Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present Read online

  All that seem solid: melancholias, idees fixes, eight years at the academy, Mr. Locke, this year and the next and the next—one like another—whee!—they are April zephyrs, were one a Botticelli, between their chinks, pink anemones.

  Often it happens that in a community of no great distinction some fellow of superficial learning but great stupidity will seem to be rooted in the earth of the place the most solid figure imaginable impossible to remove him.

  (1920)

  H. D. (1886–1961)

  Strophe

  . . . I love you would have no application for the moment. I love you waits with cold wings furled, stands a cold angel shut up like cherry-buds; cherry-buds not yet half in blossom. The cold rain and the mist and the scent of wet grass is in the unpronounceable words, I love you.

  . . . I love you would have no possible application. It would tear down the walls of the city and abstract right and grace from the frozen image that might have right and grace painted upon its collar bones. The Image has no right decoration for the moment, is swathed in foreign and barbaric garments, is smothered out in the odd garments of its strange and outlandish disproportion.

  . . . the Nordic image that stands and is cold and has that high mark of queen-grace upon its Nordic forehead is dying . . . is dying . . . it is dying, its buds are infolded. If once the light of the sheer beauty of the Initiate could strike its features, it would glow like rare Syrian gold; the workmanship of the East would have to be astonishingly summoned to invent new pattern of palm branch, new decoration of pine-bud and the cone of the Nordic pine that the Eastern workman would so appropriately display twined with the Idaian myrtle. The Idaian myrtle would be shot with the enamel of the myrtle-blue that alone among workmen, the Idaian workmen fashioned in glass and in porphyry, stained to fit separate occasion and the right and perfect slicing of the rose-quartz from the Egyptian quarry.

  . . . the Nordic Image is my Image and alone of all Images I would make it suitable so that the South should not laugh, so that the West should be stricken, so that the East should fall down, bearing its scented baskets of spice-pink and little roses.

  Antistrophe

  . . . flowers fall, unreasonable, out of space and counter point of time beaten by the metronome of year and year, century on century. The metronome is wound up, will go on, go on beating for our life span; a metronome tick of year, year, year; life for life; heart beat on heart beat, beats the metronome holding us to the music that is the solid rhythm of the scale of the one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four, I am here, you are there; tell me I am here and I will tell you, you are there; but the metronome ticks a metronome music and the voice flinging its challenge to all music in the teeth of Reason stays for no tick, tick; the heart that springs to the feet of Love with all unreason, stays no moment to listen to the human tick and tick of the human metronome heart-beat.

  . . . heart you are beating, heart you are beating, I am afraid to measure my heart beat by your heart beat for I am afraid with the shame of a child struck across fingers by the master that says play soft, play loud, play one-two-three-four again, again. I am struck across the fingers and across the mouth. My mouth aches with the unutterable insult of one-two-three-four.

  . . . O, friend or enemy. Why can’t I cry out, fall at your feet or you at my feet, one or the other overcome by the beauty of the metronome whose beauty is unassailable, or overwhelmed, overcome by the fragrance, dripped, ripped, sputtered, spread or split!

  Epode

  . . . voiceless, without a voice, seeking areas of consciousness without you. Seeking with you areas of consciousness that without you would no more be plausible. Set up choros against acted drama, the high boot, the gilt wreath of ivy for some dramatic deity; set him forth, crown him with pasteboard pomegranates . . . pasteboard pomegranates have nothing to do with this reality. Out of the air, into the air, the colour flames and there is pulse of thyme, fire-blue that leads me across a slab of white-hot marble. My feet burn there and the wet garment clings so that I am a nymph risen from white water. So you overseeing, burn into my flesh until my bones are burnt through and attacking the marrow of my singular bone-structure, you light the flame that makes me cry toward Delphi. Were pasteboard pomegranates of any worth or plums stitched on to a paper crown? Listen . . . men recounted your valour, shut you up in strophes, collected you in pages whose singular letters are still laced across your spirit. The Greek letters are an arabesque shutting you in, away, away; you are shut in from the eyes that read Greek letters. Take away the gold and manifest chryselephantine of your manifest decoration and you are left . . . seeping into wine-vats, creeping under closed doors, lying beside me . . .

  (1921)

  T. S. ELIOT (1888–1965)

  Hysteria

  As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: ‘If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden . . .’ I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.

  (1917)

  e. e. cummings (1894–1962)

  i was sitting in mcsorley’s. outside it was New York and beautifully snowing.

  Inside snug and evil. the slobbering walls filthily push witless creases of screaming warmth chuck pillows are noise funnily swallows swallowing revolvingly pompous a the swallowed mottle with smooth or a but of rapidly goes gobs the and of flecks of and a chatter sobbings intersect with which distinct disks of graceful oath, upsoarings the break on ceiling-flatness

  the Bar.tinking luscious jigs dint of ripe silver with warmlyish wetflat splurging smells waltz the glush of squirting taps plus slush of foam knocked off and a faint piddle-of-drops she says I ploc spittle what the lands thaz me kid in no sir hopping sawdust you kiddo he’s a palping wreaths of badly Yep cigars who jim him why gluey grins topple together eyes pout gestures stickily point made glints squinting who’s a wink bum-nothing and money fuzzily mouths take big wobbly foot-steps every goggle cent of it get out ears dribbles soft right old feller belch the chap hic summore eh chuckles skulch . . . .

  and i was sitting in the din thinking drinking the ale, which never lets you grow old blinking at the low ceiling my being pleasantly was punctuated by the always retchings of a worthless lamp.

  when With a minute terrif iceffort one dirty squeal of soiling light yanKing from bushy obscurity a bald greenish foetal head established It suddenly upon the huge neck around whose unwashed sonorous muscle the filth of a collar hung gently.

  (spattered) by this instant of semiluminous nausea A vast wordless nondescript genie of trunk trickled firmly in to one exactly-mutilated ghost of a chair,

  a;domeshaped interval of complete plasticity, shoulders, sprouted the extraordinary arms through an angle of ridiculous velocity commenting upon an unclean table, and, whose distended immense Both paws slowly loved a dinted mug

  gone Darkness it was so near to me, i ask of shadow won’t you have a drink?

  (the eternal perpetual question)

  Inside snugandevil. i was sitting in mcsorley’s It, did not answer.

  outside. (it was New York and beautifully, snowing . . . .

  (1922)

  JEAN TOOMER (1894–1967)

  Calling Jesus

  Her soul is like a little thrust-tailed dog that follows her, whimpering. She is large enough, I know, to find a warm spot for it. But each night when she comes home and closes the big outside storm door, the little dog is left in the vestibule, filled with chills till morning. Someone . . . eoho Jesus . .
. soft as a cotton boll brushed against the milk-pod cheek of Christ, will steal in and cover it that it need not shiver, and carry it to her where she sleeps upon clean hay cut in her dreams.

  When you meet her in the daytime on the streets, the little dog keeps coming. Nothing happens at first, and then, when she has forgotten the streets and alleys, and the large house where she goes to bed of nights, a soft thing like fur begins to rub your limbs, and you hear a low, scared voice, lonely, calling, and you know that a cool something nozzles moisture in your palms. Sensitive things like nostrils, quiver. Her breath comes sweet as honeysuckle whose pistils bear the life of coming song. And her eyes carry to where builders find no need for vestibules, for swinging on iron hinges, storm doors.

  Her soul is like a little thrust-tailed dog, that follows her, whimpering. I’ve seen it tagging on behind her, up streets where chestnut trees flowered, where dusty asphalt had been freshly sprinkled with clean water. Up alleys where niggers sat on low door-steps before tumbled shanties and sang and loved. At night, when she comes home, the little dog is left in the vestibule, nosing the crack beneath the big storm door, filled with chills till morning. Someone . . . eoho Jesus . . . soft as the bare feet of Christ moving across bales of southern cotton, will steal in and cover it that it need not shiver, and carry it to her where she sleeps: cradled in dream-fluted cane.

  (1922)

  THORNTON WILDER (1897–1975)

  Sentences

  1

  In the Italian quarter of London I found a group of clerks, waiters and idealistic barbers calling itself The Rosicrucian Mysteries, Soho Chapter, that met to read papers on the fabrication of gold and its metaphysical implications, to elect from its number certain Arch-adepts and magistri hieraticorum, to correspond with the last of the magi, Orzinda-mazda, on Mt. Sinai, and to retell, wide-eyed, their stories of how some workmen near Rome, breaking by chance into the tomb of Cicero’s daughter, Tulliola, discovered an everburning lamp suspended in mid-air, its wick feeding on Perpetual Principle; of how Cleopatra’s son Caesarion was preserved in a translucent liquid, “oil of gold,” and could be still seen in an underground shrine at Vienna; and of how Virgil never died, but was alive still on the Island of Patmos, eating the leaves of a peculiar tree.

  2

  In Rome I encountered a number of people who for one reason or another were unable to sleep between midnight and dawn, and when I tossed sleepless, or when I returned late to my rooms through the deserted streets—at the hour when the parricide feels a cat purring about his feet in the darkness—I pictured to myself old Baldassare in the Borgo, former Bishop of Shantung and Apostolic Visitor to the Far East, rising at two to study with streaming eyes the Fathers and the Councils, marvelling, he said, at the continuous blooming of the rose-tree of Doctrine; or of Stasia, a Russian refugee who had lost the habit of sleeping after dark during her experience as nurse in the War, Stasia playing solitaire through the night and brooding over the jocose tortures to which her family had been subjected by the soldiers of Taganrog; and of Elizabeth Grier who, like some German prince of the Eighteenth Century, owned her own band of musicians, listening the length over her long shadowed room to some new work that D’Indy had sent her, or bending over the score while her little troupe revived the overture to Les Indes Galantes.

  (1922)

  HART CRANE (1899–1932)

  Havana Rose

  Let us strip the desk for action—now we have a horse in Mexico . . . . That night in Vera Cruz—verily for me “the True Cross”—let us remember the Doctor and my thoughts, my humble, fond remembrances of the great bacteriologist . . . . The wind that night, the clamour of incessant shutters, trundle doors, and the cherub watchman—tiptoeing the successive patio balconies with a typical pistol—trying to muffle doors—and the pharos shine—the mid-wind midnight stroke of it, its milk-light regularity above my bath partition through the lofty, dusty glass—Cortez—Cortez—his crumbled palace in the square—the typhus in a trap, the Doctor’s rat trap. Where? Somewhere in Vera Cruz—to bring—to take—to mix—to ransom—to deduct—to cure. . . . The rats played ring around the rosy (in their basement basinette)—the Doctor supposedly slept, supposedly in #35—thus in my wakeful watches at least—the lighthouse flashed . . . whirled . . . delayed, and struck—again, again. Only the Mayans surely slept—whose references to typhus and whose records spurred the Doctor into something nigh those metaphysics that are typhoid plus and had engaged him once before to death’s beyond and back again—antagonistic wills—into immunity. Tact, horsemanship, courage were germicides to him . . . . Poets may not be doctors, but doctors are rare poets when roses leap like rats—and too, when rats make rose nozzles of pink death around white teeth . . . .

  And during the wait over dinner at La Diana the Doctor had said—who was American, also—“You cannot heed the negative—so might go on to undeserved doom . . . must therefore loose yourself within a pattern’s mastery that you can conceive, that you can yield to—by which also you win and gain mastery and happiness which is your own from birth.[”]

  (1933)

  ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899–1961)

  Montparnasse

  There are never any suicides in the quarter among people one knows

  No successful suicides.

  A Chinese boy kills himself and is dead.

  (They continue to place his mail in the letter rack at the Dome)

  A Norwegian boy kills himself and is dead.

  (No one knows where the other Norwegian boy has gone)

  They find a model dead

  Alone in bed and very dead.

  (It made almost unbearable trouble for the concierge)

  Sweet oil, the white of eggs, mustard and water soapsuds and stomach pumps rescue the people one knows.

  Every afternoon the people one knows can be found at the cafe.

  (Paris, 1923)

  RUTH KRAUSS (1901–1993)

  News

  A crowd of twenty-three thousand coy mistresses is expected to turn out this morning for the forty-four day ruby-finding meet by the Indian Ganges’ side. Eighth race on the card is scheduled for quaint honor to succumb to the tide at 4.35 P.M. and will be telecast. Thus while her willing soul transpires, she who wins shall take her due except she come up with the same bruised thigh that put her out of action last week.

  *

  “This measure,” the Attorney-General stated, “This legislation—which I endorse—requires some thirty thousand skylarks to register for the first time with my office.” And he left the room.

  *

  “Cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo,” president of the Young Cuckoo’s Christian Association board said today during the appointment of a married man as general chairman of the YCCA’s local $800,000 building and expansion campaign. “When daisies pied and violets blue,” the president continued, “Cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo.” The president’s speech will be repeated again tonight in a nationwide broadcast.

  *

  Miss Diana Palmer went roaring through a ceremony tonight of white lace whips waving wild and hurtling with winds of eighty miles an hour or more over the top of the Wedding March straight to the bottom of Christ Church (Baptist) with Mr. Theodore Van Huston. This was her maiden voyage.

  *

  A young man in scanty contemplation clad was picked up yesternight while suffering a dialect change at the junction of Eighth and Grant Streets. He is said to be the first of the season.

  (1961)

  EDWIN DENBY (1903–1983)

  Aaron

  Aaron had a passion for the lost chord. He looked for it under the newspapers at the Battery, saying to himself, “So many things have been lost.” He was very logical and preferred to look when nobody was watching, as anyone would have, let us add. He was no crank, though he was funny somehow in his bedroom. He was so funny that everybody liked him, and hearing this those who had been revolted by him changed their minds. They were right to be pleasant, and if it hadn’t been for something making the
m that way, they wouldn’t have been involved in the first place. Being involved of course was what hurt. “It’s a tight squeeze,” Aaron was saying in his bedroom, and let us suppose he was quite right. He closed his eyes and shivered, enjoying what he did. And he went on doing it, until it was time for something else, saying, “I like it.” And he did. He liked a good tune too, if it lasted. He once remarked to somebody, “Tunes are like birds.” He wanted to say it again, but he couldn’t remember, so the conversation became general, and he didn’t mind. What was Aaron’s relationship to actuality? I think it was a very good relationship.

  (1948)

  W. H. AUDEN (1907–1973)

  Vespers

  If the hill overlooking our city has always been known as Adam’s Grave, only at dusk can you see the recumbent giant, his head turned to the west, his right arm resting for ever on Eve’s haunch,

  can you learn, from the way he looks up at the scandalous pair, what a citizen really thinks of his citizenship,

  just as now you can hear in a drunkard’s caterwaul his rebel sorrows crying for a parental discipline, in lustful eyes perceive a disconsolate soul,

  scanning with desperation all passing limbs for some vestige of her faceless angel who in that long ago when wishing was a help mounted her once and vanished: