by Robert Lax
swing-move seems to
culminate the whole turn
to greet the crowd, proclaim
a modest triumph and
before it falls and you leap
with a slow scissors from
the horse (it seems bowed
with gratitude) arched
like a rain of mercy, a
blessing on the moment.
And then
you smile.
When your hand goes out (like) that;
Where do you feel it?
Is it something in the head,
in the whole body,
in the hand?
Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do know what you mean. But it
is hard to say. When the hand goes
out that way, the muscles don’t
lead it, and neither does the mind.
The flesh doesn’t lead the spirit
nor the spirit the flesh. It is a
kind of wedding of the spirit
and flesh.”
(He had
said it before,
the first day I came
“It is like a wind
or a dark cloud
that surrounds you
and you are in it,
and it belongs to you
and it gives you the power
to do these things”)
“It is all a feeling;
knowing when to
turn your head
to the right
or the left.
Knowing how it should feel
so it will have
(beautiful movement).
I almost think
I could do the somersault
better with my eyes closed,
not looking down at the horse
to see where I land.
I know where he should be
and I should be.
It is (all a matter of feeling
how it should be)”
Actually the audience doesn’t have
much to do with it
We talked about the fact that
it wasn’t the danger,
it wasn’t the skill,
it wasn’t the applause
that made the act what it was.
It was principally the grace;
the bringing into being,
for a moment,
the beautiful thing,
the somersault,
the leap,
the entrechat on horseback.
The skill,
of course, has something to do
with it. It is pleasant
to know you can do anything
so difficult. It is good when you
have mastered it, and you are
really in competition with yourself.
“When we make a mistake in
the ring we are very angry. The
audience doesn’t know, but we
know.”
But it is a pleasure
to do anything
so difficult
and do it
gracefully.
Then we talked about talking.
It was good, Mogador said,
to talk thus
“Whatever is withheld is lost.
Whatever we give away,
whatever we throw away,
what we disburden ourselves of
is profit to us.
We keep giving things away,
throwing them out
like old chairs out of a house;
keep destroying
until
we can destroy
no more.”
“Because what is left
is indestructible”
I said.
We were driving down a
dirt road (now due east)
toward the 2 o’clock
rising sun.
I lit a cigarette
and handed it to
Mogador.
Man,
with his
specialized eye,
and
specialized hand,
and
foot
& brain
surveys the earth
from his upright position
and finds
that all that moves & breathes
obeys
or
could obey him.
Order the earth then, man,
for earth’s own good
& for thy good.
This seems
to be
the advice
of those
who study.
Order the earth
for its own good,
and thus fulfill
in loving
thy duty
and
thy life.
Mogador,
I still haven’t gotten to say the thing
I want to say about you and the whole
family. It is that, to a greater degree than
almost anyone I know, you are what you
are. You are an acrobat in a family of
acrobats. And you have arrived at that
generation in the family which is most to be
desired, the time of ripeness, the moment
of fullest awareness of function and responsibility
of producing beauty, songs of
praise.
You wanted to call this book “Unfolded
Grace.” You said that early in the morning
when we were both too tired to talk more,
and you pointed out that it meant a
lot of things. Unfolded Grace: the
acrobat in somersault unfolding,
landing lightly on horseback; the
family in its generations unfolding, and
arriving at the same moment, those
same moments of unfolding grace.
Why talk about the somersault,
the leap and landing as such a
great thing. It is great and small.
It is a high achievement for man &
no achievement at all for god or angel.
It is proud and humble. It represents
graceful victory over so many obstacles;
the most elegant solution of so many
problems. And yet like the blossoming
of the smallest flower or the highest palm,
it is a very little thing, and very
great.
Think, Mogador, of the freedom, in a
world of bondage, a world expelled
from Eden; the freedom of the priest,
the artist, and the acrobat. In a
world of men condemned to earn their
bread by the sweat of their brows, the
liberty of those who,
like the lilies of the field, live by
playing. For playing is like Wisdom before
the face of the Lord. Their play is
praise. Their praise is prayer. This
play, like the ritual gestures of the
priest, is characterized by grace;
Heavenly grace unfolding, flowering
and reflected in the physical grace
of the player.
I had a friend, a Hindu monk named
Bramachari, whose monastery
near Calcutta was called Sri Angan,
which he translated as “The Playground of the Lord.”
That is the key to the whole matter,
the monks playing joyously and decorously
before the Lord, praise the Lord. The
playground, though sown with tares,
is a reflection of Eden. I think there
can be a “Circus of the Lord.”
For we are all wanderers in the
earth, and pilgrims. We have no
permanent habitat here. The migration
of people for foraging & exploiting can
become, with grace, in (the latte
r days)
a traveling circus. Our tabernacle must
in its nature be a temporary tabernacle.
We are wanderers in the earth, but
only a few of us in each generation
have discovered the life of charity, the
living from day to day, receiving
our gifts gratefully through grace,
and rendering them, multiplied
through grace, to the giver. That
is the meaning of your expansive, outward
arching gesture of the arm in
the landing; the graceful rendering,
the gratitude and giving.
After
his
act
the
juggler
crossed
the
road
quietly
lightly
in
slim
white
suit:
a
moving
pillar
a
path
of
light
in
the
darkness.
VOYAGE TO PESCARA
Never touched earth—once in my life—
lived in a dream, always, until
the circus began to come
toward Rome …
Whirling (in Peter’s jeep) near the ancient Forum,
we saw the signs (first one, then another)
and said: We will go and take pictures;
the life of a clown;
a day at the circus.
It will come in two weeks.
For two weeks I thought about the circus.
The day it arrived I was first on the field (Circus Maximus).
Soon after came the men with a truckload of sawdust
to spread in the ring.
Each day, on Peter’s roof, I would write about the circus.
And when I had written
would go back
and look again.
Yesterday the circus pulled into town and I went to watch it. I walked over to the Circus Maximus and saw the small red car with the awning in front of it, and stood there and looked at the table under the awning, and saw the folded posters for the circus. I rounded the trailer and looked in the window; nobody in there, but coffeepots were on the stove. There were children playing on the field; young boys playing a game like soccer. I started to walk away when around the bend came a big truck with three men: a dark fat hairy man driving, a dark young sharp-nosed mustached man sitting beside him, on the back of the truck a blond young man, slim, tanned, with muscles rippling swift as lightning. Relaxedly the blond man sat on the truck, joggling as it bumped along over the ground of the Circus Maximus. The truck was full of dirt; of earth. Why does the circus need a truck of earth? They drove a little way into the field, and then the three stood on the back and shoveled the dirt onto the ground. “Terra for the piste,” a watcher explained (soft earth to overlay the stony flat top of the Circus Maximus). They shoveled it off onto the ground. The blond man was an acrobat. He should have been dressed in tumbler’s tights. He should have finished a flying act and taken a majestic bow. They went on laying terra for the piste.
People seeing I was a stranger asked me questions about the circus:
When would it be in?
How long would it stay?
Where had it been?
Where was it going?
A car came around the bend pulling a white clean trailer, like a white neat beetle in the rear.
In the window of the low convertible,
the face of an acrobat.
Eyes alive
aimed like slingshots
alert as a rabbit’s
features clean
trim;
tendons
of the face
pulled back
like bowstrings;
well fleshed
but not
a molecule
to spare;
radiance of an
acrobat.
When they dismounted from the car
I asked them
if they were not acrobats
yes, they said,
with diffidence
(they did not want to be thought
more than they were,
nor too much less).
Their wives, young girls,
weary from travel,
nostalgic
for Paris.
Now they had set their
feet to earth
at Rome,
and would give
a show.
They said, “Look, it is coming.”
Down the street a long line of red trucks
(high as elephants,
slow as caterpillars,
lettered in gold)
came rolling;
stopped before the baths of Caracalla,
waited a long time.
Then the first truck
turned into the lot,
festooned with roustabouts.
They rode like feathers
on the van,
rakish,
calm;
watching the morning
with eyes
that looked to its center,
the center of morning,
the gyroscope
that whirls
at the center
of the
world.
The clear-eyed
rakish
people,
innocent
pirates,
angel
desperadoes;
towns,
roads
and forests
had washed through them,
trees
had plucked thin
the webs
from their eyes.
They had been washed clean.
They had been combed like wool.
Their eyes were clear and radiant
as the wool of dew.
They joggled as the trucks bumped.
They were on a flying ship.
They had sailed in and landed here.
They had moored like angels
among us.
They had brought honor
again
to the field.
They were almost weary
but they were alert
(alive)
moving always outward
from the center,
the center was
deep
deep
deep;
the center was deeper
than all their centers.
The center
was a center
all their
roots
could enter.
One had a bandanna
around his head,
and one a black felt hat.
The door of the first truck opened
and one dismounted.
His eyes were blue
as depths
of the sea;
within them
more than fire
of sun.
He wore a
stocking cap
over the live curls
of his head;
over the high
bones of his cheeks
was live
sun-textured
flesh.
He was stocky
(muscular)
moved on the land like a mariner;
took off his shirt with an arc of
his hand,
began to drop it
as a gesture
on the ground,
but seeing one
watch him,
he held and did not let
his mantle fall
(when will the mantle of his acceptance
fall like a blessing
on the field?)
The circus is here
and this cloth shirt
/>
is the first cloth to touch it;
the first
and smallest
curtain
of the
tabernacle.
Now they will stake out
the place of the ring;
the place of the tent.
Soon on its masts
the tent will rise
like a wing
obscuring the earth,
the ruins,
the dome of
St. Peter’s,
and stand alone
between
earth
and sky.
The trucks move like caterpillars
around in a ring;
the red truck marking
the area
of wonder.
Now the old Circus Maximus is alive.
It had slept very patiently
(waiting)
and now it lives again,
as though spring
had flowered.
From the tail of a plane,
where the swifts flew,
issued rectangular
light
square
particles of paper,
falling slowly,
drifting snow
above the trimmed trees
to the roofs below
and to the streets
Martedi
3 luglio
a 21.30
Grande Debutto
Zoo Circus
al Circo Massimo
Colosalle Sarraglio
And there in the tent
he had seen it being made:
the dark tent
with the flap that led
to the field beyond
the Circus Maximus
and beyond it
San Pietro’s;
three rings
and the dark blue tent,
the ribs that led down
diagonally to the ground;
the rings full
of the sifted earth
and sawdust
enough to keep the horses happy
but not to break the fall of acrobats.
Zavata, the clown-ringmaster,
in a blue-striped shirt,
directing,
harried, but bright;
there is much to put up
to arrange for an opening.
Tonight it must go well.
If tonight is good
we shall stay in Rome a month,