VII.
Old Actor
Any minor poet can claim
That his subject resembles music.
(“Her steps were notes of music.”
“His presence was like a song.”)
You are a long-neglected
Instrument from which the player,
With over-confident lips, blows only
A jet of dust that falls upon
The damp chagrin of his face.
Moist from the futile effort
He asks his listeners to admire
Imaginary notes.
They clap their hands, and he must retire
To the slow digesting of his lie.
Old actor, you have finished reciting Hamlet;
Your pennies are gathered; and you depart.
NEGRO CRIMINAL
From the pensive treachery of my cell
I can hear your mournful yell.
Centuries of pain are pressed
Into one unconscious jest
As your scream disrobes your soul.
The silence of your iron hole
Is hot and stolid, like a guest
Weary of seeing men undressed.
Like the silence, I listen
Because I dread the glisten
Of a hidden humour that strains
Under the stumble of all pains.
Brown and wildly clownish shape
Thrown into a cell for rape,
You contain the tortured laugh
Of a pilgrim-imbecile whose staff
Taps against a massive comedy.
Melodrama burlesques itself with free
And stony voice, and wears a row of masks
To lure the joviality of tasks.
Melodrama, you, and I,
We are merely tongues that try
To ogle a protesting dream
Into whisper, laugh, and scream.
SHORT STORY IN SONNET FORM
Loud chatter in a thousand minor lines
Was your religion, and your art was pain
Disguised by phrases of verbose disdain.
You married an old man who gave you wines
Lukewarm and pink, until your tipsy youth,
Grown weary of evading sensual lies,
Ran to idiot-Pierrot whose cries
Created that delusion known as truth.
The ache of your sincerity betrayed
His awkward falseness, and he turned away,
Grinning until your bullet found his head.
Then people claimed that you had merely paid
Insanely for a tritely sordid play.
Your lyric could not answer—it was dead.
FEMININE TALK
First Woman
Do you share the present dread
Of being sentimental?
The world has flung its boutonnière
Into the mud, and steps upon it
With elaborate gestures!
Second Woman
Sentimentality
Is the servant-girl of certain men
And the wife of others.
She scarcely ever flirts
With creative minds,
Striving also to become
Graceful and indiscreet.
First Woman
Sappho and Aristotle
Have wandered through the centuries,
Dressed in an occasional novelty—
A little twist of outward form.
They have always been ashamed
To be caught in a friendly talk.
Second Woman
When emotion and the mind
Engage in deliberate dialogue,
One hundred nightingales
And intellectuals find a common ground,
And curse the meeting of their slaves!
First Woman
The mind must only play
With polished relics of emotion,
And the heart must never lighten
Burdens of the mind.
Second Woman
I desire to be
Irrelevant and voluble,
Leaving my terse disgust for a moment.
I have met an erudite poet
With a northern hardness
Motionless beneath his youthful robes.
He shuns the quivering fluencies
Of emotion, and shifts his dominoes
Within a room of tortured angles.
But away from this creative room
He sells himself to the whims
Of his wife, a young virago
With a calculating nose.
Beneath the flagrant pose
Of his double life
Emotion and the mind
Look disconsolately at each other.
First Woman
Lyrical abandon
And mental cautiousness
Must not mingle to a magic
Glowing, yet deliberate.
Second Woman
Never spill your wine
Upon a page of mathematics.
Drink it decently
Within the usual tavern.
THE SWORD CONVERSES WITH A PHILOSOPHER
Sword
The Hindoo raises his arms
And holds them level with his shoulders
Till they become still and permanent, like horizons.
But I prefer to stumble
Into abrupt harmonies
That must ever be flung aside.
With one quick slash I cut
Lips of death upon an expressionless breast,
And a vermilion sincerity
Pardons the sophistry of flesh.
It is better to make
And leave the moments of a poem
Than to erect an ingenious pedestal
Upon which blindness solemnly squats.
Philosopher
Men’s tongues are slow, and they have made you
To avenge their hidden shame at this.
You give startling girdles to virgins,
Red beards to thieves,
And writhing necklaces to children,
Because the tongues of men are slow
And revel in your quicker rhythms.
An idiot whirls you around his head
And persuades himself that he is swift.
Imagination drenches his eyes
And he spreads himself flat on your blade.
Sword
All of your words are concentrated
Into the glittering censure of my blade!
Philosopher
Life wraps its layer of touch around one,
Like a haunting blanket
Smothering the taunting lips of a child.
Curving their fingers around your hilt
Men strive to purchase the triumph
Of an imagined escape.
I teach them plaintively to weave
Schemes of consolation
On the broad texture of their lives.
You tell them to slash the fabric,
Reaching into the black space underneath it.
You are not a symbol of cruelty.
An innocent impatience
Sharpens the comedy of your blade.
Sword
Men have only two choices—
To worship idols or mimic fireflies,
And I lend my strength to each choice,
Teaching them to abandon
The harlequin raptures of words.
Philosopher
You bring them yearning turbulence,
And I, a quick-tongued refuge.
Silence will pardon both of us.
CAPTAIN SIMMONS
An arbitrary architect
Became his mind, and planned
Cathedrals, mansions, and shops
In a room enclosed by hair.
And so a crowded town
Occupied the dwarfed miles in his head,
And along the boundary-line
That separated thought from emotion
Darkly seething slums grew up.
Owing to the lack of space
Prevailing in mental slums,
Some buildings had been forced
Into the realm of emotion.
Within these structures half-breeds lived—
Creatures whose inconsequent
Color prevented them
From being entirely logical,
And whose reeking impulses
Were deplorably snubbed by thought.
Being from the slums of mind
These hybrids loved the dirt of arguments
Inherited from centuries of men,
Stopping now and then
To order emotional brandy.
It is unnecessary
To tell that Captain Simmons was old,
With a body like the fading dream
Of an athlete, and a face
Made womanly by age.
MORE ABOUT CAPTAIN SIMMONS
Captain Simmons’ legs
Were praying after much capering.
Legs can pray without kneeling
When they steal pity from city streets.
On Captain Simmons’ face
Wrinkled inhibitions were giving
Moth-eaten lace to that soft tolerance
Where memory and dying desire sleep without dreams.
Captain Simmons’ black suit
Fitted him loosely while his mind
Became him tightly, and the reason
Flickered in his smile.
For all of life he had hidden
Beneath a loose generosity
In order to escape the fact
That certain of his thoughts
Were supplied with tights and slyness,
And his smile was a lit candle held
For a moment uncertainly over this situation.
If one mentioned that Captain Simmons
Was possessed by the plight of eyes
Like pinched chicaneries of fate,
Above a face of visual penuries,
One would only hide his essential parts
Beneath the futility of explanation.
CAPTAIN SIMMONS’ WIFE
She moved in a calculating trot,
Relinquishing hairsbreadths of her life
With each step, and gathering
Atoms of humour and melancholy
Into one last excuse for existence.
It is true that she was playing
Housewife to her thoughts and emotions.
Her intangible household had attained
A weak and exquisite indirectness,
And she fiddled with its meager neatness;
Protected them as they stooped
Over the knitting of remorse;
Fed them platters of minced scandal
And mildly censured the relish with which they ate;
Persuaded them that they could dream best
When they were uncomfortable;
Swept out bedrooms for fear
That the talkative candour of her dislikes
Might falter in the presence of dust;
And clinked the silver on side-boards
In an effort to convince herself
That she was still robustly mercenary.
Again, she scanned the spots
On a bridal-gown and planned,
As she had done for years
To send it to an imaginary cleaner.