Part 9

You wonder why I bought so many houses, Bought and repaired, built over home on house. The first one was to make a home for Mary, And Frank and Bessie, for I had myself A settled home when I was boy and man, And knew the feeling of respect, content Which comes of one familiar and continued Habitation for a boy who’s growing. The first house, then, was poor enough, God knows! A place that smelt in all the rooms of breath A sick man breathes into the very paper. The rat holes in the base boards had to be Stopped up with plaster, all the floors were loose. Bricks lay awry upon the chimney tops. An old well with a windlass on the porch Made one remember typhoid all the time. Some apple trees half-rotted, covered over With water sprouts stood in a yard of weeds. A barn was at the yard’s end out of shape From leaning at an angle. All in all The place was haunted, but it was the best I could afford just then, and naturally She hated it and grumbled all the time. A few years past, it seemed scarce two or three, And all the children married, went away. Just then I grew more prosperous and built over The haunted house, and built a handsome barn, Cut out the apple trees, destroyed the weeds, And put an iron fence around the yard. Put bathrooms, running water in the house. She jawed at me for doing this, and asked Why did you wait until the children left? Of course she knew, but blamed me just the same. And so we had no pleasure with this house. She wanted larger rooms, and trees in front, A sunny dining room--there was that porch On which ours looked, and though I closed the well She often wondered why we had not died Before I closed it.

And about this time Our banker moved away and left his house For sale at public auction. I went down Alone, not telling her, to look at it. Here was a house upon a stone foundation Built of red brick, peaked roof of slate, three stories, Brick walks about the yard with plots of flowers, A barn of brick--it was the very place! There now were grandchildren; and so I dreamed How they would romp about this lovely yard, Or play on rainy days in that wide garret. And so I bid and got the house at auction. But when I told her she was up in arms: The house would hold a family of ten! Besides the upper rooms were far too small: What is a dining room, or huge drawing room If you step out of bed against the wall? Then there’s that gully just below the barn Breeding malaria, the banker’s family Were sick year in and out--that’s why they sold it For anything at public sale. O fool! Well, Mary came that summer with her children, And my poor dream in part was realized. But Frank and Bessie moved to California And never saw the happiness I planned For them and for their children. Mary’s husband Disliked the house--his hatred was beginning. Next summer Mary left him and divorced him, And started out to earn her children’s bread. She didn’t come again.

And so it was true, We didn’t need so large a house--we sold it And bought a cottage of six rooms; this time She joined with me in picking out the house, But that was nothing, for no other house Besides this one was up for sale just then. No sooner had we moved than she was full Of wounded memory and a mad regret: She saw what she had lost. These little rooms! This front fence almost jammed against the door! And stoves again instead of radiators! No running water, only an old pump Above the kitchen sink! And near the station-- The bawling bussmen bothered her at night! The midnight train woke her unfailingly. And now she said our first house was all right With this, or that corrected. We had blundered In ever selling it and taking on Such luxury in the brick house. It had spoiled Her taste for living in a house like this, With just a little yard, that hideous fence, Which one could touch while standing in the door! She said she could not breathe because of it, And railed against her fate so that it brought The next step in my life of buying houses....

Dreams entered in my brain of fields and woods, A little lake perhaps, river or stream. There was a fad of buying farms just then. I went to Michigan on other business, And there I saw one, bought it on the spot. You see I had the passion as of drink, And knew it as I ventured once again. But then there was the house upon the bluff! And there below it was the river! there Beeches and oaks down to the river’s edge! A great white house all new, and apple trees, A vineyard and a field of eighty acres. Here will I sit, I said, upon my bluff And watch the river. I will keep a man To farm the place, and prune the vines and trees, This is the place at last. But then I thought What will she say? She wants a farm I know, But will this suit her? So I sent for her. And when she came she kissed me, she was glad, Commended my good judgment, loved the house, Went through the barn in rapture, stood beneath The windmill, which was near, to watch it pump. Strolled down the wooded bluff, threw pebbles in The river where the swallows dipped and flew, And gathered daisies by the river’s shore. I sat down in the grass flushed through with joy, Like one who finds his haven, who has solved Laborious troubles, thinking of the rest I should take here--a man to run the place, And months of summer recreation here! I told her what my plan was.

No, she said, To own a farm is business. You should know By this time that you have no head for business. I think you’ve shown some wisdom in this farm, Or better you’ve had luck in buying it. Your other ventures buying houses were Enough to make you have distrust of self. Now that you’ve bought the farm to make it pay Is what we have in hand, and you must work. We’ll keep a man, but he cannot do all There is to do here, I will work and you Must work as well, the farm must pay, you know. I want the man to live with us in the house So I can watch him, rout him out to work At sun-up and keep watch upon his time.

We’ll keep two rooms for our use. For the man Must have a family, these single fellows Are off too much at night and think too much In working hours of what they’ll do at night.

Perhaps I am a weakling with my dream Of buying houses, for I dream of joys And build my palaces, invite my joys To enter and be glad. They never come! She took the farm and ran it. It was business, But business in disorder with a loss For seed which did not sprout, and stock that died, And glutted markets when the fruit was good. I worked awhile, I fished once in the river, I sat a few times on my wooded bluff-- And then I fled and left her to the farm To rule a single farmer who cut weeds, Abandoned weeds for plowing, left the plow To make a flower bed, following her whims Obedient, indifferent to results....

If you destroy a bird’s nest that’s the end. The nesting birds return to find the branch Where they had builded with such patient care, All naked of their work. They look and fly And think of what? But build no more that year. But if you take a twig and scratch the grains About the ant hill, overturn their work, Stop up the door, the little folk begin To build again, clear out the ruined hall-- They cannot be discouraged like the birds. I think I am an ant--for even yet I’m looking for a house, or better a home. There is that house walled in with earth--that’s sure-- But if there is no house to fill my joy Why have I looked for houses all my life?

THE CHURCH AND THE HOTEL

Over the dead lake And in a dusty sky The full moon is speared by the spire of the Baptist church; Or now it hangs over the Groveland Hotel: I do not know whether it is over the spire Or over the hotel.

In a dusty sky the moon Is the bottom of a copper kettle Which cannot be scoured into brightness. The sky is a faded mosquito net Over a brass cylinder cap Dulled with verdigris.

Some years ago, Not many years ago, The Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D. At the pulpit under this spire With habitual regularity Used to say: Let us pray. And the Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D. With habitual regularity Used to preach On the wages of sin. And on Sunday evenings As he was saying let us pray, Ed Breen in Henry Hughes’ buffet, There in the Groveland Hotel Sitting with cronies at a table would say: “Another round, Henry, Bourbon for me.”

And at 7:30, At the very moment When the Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D. Was saying let us pray, Ed Breen would be beginning the night, And would be saying to Henry Hughes: “Another round, Henry, Bourbon for me.”

You, Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D. Lived to a ripe age. You lived to marry a second wife. And you, Ed Breen, died in the thirties. But whether it be better to have ptomaine poisoning From eating cold chicken, Or to drug yourself to death with bourbon I will ask the moon. For there is the moon Like a German silver watch Under a grimy show case. I think it hangs as much over the hotel As over the church.

SUSIE

Where did you go, pale Susie, after the day You left the service of the boarding house? The night before we made carouse And danced the time away.

We boys were in the kitchen and were drinking Small beer--you slapped the hands of us Who stroked your arms half amorous-- Where did you go, I’m thinking?

Medical students up at Hahnemann Hunt women on a Saturday night. And sing, tell tales, and verse recite, And rush the forbidden can.

The paltry mistress made you pay for all The fault of us, and packed you out of doors When you had scrubbed the floors, And swept the entrance hall.

I watched you in your faded cloak and hat With canvas bag walk towards the Grove. Then something in my fancy hove, Laughing I caught you at The doorway of the hotel on the street Where I had tracked you round from thirty-first. You laughed and cried and called me worst Of devils on two feet.

There I had followed you and seized you when You did not care what happened, so You fell into my hands, you know-- ’Tis twenty years since then.

I never saw you after that, nor heard In all this city aught of you. You vanished like a blot of dew, Or ashen hued seed bird.

I wonder if you wed a red bull-throat Who ran a rivet hammer, drove a truck, Bore many children or worse luck Went where the drift weeds float....

HAVING HIS WAY

We parted at the Union Station, Tom Hall and I, Two boys in the early twenties Fresh from the quiet of fields, And the sleepy silence of village life. And we stepped into Adams Street, Noisy from trucks and rattling cars, And babbling multitudes. He with his great invention, And I with my translation of Homer, And the books of Rousseau and Marx.

And he went his way To sell his great invention. And I in the village glory Of clothes ill-fitting, timid, sensitive And proud, a little learned, so zealous For the weal of the world Came to your chateau palace near the Drive, To you my friend, my queenly cousin, For a little visit before I entered Upon the city’s life. You looked me over with calm Egyptian eyes, And put me at ease with your lovely smile. And there was about you the calm of desert air in Nevada That made me forget myself. Yet you began to guide me with subtlest words, And to mould me with delicate hands, As one might smooth a rumpled collar, Or fasten a loosened scarf, Or lift to place a strand of hair Of one beloved who thrills to the touch. Even with closed eyes you saw everything Of harmony, or form, or hue. There were silver strings in your little ears Which caught the tone pictures of sounds, And the intonations and sonorities of voices; Which trembled to the barbarities of unmelodic words. And there as you saw and heard me, (I knew it at once,) You took me for your piece of bronze in the rough To be made under your hands Your triumph, your work, your creation In the world where you ruled as queen. You would see me as finished art Move before admiring eyes Where music is and richness, And where poverty and struggle And sacrifice and failure are forgotten.

That was the cousin you meant me to be. And in a few nights There was an evening dress and fine linen And an opera hat and cloak Laid out for me in my snow white room, And a valet came to help me. For we were to see Carmen together-- You and I in a box. You the queen, And I a genius from the country Of whom the word had gone the rounds: A translator of Homer, And a dreamer of revolutions, Her cousin, you know!

I was pale from fear and pride As I entered the box with you. I felt I was wronging my dreams And apostatizing all I had dreamed To be in this box with you. And a sullen hatred of everything: The mass of color, the faint perfumes, The lights, the jewels, the dazzling breasts Of the queens in the boxes angered me. And everyone was smiling, and everyone was leveling Opera glasses, sometimes at me, A translator of Homer And a dreamer of socialism. And there like a fool I sat and thought Of the cold without and the beggar man Who stood at your carriage as we alighted.

And when the music arose at last A sort of madness whirled in my brain. For what was this Carmen thing But subtle wickedness and cruel lust And hardest heathenism, And delight that seeks its own, In a setting of bloody voluptuousness, Fiendish caprice and faithlessness, In music through which a pagan soul Had sensed and voiced it all? Till at least (I almost shrieked at this) Don Jose in his amorous madness Plunged a knife in the back of the whore he loved To the growl of horns and moan of viols....

And you sat through it all Like a firefly on a vine leaf Suspiring in all your body, And gazing with calm Egyptian eyes, Or turning to me as if you would know If the poison was in my blood.... But I was immune: Democracy seemed too glorious, And the cause of the poor too just, And fair sweet love of men and women So worth the cost to gain and keep, And honest bread too sweet-- I was immune.... And I scarcely saw the fair slim girl To whom you introduced me. And I scarcely heard what you said in the carriage About her countless riches. And I scarcely heard your words of praise That I looked like a prince, And that you meant to help me, And do by me what your husband would do If he were living, And lift me along to a place in life Where power and riches are, And beauty is and music, And where struggle and sacrifice are forgotten.

And when I did not answer you thought I sat abashed by your side. Instead in my mind were running The notes to Queen Mab, And bits of Greek. I did this to stifle my wrath, And to forget the cage you were luring me into, And the poison you were offering me, And the cause of Truth! And hiding my wrath in a day or two I left you saying I would return, But I never returned.

Instead I went where the youths were thinking, Painting and writing, And talking of the revolution, And the glorious day to come. And I was happy even though They sent my great translation back As poor and amateurish. For the years of youth were long ahead There was time to try again....

Then Margaret’s stepmother Drove her from home, and she came to the city Crying in her loneliness and destitution, Suffering from her lame hip. And even these were happy days, For I loved her for her sorrows, I loved her for her lameness. It was all transfigured through my love For democracy and sacrifice, And the sweetness of honest bread. And it was like taking the sacrament, our marriage. And there in our little flat far out On Robey Street I toiled at writing While she went about so lame, Trying to keep the house for me, And to clear away the disorders Which piled about her constantly And were never cleared away....

And is it not strange that to-day, After the lapse of ten years These two things happen within an hour? Your letter from Rome arrived-- For though I scorned your life and love, And went my way, You write me still it seems, Not to wound my fallen state, Nor to show me what my life had been If I had heeded you. But just in the continuous sunshine Of noble friendship to show me I am sometimes in your thought. And scarcely had your letter come When Tom Hall crept up the creaking stairs Dragging his feet with the help of a cane-- He is rich and came to help me. And Tom Hall had his way as well: He hated marriage and went the rounds, Wherever a pretty face allured. And now he is sick and dragging his feet. And here am I at a writing desk: I’m cap and bells for the Daily Globe And my grind is a column a day. You see it comes to this, dear queen: Can a man or woman alive escape The granite’s edges or ditch’s mire, The thorny thickets or marsh’s gas, Or the traps one thinks would never be set Except for the fox or wolf?.... And here is Margaret down with a cough Never to rise from her bed again. And I sit by at my task of jokes, And I stop to read your letter again, And wonder why life has never caught you, And why you are laughing there in Rome Where you dine with happy friends; Or tramp the thickets around the ruins Of the Baths of Caracalla-- I see the platforms and dizzy arches Under a sky of Italy. It’s cloudy here and the elevated Rattles and roars beneath my window. You’re picking flowers while it’s winter here. I read these things in your letter and wonder Is the asp at your breast in spite of laughter? Or when is the asp to sting you?

THE ASP

As the train rushed on The days of our youth swept through me, As if they were brought to life by a sort of friction. I thought of how madly you laughed When we played at blindman’s buff with the Miller girls; And of the May baskets we made together, And hung as we rang the bell and ran. And of our games in the first spring days When we stole from house to house. And the children were shouting And the April moon was new. And the smell of burning leaves And the first tulips filled us with such ecstasy. We laughed, we shouted, we leaped for joy. We ran like mad through the rooms, And we went to bed at last Laughing and gasping, And lay looking at the moon through the leafless boughs, And fell to sleep with joyous hearts, Thinking of to-morrow, And the days and days to come for play, And the summer to come, And all the mad raptures of school at an end, And no death, and no end Of the love of father and mother, And the home we loved.

And here it was spring again-- But such a spring! At the end of such years and years And births and births and spheres and spheres of life, Each like a life or a world of its own With its friends, its own completeness, its rounded end. And back of them all Our old home forgotten, Our father and mother gone, And back of this spring that ended world of ours Wherein we parted Grown misty too! And as the train rushed on And the hour of meeting you neared I was thrilled with gladness, thrilled with fear. And now the station was Herkimer, And now it was Amsterdam, And now it was Albany, And then Poughkeepsie on the Hudson. And I looked from the car to the passing scene, And back to the car again. Or I turned in my seat Or took up my book and laid it down, Or fastened my bag for the hundredth time, Or straightened my cloak on the seat, And waited and waited. For I had a story to tell you That I could not wait to tell. I was traveling a thousand miles to tell you, And to get your advice, to have your solace, To look in your eyes again, And to feel in spite of springs that were gone, And our old home, and father and mother gone There was an arm in the world for me to lean on.

And the train rushed on Bringing me nearer to you. And the tears welled up to my eyes As I wondered why life had mangled me so: Why the man I loved at first and hated afterward Had died that tragic death, Leaving me with memories of that love, And such agony for that hate. And why as a sort of Empress Eugenia The world turned on me when I fell, And the little power I had departed. And why in spite of my aspiration I had run into such disgust, Such overthrow of my work, Such undoing of myself, Such spiritual wreck and shame! And to think of what had done it: My search for love, my struggle for excellence-- These things alone! I had married this second man for love, And because I believed in him As a man of power, a man of thought, A man who loved me. And hoping through him to retrieve my life From the smut of the man I married first. But I found my very soul deceived: He was just a violent visionary, A frothing fool, A spendthrift, coward, hedonist. And there I was tied to him. And carrying his child while finding him out. So I used to stand with my face to the wall And choke my mouth with a handkerchief To keep from crying out. For I knew if a whimper passed my lips I should fall and roll on the floor with madness, And beat my head on the floor.

So when the train rolled into the station A sickness, a weakness came over me. I had spent myself in expectation. And now that I was about to see you, The thought of the vainness of seeing you, And the thought that you could not help me, Though I had traveled these thousand miles, Made me wish to fly, to hide. So I stepped from the train in a kind of daze, And scarcely felt your kiss. It seemed relaxed, so faint. And your voice was weak. And your eyes were dim and dry.