Читать книгу Introducing Irony: A Book of Poetic Short Stories and Poems - Maxwell Bodenheim - Страница 4

Table of Contents

NEGRO,

Chinaman,

White servant-girl,

Russian woman,

Are learning how to be dead,

Aided by the impersonal boredom

Of a morgue at evening.

The morgue divides its whole

Of dead mens’ contacts into four

Parts, and places one in each

Of these four bodies waiting for the carts.

The frankness of their decay

Breaks into contradictory symbols

And sits erect upon the wooden tables,

Thus cancelling the validity of time.

In a voice as passive as slime

The negro speaks.

“Killed a woman: ripped her skin.

Saw her heart floating in a tumbler of gin.

Had to drink her heart because it wouldn’t leave the gin.

Because I wanted to reach all of her

They ripped my flesh.

They wanted to reach all of me

And their excuse was better than mine.”

Cowed baby painted black,

The negro sits upon fundamentals

And troubles them a little with his hands.

The beautiful insanity

Of his eyes rebukes

The common void of his face.

Then the Chinaman speaks

In a voice whose tones are brass

From which emotion has been extracted.

“Loved a woman: she was white.

Her man blew my brains out into the night.

Hatred is afraid of color.

Color is the holiday

Given to moods of understanding:

Hatred does not understand.

When stillness ends the fever of ideas

Hatred will be a scarcely remembered spark.”

Manikin at peace

With the matchless deceit of a planet,

The Chinaman fashions his placid immensity.

The Chinaman chides his insignificance

With a more impressive rapture

Than that of western midgets.

His rapture provides an excellent light

For the silhouette of the negro’s curse.

Then the white servant-girl

Speaks in a voice whose syllables

Fall like dripping flower-juice and offal,

Both producing a similar sound.

“I made a neat rug for a man.

He cleaned his feet on me and I liked

The tired, scheming way in which he did it.

When he finished he decided

That he needed a smoother texture,

And found another lady.

I killed myself because I couldn’t rub out

The cunning marks that he left behind.”

Impulsive doll made of rubbish

On which a spark descended and ended,

The white servant-girl, without question or answer,

Accepts the jest of a universe.

Then the Russian woman

Speaks in a voice that is heat

Ill-at-ease upon its couch of sound.

“I married a man because

His lips tormented my melancholy

And made it long to be meek,

And because, when he walked to his office each morning,

He thought himself a kindled devil

Enduring the smaller figures around him.

He abandoned me for German intrigue

And I chased him in other men,

Never quite designing him.

Death, a better megalomaniac,

Relieved me of the pursuit.”

Symbol of earth delighted

With the vibration of its nerves,

The Russian woman sunders life

Into amusing deities of emotion

And bestows a hurried worship.

Then the morgue, attended by a whim,

Slays the intonations of their trance

And slips these people back to life.

The air is cut by transformation.

The white servant-girl retreats to a corner

With a shriek, while the negro advances,

And the Russian woman

Nervously objects to the Chinaman’s question.

The morgue, weary housewife for speechless decay,

Spends its helplessness in gay revenge:

Revenge of earth upon four manikins

Who straightened up on wooden tables

And betrayed her.