Chapter VI: Part III: News Notes of Portage, Wisconsin

I

THE KILBOURN ROAD

In June the road to Kilbourn is a long green hall,
A corridor of leafage pillared white
By birches and with wild-rose patterns on the wall,
And all melodious with the fluid fall
Or lift of red-winged blackbirds fluting mating cries.
The very air
Is visible, not by the light,
Not by the shades that drift
And dip, but by an essence rhythmic with the flood
That flows
Not in the sap, not in the blood,
But otherwhere.
And of that essence grows
All men see in the air of Paradise.
He lay upon a little upland slope
Deep, deep with grass.
And when I saw his head above the green
Where I must pass,
The battered hat, the squinting eyes
Blinking the westering sun, I felt a sting of fear----
Alas, that in June’s delicate demesne
A watching human face can teach one fear.
So then I spoke to him, gave him good day,
And seeing his gun said what I always say
Meeting a huntsman: “Friend, I hope
You have killed nothing here.”
He stared and grinned. And with his grin
I felt his trustiness. So when
He scrambled down the bank and followed me,
I waited for him as my kind and kin.

He was a thing of seventeen. And men
Compounded in his blood had set him here
Wizened and hump-backed. But his little face
Held something of the one he was to be
In some eternity.
He talked as freely as a child. He’d shot, he said,
At a young wood-chuck. Now his gun was broke,
And it’d cost a dollar and a half
To mend it. Then I spoke
About a little kerchief made of lace
Lost on the road that day. He turned his head.
“Did it have money in it, Lady?”--with quick grace
Caught from some knightlier place.
And when I asked him what he read
He tried to rise to all my speech awoke.
“A person give me a book a while ago.
Oh, I donno
The name--the cover’s off. I got, I guess,
Two pages done. Time the stock’s fed
I get so sleepy I jump into bed.”
--And with this, for defence, a rueful laugh.
I named the town not two miles distant. No,
He hardly ever went there. Motion picture show?
His eyes lit. Several times he’d been.
War pictures was the best. He liked to kill?
He hung his head. “No, but I never will
Shoot pups or kittens when they want me to.
War’s different.” School? He’d seen
Four years of that--well, four years, more or less.
Dad needed him--dad had so much to do.

So then I faced him and his need to live.
I put it plain: “But you?
What do you want to do?”
His answer lay within him, ready made.
He met my eyes with all he had to give.
“I’d like,” he said, “to learn the artist trade.”

Questioned, he told me bit by little bit.
He’d had a horse that died--he’d painted her.
He’d painted Tige, the dog. The pigeon house.
The fence that crossed the slough. The willow tree.
Would he let me see?
Oh, well--they wasn’t much. He couldn’t stir----
The paint right, and he didn’t have enough.
All that he’d done was rough.
I tried to spell his dream,--to see if his face lit
At flame of it.
He only said: “Mebbe I couldn’t learn.”
And his eyes did not burn.
(“Perhaps,” I thought, “there’s nothing here at all.”)
“Dad’s going to have me paint the house,” he said.
I questioned where he led.
“Yellow and brown,” he answered. And my fancy’s fall
He must have fathomed in my face for a slow red
Mounted and swept his cheek. His eyes sought mine,
His look was piteous with a kind of light.
“I don’t like that. They picked it out,” he said. “I wanted white.”
And all his tone was shame.
The craftsman wounded in his craftsman’s right
In ways he could not name.

He took the cross-road. Where I saw him go
Wild fever-few made narrow paths of snow
Through the flat fields of dying afternoon.
Bravely in tune
With every little part as with some whole
A red wing answered to an oriole
And met a cat bird’s call.
The sun! The sun! The road to Kilbourn like a long green hall!
The very air a spirit like our own
So nearly shown
That one could almost see.
The veil so thin that presence was outrayed.

But all the great blue day came facing me,
And crying from the vault and from the sod:
“Oh God, oh God.
‘_I’d like_,’ he said, ‘_to learn the artist trade!_’”

II

VIOLIN

One night on some light errand I sat beside
The cooking-stove in Johann’s sitting-room.
Within there was the cheer of lamp and fire,
The stove-draught yawning red and wide,
The table with its rosy cotton spread,
A blue chair-cover from a home-land loom,
A baby’s bed.
And in that odour of cleanliness and food
Johann, the labourer worthy of his hire
For seven days a week, twelve hours a day
At some vague toil “down in the yard.”
“Hard?
What o’ that? Look at the luck I’ve got to keep the place
And draw my pay.”
He had been strong
And still his body kept its ruggedness.
Yet he was old and stiffened and he moved
As one who is wrapped round in something thick.
But O, his face,
His face was like the faces that look out
From bark and hole of trees all marred and grooved,
All laid about
With old varieties of silence and of wrong.
Such faces are locked long
In men, in stones, in wood, in earth,
Awaiting birth.
And Johann’s face was less
Expectant than the happy dead awaiting to become the quick.

His wife said much about how hard she tried.
She chattered high and shrill
About the burden and the eating ill.
His mother, little, thin, half-blind and cross,
With scarlet flannel round her throat,
Put in her note,
Muttered about the cold, the draught, her side----
Small ineffectual chants of little loss,
With never a word
Of the great gossip which she had not heard:
That life had passed her by.
The little room beset me like the din
And prick of scourges. All
At once I looked upon the spattered wall
And saw a violin.

_A hall
Vast, bright and breathing.
In the upper air
A chord, a flower of tone, a quiet wreathing
Along the lift and fall
Of some clear current in the blood
Now delicately understood,
Till all the hearing ones below
Are where
The voices call.
O now they know
What music is. It is that which they are
Themselves. Infinite bells,
Of silence in a little sheath. Deep wells
Of being in a little cup. Star upon star
Veiled save one reaching ray.
And see! The people turn
And for a breath they look
Out into one another’s eyes
And shine and burn
Wise, wise,
With ultimate knowledge of the good
That seeks one whole.
And how
Eternity begins
And ever is beginning now
A thousand hearts learn from the violins._

“My back ain’t right. My head ain’t right. I’m almost dead.
Fill the hot water bag. I’m goin’ to bed....”
“Ten pairs of socks I’ve darned to-night. I try
To do the best I can....”
I put the women by.
“Johann,” I said, “you play?” He shook his head.
“I lost it, loggin’----” he held up a stump of thumb.
“I took six lessons once,” he said.
I sat there, dumb.

From out the inner place of music there had come
Long long ago,
Some viewless one to tell him how to know
What waits upon the page
To beat the rhythm of the world. He heard; and tried
To stumble toward the door graciously wide
For other feet than his.
“I took six lessons once,” he said with pride.
This
Was all we gave him of his heritage.

III

NORTH STAR

His boy had stolen some money from a booth
At the County Fair. I found the father in his kitchen.
For years he had driven a dray and the heavy lifting
Had worn him down. So through his evenings
He slept by the kitchen stove as I found him.
The mother was crying and ironing.
I thought about the mother,
For she brought me a photograph
Taken at a street fair on her wedding day.
She was so trim and white and he so neat and alert
In the picture with their friends about them----
I saw that she wanted me to know their dignity from the first.
But afterward I thought more about the father.
For as he came with me to the door I could not forbear
To say how bright and near the stars seemed.
Then he leaned and peered from beneath his low roof,
And he said:
“_There used to be a star called the Nord Star._”

PROSE NOTES

I

THE BUREAU

In anger, in irritation, in argument, what happens to you and me?
Something fine weaving us round is torn open.
Something fine permeating us is drawn from the veins.
Presences waiting to understand us retreat to a farther ante-room of us.
Little cells are incommunicably sealed.

All this happened to me and some strange progress was halted
until something in me could be repaired.
The whole race halted with me.
The light of the remotest star, do you imagine that it did not know?
Innumerable influences ceased to pour upon us all.
And it was because someone left the attic window open and it
had rained on an old bureau.

II

MINUET

I went from Fifth avenue into the Plaza on a sunny Winter morning.
There on a little stage it was Spring. A shepherdess walked.
Beside a stream girls were tying garlands. A harp was touched.
The shepherdess and her lovers danced a minuet on the
bright emerald of that shining field.

Down by Brooklyn Bridge----
Now this sharp contrast will shock you, but we must not
interrupt the minuet----
I know a place down by Brooklyn Bridge where a woman
(Young, once pretty, still with tender eyes)
Carries water up five flights of stairs to do washing.

I watched the minuet and I thought about that woman.
Did God create two worlds?
Or has man made a world? And can man see that his world is good?

III

THE DINING ROOM

I laid the blue dishes on the table.
The dining room was still and sunny.
Zinnias were in a brown basket,
The grape-fruit plant was glossy in a window.
Skilful fingers had wrought the border of the curtain.
My grand-mother’s blue pitcher was on the sideboard.
There were chestnut leaves in the brown rug.
Barometer and thermometer recorded miracle on the rose wall.
Dark wood paneled and beamed us in together.

As I worked these exquisite patient familiar things let me within.
They let me look with their eyes, feel with their beating
pulses of hurrying molecules.
I perceived how locomotion and consciousness and
self-consciousness have advanced us.
By what means shall we go forward now?
Does anyone wonder at my slow patience as I wonder at the
slow patience of these exquisite and familiar things?

IV

PARADISE AND PURGATORY

Do you ever go into your room and find familiar things unfamiliar.
Muslin curtains thinned by moonlight,
Open window, candle, mirror, expectant chairs,
Long smooth waiting bed--do they not bear another aspect
As if you had divined them doing their duty,
As if to be inanimate clearly involved a process,
As if they were surprised at their creeping task of going
back to earth, rising in plants, quickening into beings.
That is the great work of those patient things.
That is why they look so intent.
So with all your preoccupation in dressing for to-day
Your object is the same as that of these humble ones.
Only you have reached a paradise where you can hasten your way.
But these others are yet in purgatory.

V

AT LEAST ...

On that day of wild joyous wind
I filled my being with warm hurrying air.
The pouring sun was in my heart like water in a well.
I ran in the pulsing tonic currents.
And all the time, melodious in my mind,
There beat and strove the measure of a tune.
Then for a breath I understood: Glory without and flame within,
They passioned to belong to each other.
I--I was the interruption.

From that time I gave my body to be a harp:
Wind of the world without, breath of the soul within,
I will try to let you interflow.
August Presences, at least, at least may I not hinder you.

VI

ROSES

Only once have I been sure that a rose answered me.
Always the reticence of roses was the aloofness of the peak
A rose would never admit me, speak to me,
Listen to me, reply to me, do other than suffer me.
But one day after our barbarous fashion I lifted a rose to my face.
Suddenly, thrillingly, the rose replied. It, too, touched at me.
We had something to exchange.
What am I to do that this shall be true of every flower,
Every animal, every stone, every manufactured article,
Every created object--yes, even every person of the world?

VII

SPRING EVENING

I heard her at the telephone.
“Do come early,” she was saying, “while the light lasts.
The dog-wood is in blossom, the mountains are wonderful.
It is,” she said, “too heavenly. Do come, while the light lasts....”
Outside on the veranda I could see the light,
I could see the dog-wood in bloom and a mountain
_And more!_
What else there was I am trying to tell:
Not colour for I am no artist. Not glamour for I am not in love;
Not any more magic than I am accustomed to;
Not presence I think--though perhaps after all it was presence.
But something else was there, exquisite, insistent.
When she came back I looked up to see if it met her.
But she only said: “It is too heavenly.
I hope they will come while the light lasts.”
I knew that she did not see what I saw.
But what did I see....

VIII

SECOND SIGHT

Can the world have been created for you and me to do all
that fills our days:
Care of a house, lawn, shop, billion dollar business?
These are not enough for us.
Can the world have been created for the nations to do
all that fills their days:
Trading, peacefully penetrating, warring,
Or when the mood changes, motoring down one another’s roads,
decorating one another, bowing at one another’s courts?
These are not enough for the nations.

What is the world for?

Once in an apple orchard at mid-day
I had a moment of second sight as I watched a child at play.
She shone with light like a holy child. She was pure.
She was growing. She was nothing, nothing but love.
She was all that we might be, we and the nations.
She was all that we shall be.
Come, let us face it!

IX

DOES SOMETHING WAIT?

Go and wait somewhere. Take no book, no paper, no
solitaire or needle task.
Nay but forbid yourself also that you reckon the profit or plan a feast
Or discern dust on the lamp;
That you consider to whom to sell or what to wear.
Go and wait somewhere, with forgotten muscles.

Now does something wait with you, glad and welcoming
that you are free to turn to it?
Then you have bread that you know not of and it is brought to you.
Or do you merely sit with an hundred fibres in you pressing to be gone?
Then you are in danger of starvation.
By this means we may almost know what we are.

X

DOORS

At the edge of consciousness is a little door.
What goes by?
Now a wing of brightness, of colour, of something out
there that I love more than I am accustomed to loving.
Now fares by a delicate shadow, patterned, fleet, that
I long to know more than I am accustomed to knowing.
There must be so much more to love and to know than the
little loves and the little knowledge.

Then someone knocks at my door.
Thou!
The wing of brightness, the delicate shadow were but the sign.
What am I to do?
I will find my way to the edge of my consciousness,
I will gain the door, I will have my freedom,
I will love and know and be all being.
Thou art the liberator. Why it is true....
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”

XI

LEVITATION

Three times that day came the sense of levitation.
As if court-house walk, walnut shadow, a length of sunny
lawn let her go by with no tribute of her touch.
It seemed as if the wonderful would happen.
She waited, prepared for the vision.
The day flowered, ripened, mellowed, fell upon night.
No presence opened or signaled.
Then she went to embosom that which the hours had left her.
She faced her day, and her day gathered itself as a living
thing with a voice and deep eyes.
It said, I was wonderful.

Yet the only thing to happen that day had been this:
Old Edgerton Bascom came to the porch, selling buttons.
She bought from him, picked her dahlias for his wife.
He went away, comforted, restored to self-respect by her purchase.
Perhaps when levitation comes it will be a matter of this kind
Rather than of calculation and reckoning.

XII

ENCHANTMENT

In this house I perform all as seriously as may be required.
I accept my desk, my little tools, lamp, paper.
I write in the one language which I have been taught and
about the few things with which I am familiar.
I eat the little round of food which it is said will nourish my body.
About my books I am docile and I learn from them.
I look no farther than my window permits.
When I wish to emerge I go obediently to the door as if
there were conceivable no other way of exit.
At night I fall into sleep as if that were eternal purpose.

I suffer from absence, I submit to distance,
I am subject to innumerable influences,
I am open to them all with a sober face.

But all the time I have knowledge that I am something other;
That all these things shall ultimately have no more power over me.
That I consent to them because of some delicate exigency
in this moment of eternity.
Even now I am often free of them.
There was the day when I moved among the hills and lost
every sense of difference from them.
With the crowning cloud and the far filament of the river
I found myself in common.
The air was vocal with all that is identical and in that
hour it offered to me my identity.
I became everything. I had no question to ask for it was
I, too, who was answering.
The hour dissolved. The ultimate star was my neighbour.

... Suddenly I remembered myself down in the valley moving
about in a house.
And I perceived that for years I have been enchanted.
I am listening to be set free.