the populated tiers
as much as players seem part of the show:
a constructed stage beast, three folds of Dante’s rose,
or a Chinese military hat
cunningly chased with bodies.
“Falling from his chariot, a drunk man is unhurt
because his soul is intact. Not knowing his fall,
he is unastonished, he is invulnerable.”
So, too, the “pure man”—“pure”
in the sense of undisturbed water.
“It is not necessary to seek out
a wasteland, swamp, or thicket.”
The opposing pitcher’s pertinent hesitations,
the sky, this meadow, Mantle’s thick baked neck,
the old men who in the changing rosters see
a personal mutability,
green slats, wet stone are all to me
as when an emperor commands
a performance with a gesture of his eyes.
“No king on his throne has the joy of the dead,”
the skull told Chuang-tzu.
The thought of death is peppermint to you
when games begin with patriotic song
and a democratic sun beats broadly down.
The Inner Journey seems unjudgeably long
when small boys purchase cups of ice
and, distant as a paradise,
experts, passionate and deft,
hold still while Berra flies to left.
DUE RESPECT
They [members of teen-age gangs] are respectful of their parents and particularly of their mothers—known as “moo” in their jargon.
—The New York Times Magazine
Come moo, dear moo, let’s you and me
Sit down awhile and talk togee;
My broo’s at school, and faa’s away
A-gaaing rosebuds while he may.
Of whence we come and whii we go
Most moos nee know nor care to know,
But you are not like any oo:
You’re always getting in a poo
Or working up a dreadful laa
Over nothing—nothing. Bah!
Relax. You love me, I love you,
And that’s the way it shapes up, moo.
TAX-FREE ENCOUNTER
We have $3,000 savings to invest and believe in the dignity of man. Box Y-920.
—Personal notice in The Saturday Review
I met a fellow in whose hand
Was hotly held a cool three grand.
“Inform me of,” he said, “the best
Technique of gaining interest.”
“Lend money at usurious rates,”
I said. “It soon accumulates.”
“Oh no!” he cried. “It is unsound
Artistically. Read Ezra Pound.”
“Invest,” I then suggested. “Deal
Yourself a hand in U.S. Steel.”
He snapped, “Big businessmen are sharks.
Peruse Das Kapital, by Marx.”
“Then buy some U.S. Savings Bonds,
For Our Defense, which corresponds
To Yours and Mine.” He told me, “Cease!
Defense degrades. Read War and Peace.”
He added, “Dignity of men
Is what we most believe in.” Then
He slyly smiled and slowly backed
Away, his principal intact.
ROOM 28
National Portrait Gallery, London
Remembered as octagonal, dark-panelled,
And seldom frequented, except by me—
Indeed, a bower
Attained down avenues where, framed and annalled,
Great England’s great with truculence outlive
Their hour
And staringly endure mean immortality—
The room gave rest as some libraries give.
The visitor, approaching, brushed a girlish
Bust of Lord Byron. Sir James George Frazer’s head,
An unarmed sentry,
Austere, tormented, brazen-browed, and churlish,
Guarded with sternness fit for Stygian gates
The entry
To harmless walls where men of letters lately dead
Were hung. The envied spot was held by Yeats.
His mask, alone a mask among the paintings,
Attracted to itself what little sun
The sky admitted.
Amazed that dim arena of the less
Weird-witted
Survivors of a blurred time: presbyters upon
Whose faces grieved the ghost of earnestness.
The whites of Rider Haggard’s eyes were showing
When last I saw them. Conrad’s cheeks were green,
And Rudyard Kipling’s
Pink profile burned against his brown works, glowing
With royalties and loyal choler. Fine
Sweet stipplings
Limned the long locks that Ellen Terry, seventeen,
Pre-Raphaelite, and blonde, let down to shine.
There Stevenson looked ill and ill-depicted;
Frail Patmore, plucked yet gamey; Henry James,
Our good grammarian,
More paunched and politic than I’d expected.
Among the lone-faced portraits loomed a trin-
Itarian
Composite: Baring, Chesterton, Belloc. The frame’s
Embellished foursquare dogma boxed them in.
Brave room! Where are they now? In college courses,
Perused in inferior light, then laid
On library tables.
Fair knights mismounted on empirical horses,
Flagbearers for a tattered heraldry
Of labels,
Their universe did not deserve their vows. They fade
In pale sun, placed in neither century.
THE SENSUALIST
Each Disc contains not more than ¼ minim of Chloroform together with Capsicum, Peppermint, Anise, Cubeb, Licorice, and Linseed.
—from a box of Parke-Davis throat discs
Come, Capsicum, cast off thy membranous pods;
Thy Guinea girlhood’s blossoms have been dried.
Come, Peppermint, belovèd of the gods
(That is, of Hades; Ceres, in her pride,
So Strabo says, transmogrified
Delicious Mintha, making her a plant).
Come, Anise, sweet stomachic stimulant,
Most umbelliferous of condiments,
Depart thy native haunt, the hot Levant.
Swart Licorice, or Liquorice, come hence,
And Linseed, too, of these ingredients
Most colorless, most odorless, most nil.
And Javan Cubeb, come—thy smokable
Gray pericarps and pungent seeds shall be
Our feast’s incense. Come, Chloroform, née Phyll,
In demiminims dance unto the spree.
Compounded spices, come: dissolve in me.
MOUNTAIN IMPASSE
“I despise mountains,” Stravinsky declared contemptuously, “they don’t tell me anything.”
—Life
Stravinsky looks upon the mountain,
The mountain looks on him;
They look (the mountain and Stravinsky)
And both their views are dim.
“You bore me, mountain,” says Stravinsky,
“I find you dull, and I
Despise you!” Says the mountain:
“Stravinsky, tell me why.”
Stravinsky bellows at the mountain
And near-by valleys ring:
“You don’t confide in me—Stravinsky!
You never tell me anything!”
The hill is still before Stravinsky.
The skies in silence glisten.
At last, a rumble, then the mountain:
“Igor, you never listen.”
SNAPSHOTS
How good of Mrs. Me
tz! The blur
Must be your cousin Christopher.
A scenic shot Jim took near Lyme.
Those rocks seemed lovely at the time.
And here’s a product of the days
When Jim went through his gnarled-tree phase.
The man behind the man in shorts—
His name is Shorer, Shaw, or Schwartz.
The kids at play. This must be Keith.
Can that be Wilma underneath?
I’d give my life to know why Josh
Sat next to Mrs. McIntosh.
Jim looked so well in formal clothes.
I was much slimmer than this shows.
Yes, Jim and I were so in love.
That hat: what was I thinking of?
This disappointed Mrs. Striker.
I don’t know why, it’s very like her.
The dog is Skip. He loved to play.
We had to have him put away.
I guess these people are the Wrens.
An insect landed on the lens.
This place is where I was inspired
To—stop me, if your eyes are tired.
A BITTER LIFE
Dr. Ycas [of the Quartermaster Research and Development Center, in a report to the National Academy of Sciences] holds that the ocean itself was alive. There were no living creatures in it.
—The New York Times
O you Dr. Ycas you!
In one convulsive motion
Your brain has given birth unto
A viable young ocean.
All monsters pale beside the new:
The Hydra, Hap, Garuda, Ra,
Italapas, Seb, Hua-hu
Tiao, Gulltopr, Grendel’s ma,
Quetzalcoatl, Kukulkan,
Onniont, Audhumbla, Ix,
Geryon, Leviathan,
666,
The ox Ahura Mazda made,
The Fomors, deevs, Graiae,
And others of this ilk all fade
Alongside Ycas’ sea.
The straits were sinews, channelways
Were veins, and islands eyes,
Rivers tails, reefs bones, and bays,
Depending on their size,
Fists, shoulders, heads, ears, mouths, or feet.
The fjords, as fingers, froze
Sometimes, as did the arctic pate
And pale antarctic toes.
O horrid, horrid Ocean! The
Foul grandmother of Tyr,
Who had nine hundred crania,
Did not look half so queer.
It whistled with a mournful hiss
In darkness; scared and bored,
It lapped the land, yet every kiss
Was stonily ignored.
A spheric skin, or blue-green hide,
Alone the ocean kept
Our planet’s house, yet when it died
One aeon, no one wept.
Hap: Apis, bull-god of Egypt, reincarnation of Osiris. Garuda: man-bird, steed of Vishnu, Hindu. Italapas: coyote, one of chief Chinook Indian deities. Seb: otherwise Geb, Keb, or Qeb; divine goose, Egyptian. Hua-hu Tiao: Protean creature, snake or white rat, has the power to assume the shape of a man-eating elephant with wings, etc., Chinese. Gulltopr: also Goldropf; Heimdall’s horse, Teutonic. Quetzalcoatl: name means “serpent dressed with green feathers,” though he was, of course, an anthropomorphic god, Aztec. Kukulkan: again, feathered serpent, Maya. Onniont: monster snake worshiped by Huron Indians. Audhumbla: cow who nourished Ymir, the first giant; both sprang from the mist, Norse. Ix: one of the four Bacabs, who stood at the four corners of the world and held it up, Maya. Geryon: three heads, three bodies, enormous wings, son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoë, lived on Erytheia, Greek. 666: beast of Revelation 13. The ox Ahura Mazda made: a raging, senseless creature; the first creative effort in the animal line made by the Persian Lord of Wisdom. Fomors: hideous misshapen monsters representing the kingdom of darkness, Celtic. deevs: Persian evil spirits, huge and ugly; long horns, tails, and fangs. Graiae: sisters to the Gorgons, had only one tooth and one eye among them, Greek.
A RACK OF PAPERBACKS
Gateway, Grove,
and Dover say,
“Unamuno
any day.”
Beacon Press
and Torchlight chorus,
“Kierkegaard
does nicely for us.”
“Willey, Waley,”
Anchor bleats,
“Auden, Barzun,
Kazin, Keats.”
“Tovey, Glover,
Cohen, Fry”
is Meridian’s
reply.
“Bentley’s best,”
brags Dramabooks.
Harvest brings forth
Cleanth Brooks.
All, including
Sentinel,
Jaico, Maco,
Arco, Dell,
Noonday, Vintage,
Living Age,
Mentor, Wisdom—
page on page
of classics much
too little known
when books were big
and bindings sewn—
agree: “Lord Raglan,
Margaret Mead,
Moses Hadas,
Herbert Read,
the Panchatantra,
Hamsun’s Pan,
Tillich, Ilg,
Kahlil Gibran,
and Henry James
sell better if
their spines are not
austerely stiff.”
GLASSES
I wear them. They help me. But I
Don’t care for them. Two birds, steel hinges
Haunt each an edge of the small sky
My green eyes make. Rim-horn impinges
Upon my vision’s furry fringes;
Faint dust collects upon the dry,
Unblinking shield behind which cringes
My naked, deprecated eye.
My gaze feels aimed. It is as if
Two manufactured beams had been
Lodged in my sockets—hollow, stiff,
And gray, like mailing tubes—and when
I pivot, vases topple down
From tabletops, and women frown.
POPULAR REVIVALS, 1956
The thylacine, long thought to be extinct,
Is not. The ancient dog-like creature, linked
To kangaroos and platypi, still pounces
On his Tasmanian prey, the Times announces.
The tarpan (stumpy, prehistoric horse)
Has been rebred—in Germany, of course.
Herr Heinz Heck, by striking genetic chords,
Has out of plowmares beat his tiny wards.
The California fur seal, a refined
And gullible amphibian consigned
By profit-seeking sealers to perdition,
Barked at the recent Gilmore expedition.
The bison, butchered on our Western prairie,
Took refuge in our coinage. Now, contrary
To what was feared, the herds are out of danger
And in the films, co-starred with Stewart Granger.
ODE III.ii : HORACE
Let the boy, timber-tough from vigorous soldiering,
learn to endure lack amicably,
and let him, horseman feared for his javelin,
plague the ferocious men of Parthos;
let him live his life lower than heaven
in the midst of restless things. Seeing him
from enemy ramparts, may the warring tyrant’s wife
and the young ripe woman breathe, “Ah,
let not our kingly lover, clumsy
in the swirl of combat, stroke the lion
rough to the touch, whom fury for blood
thrusts through the thick of the slaughter!”
Sweet it is, and seemly, to die for country.
Death overtakes the runaway as well,
and does not spare the coward backs
and knees of youths who are not warlike.
Manliness,
not knowing the taint of defeat,
flashes forth with unsullied glory,
neither lifts nor lowers the axes
at a whisper from the scatterbrained mob.
Manliness, that throws open heaven to those
undeserving of death, plots its course
by a route denied to most, and on pinion
soaring scorns the common crowd, the damp earth.
There is, for faithful silence, too,
sure reward. I will forbid the man who spreads abroad
occult Ceres’ sacred rites
to share a roof or to unmoor a frail craft
with me. Often slighted Jupiter
involves the unpolluted with the impure;
rarely does Poena not catch the wicked man,
though he has the head start, and her step is hesitant.
A CHEERFUL ALPHABET OF PLEASANT OBJECTS
for David
APPLE
Since Time began, such alphabets begin
With Apple, source of Knowledge and of Sin.
My child, take heart: the fruit that undid Man
Brought out as well the best in Paul Cézanne.
BIRDBATH
The birdbath is a placid eye
Beneath the apple trees; the sky
Is by the birdbath seldom seen,
And hence its water is brown-green.
When blackbirds come to purge their wings,
The water darkens. One wren brings
A touch of rust. The oriole
Casts down a casual aureole.
Trees ripen; then the birdbath glows
With muddled hints of gold and rose.