American Poetry, 1922 Part 8

Ho! the mightiest of our young men was born under a star in the midwinter....

His name is written on the sun and it is frosted on the moon....

Earth breathes him like an eternal spring: he is a second sky over the Earth.

Mighty race! mighty race!--my flesh, my flesh Is a cup of song, Is a well in Asia....

I go about with a dark heart where the Ages sit in a divine thunder....

My blood is cymbal-clashed and the anklets of the dancers tinkle there....

Harp and psaltery, harp and psaltery make drunk my spirit....

I am of the terrible people, I am of the strange Hebrews....

Amongst the swarms fixed like the rooted stars, my folk is a streaming Comet, Comet of the Asian tiger-darkness, The Wanderer of Eternity, the eternal Wandering Jew....

Ho! we have turned against the mightiest of our young men And in that denial we have taken on the Christ, And the two thieves beside the Christ, And the Magdalen at the feet of the Christ, And the Judas with thirty silver pieces selling the Christ,-- And our twenty centuries in Europe have the shape of a Cross On which we have hung in disaster and glory....

Mighty race! mighty race!--my flesh, my flesh Is a cup of song, Is a well in Asia.

ALFRED KREYMBORG

ADAGIO: A DUET

(_For J. S. and L. U._)

Should you lay ear to these lines-- you will not catch a distant drum of hoofs, cavalcade of Arabians, pa.s.sionate horde bearing down, destroying your citadel-- but maybe you'll hear-- should you just listen at the right place, hold it tenaciously, give your full blood to the effort-- maybe you'll note the start of a single step, always persistently faint, wavering in its movement between coming and going, never quite arriving, never quite pa.s.sing-- and tell me which it is, you or I that you greet, searching a mutual being-- and whether two aren't closer for the labor of an ear?

DIE KuCHE

She lets the hydrant water run: He fancies lonely, ba.n.a.l, bald-headed mountains, affected by the daily caress of the tropical sun, weeping tears the length of brooks down their faces and flanks.

She lets the hydrant water run: He hearkens Father Sebastian cooking and spreading homely themes over an inept-looking clavier confounding the wits of his children and all men's children down to the last generation.

He marvels at the paradox, drums his head with the tattoo: how can a thing as small as he shape and maintain an art out of himself universal enough to carry her daily vigil to crystalled immortality?

She lets the hydrant water run.

RAIN

It's all very well for you suddenly to withdraw and say, I'll come again, but what of the bruises you've left, what of the green and the blue, the yellow, purple and violet?-- don't you be telling us, I'm innocent of these, irresponsible of happenings-- didn't we see you steal next to her, tenderly, with your silver mist about you to hide your blandishment?-- now, what of what followed, eh?-- we saw you hover close, caress her, open her pore-cups, make a cross of her, quickly penetrate her-- she opening to you, engulfing you, every limb of her, bud of her, pore of her?-- don't call these things, kisses-- mouth-kisses, hand-kisses, elbow, knee and toe, and let it go at that-- disappear and promise what you'll never perform: we've known you to slink away until drought-time, drooping-time, withering-time: we've caught you crawling off into winter-time, try to cover what you've done with a long white scarf-- your own frozen tears (likely phrase!) and lilt your, I'll be back in spring!

Next spring, and you know it, she won't be the same, though she may look the same to you from where you are, and invite you down again!

PEASANT

It's the mixture of peasantry makes him so slow.

He waggles his head before he speaks, like a cow before she crops.

He bends to the habit of dragging his feet up under him, like a measuring-worm: some of his forefathers, stooped over books, ruled short straight lines under two rows of figures to keep their thin savings from sifting to the floor.

Should you strike him with a question, he will blink twice or thrice and roll his head about, like an owl in the pin-p.r.i.c.ks of a dawn he cannot see.

There is mighty little flesh about his bones, there is no gusto in his stride: he seems to wait for the blow on the b.u.t.tocks that will drive him another step forward-- step forward to what?

There is no land, no house, no barn, he has ever owned; he sits uncomfortable on chairs you might invite him to: if you did, he'd keep his hat in hand against the moment when some silent pause for which he hearkens with his ear to one side bids him move on-- move on where?

It doesn't matter.

He has learned to shrug his shoulders, so he'll shrug his shoulders now: caterpillars do it when they're halted by a stick.

Is there a sky overhead?-- a hope worth flying to?-- birds may know about it, but it's birds that birds descend from.

BUBBLES

You had best be very cautious how you say, I love you.

If you accent the I, she has an opening for, who are you to strut on ahead and hint there aren't others, aren't, weren't and won't be?

Blurt out the love, she has suspicion for, so?-- why not hitherto?-- what brings you bragging now?-- and what'll it be hereafter?

Defer to the you, she has cert.i.tude for, me?

thanks, lad!-- but why argue about it?-- or fancy I'm lonesome?-- do I look as though you had to?

And having determined how you'll say it, you had next best ascertain whom it is that you say it to.

That you're sure she's the one, that there'll never be another, never was one before.

And having determined whom and having learned how, when you bring these together, inform the far of the intimate-- like a bubble on a pond, emerging from below, round wonderment completed by the first sight of the sky-- what good will it do, if she shouldn't, I love you?-- a bubble's but a bubble once, a bubble grows to die.

DIRGE

Death alone has sympathy for weariness: understanding of the ways of mathematics: of the struggle against giving up what was given: the plus one minus one of nitrogen for oxygen: and the unequal odds, you a cell against the universe, a breath or two against all time: Death alone takes what is left without protest, criticism or a demand for more than one can give who can give no more than was given: doesn't even ask, but accepts it as it is, without examination, valuation, or comparison.

COLOPHON

(_For W. W._)

The Occident and the Orient, posterior and posterior, sitting tight, holding fast the culture dumped by them on to primitive America, Atlantic to Pacific, were monumental colophons a disorderly country fellow, vulgar Long Islander.

not overfond of the stench choking native respiration, poked down off the shelf with the aid of some mere blades of gra.s.s; and deliberately climbing up, brazenly usurping one end of the new America, now waves his spears aloft and shouts down valleys, across plains, over mountains, into heights: Come, what man of you dares climb the other?