I hear footsteps over my head all night.
They come and they go. Again they come and they go all night.
They come one eternity in four paces and they go one eternity in four
paces, and between the coming and the going there is Silence and the
Night and the Infinite.
For infinite are the nine feet of a prison cell, and endless is the
march of him who walks between the yellow brick wall and the red iron
gate, thinking things that cannot be chained and cannot be locked,
but that wander far away in the sunlit world, each in a wild
pilgrimage after a destined goal.
· · · · · ·
Throughout the restless night I hear the footsteps over my head.
Who walks? I know not. It is the phantom of the jail, the sleepless
brain, a man, the man, the Walker.
One-two-three-four: four paces and the wall.
One-two-three-four: four paces and the iron gate.
He has measured his space, he has measured it accurately, scrupulously,
minutely, as the hangman measures the rope and the gravedigger the
coffin—so many feet,
so many inches, so many fractions of an inch for each of the four paces.
One-two-three-four. Each step sounds heavy and hollow over my head, and
the echo of each step sounds hollow within my head as I count them in
suspense and in dread that once, perhaps, in the endless walk, there
may be five steps instead of four between the
yellow brick wall and the red iron gate.
But he has measured the space so accurately, so scrupulously, so
minutely that nothing breaks the grave rhythm of the slow, fantastic
march.
· · · · · ·
All through the night he walks and he thinks.
Is it more frightful because he walks and his footsteps sound hollow
over my head, or because he thinks and speaks not his thoughts?
But does he think? Why should he think? Do I think? I only hear the
footsteps and count them. Four steps and the wall. Four steps and the
gate. But beyond? Beyond? Where goes he beyond the gate and the wall?
He goes not beyond. His thought breaks there on the iron gate. Perhaps
it breaks like a wave of rage, perhaps like a sudden flow of hope,
but it always returns to beat the wall like a billow of helplessness
and despair.
He walks to and fro within the narrow whirlpit of this ever storming and
furious thought. Only one thought—constant, fixed, immovable,
sinister, without power and without voice.
A thought of madness, frenzy, agony and despair, a hell-brewed thought,
for it is a natural thought. All things natural are things impossible
while there are jails in the world—bread, work, happiness, peace,
love.
But he thinks not of this. As he walks he thinks of the most superhuman,
the most unattainable, the most impossible thing in the world:
He thinks of a small brass key that turns just half around and throws
open the red iron gate.
· · · · · ·
_Eunice Tietjens_
Eunice Tietjens (née Hammond) was born in Chicago, Illinois, July
29, 1884. She married Paul Tietjens, the composer, in 1904. During
1914 and 1916 she was Associate Editor of _Poetry; A Magazine of
Verse_ and went to France as war correspondent of the Chicago _Daily
News_ (1917-18). Her second marriage (to Cloyd Head, the writer)
occurred in February, 1920.
_Profiles from China_ (1917) is a series of sketches of people,
scenes and incidents observed in the interior. Written in a fluent
free verse, the poems in this collection are alive with color and
personality. The succeeding _Body and Raiment_ (1919) is less
integrated, more derivative and diffuse. And yet, in spite of
certain obvious echoes, individual poems like “The Drug Clerk,” “The
Steam Shovel” and a few others are worthy to stand beside her
distinguished first volume.