I do. I weep and pray and have big thoughts.
That’s what makes life seem so strange and unbelievable
to me.
You understand, eh?
SONG OF THE BUG
Now I sing to you the song of my kind that you do not
understand,
I, the tiny thing, swift dancing on a beam of light.
A fillip for your understanding!
On I go in my own way doing my own work,
Biting the tender legs of other little bugs,
Spraying my spermatozoa on the warm ovaries of female
bugs,
Undermining the walls of tall man-made towers.
There is a certain dignity in my life if you could but understand it,
You great bug that keep thinking such almighty thoughts,
Hark to the little song of my kind.
It would be well for you if you could understand that.
ASSURANCE
I have heard gods whispering in the corn and wind;
In my crude times when thoughts leaped forth,
Conquering, destroying, serving steel and iron,
I have run back to gods, to prayers and dreams.
I have dreamed much and have remembered dreams.
Now in this room, a face stands forth,
A narrow face, with many shadows hid ‘twixt brow and
chin.
The face half turns,
It tells its tale to me,
Now down the drumming way of time it goes and leaves me
shaken here.
Now woman and tall man,
My little brother who has passed my way,
Bestow a kiss on me.
Turn quick thy face, let what is old grow new.
Strike in the darkness at the horrid lie.
Laugh now and pass along.
I remember you forever for a moment’s love.
I pass to you the message in the long relay.
Are you brave — do you dare — will you try?
See, I take the death that came into the room to you.
A face remembered, a desire forgot,
A word caught drifting in the long detour,
A caress to you, a swift hail to you.
Forget — remember — dare to cling to me.
Now wait you in the darkness
Till the moment comes.
REMINISCENT SONG
Now you are dear to me,
Now my beloved.
You are the one that I did not take.
Even then,
When my body was young,
When the sweetness of you made me drunk,
You are the one that I did not take.
All that is old came into me,
That night by the bush and the stairs in the dark.
Yours were the lips I did not kiss,
Yours the love that I kept.
Long and long I have walked alone,
Past the cornfields and over the bridge,
Sucking the sweetness out of nights,
Dreaming things that have made me old
And young,
Since that night.
Faring away down a lonely road
Now you must go, my beloved,
Thinking your thoughts in the bitter nights,
You that I loved and did not take.
EVENING SONG
Back of Chicago the open fields — were you ever there?
Trains coming toward you out of the West —
Streaks of light on the long grey plains? — many a song —
Aching to sing.
I’ve got a grey and ragged brother in my breast —
That’s a fact.
Back of Chicago the open fields — were you ever there?
Trains going from you into the West —
Clouds of dust on the long grey plains.
Long trains go West, too — in the silence
Always the song —
Waiting to sing.
SONG OF THE SINGER
Drunken and staggering —
Saying all profane things —
Kissing your hands to the gods —
In the night praying and whimpering —
Aching to sing and not singing —
You —
My brother.
Beating upon it with fists —
Trying to shake it off —
Hoping and dreaming you will emerge —
My sister.
I wrap my arms about you that hunger.
In the long hair of my breast there is warmth.
I look far into the future beyond the noise and the clatter.
I will not be crushed by the iron machine.
Sing.
Dare to sing.
Kiss the mouth of song with your lips.
In the morning and in the evening
Trust to the terrible strength of indomitable song.
A New Testament
CONTENTS
A YOUNG MAN
ONE WHO LOOKED UP AT THE SKY
TESTAMENT
SONG NUMBER ONE
SONG NUMBER TWO
SONG NUMBER THREE
SONG NUMBER FOUR
THE MAN WITH THE TRUMPET
HUNGER
DEATH
THE HEALER
MAN SPEAKING TO A WOMAN
A DREAMER
MAN WALKING ALONE
TESTAMENT OF AN OLD MAN
HALF GODS
AMBITION
IN A WORKINGMAN’S ROOMING HOUSE
A MAN STANDING BY A BRIDGE
THE RED THROATED BLACK
SINGING SWAMP NEGRO
THOUGHTS OF A MAN PASSED IN A LONELY STREET AT NIGHT
CITIES
A YOUTH SPEAKING SLOWLY
ONE WHO SOUGHT KNOWLEDGE
THE MINISTER OF GOD
A PERSISTANT LOVER
THE VISIT IN THE MORNING
THE DUMB MAN
A POET
A MAN RESTING FROM LABOR
A STOIC LOVER
A YOUNG JEW
THE STORY TELLER
A THINKER
THE MAN IN THE BROWN COAT
ONE PUZZLED CONCERNING HIMSELF
THE DREAMER
A VAGRANT
YOUNG MAN IN A ROOM
NEGRO ON THE DOCKS AT MOBILE, ALA
WORD FACTORIES
MAN LYING ON A COUCH
THE RIPPER
ONE MAN WOULD NOT GROW OLD
THE NEW ENGLANDER
THE BUILDER
YOUNG MAN FILLED WITH THE FEELING OF POWER
A DYING POET
BROTHER
THE LAME ONE
TWO GLAD MEN
ANSWERING VOICE OF A SECOND GLAD MAN
CHICAGO
CHALLENGE OF THE SEA
POET
AT THE WELL
AN EMOTION
DER TAG
ANOTHER POET
A MAN AND TWO WOMEN STANDING BY A WALL FACING THE SEA
THE MAN
SECOND WOMAN
DEDICATED
TO
HORACE LIVERIGHT
They talked and their lips
said audible words but the
voices of their inner
selves went on uninterrupted.
While you can see me you shall
not have me.
While you can reach out your
hand and touch my fingers you
shall not know I am alive.
In the time of my death and
decay life shall come out of me
and flow into you.
A YOUNG MAN
AT TIMES, just for a moment I am a
Cæsar, a Napoleon, an Alexander.
I tell you it is true.
If you men who are my friends and
those of you who are acquaintances
could surrender yourselves to me for just a little while.
I tell you what — I would t
ake you
within myself and carry you around
within me as though I were a pregnant
woman.
ONE WHO LOOKED UP AT THE SKY
WOULD be strange it, by a
thought, a man could make Illinois pregnant.
It would be strange if the man who
just left my house and went tramping
off in the darkness to take a train to a
distant place came here from a far place,
came over lands and seas, to impregnate me.
There is a testament out of life to the
man who has just left my presence.
There is a testament to be made to a
woman who once held me in her arms
and who got no child.
There is a testament to be made to this house, to the
sunshine that falls on me, to these legs
of mine clad in torn trousers, to the sea
and to a city sleeping on a prairie.
TESTAMENT
CONTAINING SONGS OF one who
would be a priest
SONG NUMBER ONE
MY LIFE has passed into a coma of
waiting but I wait no more intelligently than you.
Sometimes as I
walk in the streets a look of intelligence
comes into my eyes. If I had not watched
closely the eyes of my brothers I would
be often deceived by what I see in my own eyes.
It is only by going about in secret I
can stumble into the pathway of truth
When truth has passed through the
streets of a town or has walked on wet
leaves in a forest there is a faint smell.
It is blown about by the wind. I smell
the footsteps of truth but I do not walk
in the footsteps.
I have recently thrown out of my
arms the maiden placed there by my
father — a liar.
I sit in a stone chair in a cold place.
I am beset by many pains.
Pain comes running to me out of the
bodies of men and women.
I am bred out of the lusts of the world.
I am become the abiding place of little
lustful thoughts that weave in and out
of the minds of my people.
It is only to comfort my solitude I
whisper to myself it is thus the new man
emerges. It is a thought to play with, a
ball to bounce off the wall. I have
whispered to myself that the new man
emerges out of the womb of an engine,
that his birth cry arises out of a clangor of sounds.
My thoughts are tossed back and forth on a wall. —
As you sit with me you shall be compelled to share my fate.
All you who live in the valley have had
sticks thrust into your eyes.
You are shepherds of blind sheep.
You shall sit in the chair of stone.
You shall sit in the narrow place.
You shall be pregnant.
You shall sit in the stone chair at night
and the throbbing of iron cities shall be
in the intricate veins of your being.
There are walls of stone.
There are walls faced with iron.
Between them you shall sit.
* * *
The little tricks of my mind shall
explain nothing to you. If I should dig
myself a grave and bury myself by the
light of a summer moon you would pass
like a flitting shadow along the further
side of the wall.
is, however, my desire to die in the
midst of a more intelligent pain. My
desire is as yet no more than a tiny
white worm that lives under a sidewalk
in an Illinois town.
You shall not know my desire until
you slip into my place in the chair.
The noises of the world are tremendous.
The walls of the cities throb.
There is a new song stuck in the brazen
throats of the cities.
There is an American song.
There is a song nobody knows.
There is a child born of an engine in a
bed of stone. American cities are pregnant.
You understand what I mean. My
insanity is crystal-clear to you as you sit
in the chair of stone.
To you my insanity is a white streak of moonlight
that falls across the smoke-begrimed
streets of your city.
My insanity is a slow creeping vine
clinging to a wall.
My insanity is a white worm with a fire
in its forehead.
* * *
I write only to beguile the hours of
the waiting. It is that I am whispering
about. I have put my lusts into an iron
cage at the side of the chair. I am watching
the people who file up out of the
valley to go like wavering shadows along
the face of the wall.
I sit patiently watching the small
white thing that comes out of my body
to creep on the face of the wall.
SONG NUMBER TWO
You lie in the arms of your beloved
but you are not in the arms of your
beloved. It rains. The rain pours out of a
broken water-spout into an alleyway.
There is a threshing of feet in wet
streets. The feet hurry along. They carry
the bodies of people bouncing along.
It is my constant desire to draw close to
you. My lover held me close and close
but I have escaped. We understand each
other. You also have drawn close to a
warm body and felt white arms clutched about your neck.
Your tramp soul will fly out with me
into the night, into the wind and the
rain and the cities. The minor things do
not matter to us. I am testifying to you.
Presently you shall testify to me.
Your voice that is a testament shall be
like driven raindrops in a city street.
Your voice shall be like the rustle of
leaves torn by a storm from a tree.
You shall uproot yourself.
You shall come out of the ground with
soil clinging to you.
* * *
We shall walk in many rains.
We shall whisper in many high winds.
We shall be blown like grasshoppers
over the sea in a storm.
If you assert your brotherhood to me
we shall be lost to each other. It is when
you are torn from your moorings and
drift like a rudderless ship I am able to
come near to you.
* * *
My fancy belongs to a high tossing place.
My lover’s arms wither away.
My lover has gone in distress to walk in the rain.
I have been blown out of myself to walk
in the wind and the rain.
* * *
You have come to me out of the arms of your lovers.
You have come to me out of your warm close place.
You have lost yourself in the nothingness.
You are a leaf tossed in a wind.
You are a blade of grass torn out of the ground.
SONG NUMBER THREE
My throat has not yet been choked
by the dust of cities.
My mind is a Kansas tumble-weed. It
rolls and bounces and skips on wide
prairies. The wind tosses it about. It
; scatters its seed.
My spirit has not yet been imprisoned
by walls of stone and iron.
My spirit makes its testament to you.
When I have died, when my body is dry
and has blown away, the dust shall fly into your eyes.
When you have come past me out of the
mouth of the womb there shall be no
looking back. You will not know how
that I have seen you going up and down.
Your voice that testifies emerges out of a
thickness of flesh. It grows faint with
weariness. You stagger in a drunken
stupor along streets past my eyes.
I have watched like a little red fox that
lies at the mouth of a hole.
The coyote runs in the moonlight over the plains.
The body of the brown bear that lives
on the rim of the bowl sings as he goes
out to seek food.
I am very young and very old.
I am unborn.
I lie at the mouth of the womb.
What I have understood is none of your
doing. The secret lies in the fact that
your ugliness is my own. I have not
sought you. In seeking myself I have
come upon you.
I have seen you in many places, in a hall
ringing with the voices of speakers, in a
procession going through the streets, in a
deep hole into which you had climbed
to lay the foundations of a prison.
Your lips were swollen.
I saw you with your throat cut lying in
an alleyway in a city.
An old newspaper had been drawn over your face.
In the morning you were in a tree where
you had climbed to see the face of a god.
You were running in streets at noon with
your hat in your hand.
The gods of insanity played upon you
with thin nervous fingers.
I saw you filling a barn with corn. I saw
you building machines and houses. I saw
sweat in your eyes. I heard your voice
telling little lies. You were a writer of
books. You were a man who shod horses.
You were a drunken man who sat upright in a bed to laugh at the stars.
I saw you as I lay at the mouth of the
womb in the midst of the valley.
I saw you when I sought myself.
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 321