Of pictures, books, romance
And of your life in France
In the varied music of exquisite words,
And in a voice that sings.
All things are memory now with you,
For poverty girds
Your hopes, and only your dreams remain.
And sometimes here and there
I see as you turn your head a whitened hair,
Even when you are smiling most.
And a light comes in your eyes like a passing ghost,
And a color runs through your cheeks as fresh
As burns in a girl's flesh.
Then I can shut my eyes and feel the pain
That has become a part of you, though I feign
Laughter myself. One sees another's bruise
And shakes his thought out of it shuddering.
So I turn and clamp my will lest I bring
Your sorrow into my flesh, who cannot choose
But hear your words and laughter,
And watch your hands and eyes.
Then as I think you over after
I have gone from you, and your face
Comes to me with its grace
Of memory of unfound love:
You seem to me the image of all women
Who dream and keep under smiles the grief thereof,
Or sew, or sit by windows, or read books
To hide their Secret's looks.
And after a time go out of life and leave
No uttered words but in their silence grieve
For Life and for the things no tongue can tell:
Why Life hurts so, and why Love haunts and hurts
Poor men and women in this demi-hell.
Perhaps your pathos means that it is well
Death in his time the aspiring torch inverts,
And all tired flesh and haunted eyes and hands
Moving in painéd whiteness are put under
The soothing earth to brighten April's wonder.
IN THE CAGE
The sounds of mid-night trickle into the roar
Of morning over the water growing blue.
At ten o'clock the August sunbeams pour
A blinding flood on Michigan Avenue.
But yet the half-drawn shades of bottle green
Leave the recesses of the room
With misty auras drawn around their gloom
Where things lie undistinguished, scarcely seen.
You, standing between the window and the bed
Are edged with rainbow colors. And I lie
Drowsy with quizzical half-open eye
Musing upon the contour of your head,
Watching you comb your hair,
Clothed in a corset waist and skirt of silk,
Tied with white braid above your slender hips
Which reaches to your knees and makes your bare
And delicate legs by contrast white as milk.
And as you toss your head to comb its tresses
They flash upon me like long strips of sand
Between a moonlit sea, pale as your hand,
And a red sun that on a high dune stresses
Its sanguine heat.
And then at times your lips,
Protruding half unconscious half in scorn
Engage my eyes while looking through the morn
At the clear oval of your brow brought full
Over the sovereign largeness of your eyes;
Or at your breasts that shake not as you pull
The comb through stubborn tangles, only rise
Scarcely perceptible with breath or signs,
Firm unmaternal like a young Bacchante's,
Or at your nose profoundly dipped like Dante's
Over your chin that softly melts away.
Now you seem fully under my heart's sway.
I have slipped through the magic of your mesh
Freed once again and strengthened by your flesh,
You seem a weak thing for a strong man's play.
Yet I know now that we shall scarce have parted
When I shall think of you half heavy hearted.
I know our partings. You will faintly smile
And look at me with eyes that have no guile,
Or have too much, and pass into the sphere
Where you keep independent life meanwhile.
How do you live without me, is the fear?
You do not lean upon me, ask my love, or wonder
Of other loves I may have hidden under
These casual renewals of our love.
And if I loved you I should lie in flame,
Ari, go about re-murmuring your name,
And these are things a man should be above.
And as I lie here on the imminent brink
Of soul's surrender into your soul's power,
And in the white light of the morning hour
I see what life would be if we should link
Our lives together in a marriage pact:
For we would walk along a boundless tract
Of perfect hell; but your disloyalty
Would be of spirit, for I have not won
Mastered and bound your spirit unto me.
And if you had a lover in the way
I have you it would not by half betray
My love as does your vague and chainless thought,
Which wanders, soars or vanishes, returns,
Changes, astonishes, or chills or burns,
Is unresisting, plastic, freely wrought
Under my hands yet to no unison
Of my life and of yours. Upon this brink
I watch you now and think
Of all that has been preached or sung or spoken
Of woman's tragedy in woman's fall;
And all the pictures of a woman broken
By man's superior strength.
And there you stand
Your heart and life as firmly in command
Of your resolve as mine is, knowing all
Of man, the master, and his power to harm,
His rulership of spheres material,
Bread, customs, rules of fair repute--
What are they all against your slender arm?
Which long since plucked the fruit
Of good and evil, and of life at last
And now of Life. For dancing you have cast
Veil after veil of ideals or pretense
With which men clothe the being feminine
To satisfy their lordship or their sense
Of ownership and hide the things of sin--
You have thrown them aside veil after veil;
And there you stand unarmored, weirdly frail,
Yet strong as nature, making comical
The poems and the tales of woman's fall....
You nod your head, you smile, I feel the air
Made by the closing door. I lie and stare
At the closed door. One, two, your tuftèd steps
Die on the velvet of the outer hall.
You have escaped. And I would not pursue.
Though we are but caged creatures, I and you--
A male and female tiger in a zoo.
For I shall wait you. Life himself will track
Your wanderings and bring you back,
And shut you up again with me and cage
Our love and hatred and our silent rage.
SAVING A WOMAN: ONE PHASE
To a lustful thirst she came at first
And gave him her maiden's pride;
And the first man scattered the flower of her love,
Then turned to his chosen bride.
She waned with grief as a fading star,
And waxed as a shining flame;
And the second man had her woman's love,
But the second was playing the game.
With passion she stirred the man who was third;
Woe's me! what delicate skill
She plied to the heart that knew her art
And fled from her wanton will.
Now calm and demure, oh fair, oh pure,
Oh subtle, patient and wise,
She trod the weary round of life,
With a sorrow deep in her eyes.
Now a hero who knew how false, how true
Was the speech that fell from her lips,
With a Norseman's strength took sail with her,
And landed and burnt his ships.
He gave her pity, he gave her mirth,
And the hurt in her heart he nursed;
But under the silence of her brows
Was a dream of the man who was first.
And all the deceit and lust of men
Had sharpened her own deceit;
And down to the gates of hell she led
Her friend with her flying feet.
For a bitten bud will never bloom,
And a woman lost is lost!
And the first and the third may go unscathed,
But some man pays the cost.
And the books of life are full of the rune,
And this is the truth of the song:
No man can save a woman's soul,
Nor right a woman's wrong.
LOVE IS A MADNESS
Love is a madness, love is a fevered dream,
A white soul lost in a field of scarlet flowers--
Love is a search for the lost, the ever vanishing gleam
Of wings, desires and sorrows and haunted hours.
Will the look return to your eyes, the warmth to your hand?
Love is a doubt, an ache, love is a writhing fear.
Love is a potion drunk when the ship puts out from land,
Rudderless, sails at full, and with none to steer.
The end is a shattered lamp, a drunken seraph asleep,
The upturned face of the drowned on a barren beach.
The glare of noon is o'er us, we are ashamed to weep--
The beginning and end of love are devoid of speech.
ON A BUST
Your speeches seemed to answer for the nonce--
They do not justify your head in bronze!
Your essays! talent's failures were to you
Your philosophic gamut, but things true,
Or beautiful, oh never! What's the pons
For you to cross to fame?--Your head in bronze?
What has the artist caught? The sensual chin
That melts away in weakness from the skin,
Sagging from your indifference of mind;
The sullen mouth that sneers at human kind
For lack of genius to create or rule;
The superficial scorn that says "you fool!"
The deep-set eyes that have the mud-cat look
Which might belong to Tolstoi or a crook.
The nose half-thickly fleshed and half in point,
And lightly turned awry as out of joint;
The eyebrows pointing upward satyr-wise,
Scarce like Mephisto, for you scarcely rise
To cosmic irony in what you dream--
More like a tomcat sniffing yellow cream.
The brow! 'Tis worth the bronze it's molded in
Save for the flat-top head and narrow thin
Backhead which shows your spirit has not soared.
You are a Packard engine in a Ford,
Which wrecks itself and turtles with its load,
Too light and powerful to keep the road.
The master strength for twisting words is caught
In the swift turning wheels of iron thought.
With butcher knives your hands can vivisect
Our butterflies, but you can not erect
Temples of beauty, wisdom. You can crawl
Hungry and subtle over Eden's wall,
And shame half grown up truth, or make a lie
Full grown as good. You cannot glorify
Our dreams, or aspirations, or deep thirst.
To you the world's a fig tree which is curst.
You have preached every faith but to betray;
The artist shows us you have had your day.
A giant as we hoped, in truth a dwarf;
A barrel of slop that shines on Lethe's wharf,
Which seemed at first a vessel with sweet wine
For thirsty lips. So down the swift decline
You went through sloven spirit, craven heart
And cynic indolence. And here the art
Of molding clay has caught you for the nonce
And made your shame our shame--your head in bronze!
Some day this bust will lie amid old metals
Old copper boilers, wires, faucets, kettles.
Some day it will be melted up and molded
In door knobs, inkwells, paper knives, or folded
In leaves and wreaths around the capitals
Of marble columns, or for arsenals
Fashioned in something, or in course of time
Successively made each of these, from grime
Rescued successively, or made a bell
For fire or worship, who on earth can tell?
One thing is sure, you will not long be dust
When this bronze will be broken as a bust
And given to the junkman to re-sell.
You know this and the thought of it is hell!
ARABEL
Twists of smoke rise from the limpness of jewelled fingers,
The softness of Persian rugs hushes the room.
Under a dragon lamp with a shade the color of coral
Sit the readers of poems one by one.
And all the room is in shadow except for the blur
Of mahogany surface, and tapers against the wall.
And a youth reads a poem of love: forever and ever
Is his soul the soul of the loved one; a woman sings
Of the nine months which go to the birth of a soul.
And after a time under the lamp a man
Begins to read a letter having no poem to read.
And the words of the letter flash and die like a fuse
Dampened by rain--it's a dying mind that writes
What Byron did for the Greeks against the Turks.
And a sickness enters our hearts. The jewelled hands
Clutch at the arms of the chairs--about the room
One hears the parting of lips, and a nervous shifting
Of feet and arms.
And I look up and over
The reader's shoulder and see the name of the writer.
What is it I see? The name of a man I knew!
You are an ironical trickster, Time, to bring
After so many years and into a place like this
This face before me: hair slicked down and parted
In the middle and cheeks stuck out with fatness,
Plump from camembert and clicquot, eyelids
Thin as skins of onions, cut like dough 'round the eyes.
Such was your look in a photograph I saw
In a silver frame on a woman's dresser--and such
Your look in life, you thing of flesh alone!
And then
As a soul looks down on the body it leaves--
A body by fever slain--I look on myself
As I was a decade ago, while the letter is read:
I enter a box
Of a theater with Jim, my friend of fifty,
I being twenty-two. Two women are in the box
One of an age for Jim and one of an age for me.
And mine is dressed in a dainty gown of dimity,
And she fans herself with a fan of silver spangles
Till a subtle odor of delicate powder or of herself
Enters my blood and I stare at her snowy neck,
And the glossy brownness of her hair until
She feels my stare, and turns half-view and I see
How like a Greek's is her nose, with just a little
Aquiline touch; and I catch the flash of an eye,
And the glint of a smile on the richness of her lips.
The company now discourses upon the letter
But my dream goes on:
I re-live a rapture
Which may be madness, and no man understands
Until he feels it no more. The youth that was I
From the theater under the city's lights follows the girl
Desperate lest in the city's curious chances
He never sees her again. And boldly he speaks.
And she and the older woman, her sister
Smile and speak in turn, and Jim who stands
While I break the ice comes up--and so
Arm in arm we go to the restaurant,
I in heaven walking with Arabel,
And Jim with her older sister.
We drive them home under a summer moon,
And while I explain to Arabel my boldness,
And crave her pardon for it, Jim, the devil,
Laughs apart with her sister while I wonder
What Jim, the devil, is laughing at. No matter
To-morrow I walk in the park with Arabel.
Just now the reader of the letter
Tells of the writer's swift descent
From wealth to want.
We are in the park next afternoon by the water.
I look at her white throat full as it were of song.
And her rounded virginal bosom, beautiful!
And I study her eyes, I search to the depths her eyes
In the light of the sun. They are full of little rays
Like the edge of a fleur de lys, and she smiles
At first when I fling my soul at her feet.
But when I repeat I love her, love her only,
A cloud of wonder passes over her face,
She veils her eyes. The color comes to her cheeks.
And when she picks some clover blossoms and tears them
Her hand is trembling. And when I tell her again
I love her, love her only, she blots her eyes
With a handkerchief to hide a tear that starts.
And she says to me: "You do not know me at all,
How can you love me? You never saw me before
Last night." "Well, tell me about yourself."
And after a time she tells me the story:
About her father who ran away from her mother;
And how she hated her father, and how she grieved
When her mother died; and how a good grandmother
Helped her and helps her now. And how her sister
Divorced her husband. And then she paused a moment:
"I am not strong, you'd have to guard me gently,
And that takes money, dear, as well as love.
Two years ago I was very ill, and since then
I am not strong."
"Well I can work," I said.
"And what would you think of a little cottage
Not too far out with a yard and hosts of roses,
And a vine on the porch, and a little garden,
And a dining room where the sun comes in,
When a morning breeze blows over your brow,
And you sit across the table and serve me
And neither of us can speak for happiness
Without our voices breaking, or lips trembling."
She is looking down with little frowns on her brow.
"But if ever I had to work, I could not do it,
I am not really well."
"But I can work," I said.
I rise and lift her up, holding her hand.
She slips her arm through mine and presses it.
"What a good man you are," she said. "Just like a brother--
I almost love you, I believe I love you."
The reader of the letter, being a doctor,
Is talking learnedly of the writer's case
Which has the classical marks of paresis.
Next day I look up Jim and rhapsodize
About a cottage with roses and a garden,
And a dining room where the sun comes in,
And Arabel across the table. Jim is smoking
And flicking the ashes, but never says a word
Till I have finished. Then in a quiet voice:
"Arabel's sister says that Arabel's straight,
But she isn't, my boy--she's just like Arabel's sister.
She knew you had the madness for Arabel.
That's why we laughed and stood apart as we talked.
And I'll tell you now I didn't go home that night,
I shook you at the corner and went back,
And staid that night. Now be a man, my boy,
Go have your fling with Arabel, but drop
The cottage and the roses."
They are still discussing the madman's letter.
And memory permeates me like a subtle drug:
The memory of my love for Arabel,
The torture, the doubt, the fear, the restless longing,
The sleepless nights, the pity for all her sorrows,
The speculation about her and her sister,
And what her illness was;
And whether the man I saw one time was leaving
Her door or the next door to it, and if her door
Whether he saw my Arabel or her sister....
The reader of the letter is telling how the writer
Left his wife chasing the lure of women.
And it all comes back to me as clear as a vision:
The night I sat with Arabel strong but conquered.
Whatever I did, I loved her, whatever she was.
Madness or love the terrible struggle must end.
She took my hand and said, "You must see my room."
We stood in the doorway together and on her dresser
Was a silver frame with the photograph of a man--
I had seen him in life: hair slicked down and parted
In the middle and cheeks stuck out with fatness
Plump from camembert and clicquot, eyelids
Thin as skins of onions, cut like dough 'round the eyes.
"There is his picture," she said, "ask me whatever you will.
Take me as mistress or wife, it is yours to decide.
But take me as mistress and grow like the picture before you,
Take me as wife and be the good man you can be.
Choose me as mistress--how can I do less for dearest?
Or make me your wife--fate makes me your mistress or wife."
"I can leave you," I said. "You can leave me," she echoed,
"But how about hate in your heart."
"You are right," I replied.
The company is now discussing the subject of love--
They seem to know little about it.
But my wife, who is sitting beside me, exclaims:
"Well, what is this jangle of madness and weakness,
What has it to do with poetry, tell me?"
"Well, it's life," Arabel.
"There's the story of Hamlet, for instance," I added.
Then fell into silence.
JIM AND ARABEL'S SISTER
Last night a friend of mine and I sat talking,
When all at once I found 'twas one o'clock.
So we came out and he went home to wife
And children, and I started for the club
Which I call home; and then just like a flash
You came into my mind. I bought a slug
And stood, in the booth, with doubtful heart and heard
The buzzer buzz. Well, it was sweet to me
To hear your voice at last--it was so drowsy,
Like a child's voice. And I could see your eyes
Heavy with sleep, and I could see you standing
In nightgown with head leaned against the wall....
Julia! the welcome of your drowsy voice
Went through me like the warmth of priceless wine--
It showed your understanding, that you know
How it is with a man, and how it is with me
Who work by day and sometimes drift by night
About this hellish city. Though you know
That I am fifty-one, can you imagine
My feeling with no children growing up?
My feeling as of one who sees a play
And afterwards sits somewhere at a table
And talks with friends about the different parts
Over a sandwich and a glass of beer?
My feeling with this money which I've made
And cannot use? Sometimes the stress of working
The money dulls the fancy which could use it
In splendid dreams or in the art of life.
Well, here was I ringing your bell at last
At half-past one, and there you stood before me
With a sleepy voice and a sleepy smile, with hands
So warm, and cheeks so red from sleep, not vexed,
But like a child, awakened, who smiles at you
With half-shut eyes and kisses you, so you
Gave me a kiss. The world seems better, Julia,
For that kiss which you gave me at the door....
Breakfast? Why, toast and coffee, not too strong,
My heart acts queer of late....
I want to say
Lest I forget it, if you ever hear
From Arabel or Francis what I said
To Francis when he told me he intended
To marry Arabel, why just remember
Our talk this morning and forget I said it--
I'm sorry that I said it. But, you see,
That night we met, I being fifty-one
And old at what men call the game, looked on
With steady eye and quiet nerve, I saw you
Just as I'd see a woman anywhere;
And I found you as I'd found others before you,
But with this difference so it seemed to me:
What had been false with them was real with you,
What had been shame with them with you was life,
What had been craft with them with you was nature,
What had been sin with them to you was good,
What had been vice with them to you the honest
And uncorrupted innocence of a human
Heart so human looking on our souls.
What had been coarse to them to you was clean
As rain is, or fresh flowers, all things that grow
And move and sing along creation's way.
You came to me like friendship, what you gave
Was friendship's gift, when friends think least of self
And least of motive. And it is through you
That I have risen out of the pit where sneers
And laughter, looks and words obscene,
Blaspheme our nature. It is through you, Julia,
As one amid great beach trees where soft mosses
Pillow our heads and where we see the clouds
Upon their infinite sailings and the lake
Washes beneath us, and we lie and think
How this has been forever and will be
When we are dust a thousand, thousand years,
Yet how life is eternal--just as one
Who there falls into prayer for ecstasy
Of wonder, prophecy could not blaspheme
The Eternal Power (as he might well blaspheme
The gospel hymns and ritual) that I
Cannot blaspheme you, Julia.
For what is our communion, yours and mine,
If it be not a way of laying hold
On that mysterious essence which makes one
Of heaven and earth, makes kindred human hands....
Tears are not like you, Julia; laugh, that's right!
Pour me a little coffee, if you please.
I'll take from my herbarium certain species
To make my points: Now here there is the woman
Of life promiscuous, or nearly so.
She fixes her design upon a man,
Who's married and the riotous game begins.
They go along a year or two perhaps.
Then psychic chemistry performs its part:
They are in love, or he's in love with her.
What shall be done with love? Now watch the woman:
That which she gave without love at the first
She now withdraws in spite of love unless
He breaks his life up, cuts all former ties
And weds her. Do you wonder sometimes men
Kill women with a knife or strangle them?
Well, here's another: She has been to Ogontz,
You meet her at a dinner-dance, we'll say.
She has green eyes and hair as light as jonquils;
She wears black velvet and a salmon sash.
And when you dance with her she has a way
Of giving you her flesh beneath thin silk,
Which almost lisps as she caresses you
With legs that scarcely touch you; and she says
Things with a double meaning, and she smiles
To carry out her meaning. Well, you think
The girl is yours, and after weeks of chasing
She lands you up at the appointed place
With mamma, who looks at you with big eyes,
That have a nervous way of opening
And closing slowly like a big wax doll's,
From which great clouds of wrath and wonder come;
Which meeting is a way of saying to you:
The girl is yours if you will marry her,
And let her have your money.
Julia, be still;
I can't go on while you are laughing so.
I know that men are easy, but to see
Women as women see them is a gift
That comes to men who reach my age in life....
Well, here's another, here's the type of woman
Whose power of motherhood conceals the art
By which she thrives, through which she reaches also
An apotheosis in society.
Her dream is children conscious or unconscious.
And her strength is the race's, and she draws
The urgings of posterity and leans
Upon the hopes and ideals of the day.
To her a man must sacrifice his life.
But women, Julia, of whatever type,
Are still but waiting ovules seeking man,
And man's life to develop, even to live.
And like the praying mantis who's devoured
In the embrace, man is devoured by women
In some way, by some sort. Love is a flame
In man's life where he warms him but to suck
The invisible heat and perish. Life is cramped,
Bound down with many ropes, shut in by gates--
Love is not free which should be wholly free
For Life's sake.