Final draft 4/24/45
The small soul
knowing no largeness
wanting
wanting so
respectability
the nods of neighbors
trousers pressed
and the smell and odor of it
clean
immaculate
untouched by living
by bawdy living
or just living.
Horizon bound
by the framed diploma
the shouting diploma
shouting its 11b’s and
letters long since lost of sense.
Wanting money
but gentlemen do not grab
gentlemen reach,
asking please
and saying thank you.
Oh the bitterness of the pill
Oh modern day Hamlet’s
greatness in your petty struggle
only his wavering and weighing.
Wanting
to possess
of the worldly and material goods
but with unsoiled fingers
what only soiled fingers clutch for
wanting it all proper
with propriety
within the letter of the law
and respectability.
Oh how your clean smell
nauseates—
smell devoid of the odor of living.
How enter
save as your observer
matching your puny struggle
against the largeness of the living
against the healthy earth of smells—
fecund breathing—
power—
dynamo
of life
till you become
obliterate
sinking
sinking away
into your feeble kickings
leaving my horizon free again
to look on
To create.
***
5/27/45
The earth does not know herself,
It is man
showered in her rains,
her fields,
her rocks
Where one would most deny
man could be,
who shows unto the earth
her fruitfulness.
The earth does not know joy
or hunger
or meanness.
Only knows the qualities
of her
that man mirrors,
only knows her full length
when man has measured it
and foresees secrets
greater than one would dream
but herself does not know these secrets
til man,
so small against her
yet how great,
has mined them
and polished them,
like jewels each secret,
like jewels shining
each saying to man
How far you have come!
I do not venture to say
the earth would not be there
without man.
The earth will always be there—
beyond man.
But without him
she will be asleep,
in heavy sleep slumbering
waiting again for man
to bring her into her own.
***
Death hovers over us over
all the pretty dishes, the calendar, affections, affectations.
Hear the wings, see the vapor trail,
disappearing, becoming another’s reality.
Forgetting its imminent return,
again we being to plan the future,
leaving the living until tomorrow.
What would I do if I knew
the silver ship turning to me,
ticket in hand, my clothes unpacked,
drawers littered with unfinished fragments,
partings unsaid. What would I say?
As you were leaving, unthinking, unseeing,
I would ask you to stay,
and we would walk quiet in the quiet afternoon,
where each autumn stirring stirs us too,
the last leaves, the migrating birds,
the decaying sweetness of frostbitten flowers,
the pall of milky smoke sent by wet leaves
burning at the gutters of the town.
I would leave the laundry and the dishes, the unkempt beds,
and hugging the afternoon
spin each sound and sight and smell
into the finest of gossamer content.
If I saw the ship coming and for me,
I would declare HOLIDAY
and taking no time to turn things right
or draw a legacy,
I would leave the marketing, the meditating, plans,
and step out onto the frosted grass
and blow my breath to see the way it blows
and say, Don’t hurry so!
Let me slowly draw you clear
to hold beyond the vision of my eye
each subtle plane and nuanced line,
busy with like I had too little time to see.
***
Lip Service
In ruined gardens of our cities
with words alone
he sit and play a sensual seduction,
suspended in a dream of building.
Inert
our words are barren.
Reality bursts outside and
splits
the dreaming self into
a dual blur of action
and intent.
Lips that speak and speak only,
Lips that open in the churches
and in the halls,
words that are sound and sound only
Echo in the ruins
and fall without noise
without substance.
___
I hear the sea’s wind and the plain’s wind,
caught and crying, lost around the tower,
carrying me far with her unleashed wildness.
I feel your hand
and the rain dripping down the gutter
and the Old Mill fog.
How here?
Small, shut, the room.
***
Man’s Hope
Mind is a many-faceted mirror
sparkling and reflecting,
Now the sun’s rays,
now a brooding darkness
absorbing and projecting.
Fast, fast the days rush
fear driven, hope driven,
Rivers, mountains,
and desires tumbling
in a fast kaleidoscope.
O save me, save me!
And up from the whirl’s
unordered profusion
is flung the hope,
the perfect gift given—
Undiscriminating birth.
***
Still waters……
The wind blows and I feel its breath against
my cheek…...but I look and see the waters,
still, unmoved by the tide……
and it leads me to despair.
What am I?...but a hollow reed by the river…
The wind has made of me a whistle...and I howl and echo.
And I know that the waters will rise up in the face
of the tide…...but I look now….
and they are still.
***
3/4/46
Not long enough days
enter the dream and
drift
not to be called from
lingering
but jarred
jarred
by jagged pieces
jutting
into the dream
the shattered fragments
torn from the
new chaos
burst into the
dream
leaving no place
no free place
to run
to hide
enter life
***
On private darkness
of the personal world
shut out the noise
and kneel
in a blue and holy light
for what salvation
lifted hands in prayers or terror?
Sundered torn and fleeing
there are no doves no borders
and no deafening
to the clapping of discarded placards
hard against the wind
***
7/19/45
Orien,
Without end—birds’ din
without stop
insistent as a clock—
without end, the green grass
stretching in freedom
yet confined, confined by narrow walks.
How does it sound here?
I have but to open the door
to step out
to be one with the bird song
or choose to run away
to another quiet
but how does it sound
to you with no doors opening
with the doors tight shut
and the key turned in the lock—
the key not yours.
Little lost fluttering bird
they call you mad
for having dared to question the unquestionable
for asking God to throw himself.
They find no pattern in your chaos
but I find in your chaos
the insistent out of tune pattern of today
our chaos knotted into a ball
and that ball you
bouncing, bouncing
on the hard pavement of our cities
up, down.
Big girl
daring to be the little girl
crying Papa
not afraid to admit your fear.
Our we not all afraid
all somewhere here searching for
Papa in the dark world
the world without end chaos
all looking for the reassuring hand
for the lap on which to quiet fear
little bird—your lessen half learned
you felll fluttering, fluttering.
Where was the hand to pick you up?
Or could we, any of us, have taught you
how to fly.
Fear drains the strength
and clips the wing
and you were born with a fear
knowing no love
afraid to out in the loveless world.
***
4/6/59
Letter to Another World
Papa, dear Papa,
Try as I may
grown and woman
to climb from the height of your shoulders
where tiny in a wide world I was lifted
from the all-four familiar circle
Tall to measure the rising distances,
Try as I might
you left me still
Your warm and hearty laugh vibrating
Thus the child on the wooden floor,
or, my ear to your heart,
The song that sang belonging and Love.
***
Must it be bare of
all the things that make life
to be real—
Spin a song web in the sunlight
And it is not real—
they call you dreamer
sweat to bring a vision into favor
and they chide
be a realist
Life is not a vision
and sunlight
strips life of its pulsating husk
and plunge to its dark still centre
***
Blare on the radio, the light
Swap out the quiet candled dark
and nights of song to the collected riches
of our human pure?
Is it worth it? —
all the living yielded to convenience,
the lost imaginary
supplanted by a fiction or a dream,
our tears unseen?
The reels, mechanically unwound,
rewind down the silences of our century,
and we sit quiet and uncommunicating
in the dark.
***
To Jack, 3/1/48
Imagining fingers feeling a longitude
exploring direction,
spin globe and before me rush
boundaries, rivers & mountains
levelled, encompassed,
duplicated on a thousand maps.
Spin and stop
and become a land, and valleys
and people
always people
children, dogs—alike & different.
O mind is a many faceted mirror
sparkling and reflecting
now the sun’s rays
now a brooding darkness
absorbing and projecting.
Unordered profusion—
from where unearth a concept, a truth,
something held on to, tested, eaten, digested,
one’s own, embodied.
And love, what is love? Hand-holding,
caresses?
You see, it is so easy to blunder,
easy to plant a seed in rock and wait
for a sprout, a shoot, the first green,
wait and wait on grey and golden days
for life to spring from a rock
thrusting the powdered rock rich earth.
Thought and reality sometimes seem to merge
and an urge can dress with fancy
the plainest face, the coarsest hair,
or create from level plains the deepest ___.
I blundered,
absorbed somewhere a sadness
shadowed my light & my soul
my love & my laughter—
and blundering went crying after a shadow
exploring an abstraction.
Your love is my sun
with an easy sweep, lighting my life
recalling song and light
and life
O sweetheart,
where would I be
without your love?
***
6/15/45
Self-Portrait
[page 1] I do not wish for the past
what has been
has been
and beautifully been
often enough to leave no room
for cynicism,
for question
as to the worth of living.
Is it good to be alive!
So it is not wishing for the past tonight,
But I cannot help
this tumult of desire
harsh
as the harsh abstractions of our century—
not an obscure desire
for the yet to be known,
but knowing its root,
longing for union
and joy
and peace.
[page 2] I walk along the East River
all its forms and preciseness
softened by night,
a festival of fantastic colors and shapes—
and I know it is part of me
and I am part of it,
part of this river binding my city.
And beneath it all
vibrates
my desire,
but not contracted
turned in on itself,
but its hard knot
dissolved
in the widest ramblings.
What am I?
Does anyone know what he is?
How present a portrait
whose lines are still being etched,
with every day of life.
And I see that every portrait
if it be of a living soul,
is difficult
in that it is already the past
and is alive
only to the extent that the past is always
alive
in each of us.
[page 3] We carry it with us everywhere.
And it contains the present
in that it shapes the present,
but cannot actually contain the present,
not if one is alive—
for then each moment is a surprise
And I realize that the process of knowing
oneself
is identical with
the process of finding with each new day
how little one has known of oneself,
for if there is life
there is each day renewal
and each day something
one could not yesterday conceive
of dream.
The process of knowing oneself is
a constant rationalization of each
new element of surprise, on the
basis of the living past which
shapes us.
***
Riddles
are a good amusement
for those with time to kill.
[page 4] But the content cannot afford the same
cannot afford
any obscurity
into which to escape in
an unexplained mood
or uncontrollable whim.
He must understand his moods,
their ???
put them to use,
and must
at all times
retain control
of himself—
else—
he becomes
just another being,
pushed around
and finding excuses.
The process of creation
is identical with the solution of riddles,
is understanding the elements that shape us.
To know oneself
is first to know one’s family,
[says page 3 but is actually page 5) one’s friends
one’s city
one’s country
one’s times.
Each riddle to be solved
be fully understood
before coming
to the self.
And one can begin
any where.
_____________________________
What shaped is my desire?
What form is my yearning?
Not to the yearning of the maiden
for her rescuing knight.
It is not that hour—
nor any other hour of the past—
not prehistoric,
and therefore this desire
not merely animal desire—
not primitive.
and therefore this desire
not a longing
for the security of unseen gods
[page 6] But of this hour
Of this hour of chaos
and birth
in the will to live
of nihilating dehumanization
of the machine
and the never before called for
human strength
that defies
the machine
and strives to the
human
above the animal
and above the machine.
Of this hour
my desire
this hour
so threatened
by material forces
man almost succumbing to that element
of man which grasps only for the
material,
for power
(so close to the animal)—
despising
the spiritual striving of man
and all its colluded manifestations.
[page 7] The joy
in knowing this hour
no matter how confused
self-ignorant
baffled,
mankind still recognizes
a vital threat to its regeneration.
The whole world
locked in combat
and
Mankind
emerging
still the victor
though still baffled
though so badly wounded.
But what joy
the reassurance
how strong
man’s instincts for self-preservation.
All this contained in
my desire
though it be this moment
for a single being.
For my desire
is shaped as my thoughts are shaped—
with all their dynamics
or statics,
[page 8] and my thoughts are shaped
as my times are shaped.
But this is not all.
My city.
The City.
Not just any city
but
New York,
the City.
Contained in my desire
is my city.
Colossus
Against the horizon of centuries
and man’s striving to build monuments
perpetuating himself
and his gods,
being again himself
the Nile Valley
Athens
___
all, all,
dwarfed
by the might
[page 9] of this CITY
this ___ monument
of man.
And what is a monument
but a mirror?
As any creation.
This City:
this monument
of exploration
to trusts
and power monopolies
to the machine dwarfing man,
this dehumanizing city
where man is always subordinate
to steel
and concrete,
to power
and politics.
This city
defying concepts of natural life:
life from the earth
and water from streams.
Creating its own life:
water through pipers
and oil through pipes
and sewage through pipes
[page 10] and subways crawling in a maze
beneath the pavement,
ferreting,
ferreting into the rock,
building,
building into the sky
and and below,
ferreting, building.
And the streets become alleys
of humid air in the summer
and cold blasts in the winter:
nothing,
nothing seeming to wish man good.
And yet! —the Daring—
the dreams
and the daring of
puny little man…
A bridge builder’s city
a sky-scraper city
City of Man’s dreams
Metropolis
Child of the 20th century
monument
to all its evils
and dreams
[page 11] and battles
Though I run away,
longing for a bit of fresh green,
or the broader atmosphere
of other coasts
this City will be contained
in me
wherever I go.
So how divorce it
from my desire?
Contained in it,
present
in my longing,
all your dreams
your dynamics
and your
depths.