Meanwhile, the trustful eye,
Content to notice merely what is there,
Remarks the ghostly phosphors of the sky,
The cast of mercury vapor everywhere—
Some shadowless, unfocussed light
In which all things come into their own right,
Pebble and weed and leaf
Distinct, refreshed, and cleanly self-defined,
Rapt in a trance of stillness, in a brief
Mood of serenity, as if designed
To be here now, and manifest
The deep, unvexed composure of the blessed.
The seamed, impastoed bark,
The cool, imperial certainty of stone,
Antique leaf-lace, all these are bathed in a dark
Mushroom and mineral odor of their own,
Their inwardness made clear and sure
As voice and fingerprint and signature.
The rain, of course, will come
With grandstand flourishes and hullabaloo,
The silvered streets, flashbulb and kettledrum,
To douse and rouse the citizens, to strew
Its rhinestones randomly, piecemeal.
But for the moment the whole world is real.
THE VENETIAN VESPERS
For HELEN
Whatever pain is figured in these pages
Whatever voice here grieves,
Belonged to other lives and distant ages
Mnemosyne retrieves;
But all the joys and forces of invention
That can transmute to true
Gold these base matters floated in suspension
Are due alone to you.
Thou must be patient. We came crying hither;
Thou know’st, the first time that we smell the air
We wawl and cry.
King Lear, IV, vi, 182–4
Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.
Moby Dick, CH. XLII
Muss es sein?
Es muss sein!
Es muss sein!
BEETHOVEN, Quartet #16 in F major, opus 135
I
THE GRAPES
At five o’clock of a summer afternoon
We are already shadowed by the mountain
On whose lower slopes we perch, all of us here
At the Hôtel de l’Univers et Déjeuner.
The fruit trees and the stone lions out front
In deepening purple silhouette themselves
Against the bright green fields across the valley
Where, at the Beau Rivage, patrons are laved
In generous tides of gold. At cocktail time
Their glasses glint like gems, while we’re eclipsed.
Which may explain
Why the younger set, which likes to get up late,
Assess its members over aperitifs,
Prefers that western slope, while we attract
A somewhat older, quieter clientele,
Americans mostly, though they seem to come
From everywhere, and are usually good tippers.
Still, it is strange and sad, at cocktail time,
To look across the valley from our shade,
As if from premature death, at all that brilliance
Across which silently on certain days
Shadows of clouds slide past in smooth parade,
While even our daisies and white irises
Are filled with blues and darkened premonitions.
Yet for our patrons, who are on holiday,
Questions of time are largely set aside.
They are indulgently amused to find
All the news magazines on the wicker table
In the lobby are outrageously outdated.
But Madame likes to keep them on display;
They add a touch of color, and a note
Of home and habit for many, and it’s surprising
How thoroughly they are read on rainy days.
And I myself have smuggled one or two
Up to my bedroom, there to browse upon
Arrested time in Time, Incorporated.
There it is always 1954,
And Marlon Brando, perfectly preserved,
Sullen and brutal and desirable,
Avoids my eyes with a scowl; the record mile
Always belongs to Roger Bannister;
The rich and sleek of the international set
In a world so far removed from the rest of us
It almost seems arranged for our amusement
As they pose for pictures, perfectly made-up,
Coiffeured by Mr. Charles, languid, serene.
They never show up here—our little resort
Is far too mean for them—except in my daydreams.
My dreams at night are reserved for Marc-Antoine,
One of the bellboys at the Beau Rivage.
In his striped vest with flat buttons of brass
He comes to me every night after my prayers,
In fantasy, of course; in actual fact
He’s taken no notice of me whatsoever.
Quite understandable, for I must be
Easily ten years older than he, and only
A chambermaid. As with all the very young,
To him the future’s limitless and bright,
Anything’s possible, one has but to wait.
No doubt it explains his native cheerfulness.
No doubt he dreams of a young millionairess,
Beautiful, spoiled and ardent, at his feet.
Perhaps it shall come to pass. Such things have happened.
Even barmaids and pantry girls have been seen
Translated into starlets tanning themselves
At the end of a diving board. But just this morning
Something came over me like the discovery
Of a deep secret of the universe.
It was early. I was in the dining room
Long before breakfast was served. I was alone.
Mornings, of course, it’s we who get the light,
An especially tender light, hopeful and soft.
I stood beside a table near a window,
Gazing down at a crystal bowl of grapes
In ice-water. They were green grapes, or, rather,
They were a sort of pure, unblemished jade,
Like turbulent ocean water, with misted skins,
Their own pale, smoky sweat, or tiny frost.
I leaned over the table, letting the sun
Fall on my forearm, contemplating them.
Reflections of the water dodged and swam
In nervous incandescent filaments
Over my blouse and up along the ceiling.
And all those little bags of glassiness,
Those clustered planets, leaned their eastern cheeks
Into the sunlight, each one showing a soft
Meridian swelling where the thinning light
Mysteriously tapered into shadow,
To cool recesses, to the tranquil blues
That then were pillowing the Beau Rivage.
And watching I could almost see the light
Edge slowly over their simple surfaces,
And feel the sunlight moving on my skin
Like a warm glacier. And I seemed to know
In my blood the meaning of sidereal time
And know my little life had somehow crested.
There was nothing left for me now, nothing but years.
My destiny was cast and Marc-Antoine
Would not be called to play a part in it.
His passion, his Dark Queen, he’d meet elsewhere.
And I knew at last, with a faint, visceral twitch,
A flood of weakness that comes to the resigned,
What it must have felt like in that rubber boat
In mid-Pacific, to be the sole survivor
Of a cr
ash, idly dandled on that blank
Untroubled waste, and see the light decline,
Taper and fade in graduated shades
Behind the International Date Line—
An accident I read about in Time.
THE DEODAND
What are these women up to? They’ve gone and strung
Drapes over the windows, cutting out light
And the slightest hope of a breeze here in mid-August.
Can this be simply to avoid being seen
By some prying femme-de-chambre across the boulevard
Who has stepped out on a balcony to disburse
Her dustmop gleanings on the summer air?
And what of these rugs and pillows, all haphazard,
Here in what might be someone’s living room
In the swank, high-toned sixteenth arrondissement?
What would their fathers, husbands, fiancés,
Those pillars of the old haute-bourgeoisie,
Think of the strange charade now in the making?
Swathed in exotic finery, in loose silks,
Gauzy organzas with metallic threads,
Intricate Arab vests, brass ornaments
At wrist and ankle, those small sexual fetters,
Tight little silver chains, and bangled gold
From soft earlobes pierced through symbolically,
They are preparing some tableau vivant.
One girl, consulting the authority
Of a painting, perhaps by Ingres or Delacroix,
Is reporting over her shoulder on the use
Of kohl to lend its dark, savage allurements.
Another, playing the slave-artisan’s role,
Almost completely naked, brush in hand,
Attends to these instructions as she prepares
To complete the seductive shadowing of the eyes
Of the blonde girl who appears the harem favorite,
And who is now admiring these effects
In a mirror held by a fourth, a well-clad servant.
The scene simmers with Paris and women in heat,
Darkened and airless, perhaps with a faint hum
Of trapped flies, and a strong odor of musk.
For whom do they play at this hot indolence
And languorous vassalage? They are alone
With fantasies of jasmine and brass lamps,
Melons and dates and bowls of rose-water,
A courtyard fountain’s firework blaze of prisms,
Its basin sown with stars and poissons d’or,
And a rude stable smell of animal strength,
Of leather thongs, hinting of violations,
Swooning lubricities and lassitudes.
What is all this but crude imperial pride,
Feminized, scented and attenuated,
The exploitation of the primitive,
Homages of romantic self-deception,
Mimes of submission glamorized as lust?
Have they no intimation, no recall
Of the once queen who liked to play at milkmaid,
And the fierce butcher-reckoning that followed
Her innocent, unthinking masquerade?
Those who will not be taught by history
Have as their curse the office to repeat it,
And for this little spiritual debauch
(Reported here with warm, exacting care
By Pierre Renoir in 1872—
Apparently unnoticed by the girls,
An invisible voyeur, like you and me)
Exactions shall be made, an expiation,
A forfeiture. Though it take ninety years,
All the retributive iron of Racine
Shall answer from the raging heat of the desert.
In the final months of the Algerian war
They captured a very young French Legionnaire.
They shaved his head, decked him in a blonde wig,
Carmined his lips grotesquely, fitted him out
With long, theatrical false eyelashes
And a bright, loose-fitting skirt of calico,
And cut off all the fingers of both hands.
He had to eat from a fork held by his captors.
Thus costumed, he was taken from town to town,
Encampment to encampment, on a leash,
And forced to beg for his food with a special verse
Sung to a popular show tune of those days:
“Donnez moi à manger de vos mains
Car c’est pour vous que je fais ma petite danse;
Car je suis Madeleine, la putain,
Et je m’en vais le lendemain matin,
Car je suis La Belle France.”
THE SHORT END
Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and Constancy is dead,
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.
I
“Greetings from Tijuana!” on a ground
Of ripe banana rayon with a fat
And couchant Mexican in mid-siesta,
Wrapped in a many-colored Jacobin
Serape, and more deeply rapt in sleep,
Head propped against a phallic organ cactus
Of shamrock green, all thrown against a throw
Of purple on a Biedermeier couch—
This is the latest prize, newly unwrapped,
A bright and shiny capstone to the largest
Assemblage of such pillows in the East:
Pillows from Kennebunkport, balsam-scented
And stuffed with woodchips, pillows from Coney Island
Blazoned with Ferris Wheels and Roller Coasters,
Pillows that fart when sat on, tasselled pillows
From Old New Orleans, creole and redly carnal,
And what may be the gem of the collection,
From the New York World’s Fair of Thirty-Nine,
Bearing a white Trylon and Perisphere,
Moderne, severe and thrilling, on the recto;
And on the verso in gold and blue italics
The Fair’s motto: “A Century of Progress.”
To this exciting find, picked up for pennies
At a garage sale in Schenectady
(Though slightly soiled with ketchup at one corner)
Yosemite, Niagara, Honolulu
Have yielded place, meekly accepting exile
In the mud room, the conversation pit,
Or other unpeopled but bepillowed rooms.
This far-flung empire, these domains belong
To Shirley Carson and her husband, “Kit,”
Softening the hard edges of their lives.
Shirley is curator, museum guide,
The Mellon and the Berenson of these
Mute instances (except for the hidden farts)
Of fustian and of bombast, crocheted, embroidered
And stencilled with bright Day-Glo coloring.
They cheer her with their brilliance, with their sleek
And traveled worldliness, and serve as cover,
In the literal sense, a plumped and bolstered cover,
For the booze she needs to have always at hand.
There used to be a game, long since abandoned,
In which he’d try to find what she concealed.
“Cooler,” she’d say, “yer gettin’ really icy,”
She’d say, “so whyantcha fix yerself a drink?”
As he sought vainly behind Acapulco,
All flame and orange satin, or underneath
A petit point of moviedom’s nobility:
A famous, genuine Hollywood Marquee,
Below which stood a spurious Romanov.
He quit because she always had reserves,
What she called “liquid assets,” tucked away.
He had tried everything over the years.
There was no appealing to her vanity;
She was now puffily fat and pillowy.
Reason, of course, was futile, and he’d learned
That strong-arm methods strengthened her defiance.
These days he came home from the body shop
He owned and operated, its walls thumb-tacked
With centerfolded bodies from Playboy,
Yielding, expectant, invitational,
Came home oil-stained and late to find her drunk
And the house rank with the staleness of dead butts.
Staleness, that’s what it was, he used to say
To himself, trying to figure what went wrong,
Emptying ashtrays of their ghostly wreckage,
Their powders and cremations of the past.
He always went to bed long before she did.
She would sit up till late, smoking and drinking,
Afloat upon a wild surfeit of colors,
The midway braveries, harlequin streamers,
Or skewbald, carney liveries of the macaw,
Through which, from time to time, memories arose.
II
Of these, two were persistent. In one of them
She was back in the first, untainted months of marriage,
Slight, shy, and dressed in soft ecru charmeuse,
Hopeful, adoring, and in return adored
By her husband, who was then a traveling salesman.
The company had scheduled a convention
In Atlantic City, and had generously
Invited the men to bring along their wives.
They were to stay in triumph at the Marlborough-
Blenheim, a luxury resort hotel
That ran both fresh and salt water in its tubs,
And boasted an international string ensemble
That assembled every afternoon at four
For thé dansant, when the very air was rich
With Jerome Kern, Romberg, and Rudolph Friml.
The room they were assigned gave on an air shaft
But even so they could smell the black Atlantic,
And being hidden away, she told herself,
Was just the thing for newlyweds, and made
Forays on the interminable vista
Of the boardwalk—it seemed to stretch away
In hazy diminution, like the prospects
Or boxwood avenues of a chateau—
The more exciting. Or so it seemed in prospect.
She recalled the opulent soft wind-chime music,
A mingling of silverware and ice-water
At their first breakfast in the dining room.
Also another sound. That of men’s voices
Just slightly louder than was necessary