Toward the Gulf

by Edgar Lee Masters

THE LOOM

My brother, the god, and I grow sick
Of heaven's heights.
We plunge to the valley to hear the tick
Of days and nights.
We walk and loiter around the Loom
To see, if we may,
The Hand that smashes the beam in the gloon
To the shuttle's play;
Who grows the wool, who cards and spins,
Who clips and ties;
For the storied weave of the Gobelins,
Who draughts and dyes.
But whether you stand or walk around
You shall but hear
A murmuring life, as it were the sound
Of bees or a sphere.
No Hand is seen, but still you may feel
A pulse in the thread,
And thought in every lever and wheel
Where the shuttle sped,
Dripping the colors, as crushed and urged—
Is it cochineal?—
Shot from the shuttle, woven and merged
A tale to reveal.
Woven and wound in a bolt and dried
As it were a plan.
Closer I looked at the thread and cried
The thread is man!
Then my brother curious, strong and bold,
Tugged hard at the bolt
Of the woven life; for a length unrolled
The cryptic cloth.
He gasped for labor, blind for the moult
Of the up-winged moth.
While I saw a growth and a mad crusade
That the Loom had made;
Land and water and living things,
Till I grew afraid
For mouths and claws and devil wings,
And fangs and stings,
And tiger faces with eyes of hell
In caves and holes.
And eyes in terror and terrible
For awakened souls.
I stood above my brother, the god
Unwinding the roll.
And a tale came forth of the woven slain
Sequent and whole,
Of flint and bronze, trowel and hod,
The wheel and the plane,
The carven stone and the graven clod
Painted and baked.
And cromlechs, proving the human heart
Has always ached;
Till it puffed with blood and gave to art
The dream of the dome;
Till it broke and the blood shot up like fire
In tower and spire.
And here was the Persian, Jew and Goth
In the weave of the cloth;
Greek and Roman, Ghibelline, Guelph,
Angel and elf.
They were dyed in blood, tangled in dreams
Like a comet's streams.
And here were surfaces red and rough
In the finished stuff,
Where the knotted thread was proud and rebelled
As the shuttle proved
The fated warp and woof that held
When the shuttle moved;
And pressed the dye which ran to loss
In a deep maroon
Around an altar, oracle, cross
Or a crescent moon.
Around a face, a thought, a star
In a riot of war!
Then I said to my brother, the god, let be,
Though the thread be crushed,
And the living things in the tapestry
Be woven and hushed;
The Loom has a tale, you can see, to tell,
And a tale has told.
I love this Gobelin epical
Of scarlet and gold.
If the heart of a god may look in pride
At the wondrous weave
It is something better to Hands which guide—
I see and believe.

---

DIALOGUE AT PERKO'S

Look here, Jack:
You don't act natural. You have lost your laugh.
You haven't told me any stories. You
Just lie there half asleep. What's on your mind?
JACK
What time is it? Where is my watch?
FLORENCE
Your watch
Under your pillow! You don't think I'd take it.
Why, Jack, what talk for you.
JACK
Well, never mind,
Let's pack no ice.
FLORENCE
What's that?
JACK
No quarreling—
What is the time?
FLORENCE
Look over towards my dresser—
My clock says half-past eleven.
JACK
Listen to that—
That hurdy-gurdy's playing Holy Night,
And on this street.
FLORENCE
And why not on this street?
JACK
You may be right. It may as well be played
Where you live as in front of where I work,
Some twenty stories up. I think you're right.
FLORENCE
Say, Jack, what is the matter? Come! be gay.
Tell me some stories. Buy another bottle.
Just think you make a lot of money, Jack.
You're young and prominent. They all know you.
I hear your name all over town. I see
Your picture in the papers. What's the matter?
JACK
I've lost my job for one thing.
FLORENCE
You don't mean it!
JACK
They used me and then fired me, same as you.
If you don't make the money, out you go.
FLORENCE
Yes, out I go. But, there are other places.
JACK
On further down the street.
FLORENCE
Not yet a while.
JACK
Not yet for me, but still the question is
Whether to fight it out for up or down,
Or run from everything, be free.
FLORENCE
You can't do that.
JACK
Why not?
FLORENCE
No more than I.
Oh well perhaps, if a nice man came by
To marry me then I could get away.
It happens all the time. Last week in fact
Christ Perko married Rachel who lived here.
He's rich as cream.
JACK
What corresponds to marriage
To take me from slavery?
FLORENCE
Money is everything.
JACK
Yes, everything and nothing.
Christ Perko's rich, Christ Perko runs this house,
The madam merely acts as figure-head;
Keeps check upon the girls and on the wine.
She's just the editor, and yet I'd rather
Be editor than owner. I was editor.
My Perko was the owner of a pulp mill,
Incorporate through some multi-millionaires,
And all our lesser writers were the girls,
Like you and Rachel.
FLORENCE
But you know before
He married Rachel, he was lover to
The madam here.
JACK
The stories tally, for
The pulp mill took my first assistant editor
To wife by making him the editor.
And I was fired just as the madam here
Lost out with Perko.
FLORENCE
This is growing funny...
Ahem! I'll ask you something—
As if I were a youth and you a girl—
How were you ruined first?
JACK
The same as you:
You ran away from school. It was romance.
You thought you loved this flashy travelling man.
And I—I loved adventure, loved the truth.
I wanted to destroy the force called "They."
There is no "They"—we're all together here,
And everyone must live, Christ Perko too,
The pulp-mill, the policeman, magistrate,
The alderman, the precinct captain too,
And you the girls, myself the editor,
And all the lesser writers. Here we are
Thrown in one integrated lot. You see
There is no "They," except the terms, the thought
Which ramifies and vivifies the whole. ...
So I came to the city, went to work
Reporting for a paper. Having said
There is no "They"—I've freed myself to say
What bitter things I choose. For how they drive you,
And terrify you, mock you, ridicule you,
And call you cub and greenhorn, send you round
To courts and dirty places, make you risk
Your body and your life, and make you watch
The rules about your writing; what's tabooed,
What names are to be cursed or to be praised,
What interests, policies to be subserved,
And what to undermine. So I went through,
Until I had a desk, wrote editorials—
Now said I to myself, I'm free at last.
But no, my manager, your madam, mark you,
Kept eye on me, for he was under watch
Of some Christ Perko. So my manager
Blue penciled me when I touched certain subjects.
But, as he was a just man, loved me too.
He gave me things to write where he could let
My conscience have full scope, as you might live
In this house where you saw the man you loved,
And no one else, though living in this hell.
For I lived in a hell, who saw around me
Such lying, hatred, malice, prostitution.
And when this offer came to be an editor
Of a great magazine, I seemed to feel
My courage and my virtue given reward.
Now, I should pass on poems, and on stories,
Creations of free souls. It was not so.
The poems and the stories one could see
Were written to be sold, to please a taste,
Placate a prejudice, keep still alive
An era dying, ready for the tomb,
Already smelling. And that was not all.
Just as the madam here must make report
To Perko, so the magazine had to run
To suit the pulp mill. As the madam here,
Assistant to Christ Perko, must keep friends
With alderman, policemen, magistrates,
So I was just a wheel in a machine
To keep it running with such larger wheels,
And by them run, of policies, and politics
Of State and Nation. Here was I locked in
And given dope to keep me still lest I
Cry out and wake the copper-who's the copper
For such as I was? If he heard me cry
How could he raid the magazine? If he raided
Where was the court to take me and the rest—
That's it, where is the court?
FLORENCE
It seems to me
You're bad as I am.
JACK
I am worse than you:
I poison minds with thoughts they take as good.
I drug an era, make it foul or dull—
You only sicken bodies here and there.
But you know how it is. You have remorse,
You fight it down, hush it with sophistry.
You think about the world, about your fellows:
You see that everyone is selling self,
Little or much somehow. You feed your body,
Try to be hearty, take things as they come.
You take athletics, try to keep your strength,
As you hear music, laugh, drink wine, and smoke,
Are bathed and coifed to keep your beauty fresh.
And through it all the soul's and body's needs,
The pleasures, interests, passions of our life,
The cry that comes from somewhere: "Live, O Soul,
The time is passing," move and claim your strength.
Till you forget yourself, forget the boy
And man you were, forget the dreams you had,
The creed you wished to live by—yes, what's worse,
See dreams you had, grown tawdry, see your creed
Cracked through and crumbled like a falling house.
And then you say: What is the difference?
As you might ask what virtue is and why
Should woman keep it.
I have reached this place
Save for one truth I hold to, shall still hold to:
As long as I have breath: The man who sees not,
Or cares not for the Truth that keeps the world
From vast disintegration is a brute,
And marked for a brute's death—that is his hell.
'Twas loyalty to this truth that made me lose
My place as editor. For when they came
And tried to make me pass an article
To poison millions with, I said, "I won't,
I won't by God. I'll quit before I do."
And then they said, "You quit," and so I quit.
FLORENCE
And so you took to drink and came to me!
And that's the same as if I came to you
And used you as an editor. I am nothing
But just a poor reporter in this house—
But now I quit.
JACK
Where are you going, Florence?
FLORENCE
I'm going to a village or a farm
Where I'll get up at six instead of twelve,
Where I'll wear calico instead of silk,
And where there'll be no furnace in the house.
And where the carpet which has kept me here
And keeps you here as editor is not.
I'm going to economize my life
By freeing it of systems which grow rich
By using me, and for the privilege
Bestow these gaudy clothes and perfumed bed.
I hate you now, because I hate my life.
JACK
Wait! Wait a minute.
FLORENCE
Dinah, call a cab!

---

SIR GALAHAD

I met Hosea Job on Randolph Street
Who said to me: "I'm going for the train,
I want you with me."
And it happened then
My mind was hard, as muscles of the back
Grow hard resisting cold or shock or strain
And need the osteopath to be made supple,
To give the nerves and streams of life a chance.
Hosea Job was just the osteopath
To loose, relax my mood. And so I said
"All right"—and went.
Hosea was a man
Whom nothing touched of danger, or of harm.
His life was just a rare-bit dream, where some one
Seems like to fall before a truck or train—
Instead he walks across them. Or you see
Shadows of falling things, great buildings topple,
Pianos skid like bulls from hellish corners
And chase the oblivious fool who stands and smiles.
The buildings slant and sway like monstrous searchlights,
But never touch him. And the mad piano
Comes up to him, puts down its angry head,
Runs out a friendly tongue and licks his hand,
And lows a symphony.
By which I mean
Hosea had some money, and would sign
A bond or note for any man who asked him.
He'd rent a house and leave it, rent another,
Then rent a farm, move out from town and in.
He'd have the leases of superfluous places
Cancelled some how, was never sued for rent.
One time he had a fancy he would see
South Africa, took ship with a load of mules,
First telegraphing home from New Orleans
He'd be back in the Spring. Likewise he went
To Klondike with the rush. I think he owned
More kinds of mining stock than there were mines.
He had more quaint, peculiar men for friends
Than one could think were living. He believed
In every doctrine in its time, that promised
Salvation for the world. He took no thought
For life or for to-morrow, or for health,
Slept with his windows closed, ate what he wished.
And if he cut his finger, let it go.
I offered him peroxide once, he laughed.
And when I asked him if his soul was saved
He only said: "I see things. I lie back
And take it easy. Nothing can go wrong
In any serious sense."
So many thought
Hosea was a nut, and others thought,
That I was just a nut for liking him.
And what would any man of business say
If he knew that I didn't ask a question,
But simply went with him to take the train
That day he asked me.
And the train had gone
Five miles or so when I said: "Where you going?"
Hosea answered, and it made me start—
Hosea answered simply, "We are going
To see Sir Galahad."
It made me start
To hear Hosea say this, for I thought
He was now really off. But, I looked at him
And saw his eyes were sane.
"Sir Galahad?
Who is Sir Galahad?"
Hosea answered:
"I'm going up to see Sir Galahad,
And sound him out about re-entering
The game and run for governor again."
So then I knew he was the man our fathers
Worked with and knew and called Sir Galahad,
Now in retirement fifteen years or so.
Well, I was twenty-five when he was famous.
Sir Galahad was forty then, and now
Must be some fifty-five while I am forty.
So flashed across my thought the matter of time
And ages. So I thought of all he did:
Of how he went from faith to faith in politics
And ran for every office up to governor,
And ran for governor four times or so,
And never was elected to an office.
He drew more bills to remedy injustice,
Improve the courts, relieve the poor, reform
Administration, than the legislature
Could read, much less digest or understand.
The people beat him and the leaders flogged him.
They shut the door against his face until
He had no place to go except a farm
Among the stony hills, and there he went.
And thither we were going to see the knight,
And call him from his solitude to the fight
Against injustice, greed.
So we got off
The train at Alden, just a little village
Of fifty houses lying beneath the sprawl
Of hills and hills. And here there was a stillness
Made lonelier by an anvil ringing, by
A plow-man's voice at intervals.
Here Hosea
Engaged a horse and buggy, and we drove
And wound about a crooked road between
Great hills that stood together like the backs
Of elephants in a herd, where boulders lay
As thick as hail in places. Ruined pines
Stood like burnt matches. There was one which stuck
Against a single cloud so white it seemed
A bursted bale of cotton.
We reached the summit
And drove along past orchards, past a field
Level and green, kept like a garden, rich
Against the coming harvest. Here we met
A scarecrow man, driving a scarecrow horse
Hitched to a wobbly wagon. And we stopped,
The scarecrow stopped. The scarecrow and Hosea
Talked much of people and of farming—I
Sat listening, and I gathered from the talk,
And what Hosea told me as we drove,
That once this field so level and so green
The scarecrow owned. He had cleaned out the stumps,
And tried to farm it, failed, and lost the field,
But raged to lose it, thought he might succeed
In further time. Now having lost the field
So many years ago, could be a scarecrow,
And drive a scarecrow horse, yet laugh again
And have no care, the sorrow healed.
It seemed
The clearing of the stumps was scarce a starter
Toward a field of profit. For in truth,
The soil possessed a secret which the scarecrow
Never went deep enough to learn about.
His problem was all stumps. Not solving that,
He sold it to a farmer who out-slaved
The busiest bee, but only half succeeded.
He tried to raise potatoes, made a failure.
He planted it in beans, had half a crop.
He sowed wheat once and reaped a stack of straw.
The secret of the soil eluded him.
And here Hosea laughed: "This fellow's failure
Was just the thing that gave another man
The secret of the soil. For he had studied
The properties of soils and fertilizers.
And when he heard the field had failed to raise
Potatoes, beans and wheat, he simply said:
There are other things to raise: the question is
Whether the soil is suited to the things
He tried to raise, or whether it needs building
To raise the things he tried to raise, or whether
It must be builded up for anything.
At least he said the field is clear of stumps.
Pass on your field, he said. If I lose out
I'll pass it on. The field is his, he said
Who can make something grow.
And so this field
Of waving wheat along which we were driving
Was just the very field the scarecrow man
Had failed to master, as that other man
Had failed to master after him.
Hosea
Kept talking of this field as we drove on.
That field, he said, is economical
Of men compared with many fields. You see
It only used two men. To grub the stumps
Took all the scarecrow's strength. That other man
Ran off to Oklahoma from this field.
I have known fields that ate a dozen men
In country such as this. The field remains
And laughs and waits for some one who divines
The secret of the field. Some farmers live
To prove what can't be done, and narrow down
The guess of what is possible. It's right
A certain crop should prosper and another
Should fail, and when a farmer tries to raise
A crop before it's time, he wastes himself
And wastes the field to try.
We now were climbing
To higher hills and rockier fields. Hosea
Had fallen into silence. I was thinking
About Sir Galahad, was wondering
Which man he was, the scarecrow, or the farmer
Who didn't know the seed to sow, or whether
He might still prove the farmer raising wheat,
Now we were come to give him back the field
With all the stumps grubbed out, the secret lying
Revealed and ready for the appointed hands.
We passed an orchard growing on a knoll
And saw a barn perked on a rocky hill,
And near the barn a house. Hosea said:
"This is Sir Galahad's." We tied the horse.
And we were in the silence of the country
At mid-day on a day in June. No bird
Was singing, fowl was cackling, cow was lowing,
No dog was barking. All was summer stillness.
We crossed a back-yard past a windlass well,
Dodged under clothes lines through a place of chips,
Walked in a path along the house. I said:
"Sir Galahad is ploughing, or perhaps
Is mending fences, cutting weeds." It seemed
Too bad to come so far and not to find him.
"We'll find him," said Hosea. "Let us sit
Under that tree and wait for him."
And then
We turned the corner of the house and there
Under a tree an old man sat, his head
Bowed down upon his breast, locked fast in sleep.
And by his feet a dog half blind and fat
Lay dozing, too inert to rise and bark.
Hosea gripped my arm. "Be still" he said.
"Let's ask him where Sir Galahad is," said I.
And then Hosea whispered, "God forgive me,
I had forgotten, you too have forgotten.
The man is old, he's very old. The years
Go by unnoticed. Come! Sir Galahad
Should sleep and not be waked."
We tip-toed off
And hurried back to Alden for the train.