Part 2
Seraphic and relaxed, you take Your novel with uncertain thumbs, As one who lingers over cake And dreads the thought of final crumbs.
Frown at my precious sorcery And label me an envious elf. If human beings could agree Their boredom might revenge itself.
O youthful housewife, weighing grains Of joy upon your empty smile, The total of my bolder gains Is but a more impressive guile.
Your serious child wins the alert And limpid art of playing tag, While your emotions rest inert Like dried fruit in a paper bag.
And yet I envy both of you And wish that I could also find The mildness of your fancied view, Where feelings dance and thoughts are kind.
VI.
_Woman_
They worship musical sound Protecting the breast of emotion. Their feelings pose as fortune-tellers And angle for coins from credulous thoughts. Shall we abandon this luxury Of mild mist and wild raptures? Your face refrains from saying yes But your closed eyes roundly Reward the luminous sentence. Greece and Asia have exchanged Problems upon your face, And the fine poise of your head Tries to catch their conversation. Few people care to use Thought as a musical instrument That brings its singing restraint to grief and joy, But we, with straight arms, will descend Daringly upon this situation. The full-blown confusion of life Will detest our intrusion.
VII.
_Old Actor_
Any minor poet can claim That his subject resembles music. (“Her steps were notes of music.” “His presence was like a song.”) You are a long-neglected Instrument from which the player, With over-confident lips, blows only A jet of dust that falls upon The damp chagrin of his face. Moist from the futile effort He asks his listeners to admire Imaginary notes. They clap their hands, and he must retire To the slow digesting of his lie. Old actor, you have finished reciting Hamlet; Your pennies are gathered; and you depart.
NEGRO CRIMINAL
From the pensive treachery of my cell I can hear your mournful yell. Centuries of pain are pressed Into one unconscious jest As your scream disrobes your soul. The silence of your iron hole Is hot and stolid, like a guest Weary of seeing men undressed. Like the silence, I listen Because I dread the glisten Of a hidden humour that strains Under the stumble of all pains. Brown and wildly clownish shape Thrown into a cell for rape, You contain the tortured laugh Of a pilgrim-imbecile whose staff Taps against a massive comedy. Melodrama burlesques itself with free And stony voice, and wears a row of masks To lure the joviality of tasks. Melodrama, you, and I, We are merely tongues that try To ogle a protesting dream Into whisper, laugh, and scream.
SHORT STORY IN SONNET FORM
Loud chatter in a thousand minor lines Was your religion, and your art was pain Disguised by phrases of verbose disdain. You married an old man who gave you wines Lukewarm and pink, until your tipsy youth, Grown weary of evading sensual lies, Ran to idiot-Pierrot whose cries Created that delusion known as truth. The ache of your sincerity betrayed His awkward falseness, and he turned away, Grinning until your bullet found his head. Then people claimed that you had merely paid Insanely for a tritely sordid play. Your lyric could not answer--it was dead.
FEMININE TALK
_First Woman_
Do you share the present dread Of being sentimental? The world has flung its boutonnière Into the mud, and steps upon it With elaborate gestures!
_Second Woman_
Sentimentality Is the servant-girl of certain men And the wife of others. She scarcely ever flirts With creative minds, Striving also to become Graceful and indiscreet.
_First Woman_
Sappho and Aristotle Have wandered through the centuries, Dressed in an occasional novelty-- A little twist of outward form. They have always been ashamed To be caught in a friendly talk.
_Second Woman_
When emotion and the mind Engage in deliberate dialogue, One hundred nightingales And intellectuals find a common ground, And curse the meeting of their slaves!
_First Woman_
The mind must only play With polished relics of emotion, And the heart must never lighten Burdens of the mind.
_Second Woman_
I desire to be Irrelevant and voluble, Leaving my terse disgust for a moment. I have met an erudite poet With a northern hardness Motionless beneath his youthful robes. He shuns the quivering fluencies Of emotion, and shifts his dominoes Within a room of tortured angles. But away from this creative room He sells himself to the whims Of his wife, a young virago With a calculating nose. Beneath the flagrant pose Of his double life Emotion and the mind Look disconsolately at each other.
_First Woman_
Lyrical abandon And mental cautiousness Must not mingle to a magic Glowing, yet deliberate.
_Second Woman_
Never spill your wine Upon a page of mathematics. Drink it decently Within the usual tavern.
THE SWORD CONVERSES WITH A PHILOSOPHER
_Sword_
The Hindoo raises his arms And holds them level with his shoulders Till they become still and permanent, like horizons. But I prefer to stumble Into abrupt harmonies That must ever be flung aside. With one quick slash I cut Lips of death upon an expressionless breast, And a vermilion sincerity Pardons the sophistry of flesh. It is better to make And leave the moments of a poem Than to erect an ingenious pedestal Upon which blindness solemnly squats.
_Philosopher_
Men’s tongues are slow, and they have made you To avenge their hidden shame at this. You give startling girdles to virgins, Red beards to thieves, And writhing necklaces to children, Because the tongues of men are slow And revel in your quicker rhythms. An idiot whirls you around his head And persuades himself that he is swift. Imagination drenches his eyes And he spreads himself flat on your blade.
_Sword_
All of your words are concentrated Into the glittering censure of my blade!
_Philosopher_
Life wraps its layer of touch around one, Like a haunting blanket Smothering the taunting lips of a child. Curving their fingers around your hilt Men strive to purchase the triumph Of an imagined escape. I teach them plaintively to weave Schemes of consolation On the broad texture of their lives. You tell them to slash the fabric, Reaching into the black space underneath it. You are not a symbol of cruelty. An innocent impatience Sharpens the comedy of your blade.
_Sword_
Men have only two choices-- To worship idols or mimic fireflies, And I lend my strength to each choice, Teaching them to abandon The harlequin raptures of words.
_Philosopher_
You bring them yearning turbulence, And I, a quick-tongued refuge. Silence will pardon both of us.
CAPTAIN SIMMONS
An arbitrary architect Became his mind, and planned Cathedrals, mansions, and shops In a room enclosed by hair. And so a crowded town Occupied the dwarfed miles in his head, And along the boundary-line That separated thought from emotion Darkly seething slums grew up. Owing to the lack of space Prevailing in mental slums, Some buildings had been forced Into the realm of emotion. Within these structures half-breeds lived-- Creatures whose inconsequent Color prevented them From being entirely logical, And whose reeking impulses Were deplorably snubbed by thought. Being from the slums of mind These hybrids loved the dirt of arguments Inherited from centuries of men, Stopping now and then To order emotional brandy.
It is unnecessary To tell that Captain Simmons was old, With a body like the fading dream Of an athlete, and a face Made womanly by age.
MORE ABOUT CAPTAIN SIMMONS
Captain Simmons’ legs Were praying after much capering. Legs can pray without kneeling When they steal pity from city streets. On Captain Simmons’ face Wrinkled inhibitions were giving Moth-eaten lace to that soft tolerance Where memory and dying desire sleep without dreams. Captain Simmons’ black suit Fitted him loosely while his mind Became him tightly, and the reason Flickered in his smile. For all of life he had hidden Beneath a loose generosity In order to escape the fact That certain of his thoughts Were supplied with tights and slyness, And his smile was a lit candle held For a moment uncertainly over this situation. If one mentioned that Captain Simmons Was possessed by the plight of eyes Like pinched chicaneries of fate, Above a face of visual penuries, One would only hide his essential parts Beneath the futility of explanation.
CAPTAIN SIMMONS’ WIFE
She moved in a calculating trot, Relinquishing hairsbreadths of her life With each step, and gathering Atoms of humour and melancholy Into one last excuse for existence. It is true that she was playing Housewife to her thoughts and emotions. Her intangible household had attained A weak and exquisite indirectness, And she fiddled with its meager neatness; Protected them as they stooped Over the knitting of remorse; Fed them platters of minced scandal And mildly censured the relish with which they ate; Persuaded them that they could dream best When they were uncomfortable; Swept out bedrooms for fear That the talkative candour of her dislikes Might falter in the presence of dust; And clinked the silver on side-boards In an effort to convince herself That she was still robustly mercenary.
Again, she scanned the spots On a bridal-gown and planned, As she had done for years To send it to an imaginary cleaner.
NORTH CLARK STREET, CHICAGO
I.
Tame and ghastly coffins Display their shamefaced grays and reds Against the passive vividness of morning. From the base of these large coffins Men and women walk, Like briskly servile automata. Some repentant toy-maker Has given them a cunning pretense of life.
A waitress hurries to her work. Her yellow hair and face stained red Blend into a garish mendicant Who steals unreal composure from the morning. Behind her tramps a bloodless Jew. The stench of endless denials Has wrenched his youthful face Into a prophecy of middle age. He does not see the lamely leaden Shop-girl, where despair and apathy, Fighting, produce the motion of her limbs. She does not see this elderly laborer Upon whose face an artist
Lies smashed and gasping for breath, And he does not regard This thread irresolutely falling From a tapestry of memory: This slender woman in black. The glittering indifference of morning Divides their faces.
II.
Afternoon has fallen on this street, Like an imbecilic organ-grinder Grinning over his discords. Dead men and women spin Their miracles of motion Upon the grayness of this street. In this old Jew’s shop A woman bargains over calico. With a ghostly naïveté She reprimands the price of her shroud. In this pawn-shop stands a man Parting with his clarinet. He walks away, with dangling arms, Like a swindled Gabriel. In a lunchroom sits a woman Whose face is a tired sin Seeking comfort in religion. A young girl near her is an angel Puzzled by streaks of mud upon her face And asking questions of her vanity. Outside, dead men and women Are whipped on by the explosive magic Of an old, resistless masquerade. Street-cars, wagons, and motor-trucks Rattle their parodies on life, And over all the afternoon Twists, like an imbecilic organ-grinder Snickering over his discords.
III.
Night has thrown his ecstasy Of staring, counterfeit eyes Over the torrent of this street. Men with faces quicker And more furtive than time Stand motionless in doorways. Women stride down this street. Many fingers have pulled their faces To a haggard lack of expression. They join the motionless men In the doorways and disappear. And over them the tame and ghastly coffins Display their shamefaced grays and reds Against the tangled vividness of night.
LANDSCAPE
The countless vagaries of maple leaves, Elastic humbleness of flowers and weeds, The hill, a placid stoic to all creeds, They use an obvious language that deceives The subtle theories of human ears. Their tongue is motion and they scorn the rhyme And meter made by men to soothe their fears.
Beneath the warm strength of each August hour They spurn cohesion and the plans of thought, With quick simplicity that seems confused Because it signals mystic whims that tower Above the thoughts and loves that men have caught: Beyond the futile words that men have used.
COUNTRY GIRL
Your face is stencilled with a pensiveness. Your face contains a minor lyric trapped By dainty ignorance, and tamely capped By hair as trimly lifeless as your dress. You suffer from the drooling praise of old And youthful men, who strive to win a blind And soothing admiration from your mind, And do not try to make your thoughts unfold.
This comedy would fade into a host If it were not rewarded by the dead But unrelenting poet on your face. Your eyes are heavy with his reckless ghost: The trouble of his hands is on your head As you peer out into a clouded space.
NONDESCRIPT TYPIST
Within an office whose exterior Resembles an ultra-conservative mind You battle with the avaricious words Of a meager, petrified man. Your face is brown stagnation Sometimes astounded by a thrust Of chattering wistfulness. Bravery is fear Effectively sneering at itself, And you are forever wavering Upon the edge of this condition. Yet your obscurity Is an important atom In the mysterious march of time.
CONCERNING EMOTIONS
And if I say that pain is but A circus barker whose loud cries Seek to reward a trivial show, Will you confess that I am wise?
“Must it be emotional?” you asked, After I had thrown Words into a carnival-scope. Sobriety and merriment Borrowed the sixteenth century Within your voice, and sought The identity of sternness-- Mental sternness pretending to ignore The confetti thrown by emotion In a carnival unique.
Emotions can be prancing curves Fashioned by relaxing thoughts. Should I kiss you, Questioner, The delicate anti-climax Of a mental caper Might perish on crimson vapor! Tired of frenzies and satiations Emotions often wander to poets And ask for more fantastic decisions For fire that glows but does not burn.
METAPHYSICAL ELIZABETH
They gave you strait-jackets to bore you. Like an unwilling promise Your legs were tied together. But people can only violate Their own conception of reality, And your actual curves Preserved their sculptural liberty. Leaving their semblance on your flesh Your lines sped inward till they gained The center where emotion changes To a speck of quivering clarity.
Within you phantoms of reality Danced with plausibilities of mind, Seeking to be consumed By the oblivion which is understanding. You feared that your return to motion Would mean a succession of disappointments-- Tamely grazing arrows Changed to wounds by the desiring heart Take my hand and move. Only two statues can stride together In a manner invisible Save to certain unreasonable adjustments Of eyesight and of hearing.
DESCRIPTION AND EXHORTATION
Truly, this age will be known As one of minute extremes Courting an elderly shape In a violent bar-room scene. An Amazon made filthy by centuries, And fuming pygmies, own the stage. Thin furies of emotion Name every color in the rainbow Without its skillful assent, And little mental skeletons Stamp with clumsy weirdness On effigies of the heart. The pygmies often sneak To the prancing Amazon And the ensuing love-scene produces Small memories of Walt Whitman.
This age is not metaphysical. Followers of Dada, Weary of electron-soliloquies And fleshly ecstasies with flat feet, Sit in the gallery And throw loose malice at the display, Evading their motives with an eager creed.
Concentrate your aim, Followers of Dada.
INEVITABLE
The insurrection of a flea Compared to driving tusks Of elephants, is just as strong. Stupidity need not be long.
The insurrection of a flea Attains philosophy and spice. Fleas salt their eating with a creed That warms the monotone of greed.
The insurrection of a flea Will leave with tense insistence till The suburbs of eternity. O small fanatic on a spree.
The flea is poet in a land That does not understand his lunge. He makes his own immaculate laws And awaits forever threatening claws.
THE NEGROES WHO TURNED WHITE
The souls of negroes, thrown into a shout, Roll their hallelujahs out To the flashing blandness of the sky. The sky does not divide their cries Into meanings foolish and wise: To the sky all men have but one cry. Still, amusement has often thrown Separate shades upon the monotone, Playing with the sleep of firm beliefs. Amused, we give these negroes forms Distinct and bounding under storms Of sounds that catapult their joys and griefs. A negro with his bald despair Seduced by remnants of silver hair, Converses with an old King known as God. He longs to have his tortured stare Rewarded with a golden chair While other negroes thump the sod With heavy echoes of his request. With a cold, castrated zest He pleads for rest, and he is bold, While scientists and troubadours Cling more closely to their floors.
“How d’yah kno-ow, how d’yah kno-o-ow Dat the blood done sign mah na-a-ame? Yes it’s so-o-o, yes it’s so-o-o, Jesus wrote it down in fla-a-ame.”
The other negroes sing With gliding fear, and swing The child-like joke of their arms to emotions That surge like an army searching for its eyes. But suddenly a quick surprise Tricks each negro’s face with fright-- Their skins are gleaming pink and white. White philosophers and scientists Strike each other with dubious fists Within the negroes’ brains, while poets fight Like blistered urchins wrapped in gloom. Shrinking underneath the uproar With its bursts of phantom gore, The negroes shriek against their doom. With bending celebration of knees They crush against their leader’s pleas.
“Lord Almighty, make us black! This strange noise strikes us on the back! We has had enough of whips! Calm this devil with your lips!”
EXPRESSIONS ON A CHILD’S FACE
Dawn?--no, the hunted transparency of dawn Curving from the white throat of a child And shaken in the still cup of his face. Then a sudden dispersal of swerving light Carrying away the defeated Wisdom of a smile.
Thought?--no, the persistent shudder Of emotion that is almost thought. The invisible recklessness of perfume Enveloping the beginning of a question.
Sadness?--no, the growth of a dim inclination To delve into the rancid importance of flesh: Then weeping, to wash away The ritual of disappointment.
PSYCHIC CLOWNS
_First Clown_
We gaze upon a negro shoveling coal. His muscles fuse into a poem Stifled and sinister, Censuring the happy rhetoric of morning air. Some day he will pitch the stretched simplicity Of his tent upon the contented ruins Of a civilization, Playing with documents and bottles of perfume Found in deserted, broken corridors.
_Second Clown_
The barbarous comedy Lost in profuse confessions And often described as life, Lends an attitude of conviction To the mechanical retreat of time.
_First Clown_
Do you hear beneath the irregular strut Of this city an imperceptible groan? Time is turning the jail-house key. They build larger jails for time; He makes larger keys of blood-stained iron. Endlessly he emerges From complicated delusions of freedom.
_Second Clown_
That desperately grotesque Wanton known as imagination Can plunge beyond both men and time. Imagination slips down Upon the last edges of thought and feeling And teaches them to transcend The forlorn bravado of swinging legs and arms.
_First Clown_
We are two psychic clowns Brandishing the poverty of words Into insolent oddities of sound. Come, men are waiting to nail us Upon the crucifix of their little logics!
DEAR MINNA
Catastrophe in a bric-a-brac shop. The proprietor lies murdered. Pieces of cups, jars, and vases Have attained the disorderly freedom So obnoxious to bankrupt fanatics. Once the cups, jars, and vases Were symmetrical and empty, And immersed in the task of holding nothing. Now they have snatched a voice from fragments; Spell many an accidental sentence; Renounce the hollow lie. Death, you take the stiffly obvious shapes Of objects and crack them with your fingers-- A shattered invitation To curiosity and anticipation-- And I am grateful to you for that. My eyes grow weary scanning the living array. Each man takes his inch upon the shelves And will not move, until your paw Robs him of microscopical convictions.
Dear Minna, read the newspapers And gloat with me over death’s industry. Banker, Freudian, Socialist, Knocked from the shelves and changed To symbols that can lure conjecture. It is well that we are metaphysical. Death must not become A mere black frame surrounding The memorized reiterations. Death must remain an irresistible Beckoning to reckless speculations And continue to offer an amorous arm To the recalcitrant antics of words.
VILLAGE CLERK
Rabelais and Maeterlinck Have subsided to one grin Upon your sharply cumbersome face. Coarseness and a psychic hope Dominate your voice As you prattle to women Purchasing sugar and salt. Then your face and voice Alter to a serious fraud Eagerly learning the technique of deceptions, As you answer this dryly emasculated Grey-beard, discussing the tendencies in hogs.
When the night replenishes Your store of morbid desires, You will try to piece together A cajoling violin From your sweet-heart’s syllables, Fumbling with hot hands for the unseen strings.
REALISM