The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem

by Jeremy Noel-Tod

I foul him up, I flood him.

  He revives.

  I rinse him off, I stretch him out (I’m beginning to get worked up, I must finish off), I bunch him together, I squeeze him, I sum him up and introduce him into my glass, and ostentatiously throw the contents on the ground, and say to the waiter: ‘Let me have a cleaner glass.’

  But I feel ill, I pay the check quickly and go off.

  Henri Michaux (1930), translated from the French by Richard Ellmann

  Force of Habit

  The table is placed in the dining-room; the taps give out clear water, soft water, tepid water, scented water. The bed is as large for two as for one. After the bud will come the leaf and after the leaf the flower and after rain fine weather. Because it is time, the eyes open, the body stands up, the hand stretches out, the fire is lit, the smile contends with night’s wrinkles for their unmalicious curve. And they are the clock’s hands that open, that stand up, that stretch out, that set light to themselves and mark the hour of the smile. The sun’s ray goes about the house in a white blouse. It’s going to snow again, a few drops of blood are going to fall again at about five o’clock, but that’ll be nothing. Oh! I was frightened, I suddenly thought there was no longer any street outside the window, but it is there just the same as ever. The chemist is even raising his metal shutters. There will soon be more people at the wheel than at the mill. Work is sharpened, hammered, thinned down, reckoned out. Once more the hand takes pleasure in finding the security of sleep in the familiar implement.

  Provided that it lasts!

  The mirror is a marvellous witness, changing all the time. It gives evidence calmly and with power, but when it has finished speaking you can see that it has been caught out again over everything. It is the current personification of verity.

  On the hairpin-bend road obstinately tied to the legs of him who assesses today as he will assess tomorrow, on the light bearings of carelessness, a thousand steps each day espouse the steps of the vigil. They have come already and they will come again without being invited. Each one has passed that way, going from his joy to his sorrow. It is a little refuge with an enormous gas-jet. You put one foot in front of the other and then you are gone.

  The walls cover themselves with pictures, the holidays sift themselves with bouquets, the mirror covers itself with vapour. As many light-houses on a stream and the stream is in the vessel of the river. Two eyes the same, for the use of your single face – two eyes covered with the same ants. Green is almost uniformly spread over the plants, the wind follows the birds, no one risks seeing the stones die. The result is not a broken-in animal but an animal trainer. Bah! It is the indefeasible order of a ceremony already, on the whole, so very gorgeous! It is the repeating pistol which makes flowers appear in vases and smoke in the mouth.

  Love, in the end, is well satisfied with seeing night clearly.

  When you are no longer there, your perfume is there to search for me. I only come to get back the oracle of your weakness. My hand in your hand is so little like your hand in mine. Unhappiness, you see, unhappiness itself profits from being known. I let you share my lot, you cannot not be there, you are the proof that I exist. And everything conforms with that life which I have made to assure myself of you.

  What are you thinking about?

  Nothing.

  André Breton and Paul Eluard (1930), translated from the French by David Gascoyne

  Sunflowers Are Already Black Gunpowder

  Grass seed floated in this evening’s soup. One thousand islands.

  The great majority of marksmen, for some unknown reason, have long, unkempt moustaches. On thinking about that it must provide ‘some form of resistance.’ (Smiles.)

  Try writing ‘we’ a number of times and it looks like children skipping. WeWeWeWeWeWeWe.

  She (she being a domestic pet) has gentle creases in the corners of her eyes like Chekhov. Instead of a ribbon I shall give her a bone.

  An autumn butterfly has settled on the towel I put inside the glass.

  – Sunflowers are already black gunpowder.

  Anzai Fuye (1929), translated from the Japanese by Dennis Keene

  The Dog’s Retort

  I dreamed I was walking in a narrow lane, my clothes in rags, like a beggar.

  A dog started barking behind me.

  I looked back contemptuously and shouted at him:

  ‘Bah! Shut up! Lick-spittle cur!’

  He sniggered.

  ‘Oh no!’ he said. ‘I’m not up to man in that respect.’

  ‘What!’ Quite outraged, I felt that this was the supreme insult.

  ‘I’m ashamed to say I still don’t know how to distinguish between copper and silver, between silk and cloth, between officials and common citizens, between masters and their slaves, between …’

  I turned and fled.

  ‘Wait a bit! Let us talk some more …’ From behind he urged me loudly to stay.

  But I ran straight on as fast as I could, until I had run right out of my dream and was back in my own bed.

  April 23, 1925

  Lu Xun (1927), translated from the Chinese by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang

  Snow

  The rain of the south has never congealed into icy, glittering snowflakes. Men who have seen the world consider this humdrum; does the rain, too, think it unfortunate? The snow south of the Yangtze is extremely moist and pretty, like the first indefinable intimation of spring, or the bloom of a young girl radiant with health. In the snowy wilderness are blood-red camellias, pale, white plum blossom tinged with green, and the golden, bell-shaped flowers of the winter plum; while beneath the snow lurk cold green weeds. Butterflies there are certainly none, and whether or no bees come to gather honey from the camellias and plum blossom I cannot clearly remember. But before my eyes I can see the wintry flowers in the snowy wilderness, with bees flying busily to and fro – I can hear their humming and droning.

  Seven or eight children, who have gathered to build a snow Buddha, are breathing on their little red fingers, frozen like crimson shoots of ginger. When they are not successful, somebody’s father comes to help. The Buddha is higher than the children; and though it is only a pear-shaped mass which might be a gourd or might be a Buddha, it is beautifully white and dazzling. Held together by its own moisture, the whole figure glitters and sparkles. The children use fruit stones for its eyes, and steal rouge from some mother’s vanity-case for its lips. So now it is really a respectable Buddha. With gleaming eyes and scarlet lips, it sits on the snowy ground.

  Some children come to visit it the next day. Clapping their hands before it, they nod their heads and laugh. The Buddha just sits there alone. A fine day melts its skin, but a cold night gives it another coat of ice, till it looks like opaque crystal. Then a series of fine days makes it unrecognisable, and the rouge on its lips disappears.

  But the snowflakes that fall in the north remain to the last like powder or sand and never bond together, whether scattered on roofs, the ground or the withered grass. The warmth from the stoves inside has melted some of the snow on the roofs. As for the rest, when a whirlwind springs up under a clear sky, it flies up wildly, glittering in the sunlight like thick mist around a flame, revolving and rising till it fills the sky, and the whole sky glitters as it whirls and rises.

  On the boundless wilderness, under heaven’s chilly vault, this glittering, spiralling wraith is the ghost of rain …

  Yes, it is lonely snow, dead rain, the ghost of rain.

  January 18, 1925

  Lu Xun (1927), translated from the Chinese by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang

  Song

  Under the bronze leaves a colt was foaled. Came such an one who laid bitter fruit in our hands. Stranger. Who passed. Here comes news of other provinces to my liking. – ‘Hail, daughter! under the tallest tree of the year.’

  * * *

  For the Sun enters the sign of the Lion and the Stranger has laid his finger on the mouth of the Dead. Stranger. Who laughed. And tells us of an herb
. O from the provinces blow many winds. What ease to our way! how the trumpet rejoices my heart and the feather revels in the scandal of the wing! ‘My Soul, great girl, you had your ways which are not ours.’

  * * *

  Under the bronze leaves a colt had been foaled. Came such an one who laid this bitter fruit in our hands. Stranger. Who passed. Out of the bronze tree comes a great bruit of voices. Roses and bitumen, gift of song, thunder and fluting in the rooms. O what ease in our ways, how many tales to the year, and by the roads of all the earth the Stranger to his ways … ‘Hail, daughter! robed in the loveliest robe of the year.’

  St-John Perse (1924), translated from the French by T. S. Eliot

  Hell Is Graduated

  When I was employed at Cooperative Fashions, in spite of the dark, ugly old maid, I tried to steal some garters. I was pursued down the superb staircases, not for the theft, but for my laziness at work and for my hatred of the innocent finery. Descend, you are pursued. The staircases are less beautiful in the offices than in the part open to the public. The staircases are less beautiful in the ‘service’ quarters than in the offices. The staircases are still less beautiful in the cellar! But what can I say of the marsh where I arrived? What can I say of the laughter? Of the animals that brushed by me, and of the whisperings of unseen creatures? Water gave place to fire, to fear, to unconsciousness; when I came to myself I was in the hands of silent and nameless surgeons.

  Max Jacob (1924), translated from the French by Elizabeth Bishop

  A Day

  That afternoon comes back to my mind. From time to time the downpour grows feeble; then, suddenly, a gust of wind whips it to fury.

  The room has darkened and I have no mind for work. I take in my hand the setar and play on it a melody of the rains.

  From the next room she comes to the doorway and retires again. Then she enters silently and sits down. In her hand she has a piece of needlework – with bowed head she begins to sew. After a while she ceases and, through the window, looks out into the trees shrouded in mist.

  The rain has stopped and my playing has ended. She rises and retires to do her hair.

  Nothing has happened; just that one afternoon made up of rain and music, darkness and indolence.

  History is littered with tales of emperors, accounts of wars and revolutions. But the tiny incident of one afternoon remains hidden like a rare jewel in the casket of Time. Only two people have heard it.

  Rabindranath Tagore (1921), translated from the Bengali by Aurobindo Bose

  from Kora in Hell: Improvisations

  1

  Why go further? One might conceivably rectify the rhythm, study all out and arrive at the perfection of a tiger lily or a china doorknob. One might lift all out of the ruck, be a worthy successor to – the man in the moon. Instead of breaking the back of a willing phrase why not try to follow the wheel through – approach death at a walk, take in all the scenery. There’s as much reason one way as the other and then – one never knows – perhaps we’ll bring back Eurydice – this time!

  Between two contending forces there may at all times arrive that moment when the stress is equal on both sides so that with a great pushing a great stability results giving a picture of perfect rest. And so it may be that once upon the way the end drives back upon the beginning and a stoppage will occur. At such a time the poet shrinks from the doom that is calling him forgetting the delicate rhythms of perfect beauty, preferring in his mind the gross buffetings of good and evil fortune.

  2

  Ay dio! I could say so much were it not for the tunes changing, changing, darting so many ways. One step and the cart’s left you sprawling. Here’s the way! and you’re – hip bogged. And there’s blame of the light too: when eyes are humming birds who’ll tie them with a lead string? But it’s the tunes they want most, – send them skipping out at the tree tops. Whistle then! Who’d stop the leaves swarming; curving down the east in their braided jackets? Well enough – but there’s small comfort in naked branches when the heart’s not set that way.

  A man’s desire is to win his way to some hilltop. But against him seem to swarm a hundred jumping devils. These are his constant companions, these are the friendly images which he has invented out of his mind and which are inviting him to rest and to disport himself according to hidden reasons. The man being half a poet is cast down and longs to rid himself of his torment and his tormentors.

  3

  When you hang your clothes on the line you do not expect to see the line broken and them trailing in the mud. Nor would you expect to keep your hands clean by putting them in a dirty pocket. However and of course if you are a market man, fish, cheeses and the like going under your fingers every minute in the hour you would not leave off the business and expect to handle a basket of fine laces without at least mopping yourself on a towel, soiled as it may be. Then how will you expect a fine trickle of words to follow you through the intimacies of this dance without – oh, come let us walk together into the air awhile first. One must be watchman to much secret arrogance before his ways are tuned to these measures. You see there is a dip of the ground between us. You think you can leap up from your gross caresses of these creatures and at a gesture fling it all off and step out in silver to my finger tips. Ah, it is not that I do not wait for you, always! But my sweet fellow – you have broken yourself without purpose, you are – Hark! it is the music! Whence does it come? What! Out of the ground? Is it this that you have been preparing for me? Ha, goodbye, I have a rendezvous in the tips of three birch sisters. Encouragez vos musiciens! Ask them to play faster. I will return – later. Ah you are kind – and I? must dance with the wind, make my own snowflakes, whistle a contrapuntal melody to my own fugue! Huzza then, this is the dance of the blue moss bank! Huzza then, this is the mazurka of the hollow log! Huzza then, this is the dance of rain in the cold trees.

  William Carlos Williams (1920)

  Tired

  I am tired of work; I am tired of building up somebody else’s civilization.

  Let us take a rest, M’Lissy Jane.

  I will go down to the Last Chance Saloon, drink a gallon or two of gin, shoot a game or two of dice and sleep the rest of the night on one of Mike’s barrels.

  You will let the old shanty go to rot, the white people’s clothes turn to dust, and the Calvary Baptist Church sink to the bottomless pit.

  You will spend your days forgetting you married me and your nights hunting the warm gin Mike serves the ladies in the rear of the Last Chance Saloon.

  Throw the children into the river; civilization has given us too many. It is better to die than it is to grow up and find out that you are colored.

  Pluck the stars out of the heavens. The stars mark our destiny. The stars marked my destiny.

  I am tired of civilization.

  Fenton Johnson (1919)

  Pulmonary Tuberculosis

  The man in the room next to mine has the same complaint as I. When I wake in the night I hear him turning. And then he coughs. And I cough. And after a silence I cough. And he coughs again. This goes on for a long time. Until I feel we are like two roosters calling to each other at false dawn. From far-away hidden farms.

  Katherine Mansfield (1918)

  Hysteria

  As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: ‘If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden …’ I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.

  T. S. Eliot (1917)
/>   Spring Day

  Bath

  The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air.

  The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.

  Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot, and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots.

  The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.

  Breakfast Table

  In the fresh-washed sunlight, the breakfast table is decked and white. It offers itself in flat surrender, tendering tastes, and smells, and colours, and metals, and grains, and the white cloth falls over its side, draped and wide. Wheels of white glitter in the silver coffee-pot, hot and spinning like catherine-wheels, they whirl, and twirl – and my eyes begin to smart, the little white, dazzling wheels prick them like darts. Placid and peaceful, the rolls of bread spread themselves in the sun to bask. A stack of butter-pats, pyramidal, shout orange through the white, scream, flutter, call: ‘Yellow! Yellow! Yellow!’ Coffee steam rises in a stream, clouds the silver tea-service with mist, and twists up into the sunlight, revolved, involuted, suspiring higher and higher, fluting in a thin spiral up the high blue sky. A crow flies by and croaks at the coffee steam. The day is new and fair with good smells in the air.