Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

My brother, the god, and I grow sick
Of heaven's heights.
We plunge to the valley to hear the tick
Of days and nights.
We walk and loiter around the Loom
To see, if we may,
The Hand that smashes the beam in the gloon
To the shuttle's play;
Who grows the wool, who cards and spins,
Who clips and ties;
For the storied weave of the Gobelins,
Who draughts and dyes.

But whether you stand or walk around
You shall but hear
A murmuring life, as it were the sound
Of bees or a sphere.
No Hand is seen, but still you may feel
A pulse in the thread,
And thought in every lever and wheel
Where the shuttle sped,
Dripping the colors, as crushed and urged--
Is it cochineal?--
Shot from the shuttle, woven and merged
A tale to reveal.
Woven and wound in a bolt and dried
As it were a plan.
Closer I looked at the thread and cried
The thread is man!

Then my brother curious, strong and bold,
Tugged hard at the bolt
Of the woven life; for a length unrolled
The cryptic cloth.
He gasped for labor, blind for the moult
Of the up-winged moth.
While I saw a growth and a mad crusade
That the Loom had made;
Land and water and living things,
Till I grew afraid
For mouths and claws and devil wings,
And fangs and stings,
And tiger faces with eyes of hell
In caves and holes.
And eyes in terror and terrible
For awakened souls.

I stood above my brother, the god
Unwinding the roll.
And a tale came forth of the woven slain
Sequent and whole,
Of flint and bronze, trowel and hod,
The wheel and the plane,
The carven stone and the graven clod
Painted and baked.
And cromlechs, proving the human heart
Has always ached;
Till it puffed with blood and gave to art
The dream of the dome;
Till it broke and the blood shot up like fire
In tower and spire.

And here was the Persian, Jew and Goth
In the weave of the cloth;
Greek and Roman, Ghibelline, Guelph,
Angel and elf.
They were dyed in blood, tangled in dreams
Like a comet's streams.
And here were surfaces red and rough
In the finished stuff,
Where the knotted thread was proud and rebelled
As the shuttle proved
The fated warp and woof that held
When the shuttle moved;
And pressed the dye which ran to loss
In a deep maroon
Around an altar, oracle, cross
Or a crescent moon.
Around a face, a thought, a star
In a riot of war!

Then I said to my brother, the god, let be,
Though the thread be crushed,
And the living things in the tapestry
Be woven and hushed;
The Loom has a tale, you can see, to tell,
And a tale has told.
I love this Gobelin epical
Of scarlet and gold.
If the heart of a god may look in pride
At the wondrous weave
It is something better to Hands which guide--
I see and believe.

DIALOGUE AT PERKO'S

Look here, Jack:
You don't act natural. You have lost your laugh.
You haven't told me any stories. You
Just lie there half asleep. What's on your mind?

JACK

What time is it? Where is my watch?

FLORENCE

Your watch
Under your pillow! You don't think I'd take it.
Why, Jack, what talk for you.

JACK

Well, never mind,
Let's pack no ice.

FLORENCE

What's that?

JACK

No quarreling--
What is the time?

FLORENCE

Look over towards my dresser--
My clock says half-past eleven.

JACK

Listen to that--
That hurdy-gurdy's playing Holy Night,
And on this street.

FLORENCE

And why not on this street?

JACK

You may be right. It may as well be played
Where you live as in front of where I work,
Some twenty stories up. I think you're right.

FLORENCE

Say, Jack, what is the matter? Come! be gay.
Tell me some stories. Buy another bottle.
Just think you make a lot of money, Jack.
You're young and prominent. They all know you.
I hear your name all over town. I see
Your picture in the papers. What's the matter?

JACK

I've lost my job for one thing.

FLORENCE

You don't mean it!

JACK

They used me and then fired me, same as you.
If you don't make the money, out you go.

FLORENCE

Yes, out I go. But, there are other places.

JACK

On further down the street.

FLORENCE

Not yet a while.

JACK

Not yet for me, but still the question is
Whether to fight it out for up or down,
Or run from everything, be free.

FLORENCE

You can't do that.

JACK

Why not?

FLORENCE

No more than I.
Oh well perhaps, if a nice man came by
To marry me then I could get away.
It happens all the time. Last week in fact
Christ Perko married Rachel who lived here.
He's rich as cream.

JACK

What corresponds to marriage
To take me from slavery?

FLORENCE

Money is everything.

JACK

Yes, everything and nothing.
Christ Perko's rich, Christ Perko runs this house,
The madam merely acts as figure-head;
Keeps check upon the girls and on the wine.
She's just the editor, and yet I'd rather
Be editor than owner. I was editor.
My Perko was the owner of a pulp mill,
Incorporate through some multi-millionaires,
And all our lesser writers were the girls,
Like you and Rachel.

FLORENCE

But you know before
He married Rachel, he was lover to
The madam here.

JACK

The stories tally, for
The pulp mill took my first assistant editor
To wife by making him the editor.
And I was fired just as the madam here
Lost out with Perko.

FLORENCE

This is growing funny...
Ahem! I'll ask you something--
As if I were a youth and you a girl--
How were you ruined first?

JACK

The same as you:
You ran away from school. It was romance.
You thought you loved this flashy travelling man.
And I--I loved adventure, loved the truth.
I wanted to destroy the force called "They."
There is no "They"--we're all together here,
And everyone must live, Christ Perko too,
The pulp-mill, the policeman, magistrate,
The alderman, the precinct captain too,
And you the girls, myself the editor,
And all the lesser writers. Here we are
Thrown in one integrated lot. You see
There is no "They," except the terms, the thought
Which ramifies and vivifies the whole. ...
So I came to the city, went to work
Reporting for a paper. Having said
There is no "They"--I've freed myself to say
What bitter things I choose. For how they drive you,
And terrify you, mock you, ridicule you,
And call you cub and greenhorn, send you round
To courts and dirty places, make you risk
Your body and your life, and make you watch
The rules about your writing; what's tabooed,
What names are to be cursed or to be praised,
What interests, policies to be subserved,
And what to undermine. So I went through,
Until I had a desk, wrote editorials--
Now said I to myself, I'm free at last.
But no, my manager, your madam, mark you,
Kept eye on me, for he was under watch
Of some Christ Perko. So my manager
Blue penciled me when I touched certain subjects.
But, as he was a just man, loved me too.
He gave me things to write where he could let
My conscience have full scope, as you might live
In this house where you saw the man you loved,
And no one else, though living in this hell.
For I lived in a hell, who saw around me
Such lying, hatred, malice, prostitution.
And when this offer came to be an editor
Of a great magazine, I seemed to feel
My courage and my virtue given reward.
Now, I should pass on poems, and on stories,
Creations of free souls. It was not so.
The poems and the stories one could see
Were written to be sold, to please a taste,
Placate a prejudice, keep still alive
An era dying, ready for the tomb,
Already smelling. And that was not all.
Just as the madam here must make report
To Perko, so the magazine had to run
To suit the pulp mill. As the madam here,
Assistant to Christ Perko, must keep friends
With alderman, policemen, magistrates,
So I was just a wheel in a machine
To keep it running with such larger wheels,
And by them run, of policies, and politics
Of State and Nation. Here was I locked in
And given dope to keep me still lest I
Cry out and wake the copper-who's the copper
For such as I was? If he heard me cry
How could he raid the magazine? If he raided
Where was the court to take me and the rest--
That's it, where is the court?

FLORENCE

It seems to me
You're bad as I am.

JACK

I am worse than you:
I poison minds with thoughts they take as good.
I drug an era, make it foul or dull--
You only sicken bodies here and there.
But you know how it is. You have remorse,
You fight it down, hush it with sophistry.
You think about the world, about your fellows:
You see that everyone is selling self,
Little or much somehow. You feed your body,
Try to be hearty, take things as they come.
You take athletics, try to keep your strength,
As you hear music, laugh, drink wine, and smoke,
Are bathed and coifed to keep your beauty fresh.
And through it all the soul's and body's needs,
The pleasures, interests, passions of our life,
The cry that comes from somewhere: "Live, O Soul,
The time is passing," move and claim your strength.
Till you forget yourself, forget the boy
And man you were, forget the dreams you had,
The creed you wished to live by--yes, what's worse,
See dreams you had, grown tawdry, see your creed
Cracked through and crumbled like a falling house.
And then you say: What is the difference?
As you might ask what virtue is and why
Should woman keep it.

I have reached this place
Save for one truth I hold to, shall still hold to:
As long as I have breath: The man who sees not,
Or cares not for the Truth that keeps the world
From vast disintegration is a brute,
And marked for a brute's death--that is his hell.
'Twas loyalty to this truth that made me lose
My place as editor. For when they came
And tried to make me pass an article
To poison millions with, I said, "I won't,
I won't by God. I'll quit before I do."
And then they said, "You quit," and so I quit.

FLORENCE

And so you took to drink and came to me!
And that's the same as if I came to you
And used you as an editor. I am nothing
But just a poor reporter in this house--
But now I quit.

JACK

Where are you going, Florence?

FLORENCE

I'm going to a village or a farm
Where I'll get up at six instead of twelve,
Where I'll wear calico instead of silk,
And where there'll be no furnace in the house.
And where the carpet which has kept me here
And keeps you here as editor is not.
I'm going to economize my life
By freeing it of systems which grow rich
By using me, and for the privilege
Bestow these gaudy clothes and perfumed bed.
I hate you now, because I hate my life.

JACK

Wait! Wait a minute.

FLORENCE

Dinah, call a cab!

SIR GALAHAD

I met Hosea Job on Randolph Street
Who said to me: "I'm going for the train,
I want you with me."

And it happened then
My mind was hard, as muscles of the back
Grow hard resisting cold or shock or strain
And need the osteopath to be made supple,
To give the nerves and streams of life a chance.
Hosea Job was just the osteopath
To loose, relax my mood. And so I said
"All right"--and went.

Hosea was a man
Whom nothing touched of danger, or of harm.
His life was just a rare-bit dream, where some one
Seems like to fall before a truck or train--
Instead he walks across them. Or you see
Shadows of falling things, great buildings topple,
Pianos skid like bulls from hellish corners
And chase the oblivious fool who stands and smiles.
The buildings slant and sway like monstrous searchlights,
But never touch him. And the mad piano
Comes up to him, puts down its angry head,
Runs out a friendly tongue and licks his hand,
And lows a symphony.

By which I mean
Hosea had some money, and would sign
A bond or note for any man who asked him.
He'd rent a house and leave it, rent another,
Then rent a farm, move out from town and in.
He'd have the leases of superfluous places
Cancelled some how, was never sued for rent.
One time he had a fancy he would see
South Africa, took ship with a load of mules,
First telegraphing home from New Orleans
He'd be back in the Spring. Likewise he went
To Klondike with the rush. I think he owned
More kinds of mining stock than there were mines.
He had more quaint, peculiar men for friends
Than one could think were living. He believed
In every doctrine in its time, that promised
Salvation for the world. He took no thought
For life or for to-morrow, or for health,
Slept with his windows closed, ate what he wished.
And if he cut his finger, let it go.
I offered him peroxide once, he laughed.
And when I asked him if his soul was saved
He only said: "I see things. I lie back
And take it easy. Nothing can go wrong
In any serious sense."

So many thought
Hosea was a nut, and others thought,
That I was just a nut for liking him.
And what would any man of business say
If he knew that I didn't ask a question,
But simply went with him to take the train
That day he asked me.

And the train had gone
Five miles or so when I said: "Where you going?"
Hosea answered, and it made me start--
Hosea answered simply, "We are going
To see Sir Galahad."

It made me start
To hear Hosea say this, for I thought
He was now really off. But, I looked at him
And saw his eyes were sane.

"Sir Galahad?
Who is Sir Galahad?"

Hosea answered:
"I'm going up to see Sir Galahad,
And sound him out about re-entering
The game and run for governor again."

So then I knew he was the man our fathers
Worked with and knew and called Sir Galahad,
Now in retirement fifteen years or so.
Well, I was twenty-five when he was famous.
Sir Galahad was forty then, and now
Must be some fifty-five while I am forty.
So flashed across my thought the matter of time
And ages. So I thought of all he did:
Of how he went from faith to faith in politics
And ran for every office up to governor,
And ran for governor four times or so,
And never was elected to an office.
He drew more bills to remedy injustice,
Improve the courts, relieve the poor, reform
Administration, than the legislature
Could read, much less digest or understand.
The people beat him and the leaders flogged him.
They shut the door against his face until
He had no place to go except a farm
Among the stony hills, and there he went.
And thither we were going to see the knight,
And call him from his solitude to the fight
Against injustice, greed.

So we got off
The train at Alden, just a little village
Of fifty houses lying beneath the sprawl
Of hills and hills. And here there was a stillness
Made lonelier by an anvil ringing, by
A plow-man's voice at intervals.

Here Hosea
Engaged a horse and buggy, and we drove
And wound about a crooked road between
Great hills that stood together like the backs
Of elephants in a herd, where boulders lay
As thick as hail in places. Ruined pines
Stood like burnt matches. There was one which stuck
Against a single cloud so white it seemed
A bursted bale of cotton.

We reached the summit
And drove along past orchards, past a field
Level and green, kept like a garden, rich
Against the coming harvest. Here we met
A scarecrow man, driving a scarecrow horse
Hitched to a wobbly wagon. And we stopped,
The scarecrow stopped. The scarecrow and Hosea
Talked much of people and of farming--I
Sat listening, and I gathered from the talk,
And what Hosea told me as we drove,
That once this field so level and so green
The scarecrow owned. He had cleaned out the stumps,
And tried to farm it, failed, and lost the field,
But raged to lose it, thought he might succeed
In further time. Now having lost the field
So many years ago, could be a scarecrow,
And drive a scarecrow horse, yet laugh again
And have no care, the sorrow healed.

It seemed
The clearing of the stumps was scarce a starter
Toward a field of profit. For in truth,
The soil possessed a secret which the scarecrow
Never went deep enough to learn about.
His problem was all stumps. Not solving that,
He sold it to a farmer who out-slaved
The busiest bee, but only half succeeded.
He tried to raise potatoes, made a failure.
He planted it in beans, had half a crop.
He sowed wheat once and reaped a stack of straw.
The secret of the soil eluded him.
And here Hosea laughed: "This fellow's failure
Was just the thing that gave another man
The secret of the soil. For he had studied
The properties of soils and fertilizers.
And when he heard the field had failed to raise
Potatoes, beans and wheat, he simply said:
There are other things to raise: the question is
Whether the soil is suited to the things
He tried to raise, or whether it needs building
To raise the things he tried to raise, or whether
It must be builded up for anything.
At least he said the field is clear of stumps.
Pass on your field, he said. If I lose out
I'll pass it on. The field is his, he said
Who can make something grow.

And so this field
Of waving wheat along which we were driving
Was just the very field the scarecrow man
Had failed to master, as that other man
Had failed to master after him.

Hosea
Kept talking of this field as we drove on.
That field, he said, is economical
Of men compared with many fields. You see
It only used two men. To grub the stumps
Took all the scarecrow's strength. That other man
Ran off to Oklahoma from this field.
I have known fields that ate a dozen men
In country such as this. The field remains
And laughs and waits for some one who divines
The secret of the field. Some farmers live
To prove what can't be done, and narrow down
The guess of what is possible. It's right
A certain crop should prosper and another
Should fail, and when a farmer tries to raise
A crop before it's time, he wastes himself
And wastes the field to try.

We now were climbing
To higher hills and rockier fields. Hosea
Had fallen into silence. I was thinking
About Sir Galahad, was wondering
Which man he was, the scarecrow, or the farmer
Who didn't know the seed to sow, or whether
He might still prove the farmer raising wheat,
Now we were come to give him back the field
With all the stumps grubbed out, the secret lying
Revealed and ready for the appointed hands.

We passed an orchard growing on a knoll
And saw a barn perked on a rocky hill,
And near the barn a house. Hosea said:
"This is Sir Galahad's." We tied the horse.
And we were in the silence of the country
At mid-day on a day in June. No bird
Was singing, fowl was cackling, cow was lowing,
No dog was barking. All was summer stillness.
We crossed a back-yard past a windlass well,
Dodged under clothes lines through a place of chips,
Walked in a path along the house. I said:
"Sir Galahad is ploughing, or perhaps
Is mending fences, cutting weeds." It seemed
Too bad to come so far and not to find him.
"We'll find him," said Hosea. "Let us sit
Under that tree and wait for him."

And then
We turned the corner of the house and there
Under a tree an old man sat, his head
Bowed down upon his breast, locked fast in sleep.
And by his feet a dog half blind and fat
Lay dozing, too inert to rise and bark.

Hosea gripped my arm. "Be still" he said.
"Let's ask him where Sir Galahad is," said I.
And then Hosea whispered, "God forgive me,
I had forgotten, you too have forgotten.
The man is old, he's very old. The years
Go by unnoticed. Come! Sir Galahad
Should sleep and not be waked."

We tip-toed off
And hurried back to Alden for the train.

ST. DESERET

You wonder at my bright round eyes, my lips
Pressed tightly like a venomous rosette.
Thus do me honor by so much, fond wretch,
And praise my Persian beauty, dulcet voice.
But oh you know me, read me, passion blinds
Your vision not at all, and you have passion
For me and what I am. How can you be so?
Hold me so bear-like, take my lips with yours,
Bury your face in these my russet tresses,
And yet not lose your vision? So I love you,
And fear you too. How idle to deny it
To you who know I fear you.

Here am I
Who answer you what e'er you choose to ask.
You stride about my rooms and open books,
And say when did he give you this? You pick
His photograph from mantels, dressers, drawl
Out of ironic strength, and smile the while:
"You did not love this man." You probe my soul
About his courtship, how I ran away,
How he pursued with gifts from city to city,
Threw bouquets to me from the pit, or stood

Like Cleopatra's Giant negro guard,
Watchful and waiting at the green-room door.
So, devil, that you are, with needle pricks,
One little question at a time, you've inked
The story in my flesh. And now at last
You smile and say I killed him. Well, it's true.
But what a death he had! Envy him that.
Your frigid soul can never win the death
I gave him.

Listen since you know already
All but the subtlest matters. How you laugh!
You know these too? Well, only I can tell them.

First 'twas a piteous thing to see a man
So love a woman, see a living thing
So love another. Why he could not touch
My hand but that his heart went up ten beats.
His eyes would grow as bright as flames, his breath
Come short when speaking. When he felt my breast
Crush soft around him he would reel and walk
Away from me, while I stood like a snake
Poised for the strike, as quiet and possessed
As a dead breeze. And you can have me wholly,
And pet and pat me like a favored child,
And let me go my way, while you turn back
To what you left for me.

Not so with him:
I was all through his blood, had made his flesh
My flesh, his nerves, brain, soul all mine at last,
Dreams, thoughts, emotions, hungers all my own.
So that he lived two lives, his own and mine,
With one poor body, which he gave to me.
Save that he could not give what I pushed back
Into his hands to use for me and live
My pities, hatreds, loves and passions with.
I loved all this and thrived upon it, still
I did not love him. Then why marry him?
Why don't you see? It meant so much to him.
And 'twas a little thing for me to do.
His loneliness, his hunger, his great passion
That showed in his poor eyes, his broken breath,
His chivalry, his gifts, his poignant letters,
His failing health, why even woman's cruelty
Cannot deny such passion. Woman's cruelty
Takes other means for finding its expression.
And mine found its expression--you have guessed
And so I tell you all.

We were married then.
He made a sacrament of our nuptials,
Knelt with closed eyes beside the bed, my lips
Pressed to his brow and throat. Unveiled my breast
And looked, then closed his eyes. He did not take me
As man takes his possession, nature's way,
In triumph of life, in lightning, no, he came
A suppliant, a worshipper, and whispered:
"What angel child may lie upon the breast
Of this it's angel mother."

Well, you see
The tears came in my eyes, for pity of him,
Who made so much of what I had to give,
And could give easily whether 'twas my rapture
To give or to withhold. And in that moment
Contempt of which I had been scarcely conscious
Lying diffused like dew around my heart
Drained down itself into my heart's dark cup
To one bright drop of vital power, where
He could not see it, scarcely knew that something
Gradually drugged the potion that he drank
In life with me.

So we were wed a year,
And he was with me hourly, till at last
I could not breathe for him, while he could breathe
No where but where I was. Then the bazaar
Was coming on where I was to dance, and he
Had long postponed a trip to England where
Great interests waited for him, and with kisses
I pushed him to his duty, and he went
Shame stricken for a duty long postponed,
Unable to retort against my words
When I said "You must go;" for well he knew
He should have gone before. And as for going
I pleaded the bazaar and hate of travel,
And got him off, and freed myself to breathe.

His life had been too fast, his years too many
To stand the strain that came. There was the worry
About the business, and the labor over it.
There was the war, and all the fear and turmoil
In London for the war. But most of all
There was the separation. And his letters!
You've read them, wretch. Such letters never were
Of aching loneliness and pining love
And hope that lives across three thousand miles,
And waits the day to travel them, and fear
Of something which may bar the way forever:
A storm, a wreck, a submarine and no day
Without a letter or a cablegram.
And look at the endearments--oh you fiend
To pick their words to pieces like a botanist
Who cuts a flower up for his microscope.
And oh myself who let you see these letters.
Why did I do it? Rather why is it
You master me, even as I mastered him?

At last he finished, got his passage back.
He had been gone three months. And all these letters
Showed how he starved for me, and scarce could wait
To take me in his arms again, would choke
With fast and heavy feeding.

Well, you see
The contempt I spoke of which lay long diffused
Like dew around my heart, and which at once
Drained down itself into my heart's dark cup
Grew brighter, bitterer, for this obvious hunger,
This thirst which could not wait, the piteous trembling.
And all the while it seemed he thought his love
Grew sacreder as it grew uncontrolled,
And marked by trembling, choking, tears and sighs.
This is not love which should be, has no use
In this or any world. And as for me
I could not stand it longer. And I thought
Of what was best to do: if 'twas not best
To kill him as the queen bee kills the mate
In rapture's own excess.

Then he arrived.
I went to meet him in the car, pretended
The feed pipe broke while I was on the way.
I was not at the station when he came.
I got back to the house and found him gone.
He had run through the rooms calling my name,
So Mary told me. Then he went around
From place to place, wherever in the village
He thought to find me.

Soon I heard his steps,
The key in the door, his winded breath, his call,
His running, stumbling up the stairs, while I
Stood silent as a shadow in our room,
My round bright eyes grown brighter for the light
His life was feeding them. And then he stood
Breathless and trembling in the door-way, stood
Transfixed with ecstacy, then rushed and caught me
And broke into loud tears.

It had to end.
One or the other of us had to die.
I could not die but by a violence,
And he could die by love alone, and love
I gave him to his death.

Why tell you details
And ways with which I maddened him, and whipped
The energies of love? You have extracted
The secret in the main, that 'twas from love
He came to death. His life had been too fast,
His years too many for the daily rapture
I gave him after three months' separation.
And so he died one morning, made me free
Of nothing but his presence in the flesh.
His love is on me yet, and its effect.
And now you're here to slave me differently--
No soul is ever free.

HEAVEN IS BUT THE HOUR

Eyes wide for wisdom, calm for joy or pain,
Bright hair alloyed with silver, scarcely gold.
And gracious lips flower pressed like buds to hold
The guarded heart against excess of rain.
Hands spirit tipped through which a genius plays
With paints and clays,
And strings in many keys--
Clothed in an aura of thought as soundless as a flood
Of sun-shine where there is no breeze.
So is it light in spite of rhythm of blood,
Or turn of head, or hands that move, unite--
Wind cannot dim or agitate the light.
From Plato's idea stepping, wholly wrought
From Plato's dream, made manifest in hair,
Eyes, lips and hands and voice,
As if the stored up thought
From the earth sphere
Had given down the being of your choice
Conjured by the dream long sought.

* * * * *

For you have moved in madness, rapture, wrath
In and out of the path
Drawn by the dream of a face.
You have been watched, as star-men watch a star
That leaves its way, returns and leaves its way,
Until the exploring watchers find, can trace
A hidden star beyond their sight, whose sway
Draws the erratic star so long observed--
So have you wandered, swerved.

* * * * *

Always pursued and lost,
Sometimes half found, half-faced,
Such years we waste
With the almost:
The lips flower pressed like buds to hold
Guarded the heart of the flower,
But over them eyes not hued as the Dream foretold.
Or to find the lips too rich and the dower
Of eyes all gaiety
Where wisdom scarce can be.
Or to find the eyes, but to find offence
In fingers where the sense
Falters with colors, strings,
Not touching with closed eyes, out of an immanence
Of flame and wings.
Or to find the light, but to find it set behind
An eye which is not your dream, nor the shadow thereof,
As it were your lamp in a stranger's window.
And so almost to find
In the great weariness of love.

* * * * *

Now this is the tragedy:
If the Idea did not move
Somewhere in the realm of Love,
Clothing itself in flesh at last for you to see,
You could scarcely follow the gleam.
And the tragedy is when Life has made you over,
And denied you, and dulled your dream,
And you no longer count the cost,
Nor the past lament,
You are sitting oblivious of your discontent
Beside the Almost--
And then the face appears
Evoked from the Idea by your dead desire,
And blinds and burns you like fire.
And you sit there without tears,
Though thinking it has come to kill you, or mock your youth
With its half of the truth.

* * * * *

A beach as yellow as gold
Daisied with tents for a lovely mile.
And a sea that edges and walls the sand with blue,
Matching the heaven without a seam,
Save for the threads of foam that hold
With stitches the canopy rare as the tile
Of old Damascus. And O the wind
Which roars to the roaring water brightened
By the beating wings of the sun!
And here I walk, not seeking the Dream,
As men walk absent of heart or mind
Who have no wish for a sorrow lightened
Since all things now seem lost or won.
And here it is that your face appears!
Like a star brushed out from leaves by a breeze
When day's in the sky, though evening nears.
You are here by a tent with your little brood,
And I approach in a quiet mood
And see you, know that the Destinies
Have surrendered you at last.
Voice, lips and hands and the light of the eyes.

* * * * *

And I who have asked so much discover
That you find in me the man and lover
You have divined and visualized,
In quiet day dreams. And what is strange
Your boy of eight is subtly guised
In fleeting looks that half resemble
Something in me. Two souls may range
Mid this earth's billion souls for life,
And hide their hunger or dissemble.
For there are two at least created,
Endowed with alien powers that draw,
And kindred powers that by some law
Bind souls as like as sister, brother.
There are two at least who are for each other.
If we are such, it is not fated
You are for him, howe'er belated
The time's for us.

* * * * *

And yet is not the time gone by?
Your garden has been planted, dear.
And mine with weeds is over-grown.
Oh yes! 'tis only late July!
We can replant, ere frosts appear,
Gather the blossoms we have sown.
And I have preached that hearts should seize
The hour that brings realities. ...

Yes, I admit it all, we crush
Under our feet the world's contempt.
But when I raise the cup, it's blush
Reveals the snake's eyes, there's a hush
While a hand writes upon the wall:
Life cannot be re-made, exempt
From life that has been, something's gone
Out of the soil, in life updrawn
To growths that vine, and tangle, crawl,
Withered in part, or gone to seed.
'Tis not the same, though you have freed
The soil from what was grown. ...

* * * * *

Heaven is but the hour
Of the planting of the flower.
But heaven is the blossom to be,
Of the one Reality.
And heaven cannot undo the once sown ground.
But heaven is love in the pursuing,
And in the memory of having found. ...

The rocks in the river make light and sound
And show that the waters search and move.
And what is time but an infinite whole
Revealed by the breaks in thought, desire?
To put it away is to know one's soul.
Love is music unheard and fire
Too rare for eyes; between hurt beats
The heart detects it, sees how pure
Its essence is, through heart defeats.--
You are the silence making sure
The sound with which it has to cope,
My sorrow and as well my hope.

VICTOR RAFOLSKI ON ART

You dull Goliaths clothed in coats of blue,
Strained and half bursted by the swell of flesh,
Topped by Gorilla heads. You Marmoset,
Trained scoundrel, taught to question and ensnare,
I hate you, hate your laws and hate your courts.
Hands off, give me a chair, now let me be.
I'll tell you more than you can think to ask me.
I love this woman, but what is love to you?
What is it to your laws or courts? I love her.
She loves me, if you'd know. I entered her room--
She stood before me naked, shrank a little,
Cried out a little, calmed her sudden cry
When she saw amiable passion in my eyes--
She loves me, if you'd know. I saw in her eyes
More in those moments than whole hours of talk
From witness stands exculpate could make clear
My innocence.

But if I did a crime
My excuse is hunger, hunger for more life.
Oh what a world, where beauty, rapture, love
Are walled in and locked up like coal or food
And only may be had by purchasers
From whose fat fingers slip the unheeded gold.
Oh what a world where beauty lies in waste,
While power and freedom skulk with famished lips
Too tightly pressed for curses.

So do men,
Save for the thousandth man, deny themselves
And live in meagreness to make sure a life
Of meagreness by hearth stones long since stale;
And live in ways, companionships as fixed
As the geared figures of the Strassburg clock.
You wonder at war? Why war lets loose desires,
Emotions long repressed. Would you stop war?
Then let men live. The moral equivalent
Of war is freedom. Art does not suffice--
Religion is not life, but life is living.
And painted cherries to the hungry thrush
Is art to life. The artist lived his work.
You cannot live his life who love his work.
You are the thrush that pecks at painted cherries
Who hope to live through art. Beer-soaked Goliaths,
The story's coming of her nakedness
Be patient for a time.

All this I learned
While painting pictures no one ever bought,
Till hunger drove me to this servile work
As butler in her father's house, with time
On certain days to walk the galleries
And look at pictures, marbles. For I saw
I was not living while I painted pictures.
I was not living working for a crust,
I was not living walking galleries:
All this was but vicarious life which felt
Through gazing at the thing the artist made,
In memory of the life he lived himself:
As we preserve the fragrance of a flower
By drawing off its essence in a bottle,
Where color, fluttering leaves, are thrown away
To get the inner passion of the flower
Extracted to a bottle that a queen
May act the flower's part.

Say what you will,
Make laws to strangle life, shout from your pulpits,
Your desks of editors, your woolsack benches
Where judges sit, that this dull hypocrite,
You call the State, has fashioned life aright--
The secret is abroad, from eye to eye
The secret passes from poor eyes that wink
In boredom, in fatigue, in furious strength
Roped down or barred, that what the human heart
Dreams of and hopes for till the aspiring flame
Flaps in the guttered candle and goes out,
Is love for body and for spirit, love
To satisfy their hunger. Yet what is it,
This earth, this life, what is it but a meadow
Where spirits are left free a little while
Within a little space, so long as strength,
Flesh, blood increases to the day of use
As roasts or stews wherewith this witless beast,
Society may feed himself and keep
His olden shape and power?

Fools go crop
The herbs they turn you to, and starve yourself
For what you want, and count it righteousness,
No less you covet love. Poor shadows sighing,
Across the curtain racing! Mangled souls
Pecking so feebly at the painted cherries,
Inhaling from a bottle what was lived
These summers gone! You know, and scarce deny
That what we men desire are horses, dogs,
Loves, women, insurrections, travel, change,
Thrill in the wreck and rapture for the change,
And re-adjusted order.

As I turned
From painting and from art, yet found myself
Full of all lusts while bound to menial work
Where my eyes daily rested on this woman
A thought came to me like a little spark
One sees far down the darkness of a cave,
Which grows into a flame, a blinding light
As one approaches it, so did this thought
Both burn and blind me: For I loved this woman,
I wanted her, why should I lose this woman?
What was there to oppose possession? Will?
Her will, you say? I am not sure, but then
Which will is better, mine or hers? Which will
Deserves achievement? Which has rights above
The other? I desire her, her desire
Is not toward me, which of these two desires
Shall triumph? Why not mine for me and hers
For her, at least the stronger must prevail,
And wreck itself or bend all else before it.
That millionaire who wooed her, tried in vain
To overwhelm her will with gold, and I
With passion, boldness would have overwhelmed it,
And what's the difference?

But as I said
I walked the galleries. When I stood in the yard
Bare armed, bare throated at my work, she came
And gazed upon me from her window. I
Could feel the exhausting influence of her eyes.
Then in a concentration which was blindness
To all else, so bewilderment of mind,
I'd go to see Watteau's Antiope
Where he sketched Zeus in hunger, drawing back
The veil that hid her sleeping nakedness.
There was Correggio's too, on whom a satyr
Smiled for his amorous wonder. A Semele,
Done by an unknown hand, a thing of lightning
Moved through by Zeus who seized her as the flames
Consumed her ravished beauty.

So I looked,
And trembled, then returned perhaps to find
Her eyes upon me conscious, calm, elate,
And radiate with lashes of surprise,
Delight as when a star is still but shines.
And on this night somehow our natures worked
To climaxes. For first she dressed for dinner
To show more back and bosom than before.
And as I served her, her down-looking eyes
Were more than glances. Then she dropped her napkin.
Before I could begin to bend she leaned
And let me see--oh yes, she let me see
The white foam of her little breasts caressing
The scarlet flame of silk, a swooning shore
Of bright carnations. It was from such foam
That Venus rose. And as I stooped and gave
The napkin to her she pushed out a foot,
And then I coughed for breath grown short, and she
Concealed a smile--and you, you jailers laugh
Coarse-mouthed, and mock my hunger.

I go on,
Observe how courage, boldness mark my steps!
At nine o'clock she climbs to her boudoir.
I finding errands in the hallway hear
The desultory taking up of books,
And through her open door, see her at last
Cast off her dinner gown and to the bath
Step like a ray of moonlight. Then she snaps
The light on where the onyx tub and walls
Dazzle the air. I enter then her room
And stand against the closed door, do not pry
Upon her in the bath. Give her the chance
To fly me, fight me standing face to face.
I hear her flounder in the water, hear
Hands slap and slip with water breast and arms;
Hear little sighs and shudders and the roughness
Of crash towels on her back, when in a minute
She stands with back toward me in the doorway,
A sea-shell glory, pink and white to hair
Sun-lit, a lily crowned with powdered gold.
She turned toward her dresser then and shook
White dust of talcum on her arms, and looked
So lovingly upon her tense straight breasts,
Touching them under with soft tapering hands
To blue eyes deepening like a brazier flame
Turned by a sudden gust. Who gives her these,
The thought ran through me, for her joy alone
And not for mine?

So I stood there like Zeus
Coming in thunder to Semele, like
The diety of Watteau. Correggio
Had never painted me a satyr there
Drinking her beauty in, so worshipful,
My will subdued in worship of her beauty
To obey her will.

And then she turned and saw me,
And faced me in her nakedness, nor tried
To hide it from me, faced me immovable
A Mona Lisa smile upon her lips.
And let me plead my cause, make known my love,
Speak out my torture, wearing still the smile.
Let me approach her till I almost touched
The whiteness of her bosom. Then it seemed
That smile of hers not wilting me she clapped
Hands over eyes and said: "I am afraid--
Oh no, it cannot be--what would they say?"
Then rushing in the bathroom, quick she slammed
The door and shrieked: "You scoundrel, go--you beast."
My dream went up like paper charred and whirled
Above a hearth. Thrilling I stood alone
Amid her room and saw my life, our life
Embodied in this woman lately there
Lying and cowardly. And as I turned
To leave the room, her father and the gardener
Pounced on me, threw me down a flight of stairs
And turned me over, stunned, to you the law
Here with these others who have stolen coal
To keep them warm, as I have stolen beauty
To keep from freezing in this arid country
Of winter winds on which the dust of custom
Rides like a fog.

Now do your worst to me!

THE LANDSCAPE

You and your landscape! There it lies
Stripped, resuming its disguise,
Clothed in dreams, made bare again,
Symbol infinite of pain,
Rapture, magic, mystery
Of vanished days and days to be.
There's its sea of tidal grass
Over which the south winds pass,
And the sun-set's Tuscan gold
Which the distant windows hold
For an instant like a sphere
Bursting ere it disappear.
There's the dark green woods which throve
In the spell of Leese's Grove.
And the winding of the road;
And the hill o'er which the sky
Stretched its pallied vacancy
Ere the dawn or evening glowed.
And the wonder of the town
Somewhere from the hill-top down
Nestling under hills and woods
And the meadow's solitudes.

* * * * *

And your paper knight of old
Secrets of the landscape told.
And the hedge-rows where the pond
Took the blue of heavens beyond
The hastening clouds of gusty March.
There you saw their wrinkled arch
Where the East wind cracks his whips
Round the little pond and clips
Main-sails from your toppled ships. ...

Landscape that in youth you knew
Past and present, earth and you!
All the legends and the tales
Of the uplands, of the vales;
Sounds of cattle and the cries
Of ploughmen and of travelers
Were its soul's interpreters.
And here the lame were always lame.
Always gray the gray of head.
And the dead were always dead
Ere the landscape had become
Your cradle, as it was their tomb.

* * * * *

And when the thunder storms would waken
Of the dream your soul was not forsaken:
In the room where the dormer windows look--
There were your knight and the tattered book.
With colors of the forest green
Gabled roofs and the demesne
Of faery kingdoms and faery time
Storied in pre-natal rhyme. ...
Past the orchards, in the plain
The cattle fed on in the rain.
And the storm-beaten horseman sped
Rain blinded and with bended head.
And John the ploughman comes and goes
In labor wet, with steaming clothes.
This is your landscape, but you see
Not terror and not destiny
Behind its loved, maternal face,
Its power to change, or fade, replace
Its wonder with a deeper dream,
Unfolding to a vaster theme.
From time eternal was this earth?
No less this landscape with your birth
Arose, nor leaves you, nor decay
Finds till the twilight of your day.
It bore you, moulds you to its plan.
It ends with you as it began,
But bears the seed of future years
Of higher raptures, dumber tears.

* * * * *

For soon you lose the landscape through
Absence, sorrow, eyes grown true
To the naked limbs which show
Buds that never more may blow.
Now you know the lame were straight
Ere you knew them, and the fate
Of the old is yet to die.
Now you know the dead who lie
In the graves you saw where first
The landscape on your vision burst,
Were not always dead, and now
Shadows rest upon the brow
Of the souls as young as you.
Some are gone, though years are few
Since you roamed with them the hills.
So the landscape changes, wills
All the changes, did it try
Its promises to justify?...

* * * * *

For you return and find it bare:
There is no heaven of golden air.
Your eyes around the horizon rove,
A clump of trees is Leese's Grove.
And what's the hedgerow, what's the pond?
A wallow where the vagabond
Beast will not drink, and where the arch
Of heaven in the days of March
Refrains to look. A blinding rain
Beats the once gilded window pane.
John, the poor wretch, is gone, but bread
Tempts other feet that path to tread
Between the barn and house, and brave
The March rain and the winds that rave. ...
O, landscape I am one who stands
Returned with pale and broken hands
Glad for the day that I have known,
And finds the deserted doorway strown
With shoulder blade and spinal bone.
And you who nourished me and bred
I find the spirit from you fled.
You gave me dreams,'twas at your breast
My soul's beginning rose and pressed
My steps afar at last and shaped
A world elusive, which escaped
Whatever love or thought could find
Beyond the tireless wings of mind.
Yet grown by you, and feeding on
Your strength as mother, you are gone
When I return from living, trace
My steps to see how I began,
And deeply search your mother face
To know your inner self, the place
For which you bore me, sent me forth
To wander, south or east or north. ...
Now the familiar landscape lies
With breathless breast and hollow eyes.
It knows me not, as I know not
Its secret, spirit, all forgot
Its kindred look is, as I stand
A stranger in an unknown land.

* * * * *

Are we not earth-born, formed of dust
Which seeks again its love and trust
In an old landscape, after change
In hearts grown weary, wrecked and strange?
What though we struggled to emerge
Dividual, footed for the urge
Of further self-discoveries, though
In the mid-years we cease to know,
Through disenchanted eyes, the spell
That clothed it like a miracle--
Yet at the last our steps return
Its deeper mysteries to learn.
It has been always us, it must
Clasp to itself our kindred dust.
We cannot free ourselves from it.
Near or afar we must submit
To what is in us, what was grown
Out of the landscape's soil, the known
And unknown powers of soil and soul.
As bodies yield to the control
Of the earth's center, and so bend
In age, so hearts toward the end
Bend down with lips so long athirst
To waters which were known at first--
The little spring at Leese's Grove
Was your first love, is your last love!

* * * * *

When those we knew in youth have crept
Under the landscape, which has kept
Nothing we saw with youthful eyes;
Ere God is formed in the empty skies,
I wonder not our steps are pressed
Toward the mystery of their rest.
That is the hope at bud which kneels
Where ancestors the tomb conceals.
Age no less than youth would lean
Upon some love. For what is seen
No more of father, mother, friend,
For hands of flesh lost, eyes grown blind
In death, a something which assures,
Comforts, allays our fears, endures.
Just as the landscape and our home
In childhood made of heaven's dome,
And all the farthest ways of earth
A place as sheltered as the hearth.

* * * * *

Is it not written at the last day
Heaven and earth shall roll away?
Yes, as my landscape passed through death,
Lay like a corpse, and with new breath
Became instinct with fire and light--
So shall it roll up in my sight,
Pass from the realm of finite sense,
Become a thing of spirit, whence
I shall pass too, its child in faith
Of dreams it gave me, which nor death
Nor change can wreck, but still reveal
In change a Something vast, more real
Than sunsets, meadows, green-wood trees,
Or even faery presences.
A Something which the earth and air
Transmutes but keeps them what they were;
Clear films of beauty grown more thin
As we approach and enter in.
Until we reach the scene that made
Our landscape just a thing of shade.

TO-MORROW IS MY BIRTHDAY