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Title: The Sardonic Arm Author: Maxwell Bodenheim Release date: August 17, 2019 [eBook #60114] Language: English Credits: Produced by Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SARDONIC ARM *** Produced by Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) [Illustration: The SARDONIC ARM _Bodenheim._-- 1923 COVICI-McGEE CHICAGO] Copyright 1923 Covici-McGee Chicago { This is a limited edition of 575 copies of which } { 550 copies are for sale and this copy is } No. 559. DEDICATED TO MINNA AND FEYDA --They will meet under different circumstances CONTENTS CONCERNING AMERICA 1 CRY, NAKED AND PERSONAL 3 FANTASY 6 HATRED OF METAPHOR AND SIMILE 9 TIME, INFINITY AND ETERNITY DESCEND UPON A BLACK DERBY HAT 11 I WALK UPON A STREET 13 THE INCURABLE MYSTIC ANSWERS WESTERN AMBITIONS 15 PLATONIC NARRATIVE 17 PORTRAITS 19 NEGRO CRIMINAL 26 SHORT STORY IN SONNET FORM 27 FEMININE TALK 28 THE SWORD CONVERSES WITH A PHILOSOPHER 31 CAPTAIN SIMMONS 34 MORE ABOUT CAPTAIN SIMMONS 36 CAPTAIN SIMMONS’ WIFE 37 NORTH CLARK STREET, CHICAGO 38 LANDSCAPE 41 COUNTRY GIRL 42 NONDESCRIPT TYPIST 43 CONCERNING EMOTIONS 44 METAPHYSICAL ELIZABETH 45 DESCRIPTION AND EXHORTATION 46 INEVITABLE 47 THE NEGROES WHO TURNED WHITE 48 EXPRESSIONS ON A CHILD’S FACE 50 PSYCHIC CLOWNS 51 DEAR MINNA 53 VILLAGE CLERK 55 REALISM 56 AMERICAN VAUDEVILLE SHOW 58 Reluctant Foreword _If I yield to the remorseful redundancy of a foreword, with its bedraggled battalions of fiercely insinuating words, it is from no mere desire to invite the ridicule of impatient time, or to rail against that host of vacant insincerities which betrays the animations of life. It may be that I do not look upon words as intimidating a fixed content, or beckoning to an inevitable style. It may be that I regard words as flexible lures seducing the essential emptiness of life, with little, false promises--promises of emotional and mental gain and reward; haloes and bludgeons with which a void may attain the mirage of toiling or dancing importance. And perhaps, in the desperate hope of achieving a proper festival of sound, I have summoned words to a reiteration of defeated antics, without in any way attempting to gain those exhausted futilities known as convictions and explanations. And if, through this foreword, I can revel in a pensive obscurity--a veil that must be carefully removed with the reading of poems that follow--I shall feel that I have furnished the exercise of amusement to certain sterile and over-confident rituals of emotion and mind._ _The poetic situation in America is, indeed, a blustering and verbose invitation to boredom and a slight, reviling headache. When not engaged in scrubbing the window pane ten times over, lest it prove opaque to an astigmatic public, American poets are discovering, with great glee, the perspiring habits and routines of sex, or naively deifying the local mannerisms of a blithely juvenile country--a lurching, colloquial, fist-swinging melee of milkmen depositing bottles on doorsteps and acquiring dignity in the process; chorus-girls and farmhands telling their troubles in a stilted slang; factory-owners falling in love with their female employees, to the tune of delicate and novel symbolism concerning “a longing to enter the house of her being”; ravings over the strength and poignancy of corn-fields and country-roads--“O, the corn, how it aches!” and “What is better than the patient and sturdy road?”--; much roaring about the importance and hard beauty of mills and factories--crudely smoky boxes of avarice faced by little, kneeling poets.... Ah, the list, when extended, defies amusement. You must leave the theater unless you desire the thankless experience of vomiting._ _The commercial cacophony of American lusts and greeds has borrowed a clarinet, a flute, and a saxophone from the admiration of American poets and is one-stepping with thousands of words, after the office and factory have closed for the day, “Swee-et Mama, well your papa’s done gone mad!”--the jerky, leering pandemonium of actual jazz on a polished floor interests me far more than its more proper and adulterated echoes--the glorious American poets of our time._ _There are, again, American poets who have turned their eyes to Europe, yes, the fact is apparent--they have turned their eyes to Europe, and they can, on occasion, become cynical animals, discovering seven thousand different ways of describing the contortions that lead to sexual intercourse, and displaying breasts and limbs with an infinite amount of abandoned bravado. Again, they have heard of the European Dadaists, yes, undoubtedly they have heard of the European Dadaists, and they have now reduced the pronoun “I” to “i,” commenced their lines with small letters, and exhibited a brave and startling hatred for commas and separate words. In Europe, this literary revolution holds a distorted incisiveness and many an original thought, heaved up from the catastrophe of words. In America, certain poets, with great gusto, have torn three buttons from their coats and are standing on their heads. Yawning, we turn the page to the greyly psychological school of poets--William James and Havelock Ellis, viewed with ecstasy behind a magnifying glass, while someone provides a blurred replica of Bach’s music._ _That tantalizing obscurity of words, luring the nimbleness of mental regard--subtlety--and those deliberate acrobatics that form an original style--both are waiting for the melodrama, comedy and lecture to subside. Alas, what a long waiting is before them--pity these two aristocrats and admire their isolated tenacity. Drop the trivial gift of a tear, also, upon a wilted, elaborate figure thrown into cell number thirty-two and trying to remember that his name was once Intellect. Then deposit the lengthened confession of a sigh upon another drooping form known as Delicate Fantasy--an elusive Liar who ravishes colors without mentioning their names (not the endless blue, green, white, yellow, red, lavender, mauve, pink, brown, cerise, golden, orange, and purple of American Imagists). They have kicked him into the cellar, damn them. Recognize the importance of his bruises. And also, spy, in the loosely naive tumult, an agile, self-possessed pilgrim known as Irony. They have kicked him in the stomach, these symbols of earth triumphant.... And now, you must not look upon these words as a stormy unfolding of conviction and explanation. The American spectacle has aroused a mood; words conceal the essential helplessness; and the lurking emptiness behind life separates into little, curious divisions of sound. The undulations have ended._ The SARDONIC ARM CONCERNING AMERICA Agitated child, Listening to the words of clown, Charlatan, blackguard, clergyman, And vainly trying to follow their commands Simultaneously, with legs and arms Swinging like demented Jehovahs, The plastic shapelessness of mud Waits to receive your castigated fevers. And all the children whose inarticulate Hearts smashed together make your body-- The burly, waggish rogue Paid to dance in your cabarets; The shoulder-shaking girl Who mistakes one shiver for immortality; The roughly earnest gunman Whose blundering insurrection Clutches a cool device; The man whose eyes are coins Encased in viscous white; The fox-like politician Leaping on small prizes in the dark; The farmer, lending his different costume To the ox-like patience of earth; The manual laborers With minds as minute and obscure as bricks, And softly prominent hearts; The factory-girls who try to scold The murmur of their souls With one hundred slang phrases-- All of them will lose Their imaginary differences In the lenient refuge of mud. But their souls, ridiculously Ignorant of national boundary-lines, And amused at the physical promise Or ruin that men extract Tortuously from life-- Their souls will instigate A more conspicuous conflict. CRY, NAKED AND PERSONAL Conversation in oak trees, Better than the talk of men Because it ends where they begin Futilely. Ferns, and invasion of moss, Waiting for the conquest of words To dwindle with the years And find, in the doom of green, A mute and sprightly correction. These trees do not proclaim That men are fools or geniuses. Their rustling tolerance Does not seek to intrude Upon the indifference of time, And it is appropriate That their leaves should wait to contain The discarded syllables Of human erudition. I have seen a man Gaze upon an oak tree, As one who hates a patient enemy. Sensual desires and mental plots Had marked his face not tenderly. Combat of envy and pride Gained the dilated prize of his eyes As he looked upon the tree. Then his voice achieved The solace of admiration. “The leaves are beautiful in Autumn. This oak tree has a pleasant sturdiness.” When confronted by a tree, Or sunset prowling down the hills, The sensual boast of men Trembles with fear and raises The shield of adoration. Look upon the oak tree Without that simulated courage Falsely wrung from soothing sound. The oak tree is a living prison Where the thoughts and lusts of men Dangle to the whims of winds And learn an unexpected tolerance. Seek revenge upon the tree; Dress it in capricious metaphor; Fling your costumes on its frame. Or, better still, realize That the oak tree does not Demolish the souls of men. I say that all of nature Is only the mingled womb and tomb With which an ancient illusion Perpetuates the religions that keep it alive. Before I leave the oak tree Laughter captures my lips. Newton, a dry and wavering leaf, Has fallen to the earth. FANTASY “Geography locates actual mountains, Rivers, and valleys, while critics Of literature and art Draw imaginary maps Small as the nail of an infant’s thumb. Then nouns and adjectives Are purchased and arranged To magnify and defend the size Of exquisite differences In altitude, position, and direction. Trivially vociferous, Your geographical critics Display their little maps to men Whose eyes are already convinced Or turned in another direction.” Torban, a scholar from Mars, Dropped his speech and laughed. His laugh was the sound of a mountain Emancipated by humour And cavorting over the plains. The mountain fled, but Torban remained, Made gigantic by its aftermath. For size does not reside [Illustration] In the legs and torsos That men hug, frightened, or with glee. He said: “Criticism in Mars Resembles your hours of sleep. Each night we leave creation; Greet the steeply slanting beds; And turn our large eyes inward To a complicated cabaret: Cabaret filled with relieving jigs; Cabaret crammed with irascible magicians Who persist in spoiling their little tricks By proclaiming the honesty of their intentions; Cabaret in which malice, Dignified or torrential, Turns creators into beetles And slays them ingeniously; Cabaret in which Erudition, Tempted by emotional coquettes, Swaggers greyly past the footlights; Cabaret in which Lust Defends itself with thoughtful monologues, Stopping to expectorate Into metaphysical cuspidors; Cabaret in which the mind Scorns the morphine of emotion Until, exhausted, it is forced Secretly to indulge in the drug; Cabaret of toothless bickerings That lisp like market-women At an ancient Fair; Cabaret in which Tolerance and Indifference Sit on the floor below the banquet-table And wait for crumbs that accidentally Slip from the over-full plates; Cabaret in which Logic Swallows the whiskey of dogmas, Reels to the little bed-chamber, And gradually falls asleep; Cabaret in which qualities, Enlarged and beribboned, engage In arguments with smaller qualities, Each longing for the other’s size.” Torban paused, and his smile, A thread of quicksilver bettering his face, Encouraged the purpose of my voice. I said: “The cabaret that you describe Reminds me of criticism on earth.” He answered: “One difference exists. We go to sleep before we criticize-- An excellent antidote for truth and lies!” HATRED OF METAPHOR AND SIMILE Ta-ra-ta-ta! The ancient horn is once more bleating Its ephemeral plea to immortality. Thus announced, the author of the play, Naked, and with a scholar’s face Ill-at-ease above the flesh, Proclaims the purpose of the play. His speech, long and unadorned, Requires this concentrated translation: “Life is a sensual hunter And only his trophies are real. These protesting animals May sometimes be cleverly scrutinized By six or seven intellects Secreted in the noisy audience.” Ta-ra-ta-ta! The horn resounds, and its echoes Are caught by an uproar of sounds-- Excited disciples within the theater. “Down with fantasy!” “Realism and flesh forever!” “No more lies about the soul!” “Give us earth and logic!” “Murder the mountebanks and butterflies!” “Down with metaphor and simile!” The play is about to begin When two unfortunate poets Are discovered in the audience. Morbid, grotesque, and nonchalant, They wear involved, embroidered clothes And smoke emotional cigarettes, Flicking the ashes carefully Into the rage of faces around them. And one poet recommends A ruffled, satirical vest for the hairy chest Of a broad man seated near him. With cries, in which the earthly illusion Mounts its strident throne, The audience expels the two poets With ritual of feet and fists. Unperturbed, the poets Stoop to mend their embroidered sleeves Tom by the frantic audience. With this important task completed, They stroll away. TIME, INFINITY, AND ETERNITY, DESCEND UPON A BLACK DERBY HAT Vicious and sincere, The black derby hat flaunts itself Upon the head of an amateur libertine. The libertine is a nervous rascal Asking too many favors From one spear-point exalted by men, But the black derby hat, Poised and incorruptible, Curves its black no to the senses. To those who cannot see, The black derby hat is only a sugar-bowl Turned upside-down and out of place, Or one of many crowns Bestowing their ugly pathos Upon the struggle of a nation, Or the way in which a dreamer Pitifully says hello to the stars, Or a symbol of bulky manhood Swaggering in an ancient trap. But to eyes that can look beyond The surface rites of America Bending over bargain-counters of flesh, The black derby hat is an alabaster Sentinel, defending its realm Against the pompous indifference Of Time, Infinity, and Eternity. The black derby hat is an outline of earth, Bold and abrupt, remaining Indifferent to the desperate commands Of sex and greed, and he who wears it Is only a helpful accident Bringing publicity to the hat. Uncompromising, the black derby hat Suggests the blunt isolation of intellect, And yet it may have been made By some weak serf of emotion. From the contact of incongruities Life evolves the more perfect shape, And so, the black derby hat, Gliding through the frantic defeats Of a city street, Coolly protects its realm Against the scarecrow-contempt Of Time, Infinity, and Eternity. I WALK UPON A STREET Must I see a gutter In which the hurried machination Of water carries bits of apple peeling To some profound, obscure intelligence? And if the gutter is to me Merely the masterful travel of brown Speeding with odds and ends of red, To lend importance to a dream, Will this belief decrease my size When death reproves my inefficient limbs? I walk upon a street Where trite deceptions glide Ceaselessly. Upon this street the spasmodic revolt Of color refuses to join The orderly, substantial lie. Scattered anarchists of color, Thin and incorrupt, Contend against the ponderous devices Of lust for flesh and gold. With a spiritual savageness Colors bring their lucid treason To ancient, shrouded tyrannies. The knitted green of this girl’s sweater Is a badge releasing A cool republic of desire Unrelated to earth. Her famished opaque face Feeds on sleek anticipations-- Unconscious incongruity. Color alone is real, Waving perpetually Over the graves of thought and emotion. From the vaster shapes of color Small and involved broods of thought and emotion Are born to scorn their distant mothers. The ruffian dream recedes Over a span of twenty thousand years, And color, awake and supreme, Waits to be once more divided By another nightmare dream. If men could see this they might kneel Upon this sidewalk and observe The importance of apple-peelings Testing their spirals of red Against the thick, brown stream. THE INCURABLE MYSTIC ANSWERS WESTERN AMBITIONS Western men, Your life is a minor rhapsody For flute and violin. With sounds, now shrill, now suave, You steal your hymns and frolics From the surface dirt of realism And the curves of sensuality. Your feeble mysticism Strains at the task of lifting tables And placing naïve retorts Into the mouths of spirits. Your erudition is the vain Gesture of your repentance Grown over-thin and complex. Western men, you are beggars Devouring bits of guile Tossed from a violent mirage. The contours of a rose Bribing the quiet madness of evening With cunning promises of red, Are more important than your sweating love And the rushing dreads of your market-places. The contours of a rose Will still arrange their subtle dream When your clever schemes of mud Win the drifting pension of dust. Your charts and diagrams Are merely a ragamuffin’s initials Cut into an ancient gateway That guards the invisible meaning of life. PLATONIC NARRATIVE Tomato soup at four A. M. We seemed to sit upon the floor But, with a feathery discretion, We advised our bodies To make the floor a glistening fundamental Flattened by the walk of centuries. Continuing the advice, We told our bodies to arrange A variation on the floor And give the floor a living Reason for existence. Our bodies, with clandestine movements, Accepted the advice And became the essences of Plato, Almost tempting our flesh To renounce its weight. Our lifted knees were actors Simulating treason to our souls, With their prominence of bone. They were interviewed By elbows that held a light disbelief. Our backs against the cushions Had disappeared, and we did not move For fear that all of us Might rush away through the openings. Our heads were fiercely bent down, As though they felt an ecstasy Of shame at their crudity ... When we returned to the tomato soup It was an insipid fluid, But we drank it indifferently, And it is also possible That an unearthly laugh Peered through the crevices of our eyes, Finding no need for sound. PORTRAITS I. _Stenographer_ Intellect, You are an electrical conspiracy Between the advance guards of soul and mind. Thoughts and spiritual instincts, Profound and unfanatical, Sit plotting against the enmity That seeks to wall them in separate castles... A thought and a spiritual instinct Link themselves for an instant Upon the face of this stenographer. Unknown to her mind and speech A gleam of intellect contradicts her features, And she spies the jest of her relation To the droning man beside her. This incredible news Will be doubted by poets and scientists. II. _Waitress_ Musicians and carpenters Meet upon your trays of food: Aesthetics and the flesh Play their little joke upon dogma, Urged by the rhythm of your hands. Your rouged cheeks slip unnoticed Through the sexless turmoil. The rituals are hastened Lest they become self-conscious... I stop you and remark: “The sylvan story of your hair Is damaged by your rhinestone comb. May I remove it?” Then you stare. The fact that you have been Greeted by something other than a wink Almost causes you to think. You walk away, holding an emotion That skims the lips of many adjectives. Confused, uncertain, scornful-- With none of them fused together. III. _Shop-Girl_ Yellow roses in your black hair Hold the significance Of stifled mystics defying Time. Yellow roses in your black hair Can become to certain eyes The trivial details of emotion. Yellow roses in your black hair Often embarrass passing philosophers Who suddenly realize That they have been furtively snatching at color and light. Shop-girl, in the midst of your frolic, Take this portrait without surprise. Portraits are merely pretexts. IV. _Manicurist_ Maudlin, hurt, morose, Tender, angry, remote, Whimsical, frigid, impatient-- Compel these adjectives to become Friendly to each other And let them stumble in unison Beneath the muscular trouble of life. The careful Boss who sends them on Holds one eye of bitterness And another of sentimentality, Closing each one on different occasions. The careful Boss may be your soul, Tired manicurist, amazing The fragrant barber-shop With words of valiant prose. Ferretti, the mildly dying barber, Loves his bald head with one finger And whispers, “She’s crazy, I fire her tomorrow. When customer ask her to eat with him She laugh and tell him she no care To pay too much for indigestion. She’s crazy. I fire her tomorrow.” Ferretti does not know That souls are not entirely unconcerned With straining for effects. V. _Housewife_ Seraphic and relaxed, you take Your novel with uncertain thumbs, As one who lingers over cake And dreads the thought of final crumbs. Frown at my precious sorcery And label me an envious elf. If human beings could agree Their boredom might revenge itself. O youthful housewife, weighing grains Of joy upon your empty smile, The total of my bolder gains Is but a more impressive guile. Your serious child wins the alert And limpid art of playing tag, While your emotions rest inert Like dried fruit in a paper bag. And yet I envy both of you And wish that I could also find The mildness of your fancied view, Where feelings dance and thoughts are kind. VI. _Woman_ They worship musical sound Protecting the breast of emotion. Their feelings pose as fortune-tellers And angle for coins from credulous thoughts. Shall we abandon this luxury Of mild mist and wild raptures? Your face refrains from saying yes But your closed eyes roundly Reward the luminous sentence. Greece and Asia have exchanged Problems upon your face, And the fine poise of your head Tries to catch their conversation. Few people care to use Thought as a musical instrument That brings its singing restraint to grief and joy, But we, with straight arms, will descend Daringly upon this situation. The full-blown confusion of life Will detest our intrusion. VII. _Old Actor_ Any minor poet can claim That his subject resembles music. (“Her steps were notes of music.” “His presence was like a song.”) You are a long-neglected Instrument from which the player, With over-confident lips, blows only A jet of dust that falls upon The damp chagrin of his face. Moist from the futile effort He asks his listeners to admire Imaginary notes. They clap their hands, and he must retire To the slow digesting of his lie. Old actor, you have finished reciting Hamlet; Your pennies are gathered; and you depart. NEGRO CRIMINAL From the pensive treachery of my cell I can hear your mournful yell. Centuries of pain are pressed Into one unconscious jest As your scream disrobes your soul. The silence of your iron hole Is hot and stolid, like a guest Weary of seeing men undressed. Like the silence, I listen Because I dread the glisten Of a hidden humour that strains Under the stumble of all pains. Brown and wildly clownish shape Thrown into a cell for rape, You contain the tortured laugh Of a pilgrim-imbecile whose staff Taps against a massive comedy. Melodrama burlesques itself with free And stony voice, and wears a row of masks To lure the joviality of tasks. Melodrama, you, and I, We are merely tongues that try To ogle a protesting dream Into whisper, laugh, and scream. SHORT STORY IN SONNET FORM Loud chatter in a thousand minor lines Was your religion, and your art was pain Disguised by phrases of verbose disdain. You married an old man who gave you wines Lukewarm and pink, until your tipsy youth, Grown weary of evading sensual lies, Ran to idiot-Pierrot whose cries Created that delusion known as truth. The ache of your sincerity betrayed His awkward falseness, and he turned away, Grinning until your bullet found his head. Then people claimed that you had merely paid Insanely for a tritely sordid play. Your lyric could not answer--it was dead. FEMININE TALK _First Woman_ Do you share the present dread Of being sentimental? The world has flung its boutonnière Into the mud, and steps upon it With elaborate gestures! _Second Woman_ Sentimentality Is the servant-girl of certain men And the wife of others. She scarcely ever flirts With creative minds, Striving also to become Graceful and indiscreet. _First Woman_ Sappho and Aristotle Have wandered through the centuries, Dressed in an occasional novelty-- A little twist of outward form. They have always been ashamed To be caught in a friendly talk. _Second Woman_ When emotion and the mind Engage in deliberate dialogue, One hundred nightingales And intellectuals find a common ground, And curse the meeting of their slaves! _First Woman_ The mind must only play With polished relics of emotion, And the heart must never lighten Burdens of the mind. _Second Woman_ I desire to be Irrelevant and voluble, Leaving my terse disgust for a moment. I have met an erudite poet With a northern hardness Motionless beneath his youthful robes. He shuns the quivering fluencies Of emotion, and shifts his dominoes Within a room of tortured angles. But away from this creative room He sells himself to the whims Of his wife, a young virago With a calculating nose. Beneath the flagrant pose Of his double life Emotion and the mind Look disconsolately at each other. _First Woman_ Lyrical abandon And mental cautiousness Must not mingle to a magic Glowing, yet deliberate. _Second Woman_ Never spill your wine Upon a page of mathematics. Drink it decently Within the usual tavern. THE SWORD CONVERSES WITH A PHILOSOPHER _Sword_ The Hindoo raises his arms And holds them level with his shoulders Till they become still and permanent, like horizons. But I prefer to stumble Into abrupt harmonies That must ever be flung aside. With one quick slash I cut Lips of death upon an expressionless breast, And a vermilion sincerity Pardons the sophistry of flesh. It is better to make And leave the moments of a poem Than to erect an ingenious pedestal Upon which blindness solemnly squats. _Philosopher_ Men’s tongues are slow, and they have made you To avenge their hidden shame at this. You give startling girdles to virgins, Red beards to thieves, And writhing necklaces to children, Because the tongues of men are slow And revel in your quicker rhythms. An idiot whirls you around his head And persuades himself that he is swift. Imagination drenches his eyes And he spreads himself flat on your blade. _Sword_ All of your words are concentrated Into the glittering censure of my blade! _Philosopher_ Life wraps its layer of touch around one, Like a haunting blanket Smothering the taunting lips of a child. Curving their fingers around your hilt Men strive to purchase the triumph Of an imagined escape. I teach them plaintively to weave Schemes of consolation On the broad texture of their lives. You tell them to slash the fabric, Reaching into the black space underneath it. You are not a symbol of cruelty. An innocent impatience Sharpens the comedy of your blade. _Sword_ Men have only two choices-- To worship idols or mimic fireflies, And I lend my strength to each choice, Teaching them to abandon The harlequin raptures of words. _Philosopher_ You bring them yearning turbulence, And I, a quick-tongued refuge. Silence will pardon both of us. CAPTAIN SIMMONS An arbitrary architect Became his mind, and planned Cathedrals, mansions, and shops In a room enclosed by hair. And so a crowded town Occupied the dwarfed miles in his head, And along the boundary-line That separated thought from emotion Darkly seething slums grew up. Owing to the lack of space Prevailing in mental slums, Some buildings had been forced Into the realm of emotion. Within these structures half-breeds lived-- Creatures whose inconsequent Color prevented them From being entirely logical, And whose reeking impulses Were deplorably snubbed by thought. Being from the slums of mind These hybrids loved the dirt of arguments Inherited from centuries of men, Stopping now and then To order emotional brandy. It is unnecessary To tell that Captain Simmons was old, With a body like the fading dream Of an athlete, and a face Made womanly by age. MORE ABOUT CAPTAIN SIMMONS Captain Simmons’ legs Were praying after much capering. Legs can pray without kneeling When they steal pity from city streets. On Captain Simmons’ face Wrinkled inhibitions were giving Moth-eaten lace to that soft tolerance Where memory and dying desire sleep without dreams. Captain Simmons’ black suit Fitted him loosely while his mind Became him tightly, and the reason Flickered in his smile. For all of life he had hidden Beneath a loose generosity In order to escape the fact That certain of his thoughts Were supplied with tights and slyness, And his smile was a lit candle held For a moment uncertainly over this situation. If one mentioned that Captain Simmons Was possessed by the plight of eyes Like pinched chicaneries of fate, Above a face of visual penuries, One would only hide his essential parts Beneath the futility of explanation. CAPTAIN SIMMONS’ WIFE She moved in a calculating trot, Relinquishing hairsbreadths of her life With each step, and gathering Atoms of humour and melancholy Into one last excuse for existence. It is true that she was playing Housewife to her thoughts and emotions. Her intangible household had attained A weak and exquisite indirectness, And she fiddled with its meager neatness; Protected them as they stooped Over the knitting of remorse; Fed them platters of minced scandal And mildly censured the relish with which they ate; Persuaded them that they could dream best When they were uncomfortable; Swept out bedrooms for fear That the talkative candour of her dislikes Might falter in the presence of dust; And clinked the silver on side-boards In an effort to convince herself That she was still robustly mercenary. Again, she scanned the spots On a bridal-gown and planned, As she had done for years To send it to an imaginary cleaner. NORTH CLARK STREET, CHICAGO I. Tame and ghastly coffins Display their shamefaced grays and reds Against the passive vividness of morning. From the base of these large coffins Men and women walk, Like briskly servile automata. Some repentant toy-maker Has given them a cunning pretense of life. A waitress hurries to her work. Her yellow hair and face stained red Blend into a garish mendicant Who steals unreal composure from the morning. Behind her tramps a bloodless Jew. The stench of endless denials Has wrenched his youthful face Into a prophecy of middle age. He does not see the lamely leaden Shop-girl, where despair and apathy, Fighting, produce the motion of her limbs. She does not see this elderly laborer Upon whose face an artist [Illustration] Lies smashed and gasping for breath, And he does not regard This thread irresolutely falling From a tapestry of memory: This slender woman in black. The glittering indifference of morning Divides their faces. II. Afternoon has fallen on this street, Like an imbecilic organ-grinder Grinning over his discords. Dead men and women spin Their miracles of motion Upon the grayness of this street. In this old Jew’s shop A woman bargains over calico. With a ghostly naïveté She reprimands the price of her shroud. In this pawn-shop stands a man Parting with his clarinet. He walks away, with dangling arms, Like a swindled Gabriel. In a lunchroom sits a woman Whose face is a tired sin Seeking comfort in religion. A young girl near her is an angel Puzzled by streaks of mud upon her face And asking questions of her vanity. Outside, dead men and women Are whipped on by the explosive magic Of an old, resistless masquerade. Street-cars, wagons, and motor-trucks Rattle their parodies on life, And over all the afternoon Twists, like an imbecilic organ-grinder Snickering over his discords. III. Night has thrown his ecstasy Of staring, counterfeit eyes Over the torrent of this street. Men with faces quicker And more furtive than time Stand motionless in doorways. Women stride down this street. Many fingers have pulled their faces To a haggard lack of expression. They join the motionless men In the doorways and disappear. And over them the tame and ghastly coffins Display their shamefaced grays and reds Against the tangled vividness of night. LANDSCAPE The countless vagaries of maple leaves, Elastic humbleness of flowers and weeds, The hill, a placid stoic to all creeds, They use an obvious language that deceives The subtle theories of human ears. Their tongue is motion and they scorn the rhyme And meter made by men to soothe their fears. Beneath the warm strength of each August hour They spurn cohesion and the plans of thought, With quick simplicity that seems confused Because it signals mystic whims that tower Above the thoughts and loves that men have caught: Beyond the futile words that men have used. COUNTRY GIRL Your face is stencilled with a pensiveness. Your face contains a minor lyric trapped By dainty ignorance, and tamely capped By hair as trimly lifeless as your dress. You suffer from the drooling praise of old And youthful men, who strive to win a blind And soothing admiration from your mind, And do not try to make your thoughts unfold. This comedy would fade into a host If it were not rewarded by the dead But unrelenting poet on your face. Your eyes are heavy with his reckless ghost: The trouble of his hands is on your head As you peer out into a clouded space. NONDESCRIPT TYPIST Within an office whose exterior Resembles an ultra-conservative mind You battle with the avaricious words Of a meager, petrified man. Your face is brown stagnation Sometimes astounded by a thrust Of chattering wistfulness. Bravery is fear Effectively sneering at itself, And you are forever wavering Upon the edge of this condition. Yet your obscurity Is an important atom In the mysterious march of time. CONCERNING EMOTIONS And if I say that pain is but A circus barker whose loud cries Seek to reward a trivial show, Will you confess that I am wise? “Must it be emotional?” you asked, After I had thrown Words into a carnival-scope. Sobriety and merriment Borrowed the sixteenth century Within your voice, and sought The identity of sternness-- Mental sternness pretending to ignore The confetti thrown by emotion In a carnival unique. Emotions can be prancing curves Fashioned by relaxing thoughts. Should I kiss you, Questioner, The delicate anti-climax Of a mental caper Might perish on crimson vapor! Tired of frenzies and satiations Emotions often wander to poets And ask for more fantastic decisions For fire that glows but does not burn. METAPHYSICAL ELIZABETH They gave you strait-jackets to bore you. Like an unwilling promise Your legs were tied together. But people can only violate Their own conception of reality, And your actual curves Preserved their sculptural liberty. Leaving their semblance on your flesh Your lines sped inward till they gained The center where emotion changes To a speck of quivering clarity. Within you phantoms of reality Danced with plausibilities of mind, Seeking to be consumed By the oblivion which is understanding. You feared that your return to motion Would mean a succession of disappointments-- Tamely grazing arrows Changed to wounds by the desiring heart Take my hand and move. Only two statues can stride together In a manner invisible Save to certain unreasonable adjustments Of eyesight and of hearing. DESCRIPTION AND EXHORTATION Truly, this age will be known As one of minute extremes Courting an elderly shape In a violent bar-room scene. An Amazon made filthy by centuries, And fuming pygmies, own the stage. Thin furies of emotion Name every color in the rainbow Without its skillful assent, And little mental skeletons Stamp with clumsy weirdness On effigies of the heart. The pygmies often sneak To the prancing Amazon And the ensuing love-scene produces Small memories of Walt Whitman. This age is not metaphysical. Followers of Dada, Weary of electron-soliloquies And fleshly ecstasies with flat feet, Sit in the gallery And throw loose malice at the display, Evading their motives with an eager creed. Concentrate your aim, Followers of Dada. INEVITABLE The insurrection of a flea Compared to driving tusks Of elephants, is just as strong. Stupidity need not be long. The insurrection of a flea Attains philosophy and spice. Fleas salt their eating with a creed That warms the monotone of greed. The insurrection of a flea Will leave with tense insistence till The suburbs of eternity. O small fanatic on a spree. The flea is poet in a land That does not understand his lunge. He makes his own immaculate laws And awaits forever threatening claws. THE NEGROES WHO TURNED WHITE The souls of negroes, thrown into a shout, Roll their hallelujahs out To the flashing blandness of the sky. The sky does not divide their cries Into meanings foolish and wise: To the sky all men have but one cry. Still, amusement has often thrown Separate shades upon the monotone, Playing with the sleep of firm beliefs. Amused, we give these negroes forms Distinct and bounding under storms Of sounds that catapult their joys and griefs. A negro with his bald despair Seduced by remnants of silver hair, Converses with an old King known as God. He longs to have his tortured stare Rewarded with a golden chair While other negroes thump the sod With heavy echoes of his request. With a cold, castrated zest He pleads for rest, and he is bold, While scientists and troubadours Cling more closely to their floors. “How d’yah kno-ow, how d’yah kno-o-ow Dat the blood done sign mah na-a-ame? Yes it’s so-o-o, yes it’s so-o-o, Jesus wrote it down in fla-a-ame.” The other negroes sing With gliding fear, and swing The child-like joke of their arms to emotions That surge like an army searching for its eyes. But suddenly a quick surprise Tricks each negro’s face with fright-- Their skins are gleaming pink and white. White philosophers and scientists Strike each other with dubious fists Within the negroes’ brains, while poets fight Like blistered urchins wrapped in gloom. Shrinking underneath the uproar With its bursts of phantom gore, The negroes shriek against their doom. With bending celebration of knees They crush against their leader’s pleas. “Lord Almighty, make us black! This strange noise strikes us on the back! We has had enough of whips! Calm this devil with your lips!” EXPRESSIONS ON A CHILD’S FACE Dawn?--no, the hunted transparency of dawn Curving from the white throat of a child And shaken in the still cup of his face. Then a sudden dispersal of swerving light Carrying away the defeated Wisdom of a smile. Thought?--no, the persistent shudder Of emotion that is almost thought. The invisible recklessness of perfume Enveloping the beginning of a question. Sadness?--no, the growth of a dim inclination To delve into the rancid importance of flesh: Then weeping, to wash away The ritual of disappointment. PSYCHIC CLOWNS _First Clown_ We gaze upon a negro shoveling coal. His muscles fuse into a poem Stifled and sinister, Censuring the happy rhetoric of morning air. Some day he will pitch the stretched simplicity Of his tent upon the contented ruins Of a civilization, Playing with documents and bottles of perfume Found in deserted, broken corridors. _Second Clown_ The barbarous comedy Lost in profuse confessions And often described as life, Lends an attitude of conviction To the mechanical retreat of time. _First Clown_ Do you hear beneath the irregular strut Of this city an imperceptible groan? Time is turning the jail-house key. They build larger jails for time; He makes larger keys of blood-stained iron. Endlessly he emerges From complicated delusions of freedom. _Second Clown_ That desperately grotesque Wanton known as imagination Can plunge beyond both men and time. Imagination slips down Upon the last edges of thought and feeling And teaches them to transcend The forlorn bravado of swinging legs and arms. _First Clown_ We are two psychic clowns Brandishing the poverty of words Into insolent oddities of sound. Come, men are waiting to nail us Upon the crucifix of their little logics! DEAR MINNA Catastrophe in a bric-a-brac shop. The proprietor lies murdered. Pieces of cups, jars, and vases Have attained the disorderly freedom So obnoxious to bankrupt fanatics. Once the cups, jars, and vases Were symmetrical and empty, And immersed in the task of holding nothing. Now they have snatched a voice from fragments; Spell many an accidental sentence; Renounce the hollow lie. Death, you take the stiffly obvious shapes Of objects and crack them with your fingers-- A shattered invitation To curiosity and anticipation-- And I am grateful to you for that. My eyes grow weary scanning the living array. Each man takes his inch upon the shelves And will not move, until your paw Robs him of microscopical convictions. Dear Minna, read the newspapers And gloat with me over death’s industry. Banker, Freudian, Socialist, Knocked from the shelves and changed To symbols that can lure conjecture. It is well that we are metaphysical. Death must not become A mere black frame surrounding The memorized reiterations. Death must remain an irresistible Beckoning to reckless speculations And continue to offer an amorous arm To the recalcitrant antics of words. VILLAGE CLERK Rabelais and Maeterlinck Have subsided to one grin Upon your sharply cumbersome face. Coarseness and a psychic hope Dominate your voice As you prattle to women Purchasing sugar and salt. Then your face and voice Alter to a serious fraud Eagerly learning the technique of deceptions, As you answer this dryly emasculated Grey-beard, discussing the tendencies in hogs. When the night replenishes Your store of morbid desires, You will try to piece together A cajoling violin From your sweet-heart’s syllables, Fumbling with hot hands for the unseen strings. REALISM Regard an American farm. That jaded collaborator, Daylight, has just arrived. Wavy signal of smoke From the wooden farm-house disappears Beneath the bluely ascetic lack of interest. Horses, pigs, and cows Assemble their discontent. The result is a Chinese orchestra Devoid of discipline and cohesion, With all of the players intoxicated. The animals do not realize That their voices should portray The farmer in the angular house; The hackneyed prose of his life; The expanding soul of his corn-fields. Turn from the absence of human wisdom And see the lights in the farm-house. Dimly circumscribed and steady, They symbolize future events. The farm-hand walks to the barn, With an ox-like dragging of feet. Black shirt, and overalls Whose color has been removed by dirt, Obscure the heavy knots of his body. His cork-screw nose ascends To the eyes of an unperturbed pig. Love and hate to him Are mouthfuls of coarse food hastily gulped During lulls in his muscular slavery. Beneath the slanting pungency Of the barn he vanishes, And with meaningless sounds He pays his meager tribute to life. Then the farmer persuades his age To indulge in an unwilling stumble Across the yard. His grey beard is the end of a rope That has gradually throttled his face. Within him, avarice Is awkwardly practising the rhythms Of weak emotions benignly, belatedly Preparing for celestial rewards. Within the cluttered farm-yard He stands, a figure of niggardly order. Earth, the men who scrape at your flanks Can never stop to examine The thin line of speech that goes adventuring Where your brown hills bite the sky. AMERICAN VAUDEVILLE SHOW This vacuous, clattering spectacle Has collected the heart-beats of a nation. Greed, like a gorged Machiavelli, Slumps down in the green plush seat And wonders whether it has not blundered, While a sentimental song, Like a kindly infant, Interferes with the clink of coins. Hatred, juvenile and deformed, Earns the smirking oblivion Of fat women mangling sound. The wrangling babble of ignorance Turns to silence underneath The opium of innuendoes. Acrobats appear and seem To be raping phantom lovers No longer beautiful and fresh But mechanically endured. Part of the audience is also A battered stoic clasping worn-out mistresses. Clog-dancers enervate The thumping martyrs of their feet, And chorus-girls offer the lines of their bodies With whining voices. 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