Читать книгу Starved Rock - Edgar Lee Masters - Страница 7

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Trees of the forest ground to pulp,

Rolled into sheets and rabbit tracked

With nut-gall or with nigrosine—

Then look at spirits thrill, or gulp

A lost delight, a rising spleen

For love that grew intense or slacked …

Here are the letters, torn in bits,

Crammed in the basket, look how full!

Our little fireplace scarce admits

So much that once was beautiful.

Here where we sat and dreamed together

In March, and now when we should be

Friends in the glory of June weather,

We tear our letters up—oh, me!

Call Jane to take the basket down,

And throw these on the furnace fire.

Let ashes drift about the town

Of what was our desire!

What are we to the gods, I wonder?

Perhaps two crickets in the grass,

Who meet and drop their stomachs' plunder

To touch antennæ as they pass.

So kissing in such soul communion

The gardener's step is heard, and quick

The crickets break their spirits' union,

Hide under logs or bits of brick.

Does guilty conscience stir the crickets?

What does he care? Why not a snap.

He's trimming out the hazel thickets

For a tennis court and shooting trap. …

You are afraid of God! Not that?

Some step has frightened you, I know.

Well, then it's gossip the alley-cat.

At least our hands grow cold as snow,

Relax their touch, and then we come,

Tear up the letters, sit and stare

Some moments, wholly dumb!

If we are crickets, still our breasts

Contain for us things real enough.

The gods may laugh, their interests

Are what? I wonder—not the love

Such as we knew. To be a god

Through love is what I hoped, and rise

Above the level of the clod.

They said it can't be, who are wise,

That's not the way to win the prize:

Or if it be, I don't know how;

Or you are not the one with whom

I might have won it. Well, my brow

Is turned into a whitened tomb

With all uncleanness in it; dreams

Rotting away with hopes as fair …

To me, the liver, nothing seems

Won that is lost. I can't invert,

Sophisticate the facts, or swear

My evil good. A hurt's a hurt,

A loss a loss, a scar a scar,

A spirit frustrate is inert.

To stretch your hands toward a star

And lose the star, or have it die

To ashes like a rocket, alters

The aspect of your being's sky.

You've learned no praise from earthly psalters

Can win the star, or else you've learned

The star you touched was quickly turned

To ashes while it burned.

Hell! Let us face it. Here it is

We had some walks, some precious talks,

Some hours of paradise and bliss.

Our blossom opened, we inhaled

All of its fragrance, now I scowl

Because our wonder blossom paled

For lack of water in the bowl

Tipped over by the alley-cat,

Or what not, change, distrust or fear;

Your pride, your will, a hovering gnat

I struck at striking you, a blear

Of eyes a moment, making blind

My vision, yours. … Or there's the age,

The age is frightful to my mind,

Nothing to do but stand it—well

I sit here and say "hell."

For it's really hell to have a will,

It's hell to hope and to believe,

That good can swallow up the ill,

That gods are working, will achieve.

They may be, yet they disregard

Our cricket feelings, so we shrill

Sonnets and elegies round the yard …

Let's talk a bit of chlorophyll:

The sun was useless for our life,

No wine, no beef, no watercress

Until this chlorophyll grew rife

Millions of years since, more or less.

And if no wine or beef, no love,

No pulp, no paper, nigrosine,

No letters which are made thereof.

Think! All we found and lost has been

Through chlorophyll.

And just suppose

Nature should lose the secret power

For making chlorophyll, the rose

We cherished would not come to flower.

No other man and woman more

Would burn their letters grieving—yet

We may be rising, for who knows

There may be something vastly better

Than love to flame and flay and fret,

And hate this letter and that letter,

Once rid of chlorophyll, in case

A subtler substance could be given

To this poor globe out of heaven—

We are a weak, if growing race!

Here, then, I think is a moral for us,

Another is tyrannosaurus—

Tyrannosaurus, what of him,

The monarch of this world one time,

Back in the æons wet and dim?

He faded like a pantomime.

And he could, well, step over trees,

Crunch up bowlders like cracking nuts,

Flip horses away like bumble-bees,

Stretch out in valleys as if they were ruts;

And hide a man in his nostril's hole,

And crush young forestry just like weeds.

He came and went, and what's your soul,

And what is mine with their crying needs?

And love that seemed eternal once,

Given of God to lift, inspire,

Well—now do we see? Was I dunce

Drunk with the wine of soul's desire?

Who made that wine, why did I drink it?

Why did I want it? What's the game?

Are spirits chaos? I scarce can think it.

Why fly for the light and get the flame?

Is love for souls of us chlorophyll

That makes us eatable, sweet and crisp

For Gods that raise us to feed their fill?

Who lives, the dreamer, the will o' the wisp?

Do Gods live, vanish, return again?

Who in the devil has love or luck?

One thing is true, there's rapture and pain.

As for the rest, I pass the buck.

Something occurs, and God knows what,

Tyrannosaurus fades like a ghost.

That throws a light on our little lot,

Love that is won, love that is lost.

Even a hundred years from now,

If this poor earth is rolling still,

Hearts will quiver, break or bow—

Provided the plants have chlorophyll.

Oh well! Oh hell! We must be heroic,

And it helps to scan a million of years.

And to think of monstrous beasts mesoic,

Brightens, though it dries no tears.

I'll dream for life of our walks by the river—

That was March and it's now July.

And this remains: I'll love you forever—

Burn up the letters now—Good by!