The People, Yes
Page 11
Goofer dust comes from the goofer tree.
Sprinkle it in the shoes of the woman you love and
she can never get away from you.
Galla gaffa gassa.
Even a lousy cur has his lucky days.
Sweep dirt out of the door after night and
you sweep yourself out of a home.
Shake the tablecloth out of doors after sunset
and you will never marry.
The first to drive a hearse is the next to die.
Kill cats, dogs or frogs and you die in rags.
Point at a shooting star or even speak of it and
you lose your next wish.
Better born lucky than rich.
Marry in May, repent always.
May is the month to marry bad wives.
The son of the white hen brings luck.
So does a horse with four white feet.
He planted gravel and up came potatoes.
When a bitch litters pigs that is luck.
The lucky fellow gets eggs from his rooster
and his hen eggs have two yolks.
Luck for the few, death for the many.
Ladders of luck, let us
climb your yellow rungs.
Ropes of the up-and-up
send us silver sky-hooks.
Black horses, let us saddle
you with silk belly-bands.
Black cats with orange spots
bring us big ships loaded
with wild Spanish women.
Galloping cubes of fate
hand us sevens elevens
hand us the pretty numbers.
Black moonlight, let a little
of that old gold drop down.
Black roses? Yes
there must be cool black roses.
Out of the deep night came to us
the kiss of the black rose.
54
Tylor believed it important; he put it down; he asks us to read it, to look at it and see what happens.
“In the islands of the Indian Archipelago whose tropical forests swarm both with high apes and low savages, the confusion between the two in the minds of the half-civilized inhabitants becomes almost inextricable.”
Tylor dwelt on the tales of men with tails, homo caudatus or satyr, how you hear about them if you go hither and yon over the earth.
“To people who at once believe monkeys a kind of savages, and savages a kind of monkeys, men with tails are creatures coming under both definitions.”
The longer you look at it the more the confusions shift in the shaded areas denoting who belongs where.
55
On Lang Syne Plantation they had a prayer:
“When we rise in the morning
to see the sun plowing his furrow across the elements,
we are thankful.
For the rising of the east moon we have seen tonight
and for the setting of the west moon we shall see,
we are thankful.
And O Lord—
When my room is like a public hall,
when my face is like a looking glass,
when my teeth shut against a silence,
mother do me no good then,
father do me no good then,
sister, brother, friend, do me no good then.
Help us to know—
when our hands rest from the plow handle and lie stillwhen
we are like hills gone down in darkness—
when our nostrils are empty of breaththen
let us know when we trust in Thee—
Thou art a crutch to the lame,
a mother to the motherless,
a father to the fatherless,
a strong arm to the widow,
a shade from the heat,
a bridge over deep water.”
The little lake with the long name in Massachusetts is called: Chaugh Jog a Gog Maugh Chaugh a Gog Chaugh Buna Guncha Maugh wherein the red men intended: We own to the middle of the lake on this side, you own to the middle of the lake on the other side, and both of us own the middle.
Oh angel, oh angel,
I don’t want to be buried in the storm.
Who’s going to close these dying eyes?
Dig my grave with a golden spade.
Lower me down with a silver chain.
The coffin lid will screw me down.
I don’t want to be buried in the storm.
Who’s going to close these dying eyes?
Oh angel, oh angel.
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The sacred legion of the justborn—
how many thousands born this minute?
how many fallen for soon burial?
what are these deaths and replacements?
what is this endless shuttling of shadowlands
where the spent and done go marching into one
and from another arrive those crying Mama Mama?
In the people is the eternal child,
the wandering gypsy, the pioneer homeseeker,
the singer of home sweet home.
The people say and unsay,
put up and tear down
and put together again—
a builder, wrecker, and builder again—
this is the people.
The shrouding of obedience to immediate necessity,
The mask of “What do I care?” to cover “What else can I do?”
One half-real face put on to hide a more real face under,
The waiting of the hope of the inner face while the outer face
Holds to its look and says yes to immediate necessity,
Says yes to whatever is for the immediate moment—
This is the pokerface of the populace never read till long afterward.
The people in several longdrawn chapters seems a monster turtle.
Heavy years go by, heavy hundreds of years, till a shroud and mask drop,
Till the faces of events command the new faces of people,
And new chapters begin with new faces.
Protective coloration is only for birds and moths who take on the look of the leaves and bark they live in?
Out of long usage the ruled-over acquire devices by the ways of animals who blend with the landscape.
They can drop into long deep sleeps, they can hide out and hibernate till a time of release develops.
In the long night streets of snakeline lights
when there is bitter crying for leadership
and no leadership steps forth
is it because the masses and the intelligentsia
both are a wornout soil so thin and acrid
they cannot fling up leaders?
When the creative breath blows not over the waters
and elders are filled with hypocritical effluvia,
when the silent workers in pure science
are considered inferior to public utility manipulators
is this the time for the young to begin movements,
to question the ways of hypocritical elders
in the long night streets of snakeline lights?
aw nuts aw go peddle yer papers
where did ja cop dat monkeyface
jeez ja see dat skirt
did ja glom dat moll
who was tellin you we wuz brudders
how come ya get on dis side deh street
go home and tell yer mudder she wants yuh
chase yer shadder aroun deh corner
yuh come to me wid a lot uh arkymalarky
a bing in de bean fer you yeah
how come ya get on dis side deh street
go home and get yer umbreller washed
den get yer face lifted
dis corner is mine—see—dis corner is mine
gwan ja tink ya gonna get dis f’m me fer nuttin
nobody gets nuttin fer nuttin
gwan monkeyface peddle yer papers
ya can’t kiss yerself in here dis is all fixed
Those without a
leader perish,
says the Sanskrit,
those without a youthful leader perish,
those without a female leader perish,
those without many leaders perish.
The people pause for breath, for wounds and braises to heal,
For food again after famine, for regaining stamina,
For preparations and migration to greener pastures, to canaan, to america, to the argentine, australia, new zealand, alaska,
To farflung commonwealths lacking precedent or tradition.
They guess and toil and rest and try to make out and get along
And some would rather not talk about what they had to go through
In the first years of finding out what the soil might do for them,
In the first winter of snow too deep for travel, or
The first summer when the few clouds showing went away without rain, or
The day the grasshoppers came and tore a black path where the crops had stood.
The people is a monolith,
a mover, a dirt farmer,
a desperate hoper.
The prize liar comes saying, “I know how, listen to me and I’ll bring you through.”
The guesser comes saying, “The way is long and hard and maybe what I offer will work out.”
The people choose and the people’s choice more often than not is one more washout.
Yet the strong man, the priceless one who wants nothing for himself and has his roots among his people,
Comes often enough for the people to know him and to win through into gains beyond later losing,
Comes often enough so the people can look back and say, “We have come far and will go farther yet.”
The people is a trunk of patience, a monolith.
“And the king wanted an inscription
good for a thousand years and after
that to the end of the world?”
“Yes, precisely so.”
“Something so true and awful that no
matter what happened it would stand?”
“Yes, exactly that.”
“Something no matter who spit on it or
laughed at it there it would stand
and nothing would change it?”
“Yes, that was what the king ordered his wise men to write.”
“And what did they write?”
“Five words: THIS TOO SHALL PASS AWAY.”
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Lincoln?
He was a mystery in smoke and flags
saying yes to the smoke, yes to the flags,
yes to the paradoxes of democracy,
yes to the hopes of government
of the people by the people for the people,
no to debauchery of the public mind,
no to personal malice nursed and fed,
yes to the Constitution when a help,
no to the Constitution when a hindrance,
yes to man as a straggler amid illusions,
each man fated to answer for himself:
Which of the faiths and illusions of mankind
must I choose for my own sustaining light
to bring me beyond the present wilderness?
Lincoln? was he a poet?
and did he write verses?
“I have not willingly planted a thorn
in any man’s bosom.”
“I shall do nothing through malice; what
I deal with is too vast for malice.”
Death was in the air.
So was birth.
What was dying few could say.
What was being born none could know.
He took the wheel in a lashing roaring
hurricane.
And by what compass did he steer the course
of the ship?
“My policy is to have no policy,” he said in
the early months,
And three years later, “I have been controlled
by events.”
He could play with the wayward human mind, saying at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858, it was no answer to an argument to call a man a liar.
“I assert that you [pointing a finger in the face of a man in the crowd] are here today, and you undertake to prove me a liar by showing that you were in Mattoon yesterday.
“I say that you took your hat off your head and you prove me a liar by putting it on your head.”
He saw personal liberty across wide horizons.
“Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid,” he wrote Joshua F. Speed, August 24, 1855. “As a nation we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty.”
Did he look deep into a crazy pool
and see the strife and wrangling
with a clear eye, writing the military
head of a stormswept area:
“If both factions, or neither, shall
you, you will probably be about right. Beware
of being assailed by one and praised
by the other”?
Lincoln? was he a historian?
did he know mass chaos?
did he have an answer for those
who asked him to organize chaos?
“Actual war coming, blood grows hot, and blood is spilled. Thought is forced from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies and universal suspicion reigns.
“Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he be first killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only; but this is not all.
“Every foul bird comes abroad and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion.
“Strong measures, deemed indispensable, but harsh at best, such men make worse by maladministration. Murders for old grudges, and murders for pelf, proceed under any cloak that will best cover for the occasion. These causes amply account for what has happened in Missouri.”
Early in ’64 the Committee of the New York Workingman’s Democratic Republican Association called on him with assurances and he meditated aloud for them, recalling race and draft riots:
“The most notable feature of a disturbance in your city last summer was the hanging of some working people by other working people. It should never be so.
“The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations and tongues and kindreds.
“Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.”