Part 2

Death, Grandiosely hackneyed subject, I live in a house one hundred years old Placed in the middle of a cemetery. The cemetery is bothered by mausoleums Where fragments of Greek and Gothic Lie in orderly shame. Slabs and crosses of stone Remain unacquainted with the bones That they must strive to introduce. The trees retain their guiltless sibilants. The trees tell me upon my morning walk: “In other cemeteries, Shakespeare, Maeterlinck and Shaw Fail to produce the slightest awe In trees that do not create for an audience.” Being finalities, the grass and trees Find no need for rules of etiquette. Delicacy must be effortless Or else it changes to a patched-up dress. But delicate and coarse are words For quickness that tries to linger, And slowness that strives to be fast! Emotions and thoughts are merely The improvisations of motion, And lack a permanent content. An aging tree is wiser Than an aging poet, And death is wiser than both. The scale ascends out of sight And I recall that the morning is light And smaller notes await me. The tomb-stones around my path Have been crisply visited by names To which they bear no relation. Imagine the perturbation Of a stone removed From the comprehension of a mountain And branded with the name of A. Rozinsky! Recollecting journeys of my own, I close my eyes and leave the stone. The names of other men entreat-- Slight variations in line Ponderously refusing to resign. Men who will be forgotten Try to hinder the process with stone. Because they dread the affirmation Of ashes undiscovered in wind, I am walking through this cemetery.

The old grave-diggers will soon Astonish the earth below this oak. From their faces adjectives have fled, Leaving the essential noun: Leaving also the unwilling frown With which they parley with the earth ... Death, I must tell you of these things Since you are unaware that they exist. You send an efficient servant To the almost unseen fluctuations Of tomb-stones, skulls, and lilies, Reserving your eyes for larger games.

SIMPLE ACCOUNT OF A POET’S LIFE

In 1892 When literature and art in America Presented a mildewed but decorous mien, He was born. During the first months of his life His senses had not yet learned to endure The majestic babble of old sterilities. The vacuum of his brain Felt a noisy thinness outside, Which it could not hear or see, And gave it the heavier substance Of yells that were really creation Fighting its way to form. (When babies shriek they seek Power in thought and action. Life objects to their intent And forces their voices to repent.) At the age of four he lived inwardly, With enormous shapeless emotions Taking his limbs, like waves. His mind was vapour censured By an occasional protest That mumbled and could not be heard. People to him were headless figures-- Bodies surmounted by voices That tickled like feathers, or struck like rocks. Missiles thrown from moving mountain-tops And leaving only resentment at their touch. At ten the voices receded To invisible meanings That toyed with flesh-protected secrets of faces. The voices made promises Which the faces continually evaded, And often the voices in vengeance Changed a lip or an eye-brow To repeat their neglected demands. When swung to him the voices Were insolent enigmas, Tripping him as he stood Midway between fright and indifference. He sometimes tittered tranquilly At the obvious absurdity of this. His rages were false and sprang From aloof thoughts chanting over their chains. The immediate cause of each rage Merely opened a door Upon this changeless inner condition. That species of intoxicated thought Which men describe as emotion Used its merriment to blind his eye-sight. But anger, whose real roots are in the mind, Tendered him times of hot perception. He noticed that children held flexible flesh That wisely sought a variety of patterns-- Flesh intent upon correcting Its closeted effect-- While older people enticed their flesh Into erect and formal lies Repeated until their patience died And they tried an unpracticed rebellion. This was a formless revelation, Unattended by words But throwing its indistinct contrast Over his broad one-colored thought. At sixteen he employed words To flay the contrast into shapes. At seventeen he decided To emulate the gay wisdom of children’s flesh. He deliberately borrowed whiskey To wipe away the lessons of older people Lest they intrude their sterility Upon his plotting exuberance. He placed his hands on women, Gently, boldly, as one Experimenting with a piano. He stole money, begged on street-corners, And answered people with an actual knife Merely to give his thoughts and emotions A changing reason for existence. Moderation seemed to him A figure half asleep and half awake And mutilating the truth of each condition. At twenty-four his flesh became tired, And to amuse the weariness His hands wrote poetry. He had done this before, But only as a gleeful reprimand To the speed of his limbs. Now he wrote with the motives of one Whose flesh is passing into less visible manners. At times he returned to more concrete motions, To befriend the handmaiden of his flesh, But gradually he longed For the complete secrecy of written creation, Enjoying the novelty of a hiding-place. In 1962 He died with a grin at the fact That literature and art in America Were still presenting a mildewed, decorous mien.

CANDID NARRATIVE

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._

Say, kid, I’m in a candid mood; The kind of mood that silences The babbling dampness of my character. I’m feeling as improbable As an overworked Grecian myth Fainting amid the smells of a Ghetto. Now, Hypocrisy Always slinks along Winking an opaque eye at reality. But when he spies a fantasy He feels disgraced and leaves in haste. What’s the use of telling a lie to a lie? So, since I’m only a dream, Listen to my candid scream. You like to press a rouged cheek Against your obscurity, Like a third-rate poet Pasting a sunset upon his emptiness. Bashful mountebanks like you Can seduce the eloquent delusion Of time and give it a speechless limp. The insincere trickle of your words Was neither silence nor sound But falteringly tempted both, Like a tiny fountain unnoticed At the feet of two large coquettes The intricate laziness Of your dimpled face Received a petulantly naked Ghost of thought, and seized it without desire. Again it held the furbished effigies Of sensuality And tried to give them life From the weariness of my face. Yet I could have endured you But for the fact that your moustache Scraped across my lips Like a clumsy imitation of passion. Trivial insults have tumbled down The pillared complacency of empires Just as the thrust of your lips Tripped my mercenary balance. My lover now has the face of a dog, With each corner of his lips Pointing to a different Heaven, Yet his greed and melancholy Sometimes fondle each other Upon the pressures of his mouth, And the monotony of his kiss Does not dissolve my stoicism. Women who measure their gifts for lovers Never hope for more than this.

II

UNLITERARY AND SHAMELESS

_A young woman who has been renounced by her lover, because of her lack of culture, answers his derision._

Your cloistered naughtiness Makes me as boisterous As a savage attending A minstrel-show of regrets. The pampered carefulness With which you distil a series Of standardized perfumes from life Takes its promenade Between the realms of sanity and madness. You are too precise to be quite sane And too evasive to be insane, And all that you have left me Is a mood of windy sadness-- Emotions becoming verbose In a last thin effort To persuade themselves that they loved A jewel that slipped from your fingers. Your mind is a limpid warehouse Filled with other mens’ creations, And you pilfer a bit from each, Disguising the scheme of your culture. I would rather be a naked fool Than a full-gowned erudite Imitation of other mens’ hands. I shall marry a desperado And give him strength with which to paint Black angels and muscular contortions On panels of taffeta.

TWO SONNETS TO MY WIFE

I

Because her voice is Schönberg in a dream In which his harshness plays with softer keys This does not mean that it is void of ease And cannot gather to a strolling gleam. Her voice is full of manners and they seem To place a masquerade on thought and tease Its strength until it finds that it has knees, And whimsically leaves its heavy scheme.

Discords can be the search of harmony For worlds that lie beyond the reach of poise And must be captured with abandoned hands. The music of my wife strives to be free And often takes a light, unbalanced voice While madly walking over thoughtful lands.

II

My wife relents to life and does not speak Each moment with a deft and rapid note. Sometimes a clumsy weirdness finds in her throat And ushers in a music that is weak And bargains with the groping of her heart. But even then she plays with graver tones That do not sell themselves to laughs and moans But seek the counsel of a deeper art.

She drapes her loud emotions in a shroud Of glistening thought that waves above their dance And sometimes parts to show their startled eyes. The depths of mind within her have not bowed To sleek emotion with its amorous glance. She slaps its face and laughs at its surprise!

FINALITIES

I

Pretend that night is grandiose, That stars win graves in every ditch; Pretend that moonlight is verbose And affable, like some grande-mère, And men will say that your despair Seduces luminous conceits, Or call you an anaemic fool Who stuffs himself with curdled sweets. Thus sentenced to obscurity, You can find more turbulent lips And spaciously retreat from men Immersed in pedestals and whips. Amusedly, you can say that stars Are wizened jests on every ditch; That moonlight is a trick that jars Your mind intent on other minds. Having agreed upon your station, Men will no longer heed your words, And with a galloping elation You can contradict yourself in peace.

II

The wary perturbations of convinced And secretly disdainful men are mild And deftly tepid to the ears of one Who entertains a careless, ungloved child. Above the sprightly idleness of plates Men sit and feign industrious respect, With eye-brows often slightly ill at ease-- Cats in an argument are more erect. At last the tactful lustres of farewells Are traded: each man strolls off and forgets The other--not a frill is disarranged. The tension dexterously avoids regrets. Two men have unveiled carved finalities And made apologies for the event, With voices well-acquainted with a task Devoid of nakedness and ornament. And each man might have murmured, “Yes, I know What you will say and what I shall reply,” And each man might have watched the other man Smile helplessly into his mutton-pie.

III

This farcical clock is copying A wood-chopper with nimble poise, While Time, with still and fluid strides, Perplexedly listens to the noise. The room that holds this joke is filled With the relaxed complacencies Of poets hiding from themselves With measured trivialities. But one among them walks about And watches with embarrassed eyes. The others do not speak to him: His nudeness is a tight disguise. This fool is anxious to display Interrogations of his mind To poets who at work and play Are isolated from their kind. Reluctantly he finds his room, Sits on the floor, with legs tucked in, And grins up at another clock Aloofly measuring its din.

IV

When you are tired of ogling moltenly, Your undertones explosively confess. A shop-girl coughing over her cigarette Expresses the burlesque of your distress. Take your cocaine. It leaves a blistering stain, But phantom diamonds are immune from greed. You pluck them from the buttons of your vest, Wildly apologising for your need. Take more. Redress the thinness of your neck With diamonds; entertain them with your breast; Cajole them on the floor with fingertips That cannot pause, dipped in a demon’s zest. If you had not relented to a man Who meddled with your face and stole your clothes, Your shrill creative pleasures might be still Incarcerated in the usual pose. Hysteria shot its fist against your face One day, and left the blood-spot of your mouth, But when the morning strikes you there will be More than hysteria in your answering shout.

V

Laughter is a skeleton’s applause: Grief sells increase to sterility: Happiness protects its subtle flaws. These three significances make The part of you that men can see, As you recline upon this bed, Your hand defending one bare knee, Your shoulders trapped upon the quilt. But under the warm sophistry That turns your flesh, another form Abstractly bellicose and free Attacks the answer of your blood. Freedom is the lowest note Of slavery, and slavery The lowest freedom--you can feel The charm of your servility. True, you were once a chamber-maid Who won a thief and spoke to grief, And now your limbs have numbly strayed. Are these not harmless travesties?

VI

Snobs have pockets into which They crowd too many trinkets. You feel this, talking to the rich And lightly bulging mountebank. Untie the knots that close your bag And tempt him with a creed or need. Be as loquacious as a hag Who loves the details of her wares. There is a relish when you speak To one who cannot understand: You celebrate upon a peak And prod his helpless effigy. This is an unimportant game To men evading holidays, But introspection becomes tame Unless it compliments itself. The lightly bulging mountebank Is but an interval in which You take your garments off and thank The privacy that he bestows.

VII

Like other men you fly from adjectives. The plain terseness that lives in verbs and nouns Creates a panorama where you know That men are not a cloud of romping clowns. You greet the wideness of eternal curves Where beauty, death and silence give their height To those rare men who do not play with thought. But this fruit-peddler decorates his fright And polishes his peaches and his grapes Insanely. If his mercenary hopes Were bolder he would be a nimble poet. Slight in her bridal gown, his mind elopes With adjectives that find her incomplete: Your mind is hard and massively parades Across the earth with Homer and Villon. Since each of you with common sense evades Monotony, I join you and refuse To call you dwarf or giant. Let the fools Who criticise you bind you with these names And separate your dead bones with their rules!

VIII

Dead men sit down beside the telephones Within your brain and carefully relate Decisions and discretions of the past, Convinced that they will not deteriorate. But you have not their certainty: you try A question now and then that cautiously Assaults their whispered indolence until Their sharp words once more force you to agree. Then you insist that certain living men Whose tones are half-discreet may be allowed To greet their masters through the telephones, Provided that their words are not too loud. The new men imperceptibly entice Their elders, and a compromise is made, Both sides discovering that two or three Excluded men must be correctly flayed. And so the matter ends; conservative And radical revise their family-tree, While you report this happening with relief To liberals and victorious cups of tea.

IMAGINARY PEOPLE

I

POET

You have escaped the comedy Of swift, pretentious praise and blame, And smashed a tavern where they sell The harlots’ wine that men call fame. Heralds of reckless solitude Have offered you another voice, But men are still a tempting jest. You roam and cannot make a choice. When you have played distractedly With a humility, you tire And change the pastime to a pride. These are but moods of one desire. You throw an imitating gleam Upon the dwarfs that line your road, Then with a worn hostility You tramp along beneath your load.

II

WOMAN

To hide your isolation, you become Tame and loquacious, bowing to the men Who bring you ornaments and poverties. Your cryptic melancholy dwindles then, Solved by the distant contrast of your words. Your loneliness, with an amused relief, Sits listening to your volubility And idling with an enervated grief. The play does not begin until you say Your last “good-night,” for you have only made A swindled fantasy regain its parts. Throughout the night you held an unseen blade Upon your lap and trifled with its hilt, And now you lift it with submissive dread. Should you attack your loneliness and grief Now that they are asleep? You shake your head.

III

CHILD

Like puffs of smoke inquisitively blown Across the slight transparency of dawn, The births of thought disperse upon your face. A tenuous arrogance, when they have gone, Clings to its tiny wisdom and denies The feeble challenge. Warm emotions swarm Upon the flushed impatience of your face And merge to lordly, evanescent form. New sights bring light oppression to your mind. You struggle with a hunger that transcends The glistening indecisions of your eyes And wins a flitting certainty. Your trends Lead to a fabled turmoil that escapes The stunted messengers of trembling thought. Yet, when your hand for moments closes tight You feel a dagger that your fears have caught.

IV

OLD MAN

Below your skull a social gathering glows. Weak animosities exchange a last Chat with emotional ambassadors Who honor the importance of your past. You turn your hammock and surrender limbs To sunlight, and increase the hammock’s swing As though you suavely bargained with a friend. Its answers are impersonal and bring A tolerance that wounds your lack of strength. A final insurrection cleaves your rest. You raise your back, then lower it convinced That motion now would be a needless test.... And with your falling back, the gathering Within your head melts through a door, chagrined, And everything within you dies except A blue and golden hammock in the wind.

UNEASY REFLECTIONS

Determinedly peppered with signs, The omnibus ambles without curiosity. Southampton Row, Malborne Road, Charing Cross-- These names have no relation To the buildings they partition If one mutters, “I shall go to Euston Road,” Imagination is relieved of all errands And, decently ticketed, enters the omnibus. If one muttered, “I shall go to protesting angles, Surreptitiously middle-aged, And find a reticent line to play with,” One would violate The hasty convenience of labels And seriously examine one’s destination. If poplar-trees, brief violets and green glades On any country road had each received An incongruous name--Smith’s Tree, C. Jackson’s Clump, or Ferguson’s Depression-- And city streets had never known a label, Most poets would have turned their fluid obsession On lamp-posts and the grandeur of ash-cans. It would be grimly realistic now To write about a violet or a cow.

SUMMER EVENING: NEW YORK SUBWAY-STATION

Perspiring violence derides The pathetic collapse of dirt. An effervescence of noises Depends upon cement for its madness. Electric light is taut and dull, Like a nauseated suspense. This kind of heat is the recollection Of an orgy in a swamp. Soiled caskets joined together Slide to rasping stand-stills. People savagely tamper With each other’s bodies, Scampering in and out of doorways. Weighted with apathetic bales of people The soiled caskets rattle on. The scene consists of mosaics Jerkily pieced together and blown apart. A symbol of billowing torment, This sturdy girl leans against an iron girder. Weariness has loosened her face With its shining cruelty. Round and poverty-stricken Her face renounces life. Her white cotton waist is a wet skin on her breast: Her black hat, crisp and delicate, Does not understand her head. An old man stoops beside her, Sweat and wrinkles erupting Upon the blunt remnants of his face. A little black pot of a hat Corrupts his grey-haired head.

Two figures on a subway-platform, Pieced together by an old complaint.

GARBAGE-HEAP

The wind was shrill and mercenary, Like a housewife pacing down the sky. Green weeds and tin-cans in the yard Made a debris of ludicrous dissipations. The ochre of cold elations Had settled on the cans. Their brilliant labels peeped from the weeds, Like the remains of a charlatan. A bone reclined against a fence-post And mouldily congratulated life. A woman’s garter wasted its faded frills Upon a newspaper argument. The shipwrecked rancor of bottles and boxes Was pressed to disfigured complexities. A smell of torrential asperity Knew the spirit of the yard.

Contented or incensed, The wreckage stood in the yard, One shade below the sardonic.

IMPULSIVE DIALOGUE

_Poet_

Will you, like other men, Offer me indigo indignities?

_Undertaker_

Indigo indignities! The words are like a mermaid and a saint Doubting each other’s existence with a kiss.

_Poet_

The words of most men kiss With satiated familiarity. Indigo is dark and vehement, But one word in place of two Angers barmaids and critics.

_Undertaker_

Straining after originality You argue with its ghost! A simple beauty, like morning Harnessed by a wide sparkle And plodding into the hearts of men, Cannot reach your frantic juggling.

_Poet_

I can appreciate The spontaneous redundancy of nature Without the aid of an echo From men who lack her impersonal size.

_Undertaker_

The sweeping purchase of an evening By an army of stars; The bold incoherence of love; The peaceful mountain-roads of friendship-- These things evade your dexterous epigrams!

_Poet_

A statue, polished and large, Dominates when it stands alone. Placed in a huge profusion of statues Its outlines become humiliated. Simplicity demands one gesture And men give it endless thousands. Complexity wanders through a forest, Glimpsing details in the gloom.

_Undertaker_

I do not crave the dainty pleasure Of chasing ghosts in a forest! Nor do I care to pluck Exaggerated mushrooms in the gloom. I have lost myself on roads Crossed by tossing hosts of men. Pain and anger have scorched our slow feet: Peace has washed our foreheads.

_Poet_

Futility, massive and endless, Captures a stumbling grandeur Embalmed in history. In my forest you could see this From a distance and lose Your limited intolerance. Simplicity and subtlety At different times are backgrounds for each other, Changing with the position of our eyes. Death will burn your eyes With his taciturn complexity.

_Undertaker_

Death will strike your eyes With his wild simplicity!

_Poet_