The Great Valley

You wonder why I bought so many houses,
Bought and repaired, built over home on house.
The first one was to make a home for Mary,
And Frank and Bessie, for I had myself
A settled home when I was boy and man,
And knew the feeling of respect, content
Which comes of one familiar and continued
Habitation for a boy who’s growing.
The first house, then, was poor enough, God knows!
A place that smelt in all the rooms of breath
A sick man breathes into the very paper.
The rat holes in the base boards had to be
Stopped up with plaster, all the floors were loose.
Bricks lay awry upon the chimney tops.
An old well with a windlass on the porch
Made one remember typhoid all the time.
Some apple trees half-rotted, covered over
With water sprouts stood in a yard of weeds.
A barn was at the yard’s end out of shape
From leaning at an angle. All in all
The place was haunted, but it was the best
I could afford just then, and naturally
She hated it and grumbled all the time.
A few years past, it seemed scarce two or three,
And all the children married, went away.
Just then I grew more prosperous and built over
The haunted house, and built a handsome barn,
Cut out the apple trees, destroyed the weeds,
And put an iron fence around the yard.
Put bathrooms, running water in the house.
She jawed at me for doing this, and asked
Why did you wait until the children left?
Of course she knew, but blamed me just the same.
And so we had no pleasure with this house.
She wanted larger rooms, and trees in front,
A sunny dining room—there was that porch
On which ours looked, and though I closed the well
She often wondered why we had not died
Before I closed it.

And about this time
Our banker moved away and left his house
For sale at public auction. I went down
Alone, not telling her, to look at it.
Here was a house upon a stone foundation
Built of red brick, peaked roof of slate, three stories,
Brick walks about the yard with plots of flowers,
A barn of brick—it was the very place!
There now were grandchildren; and so I dreamed
How they would romp about this lovely yard,
Or play on rainy days in that wide garret.
And so I bid and got the house at auction.
But when I told her she was up in arms:
The house would hold a family of ten!
Besides the upper rooms were far too small:
What is a dining room, or huge drawing room
If you step out of bed against the wall?
Then there’s that gully just below the barn
Breeding malaria, the banker’s family
Were sick year in and out—that’s why they sold it
For anything at public sale. O fool!
Well, Mary came that summer with her children,
And my poor dream in part was realized.
But Frank and Bessie moved to California
And never saw the happiness I planned
For them and for their children. Mary’s husband
Disliked the house—his hatred was beginning.
Next summer Mary left him and divorced him,
And started out to earn her children’s bread.
She didn’t come again.

And so it was true,
We didn’t need so large a house—we sold it
And bought a cottage of six rooms; this time
She joined with me in picking out the house,
But that was nothing, for no other house
Besides this one was up for sale just then.
No sooner had we moved than she was full
Of wounded memory and a mad regret:
She saw what she had lost. These little rooms!
This front fence almost jammed against the door!
And stoves again instead of radiators!
No running water, only an old pump
Above the kitchen sink! And near the station—
The bawling bussmen bothered her at night!
The midnight train woke her unfailingly.
And now she said our first house was all right
With this, or that corrected. We had blundered
In ever selling it and taking on
Such luxury in the brick house. It had spoiled
Her taste for living in a house like this,
With just a little yard, that hideous fence,
Which one could touch while standing in the door!
She said she could not breathe because of it,
And railed against her fate so that it brought
The next step in my life of buying houses....

Dreams entered in my brain of fields and woods,
A little lake perhaps, river or stream.
There was a fad of buying farms just then.
I went to Michigan on other business,
And there I saw one, bought it on the spot.
You see I had the passion as of drink,
And knew it as I ventured once again.
But then there was the house upon the bluff!
And there below it was the river! there
Beeches and oaks down to the river’s edge!
A great white house all new, and apple trees,
A vineyard and a field of eighty acres.
Here will I sit, I said, upon my bluff
And watch the river. I will keep a man
To farm the place, and prune the vines and trees,
This is the place at last. But then I thought
What will she say? She wants a farm I know,
But will this suit her? So I sent for her.
And when she came she kissed me, she was glad,
Commended my good judgment, loved the house,
Went through the barn in rapture, stood beneath
The windmill, which was near, to watch it pump.
Strolled down the wooded bluff, threw pebbles in
The river where the swallows dipped and flew,
And gathered daisies by the river’s shore.
I sat down in the grass flushed through with joy,
Like one who finds his haven, who has solved
Laborious troubles, thinking of the rest
I should take here—a man to run the place,
And months of summer recreation here!
I told her what my plan was.

No, she said,
To own a farm is business. You should know
By this time that you have no head for business.
I think you’ve shown some wisdom in this farm,
Or better you’ve had luck in buying it.
Your other ventures buying houses were
Enough to make you have distrust of self.
Now that you’ve bought the farm to make it pay
Is what we have in hand, and you must work.
We’ll keep a man, but he cannot do all
There is to do here, I will work and you
Must work as well, the farm must pay, you know.
I want the man to live with us in the house
So I can watch him, rout him out to work
At sun-up and keep watch upon his time.

We’ll keep two rooms for our use. For the man
Must have a family, these single fellows
Are off too much at night and think too much
In working hours of what they’ll do at night.

Perhaps I am a weakling with my dream
Of buying houses, for I dream of joys
And build my palaces, invite my joys
To enter and be glad. They never come!
She took the farm and ran it. It was business,
But business in disorder with a loss
For seed which did not sprout, and stock that died,
And glutted markets when the fruit was good.
I worked awhile, I fished once in the river,
I sat a few times on my wooded bluff—
And then I fled and left her to the farm
To rule a single farmer who cut weeds,
Abandoned weeds for plowing, left the plow
To make a flower bed, following her whims
Obedient, indifferent to results....

If you destroy a bird’s nest that’s the end.
The nesting birds return to find the branch
Where they had builded with such patient care,
All naked of their work. They look and fly
And think of what? But build no more that year.
But if you take a twig and scratch the grains
About the ant hill, overturn their work,
Stop up the door, the little folk begin
To build again, clear out the ruined hall—
They cannot be discouraged like the birds.
I think I am an ant—for even yet
I’m looking for a house, or better a home.
There is that house walled in with earth—that’s sure—
But if there is no house to fill my joy
Why have I looked for houses all my life?

THE CHURCH AND THE HOTEL

Over the dead lake
And in a dusty sky
The full moon is speared by the spire of the Baptist church;
Or now it hangs over the Groveland Hotel:
I do not know whether it is over the spire
Or over the hotel.

In a dusty sky the moon
Is the bottom of a copper kettle
Which cannot be scoured into brightness.
The sky is a faded mosquito net
Over a brass cylinder cap
Dulled with verdigris.

Some years ago,
Not many years ago,
The Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D.
At the pulpit under this spire
With habitual regularity
Used to say:
Let us pray.
And the Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D.
With habitual regularity
Used to preach
On the wages of sin.
And on Sunday evenings
As he was saying let us pray,
Ed Breen in Henry Hughes’ buffet,
There in the Groveland Hotel
Sitting with cronies at a table would say:
“Another round, Henry,
Bourbon for me.”

And at 7:30,
At the very moment
When the Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D.
Was saying let us pray,
Ed Breen would be beginning the night,
And would be saying to Henry Hughes:
“Another round, Henry,
Bourbon for me.”

You, Rev. Albert McDugall, D.D.
Lived to a ripe age.
You lived to marry a second wife.
And you, Ed Breen, died in the thirties.
But whether it be better to have ptomaine poisoning
From eating cold chicken,
Or to drug yourself to death with bourbon
I will ask the moon.
For there is the moon
Like a German silver watch
Under a grimy show case.
I think it hangs as much over the hotel
As over the church.

SUSIE

Where did you go, pale Susie, after the day
You left the service of the boarding house?
The night before we made carouse
And danced the time away.

We boys were in the kitchen and were drinking
Small beer—you slapped the hands of us
Who stroked your arms half amorous—
Where did you go, I’m thinking?

Medical students up at Hahnemann
Hunt women on a Saturday night.
And sing, tell tales, and verse recite,
And rush the forbidden can.

The paltry mistress made you pay for all
The fault of us, and packed you out of doors
When you had scrubbed the floors,
And swept the entrance hall.

I watched you in your faded cloak and hat
With canvas bag walk towards the Grove.
Then something in my fancy hove,
Laughing I caught you at
The doorway of the hotel on the street
Where I had tracked you round from thirty-first.
You laughed and cried and called me worst
Of devils on two feet.

There I had followed you and seized you when
You did not care what happened, so
You fell into my hands, you know—
’Tis twenty years since then.

I never saw you after that, nor heard
In all this city aught of you.
You vanished like a blot of dew,
Or ashen hued seed bird.

I wonder if you wed a red bull-throat
Who ran a rivet hammer, drove a truck,
Bore many children or worse luck
Went where the drift weeds float....

HAVING HIS WAY

We parted at the Union Station,
Tom Hall and I,
Two boys in the early twenties
Fresh from the quiet of fields,
And the sleepy silence of village life.
And we stepped into Adams Street,
Noisy from trucks and rattling cars,
And babbling multitudes.
He with his great invention,
And I with my translation of Homer,
And the books of Rousseau and Marx.

And he went his way
To sell his great invention.
And I in the village glory
Of clothes ill-fitting, timid, sensitive
And proud, a little learned, so zealous
For the weal of the world
Came to your chateau palace near the Drive,
To you my friend, my queenly cousin,
For a little visit before I entered
Upon the city’s life.
You looked me over with calm Egyptian eyes,
And put me at ease with your lovely smile.
And there was about you the calm of desert air in Nevada
That made me forget myself.
Yet you began to guide me with subtlest words,
And to mould me with delicate hands,
As one might smooth a rumpled collar,
Or fasten a loosened scarf,
Or lift to place a strand of hair
Of one beloved who thrills to the touch.
Even with closed eyes you saw everything
Of harmony, or form, or hue.
There were silver strings in your little ears
Which caught the tone pictures of sounds,
And the intonations and sonorities of voices;
Which trembled to the barbarities of unmelodic words.
And there as you saw and heard me,
(I knew it at once,)
You took me for your piece of bronze in the rough
To be made under your hands
Your triumph, your work, your creation
In the world where you ruled as queen.
You would see me as finished art
Move before admiring eyes
Where music is and richness,
And where poverty and struggle
And sacrifice and failure are forgotten.

That was the cousin you meant me to be.
And in a few nights
There was an evening dress and fine linen
And an opera hat and cloak
Laid out for me in my snow white room,
And a valet came to help me.
For we were to see Carmen together—
You and I in a box.
You the queen,
And I a genius from the country
Of whom the word had gone the rounds:
A translator of Homer,
And a dreamer of revolutions,
Her cousin, you know!

I was pale from fear and pride
As I entered the box with you.
I felt I was wronging my dreams
And apostatizing all I had dreamed
To be in this box with you.
And a sullen hatred of everything:
The mass of color, the faint perfumes,
The lights, the jewels, the dazzling breasts
Of the queens in the boxes angered me.
And everyone was smiling, and everyone was leveling
Opera glasses, sometimes at me,
A translator of Homer
And a dreamer of socialism.
And there like a fool I sat and thought
Of the cold without and the beggar man
Who stood at your carriage as we alighted.

And when the music arose at last
A sort of madness whirled in my brain.
For what was this Carmen thing
But subtle wickedness and cruel lust
And hardest heathenism,
And delight that seeks its own,
In a setting of bloody voluptuousness,
Fiendish caprice and faithlessness,
In music through which a pagan soul
Had sensed and voiced it all?
Till at least (I almost shrieked at this)
Don Jose in his amorous madness
Plunged a knife in the back of the whore he loved
To the growl of horns and moan of viols....

And you sat through it all
Like a firefly on a vine leaf
Suspiring in all your body,
And gazing with calm Egyptian eyes,
Or turning to me as if you would know
If the poison was in my blood....
But I was immune:
Democracy seemed too glorious,
And the cause of the poor too just,
And fair sweet love of men and women
So worth the cost to gain and keep,
And honest bread too sweet—
I was immune....
And I scarcely saw the fair slim girl
To whom you introduced me.
And I scarcely heard what you said in the carriage
About her countless riches.
And I scarcely heard your words of praise
That I looked like a prince,
And that you meant to help me,
And do by me what your husband would do
If he were living,
And lift me along to a place in life
Where power and riches are,
And beauty is and music,
And where struggle and sacrifice are forgotten.

And when I did not answer you thought
I sat abashed by your side.
Instead in my mind were running
The notes to Queen Mab,
And bits of Greek.
I did this to stifle my wrath,
And to forget the cage you were luring me into,
And the poison you were offering me,
And the cause of Truth!
And hiding my wrath in a day or two
I left you saying I would return,
But I never returned.

Instead I went where the youths were thinking,
Painting and writing,
And talking of the revolution,
And the glorious day to come.
And I was happy even though
They sent my great translation back
As poor and amateurish.
For the years of youth were long ahead
There was time to try again....

Then Margaret’s stepmother
Drove her from home, and she came to the city
Crying in her loneliness and destitution,
Suffering from her lame hip.
And even these were happy days,
For I loved her for her sorrows,
I loved her for her lameness.
It was all transfigured through my love
For democracy and sacrifice,
And the sweetness of honest bread.
And it was like taking the sacrament, our marriage.
And there in our little flat far out
On Robey Street I toiled at writing
While she went about so lame,
Trying to keep the house for me,
And to clear away the disorders
Which piled about her constantly
And were never cleared away....

And is it not strange that to-day,
After the lapse of ten years
These two things happen within an hour?
Your letter from Rome arrived—
For though I scorned your life and love,
And went my way,
You write me still it seems,
Not to wound my fallen state,
Nor to show me what my life had been
If I had heeded you.
But just in the continuous sunshine
Of noble friendship to show me
I am sometimes in your thought.
And scarcely had your letter come
When Tom Hall crept up the creaking stairs
Dragging his feet with the help of a cane—
He is rich and came to help me.
And Tom Hall had his way as well:
He hated marriage and went the rounds,
Wherever a pretty face allured.
And now he is sick and dragging his feet.
And here am I at a writing desk:
I’m cap and bells for the Daily Globe
And my grind is a column a day.
You see it comes to this, dear queen:
Can a man or woman alive escape
The granite’s edges or ditch’s mire,
The thorny thickets or marsh’s gas,
Or the traps one thinks would never be set
Except for the fox or wolf?....
And here is Margaret down with a cough
Never to rise from her bed again.
And I sit by at my task of jokes,
And I stop to read your letter again,
And wonder why life has never caught you,
And why you are laughing there in Rome
Where you dine with happy friends;
Or tramp the thickets around the ruins
Of the Baths of Caracalla—
I see the platforms and dizzy arches
Under a sky of Italy.
It’s cloudy here and the elevated
Rattles and roars beneath my window.
You’re picking flowers while it’s winter here.
I read these things in your letter and wonder
Is the asp at your breast in spite of laughter?
Or when is the asp to sting you?

THE ASP

As the train rushed on
The days of our youth swept through me,
As if they were brought to life by a sort of friction.
I thought of how madly you laughed
When we played at blindman’s buff with the Miller girls;
And of the May baskets we made together,
And hung as we rang the bell and ran.
And of our games in the first spring days
When we stole from house to house.
And the children were shouting
And the April moon was new.
And the smell of burning leaves
And the first tulips filled us with such ecstasy.
We laughed, we shouted, we leaped for joy.
We ran like mad through the rooms,
And we went to bed at last
Laughing and gasping,
And lay looking at the moon through the leafless boughs,
And fell to sleep with joyous hearts,
Thinking of to-morrow,
And the days and days to come for play,
And the summer to come,
And all the mad raptures of school at an end,
And no death, and no end
Of the love of father and mother,
And the home we loved.

And here it was spring again—
But such a spring!
At the end of such years and years
And births and births and spheres and spheres of life,
Each like a life or a world of its own
With its friends, its own completeness, its rounded end.
And back of them all
Our old home forgotten,
Our father and mother gone,
And back of this spring that ended world of ours
Wherein we parted
Grown misty too!
And as the train rushed on
And the hour of meeting you neared
I was thrilled with gladness, thrilled with fear.
And now the station was Herkimer,
And now it was Amsterdam,
And now it was Albany,
And then Poughkeepsie on the Hudson.
And I looked from the car to the passing scene,
And back to the car again.
Or I turned in my seat
Or took up my book and laid it down,
Or fastened my bag for the hundredth time,
Or straightened my cloak on the seat,
And waited and waited.
For I had a story to tell you
That I could not wait to tell.
I was traveling a thousand miles to tell you,
And to get your advice, to have your solace,
To look in your eyes again,
And to feel in spite of springs that were gone,
And our old home, and father and mother gone
There was an arm in the world for me to lean on.

And the train rushed on
Bringing me nearer to you.
And the tears welled up to my eyes
As I wondered why life had mangled me so:
Why the man I loved at first and hated afterward
Had died that tragic death,
Leaving me with memories of that love,
And such agony for that hate.
And why as a sort of Empress Eugenia
The world turned on me when I fell,
And the little power I had departed.
And why in spite of my aspiration
I had run into such disgust,
Such overthrow of my work,
Such undoing of myself,
Such spiritual wreck and shame!
And to think of what had done it:
My search for love, my struggle for excellence—
These things alone!
I had married this second man for love,
And because I believed in him
As a man of power, a man of thought,
A man who loved me.
And hoping through him to retrieve my life
From the smut of the man I married first.
But I found my very soul deceived:
He was just a violent visionary,
A frothing fool,
A spendthrift, coward, hedonist.
And there I was tied to him.
And carrying his child while finding him out.
So I used to stand with my face to the wall
And choke my mouth with a handkerchief
To keep from crying out.
For I knew if a whimper passed my lips
I should fall and roll on the floor with madness,
And beat my head on the floor.

So when the train rolled into the station
A sickness, a weakness came over me.
I had spent myself in expectation.
And now that I was about to see you,
The thought of the vainness of seeing you,
And the thought that you could not help me,
Though I had traveled these thousand miles,
Made me wish to fly, to hide.
So I stepped from the train in a kind of daze,
And scarcely felt your kiss.
It seemed relaxed, so faint.
And your voice was weak.
And your eyes were dim and dry.

And there in the cab as we drove to the Park
I was still in a daze
Talking of May baskets
And blindman’s buff,
And laughing, for one always laughs
When the moment is worst.
And so it was I did not really see you.
But when we began to walk
Things about you began to limn themselves:
Your shoulders seemed a little bent.
There were streaks of snow on your temples.
And you were quiet with the terrible quietness
Of understanding of life.
And the old wit I knew,
And the glad defiance of fate,
And the light in your eyes,
And the musical laugh
All were gone.
Perhaps the daily grind of Cap and Bells
Had sapped you, dear.
But when I looked at your hand on your cane
And saw how white and slim it was,
And how it trembled, I knew
You were not the giant man of old,
Though you said you were gaining strength again,
And I could lean on your arm.

Well, then I told you all:
How my search for love had fooled me again;
And how this beast had wronged and robbed me;
And how he stood in his paranoiac rages,
And compared himself to Christ.
But when I began to speak of the child,
What a darling girl she was,
You sank in a seat and said: “No more—
I didn’t think I was weak as this—
You mustn’t tell me another thing,
Not now, not just now.”
Then I saw, what Time had done,
And I saw that you could not help me.
And the next day and the next day,
When I did not see you,
And weeks passed by and I scarcely saw you,
And I scarcely saw you again,
Though I had come a thousand miles
To lean on your arm,
It grew in my mind that you despised me,
Or that you were indifferent to my lot,
Or at least that I was a wounded thing
You could not bear to see.
Till at last, though I knew
That my way was clear: there was nothing to do
But to fly with my child,
And leave him forever,
And endure great loneliness forever, if need be,
And whatever shame there was,
For the sake of my soul’s honor,
Which only myself could save,
And you could save not at all.
Though I knew, I say, that my way was clear,
And I needed your help not at all,
Still in a kind of madness
I began to reproach you for not helping me,
And for abandoning me to my fate.
As a sick child will cry and blame its mother
When it is not healed at once.

And that was the mood he found me in
When he came with a smile and honey words.
Well, I fell in his arms, and here I am
Plunged up to the mouth in spiritual muck,
And what life is left for me now?
How can I go on with life?
For he hates me now as a humbled thing,
He has broken my pride and he hates me now.
And he roars and curses about the house,
And yells at our little girl when she cries,
And stands with his hands outstretched and says
That his fate is worse than Christ’s.
And I tremble and rustle around like a fallen leaf,
And neither laugh nor cry nor return him a word....

For you know there’s a spring,
And you know there’s a fire,
To burn dead leaves.
And after the ashes
There’s a spirit given a chance!

THE FAMILY

We were three larks in the same nest.
All spring the wind blew from the west.
We chirped beneath the enshadowing wheat,
It grew to green, it grew to gold.
Our mother’s voice was piercing sweet
To see how strong we were and bold—
How palpitant of wing.

We knew our father not, alas!
A hunter slew him while the grass
Was fresh beneath the April rain.
And ere I had the strength to fly
Our brother sang a farewell strain
And soared into the empty sky.
And then our sister knew the fear
And hunger of a serpent’s eye.
And our sweet mother, lone and drear,
Fled far afield and left me here
To nurse my heart and sing.

THE SUBWAY

There was the white face of Fear,
And the solemn face of Duty,
And the face of self looking in the mirror.
But there were voices calling from vernal hilltops,
And silver spirits by moonlit gardens calling,
And voices of no sound from far horizons calling,
But even if there be penitence for living
And thought and tears for the past
And even shame and even hunger;
And if there be nothing gained at the last in living,
And much to pay for the madness of briefest bliss;
And if there be nothing in life, and life be nothing
So that to nail one’s self to the cross is nothing lost—
Is Death not even less?

These were the voices whereto we tore our flower
Petal by petal apart and scattered it,
And paused and paltered.

But lest the whispers grow louder,
And the eyebrows arch to a fiercer scorn,
You fled away to France and left me
With only a poor half uttered farewell,
A scrawl put off to the last, then written
As with shut eyes, swift nervous hands:
As one might wait for the heroic thought
To take his poison—wait in vain, and then
Cowardly gulp it down and reel to death.
I could not hate you for the pain of hate,
And could not love you who had hid yourself,
Belied yourself behind this scrawl.
I could only sit half-numb,
And drift in thought.

And afterwards it wasn’t so much to be alone,
Nor to dream of the days that were done,
Save as it deepened the surge in my heart,
Or strengthened the ebb of my soul for thought
Of your soul drawn away from me,
So needlessly drawn it seemed.
And it’s the music that deepens and changes,—
For as your soul adds strings to its strings
There are fingers to play—it almost seems
There are fingers about us that watch and wait
For a soul that’s adding strings to its harp
To play them when they’re strung.
And so it’s the music that deepens and changes
That kills you at last I think.

Well, I had a dream one night
That a dead man well could dream:
They had buried me in Rosehill.
And after twenty years from France they brought you
And put you just across the walk from me
Where we slept while the crowding city grew
To a vast six millions, and they were building
A subway to Lake Forest.
And we were forgotten of everyone,
And almost our family names were lost.
And our love you fled from all forgotten,
And everything we said, or thought, or felt forgotten
With the whispers of boys and girls
In a temple’s shadow in Babylon.

Well, to pursue, it’s a day in March
When the colors are brilliantly white and blue;
And it’s cold except for Poles and Italians
Who dig with spades and cut with picks.
And some of these fellows are digging us up,
We lie in the way of the subway, you know.
And they dump our bones in a careless heap,
The ribs of me by the ribs of you,
My skull lies ignorant by your skull.
And behold our poor arms are entwined.
For death you know is a mocker of Life.
And there we lie like stocks and stones,
And where is our love and where is your fear?
And a young Pole pushes our bones together
With a lusty shove of his heavy shoe,
And he says to another: “You saw that girl
I was dancing with last night?
Well, I don’t think I’m the only one.
And besides she bothers me most to death.
And as soon as this subway job is over,
Which will be in a year, or year and a half,
I’m going to beat it back to Poland.”
Then the other beginning to shovel muttered:
“1976.”

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