Part 2

Words, it is apparent That you are crucified and fondled By the pride of each new generation. O words, whose sportive formations Could make the courts of intellect Belligerent and insane, Men have sentenced you To scores of endless drudgeries. Weakened by the years, You guard the dying bonfires Of each nation and race. Again, like hordes of cattle, You drag the expectations Of social theories and remedies, Stopping only when the blood of men Washes away your useless labours. I have seen your bands Of ragged courtesans Marching in feverish lines To rescue the rites of sex. I have watched you rush To repair the cracks In breaking cathedrals and churches. With gilded, exclamatory vowels You garnish the cowering of earth, And with recurring darkness You spurn the peering mind. Again you are hands of intellect, Disrobing the flesh of men And carefully preserving Each discarded garment With a pinch of powdered emotion. Again you are driven forth In lying mobs of sighs and laughs To warm the evening hours of a nation. (“They could never restrain themselves To wait at home for the postman ... Would Copperfield marry Dora or Agnes?”) Sentimental breathlessness Fleeing from the helpless decay of thought. O words, brow-beaten bricklayers Obeying the shouts of science And raising walls upon whose top The soul is perched, contemptuously Squinting down at toiling pygmies: O words, and you can be Superbly demented skeptics, Betraying the unctuous failures of earth; Riding the wild horse of the mind: Bringing spurs into play; Summoning with pain the lurking soul.

RHYMED CONVERSATION WITH MONEY

How many planets have you raped, Where only animals escaped To scrape with melancholy needs The bones of last men lost in weeds? Since you are blunt and fraudulent You must receive a bare treatment. Adverbs and adjectives undress When greeted by excrescences. You are the stench on any street, Thick with the vagaries of defeat: The wench who plies her squawking crime Within the alley-ways of time. For men desire to guard with pain The limitations of their brain, And drag the numbness of their hearts Within ornate and creaking carts. And for these tasks they must be bold, Clutching endurance from a cold Squirming with you within the dark, And rising blistered with your mark. Again you give to doubting lust An argument which it can trust. Imagination spoils the scene And needs a dagger, crude and mean. For you were made by men to choke A lyric with an obscene joke And strike the mind when it is strong, With whips methodical and long. Men who are inarticulate Desire to parody their fate With gibberish of clinking coins. When life, excited thief, purloins The voice and energy of men, They lead him to a mouldy pen: They seek revenge and watch him wilt, Finding importance in his guilt. They do not know that they have made The thief to revel in his aid. And you are there to strain your cheek Against imaginations weak-- Coquettish counterfeit of strength. I have observed your metal length Of hands drop on the poet’s throat, And yet he scarcely saw you gloat. To certain men you merely feed The stoics of creative need.

_Money_

I am the vicious test with which Men find that they are poor or rich. Without my challenge men might fail To leave the blurred and murderous jail. Utopias are merely death: Men need the scorching of my breath.

HIGHLY DELIBERATE POEM

“Mother o’ mi-i-ine, mother o’ mi-i-ine, Sweet as uh ro-ose in thuh spring-ti-i-ime”--

The man who bawls this song Has the face of a spell-bound, hairless rat. Entranced within a spotlight, He borrows unconsciously Another voice from despair. The ordinary squeak of his life Is paralyzed, and fear of death Lends him a tenor voice To supplicate the Catcher. But the audience fails to understand And makes flat sounds of glee With hands ... Death, quietly Disgusted at this blind approval, Takes away the spotlight. Now safe, the rat presents Jerks of gratitude and scampers off To gnaw at his wife within their dressing-room. That squeezed-in bag of piteous Mythologies described as heart Has opened in one thousand people And received a vision Of past solicitude for other bags. The rat repeats this feat and wins Varieties of coarse sweetmeats. At sixty the rat will be a gorged Machiavelli, wondering Whether he has not blundered. Death finds no interest in killing rats And often allows them to live, Preferring instead the less buried souls Of a poet or a child of ten. But the rat has found a fear Within the second eyes of whiskey And relates it to his wife. “Say, May, this thing is funny! You won’t believe me, but tonight Just before I started the act I felt like I was gonna die. What in hell is wrong with me? This booze must be drivin’ me bughouse. Well, move a leg, and get that thousand Faulkner promised you, and stop Sitting there and staring at me.” Death, who has listened with fastidious Ennui, strolls off to slay A negro infant newly born.

POEM

A curious courtship in your brain Regulates the movements of your limbs. Remorse, the fanciful, abandoned Child of madness, discovers its lips Upon the breast of a hovering Madonna. How many poets present The crushed tips of their hearts Pieced carefully together as a wreath Upon the two heads of this wooing? Imagination is a wound Upon the adventures of thoughts, And one scar left behind Is known as reality. Will they give you robes Threaded with orderly shimmers of repentance, Pardoning the scar in earthly ways?

REALISTIC CREATOR

_A Sonnet Dedicated to T. S. Eliot_

An intimate and playful accident Common to life had placed him on a bench Beside an old and stiffly wounded wench. With erudite and careful eyes he sent A sneer to tear away her feeble mask And snatch the battered dullness of her heart. He spied her only in the scheming part Of soiled flesh bickering with some trivial task.

The lacerated madness of her soul, And delicate emotions kicked by life, Did not invade the swift tricks of his mind. Regarding her, he could not see the whole, Or catch the psychic lunge behind her strife. His eyes were savagely adroit, and blind.

CITY STREETS

This pavement and the sordid boast of stone And brick that wins the pity of a sky Are only martyred symbols made to buy A dream of permanence for flesh and bone. The jumbled, furtive anecdotes of lips And limbs that bring their fever to this street, They will subside to fragments of defeat Within the cool republic where death trips.

This is an age where flesh desires to shape Intense hyperboles in prose and verse, Transforming city streets and country lanes To backgrounds aiding physical escape. But city streets are waiting to disperse With ruins the fight and plight of earthly pains.

DECADENT CRY[A]

Hill-flowers salute his feet Upon the upward slant of a path. His destination does not matter. His legs divide the spacious tragedy Of distance into the small translation Of steps, and with their aid he reaches The fraudulent temple of a pause or end. Hill-flowers, important and unprejudiced, Bow to this monster-clown. His feet, ridiculous and neat, Do not stop, for they must ape A certainty and hasten to attack Or praise fixed idols made by flesh and mind. Hill-flowers, trimly polished Devices hailing preciosity; Rumpled by the wind To scores of original caprices; Bearing the transfigured skirmish Of spiritual moods that men call color; Swiftly and unassumingly Deaf to lusts and traditions-- They are not regarded By the men who walk, flat-footed, Or with scholarly exactitude, In chase of an ardent chicanery Known as flesh, and elderly Quibbles of mind and emotion.

Only an intellect clad in sprightly chiffon Can spy the importance of flowers on a hill.

[A] _Dedicated to a rare moment of intelligence on the part of The Dial._

GIRL

The words of men are not conjectures Lunging toward your soul: They do not wish you to leave The fawning thefts of flesh. When with covered formality They tramp from actual pulpits, They merely bring celestial nonsense For one, uncurious, sanctified bed. Ah, girl, the soul that they give you Is a clumsy, white Concert-master rebuking The first-violin of your body. Again they brand a word, Sacredness, upon your breast, Claiming that your soul is tied To the pliant riot of your limbs.

Girl, I can forget for a moment That hairs upon the bulge of my chest Must be praised or censured, And I have no desire To belittle you with one, Hopeless, cynical, sententious Group of words, while intellect, Flavoring its tea-cup with a sneer, Watches you from shaded balconies. When you win the torpid illness Known as virtue you are less important Than a quest for daisies in the moon, And when you merely ask For one blow and inertness, An old dream yells and ends With the quietness of sprawling pity. Girl, avoid the plentiful Drugs of seriousness and spend Pieces of your heart on every whim. Give your flesh the light and sharp Contacts of a thistle blown Across the wincing cheeks of rogues. Make your soul and body spurn Each other with a swift impertinence, And let your clawing griefs and joys Be still a moment on the couch of thought. And if at times you turn your head To spy the hatred of philosophers And panting realists, preserve the smile Of one who takes a suitable reward.

COLOR AND A WOMAN

Cry the names of colors And fail to reproduce The brightly worried way In which they burn ideas, Sweeping hues of intangible blood Into the conspiring fires of soul: The darkly reticent manner With which they embalm emotions, Ending the spontaneous treachery With a self-possessed attraction. Chant the names of colors And fascinate the brown Coward, who surrounds himself With crystal safeguards known as facts, But likes the dangerous sounds Of unattained realities. Or, scorn this satirical advice And storm the body of a woman With words as deliberate as wind, Yet heavier, and bearing Colors without a label. The substance of her hair-- Ethereal stems that continue their quest Beyond the warped confines of sight-- Shows the darkness of intellect Answering a miniature sunset Whose dying light does not quite succumb. The steep reserve of her forehead Has been kindled by a flat burden Pale as the cry of a child, yet carrying The hint of trouble found in late afternoon. Her eyes hold emotional evening, With spurts of dawn remaining like anxious relics Kept alive by unsatisfied designs From that derided realm where logic dies. Her breast is the color that a north wind Would have if it were visible to eyes. Upon her body, color in light and darkness Subdues the ribald ponderousness of life And brings the filmy, flashing seriousness Detested by the prostrate toil of mud; Hated in taverns at midnight; Banished from every couch when morning Rearranges the ancient jest.

RELUCTANT LADY

The widely bruised, shy beauty of a brain That renders dogmas bashful with its breath Will raise its last, wan offering to death-- A poise of gossamer that takes the rain Of darkness, with an unexpectant pride. Your thoughts are old and yet too young for life Whose ponderous sneer preserves their curling strife. They wait for heavy spear-points, side by side.

You are a wilted pilgrim on a road Where hills and rubbish-pits receive alike The skeptical remonstrance of your pace. You pass through towns and raise your thoughtful load To shield your loves against the words that strike The sheer, elastic trouble of your face.

PSYCHOLOGY FROM MARS

Torban flattered the details Of his festival in brown--a beard-- With fingers that held a musical length, And spoke of psychology. The clever reproduction Of a human being, His appearance lacked A hairsbreadth of reality And barely failed to convince. His eyes, assemblages of planets Miraculously dwarfed, were small But did not hold the shifting gluttony Common to little eyes. His lips were unsubstantial fibres And the straight line of his nose Gained an unearthly sincerity. His body was muscular but failed to reveal The smug delusion of superiority That lives within physical strength. With a voice in which pity and satire Mingled bewilderedly with each other, He spoke of psychology. “Normal and average men On Mars are charged with being Insane and distorted oracles. Because they desire to resemble each other We force them to live together On drably elaborate plateaus. There they fashion cities-- Geometrical madness That censures shreds of dread and unrest Within the spaces of its heart. There they retreat to farms, And the disciplined exhaustion Of their lives reclines upon Monotonous rewards known as harvests. They cling to homes--slumbering alcoves Plentifully supplied With complimenting mirrors And altars for the mind. Sometimes a revolution Seduces their living flatness, And an original confusion Follows rumours of creation, But the sanity vanishes Into the marching unison Of their repentant madness. We who are sane live below the plateaus. ‘Home’ to us is a flitting answer: Different spots inevitably Transformed by our bodies garlanded with mind, Or requests of the heart That tarry a moment for shelter. As we wander we tear And rebuild ancient lanes and houses, Leaving a sentinel of change Behind to confront the next traveller. We stroll in twos and threes That endure for a day or an hour, And we never linger At one place to gloat over details. Restless sanity, my friend, Equips the changing cries within us. Restless sanity Prevents us from complacently Dozing over miniatures, With a dream of importance Rocking within the rhythms of our hearts!”

TO TIME

O Time, you are an idiot’s fluid curse. O Time, you are an uninspired hearse. O Time, you kill beneath your robe of nurse.

O Time, your eyes are cherubs drowned in pools, O Time, your wisdom scorns the aid of stools, O Time, your kindness blinds the life of fools.

O Time, you blur pretentious intellect. O Time, you break the thrones that thoughts erect. O Time, your hands indifferently correct

The incoherent sorceries of men Who dance before a monstrous Axe and Pen, Waving the fetiches of words, and then

Censure the dance with pedestals of gauze Cleverly imitating rock, and laws Whose opaque sureness broods above their cause.

When irony will cease to be obscure To men whose eyes resent the cloudy lure That ends their tiny clarities, with pure

And forming mists of words, then men will climb With restless regularity, like Time, Who merely seeks a changing pantomime.

O Time, you are too pure and swiftly wide For men who try to check your colored stride With opaque temples and a sleeping bride.

DECADENT DUET

_Torban_

Lightly sharp and even, Your voice is the sound of an airplane Darting high above your unreceptive face. Your voice is unrelated To the structure of your face, And on your lips an echo merely rides, The pagan shimmerings of your face Receive the voice with a subtle disbelief. Indeed, your intellectuality, Speeding though spaces over your head, Must seem of little consequence To the nymph who listens far below. That you are thus divided is not strange, But you contain a third Self And it regards the other two With a grave and patient interest.

_Woman_

Phantasmagoria, Ruling arabesques of words, Your attenuated variations Of thought and emotion will enrage The blunt convictions of more earthly men. The pagan rituals of my face Distrust your words, and my mind, Dropping its voice from fancied heights, Resents the indirectness of your style. But the third Self within me, Generous and immobile of face, Cares only for the skill With which you elevate Vainly celebrating shades Of thought and protesting emotion. Color, form, and substance-- Three complaining slaves Engraving the details of prearranged tasks Within stationary brains and hearts. My third Self would release them To an original abandon That exchanges intangible countries, With a gracious, gaudy treason.

_Torban_

Lacking a better name I will call your third Self “soul.” The ancient, merry game Of fighting over labels Must not dismay our duet. To most men soul exists Only when their sensual weariness Needs to be gilded with a religion Or a deified memory of flesh. We contain a lurking wanderer Upon our inner roads, and he Sometimes stops to drop pitying hands Upon the forms of thought and emotions Branded with scores of prejudices. Men have hated him for centuries, And hatred, symbol of sly cowardice, Has draped its desire in false scorn And named him Decadence. Thus ends our decadent duet. Come, there are roads on which we must pirouette. The proper contrast will be furnished By philosophers, scientists, and sensualists.

POEM TO A POLICEMAN

Marionnette-fanatic, Your active club within this riot Was once the passive integrity Of a branch upon a tree. Now without success It tries to beat out fire Writhing in human skulls. The pause of nature, transformed Survival of every memory and defeat, Separates to bits of action Aiding an inexplicable fever. The hands of centuries press These bits into another Pause before corruption. O pernicious circle, I will not believe That your parsimonious farce Reiterates itself through space. The souls of men achieve An accidental dream That seems important merely Because the figures which it holds Have invented small and almost Non-existent divisions of time. Yet, trapped within these months and years, I turn to you, marionnette-fanatic. You at least can bring Diversion to my chained Impatience as I wait for death. How wildly you protect The sluggish minds of men! A calculating laziness of thought Has created you to guard its doors, While other men require An outward expression of peace Beneath which the inner struggle Can revel in privacy. And so, with buttons of brass And blue uniform that lend An incongruous dignity To your task, you defend The myriads of insincerities That drape a mutilated need. And yet, unconsciously, And at rare times you save The face of beauty from an old Insult in the fists of men. Yes, you are not entirely Without extenuation, Marionnette-fanatic.

INTIMATE SCENE

Bed-room, you have earned The sympathy of dirt, And bear upon your air Malevolent and thwarted Essences of men. Many contorters of bellies Have stirred an urgent travesty Shielded by your greasy dusk, And hearts have found upon your couch A brief, delicious insult. Cheap room within a lodging-house, You are not merely space For the coronation of flesh, And your odorous bed-quilts Need not only provoke The casual jeering of thought.

II

Woman and her master Close the door too quietly. With a mien of slinking Insecurity, the woman turns Within the dangling darkness of the room And mumbles orders to her man. Anticipation and disgust Rout each other upon her face. Then the gas-light brings Its feeble understanding to the room. Woman and man slump down Within the chairs and regard The tired amens of their feet. For a time weariness Banishes the theatrical Divisions of masculine and feminine, But returning strength Calls to the untrue drama. The man demands, with practised expectation, Money squeezed from an automatic night; Curses at the smallness of the sum, And cuffs his woman without intensity, Desiring only an excuse For the slowness of his mind. She is not a composition Waiting for its orchestra of pain: His fists can merely give An inexpensive spice To the apathy within her. Soon the man and woman laugh, To kill an inner jumble of sounds Which they cannot separate-- Nightly complaint of their souls. He pinches one of her cheeks, Like an Emperor deigning To test the softness of a bauble, And she finds within his fingers An endurable compliment. When morning light exposes Each deficiency within the room, Man and woman open their eyes. Hallucination of fire No longer streams over the moving screens. Woman and her man Stare, with disapproval, at the walls, And their souls become Querulous captives almost gaining lips. Then emotional habits Revive the earthly hoax. Rising from the bed, Man and woman use their voices Reassuringly.

NEW YORK CITY

New York, it would be easy to revile The flatly carnal beggar in your smile, And flagellate, with a superior bliss, The gasping routines of your avarice. Loud men reward you with an obvious ax, Or piteous laurel-wreath, and their attacks And eulogies blend to a common sin. New York, perhaps an intellectual grin That brings its bright cohesion to the warm Confusion of the heart, can mold your swarm Of huge, drab blunders into smaller grace ... With old words I shall gamble for your face.

The evening kneels between your filthy brick, Darkly indifferent to each scheme and trick With which your men insult and smudge their day. When evenings metaphysically pray Above the weakening dance of men, they find That every eye that looks at them is blind. And yet, New York, I say that evenings free An insolently mystic majesty From your parades of automatic greed. For one dark moment all your narrow speed Receives the fighting blackness of a soul, And every nervous lie swings to a whole-- A pilgrim, blurred yet proud, who finds in black An arrogance that fills his straining lack. Between your undistinguished crates of stone And wood, the wounded dwarfs who walked alone-- The chorus-girls, whose indiscretions hang Between the scavengers of rouge and slang; The women moulding painfully a fresh Excuse for pliant treacheries of flesh; The men who raise the tin sword of a creed, Convinced that it can kill the lunge of greed; The thieves whose poisoned vanity purloins A fancied victory from ringing coins; The staidly bloated men whose minds have sold Their quickness to an old, metallic Scold; The neatly cultured men whose hopes and fears Dwell in soft prisons honored by past years; The men whose tortured youth bends to the task Of hardening offal to a swaggering mask-- The night, with black hands, gathers each mistake And strokes a mystic challenge from each ache. The night, New York, sardonic and alert, Offers a soul to your reluctant dirt.

WE WANT LYRICS