Part 2

The loose eyes of an old man Shone aloof upon his boyish face; And a sluggish innocence Hugged his dull brown skin. He sang a hymn caught from his elders And his voice resembled A quavering, feverish laugh Softened in a swaying cradle. His life had found a refuge in his voice, And the rest of him was sickly flesh Ignorant of life and death. Like a crushed, excited clown His mother shuffled out upon the porch. Slowly her dark brown face resolved Into the hushed and sulky look Of one who stands within a dim-walled trap. Lazily uncertain, She raised the boy into her arms. Then her voice swung in the air Like a quavering, feverish laugh Softened in a swaying cradle.

BROADWAY

With sardonic futility The multi-coloured crowd, Hurried by fervent sensuality, Flees from something carried on its back. Endlessly subdued, a sound Pours up from the crowd, Like some one ever gasping for breath To utter releasing words. Through the artificial valley Made by gaudy evasions, The stifled crowd files up and down, Stabbing thought with rapid noises. Women strutting dulcetly, Embroider their unappeased hungers, And men stumble toward a flitting opiate. Sometimes a moment breaks apart And one can hear the knuckles Of children rapping on towering doors: Rapping on the highway Where civilization parades Its frozen amiabilities!

FIFTH AVENUE

(NEW YORK)

Seasons bring nothing to this gulch Save a harshly intimate anecdote Scrawled, here and there, on paint and stone. The houses shoulder each other In a forced and passionless communion. Their harassed angles rise Like a violent picture-puzzle Hiding a story that only ruins could reveal; Their straight lines, robbed of power, Meet in dwarfed rebellion. Sometimes they stand like vastly flattened faces Suffering ants to crawl In and out of their gaping mouths. Sometimes, in menial attitudes They stand like Gothic platitudes Slipshodly carved in dark brown stone. Tarnished solemnities of death Cast their transfigured hue on this avenue. The cool and indiscriminate glare Of sunlight seems to desecrate a tomb, And the racing people seem A stream of accidental shadows. Hard noises strike one’s face and make It numb with momentary reality, But the noiseless undertone returns And they change to unreal jests Made by death.

YOUNG WOMAN

So we have a face Cupped by tender insolences, Half repenting insolences Teasing their own angers. Then, a tense exuberance Brushes them away And burns a humbly erect Queen upon her face. This happens in the space Between a frown and indecision. Her face becomes forlornly wild, And a beggarly impatience Hovers into furtive shame. All the supplely intricate flame Vanishes, and leaves no mark. Her eyes are violently dark With a hopeless waiting; Her lips are isolated tatters-- All that is left of shattered recreating. Then, as quickly as she fled, The humble queen returns. Staring and unappeased She eyes her crumpled hands.

TWO WOMEN ON A STREET

This street is callous apathy In a scale of greys and browns. Its black roof-line suggests Flat bodies unable to rise. Even its screams are listlessness Having an evil dream. Its air is swarthy rawness Troubled with ash cans and cellars.

An old woman ambles on With a black bag that seems part of her back, And a candidly hawk-like face. She croons a smothered lullaby That sifts a flitting roundness Into her sharply parted face. Then she surrenders her hand To the welter of a garbage can. A hugely wilted woman slinks by With a cracked stare on her face. Her eyes are beaten discs Of the lamplight’s ghastly keenness. She glides away as though the night Were a lover flogging her; Glides into the callous apathy Of this street, like one who cringes Happily into her lover’s hallway.

ADVICE TO MAPLE-TREES

O little maple-trees, Slender and unkempt, looking with shaggy askance Upon the moon-spiked solitude; O little maple-trees, Growing a little toward the sky That touches you to all eyes save your own, You rattle insistently for wings, But wings could never tear The stain of earth from your feet: The earth that gnaws at you until Your wing-cries strike the autumn night. You see, with me, this crescent moon Juggled on the tawny fingertip Of a running cloud. The touch of your desire, or its fall, Would but be symbols of an equal death.

BOARDING-HOUSE EPISODE

Apples race into appetites: The unswerving mechanism of the table Hurries through the last dish of supper. Then an undulating interlude From people who have spent one pleasure, Distractedly juggling its aftermath And peering at new desires. One woman gazes at another While twitching murder shimmers in her eyes And skims across her face. Violets in a madman’s scene, Suspended in the air, Are the eyes of her neighbour. And in between them sits the nervous man With face like pouting gargoyle, Whose brown eyes shout the things he cannot say: Explosive evasions; Fears too tired to shriek; Renunciations groaning from their dungeons. He eyes each woman, like a man Solemnly trying to walk on mysterious ice. Crisp inanities ripple back and forth Among these three, like ghostly parrots Visiting each other’s cages. She with crazy, violet eyes, Plays with her fork, as though its clink Rhymed with secret, chained thoughts; She with murder in her eyes, And curtly voluminous body, Evenly plays her child-rôle. Cringing on the rim of middle age, With broken shields piled at her feet, She has made this man a haunted palace And she stands before the door She dare not open, with a dagger For the woman standing at her side.

They sit, afterwards, upon the veranda, Meekly greeting the velvet swagger of evening: Woman with twisted, violet eyes, Woman with hidden murder on her lips, And man like a pouting gargoyle. Then, like tired children, Their words grow cool and lazy. They draw closer to each other And, with a trembling curiosity, Look at each other’s hands.

VAUDEVILLE MOMENT

They have carved a battle Across your hard face: Transfigured conflict, Lines like suspended lances. Your voice must be the uneven Clink of the last carver’s chisel. Your soul must be a pious subterfuge Squinting its admiring eyes At the lifeless battle lining your face.... Middle aged vaudeville conductor, With a hunted leanness on your body, Sometimes the swing of your baton Sways with a brooding patience That violates your ended face.

Two acrobats appear, With their automaton bows. Their unlit motion does not strike The air into a hugging flame. They are blue and orange corpses Whirled in a sacrilegious festival. They vividly resemble The chiseled battle that grips This lean conductor’s face: Motion without life, And life that holds no motion!

TO ORRICK JOHNS

The tread-mill roar that ever tramps between The smirched geometries of this stern place, Sweeps vainly on your drowsily reckless face Lost in a swirl of raped loves barely seen. Sometimes your keenly pagan lips are raised By thoughts too tense to shape themselves in speech: Still, wounded thoughts that silently beseech Your life to make them impotent and dazed.

O tangled and half-strangled child, you shrink For ever from yourself, and wear a pose Of nimble and impenetrable pride. Yet sometimes, wavering on the sudden brink Of jaded bitterness, you drop your clothes And weave a prayer into your naked stride.

YOUNG POET

The grinning clamour on your face Dies abruptly, for moments: Boldness and timidity Are swept, transfigured, against each other. But the glistening turmoil Once more spurns itself with jests That light its troubled hands.

When too much pain has lowered The eyelids of your mood, A peaceful humour wraps your face. You are like an old man Watching children fly from his fingertips. In your kirtle of borrowed skies You find a sorrow luring your horizons Into hesitating brightness.... When night remembers, you have straightened Into stealthy, angry calmness Fingering it first, unsent arrow.

STEEL-MILLS: SOUTH CHICAGO

I

This red hush toppling over the sky, Wanders one step toward the stars And dies in a questioning shiver. The steel-mill chimneys fling their gaunt seeking A little distance into the red That softly combs their smoky hair. The steel-mill chimneys only live at night When crimson light makes love to them And star-light trickles through the red, Like glimpses of some far-off fairy tale. Throughout the day the steel-mill chimneys stand Rigidly within the wind-whirled glare: Only night can bring them supple straightness.

II

From the little, brown gate that does not see them Because its eyes are blind with wooing soot, An endless stream of men scatters out Into the cool bewilderment of morning. Upon their lips a limply child-like surrender Curves out to the light, as though they felt The presence of an unassuming strangeness. The morning hides from their eyes: They walk on, in great strides, Like blind men swinging over a well-known scene. Their faces twitch with echoes of iron fists: Their faces hold a swarthy stupor Loosened by little fingers of morning light Until it droops into reluctant life. And then their eyes, made flat by night, Swell into a Madonna-like surprise At children trooping back in huge disguise. The oranges in lunch-room windows change To sleek suns dipped in sleepy light, And rounded tarts in china plates Are like red heart-beats, resting but not dead. A trolley-car speeds by And seems a strident lyric of motion. Wagons rumble down the street Like drums enticing weariness to step.... The hearts of these steel-striding men Ascend and blend within their eyes, And yet, these men are unaware of this. They only feel a fluid relief Voicing, in a clustered roar, The cries of struggling thoughts unshaped by words. But there are some who break forth from the rest. This old Hungarian strides along And binds naïvely-winged prayer-sandals Upon the heavy feet of shuffling loves. Gently, he plays with his beard As though his fingers touched a woman’s hair. And this young Slav whose surly blasphemy Curls his face into a simple hate, Has taken iron into his laugh And uses it to hew his stony mind. While this Italian whose deep olive skin Shines like sunlight groping through dense leaves, Forgets his battered happiness And bows with mock grace to his shouting day. Beside him is a fellow-countryman Walking aimless, dazed with joy of motion. Upon his face a glistening vacancy Lights the mildly querying thoughts That seek each other but never meet. Behind him steps a stalwart Pole Whose rhythmic, stately insolence Turns the sidewalk into a grey carpet, Grey as the shades that race across his face And show the savage squalor of his soul. Night has broken her heart upon him, Only scarring his bitter smile. A street of little, jack-o’-lantern houses Veering into leering saloons, Where the night, a crazy child, Dips herself in sallow rouge And chases oaths and heavy mirth And even human beings: Where the smoky sadness of the steel-mills Wanders hesitantly into death And drops a ghostly blur upon this girl. Her numbly waxen, cherub face Emerges gently from the doorway’s blackness As though the dark had given birth to it. And then the falling light reveals That something of a village hangs about her: Something slumbering and ample. The doorway is too small to hold Her shoulders that are like a hill’s broad curves Dwindled in the distance.... She is one of many earth-curved girls Who listened to the insistent tinkle Of wind-winged music from a far-off land: Listened and knew not That their own hearts faintly played. So she ran to this far phantom, Only finding it within herself When the city’s sly fists rained upon it. Then once more she fled With a dead heart whose restless pallor Crept to squalid wantonness, for refuge. And now she stands within this doorway, Uttering muffled innuendoes To the drained men of her race. Yet, something of a village hangs about her: Something slumbering and ample Stealing from the earth curves of her shoulders.

III

The steel-mill workers straggle down this street, Clanging shut the doorways of their souls, And the sound rips their lips open. The steel-mill workers do not know of this: They only seek something that will sweeten The dirt that has eaten into their flesh And change it to raw music. They straggle down this street, Their faces slack and oiled with amorousness. Like cats they play with their desires, Biting them with little laughs Until the sallow houses draw them in. And then the night pursues their revelry: Echoes from the shut doors of their souls.

IV

Three bent women and a child Stoop before the steel-mill gate As though the morning’s ghastly murmur Washed against them in a wave Stiffening them into resisting curves. One is old and floridly misshapen. Years have melted out within her frame, Flooding her with lukewarm loves. The wrinkles on her flabby face Are like a faded scrawl of pain Scattered by the flesh on which it rests. Her frayed shawl hanging unaware of her Is a symbol of her heart. The woman standing at her side Is tall and like a slanting scarecrow Coldly jerking in the morning’s glare. Only when she lifts a bony hand Tapping life against her face, Does the image disappear. Dead dreams dangle in her heart, Limply hanging from their rainbow sashes, And whenever one sash trembles, Then, she lifts a gnarled hand to her face And tastes a moment of departing life. Near her stands a slimly rigid woman With an iron fear upon her bones. A worn strait-jacket of lines Cuts the dying youth upon her face. The slender child beside her, Buried within staidly murky clothes, Glances frightenedly up at her mother: Glances as one who dances to a gate And fumbles for a latch that hides itself. Then from the rusty-reveried steel-mill gate An endless stream of men scatter out Into the cool bewilderment of morning. Upon their lips a limply child-like surrender Curves out to the light, as though they felt The presence of an unassuming strangeness.

SOUTH STATE STREET: CHICAGO

I

Rows of blankly box-like buildings Raise their sodden architecture Into the poised lyric of the sky. At their feet, pawn-shops and burlesque theatres Yawn beneath their livid confetti. In the pawn-shop windows, violins, Cut-glass bowls and satchels mildly blink Upon the mottled turbulence outside, And sit with that detached assurance Gripping things inanimate. Near them, slyly shaded cabarets Stand in bland and ornate sleep, And the glassy luridness Of penny-arcades flays the eyes. The black crowd clatters like an idiot’s wrath.

II

Wander with me down this street Where the spectral night is caught Like moon-paint on a colourless lane.... On this corner stands a woman Sleekly, sulkily complacent Like a tigress nibbling bits of sugar. At her side, a brawny, white-faced man Whose fingers waltz upon his checkered suit, Searches for one face amidst the crowd. (His smile is like a rambling sword.) His elbows almost touch a snowy girl Whose body blooms with cool withdrawal. From her little nook of peaceful scorn She casts unseeing eyes upon the crowd. Near her stands a weary newsboy With a sullenly elfin face. The night has leaned too intimately On the frightened scampering of his soul. But to this old, staidly patient woman With her softly wintry eyes, Night bends down in gentle revelation Undisturbed by joy or hatred. At her side two factory girls In slyly jaunty hats and swaggering coats, Weave a twinkling summer with their words: A summer where the night parades Rakishly, and like a gold Beau Brummel. With a gnome-like impudence They thrust their little, pink tongues out At men who sidle past. To them, the frantic dinginess of day Has melted to caressing restlessness Tingling with the pride of breasts and hips. At their side two dainty, languid girls Playing with their suavely tangled dresses, Touch the black crowd with unsearching eyes. But the old man on the corner, Bending over his cane like some tired warrior Resting on a sword, peers at the crowd With the smouldering disdain Of a King whipped out of his domain. For a moment he smiles uncertainly. Then wears a look of frail sternness.

Musty, Rabelaisian odours stray From this naïvely gilded family-entrance And make the body of a vagrant Quiver as though unseen roses grazed him. His face is blackly stubbled emptiness Swerving to the rotted prayers of eyes. Yet, sometimes his thin arm leaps out And hangs a moment in the air, As though he raised a violin of hate And lacked the strength to play it. A woman lurches from the family-entrance. With tense solicitude she hugs Her can of beer against her stunted bosom And mumbles to herself. The trampled blasphemy upon her face Holds up, in death, its watery, barren eyes. Indifferently, she brushes past the vagrant: Life has peeled away her sense of touch.

III

With groping majesty, the endless crowd Pounds its searching chant of feet Down this tawdrily resplendent street. People stray into a burlesque theatre Framed with scarlet, blankly rotund girls. Here a burly cattle-raiser walks With the grace of wind-swept prairie grass. Behind him steps a slender clerk Tendering his sprightly stridency To the stolid, doll-like girl beside him. At his side a heavy youth Dully stands beneath his swaggering mask; And a smiling man in black and white Walks, like some Pierrot grown middle-aged.

Mutely twinkling fragments of a romance: Tiny lights stand over this cabaret. Men and women jovially emboldened Stroll beneath the curtained entrance, And their laughs, like softly brazen cow-bells, Change the scene to a strange Pastoral. Hectic shepherdesses drunk with night, Women mingle their coquettish colours.... Suddenly, a man leaps out From the doorway’s blazing pallor, Smashing into the drab sidewalk. His drunken lips and eyelids break apart Like a clown in sudden suicide. Then the mottled nakedness Of the scene comes, like a blow.

Stoically crushed in hovering grey Night lies coldly on this street. Momentary sounds crash into night Like ghostly curses stifled in their birth.... And over all the blankly box-like buildings Raise their sodden architecture Into the poised lyric of the sky.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been retained.