Читать книгу Against This Age - Maxwell Bodenheim - Страница 4

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You mutter, with your face

Pleading for more room because

It has scanned a panorama:

You mutter, with every difference

On your face an error in size

Mesmerized by the sight of a sky-line:

“Life is a nightmare and something delicate.”

Lady, they have made a world for you,

And if you dare to leave it

They will flagellate you

With the bones of dead men’s thoughts,

And five senses, five termagants

Snapping at the uneasy mind.

“No, five riotous flirts,”

You say, “and each one has

A thick blandishment to master the mind.”

Yes, lady, through the bold disarrangement of words

Life acquires with great foresight

An interesting nervousness.

But O lady with a decadent music

Somehow silent in lines of flesh,

Finding your face too small,

Finding the earth too small,

Have they not informed you

That crowding life into seven words

Is an insincere and minor epigram?

And have they not reprimanded you

Because you fail to observe

Their vile and fervent spontaneity,

These howlers of earthly shrouds?

And have they neglected to drive

The bluster of their knuckles against your face

Because you rush from the leg and arm

Anecdotes of microscopical towns,

Bandying with a fantasy

Which they call thin and valueless?

“Life is a nightmare and something delicate,”

You repeat, and then, “O yes, they have done these things

To me because I take not seriously

The interval between two steps

Made by Death, who has grown a little tired.

When Death recovers his vigor

The intervals will become

Shorter and shorter until

No more men are alive.

But now they have their chance.

The wild, foul fight of life

Delights in refreshing phrases—

Swift-pouring tranquillities and ecstasies

Atoning for the groaning stampede

That desecrates the light

Between each dawn and twilight.

And those who stand apart

Use the edged art of their minds

To cut the struggling pack of bodies

Into naked, soiled distinctness.”

Lady, do not let them hear you.

You are too delicate—

Deliberately, nimbly, remotely, strongly

Delicate—and you will remind them

Too much of Death, who is also

The swiftly fantastic compression

Of every adjective and adverb

Marching to nouns that live

Beyond the intentions of men.

Men are not able, lady,

To strike his face, and in vengeance

They will smear your face

With the loose, long hatred of their words.

I will wash your face

With new metaphors and similes,

Telling carefully with my hands

That I love you not for your skin,

And every bird at twilight

Will be enviously astonished

At your face now insubstantial

Indeed, you have an irony

That ironically doubts

Whether its power is supreme,

And at such times you accept

The adequate distraction

Of cold and shifting fantasy.

This is your mood and mine,

And with it we open the window

To look upon the night.

The night, with distinguished coherence,

Is saying yes to the soul

And mending its velvet integrity

Torn by one forlorn

Animal that bounds

From towns and villages.

The night is Blake in combat

With an extraordinary wolf

Whose head can take the mobile

Protection of a smile;

Whose heart contains the ferocious

Lies of ice and fire;

Whose heart with stiff and sinuous

Promises swindles the lips and limbs of men;

Whose heart persuades its confusion

To welcome the martyred certainties

Of cruelty and kindness;

Whose brain is but a calmness

Where the falsehoods of earth

Can fashion masks of ideas.

Welcome the wolf.

Bring lyrics to fondle his hair.

Summon your troops of words

And exalt his gasping contortions.

Lady, it is my fear

That makes me give you these commands.

Men will force upon you

The garland of their spit

If you fail to glorify,

Or eagerly disrobe,

The overbearing motives of their flesh.

And every irony of yours

Will be despised unless

A hand of specious warmth

Directs the twist of your blades.

O lady, you are flashing detachment

Clad in exquisitely careful

Fantasy, and on your face

Pity and irony unite

To form the nimble light of contemplations.

Men will dread you as they fear

Death, the Ultimate Preciosity.

Stay with me within this chamber

And tell me that your heart

Is near to a spiral of pain

Curving perfectly

From the squirming of a world.

See, you have made me luminous

With this news, and my heart,

Fighting to be original,

Ends its struggle in yours.

Turning, we trace a crescent

Of conscious imagination

Upon the darkness of this room.

Night and window still remain.

Night, spiritual acrobat,

Evades with great undulations

The moans and exultations of men.

His madly elastic invitation

To the souls of men

Gathers up the imagination

Of one poet, starving in a room

Where rats and scandals ravish the light.

With conscious combinations of words

The poet bounds through space with Night.

Together they observe

The bleeding, cheated mob

Of bodies robbed by one quick thrill.

Cold, exact, and fanciful,

They drop the new designs of words

Upon a vastly obvious contortion.

Poet and night can see

No difference between

The peasant, groveling and marred,

And smoother men who cringe more secretly.

Yet they give these men

The imaginary distinctions of words.

Compassionate poet and night.

You say: “With glaring details

Attended by the voices of men,

Morning will attack the poet.

Men will brandish adjectives.

Tenuous! Stilted! Artificial!

Dreams of warm permanence

Will grasp the little weapons

Furnished by the servant-mind.

Dreams … ah, lady, let us leave

The more precise and polished dream

Of our sadness, and surpass

The scoundrel, beggar, fool, and braggart

Fused into a loose convulsion

Called by men amusement.

Laughter is the explosive trouble

Of a soul that shakes the flesh.

Misunderstanding the signal

Men fly to an easy delight.

Causes, obscure and oppressed,

Cleave the flesh and become

Raped by earthly intentions.

Thus the surface rôles of men

Throw themselves upon the stranger,

Changing his cries with theirs.

The aftermath is a smile

Relishing the past occurrence.

Lady, since you desire

To clutch the meaning of this sound and pause,

Laugh and smile with me more sadly

And with that attenuated, cold

Courage never common to men.

Another window is behind us,

Needing much our laugh and smile.

II

That metaphysical prank

Known as chance—overwhelming

Lack of respect for bodies

And the position of objects—

Gathers three men and arranges them

Side by side in a street-car.

Freudian, poet, and priest—

Ah, lady, they have not lost

The unreal snobbishness

With which their different minds

Withdraw from one another.

Their thought does not desire

Only to be distinct

And adventurous.

They must also maintain

An extreme aloofness;

Throw the obliterating adjective;

Fix a rock and perch upon it.

Chance, the irresistible humorist,

Has lured their bodies together,

With that purity of intention

Not appreciated by men.

With a smile not impersonal

But trampling on small disputes,

We scan the minds and hearts of these men.

The Freudian is meditating

Upon a page within his essay

Where the narrative sleep of a woman

Clarifies her limbs and breast.

He does not know that men

Within their sleep discover

Creative lips and eyes stamped out by life;

That coarse and drooling fish-peddlers

Change to Dostoyevskies;

Morbid morgue-attendants

Snatch the sight of Baudelaire;

Snarling, cloudy cut-throats

Steal the shape of François Villon.

Men within their slumber

Congratulate the poetry,

Prose, and art that life reviles

Within their stifled consciousness.

Their helpless imaginations

Throw off the soiled and cramped

Weight of memorized realities.

The Freudian in the street-car

Ties this freedom to a creed,

Narrowing the broad escape

Until it fits the lunge of limbs.

We leave him, rubbing his nose

To catch the upheaval of triumph,

And look upon the more removed

Body of the poet.

Lady, poets heal

Their slashed and poisoned loneliness

With words that captivate

The bald, surrounding scene:

Words that grip the variations

Crowded underneath each outward form,

Governed by the scrutiny

Of mind, and heart, and soul.

Transcending the rattle of this car

And every other gibberish

Uttered by civilization,

The poet plans his story.

Life, an old man, cryptic and evanescent,

Tries to sell some flowers

To Death, who is young and smiles.

Lady, this poet is also young—

Tingling, candid somersault of youth—

And his words only catch

Surface novelties of style.

Different phrases drape one thought.

“An old man 3 thirds asleep”

Replaces “an old man completely asleep.”

Ah, these endless dressmakers.

They hang a new or faded gown

Upon the shapes of life:

They do not cut beneath the mould

And clutch the huddled forms that wait

For resurrection in the inner dungeon …

Poet and Freudian leave their seats

To gain the sleek encouragement of supper,

And only the priest remains.

From the lumbering torture of years

Men have wrenched a double hope,

God and Christ, and sought to calm

The strained deceptions of their flesh.

Lady, the tarrying soul,

Patient and flexible,

Must often smile at the simple,

Crude anticipations of men.

This priest smiles and is sleepy,

Thinking of coffee with cognac,

And the warm, assuring duty of prayer.

The outer smile is ever

An unconscious obliteration.

Ah, lady, logics, masks,

And ecstasies forever

Spurn the pregnant, black

Mystery that lets them spend

The tense importance of a moment.

Only fantasy and irony,

Incongruous brothers,

Can lift themselves above

The harassed interval that Death permits.