Chapter III

The new years pass like a quick-turned page,
And Habberton’s daughter links hands with Age.

Dusk and dawn, and new tasks are hers,
And the hot thoughts fade and remembrance blurs,
And her hate is starving and scarcely stirs.

For after the dust of twenty years
Her eyes have begun to remember tears.

The air was heavy with rain and Spring,
Still strong was William Habberton,
The black steeds made the coulters ring,
Plowing beneath a watery sun.

And at sunset Habberton stands alone,
And strains at the weight of a buried stone.

“Corn shall sprout from the stubborn clay,
For the rest has moldered with years away.”

The stones are rolled to the edge of the fen.
He turns to the stilts of the plow again.

His daughter nears where the earth lies red,
And swiftly the furrow drives ahead.

Till the sharp blade crashes through crunching bone.
And a white thing rolls where the clods are thrown.

And crackling under the leader’s shoe
Is a tarnished button, a scrap of blue.

Like icy wind his daughter spoke,
“Your plow is chained to a deadly yoke!”

Her fingers clawed within his coat.
His own knife gripped him at the throat.

“Rusty and dull, drive true, drive true!
You shall drink long for the work you do!”

She flung him at the horses’ feet.
“Lie there who dared to touch my sweet!”

The whip slashed down as she whispered low,
“And now the plow, and now the plow!”

And over him, struggling, mad and seared,
The horrible mace of the plow upreared.

... Dumb she drove to the western gate.
“Fate and the furrow have cloven straight.”

“Long to wait for the sheriff’s men.
I will go back to my youth again.”

Up to the curb she reeled and sank.
And the red knife nuzzled and tore and drank.

... A sallow moon swam over the rise ...
And the horses stamped and rolled their eyes
At the coming and going of the flies.

_Habberton’s plow.
John made it
William stayed it.
Sharp the blade it bears till now!_

THE TALL TOWN

COLLOQUY OF THE STATUES

(_The Avenue. Night Before Pershing’s Parade_)

Goddess, goddess, dream you or drowse you?
Horned Diana of Madison Square,
Bending your bow at the stars that house you
Hunt you the Hyades, way up there?

_Over my chase curves the moon-ship, cruising,
Flapping the skies like a cloud-white drake;
Cellarer Mars and his stars are bousing
Glories of light at her cruddled wake._

_Sherman, Sherman, where are you riding?
Winds atoss in your brazen hair,
Down where the buildings are giants striding,
Where are you riding, away down there?_

Ride? I would stir not for twenty stallions.
Yet, when your braggarts of planets fade,
I shall march with the young battalions,
Leading the van of the long parade!

_Steed of the Pentecost what are you thinking?
Golden charger whose eyeballs glare.
Snuffing the smoke that is wine for your drinking
What are you thinking, away down there?_

Musing, I wait till the torrented forces
Shake the black crowd to a crash of cheers
At the measured trample of Liberty’s horses,
The iron eyes of her cannoneers!

_Whose is your guerdon now, bright palm-bearer?
Courier of Valor none gainsayeth,
For the old great cause, or a new cause fairer,
Angel of Courage and Love and Death?_

Freedom’s my guerdon. Her least word spoken
Is a wind to shuffle the kings to sand,
And the chains of oppression are utterly broken
When she smites men’s hearts with her fiery hand!

Her old cause sleeps. To her new cause splendid
I carry my palm like a flag unfurled;
To the march that ends and is never ended!
To Freedom’s drums in the blood of the world!

_So was it once when my Father thundered.
So shall it be until Man is grass.
Peace, old friends, for the night is sundered,
And with morn the leaping bayonets pass!_

LUNCH-TIME ALONG BROADWAY

Twelve-thirty bells from a thousand clocks, the typewriter tacks and stops, Gorged elevators slam and fall through the floors like waterdrops, From offices hung like sea-gulls’ nests on a cliff the whirlwinds beat, The octopus-crowd comes rolling out, his tentacles crawl for meat.

He snuffles his way by restaurants where lily-voiced women feast, He pokes his muzzle through white-tiled caves, and gulps like a hungry beast, He roots into subterranean holes, he sweeps hell’s tables bare, His suckers settle and fix and drink like wasps on a bursting pear.

The wildcat quarrel of traffic soothes to a smooth rolling of tires And the waterflow sound of the feeding brute as he pads by the cooking-fires, His body shoulders the canyoned streets, his gluttonous mouths expand And he laps the fat and flesh of the earth as a cat laps milk from a hand.

Slowly the greedy claws curl back, the feelers recoil and close, The flood is setting the other way with the avalanche pound of snows, Heavy and hot as a sated bee, enormous, slower than oil, The beast comes shuffling to lair again, his lips still wet with his spoil.

THE WALKERS

(_Strike Pickets—Lower Fifth Ave._)

It is past day and its brilliance, it is not yet sumptuous night For the moon to shine on gardened roofs like a white nut peeled of its husk, The march of the ant-hill crowds below is like sand falling from a height, And the lost horns of the taxis cry hooting through the dusk.

Gray as rain in an autumn wood when the skies are pale with cloud Are the light and the street and the faces where the elephant busses roll, Dark motors shine like a seal’s wet skin, and they and their rich are proud, But the walkers are dim and aimless on a dolorous way of the soul.

I watch, and my soft, pleased body cries for the rooms with lights like flowers, For the delicate talk of women, and music’s deep-perfumed smart, And I sweat at the walkers crushed by machining, implacable hours, And in torment I turn away—but their march is over my heart.

They are helpless as drifting weed, they are stung with insane
impatience

At themselves and their lords and their hunger no toil can feed till it
sleeps.
They are racked earth hating the plow, they are dung at the roots of the
nations,
They are wheat that will not be bread and burns at the scythe that
reaps.

Ensigns of honor they bear not, their songs are ignorant clamors. I hate their joy and their fear. I am bitter afraid of pain. But the pitiful tune of their feet is trampling my soul with hammers, And I must follow them out in the desolate face of the rain.

From the silken-furnitured halls, from the golden and pleasant places To the lurching and crippled march that an idiot voice proclaims! To Man’s face suddenly made from a million poor men’s faces! And each walker arrayed with suns that are burning celestial flames! Ask not watchword nor sign—there is neither tocsin nor clarion; Only the strength of the flood, the might of the falling snow, The cry of the bitter clay to the God who devised it carrion, The purblind silence of sleep, as night to the night we flow.

8:30 A. M. ON 32ND STREET

_The wind sniffed like a happy cat
At scuttling beetle-people,
The sunshine would have roused a flat
To try and be a steeple._

_My breakfast in me warm and staunch,
Your letter in my pocket,
The world’s a coon that’s climbed a branch
And I am David Crockett._

Time hoards our lives with griping care
And barren is his bursary,
But he’ll make diamonds of the air
Upon one anniversary!

Five years ago I saw you first
And knew in every part
The flagrant and immortal thirst
Love salts into the heart.

Five years ago the Pleiad crew
Sang in their starry hive,
Because a miracle like you
Could dare to be alive!

Five years, and still, through earth’s degrees
You, like a pageant, pass;
Courageous as invading seas
And careless as the grass.

Pauper poets of rimes grown thin
Mutter their madhouse wrongs.
I have aeons to love you in,
Ages to make you songs!

Pour your rain on the bitter tree!
Harrow the soil with spears!
I shall grow you Felicity,
After a million years!

_The street-signs winked like smiles at me,
The wind pawed by enchanted!
The sun swung high for all to see
I’d stop him if I wanted!_

CHANSON AT MADISON SQUARE

You live in the Terminal Building, I
In the Metropolitan Tower.
This is what I send you every night,
A flash of red and a flash of white,
The red for our hearts and their pulse that is Delight,
The white for power.

You have hung your home with crimson lamps,
Apples swinging on a tree,
They band like a ring round that tall stone thumb,
They ladder up its sides like the spillings of a plum,
I must climb and pick them all ere our double kingdom come
Where the motors roar like sea.

You have crowned your hall with granite thorns,
Mine stands huge as steam.
It carries all Time like a watch upon its side,
And the slow hands sway like the cautious feet of Pride,
Doling out mortality to Moloch and his bride,
And to us the clear Edens of our dream.

The city lies at ease and her lazy paws of light
Claw idly up and down the sky,
She strikes peacock-Night on his phosphorescent fans,
And he shudders into jewels and his eyed and blinking vans
Shake their ocean-nurtured purple on the turrets that are Man’s,
And I love you and we cannot die.

Shut your eyes—you are tired—let the blue bed of air
Be your pillow through the hot short night.
We are children lost together in a wood turned rock.
We are gods whose eyes are Wisdom, and Olympus is our mock.
Drowse into your Paradise! I say above the clock
“_White—red—white—red—white!_”

HYMN IN COLUMBUS CIRCLE

(_After Seeing a Certain Window Display_)

Man in his secret shrine
Hallows a wealth of gods,
Black little basalt Baals
Wood-kings heard in the pine,
Josses whose jade prevails
Breaking Disaster’s rods;
Prayers have made each one shine.

Man’s is a pious race.
Once he knelt to the moss,
Ra, Astarte or Jove,
Deities great and base,
—Once his questionings clove
To the stubborn arms of the Cross
That smote all lies in the face.

Here is a new desire,
One of his latest lauds
Throned on marble and praised
With the lovely softness of fire.
Signs acclaim it amazed,
Its window-altar is hazed,
And every gazer applauds
The tremendous rubber tire.

APPLES OF EDEN

THE ETCHER

Unconsciously you sketched it in,
The supple throat, the firm, sweet chin,
The hair, wood-brown, leaf-brown unrolled
But hesitating into gold,
The face—a flying face and young ...
Lashingly deep the acid stung,
Charring my soul’s most stubborn plank,
A long way in it burned and sank.
Your tool cut sure, your tool cut deep!
It roused my rebels from their sleep!
Black Fortitude, the torture-wise,
Whose eyes can beat down lions’ eyes;
Song-happy Valor, long denied;
The stubborn sergeant men call Pride;
Humor, whose clear and mocking bells
Cleanse the sick mind like crystal wells;
Love in white wool that burnt like fire,
And trampling on abased Desire!
Their shining raiment bright as hail,
They rose and cried and were in mail;
Strong guards, impenetrable towers,
Their swords grew round your face like flowers!

You started out in careless sort,
But Kings have come into your court.
And spear-bright Princes vigil keep,
Where that your acid bit so deep.
A shifting border wholly mine
About that face you etched—a sign
That, devil-come or devil-go,
What man I am, you made me so!
You stirred the sluggard, taught the clod,
Came and were merciful and God
To the mewed hawk with blinded eyes
And flung him out across the skies!

Yet I have some of you—I hold
A portion of your sacred gold!
It was by steel and flame you taught
And, though the lesson stands cheap-bought,
A curl, a word, a face remain,
For I have bought them with my pain.
With bloody coins from hands cut through
I here claim part and lot in you!
For hells of fire, and hells of ice,
A corner of your Paradise!
You may not leave my soul unfed;
Dies it, then part of you is dead.
For every pageant of my foes
A portion of your shining goes.
You can forget the triumph-girt,
But not the silly boy you hurt.
You burned too deep, you seared too sure,
The bonds you forged are most secure,
Through splitting earth and rending sky,
We are together—you and I!

GRAND LARCENY

What have you done to me,
You, of the Helen-touch?
You with the noon-bright hair
And the voice like streams?
Day has become a cloud!
Season and order such
Shapes as a wizard air
Weaves out of dreams!

I was glad ere you came;
Now I have great unease.
You who have stol’n my soul
As you’d pluck a leaf!
Starved and wind-bitten oak,
Yours the Hesperides!
—Satan consume you whole,
Beautiful Thief!

Where have you locked it up?
Drowned it in colored pools
With your moods’ goldfish or
Swathed it in words?
It should go raggedly,
Hard from the scorn of fools!
Whippings may hurt it sore!
Where are its birds?

What—you will give it back?
Flowery your footpath then!
Songs of your grace I’ll sing
Sleepier than bees!
Hasten, oh wind-beloved!
Grant me my own again!
—What is this shining thing,
Under the trees?—

Tremulous, lucentine,
Sun-wave or heart of star—
What is this magic you
Proffer for mine?
—Closer the wonder draws—
(Those are your eyes!) But are
All paradises true
Then, oh Divine...?

You should have taken gold
For your soul’s treasury!
Not this poor kettle,
Clay to all spears.
Isn’t gold heavy, though!—
We shall rust airily!
Heavenly metal!
Years upon years!

NOVEMBER PROTHALAMION

Rubicund Autumn, red as a cardinal, clasps his hands in the wine-chill
air,
Shaking down gold from the tattered leafiness, waving his torch till the
sky’s aflare,
Stars that sparkle like steel in a swordhilt burn the black water of
night’s lagoons,
Out in the frost-rimed waste of the corn-field are yellow pumpkins
bigger than moons!

Pilfer the nightingale’s throat, my jackdaw Muse of the rebel and dark
pretends,
Steal one note from the silver babble that tells all Heaven a lark
ascends!
Stretch but a claw toward the dream-voiced pipes that Pan left
whispering under a tree!
Flute thou the tune to the rapturous dancers, let Io Hymen your cadence
be!

“Io Hymen!”, a chorus of voices sung in the temple of Love the bright, “Eros, lord of the honey and flame, we bring you guests for your hall to-night! Grant them such marriage of heart and purpose as mates the hand to the perfect sword, The lips of courage, the eyes of truth, and the body of ecstasy, Eros, Lord!

Grant that their years like rocketing gems of a necklace snapped at the
throat of a priest,

Differ from each by the color and shape, but in ardor and excellence
none are least!
Loose on them Trouble and Pain, swift leopards, to be taught and tamed
by their crystal wills!
Fling to them mountains to overcome that their feet may be glad on the
necks of the hills!

Every immortal must put on dust at a time all know or he is not God, These shall take seizin of Death together, the dream shall break in the crumbling sod. But they shall inherit the resurrection, when Death has unloosened his strangling cord! Since they have endured they shall see your face where there is but Eternity, Eros, Lord!”

Therefore, Muse of the motley garments, indolent thief of obscure
Romance,
Puff your cheeks to your penny whistle! fillip the feet of the flying
dance!
Blow out your soul in a torrent of music—even the trees are like lamps
ablaze!
This is the song of the red-leaf wedding that ended the jack-o’-lantern
days!

EXPRESSIONS NEAR THE END OF WINTER

If I but had my longing! not opals sad and rare,
For noble stones are proud things, and best befit your hair;
Not purple-buttoned waistcoats, nor sack to drink me deep,
But white, smooth sheets to lie in—oh I’d sleep, sleep, sleep!

And the corners of that bedstead should be olivewood so green,
And the gentle swan’s-down pillows should have comforted a queen;
With a canopy above me, of azure silk outspread,
Four carved evangels at my feet and magi at my head!

And no sun should creep there, and but small starlight,
And the whole room be odorous of gardens known at night;
The thick scents of evening, the attar of the rose,
Should take away my weariness both drowsily and close.

You would come on tiptoe, like the whisper of birds’ wings,
With a quite small music and some occupying things,
And draw up close a cushion, and bend a cautious ear,
And say “Now don’t disturb him—for he’s tired, poor dear!”

And then, both handfast, we would dream long days,
Till the dry world shimmered to a sleepy, happy haze.
With no cares to speak of—no silly fools to fret—
Oh my great, proud longing that I’ll never, never get!

LOST LIGHTS

“Let’s not be sentimental!”
You said, oh dear delight!
Well, you held Heaven’s rental;
And who was I to fight?
“Cool friends, alert and laughing,
And blessed by Plato’s snow.
But other wine for quaffing,
Be sentimental? No!”

I took you at your own word.
—Fool while my life shall last!
And found the “friend” a stone word,
And knew the radiance past.
The comradeship by snatches,
The love that lit my days
Went out like burnt-out matches
Before your husband’s gaze.

He strokes you with caresses
Too sugared to be sweet,
And fatly pats your tresses,
And binds your swift-winged feet;
And you’ve no thirst to slake from
The gold of each new June.
Nor ever dare to break from
Your sticky-bright cocoon.

I could have held you cleaner,
And free as clouds are free,
And shared you with nought meaner
Than sun and stars and sea.
But I’d a sense of humor
—At least you told me so—
And pride beyond all rumor!
And so I let you go.

Life breaks us—that grows plainer.
And wit declines to gall
With none of us the gainer ...
It seems a shame—that’s all!
When truth about me nears you
You’d better shut your eyes.
And you—his sugar smears you.
And the air crawls with flies.

COME BACK!

When we were not magnificent, nor heavenly, nor wise, And all our thoughts were clean and round, astonished as our eyes, Our life slid on untroubledly, as shiny-smooth as silk, And sugar-loaves from Paradise enriched our bread and milk.

But one day, in a closet where the grown-ups put some things, We found their elephantine clothes, and laid aside our wings. You gloved your arms with Common-Sense, and corseted in Pride, With starchy skirts of Knowledge stuck out yards on every side!

I laid aside Companionship for crimson Cloth-of-Pose, And stuck a blind man’s spectacles upon my foolish nose, And found a little whisky-flask of Irony or two— And we played up to each other as we’d seen our elders do!

We were Prince and sapphire Princess—though the jewels hurt your throat; We were haughtier than Pharaohs—and I sweltered in my coat; So we dared not shirk the ending, for our very ruffles’ sake! —Though a bad dream’s ice to choke you if your clothes won’t let you wake!

So, the Tragic Crown weighs heavy on that summer-shining head,

And—the scarlet of my doublet drips the wet where I have bled— And the grown-up phrases jangle, and their harps make angry noise— Helen of the angers, let us put aside these toys!

Put away your wisdom, and I will feed the vines The little drinks that eat me, and the sunset-colored wines! Come beneath the apple-bloom, beside the pinky pools, With awful maledictions on the two who were such fools!

Run, and be as darting as the sunlight through a tree! Sit, and sing a silly song of apricots with me! Innocence, oh Innocence, with whiteness on your names, Come into the crooked wood and help a child play games!

RESURRECTION

(_To J. W. A._)

The black sky scowled, abased and flat,
On streets gaunt as an alley-cat
And dry as misery or dirt—
I’d tramped them till my hot feet hurt.
Now—beaten as a beaten pup—
I hummed to keep my courage up
A stupid song I’d learned at school;
Though all the words ran back to “Fool” ...
Still, spite of all my flesh could feel,
My mind kept on its burning wheel,
Its blazing wheel of great aims lost,
And how her face was white—almost—
The day she’d spoken, kind and kind,
And left me eating night and blind;
So I slouched on till town was past
And scrubby country came at last,
Pinched as ingratitude. Across
The sky clouds towered, boss on boss
Of a black shield thrust down on earth
And spanning planets in its girth;
While white fire flickered in the South
Like a dog’s tongue about his mouth.

A few hot raindrops spat my cheek—
A cicada began to creak—
And slashing lightning like a sword
Unleashed the waters of the Lord!
Roaring and heavy, gushing clear
Through dirt and raggedness and fear,
They struck before I’d time to curse,
They soaked me like a leather purse!
Caught in the terrier mouth of rain
I had no time for thought or pain;
Dripping and running like a brook
With wetness everywhere I’d look,
Fresh-mated with the fierce keen scents
Where Spring had pitched her lilacked tents!
Almost alive I tramped the wold
Until a stick slid; and I rolled
Head over heels asprawl in wet,
... And something in me overset,
Snapped, went to pieces ... and I laughed
And laughed till men had thought me daft!
I beat my sides until I’d cry
At the dull ape that had been I;
That solemn insult to the earth!
I shook the bushes with my mirth,
And rose—and reeled with mockeries
Of silly sky and idiot trees,
Weak as a straw—but heart and head
Arisen starry from the dead!

So, staggering with laughter still,
I crossed the run and climbed the hill,
Knocked at your door and called to you,
And made you shriek with laughter too.
You dried my clothes and gave me food
And wine, to show that God was good.
And, after speech that flapped like birds,
I said you these prophetic words,
“We shall ascend Olympus yet,
Though scorpions the way beset!
And plant our banner, _Deus vult_,
Over the Tower Difficult,
The lilied banner, badged with gold—
Oh, we shall live before we’re old!
And drink the ale of Tartary
And eat the spice of Trebizond,
And battle with the serpent-sea
That roars round Alicant the fond!
And princesses with ivory crowns,
And girls in green, moon-spangled gowns
Shall aid our high assault till we
Have passed beyond the Topaz Sea;
And found the quests that made us meek,
Whose very names would burn the cheek
With worship and with ecstasy,
Those rippled names on which we cry—
Those eyes we saw a while agone—
But there’s adventure to be won!
And slit-eyed men and ring-nosed men
Shall bar our glorious way again
That proud armadas’ trampled shards
May make a new song for our bards!
For we are young—and youth is steel!
Hark! at our shattering trumpet-peal
The spaniel worlds slink in to heel!”

“_Eh bien_—the fire’s gone out,” you said
“And I’m tired, too.... Let’s go to bed!...”

FLOOD-TIDE

(_Maine Coast—1917_)

_Life went whistling a tune between the plum and the cherry, Rolling a blossom of pink like almonds under his tongue, Looked at us all as we grew, and made exceedingly merry. “Lord! how I’ll dibble and prune, when you aren’t so beautifully young!_

There was moon like a spilling of milky sap from the sky And the tree of the sky was a candle of creamy flame, Each white-fire-leaf of a star distinct; and old wind went by Hooded in dark and ashamed as it whispered some muttering name.

We were huddled up in the launch like a sleepy parcel of birds. The plunging silence engulfed us. We heard, as if we had died, The throb of the engine’s heart erase our tiptoeing words, And the slow mysterious mouth of the water against the side.

If you dripped your fingers awave, wet star-dust clung to the skin, Spangling the wax-cool hand with the pollen and seeds of dawn, And the wake, like a fish of fire, went twisting alive within The willow-dark cage of green, and in splinters of foam was gone.

Then we saw the cloudy old house, and the waters deep at its stair, Bright in an endless flood, irradiate, calm and wise, Like the milk-white body of Truth asleep in her naked hair, And the blood and strength of the Earth arose to our dazzling eyes!

Quiet, quiet and quiet, said the march of the wave beneath. Oh, immaculate shone the mind while the lotos of silence grew! And the sore heart heavy with youth was a clean blade straight in its sheath, As we drank with a matchless dream in that chrism of salt and dew!

_Death jams down on his spade in the bloom of our elvish orchard, Even the root-curls crawl at the skeleton jokes he cracks; Let’s make rhymes for a while, as our Youth goes out to be tortured! We shall remember a moon till they hew us under the axe!_

THE SONG OF COLD AND PAIN

Colder than leopards’ eyes the arc
Where all the freezing stars go round,
Black wind runs trotting to the dark,
Striking cold hoofs on the cold ground.

The body crawls, the sinews scrape,
Knotted and cramped by fingering cold;
It shrinks my flesh into the shape
I shall not break from when I’m old.

And yet my shoulders lift the air
That weighs like ice, that pours like lead,
For cold’s a thing the flesh can bear
If desperation’s in the head.

The wooden head needs other pyres
To warm alive its wooden wits!
But in this cold there are more fires
Than ever burnt a sun to bits!

Inside of cold, inside of pain,
Past each last tingle of the sense,
The flame called God ascends again
In all its raging innocence!

It is the scarlets of the white,
It is the seeing of the blind,
More furiously clear than light
It burns like snow upon the mind.

I built my house with Pain for wall,
I filled its halls with Cold for wives,
And twenty years have bade it fall
And it shall stand for twenty lives!

I hung the doors with griefs I had,
Fear was a grape I crushed to wine,
And not an angel good or bad,
Can boast such feasting as is mine!

The fire that on my hearth exults
But Pain and Cold could throw and tame
Till now I know in every pulse
The last intensity of flame!

In that excruciating joy
Have Cold and Pain my judgment writ,
Though it exalt me or destroy
I must arise and follow it!

Life is a vapor, dreaming South,
A sleepy field ’twixt stream and stream.
Death is a dream that shuts the mouth
—Until you live inside the dream.

WISDOM-TEETH

When I was a man and a very young man
I straddled the wings of Boreas!
For I was the high gods’ drinking-can,
My rhymes were their ale uproarious!

But they’ve poured out the posset of youth to cool
And I shine like an empty tankard
With a witless smile at the heavenly pool
Where the moons of desire float anchored.

The bubble of sugar I swore was love,
The purge that I knew for knowledge,
I’m bare of the lot, and the winds above
Are teaching me more than college!

The lash comes down and the yell goes up
And the flesh of the fool keeps shrinking,
But vinegar Time must scour the cup
Till it’s clean for a draught worth drinking.

Pour me the stars of the seraphim
Or the wine of God’s chastising!
All that I ask is the flooding brim
Where the tides of the heart are rising!

All that I ask is the ache of birth,
Lords of the Planet Tally,
And a girl to follow around the earth
Or the wreck of a cause to rally!

Naked dirt that came from the dirt,
Cup of your giant pleasure,
What care I how your nectars hurt?
Fill me again, full measure!

THE KINGDOM OF THE MAD

“_The progress of life is through the kingdom of the mad_....”

_Claude Gex (Warren’s translation)._

THE ORIGINAL IMPULSE

If I could lay my head upon
Your breast, where it has never lain,
And know there was an end to pain,
And feel between my clasped hands, one
Slight brown small hand, lean as a boy’s,
And hear the murmur of your voice—
Utterly peaceful, lapped around
With sleepy harmonies of sound,
Forgetful of the wings, the ruth,
The bitter-sick unrest of youth,
The causeless fight that scars the will ...
But there’s the eternal combat still!
The banner struck with darts like sleet,
Implacable before defeat,
And I must fight the bad game through!
So take these verses made for you;
Half-shadowings of the thing I meant,
Blurred visions of a clear intent,
The gems of paste that may not shine,
Romantic gilt, sardonic brine.
And when this agony is past
I shall return to you at last,
From the lost cause—the fruitless quest—
And you will smile and give me rest.
Rest ... and the peace I never knew....

Oh I shall ask great things of you!
So keep this rhyme, and we’ll not quarrel!
Perhaps, next time, I’ll bring you laurel!

LUNCH AT A CITY CLUB

(_For, though not to, D. M. C._)

The member with the face like a pale ham
Settles his stomachs in the leather chair.
The member with the mustard-colored hair
Chats with the member like a curly ram,
Then silence like the shutting of a clam,
Gulps, and slow eating, and the waiters’ stare—
Like prosperous leeches settling to their fare
The members gorge, distending as they cram.

And I am fiery ice—and a hand knocks
Inside my heart. Three hours till God comes true,
When there’s no earth or sky or time in clocks
But only hell and paradise and you.
Life bows his strings! I shout the amazing tune!
... The dullest member drops his coffee spoon.

THE KNOCKOUT

The bell clanged “Time!” again. The boxers sparred,
Creep-footed, tiger-muscled, cautious-eyed,
Love the bright pugilist with his glance enskied,
Fate swart as rock, indomitably hard.
Slashing the battle joined of bull and pard
With blows like hammerstrokes. A thick sob died
In the crowd’s throat. Fate’s poison-smile grew wide,
His mountainous fist ripped Love’s too-careless guard.

Fate smashed the reeling struggle to the ropes,
Poised for the knockout; hurled his brute attack,
—And suddenly was lying on his back—
“Nine—Ten!” the slow words came like punctured hopes—
Laughing I clapped, and winked at languid Love.
I _knew_ he had a star inside his glove!

DEVOURER OF NATIONS

“Strength shall be thrust to the Eater,
And down to the Strong One, sweet.”
Was ever a proverb neater,
A phrasing more apt, or meeter,
To fix on our Course-Completer
As we end Life’s beat?

You’ll decorate quite the scarlet
And secret hall of his tongue—
With your clasped hands marble and chilly,
And your face like a frozen lily—
For Death is a luscious varlet,
And likes maids young!

So there’s the end of it, Nelly!
Of you and your purple hat!
And I, your impotent Shelley,
With czars and pariahs smelly,
Shall tapestry well his belly,
That gray, round Rat!

ABRAHAM’S BOSOM

So the world darkened, as if ink were poured
Over a picture, clotting jammily;
And there was really nothing left to see,
And I was just beginning to feel bored
—They might have let me drive the hearse at least!
I’d love to dangle on the plumes and kick
Fat-vested mourners—when, in half a tick,
Light gurgled from the sky and filled the East.

I walked on something squashy like a tire,
Rebounding heavily where’er I trod,
Set with black plants that grew like tangled wire....
I’d just begun to look around for God,
When mountains fell, the skies gaped crimson-shot
And thunder took the earth....
A voice said “_Vot?_”

PROHIBITION

“I wouldn’t mind if it were gin!” he said,
“Good gin’s like ether, sick with pungent sweet,
And rum I never liked—not even neat!
Champagne and such stuck pins into my head.
Old port was sunlight where a ruby bled.
The silky-bright liqueurs had twinkling feet
Like gipsy children running down a street;
And beer’s as old a brother as good bread.

Still, I could give them up!” he mused and sighed
Like a poor scrawny gust of city wind,
“But it’s the precedent that’s bad! You’ll find
Things worse Hereafter ... I’d a friend who died.
And ... well, damned souls had never much to tell....
But now they’ve stopped the Lethe, down in Hell!”

MORTUARY PARLORS

The smooth, unobtrusive walls say “Hush!” in a voice of honey and meal, The refined and comforting chairs protest that sorrow may be genteel, They are all hiding the dead away, they are huddling them off to forget.... —I would rather scoop a hole in the sand till my hands ran blood and sweat, I would rather raise my friend on a pyre for the lightning to do its will, I would sooner leave my dead to the dogs—they are happy over their kill— Than to bring them here to this oily place to lie like a numbered sheaf! —This servants’ quiet can have no room for my racked and horrible grief— The windows smile with the smiles of masks, the curtains are specters walking, And Death, the obsequious gentleman, comes rubbing black gloves and talking!

TALK

New words are my desire, new verbs to scan,
Chaste paradigms that never sold themselves,
And adverbs from the leaf-talk of the elves,
With dog-faced articles, unknown to man;
Low-pattered syllables that trot like sheep
Round out my mouth and mind with holy peace,
And I have found redemption and surcease
In Babylonian nouns like bulls asleep.

Who can be hopeless saying “Bethmacoon”?
“Aleery” is an opiate for all pain.
—And I shall swim beneath the Idiot’s Moon,
And climb the crags that tower in my brain
To feel the kreeth of Morning touch my lips,
Where Ocean plays with his smaranthian ships.

NEARSIGHT

When Spruggles takes his glasses off, he sees.
Globular people strut like walking trees
Through a strange, oozy mist that melts to air
Some thirty feet before his blinking stare
And all the edgy corners of the streets
Are puffed and bulged like bottle-’scaped Afreets!
—There are no definitions. All is dim.
A yellowy underworld, where trolleys swim
Enormous as a magic, and the least
Rice-powdered shop-girl, like a vesting priest
Assumes estranged beauty, cloudy-far,
Desirous as a water-mirrored star.
—The houses are cartoons—So is his wife—
He thinks “Grotesque” would be the word for Life.

BEFORE MICHAEL’S LAST FIGHT

The lightning quivers up in Gabriel’s hand,
Whetting his sword on a bleak ridge of cloud,
And all the stars of hell are crying loud
At the bright insult of that sparking brand.
The demon-torn and devastated land
Smokes like a field of salt wild fire has plowed,
Athwart it towers Satan, thunder-browed,
Black at his side his Princely Evils stand.

After our fated triumph, some will drink,
Those who had girls will kiss the girls they had;
But I shall wander on the starry brink
And feel divine, and, beautifully sad,
Sing my one song about you to the void;
And make the angels horribly annoyed.

ALWAYS THE SONNETTEER

Though I were old and mad and poor and dumb,
And your name were a blasphemy to say
For which men came and beat me, every day,
With seven-foot bull-hide whips—yet should they come,
Red smiles upon them, since I had no tongue,
And gasp with horror ... at black ant platoons
Wheeling in ordered state to form the runes,
The hero-word I knew when I was young!

With this poor body, worn to rags and skin
By the chained stalk of the uneasy mind,
I’d take the blows and watch the fun begin;
Groping among the stars, meantime, to find
The Dipper made a letter—seen by God—
And Mars, perhaps, might serve as period.

PORTRAIT OF YOUNG LOVE

If you were with me—as you’re not, of course,
I’d taste the elegant tortures of Despair
With a slow, languid, long-refining tongue;
Puzzle for days on one particular stare,
Or if you knew a word’s peculiar force,
Or what you looked like when you were quite young.

You’d lift me heaven-high—till a word grated.
Dash me hell-deep—oh that luxurious Pit,
Fatly and well encushioned with self-pity,
Where Love’s an epicure not quickly sated!
What mournful musics wander over it,
Faint-blown from some long-lost celestial city!

Such bitter joyousness I’d have, and action,
Were you here—be no more the fool who broods
On true Adventure till he wakes her scorning—
But we’re too petty for such noble warning!
And I find just as perfect satisfaction
In analyzing these, and other moods!

TWO MORE MUSES

When this amusing planet is bereft of me,
They will depart who made my noonshine night;
The dwarfed and crippled wizard to the left of me,
And the enormous lady on my right!

The lovely largeness thinks of silver sandals,
Pale marbles swallowed up in yellow rain,
Dear ruffians dicing long beneath blurred candles,
Romance and thunder and the Spanish Main.

But, as she pours each sparkling hope before me,
His ivory eyes unstopper just a chink,
And, low remarking “too much sweet might bore me!”
He slips a painted acid in the drink,

Which I must taste, intolerably bitter,
Sauterne and quinine, saccharine and gall,
And try to please than both when death were fitter,
And never have my true desire at all!

So chained we sit—until I leave the human—
And I shall praise old Skullface, if he can
But rid me of that smooth and comely woman,
And the small, laughing, devil-twisted man!

OPERATION

(_For J. F. C. Jr._)

Bound to the polished table, arm and leg,
I lay and watched, with loud, disgusting fear,
The army of the instruments draw near,
Hook, saw, sleek scissor and distorted peg;
My eyes were like a spaniel’s when they beg,
The nurses’ purpose was so very clear
... And though I tried to bite one in the ear
She stayed as white and silent as an egg.

Time, the superb physician, drew his breath,
“I’ll just remove Youth, Health and Love,” he said,
“The rest is for Consulting-Surgeon Death.”
God how I hated that peremptory head!
As through the ether came his sickening drawl
“Now this won’t hurt.... Oh, it won’t hurt at all.”

THE TRAPEZE PERFORMER

(_For C. M._)

Fierce little bombs of gleam snap from his spangles,
Sleek flames glow softly on his silken tights,
The waiting crowd blurs to crude darks and whites
Beneath the lamps that stare like savage bangles;
Safe in a smooth and sweeping arc he dangles
And sees the tanbark tower like old heights
Before careening eyes. At last he sights
The waiting hands and sinuously untangles....

Over the sheer abyss so deadly-near
He falls, like wine to its appointed cup,
Turns like a wheel of fireworks, and is mine.
Battering hands acclaim our triumph clear.
—And steadfast muscles draw my sonnet up
To the firm iron of the fourteenth line.

EPITAPH TO BE SPOKEN

When I am very dead and rather cold,
Say merely this, “Here lies a rebel town,
Whose alleyways contained for chief renown
Gods, logwood, cassia, antelopes and gold.
Here traffickers embarked for desperate shores,
Here was a bickering of steel at times;
And fifty thousand unconvicted crimes
That shocked the souls out of my counselors.

Friend of my arrogance, city I burned,
Have peace—now you are prouder grown than Troy;
And will not bring me lions, or a flower.
Or cauterize the fools we both have spurned;
Or hasten, singing, toward a mad employ,
On two thick stilts, some thousand yards an hour.”

JUDGMENT

“He’ll let us off with fifty years!” one said.
And one, “I always knew that Bible lied!”
One who was philanthropic stood aside,
Patting his snivelling virtues on the head.
“Yes, there may be some—pain,” another wheezed.
“One rending touch to fit the soul for bliss.”
“A bare formality!” one seemed to hiss.
And every one was pink and fed and pleased.

Then thunder came, and with an earthquake sound
Shook those fat corpses from their flabby languor!
The sky was furious with immortal anger,
We miserable sinners hugged the ground:
Seeing through all the torment, saying “Yes,”
God’s quiet face, serenely merciless.

BOARDING-HOUSE HALL

First the stuffy upholstered smell of the chairs began
To puff a few sighs of dust, and the sticky-varnished
Reek of the cheap worn wood had a verse to scan
About Love and Death and Beauty, fly-spotted and tarnished.

“I never liked her at all!” said a green glass bowl,
And a whiff of anger whitened the broken plaster,
“Her eyes were too big!” cried a smell with paws like a mole.
“She was slinky,” the pinks spoke. “Thin,” creaked a broken castor.

“She was greedy. She never loved him. She powdered her nose.”
Pale-calm as a specter’s gem in the shadow-playtime,
The ghost of the perfume hid in her hair arose
And shook dark wealth from its robes and possessed the daytime.

Like a scented tree of Egypt it burgeoned above,
For a space of quiet like myrrh, for the flash of a feather....
They were still, who had seen the dead, happy face of Love ...
—And the smells of the onions trooped up the stairs together.

BLOOD BROTHERS

The blunt snouts of a dozen worms or so
Were busy at the thing that had worn clothes,
As conscientious as a lot of clowns
And quite as self-absorbed.
Beside the grave
A figure stood in armor, stood and blazed
With the pale dazzle of an April moon,
Rippling a steely silver from his wings
That trembled in their fierce desire for air;
Armed like an angel, blazoned like a king,
And proud as charging seas first seen at dawn.
The worms raised up their heads and spoke to him.
He answered like a father to his children,
Praising them all for honest, quiet work,
And pointing out new pastures.
And they bowed;
Again became a stir among corruption.
He looked upon the seethe with steady eyes
Of awful friendship.
So I left them there,
The three immortal parts of John J. Jones.

WATCHMEN

Six of us were your guards, slayers of fear,
Humor, the parti-colored, juggling knives,
Rhyme with a sonnet train of elfin wives,
Friendship, as solid-indolent as beer;
Love with his harp you thought a trifle queer,
But most amusing—if he walked in gyves.
Trust and myself made pillows of our lives.
And so you bore with us for quite a year.

You wearied. Humor twinkled to a star.
Rhyme turned a broker and began to add.
I’m sure that Friendship went entirely mad;
And Love crept stalely drunk from bar to bar.
Only remained the bald old dog, blind Trust
And I—and we shall growl till both are dust.

“LES CRUCHES CASSÉES”

Even old sofas can be reupholstered,
Covered with chintz that blinks with dragon’s eyes;
Worm-eaten chairs that tell too many lies
May yet be painted, puttied, somehow bolstered;
A rickety piano has a tuner
To plink it back to musical surprise;
And frugal housewives, strictly pennywise,
Cement burst jugs and make them healthy sooner.

But where’s the tinker-devil who will clout
Our cracked-up selves till they hold love once more?
Oh you can smooth your curlylocks, no doubt!
Look what a mess we’ve made on Life’s clean floor!
You can’t patch leaky clay. There are no cures.
And it was your fault, yours! “_No, yours!_” Yours! “_Yours!_”

P. P. C.—MADAM LIFE

All through the heavy plush of afternoon,
Your muffin-hands in your upholstered lap,
I listened to your voice like maple-sap
Trickle and whisper from its sugary spoon
Grandmother-talk, a drowning warm lagoon,
Weakling advice, slow anecdotes of pap—
And longed for fins to wave or wings to flap,
Or anything to end the visit soon.

Now the call ceases—there shall be no other—
Dowager Life, I bend above your hand.
Flung from your hothouse to the tempest-smother
Your fright calls Death and dares not understand!
Such a nice chat! Oh, taking leave is hard!
But—here’s my body for a calling-card!

POSITIVELY THE LAST PERFORMANCE!

So here’s an end—and all the truth of you
Is said that can be said—and all the lies.
Clear for the fools who never saw your eyes,
Since you insist we are not one, but two.
Well, fifty years remain to jingle through
In which we will not meet, as you surmise;
And, after that dull masque has changed its guise,
Suppose we make the sun our rendezvous?

Naked and white and beautiful you stand,
Reining your fire-maned coursers with one hand,
And birds are in your laughter as you turn
That gaze of clear perfection to my own,
And meet the petal-kiss that seems to burn,
And makes us less divisible than stone!

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.