Part 3

Regard an American farm. That jaded collaborator, Daylight, has just arrived. Wavy signal of smoke From the wooden farm-house disappears Beneath the bluely ascetic lack of interest. Horses, pigs, and cows Assemble their discontent. The result is a Chinese orchestra Devoid of discipline and cohesion, With all of the players intoxicated. The animals do not realize That their voices should portray The farmer in the angular house; The hackneyed prose of his life; The expanding soul of his corn-fields. Turn from the absence of human wisdom And see the lights in the farm-house. Dimly circumscribed and steady, They symbolize future events. The farm-hand walks to the barn, With an ox-like dragging of feet. Black shirt, and overalls Whose color has been removed by dirt, Obscure the heavy knots of his body. His cork-screw nose ascends To the eyes of an unperturbed pig. Love and hate to him Are mouthfuls of coarse food hastily gulped During lulls in his muscular slavery. Beneath the slanting pungency Of the barn he vanishes, And with meaningless sounds He pays his meager tribute to life. Then the farmer persuades his age To indulge in an unwilling stumble Across the yard. His grey beard is the end of a rope That has gradually throttled his face. Within him, avarice Is awkwardly practising the rhythms Of weak emotions benignly, belatedly Preparing for celestial rewards. Within the cluttered farm-yard He stands, a figure of niggardly order.

Earth, the men who scrape at your flanks Can never stop to examine The thin line of speech that goes adventuring Where your brown hills bite the sky.

AMERICAN VAUDEVILLE SHOW

This vacuous, clattering spectacle Has collected the heart-beats of a nation. Greed, like a gorged Machiavelli, Slumps down in the green plush seat And wonders whether it has not blundered, While a sentimental song, Like a kindly infant, Interferes with the clink of coins. Hatred, juvenile and deformed, Earns the smirking oblivion Of fat women mangling sound. The wrangling babble of ignorance Turns to silence underneath The opium of innuendoes. Acrobats appear and seem To be raping phantom lovers No longer beautiful and fresh But mechanically endured. Part of the audience is also A battered stoic clasping worn-out mistresses. Clog-dancers enervate The thumping martyrs of their feet, And chorus-girls offer the lines of their bodies With whining voices.

Dreams are cheap, and green plush seats Appropriately, snugly hold The expensive hallucinations.

_Printing Service_ _Company_ _Chicago_