MANNERS
GINGERLY, the poets sit.
Gingerly, they spend
The adjectives of dribbling flatteries,
With here and there a laceration
Feeding on the poison of a smile.
In the home of the poet-host
That bears the slants of a commonplace,
Eagerly distributed—
The accepted lyrical note—
The poets sit.
The poets drink much wine
And tug a little at their garments,
Weighing the advantages of disrobing.
(It is necessary to call them “poets”
Since, according to custom,
Titles are generously given to the attempt.)
Sirona, cousin of the poet-host,
Munches at the feast of words.
She endeavors to convince herself
That her hunger has become an illusion.
The poets, capitulating to wine,
Leave their birds and twilights,
Their trees and cattle at evening,
And study Sirona’s body—
Their manacled hands still joined
By the last half-broken link.
Beneath her ill-fitting worship
Young Sirona fears
That the poets are wordy animals
Circled by brocaded corsets....
Sirona, if you stood on your head
Now, and waved the brave plan of your legs,
Undisturbed by cloth,
The poets would be convinced
That you were either insane or angling.
But an exceptional poet,
Never present at these parties,
Would compliment your vigour
And scoff at the vain deceptions of privacy.
Vulgarity, Sirona, is often a word
Invented by certain men to defend
Their disdain for other men, who chuckle
At the skulking tyrannies of fashion.
Few men, Sirona, dare to become
Completely vulgar, but many
Nibble at the fringes.
AN ACROBAT, A VIOLINIST, AND
A CHAMBERMAID CELEBRATE
GEOMETRY of souls.
Dispute the roundness of gesturing flesh;
Angles, and oblongs, and squares
Slip with astounding precision
Into the throes of lifted elbows;
Into the searching perpendicular
Of fingers rising to more than ten;
Into the salient straightness of lips;
Into the rock-like protest of knees.
The flesh of human beings
Is a beginner’s-lesson in mathematics.
The pliant stupidity of flesh
Mentions the bungling effort
Of a novice to understand
The concealed mathematics of the soul.
Men will tell you that an arm
Rising to the sky
Indicates strident emotion;
Reveals a scream of authority;
Expresses the longing of a red engine
Known as the heart;
Rises like a flag-pole
From which the mind signals.
Men will fail to tell you
That an arm rising to the sky
Takes a straight line of the soul
And strives to comprehend it;
That the arm is a solid tunnel
For a significance that shoots beyond it.
The squares, and angles, and oblongs of the soul,
The commencing lines of the soul
Are pestered by a debris of words.
Men shovel away the words:
Falteringly in youth;
Tamely and pompously in middle age;
Vigorously in old age.
Death takes the last shovel-full away:
Death is accommodating.
Nothing is wise except outline.
The content held by outline
Is a slave in the mass.
Men with few outlines in their minds
Try to give the outlines dignity
By moulding them into towers two inches high,
In which they sit in lonely, talkative importance.
Men with many outlines
Break them into more, and thus
Playing, come with quickened breath
To hints of spiritual contours.
Seek only the decoration;
Avoid the embryonic yelping
Of argument, and scan your patterns
For angles, oblongs, and squares of the soul.
I overheard this concentrated prelude
While listening to an acrobat, a violinist, and a chamber-maid
Celebrate the removal of their flesh.
While playing, the violinist’s upper arm
Bisected the middle of the acrobat’s head
As the latter knelt to hear,
And the chamber-maid
Stretched straight on the floor, with her forehead
Touching the tips of the violinist’s feet.
Motion knelt to receive
The counselling touch of sound,
And vigour, in a searching line,
Reclined at the feet of sound,
Buying a liquid release.
Angles of arms and straight line of bodies
Made a decoration.
The violinist’s music
Fell upon this decoration;
Erased the vague embellishment of flesh;
And came to angles, squares, and oblongs
Of the soul.