by Robert Lax
In Rome, when the first worker begins to make preparations to put up the massive circus tent, he removes his shirt, and in dropping it to the ground sanctifies the site. The circus tent becomes the tabernacle. But rather than the people being outside, they are now inside: a perfect portrait of the church. Rather than the priest offering a sacrifice that only he can see, the circus performers present their efforts before the whole of the people. The performer’s entrance is “within the tent, but not of it,” just as believers are supposed to be in the world but not of it. The ministry of the priest was to offer sacrifices for the sins of the people. The ministry of the performers is to refresh and refocus the people to look back at a world “whose pattern they had lost, a world before whose multiplicity their eyes had grown dim.”
In Voyage to Pescara, the time of dusk again proves to be a center point for the text. Darkness falls on the camp in “Circus at Twilight” as it does on the world. In this lyrical poem there is a sense of peace and completion. It serves the text as the last of a series of portraits in verse, and it serves the narrative by highlighting the last night in Rome.
When the circus finally arrived in Pescara, Lax parted company with the troupe rather than continue on with them up the coast to San Juliana and Rimini. Although he doesn’t say so in the text, Lax had received word from his friend Peter in Rome that two of his relations were going to be coming to visit him. Lax returned to Rome and the three of them journeyed together to other parts of Europe.
Though written around the time of the events narrated, Voyage to Pescara has not been published as a whole before.
Circus of the Sun was first published in its complete form in 1959 by Emil Antonucci through his press, Journeyman Books. Antonucci, a graphic artist, was the first one to publish Lax in book form. He did so for over a decade, not only producing beautifully designed and illustrated volumes, but also films based on Lax’s writing.
Previous to the Antonucci volume, there were two appearances of material that would become the finished Circus of the Sun. The first was in New-Story magazine in Paris (no. 4, June 1951, p. 34–36). Lax had been working for this publication while living in France. The text was published under the title “Circus of the Sun” and was said to be an “Excerpt from a novel in progress.” The piece that appeared was “The Sunset City,” but it was a longer version (almost twice as long) than the text that appeared in the Antonucci volume.
The next printed appearance was in New World Writing #13 (New York: New American Library, 1958). The piece was entitled “The Circus.” It contained about a third of the completed work but also had some extra material here and there.
The second complete edition of the text was published by Bernhard Moosbrugger of Pendo Verlag in Zurich, Switzerland. Moosbrugger was a photographer who began Pendo mainly to publish Lax’s works. The edition he produced had the English text with full translations in German and French and a partial translation in Spanish. The volume was also lavishly illustrated with circus photographs that Moosbrugger took. Pendo has since published more than a dozen Lax titles in beautiful uniform editions containing the English text with a German translation on the facing page.
In recent years the text of Circus of the Sun has appeared submerged in the Lax anthologies 33 Poems (New York: New Directions, 1987) and Love Had a Compass (New York: Grove, 1996). The present volume places this early masterwork back in the position of prominence that it deserves. In an unpublished appreciation of Lax as a poet, R. C. Kenedy stated that
Circus of the Sun is, in all probability, the finest volume of poems published by an English-speaking poet of the generation which comes in the wake of T. S. Eliot.
Mogador’s Book was mostly transcribed from a notebook now in the Lax Archives at St. Bonaventure University entitled “Afternoon at the Circus.” It was in this standard composition notebook that Lax first recorded impressions of the time he spent traveling with the Cristianis in Canada. Lax wrote this while staying at the Virgin Islands retreat of Robert Gibney and Nancy Flagg. Another visitor at the time was their mutual friend Ad Reinhardt. Lax’s reminiscences of this stay can be found in Journal ETagebuch E (Zurich: Pendo, 1996) and also in Nancy Flagg’s articles “The Beats in the Jungle” (Art International, Sept. 1977, p. 56–59) and “Reinhardt Revisiting” (Art International, Feb. 1978, p. 54–57).
Lax must have gone directly to the Islands via New York City, as he begins the journal by saying that he had to send Mogador a check to repay him for lending Lax the money for the plane fare. The journal also shows how much the circus had captivated him, for Lax records no less than three dreams he had of the circus and of Mogador in particular. Mogador’s Book was first published by Pendo Verlag in Zurich in 1992.
The material in Circus of the Sun and Mogador’s Book was written within six months but published thirty years apart. Voyage to Pescara was written in 1951 and is first seeing the light of day with the publication of the present volume. By the time that Circus of the Sun was published and the material of Mogador’s Book and Voyage to Pescara was written, Lax had already moved on in his poetic development, so it can be said that the circus materials mark the end of the early period of his writing. With the publication of New Poems (New York: Journeyman Books, 1962), “Sea & Sky” (Lugano Review, v. 1, nos. 3–4, 1965, p. 15–133), and “Black & White” (Lugano Review, v. 1, nos. 5–6, 1966, p. 35–50), Lax headed into uncharted poetic waters in which he is still sailing. As David Miller has written,
Lax is a poet whose discoveries are entirely his own and not drawn from the books of other poets; he has been from the beginning an extremely original, unprecedented innovator.
(Lugano Review, v. 2, 1975, p. 46–48)
PAUL J. SPAETH
Curator of the Lax Archives
Director of the Library
St. Bonaventure University
For further information on Robert Lax and his writings see:
David Miller and Nicholas Zurbrugg, eds., The ABCs of Robert Lax (Exeter, England: Stride Publications, 1999).
Sigrid Hauff, A Line in Three Circles: The Inner Biography of Robert Lax (München: Belleville Verlag, 1999).
CIRCUS OF THE SUN
I was set up from eternity,
and of old,
before the earth was made:
The depths were not as yet
and I was already conceived,
neither had the fountains of waters
as yet sprung out,
The mountains with their huge bulk
had not yet been established;
before the hills
I was brought forth;
He had not yet made the earth,
nor the rivers,
nor the poles of the world:
when he prepared the heavens,
I was there.
Proverbs 8:23–27
morning
Sometimes we go on a search
and do not know what we are looking for,
until we come again to our beginning.
In the beginning (in the beginning of time to say
the least) there were the compasses: whirling in
void their feet traced out beginnings and endings,
beginning and end in a single line. Wisdom danced
also in circles, for these were her kingdom: the sun
spun, worlds whirled, the seasons came round, and
all things went their rounds: but in the beginning,
beginning and end were in one.
And in the beginning was love. Love made a sphere:
all things grew within it; the sphere then encompassed
beginnings and endings, beginning and end. Love
had a compass whose whirling dance traced out a
sphere of love in the void: in the center thereof
rose a fountain.
Fields were set
for the circus,
stars for shows
before ever
elephant lumbered
or tent rose.
THE MORNING STARS
Have you seen my circus?
Have you known such a thing?
Did you get up in the early morning and see the wagons pull
into town?
Did you see them occupy the field?
Were you there when it was set up?
Did you see the cookhouse set up in dark by lantern light?
Did you see them build the fire and sit around it
smoking and talking quietly?
As the first rays of dawn came, did you see
them roll in blankets and go to sleep?
A little sleep until time came to
unroll the canvas, raise the tent,
draw and carry water for the men and animals;
were you there when the animals came forth,
the great lumbering elephants to drag the poles
and unroll the canvas?
Were you there when the morning moved over the grasses?
Were you there when the sun looked through dark bars of clouds
at the men who slept by the cookhouse fire?
Did you see the cold morning wind nip at their blankets?
Did you see the morning star twinkle in the firmament?
Have you heard their laughter around the cookhouse fire?
When the morning stars threw down their spears
and watered heaven …
Have you looked at spheres of dew on spears of grass?
Have you watched the light of a star through a world of dew?
Have you seen the morning move over the grasses?
And to each leaf the morning is present.
Were you there when we stretched out the line,
when we rolled out the sky,
when we set up the firmament?
Were you there when the morning stars
sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Morning is quiet over the field. Clouds hang over it close
and full. The song of the morning goes up from the grass;
the sun receives and returns it to clouds, bending over the
morning field, full of the song of the grass.
In a green straw Mexican hat, very gentle and shy,
Tina watches the morning. Belmonte’s child. Her hair
is brown and shining, straight. She loves to go out into
her province. Air is summer blue, full of life,
eager to carry light and color.
This is the day when the people come walking slowly
to the outskirts of town; when over the field they come to walk
in the grass where the stakes are driven: rust and dew.
They stand in the morning field, watching.
“See him drag that chain. Look how he pulls it?”
At work in loose pajamas, elephants twist their trunks around
the tent poles, lifting lightly, their faces and hides are
finely lined, maps of a land of mountains and rivers: they move
about in the tall grass,
lifting their great scalloped feet.
The men are on hand as witnesses;
“Look at the camel.”
“Moulting, I guess.”
“There must be something wrong with it.”
Inwardly she weeps.
The big stuffed mat the reapers land on sits on the field.
The weary lie on it like Romans; or sit on it upright,
pensively on edge,
like little big-headed Bagonghi.
Thinking about his teeth. “I go downtown to see the dentist,
every day, every day.”
Every day a different town.
The festivity of plumes on timothy grass,
water-filled young shoots up from the early ground aspiring,
up in the early morning playing, they are wet with water of
sky, sprinkled by clouds, standing,
overshoulder peering at light on the field;
dart of birds, and look here: walkers walking in sky water;
drops on grass, hanging colors: light of sun in many colors,
all the colors, and the drop stands on the timothy grass
wondering will I fall to earth or will I rise to heaven?
Up every day for the festival,
today is the festival of walkers, walking:
Out of all the round year today, the day of its coming.
We the innocent grasses stand on tiptoe overshouldering
each other, looking toward the circle’s center,
middle of the field where they stretch the skyworks.
Birds dart over us, pulling shadows through us.
Quietly the field waited;
she would be blessed with the wonder of creation.
Workers are arrived from another world; like visiting angels,
they speak their own language and put their questioners
off with jokes: rough trousers, blue denim shirts, flesh red
from the elements:
Their eyes look far back, and infinitely on. They penetrate
and do not appraise:
beholding all things before them with the innocence of light.
Strange visitors, when they meet
they fall to laughter,
their glances flash together like water in sunlight.
These are the ones who tug at the ropes and put up the tents;
roustabouts with chants and hammers, who drive the stakes that
hold in place the billowing firmament.
Bagonghi says, “I’ll take your suitcase until Mogador
wakes up.”
Stubby, bowlegged, he rocks from side to side, a tug in a
swell as he crosses the field,
holding the bag an inch above the ground.
He opens the wide door of the trailer, stands on tiptoe,
swings the suitcase into the dark. “It’ll be all right till
Mogador wakes up.”
He comes back, leaving the door ajar.
The ground of the field is rich and growing, but who
will eat the grass? Horses, camels, zebras.
A song rises up from the ground, herbs from the field.
Who will watch the green grass growing; who will hear
the song of earth?
Children who come to see the tent set up in the morning.
Three masts stand on a sea of canvas. Rope line loops
from one to another, drops in a gentle arc to the ground.
Bagonghi swings his hand toward the gesture in midair.
“Look! The big top!”
Who stretches forth the canopy of morning?
(Knowing the wonder to be born of her, hoping to bring forth
a son, a tree, in whose laughing and delicate shade the
children of innocence could rejoice, the field waited.)
We have seen all the days of creation in one day: this is the day of the waking dawn and all over the field the people are moving, they are coming to praise the Lord: and it is now the first day of creation. We were there on that day and we heard Him say: Let there be light. And we heard Him say: Let firmament be; and water, and dry land, herbs, creeping things, cattle and men. We were there in the beginning for we were there in the morning and we saw the rising of the tent and we have known how it was in the beginning. We have known the creation of the firmament: and of the water, and of the dry land, and of the creatures that moved in the deep, and of the creatures that moved on the land, and of the creation of men: the waking of acrobats. We have known these things from the beginning of the morning, for we woke early. We rose and came to the field.
They lie in slumber late, the acrobats,
they sleep and do not know the sun is up.
Nor does the Lord wake them,
nor do the sun’s rays touch them.
And the Lord, who has chosen them,
the Lord, who created them,
leav
es them in slumber until it is time.
Slowly, slowly, His hand upon the morning’s lyre
makes a music in their sleeping.
And they turn, and turning wonder
eyes awake to light of morning.
They rise, dismounting from their beds,
they rise and hear the light airs playing
songs of praise unto the Lord.
The circus is a song of praise,
a song of praise unto the Lord.
The acrobats, His chosen people,
rejoice forever in His love.
Mogador comes down the field.
“There he is!”
He walks the earth like a turning ball: knowing
and rejoicing in his sense of balance:
he delights in the fulcrums
and levers, teeterboards, trampolines, high wires,
swings, the nets, ropes and ring curbs of the natural
universe.
Beneath his feet the world is buoyant,
thin and alive as a bounding rope.
He stands on it poised,
a gyroscope on the rim of a glass,
sustained by the whirling of an inner wheel.
He steps through the drum of light and air, his
hand held forth.
The moment is a sphere moving with Mogador.
afternoon
ACROBAT’S SONG
Who is it for whom we now perform
cavorting on wire:
for whom does the boy
climbing the ladder
balance and whirl—
for whom,
seen or unseen
in a shield of light?