he went down chimneys under the Irish skies
& the last voice in drawled; ‘Henry? a brick,’
293
What gall had he in him, so to begin Book VII
or to design, out of its hotspur materials,
its ultimate structure
whereon will critics browse at large, at Heaven Eleven
finding it was not cliffhangers or old serials
but according to his nature
O the baby has had one million & thirteen falls,
no wonder she howls
She’ll trip on the steps at Vassar, ho, & bawl
in Latin. That baby has got to learn things
including remaining erect & on deck & all,
her study of herself must include no wings.
She’s sturdy, beautiful, & she will do, unless
the universal homage turns her head
as it well might do mine,
hypmotized by the Little Baby, who has ears only for Diana & The Beast,
& mommy, & admirers & her Mir, instead
of brothers & sisters coming on like swine.
294
I broke a mirror, in which I figured you.
Henry did not lavish his hopes: he hoped to destroy
with this one act
the counter-forces against your art’s design,
the burgeon of your heart. You have enemies,
my dear. It is a fact
that you have enemies: one word of praise
has grouped against you gangs against that word
of decent praise:
I urge you, with misgivings, on, these days,
the temperature of the end has not been taken,
so I have heard,
I trust your detestation of Carlyle
the evil way a genius can go.
I hope you hate Carlyle
& Emerson’s insufferable essays,
wisdom in every line, while his wife cried upstairs,
disgusting Emerson & Rilke.
295
You dear you, clearing up Henry’s foreign affairs,
with your sword & armour heading for his bank,
a cable gone astray:
except for you he had hopped in the Liffey & sank.
Now what can he in return do: upstairs? downstairs?
You run your life every day
so well it’s hard to think of anything you need
and I only supply needs, needs & ceremonies,
I’ll send you the last thirteen,
in all of which Henry is extremely dead
but talkative. To you with your peat moss & leaf-mould
& little soft wet holes
where you put ginger, bloodroot & blueheads
& pearly everlasting,—what can he say of worth?
In all his nine lives
he was seldom so pleased been to be on the same earth
with you, my dear. We get on better than
most husbands & wives.
296
Of grace & fear, said Lady Valerie,
you are the master, Henry Pussy-cat.
After that a lovely silence,
the Lady sat there, away in Illinois,
Henry sat here, in Dublin’s fair city,
close to Killarney Bay.
O that bay is excellent, the Atlantic is blue
and soon we’ll take a plane across it to London,
Paris & Rome & Athens
& then, if all goes well, Jerusalem
where all those fine Jews are, & holy places
imperfectly determined.
O the sea is blue, & you are my honey dear,
purred Henry far away, in crisis. Fear
& grace, she suddenly said.
A sweet thing to say. Henry was a needer
of a very few or even of one reader
in the bright afternoon outspread.
297
Golden his mail came at his journey’s end,
Henry was back in action. His old friend liked
his ancient sonnets,
and institutions had come up to scratch
awarding Henry much: now he was on his own,
no lectures, no seminars,
only the actual: I perfect my metres
until no mosquito can get through,
I love the Liffey,
ruined castles (three) make my blood flow
& that is what my doctor would contra-indicate
in my case.
Is there more to say? Surely I’ve said enough,
my mind has been laid open
& either could not get it or had too much of it,
impenetrable Henry, goatish, reserved,
whose heart is broken.
298
Henry in transition, transient Henry,
rubbed his eyes & hurt. He was on TV
with his baby daughter,
and Housman’s rhyme O in this case was ’oughter
and Henry did his bloody level best
for all them young Englishmen & so did his daughter.
The baby on a million screens, hurrah,
my almost perfect child, in the midst of the cameramen
& Daddy’s high-lit reading.
She never made a peep to that sensitive mike
my born performer. We’ll see her through Smith & then
swiftly into the Senate.
Daddy by then will be the nearest ghost,
honey, but won’t return. Daddy’s heart sank
at leaving the lovely baby.
Your Mommy will be with you, when Henry’s a blank,
you’ll have to study him in school, at most,
troubled & gone Henry.
299
The Irish have the thickest ankles in the world
& the best complexions. Unnerved by both,
Henry reserved his vote.
A dreadful dream, me stranded on a red rock slope
unable to go up, or down, or sideways:
shout for the Fire Department?
Your first day in Dublin is always your worst.
I just found my fly open: panic! A depressing
& badly written letter, very long,
from northern California enclosing a bad poem.
Fear of proving unworthy to my self-imposed task.
Fear.
And how will his last day in Dublin be,
away so many labours? —Offer up prayers,
Mr Bones. Down on your knees.
Life comes against not all at once but in layers.
—You offers me this hope. Now I thank you,
depressed, down on my knees.
300
Henry Comforted
Your first day in Dublin is always your worst
& today is better, as when thirty years ago
I recovered my spirits at once.
Unshaven, tieless, with the most expensive drink in the room,
I have recovered a little. The room is filling
with Irish types—one gorgeous girl,
pipe-men, cigarette-men, a portentous black beard,
& the accents are flying: the all-service man
is a giant with a shock of red hair & an easy air.
Henry is feeling better,
owing to three gin-&-vermouths.
He is seeking where to live & pursue his work.
The Irish are not neat, except in the Book of Kells.
The skirts are as short here as in Minnesota.
What the services need
is a teen-age H-bomb: fashions their elders can follow.
His shoes are momumental, Egyptian, ay
the two at my left are giving it verbal hell.
301
Shifted his mind & was once more full of the great Dean
with his oddities about money & his enigmatic ladies,
the giant presences
chained to St Patrick’s,
tumultuous, serene,
their mighty stint done, larger in stone than life,
larger than Henry’s belief
who now returns at fifty, conflict-scarred,
to see how they are doing: why, they are doing
just what thirty years ago
he thought they were doing, and it is not hard,
neither in doubt or trouble, neither gaining nor losing,
just being the same O.
His frantic huge mind left him long before the end,
he wandered mad through the apartments but once was seen
to pause by a shelf & look
at a copy of the Tale of a Tub: he took it down
& was heard to mutter ‘What a genius was mine
when I wrote down that book.’
302
Cold & golden lay the high heroine
in a wilderness of bears. The forest tramped.
Henry was not at ease.
Intrusions had certainly been made on his dignities,
to his fury. Looking around, he felt cramped.
He said: This place is theirs,
I’ll remove elsewhere, I will not live here
among my thugs. Lo, and he went away
to Dublin’s fair city.
There he met at once two ladies dear
with problems, problems. Henry could not say
like their parish priest ‘Pray’.
He immersed himself in their disabled fates
the catafalque above all for instance T—’s
and others’ bound to come
The White House invitation came today,
three weeks after the reception, hey,
Henry not being at home.
303
Three in Heaven I Hope
‘Three in heaven I hope’ said old Jane to Henry
‘and one in a mental hospital and three wed.’
Henry had only three.
Jack’s lounge roared around them they chatted over their kids,
Ten-thirty. Work’s over, except Henry’s: more.
The Irish clouds outside giving us an Irish downpour.
The baby in her high & hurried voice
babbles while Henry rocks & rocks; aged four.
I do love that baby.
Of babies I have loved I declare I rejoice
chiefly in Paul & Martha, called Twissy-Pits,
and jack-knifed how on the floor she sits
doing her colouring & her scissoring.
Brought Jerry with me home last night, Kate got cross,
Jerry likes my baby too.
Working & children & pals are the point of the thing,
for the grand sea awaits us, which will then us toss
& endlessly us undo.
304
Maris & Valerie held his grand esteem
except for maybe Ellen on her hill-top
in northern California:
Maris the vividest writer yet, a team
not a woman, bringing bank mysteries to a stop,
relishing garden mysteries,
with the enigma of Boyd ever at her elbow
as Ellen has the enigma of Phil, while Valerie
has only & always her own
in her daring & placid beauty, which bestow
warily, my dear, warily, warily,
lest they want that alone.
I wrote to the White House yesterday, regretting
the lateness of an invitation there,
we couldn’t accept:
I should have consulted him on my splendid getting
four ladies to write to Henry: who is most fair,
ingenious & adept?
305
Like the sunburst up the white breast of a black-footed penguin
amid infinite quantities of gin
Henry perceived his subject.
It came nearer, like a guilty bystander,
stood close, leaving no room to ponder,
Mickey Mouse & The Tiger on the table.
Leaving the ends aft open, touch the means,
whereby we ripen. Touch by all means the means
whereby we come to life,
enduring the manner for the matter, ay
I sing quickly, offered Henry, I
sing more quickly.
I sing with infinite slowness finite pain
I have reached into the corner of my brain
to have it out.
I sat by fires when I was young, & now
I’m not I sit by fires again, although
I do it more slowly.
306
The Danish priest has horns of solid fire
the angry little lady is for hire
Henry remembers it all
the steep-down street which also cost his ankle
His housemother Miss Dulon without a wrinkle
the long sweet days of Fall
the long sweet days of youths striving together
Friends so intense the world seems to hold no other
Henry remembers all
A night with a drunk B-girl & a drunk pawnbroker
They threw him out in the end, a half-drunk joker
whereas they went in her room on business
The green green fields between Cobh (Khōve) & Dublin
White horses grazing, most splendid since Kentucky
Henry remembers fire
Irish tenors impromptu in the Lounge
Thirty years of mostly labour & scrounge
The fire out of hand, the embers
307
The Irish monk with horns of solid mire
pillaged the countryside: Haw haw they cried
this is our favourite monk
He did them down dirty like a low-down skunk
The Irish sky remained fitful & wide
with clouds bright as fire
Helen or Henry is reborn in this place of the past
The Eighteenth Century lives on & on
Henry is overcome
with this solidity where shall he find a home?
The Irish converse about practical questions
& about finding us a house fast.
Cold & weary sought he a hearth, not just for now
but all the workful months to come, Adrienne
Succor me, be on my side
This is the chief lion-breeding place: I bow
gently to my superiors, being merely men
who have not been denied.
308
An Instructions to Critics
The women of Kilkenny weep when the team loses,
they don’t see the match but they cry. Mad bettors everywhere,
the sign “Turf Accountant”,
men slipping in & out. People are all the same,
the seaman argued: Henry feels the Spanish & Irish
& Bengalis are thoroughly odd.
Americans, whom I prefer, are hopelessly normal.
The Japanese are barely comprehensible & formal,
formal Henry found.
We should have lowered the boom
on ourselves in our mother’s womb,
dixit Henry’s pal above ground.
My baby chatters. I feel the end is near
& strong of my large work, which will appear,
and baffle everybody.
They’ll seek the strange soul, in rain & mist,
whereas they should recall the pretty cousins they kissed,
and stick with the sweet switch of the body.
309
Fallen leaves & litter. It is September.
Henry’s months now begin. Much to be done
by merry Christmas,
much to be done by the American Thanksgiving
(I hate these English cigarettes), much to be done,
much to be done.
I went shopping today & came back with
a book about the Easter Rising, reality & myth—
all Henry’s old heroes,
The O’Rahilly, Plunkett, Connolly, & Pearse,
spring back into action, fatuous campaigners
dewy with phantastic hope.
Phantastic hope rules Henry’s war as well,
all these enterprises are doomed, all human pleas
are headed for the night.
Wait the lime-pits for all originators,
wounded propped up to be executed,
afterward known as martyrs.
310
His gift receded. He could write no more.
Be silent then, until the thing returns.
We have Goethe’s warrant
for idling when no theme presents itself
or none that can be handled suitably:
I fall back on that high word.
I hate his race though, except Hölderlin
& Kleist, whom he clasped both to Henry’s bosom:
a suicide & a madman,
to teach him lessons who was so far neither.
The language best handled by a foreigner,
Kafka, old pal.
Henry, monstrous bug, laid himself down
on the machine in the penal colony
without a single regret.
He was all regret, swallowing his own vomit,
disappointing people, letting everyone down
in the forests of the soul.
311
Famisht Henry ate everything in sight
after his ancient fast. His fasting was voluntary,
self-imposed.
He specially liked hunks of decent bread
sopped in olive-oil & cut raw onion,
specially.
Hunger was constitutional with him,
women, cigarettes, liquor, need need need
until he went to pieces.
The pieces sat up & wrote. They did not heed
their piecedom but kept very quietly on
among the chaos.
An old old mistress recently rang up,
here in Ireland, to see how Henry was:
how was he? delighted!
He thought she was 3000 miles away,
safe with her children in New York: she’s coming at five:
we’ll wélcome her!
312
I have moved to Dublin to have it out with you,
majestic Shade, You whom I read so well