REGARDING AN AMERICAN VILLAGE
I
O local mannerisms,
Coarsely woven cloaks
Thrown upon the plodding,
Emaciated days within this village,
I have no contempt or praise
To give you—no desire
To rip you off, discovering
Skin, and undulations known as sin,
And no desire to revise you
With glamorous endearments of rhyme.
Slowly purchased garments
Of cowardice, men wear you
And aid their practised shrinking
From one faint irritation
Escaping nightly from their souls.
Night makes men uncertain—
The mystery of a curtain
Different from those that hang in windows.
At night the confidence of flesh
Becomes less strong and men
Are forced to rescue it
With desperate hilarities.
Observe them now within the bland
Refuge of manufactured light.
Between the counters of a village store
They arm their flesh with feigned
Convictions brought by laughter.
Afterwards, as they roll along
The dark roads leading to their farms,
The grumbling of their souls will compete
With the neighing of horses
And the stir of leaves and weeds.
Night will lean upon them,
Teasing the sturdiness of flesh.
II
The body of Jacob Higgins—
Belated minstrel—sings and dances
On the edge of the cliff.
Once fiendish and accurate,
His greed has now become
Frivolous and unskillful,
Visualizing Death as a new
Mistress who must be received with lighter manners.
Preparing for her coming
He buys “five cents wuth of candy”
For a grandchild, and with a generous cackle
Tackles a chair beside the stove.
Another old man, like a blurred
Report of winter, seizes
The firmer meaning of a joke
About the Ree-publican partee.
Jacob, using one high laugh,
Preens himself for celestial dallying.
Old men in American villages laugh
To groom the mean, untidy habits
Of their past existences.
(They lack the stolid frankness
Of European peasants.)
Behind a wire lattice
Bob Wentworth separates the mail
With the guise of one intent
On guessing the contents of a novel.
Forty years have massed
Exhausted lies within him,
And to ease the weight he builds
In the fifty people whom he knows.
Agnes Holliday receives her letter
With that erect, affected
Indifference employed by village girls.
The words of a distant lover
Rouse the shallow somnambulist
Of her heart, and it stares
Reproachfully at an empty bed.
Oh, she had forgotten:
Sugar, corn, and loaves of bread.
The famished alertness of her reading
Curtsies to a cheap and orderly
Trance known to her mind as life.
Then an anxious, skittish youth
Behind the counter invites her
To the weekly dance at Parkertown.
Concrete pleasures drive their boots
Against the puny, fruitless dream ...
And, Thomas Ainsley, they have given you
Chained tricks for your legs and arms,
And peevish lulls that play with women’s feet.
You stroke the paper of your letter—
An incantation to the absent figure.
The night upon a country-road
Is waiting to pounce upon
The narrow games of these people.
The power of incomprehensible sounds
Will cleave their breasts and join
The smothered gossip of trees,
And every man will lengthen his steps
And crave the narcotic safety of home.
Fear is only the frantic
Annoyance of a soul,
Misinterpreted by flesh.