until it wearieth
and then the child must outgo on its own:
outgo! My parting farewell on your sons
who will not replace you yet:
you are both young & old, fresh & worn, torn
but loving as I was in San Francisco once
and now yóu have that bit.
159
Panic & shock, together. They are all going away.
Henry took down his black four-in-hand & his black bowtie
and put away all other ties.
It is a pleasant Sunday summer afternoon,
I have been sick five times. Can I go on?
I am a half-closed book.
Exalted figures passed before Henry’s eyes,
passed & withdrew. Retaining his faculties
barely, his trajectory,
his heart still beating in his empty breast,
he hollow-hearted waved to them going by
& out of sight.
I feel a final chill. This is cold sweat
that will not leave me now. Maybe it’s time
to throw in my own hand.
But there are secrets, secrets, I may yet—
hidden in history & theology, hidden in rhyme—
come on to understand.
160
Halfway to death, from his young years, he failed
to keep on assigning to the concept ‘love’
the usual value.
The heat of the chase yielded to ease & paled
midday which once he could not have enough of,
affections old to new
much he preferred, with one or two exceptions
which made up the existential difference
O and on these he banked,
Amy & Valerie hotted up his mail
which otherwise was dignified & stale
requests, to which he cranked
answers due, mostly too late, with slippers on,
‘Thanks for the honour implied’ chiefly he began
& let the rest dictate
indifferently itself: ‘BUT I decline’
etc. whereas he raged bright orange in a pine
if his young ladies were late.
161
Draw on your resources. Draw on your resources.
It’s not clear if I can. In a French town
Autun
where the grand cathedral stands, Henry’s mental gown
amazed the residents, and his mental forces
exceeded Verdun.
But he was not up to that ancient sculpture;
cold & uneasy witnessed he them scenes:
the figures put him down.
The figures figure what the lost soul means,
so long ago, in an acre of sepulture
insisting on the verb, not the noun.
I wanted so to go to the Windward Islands,
and I will never make it, stuck in this French
vaulting cathedral thought.
We’ve been here long, long, lowlands & highlands
but not as they have. Draw on your mere mensch
for the benefits we sought.
162
Vietnam
Henry shuddered: a war which was no war,
the enemy was not our enemy
but theirs whoever they are
and the treaty-end that might conclude it more
unimaginable than Alice’s third volume-eee—
and somehow our policy bare
in eighteen costumes kept us unaware
that we were killing Asiatics, daily,
with the disgusting numbers given
on my front page, at which, my love, I stare.
Better would be a definite war with the dragon,
taught to hate us wholly.
Better than the Buddhists self-incinerated
a colossal strike: on military targets
near eighteen Chinese cities.
That would make them think: as we have stated,
an end to aggression will open up new markets
and other quarter-lies.
163
Stomach & arm, stomach & arm
Henry endured like a pain-farm.
Nine o’clock, ten.
He workt all day & then he workt all night
and nothing that he made would tot out right
again.
The lust-quest seems in this case to be over:
Henry except for Amy has no lover,
Amy in a distant city
only that Henry’s now respectable,
a householder, child & all.
Today’s Thanksgiving; that is, summing up
that which one bears more steadily than else
and the odd definite good.
I do this thrice a year; that is, I grope
a few sore hours among my actuals
for evidence of knighthood.
164
Three limbs, three seasons smashed; well, one to go.
Henry fell smiling through the air below
and through the air above,
the middle air as well did he not neglect
but carefully in all these airs was wrecked
which he got truly tired of.
His friends alas went all about their ways
intact. Couldn’t William break at least a collar-bone?
O world so ill arranged!
Henry holds in addition pharmacies
for all his other ills, pills of his own
which frequently get changed
as his despairing doctors change their minds
about what must be best for wilful Henry.
There seems to firm no answer
save from the sexton in the place that blinds
& stones and does not hurt: Henry springs youthfully
in his six-by-two like a dancer.
165
An orange moon upon a placid sea
glistened for criminal Henry’s fiery arm
fractured in the humerus:
no joke to Henry, nothing humorous
about his broken, he loved emptily
the rest of his body, warm
but not too warm, like this delinquent member.
His fingers wiggle, wiggle too his toes
like a sound person’s.
He found himself okay, save for dispersings
of pain across his gross shaft, hard as blows
that in deep woods fell timber.
O prostrate body, busy with your break,
false tissue forming, striving to recover,
when will you make do like the moon
cold on a placid sea, with three limbs, take
the other for a cruise, like an elderly lover
not expecting much.
166
I have strained everything except my ears,
he marvelled to himself: and they’re too dull—
owing to one childhood illness—
outward, for strain; inward, too smooth & fierce
for painful strain as back at the onset, yes
when Henry keen & viable
began to poke his head from Venus’ foam
toward the grand shore, where all them ears would be
if any.
Thus his art started. Thus he ran from home
toward home, forsaking too withal his mother
in the almost unbearable smother.
He strained his eyes, his brain, his nervous system,
for a beginning; cracked an ankle & arm;
it cannot well be denied
that nearly all the rest of him came to harm
too … Only his ears sat with his theme
in the splices of his pride.
167
Henry’s Mail
His mail is brimming with Foundation reports
and with the late inaction of the Courts
in his case, and his insurance firms
are rich with info enigmatic and
stuff stranger still from his main Bank is here to hand,
the Washington Post is all about germs,
and he and she want this and that—Christ God,
it’s growing hard to get up in the morning
particularly since our postal service—
I hear Togo’s is better: Couldn’t we prod
that Cabinet jerk say into resembling
London or Paris
almost a hundred years ago
or the town in Okie-land when I was young—
three and four deliveries a day!—
now gives me, toward noon, ONE.
And I dote on my mail: I need its bung:
and the postman may indeed follow the moon and the sun
but believe me he fellows not Henry.
168
The Old Poor
and God has many other surprises, like
when the man you fear most in the world marries your mother
and chilling other,
men from far tribes armed in the dark, the dike-
hole, the sudden gash of an old friend’s betrayal,
words out that leave one pale,
milk & honey in the old house, mouth gone bad,
the caress that felt for all the world like a blow,
screams of fear eyeless, wide-eyed loss,
hellish vaudeville turns, promises had
& promises forgotten here below,
the final wound of the Cross.
I have a story to tell you which is the worst
story to tell that ever once I heard.
What thickens my tongue?
and has me by the throat? I gasp accursed
even for the thought of uttering that word.
I pass to the next Song:
169
Books drugs razor whisky shirts
Henry lies ready for his Eastern tour,
swollen ankles, one hand,
air reservations, friends at the end of the hurts,
a winter mind resigned: literature
must spread, you understand,
there’s also the dough, to help out Vietnam.
Ha ha, no neckties, because of the sling
or is the arm that well
for neckties? It’s doing what must be done,
helping them kill each other; that’s the thing;
and keeping up appearances till
one miracle of one recovered arm
occurs, when Henry, without thinking about it,
can scratch his baffled head
in public or alone with either. Warm
should everybody mouth a lawless tit
at say thirty-three instead.
170
—I can’t read any more of this Rich Critical Prose,
he growled, broke wind, and scratched himself & left
that fragrant area.
When the mind dies it exudes rich critical prose,
especially about Henry, particularly in Spanish, and sends it to him
from Madrid, London, New York.
Now back on down, boys; don’t expressed yourself,
begged for their own sake sympathetic Henry,
his spirit full with Mark Twain
and also his memory, lest they might strain
theirselves, to alter the best anecdote
that even he ever invented.
Let the mail demain contain no pro’s or con’s,
or photographs or prose or sharp translations.
Let one-armed Henry be.
A solitaire of English, free of dons
& journalists, keeping trying in one or two nations
to put his boat back to sea.
171
Go, ill-sped book, and whisper to her or
storm out the message for her only ear
that she is beautiful.
Mention sunsets, be not silent of her eyes
and mouth and other prospects, praise her size,
say her figure is full.
Say her small figure is heavenly & full,
so as stunned Henry yatters like a fool
& maketh little sense.
Say she is soft in speech, stately in walking,
modest at gatherings, and in every thing
declare her excellence.
Forget not, when the rest is wholly done
and all her splendours opened one by one
to add that she likes Henry,
for reasons unknown, and fate has bound them fast
one to another in linkages that last
and that are fair to see.
172
Your face broods from my table, Suicide.
Your force came on like a torrent toward the end
of agony and wrath.
You were christened in the beginning Sylvia Plath
and changed that name for Mrs Hughes and bred
and went on round the bend
till the oven seemed the proper place for you.
I brood upon your face, the geography of grief,
hooded, till I allow
again your resignation from us now
though the screams of orphaned children fix me anew.
Your torment here was brief,
long falls your exit all repeatingly,
a poor exemplum, one more suicide
to stack upon the others
till stricken Henry with his sisters & brothers
suddenly gone pauses to wonder why he
alone breasts the wronging tide.
173
In Mem: R. P. Blackmur
Somebody once pronounced upon one Path.
What rhythm shall we use for Richard’s death,
the dearer of the dear,
my older friend of three blackt out on me
I am heartbroken—open-heart surgery—see!
but I am not full of fear.
Richard is quiet who talked on so well:
I fill with fear: I agree: all this is hell
Where will he lie?
In a tantrum of horror & blocking where will he be?
With Helen, whom he softened—see! see! see!
But not nearby.
Which search for Richard will not soon be done.
I blow on the live coal. I would be one,
another one.
Surely the galaxy will scratch my itch
Augustinian, like the night-wind witch
and I will love that touch.
174
Kyrie Eleison
Complex his task: he threads the mazers daily,
sorts out from monsters saints and rewards them,
produces snow.
Blind his assistants, some in the Old Bailey,
some at the Waldorf Towers, the Pump Room,
trying their best O.
And he shall turn the heart of the children to their fathers
and this will not be easy. The wound talks to you.
It’s light as a promise
to Rahab the spies’. Words light as feathers
fly. Wake with rage ruined limbs. Hoarfrost is blue
at dawn on the storm-windows.
Thuds. Almost floors. In the garden I am alone
among the animals. There is a shrill music
of which the less said the better.
Cold dough: is not that the one thing that might matter?
That, and the frightful fact that I am alone
while he sorts out the bloody saints.
175
Old King Cole was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was Henry
He called for his butts & he called for his bowl
& he called for his fiddlers three
in vain. Blank prose took hold of Henry’s soul
considering all the deaths & considering.
There is a little life upstairs
playing her nursery rhymes to be considered
also. And there is a tall l
ife out in the car
to be considered.
And there is the life of Henry’s characters
to be thought on, established from afar.
Henry has much to do.
Take a deep breath then, sigh, relax, continue.
This world is a solemn place, with room for tennis.
Everybody’s mouth
is somewhere else, I know, somebody’s anus.
I speak a mystery, only to you.
Here’s all my blood in pawn.
176
All that hair flashing over the Atlantic,
Henry’s girl’s gone. She’ll find Paris a sweet place
as many times he did.
She’s there now, having left yesterday. I held
her cousin’s hand, all innocence, on the climb to the tower.
Her cousin is if possible more beautiful than she is.
All over the world grades are being turned in,
and isn’t that a truly gloomy thought.
All over the world.
It’s June, God help us, when the sight we fought
clears. One day when I take my sock
off the skin will come with it
and I’ll run blood, horrible on the floor
the streaming blood reminds me of my love
Wolves run in & out
take wolves, but terrible enough
I am dreaming of my love’s hair & all her front teeth are false
as were my anti-hopes.
177
Am tame now. You may touch me, who had thrilled
(before) your tips, twitcht from your breast your heart,
& burnt your willing brain.
I am tame now. Undead, I was not killed
by Henry’s viewers but maimed. It is my art
to buzz the spotlight in vain,
flighting ‘at random’ while Addison wins.
I would not war with Addison. I love him
and Addison so loves me back
me backsides, I may perish in his grins
& grip. I would he liked me less, less grim.
But he has helpt me, slack
& sick & hopeful, anew to know what man—
scrubbing the multiverse with dazzled thought—
still has in store for man:
a doghouse or a cave, is all we could,
according to my dreams. I stand in doubt,
surrounded by holy wood.