AGAINST THIS AGE

AGAINST THIS AGE

MAXWELL BODENHEIM

BONI AND LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHERS : : NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To
FEDYA AND MINNA
FOUR EYES WITHIN A BLIND WORLD

Some of the poems in this book have appeared in
The Century, The Bookman, The Nation, The Dial,
The Menorah Journal, Broom, The Double Dealer,
Shadowland, and Harper’s Magazine.

CONTENTS

AGAINST THIS AGE

BABY

1

The blue beginning of your eyes

Condenses the sprawling and assured

Blue with which the sky retreats

From those obscene confessions known as days.

2

Again, your battling mites of blue

Try to stop the revolving monster of life

And find the indelible persuasiveness

Of single forms within the circling blur.

Sundered bits of a soul

Astonished at their shrunken estate,

They are not sure that they have still survived,

And plead for the conviction of sight.

3

But when they recollect

The hugely placid manners

Of their life, before the earthly exile

Made them small and fastened

To one pathetic puzzle,

Their blue reverts to swelling reveries

Whose outward circles spurn the curtained jail.

4

Upon your softly incomplete

Face, where germs of devils stir in curves

That tremble into questioning symmetries,

A thrust of darkness sometimes interferes

With secret, virgin places underneath

Your eyes and where your leaf-thin nostrils pause.

This darkness bends with helpless messages,

Like history admonishing a world

Personified in one, composite face.

NIGHTMARE AND SOMETHING DELICATE

You mutter, with your face

Pleading for more room because

It has scanned a panorama:

You mutter, with every difference

On your face an error in size

Mesmerized by the sight of a sky-line:

“Life is a nightmare and something delicate.”

Lady, they have made a world for you,

And if you dare to leave it

They will flagellate you

With the bones of dead men’s thoughts,

And five senses, five termagants

Snapping at the uneasy mind.

“No, five riotous flirts,”

You say, “and each one has

A thick blandishment to master the mind.”

Yes, lady, through the bold disarrangement of words

Life acquires with great foresight

An interesting nervousness.

But O lady with a decadent music

Somehow silent in lines of flesh,

Finding your face too small,

Finding the earth too small,

Have they not informed you

That crowding life into seven words

Is an insincere and minor epigram?

And have they not reprimanded you

Because you fail to observe

Their vile and fervent spontaneity,

These howlers of earthly shrouds?

And have they neglected to drive

The bluster of their knuckles against your face

Because you rush from the leg and arm

Anecdotes of microscopical towns,

Bandying with a fantasy

Which they call thin and valueless?

“Life is a nightmare and something delicate,”

You repeat, and then, “O yes, they have done these things

To me because I take not seriously

The interval between two steps

Made by Death, who has grown a little tired.

When Death recovers his vigor

The intervals will become

Shorter and shorter until

No more men are alive.

But now they have their chance.

The wild, foul fight of life

Delights in refreshing phrases—

Swift-pouring tranquillities and ecstasies

Atoning for the groaning stampede

That desecrates the light

Between each dawn and twilight.

And those who stand apart

Use the edged art of their minds

To cut the struggling pack of bodies

Into naked, soiled distinctness.”

Lady, do not let them hear you.

You are too delicate—

Deliberately, nimbly, remotely, strongly

Delicate—and you will remind them

Too much of Death, who is also

The swiftly fantastic compression

Of every adjective and adverb

Marching to nouns that live

Beyond the intentions of men.

Men are not able, lady,

To strike his face, and in vengeance

They will smear your face

With the loose, long hatred of their words.

I will wash your face

With new metaphors and similes,

Telling carefully with my hands

That I love you not for your skin,

And every bird at twilight

Will be enviously astonished

At your face now insubstantial

Indeed, you have an irony

That ironically doubts

Whether its power is supreme,

And at such times you accept

The adequate distraction

Of cold and shifting fantasy.

This is your mood and mine,

And with it we open the window

To look upon the night.

The night, with distinguished coherence,

Is saying yes to the soul

And mending its velvet integrity

Torn by one forlorn

Animal that bounds

From towns and villages.

The night is Blake in combat

With an extraordinary wolf

Whose head can take the mobile

Protection of a smile;

Whose heart contains the ferocious

Lies of ice and fire;

Whose heart with stiff and sinuous

Promises swindles the lips and limbs of men;

Whose heart persuades its confusion

To welcome the martyred certainties

Of cruelty and kindness;

Whose brain is but a calmness

Where the falsehoods of earth

Can fashion masks of ideas.

Welcome the wolf.

Bring lyrics to fondle his hair.

Summon your troops of words

And exalt his gasping contortions.

Lady, it is my fear

That makes me give you these commands.

Men will force upon you

The garland of their spit

If you fail to glorify,

Or eagerly disrobe,

The overbearing motives of their flesh.

And every irony of yours

Will be despised unless

A hand of specious warmth

Directs the twist of your blades.

O lady, you are flashing detachment

Clad in exquisitely careful

Fantasy, and on your face

Pity and irony unite

To form the nimble light of contemplations.

Men will dread you as they fear

Death, the Ultimate Preciosity.

Stay with me within this chamber

And tell me that your heart

Is near to a spiral of pain

Curving perfectly

From the squirming of a world.

See, you have made me luminous

With this news, and my heart,

Fighting to be original,

Ends its struggle in yours.

Turning, we trace a crescent

Of conscious imagination

Upon the darkness of this room.

Night and window still remain.

Night, spiritual acrobat,

Evades with great undulations

The moans and exultations of men.

His madly elastic invitation

To the souls of men

Gathers up the imagination

Of one poet, starving in a room

Where rats and scandals ravish the light.

With conscious combinations of words

The poet bounds through space with Night.

Together they observe

The bleeding, cheated mob

Of bodies robbed by one quick thrill.

Cold, exact, and fanciful,

They drop the new designs of words

Upon a vastly obvious contortion.

Poet and night can see

No difference between

The peasant, groveling and marred,

And smoother men who cringe more secretly.

Yet they give these men

The imaginary distinctions of words.

Compassionate poet and night.

You say: “With glaring details

Attended by the voices of men,

Morning will attack the poet.

Men will brandish adjectives.

Tenuous! Stilted! Artificial!

Dreams of warm permanence

Will grasp the little weapons

Furnished by the servant-mind.

Dreams ... ah, lady, let us leave

The more precise and polished dream

Of our sadness, and surpass

The scoundrel, beggar, fool, and braggart

Fused into a loose convulsion

Called by men amusement.

Laughter is the explosive trouble

Of a soul that shakes the flesh.

Misunderstanding the signal

Men fly to an easy delight.

Causes, obscure and oppressed,

Cleave the flesh and become

Raped by earthly intentions.

Thus the surface rôles of men

Throw themselves upon the stranger,

Changing his cries with theirs.

The aftermath is a smile

Relishing the past occurrence.

Lady, since you desire

To clutch the meaning of this sound and pause,

Laugh and smile with me more sadly

And with that attenuated, cold

Courage never common to men.

Another window is behind us,

Needing much our laugh and smile.

II

That metaphysical prank

Known as chance—overwhelming

Lack of respect for bodies

And the position of objects—

Gathers three men and arranges them

Side by side in a street-car.

Freudian, poet, and priest—

Ah, lady, they have not lost

The unreal snobbishness

With which their different minds

Withdraw from one another.

Their thought does not desire

Only to be distinct

And adventurous.

They must also maintain

An extreme aloofness;

Throw the obliterating adjective;

Fix a rock and perch upon it.

Chance, the irresistible humorist,

Has lured their bodies together,

With that purity of intention

Not appreciated by men.

With a smile not impersonal

But trampling on small disputes,

We scan the minds and hearts of these men.

The Freudian is meditating

Upon a page within his essay

Where the narrative sleep of a woman

Clarifies her limbs and breast.

He does not know that men

Within their sleep discover

Creative lips and eyes stamped out by life;

That coarse and drooling fish-peddlers

Change to Dostoyevskies;

Morbid morgue-attendants

Snatch the sight of Baudelaire;

Snarling, cloudy cut-throats

Steal the shape of François Villon.

Men within their slumber

Congratulate the poetry,

Prose, and art that life reviles

Within their stifled consciousness.

Their helpless imaginations

Throw off the soiled and cramped

Weight of memorized realities.

The Freudian in the street-car

Ties this freedom to a creed,

Narrowing the broad escape

Until it fits the lunge of limbs.

We leave him, rubbing his nose

To catch the upheaval of triumph,

And look upon the more removed

Body of the poet.

Lady, poets heal

Their slashed and poisoned loneliness

With words that captivate

The bald, surrounding scene:

Words that grip the variations

Crowded underneath each outward form,

Governed by the scrutiny

Of mind, and heart, and soul.

Transcending the rattle of this car

And every other gibberish

Uttered by civilization,

The poet plans his story.

Life, an old man, cryptic and evanescent,

Tries to sell some flowers

To Death, who is young and smiles.

Lady, this poet is also young—

Tingling, candid somersault of youth—

And his words only catch

Surface novelties of style.

Different phrases drape one thought.

“An old man 3 thirds asleep”

Replaces “an old man completely asleep.”

Ah, these endless dressmakers.

They hang a new or faded gown

Upon the shapes of life:

They do not cut beneath the mould

And clutch the huddled forms that wait

For resurrection in the inner dungeon ...

Poet and Freudian leave their seats

To gain the sleek encouragement of supper,

And only the priest remains.

From the lumbering torture of years

Men have wrenched a double hope,

God and Christ, and sought to calm

The strained deceptions of their flesh.

Lady, the tarrying soul,

Patient and flexible,

Must often smile at the simple,

Crude anticipations of men.

This priest smiles and is sleepy,

Thinking of coffee with cognac,

And the warm, assuring duty of prayer.

The outer smile is ever

An unconscious obliteration.

Ah, lady, logics, masks,

And ecstasies forever

Spurn the pregnant, black

Mystery that lets them spend

The tense importance of a moment.

Only fantasy and irony,

Incongruous brothers,

Can lift themselves above

The harassed interval that Death permits.

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

Mysteries and fictions

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.

THREE PORTRAITS

I

Withdraw your hair from the simulated

Interest of the moon;

Take every tenuous shadow

From the aimless tongues of these trees

And darken your speech until it attains

A fickle and fantastic

Acquaintance with the eccentric night;

Disarrange your dress and make it

A subtle invitation to nakedness.

Remove your shoes and stockings

So that your feet may enjoy

An embarrassed soliloquy with the grass;

Place the palm of your hand

Lightly against your nose,

Following the slope of some grotesque feeling.

Devise these careful affronts

To the heavier intentions

Of thought and emotion, and gratefully

Accept your title of minor poet.

Only trees with long roots caught by hills

Will recognize your importance.

II

They worship musical sound,

Protecting the breast of emotion.

Their feelings pose as fortune-tellers

And angle for coins from credulous thoughts.

Shall we abandon this luxury

Of mild mist and wild raptures?

Your face refrains from speaking yes

But your poised eyes roundly

Reward the luminous question.

Greece and Asia have exchanged

Problems upon your face,

And the fine poise of your head

Tries to catch their conversation.

Few people care to use

Thought as a musical instrument,

Bringing ingenious restraints to grief and joy,

But we, with clasped arms, will descend

Daringly upon this situation.

The full-blown confusion of life

Will detest our intrusion.

III

If you subtract a nose you add religion,

Supine, and in a glitter of explanation

Expanding the unreasonable second

Of chattering, pugnacious flesh.

The inquisitive elevation of noses

Does not fit into the smooth

Curvatures of faith.

If you remove the lips you add

Philosophy, for lips express the warm

Quarrel of emotions and become

Crimson antagonists to contemplation.

If you subtract the eyes you add

The fertile smugness of earth,

For eyes are rapid skeptics

Tossing light beyond the circles of earth.

Flesh will remain and vacillate

Between the cocaine of belief

And times of wakefulness

Designed to replenish the drug.

Then reconstruct the face

With shifting experiments

Of spirit, fantasy, and intellect,

Intent upon violating

The tyrannies of formal reiteration.

Men will revile you and bestow

The necessary background.

DEFINITIONS

Music is a treacherous sound,

Seducing emotions and marking

Their breathless faces with death.

Art is an intrepid mountebank,

Enraging philosophies and creeds

By stepping into the black space beyond them.

Religions are blindly tortured eyes,

Paralyzing the speed of imagination

With static postures of hope.

History is an accidental madness,

Using nations and races

To simulate a cruel sanity.

(In the final dust

This trick will be discovered.)

Psychology is a rubber-stamp

Pressed upon a slippery, dodging ghost,

But thousands of centuries can remove

All marks of this indignity.

Men, each snuggling proudly

Into an inch of plausible falsehood,

Will hate the careless smile

That whitens these definitions.

The table has been broken by fists;

The fanatic has mangled his voice;

The scientist cautiously repairs the room

Beyond which he dares not peer.

Life, they will never cease to explain you.

TO A CORPULENT SINGER

I

Bulging maturity

Constructs an unfair version

Of curves not visible

To eyes upon the outside face.

II

If a soul is more

Slender than the motives of wind,

Flesh provides the necessary

Privacy, and in a rising voice

The soul proclaims its gratefulness.

III

Who has watched a bear

Pawing his idea of a breeze?

The audience in this falsely walled

Room is pouncing awkwardly

Upon the small part of a singer’s voice.

The actual sounds swing easily

To eyes and ears beyond the edge of earth.

IV

And if to this meandering

Of metaphysical remarks

I should add a face

Where tragedy experiments with lanterns

To aid a long, sharp nose and wondering lips,

And laughter is conscious of being

The excited, misunderstood child of a soul,

The singer would receive

Final details of her disguise.

TOPSY-TURVY

I

If I insist that violets

Are intellectual eyes

Dotting with a wave of sight

The chained recalcitrance of earth,

Philosophers and scientists—

Blind boys who bolt themselves within a room—

Will seek to torture me

For the flashing witchcraft

That rides on thunderclaps

Called imagination.

The crystallized escape

Of fear is known as logic,

And men have used it to light

Small spaces in the wilderness of black.

But I prefer to mount

Huge horses of the wind,

Whose fantastic laughter

Separates to metaphors

And similes that hurl their decorations

Against the wide malevolence of space.

When I return to the morbid

Helplessness of earth

And shake off the dream of freedom,

Men ply their knives of gods

And creeds upon my skin.

Much traveling through space

Has made me immune to pain,

And metaphors and similes

Aid my counting of blood-drops,

Bringing color to mathematics.

II

Lady upon whose head

I weave the motives of this poem,

Change your sex to a barely visible

Trembling that can match the fluttering charm

Of the wreath that I have made for you.

When this task is finished

We may saunter gayly

Past the cunning niches

That psychology has made for us.

REVILE THE ACROBAT

Maiden, where are you going,

With impudence that makes your arms and legs

Unnecessary feathers?

Your eyes have interceded

Between the flesh and soul,

And show a light of reconciliation.

For whom have you prepared yourself?

I go to see an acrobat

Reviled by men, and acting

Within a lonely circus owned

By Mind, Soul, & Heart, Incorporated.

I love his limbs whose muscles

Compete with twirls of gossamer,

And Oh, I love him not

With the drooling, fevered weight of earth.

He turns my blood to one

Profusion of melted wings.

Maiden, why is this acrobat

Better than men who stand within

The favored halls of mind and heart,

Playing, with lust and dignity,

Violins and trumpets?

They are not better, and he,

Whose thoughtful quickness combines

The pliantness of mind and soul,

He is not worse—the thoughts of men

Stand still on high roofs of the mind,

Or borrow sorceries of flesh,

While he, with flimsy trails

Of ruffles on a gaudy jacket,

Springs into the air; assaults

Every stately, fierce, robust

Finality that men have made.

He cares not whether he is right or wrong.

He seeks a decorative speed

Of thought and soul, and he is not afraid

Of being insincere.

Men loathe him, but I clothe him

With magnificent, specific

Fabrics slighter than the remorse of a child

And bearing involved births of colors.

Strength is not alone

The size and thickness known to men!

COMPULSORY TASKS

Words, it is apparent

That you are crucified and fondled

By the pride of each new generation.

O words, whose sportive formations

Could make the courts of intellect

Belligerent and insane,

Men have sentenced you

To scores of endless drudgeries.

Weakened by the years,

You guard the dying bonfires

Of each nation and race.

Again, like hordes of cattle,

You drag the expectations

Of social theories and remedies,

Stopping only when the blood of men

Washes away your useless labours.

I have seen your bands

Of ragged courtesans

Marching in feverish lines

To rescue the rites of sex.

I have watched you rush

To repair the cracks

In breaking cathedrals and churches.

With gilded, exclamatory vowels

You garnish the cowering of earth,

And with recurring darkness

You spurn the peering mind.

Again you are hands of intellect,

Disrobing the flesh of men

And carefully preserving

Each discarded garment

With a pinch of powdered emotion.

Again you are driven forth

In lying mobs of sighs and laughs

To warm the evening hours of a nation.

(“They could never restrain themselves

To wait at home for the postman ...

Would Copperfield marry Dora or Agnes?”)

Sentimental breathlessness

Fleeing from the helpless decay of thought.

O words, brow-beaten bricklayers

Obeying the shouts of science

And raising walls upon whose top

The soul is perched, contemptuously

Squinting down at toiling pygmies:

O words, and you can be

Superbly demented skeptics,

Betraying the unctuous failures of earth;

Riding the wild horse of the mind:

Bringing spurs into play;

Summoning with pain the lurking soul.

RHYMED CONVERSATION WITH MONEY

How many planets have you raped,

Where only animals escaped

To scrape with melancholy needs

The bones of last men lost in weeds?

Since you are blunt and fraudulent

You must receive a bare treatment.

Adverbs and adjectives undress

When greeted by excrescences.

You are the stench on any street,

Thick with the vagaries of defeat:

The wench who plies her squawking crime

Within the alley-ways of time.

For men desire to guard with pain

The limitations of their brain,

And drag the numbness of their hearts

Within ornate and creaking carts.

And for these tasks they must be bold,

Clutching endurance from a cold

Squirming with you within the dark,

And rising blistered with your mark.

Again you give to doubting lust

An argument which it can trust.

Imagination spoils the scene

And needs a dagger, crude and mean.

For you were made by men to choke

A lyric with an obscene joke

And strike the mind when it is strong,

With whips methodical and long.

Men who are inarticulate

Desire to parody their fate

With gibberish of clinking coins.

When life, excited thief, purloins

The voice and energy of men,

They lead him to a mouldy pen:

They seek revenge and watch him wilt,

Finding importance in his guilt.

They do not know that they have made

The thief to revel in his aid.

And you are there to strain your cheek

Against imaginations weak—

Coquettish counterfeit of strength.

I have observed your metal length

Of hands drop on the poet’s throat,

And yet he scarcely saw you gloat.

To certain men you merely feed

The stoics of creative need.

Money

I am the vicious test with which

Men find that they are poor or rich.

Without my challenge men might fail

To leave the blurred and murderous jail.

Utopias are merely death:

Men need the scorching of my breath.

HIGHLY DELIBERATE POEM

“Mother o’ mi-i-ine, mother o’ mi-i-ine,

Sweet as uh ro-ose in thuh spring-ti-i-ime”—

The man who bawls this song

Has the face of a spell-bound, hairless rat.

Entranced within a spotlight,

He borrows unconsciously

Another voice from despair.

The ordinary squeak of his life

Is paralyzed, and fear of death

Lends him a tenor voice

To supplicate the Catcher.

But the audience fails to understand

And makes flat sounds of glee

With hands ... Death, quietly

Disgusted at this blind approval,

Takes away the spotlight.

Now safe, the rat presents

Jerks of gratitude and scampers off

To gnaw at his wife within their dressing-room.

That squeezed-in bag of piteous

Mythologies described as heart

Has opened in one thousand people

And received a vision

Of past solicitude for other bags.

The rat repeats this feat and wins

Varieties of coarse sweetmeats.

At sixty the rat will be a gorged

Machiavelli, wondering

Whether he has not blundered.

Death finds no interest in killing rats

And often allows them to live,

Preferring instead the less buried souls

Of a poet or a child of ten.

But the rat has found a fear

Within the second eyes of whiskey

And relates it to his wife.

“Say, May, this thing is funny!

You won’t believe me, but tonight

Just before I started the act

I felt like I was gonna die.

What in hell is wrong with me?

This booze must be drivin’ me bughouse.

Well, move a leg, and get that thousand

Faulkner promised you, and stop

Sitting there and staring at me.”

Death, who has listened with fastidious

Ennui, strolls off to slay

A negro infant newly born.

POEM

A curious courtship in your brain

Regulates the movements of your limbs.

Remorse, the fanciful, abandoned

Child of madness, discovers its lips

Upon the breast of a hovering Madonna.

How many poets present

The crushed tips of their hearts

Pieced carefully together as a wreath

Upon the two heads of this wooing?

Imagination is a wound

Upon the adventures of thoughts,

And one scar left behind

Is known as reality.

Will they give you robes

Threaded with orderly shimmers of repentance,

Pardoning the scar in earthly ways?

REALISTIC CREATOR

A Sonnet Dedicated to T. S. Eliot

An intimate and playful accident

Common to life had placed him on a bench

Beside an old and stiffly wounded wench.

With erudite and careful eyes he sent

A sneer to tear away her feeble mask

And snatch the battered dullness of her heart.

He spied her only in the scheming part

Of soiled flesh bickering with some trivial task.

The lacerated madness of her soul,

And delicate emotions kicked by life,

Did not invade the swift tricks of his mind.

Regarding her, he could not see the whole,

Or catch the psychic lunge behind her strife.

His eyes were savagely adroit, and blind.

CITY STREETS

This pavement and the sordid boast of stone

And brick that wins the pity of a sky

Are only martyred symbols made to buy

A dream of permanence for flesh and bone.

The jumbled, furtive anecdotes of lips

And limbs that bring their fever to this street,

They will subside to fragments of defeat

Within the cool republic where death trips.

This is an age where flesh desires to shape

Intense hyperboles in prose and verse,

Transforming city streets and country lanes

To backgrounds aiding physical escape.

But city streets are waiting to disperse

With ruins the fight and plight of earthly pains.

DECADENT CRY[A]

Hill-flowers salute his feet

Upon the upward slant of a path.

His destination does not matter.

His legs divide the spacious tragedy

Of distance into the small translation

Of steps, and with their aid he reaches

The fraudulent temple of a pause or end.

Hill-flowers, important and unprejudiced,

Bow to this monster-clown.

His feet, ridiculous and neat,

Do not stop, for they must ape

A certainty and hasten to attack

Or praise fixed idols made by flesh and mind.

Hill-flowers, trimly polished

Devices hailing preciosity;

Rumpled by the wind

To scores of original caprices;

Bearing the transfigured skirmish

Of spiritual moods that men call color;

Swiftly and unassumingly

Deaf to lusts and traditions—

They are not regarded

By the men who walk, flat-footed,

Or with scholarly exactitude,

In chase of an ardent chicanery

Known as flesh, and elderly

Quibbles of mind and emotion.

Only an intellect clad in sprightly chiffon

Can spy the importance of flowers on a hill.

[A] Dedicated to a rare moment of intelligence on the part of The Dial.

GIRL

The words of men are not conjectures

Lunging toward your soul:

They do not wish you to leave

The fawning thefts of flesh.

When with covered formality

They tramp from actual pulpits,

They merely bring celestial nonsense

For one, uncurious, sanctified bed.

Ah, girl, the soul that they give you

Is a clumsy, white

Concert-master rebuking

The first-violin of your body.

Again they brand a word,

Sacredness, upon your breast,

Claiming that your soul is tied

To the pliant riot of your limbs.

Girl, I can forget for a moment

That hairs upon the bulge of my chest

Must be praised or censured,

And I have no desire

To belittle you with one,

Hopeless, cynical, sententious

Group of words, while intellect,

Flavoring its tea-cup with a sneer,

Watches you from shaded balconies.

When you win the torpid illness

Known as virtue you are less important

Than a quest for daisies in the moon,

And when you merely ask

For one blow and inertness,

An old dream yells and ends

With the quietness of sprawling pity.

Girl, avoid the plentiful

Drugs of seriousness and spend

Pieces of your heart on every whim.

Give your flesh the light and sharp

Contacts of a thistle blown

Across the wincing cheeks of rogues.

Make your soul and body spurn

Each other with a swift impertinence,

And let your clawing griefs and joys

Be still a moment on the couch of thought.

And if at times you turn your head

To spy the hatred of philosophers

And panting realists, preserve the smile

Of one who takes a suitable reward.

COLOR AND A WOMAN

Cry the names of colors

And fail to reproduce

The brightly worried way

In which they burn ideas,