Poems

     I

     The winter evening settles down
     With smell of steaks in passageways.
     Six o'clock.
     The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
     And now a gusty shower wraps
     The grimy scraps
     Of withered leaves about your feet
     And newspapers from vacant lots;
     The showers beat
     On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
     And at the corner of the street
     A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
     And then the lighting of the lamps.

     II

     The morning comes to consciousness
     Of faint stale smells of beer
     From the sawdust-trampled street
     With all its muddy feet that press
     To early coffee-stands.

     With the other masquerades
     That time resumes,
     One thinks of all the hands
     That are raising dingy shades
     In a thousand furnished rooms.

     III

     You tossed a blanket from the bed,
     You lay upon your back, and waited;
     You dozed, and watched the night revealing
     The thousand sordid images
     Of which your soul was constituted;
     They flickered against the ceiling.
     And when all the world came back
     And the light crept up between the shutters,
     And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
     You had such a vision of the street
     As the street hardly understands;
     Sitting along the bed's edge, where
     You curled the papers from your hair,
     Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
     In the palms of both soiled hands.

     IV

     His soul stretched tight across the skies
     That fade behind a city block,
     Or trampled by insistent feet
     At four and five and six o'clock;
     And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
     And evening newspapers, and eyes
     Assured of certain certainties,
     The conscience of a blackened street
     Impatient to assume the world.

     I am moved by fancies that are curled
     Around these images, and cling:
     The notion of some infinitely gentle
     Infinitely suffering thing.

     Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
     The worlds revolve like ancient women
     Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

     Twelve o'clock.
     Along the reaches of the street
     Held in a lunar synthesis,
     Whispering lunar incantations
     Disolve the floors of memory
     And all its clear relations,
     Its divisions and precisions,
     Every street lamp that I pass
     Beats like a fatalistic drum,
     And through the spaces of the dark
     Midnight shakes the memory
     As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

     Half-past one,
     The street lamp sputtered,
     The street lamp muttered,
     The street lamp said,
     "Regard that woman
     Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
     Which opens on her like a grin.
     You see the border of her dress
     Is torn and stained with sand,
     And you see the corner of her eye
     Twists like a crooked pin."

     The memory throws up high and dry
     A crowd of twisted things;
     A twisted branch upon the beach
     Eaten smooth, and polished
     As if the world gave up
     The secret of its skeleton,
     Stiff and white.
     A broken spring in a factory yard,
     Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
     Hard and curled and ready to snap.

     Half-past two,
     The street-lamp said,
     "Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
     Slips out its tongue
     And devours a morsel of rancid butter."
     So the hand of the child, automatic,
     Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along
     the quay.
     I could see nothing behind that child's eye.
     I have seen eyes in the street
     Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
     And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
     An old crab with barnacles on his back,
     Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

     Half-past three,
     The lamp sputtered,
     The lamp muttered in the dark.

     The lamp hummed:
     "Regard the moon,
     La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
     She winks a feeble eye,
     She smiles into corners.
     She smooths the hair of the grass.
     The moon has lost her memory.
     A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
     Her hand twists a paper rose,
     That smells of dust and old Cologne,
     She is alone With all the old nocturnal smells
     That cross and cross across her brain.
     The reminiscence comes
     Of sunless dry geraniums
     And dust in crevices,
     Smells of chestnuts in the streets
     And female smells in shuttered rooms
     And cigarettes in corridors
     And cocktail smells in bars."

     The lamp said,
     "Four o'clock,
     Here is the number on the door.
     Memory!
     You have the key,
     The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair,
     Mount.
     The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
     Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life."

     The last twist of the knife.

     They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
     And along the trampled edges of the street
     I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
     Sprouting despondently at area gates.
     The brown waves of fog toss up to me
     Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
     And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
     An aimless smile that hovers in the air
     And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

     The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
     Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.
     When evening quickens faintly in the street,
     Wakening the appetites of life in some
     And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript,
     I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning
     Wearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Rochefoucauld,
     If the street were time and he at the end of the street,
     And I say, "Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript."

     Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt,
     And lived in a small house near a fashionable square
     Cared for by servants to the number of four.
     Now when she died there was silence in heaven
     And silence at her end of the street.
     The shutters were drawn and the undertaker wiped his feet—
     He was aware that this sort of thing had occurred before.
     The dogs were handsomely provided for,
     But shortly afterwards the parrot died too.
     The Dresden clock continued ticking on the mantelpiece,
     And the footman sat upon the dining-table
     Holding the second housemaid on his knees—
     Who had always been so careful while her mistress lived.

     Miss Nancy Ellicott Strode across the hills and broke them,
     Rode across the hills and broke them—
     The barren New England hills—
     Riding to hounds
     Over the cow-pasture.

     Miss Nancy Ellicott smoked
     And danced all the modern dances;
     And her aunts were not quite sure how they felt about it,
     But they knew that it was modern.

     Upon the glazen shelves kept watch
     Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,
     The army of unalterable law.

     When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States
     His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
     I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees,
     And of Priapus in the shrubbery
     Gaping at the lady in the swing.
     In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah's
     He laughed like an irresponsible foetus.
     His laughter was submarine and profound
     Like the old man of the sea's
     Hidden under coral islands
     Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence,
     Dropping from fingers of surf.
     I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair
     Or grinning over a screen
     With seaweed in its hair.
     I heard the beat of centaur's hoofs over the hard turf
     As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon.
     "He is a charming man"—"But after all what did he mean?"—
     "His pointed ears... He must be unbalanced,"—
     "There was something he said that I might have challenged."
     Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah
     I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitten macaroon.

     As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her
     laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were
     only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I
     was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary
     recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her
     throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An
     elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly
     spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty
     green iron table, saying: "If the lady and gentleman
     wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and
     gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden..." I
     decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be
     stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might
     be collected, and I concentrated my attention with
     careful subtlety to this end.

     I observe: "Our sentimental friend the moon!
     Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
     It may be Prester John's balloon
     Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
     To light poor travellers to their distress."
       She then: "How you digress!"

     And I then: "Some one frames upon the keys
     That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain
     The night and moonshine; music which we seize
     To body forth our vacuity."
       She then: "Does this refer to me?"
       "Oh no, it is I who am inane."

     "You, madam, are the eternal humorist,
     The eternal enemy of the absolute,
     Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
     With your air indifferent and imperious
     At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—"
       And—"Are we then so serious?"

       O quam te memorem Virgo...

     Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—
     Lean on a garden urn—
     Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
     Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
     Fling them to the ground and turn
     With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
     But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

     So I would have had him leave,
     So I would have had her stand and grieve,
     So he would have left
     As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
     As the mind deserts the body it has used.
     I should find
     Some way incomparably light and deft,
     Some way we both should understand,
     Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

     She turned away, but with the autumn weather
     Compelled my imagination many days,
     Many days and many hours:
     Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
     And I wonder how they should have been together!
     I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
     Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
     The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.