in June
lean among flowers
sweet and white at
heavy cost
A cool of books
will sometimes lead the mind to libraries
of a hot afternoon, if books can be found
cool to the sense to lead the mind away.
For there is a wind or ghost of a wind
in all books echoing the life
there, a high wind that fills the tubes
of the ear until we think we hear a wind,
actual .
to lead the mind away.
Drawn from the streets we break off
our minds’ seclusion and are taken up by
the books’ winds, seeking, seeking
down the wind
until we are unaware which is the wind and
which the wind’s power over us .
to lead the mind away
and there grows in the mind
a scent, it may be, of locust blossoms
whose perfume is itself a wind moving
to lead the mind away
through which, below the cataract
soon to be dry
the river whirls and eddys
first recollected.
Spent from wandering the useless
streets these months, faces folded against
him like clover at nightfall, something
has brought him back to his own
mind .
in which a falls unseen
tumbles and rights itself
and refalls—and does not cease, falling
and refalling with a roar, a reverberation
not of the falls but of its rumor
unabated
Beautiful thing,
my dove, unable and all who are windblown,
touched by the fire
and unable,
a roar that (soundless) drowns the sense
with its reiteration
unwilling to lie in its bed
and sleep and sleep, sleep
in its dark bed.
Summer! it is summer .
—and still the roar in his mind is
unabated
The last wolf was killed near the Weisse Huis in the year 1723
Books will give rest sometimes against
the uproar of water falling
and righting itself to refall filling
the mind with its reverberation
shaking stone.
Blow! So be it. Bring down! So be it. Consume
and submerge! So be it. Cyclone, fire
and flood. So be it. Hell, New Jersey, it said
on the letter. Delivered without comment.
So be it!
Run from it, if you will. So be it.
(Winds that enshroud us in their folds—
or no wind). So be it. Pull at the doors, of a hot
afternoon, doors that the wind holds, wrenches
from our arms — and hands. So be it. The Library
is sanctuary to our fears. So be it. So be it.
— the wind that has tripped us, pressed upon
us, prurient or upon the prurience of our fears
— laughter fading. So be it.
Sit breathless
or still breathless. So be it. Then, eased
turn to the task. So be it :
Old newspaper files,
to find — a child burned in a field,
no language. Tried, aflame, to crawl under
a fence to go home. So be it. Two others,
boy and girl, clasped in each other’s arms
(clasped also by the water) So be it. Drowned
wordless in the canal. So be it. The Paterson
Cricket Club, 1896. A woman lobbyist. So
be it. Two local millionaires — moved away.
So be it. Another Indian rock shelter
found — a bone awl. So be it. The
old Rogers Locomotive Works. So be it.
Shield us from loneliness. So be it. The mind
reels, starts back amazed from the reading .
So be it.
He turns: over his right shoulder
a vague outline, speaking .
Gently!Gently!
as in all things an opposite
that awakes
knowledge
by way of despair that has
no place
to lay its glossy head—
Save only—not alone!
Never, if possible
alone! to escape the accepted
chopping block
and a square hat! .
The “Castle” too to be razed. So be it. For no
reason other than that it is there, in-
comprehensible; of no USE! So be it. So be it.
Lambert, the poor English boy,
the immigrant, who built it
was the first
to oppose the unions:
This is MY shop. I reserve the right (and he did)
to walk down the row (between his looms) and
fire any son-of-a-bitch I choose without excuse
or reason more than that I don’t like his face.
Rose and I didn’t know each other when we both went to the Paterson strike around the first war and worked in the Pagent. She went regularly to feed Jack Reed in jail and I listened to Big Bill Haywood, Gurley Flynn and the rest of the big hearts and helping hands in Union Hall. And look at the damned thing now.
They broke him all right .
—the old boy himself, a Limey,
his head full of castles, the pivots of that
curt dialectic (while it lasted), built himself a
Balmoral on the alluvial silt, the rock-fall skirt-
ing the volcanic upthrust of the “Mountain”
—some of the windows
of the main house illuminated by translucent
laminae of planed pebbles (his first wife
admired them) by far the most authentic detail
of the place; at least the best
to be had there and the best artifact .
The province of the poem is the world.
When the sun rises, it rises in the poem
and when it sets darkness comes down and
the poem is dark .
and lamps are lit, cats prowl and men
read, read—or mumble and stare
at that which their small lights distinguish
or obscure or their hands search out
in the dark. The poem moves them or
it does not move them. Faitoute, his ears
ringing . no sound . no great city,
as he seems to read —
a roar of books
from the wadded library oppresses him
until
his mind begins to drift .
Beautiful thing:
— a dark flame,
a wind, a flood—counter to all staleness.
Dead men’s dreams, confined by these walls, risen,
seek an outlet. The spirit languishes,
unable, unable not from lack of innate ability —
(barring alone sure death)
but from that which immures them pressed here
together with their fellows, for respite .
Flown in from before the cold or nightbound
(the light attracted them)
they sought safety (in books)
but ended battering against glass
at the high windows
The Library is desolation, it has a smell of its own
of stagnation and death .
Beautiful Thing!
—the cost of dreams.
in which we search, after a surgery
of the wits and must translate, quickly
step by step or be destroyed—under a spell
to remain a castrate (a slowly descending veil
closing about the mind
&
nbsp; cutting the mind away) .
SILENCE!
Awake, he dozes in a fever heat,
cheeks burning . . loaning blood
to the past, amazed . risking life.
And as his mind fades, joining the others, he
seeks to bring it back—but it
eludes him, flutters again and flies off and
again away .
O Thalassa, Thalassa!
the lash and hiss of water
The sea!
How near it was to them!
Soon!
Too soon .
—and still he brings it back, battering
with the rest against the vents and high windows
(They do not yield but shriek
as furies,
shriek and execrate the imagination, the impotent,
a woman against a woman, seeking to destroy
it but cannot, the life will not out of it) .
A library — of books! decrying all books
that enfeeble the mind’s intent
Beautiful thing!
The Indians were accused of killing two or three pigs—this was untrue, as afterward proved, because the pigs had been butchered by the white men themselves. The following incident is concerned with two of the Indians who had been captured by Kieft’s soldiers because of the accusations: The braves had been turned over to the soldiers, by Kieft, to do with as they pleased.
The first of these savages, having received a frightful wound, desired them to permit him to dance the Kinte Kaye, a religious use among them before death; he received, however, so many wounds that he dropped dead. The soldiers then cut strips down the other’s body…. While this was going forward Director Kieft, with his Councillor (the first trained physician in the colony) Jan de la Montagne, a Frenchman, stood laughing heartily at the fun, and rubbing his right arm, so much delight he took in such scenes. He then ordered him (the brave) to be taken out of the fort, and the soldiers bringing him to the Beaver’s Path, he dancing the Kinte Kaye all the time, mutilated him, and at last cut off his head.
There stood at the same time, 24 or 25 female savages, who had been taken prisoners, at the north-west corner of the fort: they held up their arms, and in their language exclaimed. “For shame! for shame! such unheard of cruelty was never known, or even thought of, among us.”
They made money of sea-shells. Bird feathers. Beaver skins. When a priest died and was buried they encased him with such wealth as he possessed. The Dutch dug up the body, stole the furs and left the carcass to the wolves that roamed the woods.
Doc, listen — fiftyish, a grimy hand
pushing back the cap: In gold —
Volunteers of America
I got
a woman outside I want to marry, will
you give her a blood test?
From 1869 to 1879 several crossed the falls on a tight rope (in the old pictures the crowd, below, on the dry rocks in their short sleeves and summer dresses look more like water-lilies or penguins than men and women staring up at them): De Lave, Harry Leslie and Geo. Dobbs—the last carrying a boy upon his shoulders. Fleetwood Miles, a semi-lunatic, announced that he too would perform the feat but could not be found when the crowd had assembled.
The place sweats of staleness and of rot
a back-house stench . a
library stench
It is summer! stinking summer
Escape from it—but not by running
away. Not by “composition.” Embrace the
foulness
—the being taut, balanced between
eternities
A spectator on Morris Mountain, when Leslie had gone out with a cookstove strapped to his back—tugged at one of the guy-ropes, either out of malice or idleness, so that he almost fell off. Having carried the stove to the center of the rope he kindled a fire in it, cooked an omelet and ate it. It rained that night so that the later performance had to be postponed.
But on Monday he did the Washerwoman’s Frolic, in female attire, staggering drunkenly across the chasm, going backward, hopping on one foot and at the rope’s center lay down on his side. He retired after that having “busted” his tights—to the cottage above for repairs.
The progress of the events was transmitted over the new telephone to the city from the tower of the water works. The boy, Tommy Walker, was the real hero of these adventures.
And as reverie gains and
your joints loosen
the trick’s done!
Day is covered and we see you—
but not alone!
drunk and bedraggled to release
the strictness of beauty
under a sky full of stars
Beautiful thing
and a slow moon —
The car
had stopped long since
when the others
came and dragged those out
who had you there
indifferent
to whatever the anesthetic
Beautiful Thing
might slum away the bars—
Reek of it!
What does it matter?
could set free
only the one thing—
But you!
—in your white lace dress
. . .
Haunted by your beauty (I said),
exalted and not easily to be attained, the
whole scene is haunted:
Take off your clothes,
(I said)
Haunted, the quietness of your face
is a quietness, real
out of no book.
Your clothes (I said) quickly, while
your beauty is attainable.
Put them on the chair
(I said. Then in a fury, for which I am
ashamed)
You smell as though you need
a bath. Take off your clothes and purify
yourself . .
And let me purify myself
—to look at you,
to look at you (I said)
(Then, my anger rising) TAKE OFF YOUR
CLOTHES! I didn’t ask you
to take off your skin . I said your
clothes, your clothes. You smell
like a whore. I ask you to bathe in my
opinions, the astonishing virtue of your
lost body (I said) .
—that you might
send me hurtling to the moon
. . let me look at you (I
said, weeping)
Let’s take a ride around, to see what the town looks like .
Indifferent, the indifference of certain death
or incident upon certain death
propounds a riddle (in the Joyceian mode—
or otherwise,
it is indifferent which)
A marriage riddle:
So much talk of the language—when there are no
ears.
. . . . . . . .
What is there to say? save that
beauty is unheeded . tho’ for sale and
bought glibly enough
But it is true, they fear
it more than death, beauty is feared
more than death, more than they fear death
Beautiful thing
—and marry only to destroy, in private, in
their privacy only to destroy, to hide
(in marriage)
that they may destroy and not be perceived
in it—the destroying
Death will be too late to bring us aid .
What end but love, that stares death in the eye?
A city, a marriage — that stares death
in the eye
The riddle of a man and a woman
For what is there but love, that stares death
in the eye, love, begetting marriage —
not infamy, not death
tho’ love seem to beget
only death in the old plays, only death, it is
as tho’ they wished death rather than to face
infamy, the infamy of old cities .
. . . a world of corrupt cities,
nothing else, that death stares in the eye,
lacking love: no palaces, no secluded gardens,
no water among the stones; the stone rails
of the balustrades, scooped out, running with
clear water, no peace .
The waters
are dry. It is summer, it is . ended
Sing me a song to make death tolerable, a song
of a man and a woman: the riddle of a man
and a woman.
What language could allay our thirsts,
what winds lift us, what floods bear us
past defeats
but song but deathless song?
The rock
married to the river
makes
no sound
And the river
passes—but I remain
clamant
calling out ceaselessly
to the birds
and clouds
(listening)
Who am I?
—the voice!
—the voice rises, neglected
(with its new) the unfaltering
language. Is there no release?
Give it up. Quit it. Stop writing.
“Saintlike” you will never
separate that stain of sense,
an offense
to love, the mind’s worm eating
out the core, unappeased
—never separate that stain
of sense from the inert mass. Never.
Never that radiance
quartered apart,
unapproached by symbols .
Doctor, do you believe in
“the people,” the Democracy? Do
you still believe — in this
swill-hole of corrupt cities?
Do you, Doctor? Now?
Give up
the poem. Give up the shilly-
shally of art.
What can you, what
can YOU hope to conclude —
on a heap of dirty linen?
— you
a poet (ridded) from Paradise?
Is it a dirty book? I’ll bet
it’s a dirty book, she said.
Death lies in wait,
a kindly brother —
full of the missing words,
the words that never get said—
a kindly brother to the poor.
The radiant gist that
resists the final crystallization
. in the pitch-blend
the radiant gist .
There was an earlier day, of prismatic colors : whence to New Barbadoes came the Englishman .
Thus it began .
Certainly there is no mystery to the fact
that COSTS SPIRAL ACCORDING TO A REBUS—known
or unknown, plotted or automatic. The fact
of poverty is not a matter of argument. Language