Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson

by Sherwood Anderson

  I look dreamily out over warm stagnant

  waters. There is a reed grows out of the

  yellow mud. In the orchard at my back

  a hog grunts. An insect with brightly

  colored back and wings comes swinging

  down stream. He has lived more freely

  than the waters of a river. I go with him

  as I would go in at the door of God’s

  house if I knew the street in which God’s

  house stands, as I would go into you if

  you would leave the door open for me.

  YOUNG MAN IN A ROOM

  THERE is a woman has just passed

  by the door of my house. There was a

  barely perceptible quickening of the

  pulse of my body. “She is beautiful”, I

  thought, and said so aloud. I arose and

  went to the door to follow her with my

  eyes. At the moment when I thought her

  beautiful a wind had just come skipping

  and shouting down the street. It lifted

  the woman’s hat and she threw up her

  hand. Her hand made a lovely gesture.

  My neighbor the wind whispered the

  story of her beauty to me.

  NEGRO ON THE DOCKS AT MOBILE, ALA

  I HAVE given out of the richness of

  myself to many mornings.

  At night when the waters of the seas

  murmured I have murmured.

  I have surrendered to seas and suns

  and days and swinging ships.

  My blood is thick with surrender, it

  shall be let out through wounds and shall

  color the seas and the earth.

  My blood shall color the earth where

  the seas come for the night kiss and the

  seas shall be red.

  I have come out and I shall go back.

  I grew and I shall decay.

  have given myself to days and nights.

  I have been warm and cold. I have been

  asleep and awake.

  What you see with your eyes I do not

  see.

  What you have felt with your fingers

  creeps unasked through my sleeping body.

  I have not gone into your days and

  your poison has not come into me.

  I Open my body and drink — my soul is

  sweet.

  I have absorbed suns and seas and

  days and your poison has not come into me.

  WORD FACTORIES

  LONG AGO an old man sat on a log

  at the edge of a cornfield and talked

  to me of God.

  His words leaked away.

  They would not stay in my head.

  The rustling of the leaves of a tree near

  at hand drowned his voice.

  It ran the scale like the voice of an Oriental.

  The little drums in my ears were tickled

  by rising and diminishing waves of sound.

  I His words ran into the rows of corn

  and became rows of sounds, an army of sounds.

  They hopped and ran like little naked children.

  He did not teach me much of God but

  fragments of God’s truth clung to me.

  It fell on me like drops of warm rain

  out of a wet sky.

  Did I not learn from him that words are

  living, breathing things. They are the

  children of men that have been put to

  work in a factory. Their little bodies

  have become bent and stooped and twisted.

  The female words have found no lovers.

  They are barren.

  It was not God’s wish that it be so.

  I am one who would serve God.

  Have not my brothers the male words

  been castrated and made into eunuchs.

  I would be nurse to many distorted words.

  I would make my book a hospital for

  crippled words.

  From this day I shall wear a white

  garment and deny myself the pleasures

  of the body. The words of old time men

  have been reborn in the factory towns of

  my country. They are choked with

  smoke and drowned in waves of new

  sounds. Will you give a word nourishing

  food, carry him for a day in the warm

  body of yourself, as a maid carries with

  due modesty a babe in her belly.

  It is time for the old men to come back

  out of their sleeping stupor.

  They must sit again at the edge of the cornfields.

  The words of our lips are being destroyed.

  They are undernourished and work in the factories.

  There is a tough gnarled new word

  that has lived for a long time in a corner

  of my brain. He has set up an insanity

  there. Sometimes for days I do not dare

  go near the corner of myself where the

  word sits crouched, ready to strike, to

  spring. I start to walk boldly in at the

  door of my house and then grow afraid

  and run away.

  I run out of the present and into the past.

  I run past clanging factory towns, past

  long bridges, over lakes and seas, into

  the deserts, into the forests.

  It is by chance that I recover and

  come back into myself.

  A twisted word seeks warmth in a

  corner of my brain. His body is bent and

  his lips twitch. Something tells me he is

  the son of an old sweet word born on a

  hillside long ago in the night.

  They have brought the little twisted

  word into the West. In the service in

  which they put him the air was bad. The

  flying end of a broken wheel hit him and

  broke his back. His body twitches when

  he breathes. He lives but the air whines

  and whistles as it works its way through

  his lungs. He has escaped from his servitude and has got into my brain.

  My twisted word will live long enough

  to breed and to perpetuate his kind.

  Bring me quickly the female words

  that are barren and waiting.

  If you do not hurry, my twisted word

  will die in the corner of my brain.

  I am a breeding place for a twisted word.

  I await the time of the breeding.

  MAN LYING ON A COUCH

  I AM A TREE that grows beside the

  wall. I have been thrusting up and

  up. My body is covered with scars. My

  body is old but still I thrust upwards,

  creeping towards the top of the wall.

  It is my desire to drop blossoms and

  fruit over the wall.

  I would moisten dry lips.

  I would drop blossoms on the heads of

  children over the top of the wall.

  I would caress with falling blossoms

  the bodies of those who live on the

  farther side of the wall.

  THE RIPPER

  I CAN TELL it all quite sanely now.

  Look at these hands, how quiet.

  Look in these quiet eyes.

  I went forth out of this iron house where

  I have lived.

  Myself black with hate,

  Mothered I was at the breast of hate.

  A knife was in my hand.

  I ripped the people open as I came to

  them,

  Slashed them as a pig is slashed on

  wintry mornings in a farmhouse yard.

  Through dreary years I went,

  Crawling on my belly in the dark,

  Leaping,

  Making my knife strokes
straight and true.

  I cut them open every one.

  In each the same dead child.

  And then I came to her.

  From her a child stepped forth and took

  my hands,

  A quiet child with quiet hands.

  Look in these eyes, how quiet.

  Look at these quiet hands.

  ONE MAN WOULD NOT GROW OLD

  I HAVE wished that the wind would

  stop blowing, that birds would stop

  dead still in their flight without falling

  into the sea, that waves would stand

  ready to break upon shores without

  breaking, that all time, all impulse, all

  movement, mood, hungers, everything

  would stop and stand hushed and still

  for a moment.

  It would be wonderful to be sitting on

  a log in a forest when it happened.

  When all was still and hushed, just as

  I have described, I would get off the log

  and walk a little.

  The insects would all lie still on the

  ground or float fixed and silent in the air.

  An old frog that lives under a stone and

  that had opened his mouth to snap at a

  fly would sit gaping.

  There would be no movement in

  Chicago, in New York, down by the

  stock exchange, in towns, in factories, on

  farms.

  Away out in Colorado where a man is

  at this moment riding his horse furiously

  striving to catch a steer to be sent to

  Chicago to be butchered and eaten —

  He would stop and the steer would stop.

  You and I would walk a little way in

  the forest or on a prairie and stop. We

  would be the only moving things in the

  world and one of us would start a thought

  rolling and rolling down time, down

  space, down mind, down life too.

  I am sure I would let you do it if later

  you would be still and keep all the voices

  of your mind hushed while I did it in my turn.

  I would wait ten lives while others did

  it for my turn.

  THE NEW ENGLANDER

  I TAKE this phone up, then put it

  down and turn my back.

  My fingers grope until they find its lips.

  Here now, in this room, the spirit’s

  sword has cut down sharp and clear.

  There is as much to be found out as I

  know or you know. I can put the world

  down and can turn my back to it. I can

  cut more worlds out of my silence than

  you will ever build. I can feel the lips of

  this thing, can caress its lips. Like David

  I can tear the lion’s jaws apart.

  The roaring world in my white hands

  becomes a pool of whirling soot.

  What I want to say to you can be said

  in fifty ways. * * *

  I have stood at the door of this house

  now for many years.

  I stand here with the knob held in my

  hand.

  I have seen you pass the house, going

  forward in the street. I have seen snows

  come and icy winds. In the spring the

  green things grew for me as I have often

  said they grew for you. The birds flew

  past and in the evening darkness settled

  down.

  I have made a stone god of myself, at

  my back a house, at my hand an open

  door.

  My dream is I shall pass through you

  into the dawning of new days.

  There is my condensed, compressed,

  distilled desire, to go through doors, to

  walk in hallways, walled about by life.

  THE BUILDER

  I AM building me a house slowly —

  a house in which I may live. Day by

  day the bricks are piled in long rows

  making walls. Doors are hung and shingles

  are being cut for the roof. The air is

  heavy with the perfume of logs, new cut.

  In the morning you may see my housebuilding

  — in your street, on the corner

  there by the church — in the valley beyond

  your house where the road dips down and

  crosses a bridge. It is morning and the

  house is almost complete. Take this key.

  Go in.

  It is evening and my house is in ruins.

  Weeds and vines have grown on the

  broken walls. The rafters of the house I

  aspired to build are buried in long grass.

  They have decayed. Worms live in them.

  You will find the ruins of my house in a

  street of your town, on a country road,

  in a long street black with smoke clouds

  in a city.

  This is a day, a week, a month, a year.

  My house is not built. Would you come

  into my house. Take this key. Come in.

  My house is in the perfume of the wild

  rose that grows by a roadside, it sleeps

  in the eyes of a nigger who works on the

  docks at New Orleans. It is built on the

  foundation of a thought I have not dared

  to express. I am not subtle enough to

  build my house. The foundation walls

  of my house stand on the shivering legs

  of a little lost dog standing at the closed

  door of your house on a cold morning in

  November. The doors of my house creak

  like the voice of a guinea hen. At night

  the creaking of the doors of my house is

  like the voice of a child given over to

  sadness.

  I am building me a house slowly. Take

  this key. Go in.

  YOUNG MAN FILLED WITH THE FEELING OF POWER

  THE FIRM grip of my fingers on the

  thin paper of this cigarette is a sign

  I am very quiet now. Sometimes it is not

  so. When I am unquiet I am weak but

  when I am quiet, as I am now, I am

  very strong.

  Just now I went along one of the streets

  of my city and in at a door and came up

  here where I am now, lying on a couch

  and looking out at a window. Very

  suddenly and completely the knowledge

  has come to me that I could grip the sides

  of tall buildings as freely and as easily

  as I now grip this cigarette. I could hold

  the building between my fingers, put it to

  my lips and blow smoke through it. I

  could blow confusion away. I could blow

  a thousand people out through the roof

  of one tall building into the sky, into the

  unknown. Building after building I could

  consume as I consume the cigarettes in

  this box. I could throw the burned ends

  of cities over my shoulder and out through

  a window.

  It is not often I get in the state I am

  now in — so quiet and sure of myself.

  When the feeling comes over me there is

  a directness and simplicity in me that

  makes me love myself. To myself at such

  times I say strong sweet words.

  I am on a couch by this window and I

  could ask a woman to come here to lie

  with me or a man either for that matter.

  I could take a row of houses standing

  on a street, tip them over, empty the

  people out of them, squeeze and compress

  all the people into
one person and

  love that person.

  Do you see this hand? Suppose it held

  a knife that could cut down through all

  the falseness in you. Suppose it could

  cut down through the sides of buildings

  and houses where thousands of people

  now lie asleep.

  It would be something worth thinking

  about if the fingers of this hand gripped

  a knife that could cut and rip through

  all the ugly husks in which millions of

  lives are enclosed.

  A DYING POET

  TO EMANUEL CARNEVALI

  I FOUND you fighting in the waves of a sea.

  A soldier came to my house. His hands

  were dirty. He had made a mess and besmeared himself.

  He told me you had

  thrown yourself into the sea. He said you

  were fighting desperately to make your

  way back out of the sea.

  I went to the seashore but did not find you.

  You were walking in the streets of a city.

  Something had made you proud and arrogant.

  You spoke of a goddess who walks by

  the seashore in silence. She wears heavy

  gold wristlets and in her hair is a chain of

  finely wrought silver.

  It was your intention to go on a long

  journey. We spoke of the matter at

  length. I watched you closely and understood

  your most intimate thoughts. You

  muttered that something had been sacrificed.

  You spoke of blood that had befouled the grass in the fields.

  For a long time I was absorbed in

  watching you. Your coming cold and in

  doubt out of the sea did not interest me

  but your intention of going on a journey

  was intensely interesting.

  Your journey no doubt lasted a lifetime.

  It lasted through the lifetime of

  yourself and your father and grandfather.

  Wherever you went you bathed yourself.

  Bathing had become a passion with

  you.

  You bathed in a brook.

  You bathed yourself with prayers in a church.

  You bathed yourself with love in the

  presence of men.

  You went into a lonely place to bathe

  yourself with thoughts.

  What is the most curious fact of all is

  that you became an unreality to me. For

  a long time I had the notion that you had