Chapter 3
Our broken school days lose us clues, Some lesson has been missed, the final meaning And wholeness of the grammar are disturbed-- That shall not be made up in all our life. The children, save a few, are not our friends, Some taunt us with your quarrels. We learn great secrets scrawled in signs or words Of foulness on the fences. So it is An American village, in a great Republic, Where men are free, where therefore goodness, wisdom Must have their way!
We reach the budding age. Sweet aches are in our breasts: Is it spring, or God, or music, is it you? I am all tenderness for you at times, Then hate myself for feeling so, my flesh Crawls by an instinct from you. You repel me Sometimes with an insidious smile, a look. What are these phantasies I have? They breed Strange hatred for you, even while I feel My soul's home is with you, must be with you To find my soul's rest. ...
I must go back a little. At ten years I play with Paula. I plait her crowns of flowers, carry her books, Defend her, watch her, choose her in the games. You overhear us under the oak tree Calling her doll our child. You catch my coat And draw me in the house. When I resist you whip me cruelly. To think of whipping me at such time, And mix the shame of smarting legs and back With love of Paula! So I lose Paula.
I am a man at last. I now can master what you are and see What you have been. You cannot rout me now, Or put me in the wrong. Out of old wounds, Remembrance of your baffling days, I take great strength and show you Where you have been untruthful, where a hater, Where narrow, bitter, growing in on self, Where you neglected us, Where you heaped fast destruction on our father-- For now I know that you devoured his soul, And that no soul that you could not devour Could have its peace with you. You've dwindled to a quiet word like this: "You are unfilial." Which means at last That I have conquered you, at least it means That you could not devour me.
Yet am I blind to you? Let me confess You are the world's whole cycle in yourself: You can be summer rich and luminous; You can be autumn, mellow, mystical; You can be winter with a cheerful hearth; You can be March, bitter, bright and hard, Pouring sharp sleet, and showering cutting hail; You can be April of the flying cloud, And intermittent sun and musical air. I am not you while being you, While finding in myself so much of you. It tears my other self, which is not you. My tragedy is this: I do not love you. Your tragedy is this: my other self Which triumphs over you, you hate at heart. Your solace is you have no faith in me.
All quiet now, no March days with you now, Only the soft coals slumbering in your face, I saw you totter over a ravine! Your eyes averted, watching steps, A light of resignation on your brow. Your thin-spun hair all gray, blown by the wind Which swayed the blossomed cherry trees, Bent last year's reeds, Shook early dandelions, and tossed a bird That left a branch with song-- I saw you totter over a ravine!
What were you at the start? What soul dissatisfaction, sense of wrong, Of being thwarted, stung you? What was your shrinking of the flesh; What fear of being soiled, misunderstood, What wrath for loneliness which constant hope Saw turned to fine companionship; What in your marriage, what in seeing me, The fruit of marriage, recreated traits Of face or spirit which you loathed; What in your father and your mother, And in the chromosomes from which you grew, By what mitosis could result at last In you, in issues of such moment, In our dissevered beings, In what the world will take from me In children, in events? All quiet now, no March days with you now, Only the soft coals slumbering in your face, I saw you totter over a ravine, And back of you the Furies!
JOHNNY APPLESEED
When the air of October is sweet and cold as the wine of apples Hanging ungathered in frosted orchards along the Grand River, I take the road that winds by the resting fields and wander From Eastmanville to Nunica down to the Villa Crossing.
I look for old men to talk with, men as old as the orchards, Men to tell me of ancient days, of those who built and planted, Lichen gray, branch broken, bent and sighing, Hobbling for warmth in the sun and for places to sit and smoke.
For there is a legend here, a tale of the croaking old ones That Johnny Appleseed came here, planted some orchards around here, When nothing was here but the pine trees, oaks and the beeches, And nothing was here but the marshes, lake and the river.
Peter Van Zylen is ninety and this he tells me: My father talked with Johnny Appleseed there on the hill-side, There by the road on the way to Fruitport, saw him Clearing pines and oaks for a place for an apple orchard.
Peter Van Zylen says: He got that name from the people For carrying apple-seed with him and planting orchards All the way from Ohio, through Indiana across here, Planting orchards, they say, as far as Illinois.
Johnny Appleseed said, so my father told me: I go to a place forgotten, the orchards will thrive and be here For children to come, who will gather and eat hereafter. And few will know who planted, and none will understand.
I laugh, said Johnny Appleseed: Some fellow buys this timber Five years, perhaps from to-day, begins to clear for barley. And here in the midst of the timber is hidden an apple orchard. How did it come here? Lord! Who was it here before me?
Yes, I was here before him, to make these places of worship, Labor and laughter and gain in the late October. Why did I do it, eh? Some folks say I am crazy. Where do my labors end? Far west, God only knows!
Said Johnny Appleseed there on the hill-side: Listen! Beware the deceit of nurseries, sellers of seeds of the apple. Think! You labor for years in trees not worth the raising. You planted what you knew not, bitter or sour for sweet.
No luck more bitter than poor seed, but one as bitter: The planting of perfect seed in soil that feeds and fails, Nourishes for a little, and then goes spent forever. Look to your seed, he said, and remember the soil.
And after that is the fight: the foe curled up at the root, The scale that crumples and deadens, the moth in the blossoms Becoming a life that coils at the core of a thing of beauty: You bite your apple, a worm is crushed on your tongue!
And it's every bit the truth, said Peter Van Zylen. So many things love an apple as well as ourselves. A man must fight for the thing he loves, to possess it: Apples, freedom, heaven, said Peter Van Zylen.
THE LOOM
My brother, the god, and I grow sick Of heaven's heights. We plunge to the valley to hear the tick Of days and nights. We walk and loiter around the Loom To see, if we may, The Hand that smashes the beam in the gloon To the shuttle's play; Who grows the wool, who cards and spins, Who clips and ties; For the storied weave of the Gobelins, Who draughts and dyes.
But whether you stand or walk around You shall but hear A murmuring life, as it were the sound Of bees or a sphere. No Hand is seen, but still you may feel A pulse in the thread, And thought in every lever and wheel Where the shuttle sped, Dripping the colors, as crushed and urged-- Is it cochineal?-- Shot from the shuttle, woven and merged A tale to reveal. Woven and wound in a bolt and dried As it were a plan. Closer I looked at the thread and cried The thread is man!
Then my brother curious, strong and bold, Tugged hard at the bolt Of the woven life; for a length unrolled The cryptic cloth. He gasped for labor, blind for the moult Of the up-winged moth. While I saw a growth and a mad crusade That the Loom had made; Land and water and living things, Till I grew afraid For mouths and claws and devil wings, And fangs and stings, And tiger faces with eyes of hell In caves and holes. And eyes in terror and terrible For awakened souls.
I stood above my brother, the god Unwinding the roll. And a tale came forth of the woven slain Sequent and whole, Of flint and bronze, trowel and hod, The wheel and the plane, The carven stone and the graven clod Painted and baked. And cromlechs, proving the human heart Has always ached; Till it puffed with blood and gave to art The dream of the dome; Till it broke and the blood shot up like fire In tower and spire.
And here was the Persian, Jew and Goth In the weave of the cloth; Greek and Roman, Ghibelline, Guelph, Angel and elf. They were dyed in blood, tangled in dreams Like a comet's streams. And here were surfaces red and rough In the finished stuff, Where the knotted thread was proud and rebelled As the shuttle proved The fated warp and woof that held When the shuttle moved; And pressed the dye which ran to loss In a deep maroon Around an altar, oracle, cross Or a crescent moon. Around a face, a thought, a star In a riot of war!
Then I said to my brother, the god, let be, Though the thread be crushed, And the living things in the tapestry Be woven and hushed; The Loom has a tale, you can see, to tell, And a tale has told. I love this Gobelin epical Of scarlet and gold. If the heart of a god may look in pride At the wondrous weave It is something better to Hands which guide-- I see and believe.
DIALOGUE AT PERKO'S
Look here, Jack: You don't act natural. You have lost your laugh. You haven't told me any stories. You Just lie there half asleep. What's on your mind?
JACK
What time is it? Where is my watch?
FLORENCE
Your watch Under your pillow! You don't think I'd take it. Why, Jack, what talk for you.
JACK
Well, never mind, Let's pack no ice.
FLORENCE
What's that?
JACK
No quarreling-- What is the time?
FLORENCE
Look over towards my dresser-- My clock says half-past eleven.
JACK
Listen to that-- That hurdy-gurdy's playing Holy Night, And on this street.
FLORENCE
And why not on this street?
JACK
You may be right. It may as well be played Where you live as in front of where I work, Some twenty stories up. I think you're right.
FLORENCE
Say, Jack, what is the matter? Come! be gay. Tell me some stories. Buy another bottle. Just think you make a lot of money, Jack. You're young and prominent. They all know you. I hear your name all over town. I see Your picture in the papers. What's the matter?
JACK
I've lost my job for one thing.
FLORENCE
You don't mean it!
JACK
They used me and then fired me, same as you. If you don't make the money, out you go.
FLORENCE
Yes, out I go. But, there are other places.
JACK
On further down the street.
FLORENCE
Not yet a while.
JACK
Not yet for me, but still the question is Whether to fight it out for up or down, Or run from everything, be free.
FLORENCE
You can't do that.
JACK
Why not?
FLORENCE
No more than I. Oh well perhaps, if a nice man came by To marry me then I could get away. It happens all the time. Last week in fact Christ Perko married Rachel who lived here. He's rich as cream.
JACK
What corresponds to marriage To take me from slavery?
FLORENCE
Money is everything.
JACK
Yes, everything and nothing. Christ Perko's rich, Christ Perko runs this house, The madam merely acts as figure-head; Keeps check upon the girls and on the wine. She's just the editor, and yet I'd rather Be editor than owner. I was editor. My Perko was the owner of a pulp mill, Incorporate through some multi-millionaires, And all our lesser writers were the girls, Like you and Rachel.
FLORENCE
But you know before He married Rachel, he was lover to The madam here.
JACK
The stories tally, for The pulp mill took my first assistant editor To wife by making him the editor. And I was fired just as the madam here Lost out with Perko.
FLORENCE
This is growing funny... Ahem! I'll ask you something-- As if I were a youth and you a girl-- How were you ruined first?
JACK
The same as you: You ran away from school. It was romance. You thought you loved this flashy travelling man. And I--I loved adventure, loved the truth. I wanted to destroy the force called "They." There is no "They"--we're all together here, And everyone must live, Christ Perko too, The pulp-mill, the policeman, magistrate, The alderman, the precinct captain too, And you the girls, myself the editor, And all the lesser writers. Here we are Thrown in one integrated lot. You see There is no "They," except the terms, the thought Which ramifies and vivifies the whole. ... So I came to the city, went to work Reporting for a paper. Having said There is no "They"--I've freed myself to say What bitter things I choose. For how they drive you, And terrify you, mock you, ridicule you, And call you cub and greenhorn, send you round To courts and dirty places, make you risk Your body and your life, and make you watch The rules about your writing; what's tabooed, What names are to be cursed or to be praised, What interests, policies to be subserved, And what to undermine. So I went through, Until I had a desk, wrote editorials-- Now said I to myself, I'm free at last. But no, my manager, your madam, mark you, Kept eye on me, for he was under watch Of some Christ Perko. So my manager Blue penciled me when I touched certain subjects. But, as he was a just man, loved me too. He gave me things to write where he could let My conscience have full scope, as you might live In this house where you saw the man you loved, And no one else, though living in this hell. For I lived in a hell, who saw around me Such lying, hatred, malice, prostitution. And when this offer came to be an editor Of a great magazine, I seemed to feel My courage and my virtue given reward. Now, I should pass on poems, and on stories, Creations of free souls. It was not so. The poems and the stories one could see Were written to be sold, to please a taste, Placate a prejudice, keep still alive An era dying, ready for the tomb, Already smelling. And that was not all. Just as the madam here must make report To Perko, so the magazine had to run To suit the pulp mill. As the madam here, Assistant to Christ Perko, must keep friends With alderman, policemen, magistrates, So I was just a wheel in a machine To keep it running with such larger wheels, And by them run, of policies, and politics Of State and Nation. Here was I locked in And given dope to keep me still lest I Cry out and wake the copper-who's the copper For such as I was? If he heard me cry How could he raid the magazine? If he raided Where was the court to take me and the rest-- That's it, where is the court?
FLORENCE
It seems to me You're bad as I am.
JACK
I am worse than you: I poison minds with thoughts they take as good. I drug an era, make it foul or dull-- You only sicken bodies here and there. But you know how it is. You have remorse, You fight it down, hush it with sophistry. You think about the world, about your fellows: You see that everyone is selling self, Little or much somehow. You feed your body, Try to be hearty, take things as they come. You take athletics, try to keep your strength, As you hear music, laugh, drink wine, and smoke, Are bathed and coifed to keep your beauty fresh. And through it all the soul's and body's needs, The pleasures, interests, passions of our life, The cry that comes from somewhere: "Live, O Soul, The time is passing," move and claim your strength. Till you forget yourself, forget the boy And man you were, forget the dreams you had, The creed you wished to live by--yes, what's worse, See dreams you had, grown tawdry, see your creed Cracked through and crumbled like a falling house. And then you say: What is the difference? As you might ask what virtue is and why Should woman keep it.
I have reached this place Save for one truth I hold to, shall still hold to: As long as I have breath: The man who sees not, Or cares not for the Truth that keeps the world From vast disintegration is a brute, And marked for a brute's death--that is his hell. 'Twas loyalty to this truth that made me lose My place as editor. For when they came And tried to make me pass an article To poison millions with, I said, "I won't, I won't by God. I'll quit before I do." And then they said, "You quit," and so I quit.
FLORENCE
And so you took to drink and came to me! And that's the same as if I came to you And used you as an editor. I am nothing But just a poor reporter in this house-- But now I quit.
JACK
Where are you going, Florence?
FLORENCE
I'm going to a village or a farm Where I'll get up at six instead of twelve, Where I'll wear calico instead of silk, And where there'll be no furnace in the house. And where the carpet which has kept me here And keeps you here as editor is not. I'm going to economize my life By freeing it of systems which grow rich By using me, and for the privilege Bestow these gaudy clothes and perfumed bed. I hate you now, because I hate my life.
JACK
Wait! Wait a minute.
FLORENCE
Dinah, call a cab!
SIR GALAHAD
I met Hosea Job on Randolph Street Who said to me: "I'm going for the train, I want you with me."
And it happened then My mind was hard, as muscles of the back Grow hard resisting cold or shock or strain And need the osteopath to be made supple, To give the nerves and streams of life a chance. Hosea Job was just the osteopath To loose, relax my mood. And so I said "All right"--and went.
Hosea was a man Whom nothing touched of danger, or of harm. His life was just a rare-bit dream, where some one Seems like to fall before a truck or train-- Instead he walks across them. Or you see Shadows of falling things, great buildings topple, Pianos skid like bulls from hellish corners And chase the oblivious fool who stands and smiles. The buildings slant and sway like monstrous searchlights, But never touch him. And the mad piano Comes up to him, puts down its angry head, Runs out a friendly tongue and licks his hand, And lows a symphony.
By which I mean Hosea had some money, and would sign A bond or note for any man who asked him. He'd rent a house and leave it, rent another, Then rent a farm, move out from town and in. He'd have the leases of superfluous places Cancelled some how, was never sued for rent. One time he had a fancy he would see South Africa, took ship with a load of mules, First telegraphing home from New Orleans He'd be back in the Spring. Likewise he went To Klondike with the rush. I think he owned More kinds of mining stock than there were mines. He had more quaint, peculiar men for friends Than one could think were living. He believed In every doctrine in its time, that promised Salvation for the world. He took no thought For life or for to-morrow, or for health, Slept with his windows closed, ate what he wished. And if he cut his finger, let it go. I offered him peroxide once, he laughed. And when I asked him if his soul was saved He only said: "I see things. I lie back And take it easy. Nothing can go wrong In any serious sense."
So many thought Hosea was a nut, and others thought, That I was just a nut for liking him. And what would any man of business say If he knew that I didn't ask a question, But simply went with him to take the train That day he asked me.
And the train had gone Five miles or so when I said: "Where you going?" Hosea answered, and it made me start-- Hosea answered simply, "We are going To see Sir Galahad."
It made me start To hear Hosea say this, for I thought He was now really off. But, I looked at him And saw his eyes were sane.
"Sir Galahad? Who is Sir Galahad?"
Hosea answered: "I'm going up to see Sir Galahad, And sound him out about re-entering The game and run for governor again."
So then I knew he was the man our fathers Worked with and knew and called Sir Galahad, Now in retirement fifteen years or so. Well, I was twenty-five when he was famous. Sir Galahad was forty then, and now Must be some fifty-five while I am forty. So flashed across my thought the matter of time And ages. So I thought of all he did: Of how he went from faith to faith in politics And ran for every office up to governor, And ran for governor four times or so, And never was elected to an office. He drew more bills to remedy injustice, Improve the courts, relieve the poor, reform Administration, than the legislature Could read, much less digest or understand. The people beat him and the leaders flogged him. They shut the door against his face until He had no place to go except a farm Among the stony hills, and there he went. And thither we were going to see the knight, And call him from his solitude to the fight Against injustice, greed.
So we got off The train at Alden, just a little village Of fifty houses lying beneath the sprawl Of hills and hills. And here there was a stillness Made lonelier by an anvil ringing, by A plow-man's voice at intervals.
Here Hosea Engaged a horse and buggy, and we drove And wound about a crooked road between Great hills that stood together like the backs Of elephants in a herd, where boulders lay As thick as hail in places. Ruined pines Stood like burnt matches. There was one which stuck Against a single cloud so white it seemed A bursted bale of cotton.