by an array of hacked corpses:
War!
a poverty of resource . .
Twenty feet of
guts on the black sands of Iwo
“What have I done?”
—to convince whom? the sea worm?
They are used to death and
jubilate at it . .
Murder.
—you cannot believe
that it can begin again, again, here
again . here
Waken from a dream, this dream of
the whole poem . sea-bound,
rises, a sea of blood
—the sea that sucks in all rivers,
dazzled, led
by the salmon and the shad .
Turn back I warn you
(October 10, 1950)
from the shark, that snaps
at his own trailing guts, makes a sunset
of the green water .
But lullaby, they say, the tame sea is
no more than sleep is . afloat
with weeds, bearing seeds .
Ah!
float wrack, float words, snaring the
seeds .
I warn you, the sea is not our home.
the sea is not our home
The sea is our home whither all rivers
(wither) run .
the nostalgic sea
sopped with our cries
Thalassa! Thalassa!
calling us home .
I say to you, Put wax rather in your
ears against the hungry sea
it is not our home!
. draws us in to drown, of losses
and regrets .
Oh that the rocks of the Areopagus had
kept their sounds, the voices of the law!
Or that the great theatre of Dionysius
could be aroused by some modern magic
to release
what is bound in it, stones!
that music might be wakened from them to
melt our ears .
The sea is not our home .
—though seeds float in with the scum
and wrack . among brown fronds
and limp starfish .
Yet you will come to it, come to it! The
song is in your ears, to Oceanus
where the day drowns .
No! it is not our home.
You will come to it, the blood dark sea
of praise. You must come to it. Seed
of Venus, you will return . to
a girl standing upon a tilted shell, rose
pink .
Listen!
Thalassa! Thalassa!
Drink of it, be drunk!
Thalassa
immaculata: our home, our nostalgic
mother in whom the dead, enwombed again
cry out to us to return .
the blood dark sea!
nicked by the light alone, diamonded
by the light . from which the sun
alone lifts undamped his wings
of fire!
. . not our home! It is NOT
our home.
What’s that?
—a duck, a hell-diver? A swimming dog?
What, a sea-dog? There it is again.
A porpoise, of course, following
the mackerel . No. Must be the up-
end of something sunk. But this is moving!
Maybe not. Flotsam of some sort.
A large, compact bitch gets up, black,
from where she has been lying
under the bank, yawns and stretches with
a half suppressed half whine, half cry .
She looks to sea, cocking her ears and,
restless, walks to the water’s edge where
she sits down, half in the water .
When he came out, lifting his knees
through the waves she went to him frisking
her rump awkwardly .
Wiping his face with his hand he turned
to look back to the waves, then
knocking at his ears, walked up to
stretch out flat on his back in
the hot sand . there were some
girls, far down the beach, playing ball.
—must have slept. Got up again, rubbed
the dry sand off and walking a
few steps got into a pair of faded
overalls, slid his shirt on overhand (the
sleeves were still rolled up) shoes,
hat where she had been watching them under
the bank and turned again
to the water’s steady roar, as of a distant
waterfall . Climbing the
bank, after a few tries, he picked
some beach plums from a low bush and
sampled one of them, spitting the seed out,
then headed inland, followed by the dog
John Johnson, from Liverpool, England, was convicted after 20 minutes conference by the Jury. On April 30th, 1850, he was hung in full view of thousands who had gathered on Garrett Mountain and adjacent house tops to witness the spectacle.
This is the blast
the eternal close
the spiral
the final somersault
the end.
BOOK FIVE
(1958)
To the Memory
of
HENRI TOULOUSE LAUTREC,
Painter
I.
In old age
the mind
casts off
rebelliously
an eagle
from its crag
— the angle of a forehead
or far less
makes him remember when he thought
he had forgot
— remember
confidently
only a moment, only for a fleeting moment —
with a smile of recognition . .
It is early . . .
the song of the fox sparrow
reawakening the world
of Paterson
— its rocks and streams
frail tho it is
from their long winter sleep
In March —
the rocks
the bare rocks
speak!
— it is a cloudy morning.
He looks out the window
sees the birds still there —
Not prophecy! NOT prophecy!
but the thing itself!
— the first phase,
Lorca’s The Love of Don Perlimplin,
the young girl
no more than a child
leads her aged bridegroom
innocently enough
to his downfall —
—at the end of the play, (she was a hot little bitch but nothing unusual—today we marry women who are past their prime, Juliet was 13 and Beatrice 9 when Dante first saw her).
The moral
proclaimed by the whorehouse
could not be better proclaimed
by the virgin, a price on her head,
her maidenhead!
sharp practice
to hold on to that
cheapening it:
Throw it away! (as she did)
The Unicorn
the white one-horned beast
thrashes about
root toot a toot!
faceless among the stars
calling
for its own murder
Paterson, from the air
above the low range of its hills
across the river
on a rock-ridge
has returned to the old scenes
to witness
What has happened
since Soupault gave him the novel
the Dadaist novel
to tra
nslate —
The Last Nights of Paris.
“What has happened to Paris
since that time?
and to myself”?
A WORLD OF ART
THAT THROUGH THE YEARS HAS
SURVIVED!
— the museum became real
The Cloisters —
on its rock
casting its shadow —
“laréa lité! la réalité!
la réa, la réa, la réalité!”
Dear Bill:
I wish you and F. could have come. It was a grand day and we missed you two, one and all missed you. Forgetmenot, Wild columbine, white and purple violets, white narcissus, wild anemones and yards and yards of delicate wild windflowers along the brook showed up at their best. We didn’t have hard cider or applejack this time but wine and vodka and lots of victuals. The farm buildings are not “long gone” but exactly as you saw them. The erstwhile chicken house has been a studio for years, one D.E. envied when he saw it and it has been occupied by one person or another writing every summer when I am here which has been pretty continuously for some time. The barn too has a big roomy floor which anyone who finds a table and a chair in space enlivening is welcome to. E’s even fondled the idea of “doing something” about the barn and I wish they would. Their kids went in bathing in the brook, painted pictures and explored. If you ever feel like coming and get transportation please come. E’s will be up again before leaving Princeton in June. They will be in H. next year. J.G. is occupying the “Guest House” now.
How lovely to read your memories of the place; a place is made of memories as well as the world around it. Most of the flowers were put in many years ago and thrive each spring, the wild ones in some new spot that is exciting to see. Hepatica and bloodroot are now all over the place, and trees that were infants are now tall creatures filled this season with orioles, some rare warblers like the Myrtle and magnolia warbler and a wren has the best nest in the garage (not to be confused with any uptodate shelter) where I had a coat lined with sheepskin hanging and the wren simply used it to back her nest against where she is sitting warm and pretty on five eggs.
Best wishes and love from everyone who was here
Josie
The whore and the virgin, an identity:
— through its disguises
thrash about — but will not succeed in breaking free .
an identity
Audubon (Au-du-bon), (the lost Dauphin)
left the boat
downstream
below the falls of the Ohio at Louisville
to follow
a trail through the woods
across three states
northward of Kentucky . .
He saw buffalo
and more
a horned beast among the trees
in the moonlight
following small birds
the chicadee
in a field crowded with small flowers
. . its neck
circled by a crown!
from a regal tapestry of stars!
lying wounded wounded on his belly
legs folded under him
the bearded head held
regally aloft .
What but indirection
will get to the end of the sphere?
Here
is not there,
and will never be.
The Unicorn
has no match
or mate . the artist
has no peer .
Death
has no peer:
a field crowded with small flowers
in which the wounded beast lies down to rest
We shall not get to the bottom:
death is a hole
in which we are all buried
Gentile and Jew
The flower dies down
and rots away .
But there is a hole
in the bottom of the bag.
It is the imagination
which cannot be fathomed.
It is through this hole
we escape . .
So through art alone, male and female, a field of
flowers, a tapestry, spring flowers unequaled
in loveliness,
through this hole
at the bottom of the cavern
of death, the imagination
escapes intact
. he bears a collar round his neck
hid in the bristling hair.
Dear Dr. Williams:
Thanks for your introduction. The book is over in England being printed, and will be out in July sometime. Your foreword is personal and compassionate and you got the point of what has happened. You should see what strength & gaiety there is beyond that though. The book will contain . . . I have never been interested in writing except for the splendor of actual experience etc. bullshit, I mean I’ve never been really crazy, confused at times.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I am leaving for the North pole this time on a ship in a few weeks. . . . I’ll see icebergs and write great white polar rhapsodies. Love to you, back in October and will pass thru Paterson to see family on my first trip to Europe. I have NOT absconded from Paterson. I have a whitmanesque mania & nostalgia for cities and detail & panorama and isolation in jungle and pole, like the image you pick up. When I’ve seen enough I’ll be back to splash in the Passaic again only with a body so naked and happy City Hall will have to call out the Riot Squad. When I come back I’ll make big political speeches in the mayoralty campaigns like I did when I was 16 only this time I’ll have W. C. Fields on my left and Jehovah on my right. Why not? Paterson is only a big sad poppa who needs compassion. . In any case Beauty is where I hang my hat. And reality. And America.
There is no struggle to speak to the city, out of the stones etc. Truth is not hard to find . . . I’m not being clear, so I’ll shut up . . . I mean to say paterson is not a task like milton going down to hell, it’s a flower to the mind etc etc
A magazine will be put out . . . etc.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Adios.A.G.
IF YOU DON’T HAVE ANY TIME FOR ANYTHING ELSE PLEASE READ THE ENCLOSED
SUNFLOWER SUTRA
—the virgin and the whore, which
most endures? the world
of the imagination most endures:
Pollock’s blobs of paint squeezed out
with design!
pure from the tube. Nothing else
is real . .
WALK in the world
(you can’t see anything
from a car window, still less
from a plane, or from the moon!? Come
off of it.)
— a present, a “present”
world, across three states (Ben Shahn saw it
among its rails and wires,
and noted it down) walked across three states
for it . .
a secret world,
a sphere, a snake with its tail in
its mouth
rolls backward into the past
. . . The whores grasping for your genitals, faces almost pleading—“two dolla, two dolla” till you almost go in with the sheer brute desire straining at your loins, the whisky and the fizzes and the cognac in you till a friend grabs you . . . “No . . . to a real house, this is shit.” A real house, a real house? Casa real? Casa de putas? And then the walk through the dark streets, joy of living, in being drunk and walking with other drunks, walking the streets of dust in a dusty year in a dusty century where everything is dust but you are young and you are drunk and there are women ready to love for some paper in your pocket. Through the streets with dozens of bands of other soldiers (they are soldiers even with civilian clothes, soldiers as you are but different and this band is different because you are you — and drunk and Baudelaire and Rimbaud and a soul with a book in it and drunk) A woman steps into the open door o
f a cafe and puts her hand between her legs and smiles at you . . . at you a whore smiles! And you yell back and all yell back and she yells and laughs and laughter fills . . . the . . . guitar soaked night air.
And then the house, . . . and see a smooth faced girl against a door, all white . . . snow, the virgin, O bride . . . crook her finger and the vestal not-color of it, the clean hair of her and the beauty of her body in the orchid stench, in the vulgar assailing stench the fragility and you walk and sway across the floor, and reel against the dancers and push away the voice that embraces your ear and find her, still standing against the door and she is smooth-faced and wants four dollars but you make it three but four she says you argue and her hand on your belly and she moves it and four and you can hear the music spinning out its tropical redness the beer you gulp and touch the breast, the firmness FOUR no three and smile a girl is carried out of the room by a soldier (bride eternal) smile FOUR no three the hand! the breast, you touch grasp hold lust feel the curve of a buttock silent-smooth sliding under your palm, the dress, the hand!
high heels clack clack laughs noise and her eyes are black and four? please and you pay four? no . three . and then yes four cuatro . . . cuatro dolares but twice, I go twice, ’andsome, come on, ’andsome. A child you follow her, the light whirling in your eyes the noise the other girls in the babel friend’s voice unintelligible, edged with laughter his face at which you smile though there is nothing to smile at but smile absurdly because making love to a whore is funny but it is not funny as her blood beneath flesh, her fingers fragile touches yours in rhythm not funny but heat and passion bright and white, brighter-white than lights of whorehouses, than the gin fizz white, white and deep as birth, deeper than death.
G.S.
A lady with the tail of her dress
on her arm . her hair is
slicked back showing the round
head, like her cousin’s, the King,
the royal consort’s, young as she .
in a velvet bonnet, puce,
slanted above the eyes, his legs
are in striped hose, green and brown.
The lady’s brow is serene
to the sound of a huntsman’s horn
— the birds and flowers, the castle showing through the leaves of the trees, a pheasant drinks at the fountain, his shadow drinks there also
. cyclamen, columbine, if the art
with which these flowers have been
put down is to be trusted — and
again oak leaves and twigs
that brush the deer’s antlers . .
the brutish eyes of the deer
not to be confused
with the eyes of the Queen
are glazed with death .
. a rabbit’s rump escaping