Part 2

“My flesh is turned to stone. I have endured my summer. The flurry of falling petals is ended. Lay the finger upon this granite. I was well desired and fully caressed by many lovers but my flesh withered swiftly and my heart was never satisfied. Lay your hands upon the granite as a lover lays his hand upon the thigh and upon the round breasts of her who is beside him, for now I will not wither, now I have thrown off secrecy, now I have walked naked into the street, now I have scattered my heavy beauty in the open market. Here I am with head high and a burning heart eagerly awaiting your caresses, whoever it may be, for granite is not harder than my love is open, runs loose among you!

I arrogant against death! I who have endured! I worn against the years!”

V.

But it is five o’clock. Come! Life is good--enjoy it! A walk in the park while the day lasts. I will go with you. Look! this northern scenery is not the Nile, but-- these benches--the yellow and purple dusk-- the moon there--these tired people-- the lights on the water!

Are not these Jews and--Ethiopians? The world is young, surely! Young and colored like--a girl that has come upon a lover! Will that do?

WINTER QUIET

Limb to limb, mouth to mouth with the bleached grass silver mist lies upon the back yards among the outhouses. The dwarf trees pirouette awkwardly to it-- whirling round on one toe; the big tree smiles and glances upward! Tense with suppressed excitement the fences watch where the ground has humped an aching shoulder for the ecstasy.

DAWN

Ecstatic bird songs pound the hollow vastness of the sky with metallic clinkings-- beating color up into it at a far edge,--beating it, beating it with rising, triumphant ardor,-- stirring it into warmth, quickening in it a spreading change,-- bursting wildly against it as dividing the horizon, a heavy sun lifts himself--is lifted-- bit by bit above the edge of things,--runs free at last out into the open--! lumbering glorified in full release upward--songs cease.

GOOD NIGHT

In brilliant gas light I turn the kitchen spigot and watch the water plash into the clean white sink. On the grooved drain-board to one side is a glass filled with parsley-- crisped green. Waiting for the water to freshen-- I glance at the spotless floor--: a pair of rubber sandals lie side by side under the wall-table, all is in order for the night.

Waiting, with a glass in my hand --three girls in crimson satin pass close before me on the murmurous background of the crowded opera-- it is memory playing the clown-- three vague, meaningless girls full of smells and the rustling sound of cloth rubbing on cloth and little slippers on carpet-- high-school French spoken in a loud voice!

Parsley in a glass, still and shining, brings me back. I take my drink and yawn deliciously. I am ready for bed.

DANSE RUSSE

If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,-- if I in my north room danse naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: “I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely. I am best so!” If I admire my arms, my face my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,--

who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?

PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN IN BED

There’s my things drying in the corner: that blue skirt joined to the grey shirt--

I’m sick of trouble! Lift the covers if you want me and you’ll see the rest of my clothes-- though it would be cold lying with nothing on!

I won’t work and I’ve got no cash. What are you going to do about it?

--and no jewelry (the crazy fools)

But I’ve my two eyes and a smooth face and here’s this! look! it’s high! There’s brains and blood in there-- my name’s Robitza! Corsets can go to the devil-- and drawers along with them! What do I care!

My two boys? --they’re keen! Let the rich lady care for them-- they’ll beat the school or let them go to the gutter-- that ends trouble.

This house is empty isn’t it? Then it’s mine because I need it.

Oh, I won’t starve while there’s the Bible to make them feed me.

Try to help me if you want trouble or leave me alone-- that ends trouble.

The county physician is a damned fool and you can go to hell!

You could have closed the door when you came in; do it when you go out. I’m tired.

VIRTUE

Now? Why-- whirl-pools of orange and purple flame feather twists of chrome on a green ground funneling down upon the steaming phallus-head of the mad sun himself-- blackened crimson! Now?

Why-- it is the smile of her the smell of her the vulgar inviting mouth of her! It is--Oh, nothing new nothing that lasts an eternity, nothing worth putting out to interest, nothing-- but the fixing of an eye concretely upon emptiness!

Come! here are-- cross-eyed men, a boy with a patch, men walking in their shirts, men in hats dark men, a pale man with little black moustaches and a dirty white coat, fat men with pudgy faces, thin faces, crooked faces slit eyes, grey eyes, black eyes old men with dirty beards, men in vests with gold watch chains. Come!

CONQUEST

[_Dedicated to F. W._]

Hard, chilly colors: straw grey, frost grey the grey of frozen ground: and you, O sun, close above the horizon! It is I holds you-- half against the sky half against a black tree trunk icily resplendent!

Lie there, blue city, mine at last-- rimming the banked blue grey and rise, indescribable smoky yellow into the overpowering white!

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN WITH A BAD HEART

Have I seen her? Only through the window across the street.

If I go meeting her on the corner some damned fool will go blabbing it to the old man and she’ll get hell. He’s a queer old bastard! Every time he sees me you’d think I wanted to kill him. But I figure it out it’s best to let things stay as they are-- for a while at least.

It’s hard giving up the thing you want most in the world, but with this damned pump of mine liable to give out ...

She’s a good kid and I’d hate to hurt her but if she can get over it--

it’d be the best thing.

KELLER GEGEN DOM

Witness, would you-- one more young man in the evening of his love hurrying to confession: steps down a gutter crosses a street goes in at a doorway opens for you-- like some great flower-- a room filled with lamplight; or whirls himself obediently to the curl of a hill some wind-dancing afternoon; lies for you in the futile darkness of a wall, sets stars dancing to the crack of a leaf--

and--leaning his head away-- snuffs (secretly) the bitter powder from his thumb’s hollow, takes your blessing and goes home to bed?

Witness instead whether you like it or not a dark vinegar smelling place from which trickles the chuckle of beginning laughter

It strikes midnight.

SMELL!

Oh strong ridged and deeply hollowed nose of mine! what will you not be smelling? What tactless asses we are, you and I, boney nose, always indiscriminate, always unashamed, and now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggled poplars: a festering pulp on the wet earth beneath them. With what deep thirst we quicken our desires to that rank odor of a passing spring-time! Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors for something less unlovely? What girl will care for us, do you think, if we continue in these ways? Must you taste everything? Must you know everything? Must you have a part in everything?

BALLET

Are you not weary, great gold cross shining in the wind-- are you not weary of seeing the stars turning over you and the sun going to his rest and you frozen with a great lie that leaves you rigid as a knight on a marble coffin?

--and you, higher, still, robin, untwisting a song from the bare top-twigs, are you not weary of labor, even the labor of a song?

Come down--join me for I am lonely.

First it will be a quiet pace to ease our stiffness but as the west yellows you will be ready!

Here in the middle of the roadway we will fling ourselves round with dust lilies till we are bound in their twining stems! We will tear their flowers with arms flashing!

And when the astonished stars push aside their curtains they will see us fall exhausted where wheels and the pounding feet of horses will crush forth our laughter.

SYMPATHETIC PORTRAIT OF A CHILD

The murderer’s little daughter who is barely ten years old jerks her shoulders right and left so as to catch a glimpse of me without turning round.

Her skinny little arms wrap themselves this way then that reversely about her body! Nervously she crushes her straw hat about her eyes and tilts her head to deepen the shadow-- smiling excitedly!

As best as she can she hides herself in the full sunlight her cordy legs writhing beneath the little flowered dress that leaves them bare from mid-thigh to ankle--

Why has she chosen me for the knife that darts along her smile?

THE OGRE

Sweet child, little girl with well shaped legs you cannot touch the thoughts I put over and under and around you.

This is fortunate for they would burn you to an ash otherwise. Your petals would be quite curled up.

This is all beyond you--no doubt, yet you do feel the brushings of the fine needles; the tentative lines of your whole body prove it to me; so does your fear of me, your shyness; likewise the toy baby cart that you are pushing-- and besides, mother has begun to dress your hair in a knot. These are my excuses.

RIPOSTE

Love is like water or the air my townspeople; it cleanses, and dissipates evil gases. It is like poetry too and for the same reasons.

Love is so precious my townspeople that if I were you I would have it under lock and key-- like the air or the Atlantic or like poetry!

THE OLD MEN

Old men who have studied every leg show in the city Old men cut from touch by the perfumed music-- polished or fleeced skulls that stand before the whole theater in silent attitudes of attention,-- old men who have taken precedence over young men and even over dark-faced husbands whose minds are a street with arc-lights. Solitary old men for whom we find no excuses-- I bow my head in shame for those who malign you. Old men the peaceful beer of impotence be yours!

PASTORAL

If I say I have heard voices who will believe me?

“None has dipped his hand in the black waters of the sky nor picked the yellow lilies that sway on their clear stems and no tree has waited long enough nor still enough to touch fingers with the moon.”

I looked and there were little frogs with puffed out throats, singing in the slime.

SPRING STRAINS

In a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds crowded erect with desire against the sky-- tense blue-grey twigs slenderly anchoring them down, drawing them in-- two blue-grey birds chasing a third struggle in circles, angles, swift convergings to a point that bursts instantly!

Vibrant bowing limbs pull downward, sucking in the sky that bulges from behind, plastering itself against them in packed rifts, rock blue and dirty orange! But--

(Hold hard, rigid jointed trees!) the blinding and red-edged sun-blur-- creeping energy, concentrated counterforce--welds sky, buds, trees, rivets them in one puckering hold! Sticks through! Pulls the whole counter-pulling mass upward, to the right, locks even the opaque, not yet defined ground in a terrific drag that is loosening the very tap-roots!

On a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds two blue-grey birds, chasing a third, at full cry! Now they are flung outward and up--disappearing suddenly!

TREES

Crooked, black tree on your little grey-black hillock, ridiculously raised one step toward the infinite summits of the night: even you the few grey stars draw upward into a vague melody of harsh threads.

Bent as you are from straining against the bitter horizontals of a north wind,--there below you how easily the long yellow notes of poplars flow upward in a descending scale, each note secure in its own posture--singularly woven.

All voices are blent willingly against the heaving contra-bass of the dark but you alone warp yourself passionately to one side in your eagerness.

A PORTRAIT IN GREYS

Will it never be possible to separate you from your greyness? Must you be always sinking backward into your grey-brown landscapes--and trees always in the distance, always against a grey sky? Must I be always moving counter to you? Is there no place where we can be at peace together and the motion of our drawing apart be altogether taken up? I see myself standing upon your shoulders touching a grey, broken sky-- but you, weighted down with me, yet gripping my ankles,--move laboriously on, where it is level and undisturbed by colors.

INVITATION

You who had the sense to choose me such a mother, you who had the indifference to create me, you who went to some pains to leave hands off me in the formative stages,-- (I thank you most for that perhaps) but you who with an iron head, first, fiercest and with strongest love brutalized me into strength, old dew-lap,-- I have reached the stage where I am teaching myself to laugh. Come on, take a walk with me.

DIVERTIMIENTO

Miserable little woman in a brown coat-- quit whining! My hand for you! We’ll skip down the tin cornices of Main Street flicking the dull roof-line with our toe-tips! Hop clear of the bank! A pin-wheel round the white flag-pole.

And I’ll sing you the while a thing to split your sides about Johann Sebastian Bach, the father of music, who had three wives and twenty-two children.

JANUARY MORNING

SUITE

I.

I have discovered that most of the beauties of travel are due to the strange hours we keep to see them:

the domes of the Church of the Paulist Fathers in Weehawken against a smoky dawn--the heart stirred-- are beautiful as Saint Peters approached after years of anticipation.

II.

Though the operation was postponed I saw the tall probationers in their tan uniforms hurrying to breakfast!

III.

--and from basement entrys neatly coiffed, middle aged gentlemen with orderly moustaches and well brushed coats

IV.

--and the sun, dipping into the avenues streaking the tops of the irregular red houselets, and the gay shadows dropping and dropping.

V.

--and a young horse with a green bed-quilt on his withers shaking his head: bared teeth and nozzle high in the air!

VI.

--and a semicircle of dirt colored men about a fire bursting from an old ash can,

VII.

--and the worn, blue car rails (like the sky!) gleaming among the cobbles!

VIII.

--and the rickety ferry-boat “Arden”! What an object to be called “Arden” among the great piers,--on the ever new river! “Put me a Touchstone at the wheel, white gulls, and we’ll follow the ghost of the Half Moon to the North West Passage--and through! (at Albany!) for all that!”

IX.

Exquisite brown waves--long circlets of silver moving over you! enough with crumbling ice-crusts among you! The sky has come down to you, lighter than tiny bubbles, face to face with you! His spirit is a white gull with delicate pink feet and a snowy breast for you to hold to your lips delicately!

X.

The young doctor is dancing with happiness in the sparkling wind, alone at the prow of the ferry! He notices the curdy barnacles and broken ice crusts left at the slip’s base by the low tide and thinks of summer and green shell crusted ledges among the emerald eel-grass!

XI.

Who knows the Palisades as I do knows the river breaks east from them above the city--but they continue south --under the sky--to bear a crest of little peering houses that brighten with dawn behind the moody water-loving giants of Manhattan.

XII.

Long yellow rushes bending above the white snow patches; purple and gold ribbon of the distant wood: what an angle you make with each other as you lie there in contemplation.

XIII.

Work hard all your young days and they’ll find you too, some morning staring up under your chiffonier at its warped bass-wood bottom and your soul-- out! --among the little sparrows behind the shutter.

XIV.

--and the flapping flags are at half mast for the dead admiral.

XV.

All this-- was for you, old woman. I wanted to write a poem that you would understand. For what good is it to me if you can’t understand it? But you got to try hard-- But-- Well, you know how the young girls run giggling on Park Avenue after dark when they ought to be home in bed? Well, that’s the way it is with me somehow.

TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE

Rather notice, mon cher, that the moon is tilted above the point of the steeple than that its color is shell-pink.

Rather observe that it is early morning than that the sky is smooth as a turquoise.

Rather grasp how the dark converging lines of the steeple meet at the pinnacle-- perceive how its little ornament tries to stop them--

See how it fails! See how the converging lines of the hexagonal spire escape upward-- receding, dividing! --sepals that guard and contain the flower!

Observe how motionless the eaten moon lies in the protecting lines.

It is true: in the light colors of morning brown-stone and slate shine orange and dark blue.

But observe the oppressive weight of the squat edifice! Observe the jasmine lightness of the moon.

DEDICATION FOR A PLOT OF GROUND

This plot of ground facing the waters of this inlet is dedicated to the living presence of Emily Richardson Wellcome who was born in England; married; lost her husband and with her five year old son sailed for New York in a two-master; was driven to the Azores; ran adrift on Fire Island shoal, met her second husband in a Brooklyn boarding house, went with him to Puerto Rico bore three more children, lost her second husband, lived hard for eight years in St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed the oldest son to New York, lost her daughter, lost her “baby,” seized the two boys of the oldest son by the second marriage mothered them--they being motherless--fought for them against the other grandmother and the aunts, brought them here summer after summer, defended herself here against thieves, storms, sun, fire, against flies, against girls that came smelling about, against drought, against weeds, storm-tides, neighbors, weasles that stole her chickens, against the weakness of her own hands, against the growing strength of the boys, against wind, against the stones, against trespassers, against rents, against her own mind.

She grubbed this earth with her own hands, domineered over this grass plot, blackguarded her oldest son into buying it, lived here fifteen years, attained a final loneliness and--

If you can bring nothing to this place but your carcass, keep out.

K. McB.

You exquisite chunk of mud Kathleen--just like any other chunk of mud! --especially in April! Curl up round their shoes when they try to step on you, spoil the polish! I shall laugh till I am sick at their amazement. Do they expect the ground to be always solid? Give them the slip then; let them sit in you; soil their pants; teach them a dignity that is dignity, the dignity of mud!

Lie basking in the sun then--fast asleep! Even become dust on occasion.

LOVE SONG

I lie here thinking of you:--

the stain of love is upon the world! Yellow, yellow, yellow it eats into the leaves, smears with saffron the horned branches that lean heavily against a smooth purple sky! There is no light only a honey-thick stain that drips from leaf to leaf and limb to limb spoiling the colors of the whole world--

you far off there under the wine-red selvage of the west!

THE WANDERER

_A Rococo Study_

ADVENT

Even in the time when as yet I had no certain knowledge of her She sprang from the nest, a young crow, Whose first flight circled the forest. I know now how then she showed me Her mind, reaching out to the horizon, She close above the tree tops. I saw her eyes straining at the new distance And as the woods fell from her flying Likewise they fell from me as I followed-- So that I strongly guessed all that I must put from me To come through ready for the high courses.

But one day, crossing the ferry With the great towers of Manhattan before me, Out at the prow with the sea wind blowing, I had been wearying many questions Which she had put on to try me: How shall I be a mirror to this modernity? When lo! in a rush, dragging A blunt boat on the yielding river-- Suddenly I saw her! And she waved me From the white wet in midst of her playing! She cried me, “Haia! Here I am, son! See how strong my little finger is! Can I not swim well? I can fly too!” And with that a great sea-gull Went to the left, vanishing with a wild cry-- But in my mind all the persons of godhead Followed after.

CLARITY