Selected Poems
Page 14
—his mind a red stone carved to be
endless flight .
Love that is a stone endlessly in flight,
so long as stone shall last bearing
the chisel’s stroke .
and is lost and covered
with ash, falls from an undermined bank
and— begins churring!
AND DOES, the stone after the life!
The stone lives, the flesh dies
—we know nothing of death.
—boot long
window-eyes that front the whole head,
Red stone! as if
a light still clung in them .
Love
combating sleep
______________
the sleep
piecemeal
Shortly after midnight, August 20, 1878, special officer Good-ridge, when, in front of the Franklin House, heard a strange squealing noise down towards Ellison Street. Running to see what was the matter, he found a cat at bay under the water table at Clark’s hardware store on the corner, confronting a strange black animal too small to be a cat and entirely too large for a rat. The officer ran up to the spot and the animal got in under the grating of the cellar window, from which it frequently poked its head with a lightning rapidity. Mr. Goodridge made several strikes at it with his club but was unable to hit it. Then officer Keyes came along and as soon as he saw it, he said it was a mink, which confirmed the theory that Mr. Goodridge had already formed. Both tried for a while to hit it with their clubs but were unable to do so, when finally officer Goodridge drew his pistol and fired a shot at the animal. The shot evidently missed its mark, but the noise and powder so frightened the little joker that it jumped out into the street, and made down into Ellison Street at a wonderful gait, closely followed by the two officers. The mink finally disappeared down a cellar window under the grocery store below Spanger-macher’s lager beer saloon, and that was the last seen of it. The cellar was examined again in the morning, but nothing further could be discovered of the little critter that had caused so much fun.
Without invention nothing is well spaced,
unless the mind change, unless
the stars are new measured, according
to their relative positions, the
line will not change, the necessity
will not matriculate: unless there is
a new mind there cannot be a new
line, the old will go on
repeating itself with recurring
deadliness: without invention
nothing lies under the witch-hazel
bush, the alder does not grow from among
the hummocks margining the all
but spent channel of the old swale,
the small foot-prints
of the mice under the overhanging
tufts of the bunch-grass will not
appear: without invention the line
will never again take on its ancient
divisions when the word, a supple word,
lived in it, crumbled now to chalk.
Under the bush they lie protected
from the offending sun—
11 o’clock
They seem to talk
—a park, devoted to pleasure : devoted to . grasshoppers
3 colored girls, of age! stroll by
—their color flagrant,
their voices vagrant
their laughter wild, flagellant, dissociated
from the fixed scene .
But the white girl, her head
upon an arm, a butt between her fingers
lies under the bush . .
Semi-naked, facing her, a sunshade
over his eyes,
he talks with her
—the jalopy half hid
behind them in the trees—
I bought a new bathing suit, just
pants and a brassier :
the breasts and
the pudenda covered—beneath
the sun in frank vulgarity.
Minds beaten thin
by waste—among
the working classes SOME sort
of breakdown
has occurred. Semi-roused
they lie upon their blanket
face to face,
mottled by the shadows of the leaves
upon them, unannoyed,
at least here unchallenged.
Not undignified. . .
talking, flagrant beyond all talk
in perfect domesticity—
And having bathed
and having eaten (a few
sandwiches)
their pitiful thoughts do meet
in the flesh—surrounded
by churring loves! Gay wings
to bear them (in sleep)
—their thoughts alight,
away
. . among the grass
Walking—
across the old swale—a dry wave in the ground
tho’ marked still by the line of Indian alders
. . they (the Indians) would weave
in and out, unseen, among them along the stream
. come out whooping between the log
house and men working the field, cut them
off! they having left their arms in the block-
house, and—without defense—carry them away
in captivity. One old man .
Forget it! for God’s sake, Cut
out that stuff .
Walking—
he rejoins the path and sees, on a treeless
knoll—the red path choking it—
a stone wall, a sort of circular
redoubt against the sky, barren and
unoccupied. Mount. Why not?
A chipmunk,
with tail erect, scampers among the stones.
(Thus the mind grows, up flinty pinnacles)
but as he leans, in his stride,
at sight of a flint arrow-head
(it is not)
—there
in the distance, to the north, appear
to him the chronic hills
Well, so they are.
He stops short:
Who’s here?
To a stone bench, to which she’s leashed,
within the wall a man in tweeds—a pipe hooked in his jaw—is combing out a new-washed Collie bitch. The deliberate comb-strokes part the long hair—even her face he combs though her legs tremble slightly—until it lies, as he designs, like ripples in white sand giving off its clean-dog odor. The floor, stone slabs, she stands patiently before his caresses in that bare “sea chamber”
to the right
from this vantage, the observation tower
in the middle distance stands up prominently
from its pubic grove
DEAR B. Please excuse me for not having told you this when I was over to your house. I had no courage to answer your questions so I’ll write it. Your dog is going to have puppies although I prayed she would be okey. It wasn’t that she was left alone as she never was but I used to let her out at dinner time while I hung up my clothes. At the time, it was on a Thursday, my mother-in-law had some sheets and table cloths out on the end of the line. I figured the dogs wouldn’t come as long as I was there and none came thru my yard or near the apartment. He must have come between your hedge and the house. Every few seconds I would run to the end of the line or peck under the sheets to see if Musty was alright. She was until I looked a minute too late. I took sticks and stones after the dog but he wouldn’t beat it. George gave me plenty of hell and I started praying that I had frightened the other dog so much that nothing had happened. I know you’ll be cursing like a son-of-a-gun and probably won’t ever speak to me again for not having told you. Don’t think I haven’t been worrying about Musty. She’s occupied my mind every day since that awful event. You won’t think so highly of me now and feel like protecting me. Instead I’ll bet you could kill …
And still the picnick
ers come on, now
early afternoon, and scatter through the
trees over the fenced-in acres .
Voices!
multiple and inarticulate . voices
clattering loudly to the sun, to
the clouds. Voices!
assaulting the air gaily from all sides.
—among which the ear strains to catch
the movement of one voice among the rest
—a reed-like voice
of peculiar accent
Thus she finds what peace there is, reclines,
before his approach, stroked
by their clambering feet—for pleasure
It is all for
pleasure . their feet . aimlessly
wandering
The “great beast” come to sun himself
as he may
. . their dreams mingling,
aloof
Let us be reasonable!
Sunday in the park,
limited by the escarpment, eastward; to
the west abutting on the old road: recreation
with a view! the binoculars chained
to anchored stanchions along the east wall—
beyond which, a hawk
soars!
—a trumpet sounds fitfully.
Stand at the rampart (use a metronome
if your ear is deficient, one made in Hungary
if you prefer)
and look away north by east where the church
spires still spend their wits against
the sky to the ball-park
in the hollow with its minute figures running
—beyond the gap where the river
plunges into the narrow gorge, unseen
—and the imagination soars, as a voice
beckons, a thundrous voice, endless
—as sleep: the voice
that has ineluctably called them—
that unmoving roar!
churches and factories
(at a price)
together, summoned them from the pit .
—his voice, one among many (unheard)
moving under all.
The mountain quivers.
Time! Count! Sever and mark time!
So during the early afternoon, from place
to place he moves,
his voice mingling with other voices
—the voice in his voice
opening his old throat, blowing out his lips,
kindling his mind (more
than his mind will kindle)
—following the hikers.
At last he comes to the idlers’ favorite
haunts, the picturesque summit, where
the blue-stone (rust-red where exposed)
has been faulted at various levels
(ferns rife among the stones)
into rough terraces and partly closed in
dens of sweet grass, the ground gently sloping.
Loiterers in groups straggle
over the bare rock-table—scratched by their
boot-nails more than the glacier scratched
them—walking indifferent through
each other’s privacy .
—in any case,
the center of movement, the core of gaiety.
Here a young man, perhaps sixteen,
is sitting with his back to the rock among
some ferns playing a guitar, dead pan .
The rest are eating and drinking.
The big guy
in the black hat is too full to move
but Mary
is up!
Come on! Wassa ma’? You got
broken leg?
It is this air!
the air of the Midi
and the old cultures intoxicates them:
present!
—lifts one arm holding the cymbals
of her thoughts, cocks her old head
and dances! raising her skirts:
La la la la!
What a bunch of bums! Afraid somebody see
you?
Blah!
Escrementi!
—she spits.
Look a’ me, Grandma! Everybody too damn
lazy.
This is the old, the very old, old upon old,
the undying: even to the minute gestures,
the hand holding the cup, the wine
spilling, the arm stained by it:
Remember
the peon in the lost
Eisenstein film drinking
from a wine-skin with the abandon
of a horse drinking
so that it slopped down his chin?
down his neck, dribbling
over his shirt-front and down
onto his pants—laughing, toothless?
Heavenly man!
—the leg raised, verisimilitude .
even to the coarse contours of the leg, the
bovine touch! The leer, the cave of it,
the female of it facing the male, the satyr—
(Priapus!)
with that lonely implication, goatherd
and goat, fertility, the attack, drunk,
cleansed .
Rejected. Even the film
suppressed : but . persistent
The picnickers laugh on the rocks celebrating
the varied Sunday of their loves with
its declining light—
Walking—
look down (from a ledge) into this grassy
den
(somewhat removed from the traffic)
above whose brows
a moon! where she lies sweating at his side:
She stirs, distraught,
against him—wounded (drunk), moves
against him (a lump) desiring,
against him, bored .
flagrantly bored and sleeping, a
beer bottle still grasped spear-like
in his hand .
while the small, sleepless boys, who
have climbed the columnar rocks
overhanging the pair (where they lie
overt upon the grass, besieged—
careless in their narrow cell under
the crowd’s feet) stare down,
from history!
at them, puzzled and in the sexless
light (of childhood) bored equally,
go charging off .
There where
the movement throbs openly
and you can hear the Evangelist shouting!
—moving nearer
she—lean as a goat—leans
her lean belly to the man’s backside
toying with the clips of his
suspenders .
—to which he adds his useless voice:
until there moves in his sleep
a music that is whole, unequivocal (in
his sleep, sweating in his sleep—laboring
against sleep, agasp!)
—and does not waken.
Sees, alive (asleep)
—the fall’s roar entering
his sleep (to be fulfilled)
reborn
in his sleep—scattered over the mountain
severally .
—by which he woos her, severally.
And the amnesic crowd (the scattered),
called about— strains
to catch the movement of one voice .
hears,
Pleasure! Pleasure!
—feels,
half dismayed, the afternoon of complex
voices its own—
and is relieved
(relived)
A cop is directing traffic
across the main road up
a little wooded slope toward
the conveniences:
oaks, choke-cherry,
dogwoods, white and green, iron-wood :
humped roots matted into the shallow soil
—mostly gone: rock out-croppings
polished by the feet of the picnickers:
sweetbarked sassafras .
leaning from the rancid grease:
deformity—
—to be deciphered (a horn, a trumpet!)
an elucidation by multiplicity,
a corrosion, a parasitic curd, a clarion
for belief, to be good dogs :
NO DOGS ALLOWED AT LARGE IN THIS PARK
. . .
The descent beckons
as the ascent beckoned
Memory is a kind
of accomplishment
a sort of renewal
even
an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new
places
inhabited by hordes
heretofore unrealized,
of new kinds—
since their movements
are towards new objectives
(even though formerly they were abandoned)
No defeat is made up entirely of defeat—since
the world it opens is always a place
formerly
unsuspected. A
world lost,
a world unsuspected
beckons to new places
and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory
of whiteness .
With evening, love wakens
though its shadows
which are alive by reason
of the sun shining—
grow sleepy now and drop away
from desire .
Love without shadows stirs now
beginning to waken
as night
advances.
The descent
made up of despairs
and without accomplishment
realizes a new awakening :
which is a reversal
of despair.
For what we cannot accomplish, what
is denied to love,
what we have lost in the anticipation—
a descent follows,
endless and indestructible .
. . .
On this most voluptuous night of the year
the term of the moon is yellow with no light
the air’s soft, the night bird has
only one note, the cherry tree in bloom
makes a blur on the woods, its perfume
no more than half guessed moves in the mind.
No insect is yet awake, leaves are few.
In the arching trees there is no sleep.