The Project Gutenberg eBook of Advice: A Book of Poems This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Advice: A Book of Poems Author: Maxwell Bodenheim Release date: September 7, 2019 [eBook #60252] Language: English Credits: Produced by Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVICE: A BOOK OF POEMS *** Produced by Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) ADVICE _NEW POETRY_ _FALL, 1920_ OCTOBER _By Robert Bridges_ THE FORERUNNER _By Kahlil Gibran_ WORDSWORTH: AN ANTHOLOGY _By R. Cobden-Sanderson_ ADVICE _By Maxwell Bodenheim_ ADVICE A BOOK OF POEMS By MAXWELL BODENHEIM [Illustration] NEW YORK ALFRED·A·KNOPF 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO MINNA WHOSE SMILE IS MY THRONE Some of the poems which compose this book have appeared in the _Yale Review_, the _Smart Set_, the _New Republic_, _Reedy’s Mirror_, the _Dial_, the _Touchstone_, the _Little Review_, _Poetry: A Magazine of Verse_, the _Century_, and the _New York Tribune_. They are good, in spite of their numerous appearances. CONTENTS ADVICE TO A STREET-PAVEMENT 13 ADVICE TO A BUTTER-CUP 14 ADVICE TO A RIVER STEAMBOAT 15 FOUNDRY WORKERS 16 ADVICE TO A HORNÈD TOAD 18 ADVICE TO A FOREST 19 RATTLESNAKE MOUNTAIN FABLE I 21 ADVICE TO A BLUEBIRD 23 TO A FRIEND 24 ADVICE TO A WOMAN 25 RATTLESNAKE MOUNTAIN FABLE II 26 ADVICE TO A BUTTERFLY 28 ADVICE TO A POOL 29 WHEN FOOLS DISPUTE 30 ADVICE TO A GRASS-BLADE 31 EAST-SIDE: NEW YORK 32 TO A MAN 33 THE CHILD MEDITATES 34 PIERROT OBJECTS 36 COLUMBINE REFLECTS 37 RATTLE SNAKE MOUNTAIN DIALOGUE 38 DIALOGUE BETWEEN A PAST AND PRESENT POET 41 SMILES 43 THE COURTESAN CHATS 45 THE MOUNTEBANK CRITICIZES 47 TO LI T’AI PO 49 INSANITY 51 TRACK-WORKERS 53 FIGURE 55 NEGROES 56 BROADWAY 58 FIFTH AVENUE 60 YOUNG WOMAN 62 TWO WOMEN ON A STREET 64 ADVICE TO MAPLE TREES 66 BOARDING HOUSE EPISODE 67 VAUDEVILLE MOMENT 70 TO ORRICK JOHNS 72 YOUNG POET 73 STEEL MILLS: SOUTH CHICAGO 74 SOUTH STATE STREET: CHICAGO 81 ADVICE ADVICE TO A STREET-PAVEMENT Lacerated grey has bitten Into your shapeless humility. Little episodes of roving Strew their hieroglyphics on your muteness. Life has given you heavy stains Like an ointment growing stale. Endless feet tap over you With a maniac insistence. O unresisting street-pavement, Keep your passive insolence At the dwarfs who scorn you with their feet. Only one who lies upon his back Can disregard the stars. ADVICE TO A BUTTER-CUP Undistinguished butter-cup Lost among myriads of others, To the red ant eyeing you You are giant stillness. He pauses on the boulder of a clod, Baffled by your nearness to the sky. But to the black loam at your feet You are the atom of a pent-up dream. Undistinguished butter-cup, Take your little breath of contemplation, Undisturbed by haughty tricks of space. ADVICE TO A RIVER STEAM-BOAT The brass band plays upon your decks, Like a sturdy harlot aping mirth, And people in starched shields Stuff their passions with sweet words, Life is swishing in the air, Like a tipsy, unseen bridegroom. O humbly grunting river boat, Take the churning water and the sun Like one who plays with his own chains And flings their turmoil to the sky. Only a voice can leap above high walls. FOUNDRY WORKERS Brown faces twisted back Into an ecstasy of tight resistance; Eyes that are huge sweat drops Unheeded by the struggle underneath them-- Throughout the night you stagger under walls Where life is squeezed to squealing bitterness. Beneath your heaving flash of limbs Your thoughts are smashed to a dejected trance And you are swept, like empty mites, Into a glistening frenzy of motion.... Yet, on a Sunday afternoon I have seen you straightening your backs with slow smiles; Walking through the streets And patiently groping for lost outlines. Your lips were placid bruises Almost fearing to relax, And often out upon some green Your legs swung themselves into long lost shapes. Perhaps upon your death-beds You will lift your hands, with a wraith of grace, Showing life a last, weak curve Of the rhythm he could not kill. ADVICE TO A HORNÈD TOAD Hornèd Toad of cloven brown, Rock souls have dwindled to your eyes And thrown a splintered end upon your blood. Night and day have vanished To you, who squat and watch Years loosen one sand grain until Its fall becomes your moment. Tall things plunge over you, Slashing their dreams with motion That holds the death of all they seek, But you, to whom fierce winds are ripples, Do not move lest you lose the taste of stillness. Hornèd Toad of cloven brown, Never hop from your grey rock crevice Mute with interwoven beginnings and ends. The fluid lies of motion Leave no remembrance behind. ADVICE TO A FOREST O trees, to whom the darkness is a child Scampering in and out of your long, green beards; O trees, to whom sunlight is a tattered pilgrim Counting his dreams within your hermitage And slipping down the road, in twilight robes; O trees, whose leaves make an incense of sound Reeling with the beat of your caught feet, Do not mingle your tips in startled hatred, When little men come to fell you. These men will saw you into strips Of pointed brooding, blind with paint, But underneath you men will chase The grey staccato of their lives Down a glaring maze of walls Much harder than your own. And when, at last, the deep brown gaze Of stolidly amorous time steals over you, The little men who bit into your hearts Will stray off in a patter of rabbits’ feet. Look down upon these children then With the aloof and weary tolerance That all still things possess, O trees, to whom the darkness was a child Scampering in and out of your long, green beards. RATTLESNAKE MOUNTAIN FABLE I Rounded to a wide eyed clownishness Crowned by the shifting bravado Of his long, brown ears, The rabbit peeked at the sky. To him, the sky seemed an angelic Pasture stripped to phantom tranquility, Where one could nibble thoughtfully. He longed to leave his mild furtiveness And speak to a boldness puzzled by his flesh. With one long circle of despairing grace He flashed into the air, Leaping toward his heaven. But down he crashed against a snake Who ate him with a meditative interest. From that day on the snake was filled With little, meek whispers of concern. The crushed and peaceful rabbit’s dream Cast a groping hush upon his blood. He curled inertly on a rock, In cryptic, wilted savageness. In the end, his dry, grey body Was scattered out upon the rock, Like a story that could not be told. ADVICE TO A BLUE-BIRD Who can make a delicate adventure Of walking on the ground? Who can make grass-blades Arcades for pertly careless straying? You alone, who skim against these leaves, Turning all desire into light whips Moulded by your deep blue wing-tips, You who shrill your unconcern Into the sternly antique sky. You to whom all things Hold an equal kiss of touch. Mincing, wanton blue-bird, Grimace at the hoofs of passing men. You alone can lose yourself Within a sky, and rob it of its blue! TO A FRIEND Your head is steel cut into drooping lines That make a mask satirically meek: Your face is like a tired devil weak From drinking many vague and unsought wines. The sullen skepticism of your eyes For ever trying to transcend itself, Is often entered by a wistful elf Who sits naïvely unperturbed and wise. And this same remnant, with its youthful wiles Held curiously apart from blasphemies, Twirls starlight shivers out upon your sneers And changes them to little, startled smiles. And all your insolence drops to its knees Before the half-won grandeur of past years. ADVICE TO A WOMAN The sloping lines of your shoulders Speak of Chinese pagodas. They clash with your western face Where child and courtesan Clasp each other in a feigned embrace. Life, to you, is a liquid mirror. You stand with delicate, perpetual amazement, Vainly seeking your reflection. RATTLESNAKE MOUNTAIN FABLE II August sauntered down the mountain-side, Dropping mottled, turbid wraiths of decay. The air was like an old priest Disrobing without embarrassment Before the dark and candid gaze of night. But these things brought no pause To the saucily determined squirrel. His eyes were hungrily upturned To where the stars hung--icily clustered nuts Dotting trees of solitude. He saw the stars just over the horizon, And they seemed to grow On trees that he could reach. So he scampered on, from branch to branch, Wondering why the fairy nut-trees Ran away from him. But, looking down, he spied A softly wild cheeked mountain pool, And there a handful of fairy nuts Bit into the indigo cupping them. With a squeal of weary happiness The squirrel plunged into the mountain pool, And as he drowned within its soundless heart The fairy nuts were jigging over him, Like the unheard stirring of a poem. ADVICE TO A BUTTERFLY Aimless petal of the wind, Spinning gently weird circles, To the flowers underneath You are a drunken king of motion; To the plunging winds above You are momentary indecision. Aimless petal of the wind, Waver carelessly against this June. The universe, like you, is but The drowsy arm of stillness Spinning gently weird circles in his sleep. ADVICE TO A POOL Be a liquid threshold for the dawn And let night touch you with his back. The earth-bowl prisoning you, and cold night winds Are only pause and rhythm Within an endless fantasy, But you, like they, can be A dream from the loins of a dream, And build a golden stairway of escape. O coolly unperturbed pool, Slap your ripples in laughter at men, Who splash you with their lordly hands. Time is but a phantom dagger That motion lifts to slay itself. WHEN FOOLS DISPUTE A trickle of dawn insinuated itself Through the crevices of black satiation. The elderly trees coughed, lightly, hurriedly, In remonstrance against the invasion. Lean with a virginal poison, The grass-blades shook, immune to light and time. A bird lost in a tree Shrilly flirted with its energy.... One fool, in the garden, spoke to another. ADVICE TO A GRASS-BLADE Thin and dark green symbol Of an earth forever raising Myriads of chained wings, Breezes have a form, to you, And sounds break into vivid shape. The proud finality of tiny sight Cannot lure your pliant blindness. Thin and dark green blade, Be not awed by trees and men Whose sound is all that gives them life. You reach the sky because your face Is not turned toward it. EAST-SIDE: NEW YORK An old Jew munches an apple, With conquering immersion All the thwarted longings of his life Urge on his determined teeth. His face is hard and pear-shaped; His eyes are muddy capitulations; But his mouth is incongruous. Softly, slightly distended, Like that of a whistling girl, It is ingenuously haunting And makes the rest of him a soiled, grey background. Hopes that lie within their grave Of submissive sternness, Have spilled their troubled ghosts upon this mouth, And a tortured belief Has dwindled into tenderness upon it.... He trudges off behind his push-cart And the Ghetto walks away with him. TO A MAN Master of earnest equilibrium, You are a Christ made delicate By centuries of baffled meditation. You curve an old myth to a peaceful sword, Like some sleep-walker challenging The dream that gave him shape. With gentle, antique insistence You place your child’s hand on the universe And trace a smile of love within its depths. And yet, the whirling scarecrow men have made Of something that eludes their sight, May have the startling simplicity of your smile. Once every thousand years Stillness fades into a shape That men may crucify. THE CHILD MEDITATES The oak-tree in front of my house Smells different every morning. Sometimes it smells fresh and wise Like my mother’s hair. Sometimes it stands ashamed Because it doesn’t own the smell It borrowed from our flower-garden. Sometimes it has a windy smell, As though it had come back from a long walk. The oak-tree in front of my house Has different smells, like grown up people. My doll hides behind her pink cheeks, So that you can’t see when she moves, But it doesn’t matter because She always moves when no one is looking, And that is why people think she is still. People laugh when I say that my doll is alive, But if she were dead, my fingers Wouldn’t know that they were touching her. She lives inside a little house. And laughs because I cannot find the door. The colours in my room Meet each other and hesitate. Is that what people call shape? Nobody seems to think so, But I believe that lines are dead shapes Unless they fall against each other And look surprised, like the colours in my room! PIERROT OBJECTS They have made me an airy apology For the crude insistence of their flesh! They have made me twist my tongue Into fickle nonchalance! With a languid impudence I have tarried underneath the moon, While the haggard reticence Of their lives forgot itself within me! Well, I am rebelling At the men who make me Their grimacing marionnette! Let them find another dancing-teacher For their dull, unruffled fears. I am off to tear my black and white Into shreds, within a valley Where nakedness and colours do not need An artificial night to make them brave! COLUMBINE REFLECTS They have moulded my face with a tear and a sneer. They have sandalled me with caprice, And the heart they have given me Is a bag of red tissue-paper. Their loves are ragged and fat And seek the consolation Of a tinkling effigy! But even an effigy may wink An eye at its slinking masters! I can laugh at their frantic, tattered arms Spinning me into impish posturings, And jeer at the faces behind me! After my play I go to sleep, But they must sit, heavily looking at each other. RATTLE-SNAKE MOUNTAIN DIALOGUE RATTLE-SNAKE MOUNTAIN Every night the sky grips my shoulder, in pain. The cows upon my slope Attack their blades of grass with less decision. The boulders reaching in to form my ribs, Are touched by evening dizziness, to dust, And lose their fierce pretence of hardness. Three crows in a row Search for clearer tongues, with steady discords. MAN The nervous dissolution Which men call beauty stands Sternly watching itself. RATTLE-SNAKE MOUNTAIN Evening, staggering under dead men’s tongues, Makes light of my loneliness. He comes like a madman dissolved Into unbearable quietness. But, drinking my vigorous muteness, He melts into that stream of seeking motion Which men call morning. MAN You teach him to make his recompense A solitary unfolding Walking perilously Between the scowls of life and death. RATTLE-SNAKE MOUNTAIN When he goes he is something more than himself. He holds a lean alertness That, green as any leaf, Takes the flutterings of life, unperturbed. MAN Beauty is a proud stare Challenging all things to remove Their inattentive clamours: And some things bow abruptly, Timidly stroking their untouched skins. RATTLE-SNAKE MOUNTAIN And thus evening bows into morning. DIALOGUE BETWEEN A PAST AND PRESENT POET PAST POET I wrote of roses on a woman’s breast, Glowing as though her blood Had welled out to a spellbound fierceness; And the glad, light mixture of her hair. I wrote of God and angels. They stole the simple blush of my desire To make their isolated triumph human. Knights and kings flooded my song, Catching with their glittering clash The unheard boldness in my life. Gods and nymphs slipped through my voice, And with the lofty scurrying of their feet Spurned the smirched angers of my days. PRESENT POET You raised an unhurried, church-like escape. You lingered in shimmering idleness; Or lengthened a prayer into a lance; Or strengthened a thought till it heaved off all of life And dropped its sightless heaven into your smile. Life, to us, is a colourless tangle. Like madly gorgeous weavers Our eyes reiterate themselves on life. PAST POET My towering simplicity Loosening an evening of belief Over the things it dared not view, Gladly shunned reality Just as your mad weaver does. PRESENT POET Reality is a formless lure, And only when we know this Do we dare to be unreal. SMILES Smiles are the words beyond the words That thoughts abandon helplessly. Upon this nervous shop-girl’s face, Where clusters of tiny limpness meet, A frightened spark leaps high and drops Into the hot pause of a banished love. A lustrelessly plump Girl beside her does not know That her face for moments glows Into a helpless solitude. Upon an old man’s face Are gleams of meek embarrassment-- The faded presence of some old debt? This woman’s face is scorched By a torch that falls from weary hands And makes her laugh an unheard lie. The face of this tamed sprite Shimmers with an understanding Of the opaque loss she cannot bear, And I see that smiles are sometimes Words beyond the words That thoughts abandon hopefully. THE COURTESAN CHATS Last night I met a passive man With almost no curve to his face, And skin relentlessly white. He made me tell his fortune With a pack of cards. “Jack of hearts--your love will be A scullion overturning trays of food And standing dubiously in their midst.” “Queen of diamonds--you will have a wife Like a thistle dipped in frost, Helpless in your sheathed hands.” “Deuce of clubs--a downcast jester Will pester you with slanting malice When you seek to play the king.” “Ace of hearts--your life will stand Straight in a desperate majesty, Its lurid robes ever slipping And one wound endlessly dripping.” The passive man blew out a candle On the table and bade me leave, Not desiring me to see his face. THE MOUNTEBANK CRITICIZES I lose all sense of profiles, Strolling through your greys and blacks and browns! No man bestows his orange robe Soberly upon your uncoloured pavements, Rebuking life for being death. No woman taunts her sorrows With a coloured haughtiness. When you take to colours, you are ashamed, Like pages nibbling at a pilfered tart. You go back quickly to your coldness. And since you have no colours on your clothes, You walk in straight and measured lilts As befits the seriously blind. Your women do not stroll as though Each step were a timid intrigue Woven into the climax to which they fare. Pistols, rhapsodies and heavy odours Drugged the lustre of my time. Yet, we had a virtue. We lavished colours on our backs And ravished our sorrow with brightness That often gave a lightness to our feet! TO LI T’AI PO They are writing poems to you: White devils who have not Smeared the distant yellow of your life Upon their skins. Faces where snob and harlequin Ogle each other in two, cold colours, White and red; Faces where middle age Sits, tearing a last gardenia; Faces continually cracked By the brittle larceny of age; Faces where emotions Stand disarmed within a calm mirage: These faces bend over paper And steal from you a little silver and red So that their lives may seem to bleed Under the prick of a flashing need. The old and tired smile Of one who spies too much within himself To spare the effort of a halting frown, Brushed its sceptre over your face. You gave kind eyes to your hope, Desiring it to grope unfearing Underneath the toppling mountain-tops. The wine you drank was a lake In which you splashed and found a vigour; The wine you drank was void of taste. Your yellow skin resembled A balanced docility Smiling at all things--even at itself-- Li T’ai Po. INSANITY Like a vivid hyperbole, The sun plunged into April’s freshness, And struck its sparkling madness Against the barnlike dejection Of this dark red insane asylum. A softly clutching noise Stumbled from the open windows. Now and then obliquely reeling shrieks Rose, as though from men To whom death had assumed An inexpressibly kindly face. A man stood at one window, His gaunt face trembling underneath A feverish jauntiness. A long white feather slanted back Upon his almost shapeless hat, Like an innocent evasion. Hotly incessant, his voice Methodically flogged the April air: A voice that held the clashing bones Of happiness and fear; A voice in which emotion Sharply ridiculed itself; A monstrously vigorous voice Mockingly tearing at life With an unanswerable question. Hollowed out by his howl, I turned and saw an asylum guard. His petulantly flabby face Rolled into deathlike chips of eyes. He bore the aimless confidence Of one contentedly playing with other men’s wings. He walked away; the man above still shrieked. I could not separate them. TRACK-WORKERS The rails you carry cut into your hands, Like the sharp lips of an unsought lover. As you stumble over the ties Sunlight is clinging, yellow spit Raining down upon your faces. You are the living cuspidors of day. Dirt, its teasing ghost, dust, And passionless kicks of steel, fill you. Flowers sprouting near the tracks, Brush their lightly odoured hands In vain against your stale jackets of sweat. Within you, minds and hearts Are snoring to the curt rhythm of your breath. You do not see this blustering blackbird Promenading on a barbed-wire fence. He eyes you with spritelike hauteur, Unable to understand Why your motions endlessly copy each other, One of you, a meek and burly Pole, Peers a moment at the strutting blackbird With a fleeting shade of dull resentment.... There is always one among you Who recoils from glimpsing corpses. FIGURE Through the turbulent servility Of a churlish city street He strides opaquely; nothing in his walk Resembles an advancing gleam. His legs are muffled iron Stubbornly following even thoughts, His gaily pugnacious head Seems worried because no dread Remains for it to slay. His eyes hold an austerity That recalls itself while leaping, And often melts into amusement. The bent poise of his body Tells of walls that threw him back, Only to crumble underneath The stunned friendliness of his face. Through the angularly churlish street He walks, and stoops beneath the captured weight Of eyes that do not see him. NEGROES The loose eyes of an old man Shone aloof upon his boyish face; And a sluggish innocence Hugged his dull brown skin. He sang a hymn caught from his elders And his voice resembled A quavering, feverish laugh Softened in a swaying cradle. His life had found a refuge in his voice, And the rest of him was sickly flesh Ignorant of life and death. Like a crushed, excited clown His mother shuffled out upon the porch. Slowly her dark brown face resolved Into the hushed and sulky look Of one who stands within a dim-walled trap. Lazily uncertain, She raised the boy into her arms. Then her voice swung in the air Like a quavering, feverish laugh Softened in a swaying cradle. BROADWAY With sardonic futility The multi-coloured crowd, Hurried by fervent sensuality, Flees from something carried on its back. Endlessly subdued, a sound Pours up from the crowd, Like some one ever gasping for breath To utter releasing words. Through the artificial valley Made by gaudy evasions, The stifled crowd files up and down, Stabbing thought with rapid noises. Women strutting dulcetly, Embroider their unappeased hungers, And men stumble toward a flitting opiate. Sometimes a moment breaks apart And one can hear the knuckles Of children rapping on towering doors: Rapping on the highway Where civilization parades Its frozen amiabilities! FIFTH AVENUE (NEW YORK) Seasons bring nothing to this gulch Save a harshly intimate anecdote Scrawled, here and there, on paint and stone. The houses shoulder each other In a forced and passionless communion. Their harassed angles rise Like a violent picture-puzzle Hiding a story that only ruins could reveal; Their straight lines, robbed of power, Meet in dwarfed rebellion. Sometimes they stand like vastly flattened faces Suffering ants to crawl In and out of their gaping mouths. Sometimes, in menial attitudes They stand like Gothic platitudes Slipshodly carved in dark brown stone. Tarnished solemnities of death Cast their transfigured hue on this avenue. The cool and indiscriminate glare Of sunlight seems to desecrate a tomb, And the racing people seem A stream of accidental shadows. Hard noises strike one’s face and make It numb with momentary reality, But the noiseless undertone returns And they change to unreal jests Made by death. YOUNG WOMAN So we have a face Cupped by tender insolences, Half repenting insolences Teasing their own angers. Then, a tense exuberance Brushes them away And burns a humbly erect Queen upon her face. This happens in the space Between a frown and indecision. Her face becomes forlornly wild, And a beggarly impatience Hovers into furtive shame. All the supplely intricate flame Vanishes, and leaves no mark. Her eyes are violently dark With a hopeless waiting; Her lips are isolated tatters-- All that is left of shattered recreating. Then, as quickly as she fled, The humble queen returns. Staring and unappeased She eyes her crumpled hands. TWO WOMEN ON A STREET This street is callous apathy In a scale of greys and browns. Its black roof-line suggests Flat bodies unable to rise. Even its screams are listlessness Having an evil dream. Its air is swarthy rawness Troubled with ash cans and cellars. An old woman ambles on With a black bag that seems part of her back, And a candidly hawk-like face. She croons a smothered lullaby That sifts a flitting roundness Into her sharply parted face. Then she surrenders her hand To the welter of a garbage can. A hugely wilted woman slinks by With a cracked stare on her face. Her eyes are beaten discs Of the lamplight’s ghastly keenness. She glides away as though the night Were a lover flogging her; Glides into the callous apathy Of this street, like one who cringes Happily into her lover’s hallway. ADVICE TO MAPLE-TREES O little maple-trees, Slender and unkempt, looking with shaggy askance Upon the moon-spiked solitude; O little maple-trees, Growing a little toward the sky That touches you to all eyes save your own, You rattle insistently for wings, But wings could never tear The stain of earth from your feet: The earth that gnaws at you until Your wing-cries strike the autumn night. You see, with me, this crescent moon Juggled on the tawny fingertip Of a running cloud. The touch of your desire, or its fall, Would but be symbols of an equal death. BOARDING-HOUSE EPISODE Apples race into appetites: The unswerving mechanism of the table Hurries through the last dish of supper. Then an undulating interlude From people who have spent one pleasure, Distractedly juggling its aftermath And peering at new desires. One woman gazes at another While twitching murder shimmers in her eyes And skims across her face. Violets in a madman’s scene, Suspended in the air, Are the eyes of her neighbour. And in between them sits the nervous man With face like pouting gargoyle, Whose brown eyes shout the things he cannot say: Explosive evasions; Fears too tired to shriek; Renunciations groaning from their dungeons. He eyes each woman, like a man Solemnly trying to walk on mysterious ice. Crisp inanities ripple back and forth Among these three, like ghostly parrots Visiting each other’s cages. She with crazy, violet eyes, Plays with her fork, as though its clink Rhymed with secret, chained thoughts; She with murder in her eyes, And curtly voluminous body, Evenly plays her child-rôle. Cringing on the rim of middle age, With broken shields piled at her feet, She has made this man a haunted palace And she stands before the door She dare not open, with a dagger For the woman standing at her side. They sit, afterwards, upon the veranda, Meekly greeting the velvet swagger of evening: Woman with twisted, violet eyes, Woman with hidden murder on her lips, And man like a pouting gargoyle. Then, like tired children, Their words grow cool and lazy. They draw closer to each other And, with a trembling curiosity, Look at each other’s hands. VAUDEVILLE MOMENT They have carved a battle Across your hard face: Transfigured conflict, Lines like suspended lances. Your voice must be the uneven Clink of the last carver’s chisel. Your soul must be a pious subterfuge Squinting its admiring eyes At the lifeless battle lining your face.... Middle aged vaudeville conductor, With a hunted leanness on your body, Sometimes the swing of your baton Sways with a brooding patience That violates your ended face. Two acrobats appear, With their automaton bows. Their unlit motion does not strike The air into a hugging flame. They are blue and orange corpses Whirled in a sacrilegious festival. They vividly resemble The chiseled battle that grips This lean conductor’s face: Motion without life, And life that holds no motion! TO ORRICK JOHNS The tread-mill roar that ever tramps between The smirched geometries of this stern place, Sweeps vainly on your drowsily reckless face Lost in a swirl of raped loves barely seen. Sometimes your keenly pagan lips are raised By thoughts too tense to shape themselves in speech: Still, wounded thoughts that silently beseech Your life to make them impotent and dazed. O tangled and half-strangled child, you shrink For ever from yourself, and wear a pose Of nimble and impenetrable pride. Yet sometimes, wavering on the sudden brink Of jaded bitterness, you drop your clothes And weave a prayer into your naked stride. YOUNG POET The grinning clamour on your face Dies abruptly, for moments: Boldness and timidity Are swept, transfigured, against each other. But the glistening turmoil Once more spurns itself with jests That light its troubled hands. When too much pain has lowered The eyelids of your mood, A peaceful humour wraps your face. You are like an old man Watching children fly from his fingertips. In your kirtle of borrowed skies You find a sorrow luring your horizons Into hesitating brightness.... When night remembers, you have straightened Into stealthy, angry calmness Fingering it first, unsent arrow. STEEL-MILLS: SOUTH CHICAGO I This red hush toppling over the sky, Wanders one step toward the stars And dies in a questioning shiver. The steel-mill chimneys fling their gaunt seeking A little distance into the red That softly combs their smoky hair. The steel-mill chimneys only live at night When crimson light makes love to them And star-light trickles through the red, Like glimpses of some far-off fairy tale. Throughout the day the steel-mill chimneys stand Rigidly within the wind-whirled glare: Only night can bring them supple straightness. II From the little, brown gate that does not see them Because its eyes are blind with wooing soot, An endless stream of men scatters out Into the cool bewilderment of morning. Upon their lips a limply child-like surrender Curves out to the light, as though they felt The presence of an unassuming strangeness. The morning hides from their eyes: They walk on, in great strides, Like blind men swinging over a well-known scene. Their faces twitch with echoes of iron fists: Their faces hold a swarthy stupor Loosened by little fingers of morning light Until it droops into reluctant life. And then their eyes, made flat by night, Swell into a Madonna-like surprise At children trooping back in huge disguise. The oranges in lunch-room windows change To sleek suns dipped in sleepy light, And rounded tarts in china plates Are like red heart-beats, resting but not dead. A trolley-car speeds by And seems a strident lyric of motion. Wagons rumble down the street Like drums enticing weariness to step.... The hearts of these steel-striding men Ascend and blend within their eyes, And yet, these men are unaware of this. They only feel a fluid relief Voicing, in a clustered roar, The cries of struggling thoughts unshaped by words. But there are some who break forth from the rest. This old Hungarian strides along And binds naïvely-winged prayer-sandals Upon the heavy feet of shuffling loves. Gently, he plays with his beard As though his fingers touched a woman’s hair. And this young Slav whose surly blasphemy Curls his face into a simple hate, Has taken iron into his laugh And uses it to hew his stony mind. While this Italian whose deep olive skin Shines like sunlight groping through dense leaves, Forgets his battered happiness And bows with mock grace to his shouting day. Beside him is a fellow-countryman Walking aimless, dazed with joy of motion. Upon his face a glistening vacancy Lights the mildly querying thoughts That seek each other but never meet. Behind him steps a stalwart Pole Whose rhythmic, stately insolence Turns the sidewalk into a grey carpet, Grey as the shades that race across his face And show the savage squalor of his soul. Night has broken her heart upon him, Only scarring his bitter smile. A street of little, jack-o’-lantern houses Veering into leering saloons, Where the night, a crazy child, Dips herself in sallow rouge And chases oaths and heavy mirth And even human beings: Where the smoky sadness of the steel-mills Wanders hesitantly into death And drops a ghostly blur upon this girl. Her numbly waxen, cherub face Emerges gently from the doorway’s blackness As though the dark had given birth to it. And then the falling light reveals That something of a village hangs about her: Something slumbering and ample. The doorway is too small to hold Her shoulders that are like a hill’s broad curves Dwindled in the distance.... She is one of many earth-curved girls Who listened to the insistent tinkle Of wind-winged music from a far-off land: Listened and knew not That their own hearts faintly played. So she ran to this far phantom, Only finding it within herself When the city’s sly fists rained upon it. Then once more she fled With a dead heart whose restless pallor Crept to squalid wantonness, for refuge. And now she stands within this doorway, Uttering muffled innuendoes To the drained men of her race. Yet, something of a village hangs about her: Something slumbering and ample Stealing from the earth curves of her shoulders. III The steel-mill workers straggle down this street, Clanging shut the doorways of their souls, And the sound rips their lips open. The steel-mill workers do not know of this: They only seek something that will sweeten The dirt that has eaten into their flesh And change it to raw music. They straggle down this street, Their faces slack and oiled with amorousness. Like cats they play with their desires, Biting them with little laughs Until the sallow houses draw them in. And then the night pursues their revelry: Echoes from the shut doors of their souls. IV Three bent women and a child Stoop before the steel-mill gate As though the morning’s ghastly murmur Washed against them in a wave Stiffening them into resisting curves. One is old and floridly misshapen. Years have melted out within her frame, Flooding her with lukewarm loves. The wrinkles on her flabby face Are like a faded scrawl of pain Scattered by the flesh on which it rests. Her frayed shawl hanging unaware of her Is a symbol of her heart. The woman standing at her side Is tall and like a slanting scarecrow Coldly jerking in the morning’s glare. Only when she lifts a bony hand Tapping life against her face, Does the image disappear. Dead dreams dangle in her heart, Limply hanging from their rainbow sashes, And whenever one sash trembles, Then, she lifts a gnarled hand to her face And tastes a moment of departing life. Near her stands a slimly rigid woman With an iron fear upon her bones. A worn strait-jacket of lines Cuts the dying youth upon her face. The slender child beside her, Buried within staidly murky clothes, Glances frightenedly up at her mother: Glances as one who dances to a gate And fumbles for a latch that hides itself. Then from the rusty-reveried steel-mill gate An endless stream of men scatter out Into the cool bewilderment of morning. Upon their lips a limply child-like surrender Curves out to the light, as though they felt The presence of an unassuming strangeness. SOUTH STATE STREET: CHICAGO I Rows of blankly box-like buildings Raise their sodden architecture Into the poised lyric of the sky. At their feet, pawn-shops and burlesque theatres Yawn beneath their livid confetti. In the pawn-shop windows, violins, Cut-glass bowls and satchels mildly blink Upon the mottled turbulence outside, And sit with that detached assurance Gripping things inanimate. Near them, slyly shaded cabarets Stand in bland and ornate sleep, And the glassy luridness Of penny-arcades flays the eyes. The black crowd clatters like an idiot’s wrath. II Wander with me down this street Where the spectral night is caught Like moon-paint on a colourless lane.... On this corner stands a woman Sleekly, sulkily complacent Like a tigress nibbling bits of sugar. At her side, a brawny, white-faced man Whose fingers waltz upon his checkered suit, Searches for one face amidst the crowd. (His smile is like a rambling sword.) His elbows almost touch a snowy girl Whose body blooms with cool withdrawal. From her little nook of peaceful scorn She casts unseeing eyes upon the crowd. Near her stands a weary newsboy With a sullenly elfin face. The night has leaned too intimately On the frightened scampering of his soul. But to this old, staidly patient woman With her softly wintry eyes, Night bends down in gentle revelation Undisturbed by joy or hatred. At her side two factory girls In slyly jaunty hats and swaggering coats, Weave a twinkling summer with their words: A summer where the night parades Rakishly, and like a gold Beau Brummel. With a gnome-like impudence They thrust their little, pink tongues out At men who sidle past. To them, the frantic dinginess of day Has melted to caressing restlessness Tingling with the pride of breasts and hips. At their side two dainty, languid girls Playing with their suavely tangled dresses, Touch the black crowd with unsearching eyes. But the old man on the corner, Bending over his cane like some tired warrior Resting on a sword, peers at the crowd With the smouldering disdain Of a King whipped out of his domain. For a moment he smiles uncertainly. Then wears a look of frail sternness. Musty, Rabelaisian odours stray From this naïvely gilded family-entrance And make the body of a vagrant Quiver as though unseen roses grazed him. His face is blackly stubbled emptiness Swerving to the rotted prayers of eyes. Yet, sometimes his thin arm leaps out And hangs a moment in the air, As though he raised a violin of hate And lacked the strength to play it. A woman lurches from the family-entrance. With tense solicitude she hugs Her can of beer against her stunted bosom And mumbles to herself. The trampled blasphemy upon her face Holds up, in death, its watery, barren eyes. Indifferently, she brushes past the vagrant: Life has peeled away her sense of touch. III With groping majesty, the endless crowd Pounds its searching chant of feet Down this tawdrily resplendent street. People stray into a burlesque theatre Framed with scarlet, blankly rotund girls. Here a burly cattle-raiser walks With the grace of wind-swept prairie grass. Behind him steps a slender clerk Tendering his sprightly stridency To the stolid, doll-like girl beside him. At his side a heavy youth Dully stands beneath his swaggering mask; And a smiling man in black and white Walks, like some Pierrot grown middle-aged. Mutely twinkling fragments of a romance: Tiny lights stand over this cabaret. Men and women jovially emboldened Stroll beneath the curtained entrance, And their laughs, like softly brazen cow-bells, Change the scene to a strange Pastoral. Hectic shepherdesses drunk with night, Women mingle their coquettish colours.... Suddenly, a man leaps out From the doorway’s blazing pallor, Smashing into the drab sidewalk. His drunken lips and eyelids break apart Like a clown in sudden suicide. Then the mottled nakedness Of the scene comes, like a blow. Stoically crushed in hovering grey Night lies coldly on this street. Momentary sounds crash into night Like ghostly curses stifled in their birth.... And over all the blankly box-like buildings Raise their sodden architecture Into the poised lyric of the sky. TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been retained. *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVICE: A BOOK OF POEMS *** Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. 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