His Toy, His Dream, His Rest Read online

  at least,’ and with his thunder clapped a promise?

  In that far away town

  who lookt upon my mother with shame & rage

  that any should endure such pilgrimage,

  growled Henry sweating, grown

  but not grown used to the goodness of this woman

  in her great strength, in her hope superhuman,

  no, no, not used at all.

  I declare a mystery, he mumbled to himself,

  of love, and took the bourbon from the shelf

  and drank her a tall one, tall.

  101

  A shallow lake, with many waterbirds,

  especially egrets: I was showing Mother around,

  An extraordinary vivid dream

  of Betty & Douglas, and Don—his mother’s estate

  was on the grounds of a lunatic asylum.

  He showed me around.

  A policeman trundled a siren up the walk.

  It was 6:05 p.m., Don was late home.

  I askt if he ever saw

  the inmates—‘No, they never leave their cells.’

  Betty was downstairs, Don called down ‘A drink’

  while showering.

  I can’t go into the meaning of the dream

  except to say a sense of total LOSS

  afflicted me thereof:

  an absolute disappearance of continuity & love

  and children away at school, the weight of the cross,

  and everything is what it seems.

  102

  The sunburnt terraces which swans make home

  with water purling, Macchu Pichu died

  like Delphi long ago—

  a message to Justinian closing it out,

  the thousand years’ authority, although

  tho’ never found exactly wrong

  political patterns did indeed emerge;

  the Oracle was conservative, like Lippmann,

  roared the winds on the height,

  The Shining Ones behind the shrine, whose verge

  saw the impious plunged, 6000 statues

  above the Temple shone

  plundered, centuries plundered, first the gold

  then bronze & marble, then the plinths,

  then the dead nerve—

  root-canal-work, ugh. I—I still hold

  for the saviour of teeth, & I embrace

  only he threw me a vicious

  103

  I consider a song will be as humming-bird

  swift, down-light, missile-metal-hard, & strange

  as the world of anti-matter

  where they are wondering: does time run backward—

  which the poet thought was true; Scarlatti-supple;

  but can Henry write it?

  Wreckt, in deep danger, he shook once his head,

  returning to meditation. And word had sped

  all from the farthest West

  that Henry was desired: can he get free

  of the hanging menace, & this all, and go?

  He doesn’t think so.

  Therefore he shakes and he will sing no more,

  much less a song as fast as said, as light,

  so deep, so flexing. He broods.

  He may, rehearsing, here of his bad year

  at the very end, in squalor, ill, outside.

  —Happy New Year, Mr Bones.

  104

  Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one!

  I never cared for fifty, when nothing got done.

  The hospitals were fun

  in certain ways, and an honour or so,

  but on the whole fifty was a mess as though

  heavy clubs from below

  and from—God save the bloody mark—above

  were loosed upon his skull & soles. O love,

  what was you loafing of

  that fifty put you off, out & away,

  leaving the pounding, horrid sleep by day,

  nights naught but fits. I pray

  the opening decade contravene its promise

  to be as bad as all the others. Is

  there something Henry miss

  in the jungle of the gods whom Henry’s prayer to?

  Empty temples—a decade of dark-blue

  sins, son, worse than you.

  105

  As a kid I believed in democracy: I

  ‘saw no alternative’—teaching at The Big Place I ah

  put it in practice:

  we’d time for one long novel: to a vote—

  Gone with the Wind they voted: I crunched ‘No’

  and we sat down with War & Peace.

  As a man I believed in democracy (nobody

  ever learns anything): only one lazy day

  my assistant, called James Dow,

  & I were chatting, in a failure of meeting of minds,

  and I said curious ‘What are your real politics?’

  ‘Oh, I’m a monarchist.’

  Finishing his dissertation, in Political Science.

  I resign. The universal contempt for Mr Nixon,

  whom never I liked but who

  alert & gutsy served us years under a dope,

  since dynasty K swarmed in. Let’s have a King

  maybe, before a few mindless votes.

  106

  28 July

  Calmly, while sat up friendlies & made noise

  delight fuller than he can ready sing

  or studiously say,

  on hearing that the year had swung to pause

  and culminated in an abundant thing,

  came his Lady’s birthday.

  Dogs fill daylight, doing each other ill:

  my own in love was lugged so many blocks

  we had to have a vet.

  Comes unrepentant round the lustful mongrel

  again today, glaring at her bandages & locks:

  his bark has grit.

  This screen-porch where my puppy suffers and

  I swarm I hope with hurtless love is now

  towards the close of day

  the scene of a vision of friendlies who withstand

  animal nature so far as to allow

  grace awhile to stay.

  107

  Three ’coons come at his garbage. He be cross,

  I figuring porcupine & took Sir poker

  unbarring Mr door,

  & then screen door. Ah, but the little ’coon,

  hardly a foot (not counting tail) got in with

  two more at the porch-edge

  and they swirled, before some two swerve off

  this side of crab tree, and my dear friend held

  with the torch in his tiny eyes

  two feet off, banded, but then he gave &

  shot away too. They were all the same size,

  maybe they were brothers,

  it seems, and is, clear to me we are brothers,

  I wish the rabbit & the ’coons could be friends,

  I’m sorry about the poker

  but I’m too busy now for nipping or quills

  I’ve given up literature & taken down pills,

  and that rabbit doesn’t trust me

  108

  Sixteen below. Our cars like stranded hulls

  litter all day our little Avenue.

  It was 28 below.

  No one goes anywhere. Fabulous calls

  to duty clank. Icy dungeons, though,

  have much to mention to you.

  At Harvard & Yale must Pussy-cat be heard

  in the dead of winter when we must be sad

  and feel by the weather had.

  Chrysanthemums crest, far away, in the Emperor’s garden

  and, whenever we are, we must beg always pardon

  Pardon was the word.

  Pardon was the only word, in ferocious cold

  like Asiatic prisons, where we live

  and strive and strive to forgive.

  Melted my honey, summers ago. I told

  her true & summer things. S
he leaned an ear

  in my direction, here.

  109

  She mentioned ‘worthless’ & he took it in,

  degraded Henry, at the ebb of love—

  O at the end of love—

  in undershorts, with visitors, whereof

  we can say their childlessness is ending. Love

  finally took over,

  after their two adopted: she has a month to go

  and Henry has (perhaps) many months to go

  until another Spring

  wakens another Henry, with far to go;

  far to go, pal.

  My pussy-willow ceased. The tiger-lily dreamed.

  All we dream, uncertain, in Syracuse & here

  & there: dread we our loves, whereas the National Geographic

  is on its way somewhere.

  We’re not. We’re on our way to the little fair

  and the cops & the flicks & the single flick

  who’ll solve our intolerable problem.

  110

  It was the blue & plain ones. I forget all that.

  My own clouds darkening hung.

  Besides, it wasn’t serious.

  They took them in different rooms & fed them lies.

  ‘She admitted you wanted to get rid of it.’

  ‘He told us he told you to.’

  The Force, with its rapists con-men murderers,

  has been our Pride (trust Henry) eighty years;—

  now Teddy was hard on.

  Still the tradition persists, beat up, beat on,

  take, take. Frame. Get set; cover up.

  The Saturday confessions are really something.

  Here was there less or nothing in question but horror.

  She left his brother’s son two minutes but—

  as I say I forget that—

  during the time he drowned. The laundry lived

  and they lived, uncharged, and went their ways apart

  with the blessing of the N.Y. Police Force.

  111

  I miss him. When I get back to camp

  I’ll dig him up. Well, he can prop & watch,

  can’t he, pink or blue,

  and I will talk to him. I miss him. Slams,

  grand or any, aren’t for the tundra much.

  One face-card will do.

  It’s marvellous how four sit down—beyond

  my thought how many tables sometimes are

  in forgotten clubs

  across & down the world. Your fever conned

  us, pal. Will it work out, my solitaire?

  The blubber’s safe in the tubs,

  the dogs are still, & all’s well … nine long times

  I loosed & buried. Then I shot him dead.

  I don’t remember why.

  The Captain of the supply ship, playing for dimes,

  thinks I killed him. The black cards are red

  and where’s the others? I—

  112

  My framework is broken, I am coming to an end,

  God send it soon. When I had most to say

  my tongue clung to the roof

  I mean of my mouth. It is my Lady’s birthday

  which must be honoured, and has been. God send

  it soon.

  I now must speak to my disciples, west

  and east. I say to you, Do not delay

  I say, expectation is vain.

  I say again, It is my Lady’s birthday

  which must be honoured. Bring her to the test

  at once.

  I say again, It is my Lady’s birthday

  which must be honoured, for her high black hair

  but not for that alone:

  for every word she utters everywhere

  shows her good soul, as true as a healed bone,—

  being part of what I meant to say.

  113

  or Amy Vladeck or Riva Freifeld

  That isna Henry limping. That’s a hobble

  clapped on mere Henry by the most high GOD

  for the freedom of Henry’s soul.

  —The body’s foul, cried god, once, twice, & bound it—

  For many years I hid it from him successfully—

  I’m not clear how he found it

  But now he has it—much good may it do him

  in the vacant spiritual of space—

  only Russians & Americans

  to as it were converse with—weel, one Frenchman

  to liven up the airless with one nose

  & opinions clever & grim.

  God declared war on Valerie Trueblood,

  against Miss Kaplan he had much to say

  O much to say too.

  My memory of his kindness comes like a flood

  for which I flush with gratitude; yet away

  he shouldna have put down Miss Trueblood.

  114

  Henry in trouble whirped out lonely whines.

  When ich when was ever not in trouble?

  But did he whip out whines

  afore? And when check in wif ales & lifelines

  anyone earlier O? —Some, now, Mr Bones,

  many. —I am fleeing double:

  Mr Past being no friends of mine,

  all them around: Sir Future Dubious,

  calamitous & grand:

  I can no foothold here; wherefore I pines

  for Dr Present, who won’t thrive to us

  hand over neither hand

  from them blue depths nor choppering down skies

  does Dr Present vault unto his task.

  Henry is weft on his own.

  Pluck Dr Present. Let his grievous wives

  thrall lie to livey toads. May his chains bask.

  lower him, Capt Owen, into the sun.

  115

  Her properties, like her of course & frisky & new:

  a stale cake sold to kids, a 7-foot weed

  inside in the Great Neck night,

  a record (‘great’), her work all over as u-

  sual rejected. She odd in a bakery.

  The owner stand beside her

  and she have to sell to the brother & sister jumping

  without say ‘One week old.’ Her indifference

  to the fate of her manuscripts

  (which flash) to a old hand is truly somefing.

  I guess: she’ll take the National Book Award

  presently, with like flare & indifference.

  A massive, unpremeditated, instantaneous

  transfer of solicitude from the thing to the creature

  Henry sometimes felt.

  A state of chancy mind when facts stick out

  frequent was his, while that this shrugging girl,

  keen, do not quit, he knelt.

  (Having so swiftly, and been by, let down.)

  116

  Through the forest, followed, Henry made his silky way.

  No chickadee was troubled, small moss smiled

  on his swift passage.

  But there were those ahead when at midday

  they met in a clearing and lookt at each other awhile.

  To kill was not the message.

  He only could go with them—odds? 20 to one-and-a-half:

  pointless. Besides, palaver with the High Chief

  might advance THE CAUSE.

  Undoubtedly down they sat and they did talk

  and one did balk & stuck but one did stalk

  a creation of new laws.

  He smoked the pipe of peace—the scene? tepees,

  wigwams, papooses, buffalo hides, a high fire—

  with everyone,

  even that abnormally scrubbed & powerful one,

  shivering with power, held together with wires,

  his worst enemy.

  117

  Disturbed, when Henry’s love returned with a hubby,—

  I see that, Henry, I don’t put that down,—

  he thought he had to think

  or with a razor like a skating-rink

&n
bsp; have more to say or more to them downtown

  in the Christmas season, like a hobby.

  Their letters will, released, shake the mapped world

  at some point, in the National Geographic.

  (Friend, that hurt.)

  It’s horrible how near she was my hurt

  in the old days—now she’s a lawyer twirled

  halfway around her finger

  and I am elated & vague for love of her

  and she is chilly & lost for love of me

  and we are for each other

  that which needs which, corresponding to Henry’s mother

  but which can not have, like the lifting sea

  over each other’s fur.

  118

  He wondered: Do I love? all this applause,

  young beauties sitting at my feet & all,

  and all.

  It tires me out, he pondered: I’m tempted to break laws

  and love myself, or the stupid questions asked me

  move me to homicide—

  so many beauties, one on either side,

  the wall’s behind me, into which I crawl

  out of my repeating voice—

  the mike folds down, the foolish askers fall

  over theirselves in an audience of ashes

  and Henry returns to rejoice

  in dark & still, and one sole beauty only

  who never walked near Henry while the mob

  was at him like a club:

  she saw through things, she saw that he was lonely

  and waited while he hid behind the wall

  and all.

  119

  Fresh-shaven, past months & a picture in New York

  of Beard Two, I did have Three took off. Well. .

  Shadow & act, shadow & act,

  Better get white or you’ get whacked,

  or keep so-called black

  & raise new hell.

  I’ve had enough of this dying.

  You’ve done me a dozen goodnesses; get well.

  Fight again for our own.

  Henry felt baffled, in the middle of the thing.

  He spent his whole time in Ireland on the Book of Kells,

  the jackass, made of bone.

  No tremor, no perspire: Heaven is here

  now, in Minneapolis.

  It’s easier to vomit than it was,

  beardless.

  There’s always the cruelty of scholarship.