Chapter 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.