Circus Days and Nights

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Circus Days and Nights Page 6

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,

 

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