Chapter 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