His Toy, His Dream, His Rest Read online

  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

  which fierce might be regarded as a pity

  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.