by Ray Bradbury
And Shakespeare, Pope, and Dryden, too,
And Dickens, Wycherley drum through
Beneath my window every dawn
To summon me to tread the lawn
For one more journey round the Isle
And all them with me mile on mile;
So round about from south to north
And spyglassing the Firth of Forth,
And compassing dire Scotland, Wales
To from grim ancient stocks and gaols
Fetch pensioners and poor to coasts
That must tide back the Spanish hosts.
And in Trafalgar New Year’s Eve
Will gently joy, and gently grieve …
But, here! I’m running on again.
I must be off! It looks like rain.
O son, farewell, get off the Isle,
And let me walk and think awhile;
Go south to all those Afrique lands,
To golden shores and blazing sands
And say that Henry sends his best
And all our strewn seed now is blessed
By mad King pacing here alone
To guard his proxy Stone of Scone.
Then sing some Auld Lang Syne for me
In equatorial summer sea,
And I will sing back Auld Lang Syne
And Blood and Sweat and Tears, now mine,
And be the bulldog to lost Queen
And gardener to all the green
At Blenheim where, tomorrow morn
Who knows? old Churchill is reborn
To start the wheels of Time again
And populate the Land with rain
Of people showering from the sky
To certain-sure Queen Mab won’t die.
O populations, fled away
To gift yourself with lasting day
And kept by summers that shan’t end,
I here your last live blood defend.
You go with sun. I stay with snow.
You bed with heat. I winters know.
Stay there, warm flesh, where you have flown.
Forgiving, I, mad, crowned, alone,
Keep warm thy proxy Stone of Scone.
The Syncopated Hunchbacked Man
* * *
The syncopated hunchbacked man
He moves in rhythms all his own,
The bone along his back does this to him,
He moves then to a private inner whim
A hymn to cartilage, a spine that broke
By sheer genetics in the womb, God’s hidden joke;
So balled into the world he came and soon or late
His shellcrab shoulders taught his bones to syncopate
And pat and shuffle on the street as if to fling
Him in a rigadoon of spring; he comes
And pressured is his mouth in whines and hums;
A Gloria perhaps to chromosome
That built him from cracked bricks, a cramping home
In which his soul like doll is stuffed in house
The house a caving roof, his soul crazed mouse
That hides in blood then rushes and collides
With yet more crumpled bone, a rodent mad
With gyrating, while up above? A face that’s glad.
A mask? But no. The hunchback loves the fall,
The summer, winter, spring, he takes it all,
It’s one romance;
And where his spine taught him to shuffle-tap and syncopate
Now realer dance does seize his feet
And in an ecstasy of life, goes down the street.
So Being, if even it’s hunched, finds recompense
And dearly loves June miracles immense;
For Christ Himself, who knows? once shared this lack:
Born, lived, laughed, wept, and died, with crumpled back.
If Man Is Dead, Then God Is Slain
* * *
What size is Space? A thimble!
No! outside of a Sun!
The nimble tricks of lightning,
Dichotomies lost, won;
Black holes in which, sequestered,
Great nightmares stride the beams,
Sun-spots in which gods, festered,
Give up their fractured dreams.
What is this dream of Cosmos,
What’s birthed from Panic’s plan?
A mad brave wingless bird-thing,
This beast half-grown to Man.
Born from a senseless yearning
Of molecules for form,
Birthed from a mindless burning
Of solar fire-storm—
The Universe, in needing,
Made flesh of empty space,
And with a mighty seeding
Made pygmy human race …
Which now on fires striding
Walks up the stars to live
And cry to God in hiding:
We birth ourselves! Forgive!
Then from the Cosmos breathing,
An answering word from Him:
“No, dwarf-child, self-bequeathing,
I birthed you as a whim.
I laughed you from the darkness,
I dropped you as a joke,
But, strange, small, fragile creature,
You fell but never broke!
And now I see you laughing
As if the joke were yours;
Perhaps we made each other
In some wild common cause.
So let us share a hubris,
Take common flesh as bread,
And drink each other’s laughter,
Fall from each other’s bed.
But, careful, darling monster,
Your laugh might crack your soul,
What’s yours is mine, remember,
We, separate, are Whole.”
God laughs, and Man gives answer,
Man laughs and God responds;
Then off they glide on rafters
Of stars like skating-ponds.
And which is God, which Human,
Let God now truly say:
“We fly much like each other,
We walk a common clay.
I dreamed Man into being,
He dreams Me now to stay—
Twin mirror selves of seeing,
We live Forever’s Day.
If Man should die I’d blindly
Rebirth that Beast again;
I cannot live without him.
Man dead? Then God is slain!
My Universe needs seeing,
That’s Man’s eternal task,
What is the use of being,
If God is but a mask?”
So, Man and God, conjoining,
Are One, uncelibate,
And spawn the Cosmic rivers,
In billions celebrate
No Ending or Beginning,
No crease, stitch, fold or seam;
Where God leaves off, Man’s starting
To recompense the Dream.
Behold! the Mystery stirring …
Here come the human moles!
To rise behind God’s masking
And peek out from the holes.
Thoughts on Visiting the Main Rocket Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral for the First Time
* * *
Othello’s occupations?
Here they lie—in countries where the spacemen
Flow in fire and much desire the Moon
And reach for Mars,
And teach the fiery atoms how to sing
And bring intemperate blood to God-lost lands
To warm His snow-frost lunar sands
And never ask: To Be Or Not To Be,
For here all Is and Is Again, at our behest.
Mind’s quest makes footfall here
For transfer across Space to lift Mankind.
Long blind, we catwalk breadths and heights,
Fix sights in rare Assembly shop as vast as Shakespeare’s mind
And add that Melville once drowsed here
To dream the Beast awake;
Pumped lox for blood and with one quake
Of God’s triumphant voice made rocket blast
Thus rousing lunar whale to swim in star-tides vast.
How then describe how high, how wide, how wild
This fire-fiord place?
Tape-measure Shakespeare’s brow
Night-travel nineteen light-years deep and down
Pale Hamlet’s face.
Sweet William long years dead? No, no.
Step through this labyrinth portal
Stand slaking Eden’s breath, immortal;
Where Saturn, born to new Hells, learns his lust,
Where Titan resurrected now is thrust
Across the comet-midwife light-year poet’s skull. Not dead.
The brow that knows itself and knows it knows,
The thought that birthed itself to Space
Where now Man goes.
Not dead, no, no, not dead.
Name it Canaveral/Kennedy/Stratford? More! Instead
Say: Shakespeare’s Life-Force, God’s dream,
Church-cathedral head.
Then will this solid flesh downfall, resolve itself in dew?
No! Yeast that solid flesh, resolve it to a fire
Conspire to know and build and try
For if God’s dead, then Man can surely die.
But All being One (it is! it is!)
God/Man/Ghost takes as bride
Entire Comet Universe to yoke with pride
And seed-bed Moon and mouth-breathe Mars
With child/boy/men in bright new Ra Egyptian fire-chariot cars.
Put out the light and then put out the light?
Stay. Kindle night and then rekindle night.
Othello unemployed, now reemployed
To summon racial memory from Jung and Freud
And in genetics’ marrow seek God’s Will
To find lost man and send him up the hill
Of stars to change the dreadful dates of 1984
And sum them up with shouts to make a score
Man could not dream or hope or care to do;
Make Orwell laugh in year 2002!
Grand Things to Come? Yes! Things to Come!
Cabal stands here! that towering son of Wells who saw a sea
Of wheeling orbs and sparks and cried:
Which shall it be?
Sink back to dust and tomb, to worms and grave,
Or onward to dead Mars and Mankind save?
And star-blown winds now echo endlessly:
Which shall it be, O wandering man, which shall,
Which shall it be?
Will Shakespeare dead? No, no!
This is his place I tread, his time and flight and dream
His corridors of night, his islands lost in time
His thunders, rumors, questionings of self:
To be or not to be on Saturn’s shelf.
Not lost? No, no, not lost in dust or rain
Or falling down of years.
From Yorick’s skull, God’s manifesto peers;
From graveyard dirt he shapes a striding man
To jig the stars and go where none else can.
What pulls him there in arrow flights of ships?
A birth of suns that burn from Shakespeare’s flaming lips.
Not dumb dull TV news inspires lost man
But Will who, turned in sleeps, earthquakes our plan
And answers Job whose agonies and sulks ask why
This fragile flesh is thrust forth cold to die?
Not so! says Pleiades for tongue,
Not so! Not so!
From Stratford’s fortress mind we build and go
And strutwork catwalk stars across abyss
And to small wondering seed-bed souls do promise this:
To Be is best, and Not to Be far worse.
And Will says what?
Stand here, grow tall, rehearse.
Be God-grown-Man.
Act out the Universe!
Their Names in Dust, Their Dates in Grass
* * *
The graveyard man is almost old. But, no,
Same age as I. He only seems an older twin
Because his sin, to me at least, is digging. Or—much worse:
The hearse takes not his mind.
He never thinks on death, he’s far too fond of work for that.
He wears his ancient hat askew,
His look makes windowpane of you. You are not there.
Today, tomorrow, yesterday, all one.
Because his work is never done, I sense some small resentment;
I’ve come to find the brother lost before my birth,
The grandfather I grieved when I was six;
In all this mix of rococo-baroque, where do they hide?
“Well, now, let’s see. What month? What day?”
The man trots out of sun. I follow him to find
No great charts showing sunken lands of death.
Some old notebooks make do, much gone to hair and raveling.
His earth-dark finger traveling the pages
Touches Palmer Penmanship of other years
Which names the lost whose Finder Dark has stashed them here.
I cannot name the year or hour for him. I stopped here on a whim.
Cross-country midnight on a train I thought I heard
My grandpa call again,
Thought I heard my brother laugh from flowered green.
All this now seems obscene by day.
The digger’s finger jabs and points to touch and stay
At Baby Addison, Baby Simms, Baby Jones, too much, too much!
That was a time of buried young,
Death sprinkled them like frozen seed,
He gave no heed to medicines, for there were none.
The brightest, smallest sparks of sun extinguished he;
And nameless let them fall. The 1918/1919 stones read, all about:
CHILD. SIX MONTHS. THREE MONTHS. ONE YEAR.
No first names given. These lost were barely born.
Leave them to Heaven.
The old man stops to touch my grandpa’s name,
And then a boy named Sam.
I wonder if I’m sad. I think I am.
We go to find the plot and see but space,
No stone to grace the small or large bones here,
They did consign my relatives to wind and rain
And dandelion.
Well, then, did they love less, who put no chiseled rock
To mark these lost? What would have been the cost?
No matter if they came and shameless dropped their tears
To rinse these souls in buried years.
And now here, I, kneeled down in springtime-day-turned-fall
And suddenly not large or old but young and small,
Put forth my hand to let them know
That I am here who loved them so.
I break a flower and use its stem
To write the names and dates of those who slept
And now at last have names and dates.
The hour grows late. I run. Outside the gates
I turn and, glorious God!
On distant green and lonely sod
I still can see the mark I’ve made
To light their dark-in-spring-noon shade;
Their names in dust, their dates in grass
Erased by shadow clouds that pass,
Their headstone one bright gift of mine:
A blazing summer dandelion.
Long Thoughts on Best-Sellers by Worst People
* * *
Oh, the bad that I’ve demolished, they are doing far too well,
And the bores that I have vanquished now have learned new ways to spell;
For the alphabet of tombstones, once it’s learned, can set you free,
So these nonbook, awful writers now turn up to blab at tea.
Lo, the Fascists and the Commies, Richard’s Plum
bers in a Clan,
All the jet-set hostage-killers that forever frighten man,
Clang their death-bells, shriek for banknotes, every night upon my lawn
After all my time invested to make super-sure they’d gone.
For from Hell where I had sent them now the driveling fiends return
In the vapored rains of fire where dire Savonarolas burn,
Here come Sirhan Sirhan cabals, Senate Girl-Friends whose élan
Marches Dante down the sludgeways where new novels hit the fan.
Here Mad Donkey, sad Behemoth (G.O.P. upon his flank)
Ballot-stuffers, candle-muffers of the meanest row and rank,
Here runs night-train bearing Lenin, there kind Stalin and his mob,
Here, reprinted, Adolf’s Bunker; Mayor Daley (Lyndon’s slob),
Hail, John Dean, John Mitchell, Agnew—live best-sellers in the stalls,
While more lecturing assassins fill our cities’ concert halls.
So, in death there seems much living, and in evil mostly good.
Otherwise why do these demons Watergate my neighborhood?
God, more books about young Edward sunk near Chappa-quiddick Bridge,
One more second-gunman theory on the Dallas Book-Tower ridge!
Linda Lovelace, be our teacher, Hustler Flynt now be our scribe,
Martin Bormann, Hess and Goebbels, all’s forgiven! Lead our tribe!
Orwell taught us black was whiter if you stood upon your head,
Now we know that white is blacker and what’s most alive is dead.
All kidnappers and skyjackers, get you home and write a book!
But be sure the title reads as: Heck, You Know That I’m No Crook.
Franco’s dead—Ah, God, the wonder! Look! Indira Gandhi’s gone!
But ten books about these monsters will be done and out by dawn!
So I’ll retire me to Bedlam, for my goodness is my shame,
Or I’ll hire some evil Berlitz, teach myself a smarter game,
Run with dogs and hogs and butchers, make Caligula my name;
Vote for Nixon, Mao, Castro, Idi Amin, James Earl Ray.
Buy a bedsheet, cut some eyeholes, join the Book Club KKK.
Kill Olympic sports for breakfast, burn an airport, see the sights!
Then send cables, ask for bidders, sell the film and TV rights.
Patty Hearst is ripe for sequels, flood the market, what the hell.
Since the bad that I once vanquished, still around, are doing well.
If you enjoyed Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns, check out these other great Ray Bradbury titles.