Ta-ra-ta-ta!
The ancient horn is once more bleating
Its ephemeral plea to immortality.
Thus announced, the author of the play,
Naked, and with a scholar’s face
Ill-at-ease above the flesh,
Proclaims the purpose of the play.
His speech, long and unadorned,
Requires this concentrated translation:
“Life is a sensual hunter
And only his trophies are real.
These protesting animals
May sometimes be cleverly scrutinized
By six or seven intellects
Secreted in the noisy audience.”
Ta-ra-ta-ta!
The horn resounds, and its echoes
Are caught by an uproar of sounds—
Excited disciples within the theater.
“Down with fantasy!”
“Realism and flesh forever!”
“No more lies about the soul!”
“Give us earth and logic!”
“Murder the mountebanks and butterflies!”
“Down with metaphor and simile!”
The play is about to begin
When two unfortunate poets
Are discovered in the audience.
Morbid, grotesque, and nonchalant,
They wear involved, embroidered clothes
And smoke emotional cigarettes,
Flicking the ashes carefully
Into the rage of faces around them.
And one poet recommends
A ruffled, satirical vest for the hairy chest
Of a broad man seated near him.
With cries, in which the earthly illusion
Mounts its strident throne,
The audience expels the two poets
With ritual of feet and fists.
Unperturbed, the poets
Stoop to mend their embroidered sleeves
Tom by the frantic audience.
With this important task completed,
They stroll away.
TIME, INFINITY, AND ETERNITY, DESCEND UPON A BLACK DERBY HAT
Vicious and sincere,
The black derby hat flaunts itself
Upon the head of an amateur libertine.
The libertine is a nervous rascal
Asking too many favors
From one spear-point exalted by men,
But the black derby hat,
Poised and incorruptible,
Curves its black no to the senses.
To those who cannot see,
The black derby hat is only a sugar-bowl
Turned upside-down and out of place,
Or one of many crowns
Bestowing their ugly pathos
Upon the struggle of a nation,
Or the way in which a dreamer
Pitifully says hello to the stars,
Or a symbol of bulky manhood
Swaggering in an ancient trap.
But to eyes that can look beyond
The surface rites of America
Bending over bargain-counters of flesh,
The black derby hat is an alabaster
Sentinel, defending its realm
Against the pompous indifference
Of Time, Infinity, and Eternity.
The black derby hat is an outline of earth,
Bold and abrupt, remaining
Indifferent to the desperate commands
Of sex and greed, and he who wears it
Is only a helpful accident
Bringing publicity to the hat.
Uncompromising, the black derby hat
Suggests the blunt isolation of intellect,
And yet it may have been made
By some weak serf of emotion.
From the contact of incongruities
Life evolves the more perfect shape,
And so, the black derby hat,
Gliding through the frantic defeats
Of a city street,
Coolly protects its realm
Against the scarecrow-contempt
Of Time, Infinity, and Eternity.
I WALK UPON A STREET
Must I see a gutter
In which the hurried machination
Of water carries bits of apple peeling
To some profound, obscure intelligence?
And if the gutter is to me
Merely the masterful travel of brown
Speeding with odds and ends of red,
To lend importance to a dream,
Will this belief decrease my size
When death reproves my inefficient limbs?
I walk upon a street
Where trite deceptions glide
Ceaselessly.
Upon this street the spasmodic revolt
Of color refuses to join
The orderly, substantial lie.
Scattered anarchists of color,
Thin and incorrupt,
Contend against the ponderous devices
Of lust for flesh and gold.
With a spiritual savageness
Colors bring their lucid treason
To ancient, shrouded tyrannies.
The knitted green of this girl’s sweater
Is a badge releasing
A cool republic of desire
Unrelated to earth.
Her famished opaque face
Feeds on sleek anticipations—
Unconscious incongruity.
Color alone is real,
Waving perpetually
Over the graves of thought and emotion.
From the vaster shapes of color
Small and involved broods of thought and emotion
Are born to scorn their distant mothers.
The ruffian dream recedes
Over a span of twenty thousand years,
And color, awake and supreme,
Waits to be once more divided
By another nightmare dream.
If men could see this they might kneel
Upon this sidewalk and observe
The importance of apple-peelings
Testing their spirals of red
Against the thick, brown stream.