His Toy, His Dream, His Rest Read online

  (The tanks of the elders roll, in exercise, on the German plain.)

  Even if their sense is to (swill &) die

  why don’t they join us, pal, as Texas did

  (the oil-mailed arrogant butt), and learn how to speak

  modestly, & with exactness, and

  … like a sense of the country, man? Come off it. Powers,

  the fêted traitor, became so in hours,

  and the President, ignorant, didn’t even lie.

  217

  Some remember (‘Pretty well’) the Korean war.

  The unrecruited memory seems to embrace

  the Bay of Pigs, Franklin Roosevelt. Who has in mind

  with a shudder Cold Harbor,—

  Henry is schlaft in his historical moode,—

  with pity & horror the Bloody Angle?

  Good Friday, and the end?

  Three like terrifying political murders

  have cast, as Adams sighed, no shadow on the Whites’ House.

  —Adhere, Sir Bones, to Heaven; tho’ the shrine is still,

  what here or there but by the will

  of hidden God git done? Ah ask.

  —I have an answer lost here on my desk:

  Pakistan may Pakistan, well, find;

  or not.

  Henry couldn’t care less.

  —Mr Bones, cares for all men!

  —Overloaded. It is my country in my country only

  cast is our lot.

  218

  Fortune gave him to know the flaming best,

  expression’s kings in his time, by voice & hand,—

  the Irishman,

  the doomed bard roaring down the thirsty west,

  the subtle American British banker-man

  and the lunatic one

  fidgeting, with bananas, and his friend the sage

  (touchy, ‘I’m very touchy’) in his cabin

  two miles from mine here,

  and already now let’s call it a strong age,

  not just a science age, as idiot habit

  cries; I’m getting near

  an end, but I add on the Bostonian,

  rugged & grand & sorrowful. That’s six,

  and that’s enough.

  Henry as I was muttering knew them man

  by man: much good it did him in his fix

  except for letting out love.

  219

  So Long? Stevens

  He lifted up, among the actuaries,

  a grandee crow. Ah ha & he crowed good.

  That funny money-man.

  Mutter we all must as well as we can.

  He mutter spiffy. He make wonder Henry’s

  wits, though, with a odd

  … something … something … not there in his flourishing art.

  O veteran of death, you will not mind

  a counter-mutter.

  What was it missing, then, at the man’s heart

  so that he does not wound? It is our kind

  to wound, as well as utter

  a fact of happy world. That metaphysics

  he hefted up until we could not breathe

  the physics. On our side,

  monotonous (or ever-fresh)—it sticks

  in Henry’s throat to judge—brilliant, he seethe;

  better than us; less wide.

  220

  —If we’re not Jews, how can messiah come?

  Praise God, brothers, Who is a coloured man.

  (Some time we’ll do it again,

  in whiteface.) ‘Rám,’ was his last word, like ‘Mary’

  or ‘OM’ or a perishing new grunt.

  (winged ’em.) Kingdom? Some.

  My God! they’m be surprised to see Your face,

  all your admirers, in their taffeta,

  or—upon thought—not all:

  we will not wonder, will us, Mr Bones,

  when either He looms down or wifout trace

  we vanisheth. It’s tall

  time now in Ghetto-town: it’s curtain-call:

  hard now to read the time. Seem to Me I’m

  not altogether the same

  pro-man I strutted out from the wings as,

  like losing faith. Counsel me, Mr Bones.

  —my friend, the clingdom has come.

  221

  I poured myself out thro’ my tips. What’s left?

  I slipt. I slipt. What’s right? Whose centre’s where?

  His son has set.

  Their towers lean & wobble. Anything I sang

  I take back. Crimson is succeeded by black;

  it is a fact.

  Beckett shuddered, with thought. An unspeakable sound

  of typing chittered to me in the night

  as I sat thinking.

  Pray as I would, dawn came to my hills:

  in perfect silence I took out my laundry

  and had it done.

  If the blood banged, as it must do, faint

  with necessity, forgive it, please. ‘I paint’

  (Renoir said) ‘with my penis.’

  A picture in Philadelphia proves it. Pal,

  in wars & loves when we lost ground, how shall

  we know who it means?

  222

  It was a difficult crime to re-enact,

  Fatty’s; if crime it were. Was he so made

  as to be dangerous?

  or if she’d gone to the john beforehand might

  in the middle of his love she have been all right

  or was there shoved ice?

  This burning to sheathe it which so many males

  so often and all over suffer: why?

  Is it: to make or kill

  is jungle-like what constitutes my I,

  so let’s thrust? When both crimes lead into wails,

  at once or later. Tales

  told of these truths stand up like goldenglow

  head-high, and around the planet men are erect

  and girls lie ready:

  a bounce, toward pain. Melons, they say, though,

  are best—I don’t know if that’s correct—

  as well as infertile, it’s said.

  223

  It’s wonderful the way cats bound about,

  it’s wonderful how men are not found out

  so far.

  It’s miserable how many miserable are

  over the spread world at this tick of time.

  These mysteries that I’m

  rehearsing in the dark did brighter minds

  much bother through them ages, whom who finds

  guilty for failure?

  Up all we rose with dawn, springy for pride,

  trying all morning. Dazzled, I subside

  at noon, noon be my gaoler

  and afternoon the deepening of the task

  poor Henry set himself long since to ask:

  Why? Who? When?

  —I don know, Mr Bones. You asks too much

  of such as you & me & we & such

  fast cats, worse men.

  224

  Eighty

  Lonely in his great age, Henry’s old friend

  leaned on his burning cane while hís old friend

  was hymnéd out of living.

  The Abbey rang with sound. Pound white as snow

  bowed to them with his thoughts—it’s hard to know them though

  for the old man sang no word.

  Dry, ripe with pain, busy with loss, let’s guess.

  Gone. Gone them wine-meetings, gone green grasses

  of the picnics of rising youth.

  Gone all, slowly. Stately, not as the tongue

  worries the loose tooth, wits as strong as young,

  only the albino body failing.

  Where the smother clusters pinpoint insights clear.

  The tennis is over. The last words are here?

  What, in the world, will they be?

  White is the hue of death & victory,

  all the old generosities dismissed
/>   while the white years insist.

  225

  Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt

  Madness & booze, madness & booze.

  Which’ll can tell who preceded whose?

  What chicken walked out on what egg?

  I can tell, which am which oblong.

  Corroborate, Los Alamos. —We read you. Wrong.

  —I put up my radar & beg:

  Corroborate from Berkeley. —Wrong. —Corrob

  O from Woods Hole. —No wish to bob

  your cred’, but we knew that.

  Yes. Confirmed, confirmed.

  —Dance in my corridors, under the orange-grey moon,

  stuff on your glory hat,

  and potstill highland malt that whisky out

  swifter than missles to the side of the hill,

  the side of the sweet hill,

  where installations live forever, about.

  Up Scotland! who only drunky sexy Burns

  producing, which returns.

  226

  Phantastic thunder shook the welkin, high.

  The animals sat face to face & glared.

  Henry was afraid.

  Her love, which was not exactly that of a maid,

  failed to assuage his terrible fears, who fared

  forth in such a world.

  Arose from throats anguish. Disappeared in air

  many, and many on the ground, and many at sea.

  It was not a place to love.

  Thumbs into eyes, enormous explosions of

  what we know not, until sobriety became a vice.

  ‘Our breakdowns guarantee us,’ said a pal.

  I saw her in a dream, from my dream she woke,

  pleasantness & courtesy & love

  and all them stuff.

  She had long hair as if long hair enough

  to smother horrors. What with her in the smoke

  he did he will not say.

  227

  Profoundly troubled over Miss Birnbaum—

  a photograph! from Heaven! by Heaven, please!—

  Henry rocked on knees

  tortured with his project: Lebensraum!

  (Unused to pray, he ache.) Away with treaties!

  Lassen Sie uns

  herausgehen! (Bony, either, his knees hurt,

  all over he hurt.) Down with the superior race!

  One look more at that face

  live enchanting would trance Henry to assert

  ideologies weird: take her aways:

  disband the Bunds:

  leave wizard Henry: at his lectern where

  he’s working on his phantasies: Disperse!

  and everything goes worse

  so the world fills with hér knees, harmful & fair:

  a medium where ‘Fuck you’ comes as no curse

  but come as a sigh or a prayer.

  228

  The Father of the Mill surveyed his falls,

  his daughterly race, his flume, his clover, privy, of all

  his waterfall, found well.

  Rain fell in June like … grace? One flopping trout

  (a rainbow) make his lunch who took his bait.

  Pitch, & Fate flout.

  Each cat should seizing private waterfall,

  or rent, as Henry do. Seizure is gall,

  I guess. Yes;

  we nothing own. But we are lying owned.

  When last his burning publisher telephoned,

  he dying to confess.

  The father and the mill purveyed their falls:

  grist, grist! Still, stamping on Fate,

  he lauded his lady;

  ladies. Waders were treble at his end

  or ends. The fool danced in the waterfall

  losing his footing, ready.

  229

  They laid their hands on Henry, kindly like,

  and swooped him thro’ the major & minor orders

  and said to him: ‘You’re in business.’

  ‘OW’ he responded. It was raining at the time,

  or cascading, or the seas were climbing up out of their borders,

  when he took up Is-ness.

  Dragons, good dragons, sport in the violent foam

  on the second floor of the Boston Art Museum

  in the joy of the dead Sung Master.

  Tigers were friendly: they do not kill needless

  and remove pests; dragons are male, yes.

  The subject: triumph—disaster.

  God’s own problem, whistled the whiskey priest.

  I cannot help him. But, if he repents,

  I’ll do what I can, man.

  Like exorcize: a slow process: at least,

  unless he dies, he’ll scream with less vehemence

  and we’ll get the Devil a bus ticket.

  230

  There are voices, voices. Light’s dying. Birds have quit.

  He lied about me, months ago. His friendly wit

  now slid to apology.

  I am sorry that senior genius remembered it.

  I am nothing, to occupy his thought

  one moment. We

  went at his bidding to his cabin, three,

  in two bodies; and he spoke like Jove.

  I sat there full of love,

  salt with attention, while his jokes like nods

  pierced for us our most strange history. He

  seemed to be in charge of the odds:

  hurrah. Three. Three. I must remember that.

  I love great men I love. Nobody’s great.

  I must remember that.

  We all fight. Having fought better than the rest,

  he sings, & mutters & prophesies in the West

  and is our flunked test.

  I always come in prostrate; Yeats & Frost.

  231

  Ode

  To That Boring Shit James Thomson, Seasonal

  Now gently rail on Henry Pussycat,

  for he did bad, and punisht he must be,

  by them, & by them, & by all.

  He’ll lose his place (in the book) and each thing that

  ever he valued. He’ll lose his minstrelsy.

  Vainly will topics call

  for cunning putting to who smashed his lyre,

  drowned his harmonica, covered with foes,

  and coughed with horror, & gave uts.

  One word of them: (he’ll lose his scholar-ire,

  pereant qui . .) a voyeur, O and those

  the slob’s associates

  the aggressive tease shockfull of malice, the dead-end

  out-of-conflict father, the clever brother & the dull,

  the nosey Jesuit.

  A tribe to lose to: I lose my right hand,

  she lost the honour of her word, ah well

  Henry fell among . . it.

  232

  They work not well on all but they did for him.

  He wolfed friend breakfast, bolted lunch, & pigged

  dinner.

  Beastly yet, meat at midnight, juice he swigged,

  juices, avocado lemon’d, artichoke hearts,

  anything inner,

  except the sauce. Stand Henry off the sauce.

  He scrub himself, have nine more matchless cigarettes,

  waiting upon the Lord.

  Pascal drop in, they placing cagey bets,

  it’s midnight! Being ample in their skins

  they hang around bored.

  Negroes, ignite! you have nothing to use but your brains,

  which let bust out. —What was that again, Mr Bones?

  De body have abuse

  but is de one, too. —One-two, the old thrones

  topple, dead sober. The decanter, pal!

  Pascal, we free & loose.

  233

  Cantatrice

  Misunderstanding. Misunderstanding, misunderstanding.

  Are we stationed here among another thing?

  Sometimes I wonder.

  After the lightning, this afternoon, ca
me thunder:

  the natural world makes sense: cats hate water

  and love fish.

  Fish, plankton, bats’ radar, the sense of fish

  who glide up the coast of South America

  and head for Gibraltar.

  How do they know it’s there? We call this instinct

  by which we dream we know what instinct is,

  like misunderstanding.

  I was soft on a green girl once and we smiled across

  and married, childed. Never did we truly take in

  one burning wing.

  Henry flounders. What is the name of that fish?

  So better organized than we are oh.

  Sing to me that name, enchanter, sing!

  234

  The Carpenter’s Son

  The child stood in the shed. The child went mad,

  later, & saned the wisemen. People gathered

  as he conjoined the Jordan joint

  ánd he spoke with them until he got smothered

  amongst their passion for mysterious healing had.

  They could not take his point:

  —Repent, & love, he told them frightened throngs,

  and it is so he did. Díd some of them?

  Which now comes hard to say.

  The date’s in any event a matter of wrongs

  later upon him, lest we would not know him,

  medieval, on Christmas Day.

  Pass me a cookie. O one absolutely did

  lest we not know him. Fasten to your fire

  the blessing of the living God.

  It’s far to seek if it will do as good

  whether in our womanly or in our manlihood,

  this great man sought his retire.

  235

  Tears Henry shed for poor old Hemingway

  Hemingway in despair, Hemingway at the end,

  the end of Hemingway,

  tears in a diningroom in Indiana

  and that was years ago, before his marriage say,

  God to him no worse luck send.

  Save us from shotguns & fathers’ suicides.

  It all depends on who you’re the father of

  if you want to kill yourself—

  a bad example, murder of oneself,

  the final death, in a paroxysm, of love

  for which good mercy hides?

  A girl at the door: ‘A few coppers pray’