>
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