FLASHLIGHTS
BY
MARY ALDIS
AUTHOR OF
“THE PRINCESS JACK”
AND
“PLAYS FOR SMALL STAGES”
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1916
Copyright, 1916, by MARY ALDIS
The author desires to make acknowledgement for permission to reprint
to _Poetry_, _The Little Review_, _The Masses_, _Others_, _The Trimmed
Lamp_, _The Survey_, _The Los Angeles Graphic_, _The Chicago Herald_
and _The Chicago Evening Post_.
CONTENTS
I. CITY SKETCHES
PAGE
The Barber Shop 3
Love in the Loop 8
Converse 12
Window-wishing 16
A Little Old Woman 20
II.
Design 27
The World Cry 28
Brown Sands 29
Seeking 30
May 11, 1915 31
Watchers 32
To Maurice Browne 35
Prayers 37
My Boat and I 39
Pictures 42
Forward, Singing! 44
Barberries 46
Two Paths 48
When You Come 50
Rest 52
Moriturus Te Saluto 54
Flashlights 56
Floodgates 63
Chloroform 69
The Beginning of the Journey 75
III. STORIES IN METRE
The Prisoner 81
Ellie 86
The Park Bench 92
The Sisters 105
Reason 110
Her Secret 115
A Little Girl 117
I
CITY SKETCHES
_Go forth now, moods and metres,
Sing your song and tell your story;
You have companioned me
Through hours grave and gay,
What will you say
To him whose curious hand
Shall turn these pages?_
_Soon all my joy in setting forth
My vagrant thoughts
Shall pass
Into the silence;
Soon I shall be
One with the mystery._
_My book upon some quiet shelf
Beneath your touch
Shall wake, perhaps,
And speak again
My wonder, my delight,
My questioning before the night--_
_And as you read
Somewhere afar
I shall be singing, singing._
_THE BARBER SHOP_
I spend my life in a warren of worried men.
In and out and to and fro
And up and down in electric elevators
They rush about and speak each other,
Hurrying on to finish the deal,
Hurrying home to wash and eat and sleep,
Hurrying to love a little maybe
Between the dark and dawn
Or cuddle a tired child
Who blinks to see his father.
I hurry too but with a sense
That Life is hurrying faster
And will catch up with me.
Right in the middle of our furious activity
Two soft-voiced barbers in a little room,
White-tiled and fresh and smelling deliciously,
Flourish their glittering tools
And smile and barb
And talk about the war and stocks and the Honolulu earthquake
With equal impartiality.
I like to go there.
Time seems slow and patient
While they tuck me up in white
And hover over me.
The room gives north and west and the sunset sky
Lights the grey river to a ribbon of glory
Where silhouetted tugs
Like tooting beetles fuss about their smoky businesses;
Besides, in that high place
No curious passer-by
Can see my ignominious bald spot treated with a tonic,
Nor can a lady stop and bow to me, my chin in lather,
As happened once;
So I go there often
And even take a book.
There’s another person all in white
Who comes and goes and manicures your nails
On application.
One can read with one hand while she does the other.
Because I feel that Life is hurrying me along
With horrid haste
Soon to desert me utterly,
I used to take my Inferno in my pocket
And reflect on what might happen
Were I among the usurers.
One day a low-pitched voice broke in.
I listened vaguely,
What was the woman saying?
“Please listen for a moment, Mister Brown,
I’ve done your nails for almost half a year
You’ve never looked at me.”
I looked at that,
And sure enough the girl was young and round and sweet.
She coloured as I turned to her
And looked away.
I waited silently, enjoying her confusion.
The words had been shot out at me
And now apparently she wished them back.
“What do you want?” I said.
Again a silence while she rubbed away.
I opened my Inferno with an ironic glance
Towards Paradiso waiting just beyond.
“Well, rub away, my girl,” I thought,
“You opened up, go on.”
The book provoked her.
“I’m straight,” she said.
“I never talked like this before.
The fellows that come round--
Good Lord!
Showin’ me two pink ticket corners
Stickin’ out the pocket of their vest,
‘Say, kid,--tonight,--you know,’
Thinkin’ I’ll tumble
For a ticket to a show!
They make me sick, they do,
Boobs like that;
You’re different. I want to know
What’s in that book you read.
I want to hear you talk.
Oh, Mister, I’m so lonesome!
But I’m straight, I tell you.
I read, too, every evening in my room,
But I can’t ever find
The books you have.
I expect you think I’m horrid
To talk like this--but--
I got some things by an Englishman
From the Public Library.
Say, they were queer!
He thinks a woman has a right
To say out if she likes a man;
He thinks they do the looking
Because they want--
Oh, Mister, I’m so terribly ashamed
I’ll die when I get home,
An’ yet I had to speak--
I’d be awful, awful good to you, if only,
Please, please, don’t think I’m like--
Don’t think I’m one o’ them!
Whatever you say, don’t, don’t think that!”
She stopped, and turned to hide her crying.
I looked at her again,
Looked at her young wet eyes,
At her abashed bent head,
Looked at her sweet, deft hands
Busy with mine....
But--
Not for nothing
Were my grandfather and four of my uncles
Elders in the Sixth Presbyterian Church
Situated on the Avenue.
Oh not for nothing
Was I led
To squirm on those green rep seats
One day in seven.
And now,
The white-tiled, sweetly-smelling barber shop
Is lost to me.
What a pity!
_LOVE IN THE LOOP_
They sat by the fountain at a table for two,
The traditional couple--
An awkward, ill-dressed girl,
With a lovely skin and a country smile,
And the man who was paying for her dinner.
There they were--
Exploiter and Exploited.
I could see only his back, clad in grey tweed.
His neck rolled over his collar
In a thick red fold,
And his hands, which he waved about,
Were fat and white with shiny nails
And diamond rings.
I wondered if he was offering her better clothes
For the girl looked troubled.
Her shirt-waist wasn’t fresh,
Her skirt was draggled,
And her feet, curled up under the chair,
Shifted themselves uneasily, seeking cover
For most lamentable shoes;
But oh, her skin!
Soft rose and the delicate white of summer mist.
Her hair was the brown of hazelnuts after a frost,
Glinting to saffron as she turned her head
Quickly from side to side
Like an enquiring dove.
Soon oysters came;
She eyed them with distrust,
Then ate one thoughtfully and made a face.
He seemed concerned
And beckoned the waiter to remove the dish,
Asking if she’d rather have a “country sausage.”
She showed her baby teeth in a happy smile
And sausages were brought.
She ate them all while he watched her enviously,
Putting a little white pellet in some water
For his second course.
Champagne was set before them and he filled her glass
While he turned his bottom side up.
She sipped, and made another face, and choked,
Then tried again and laughed.
“I do believe it’s good,” she said,
And finished the glass,
Holding it out for more.
“You’d best look out,” I heard him say
As he slid his hand along the table-cloth.
She cringed away.
“Oh, please, please don’t!” she said;
But he hitched his chair softly around the table.
I watched it all,
Wondering miserably if it was my duty
To warn the girl,
And whether she would prove clinging if I did.
Finally to secure her hands he turned himself.
My God, what a mug!
His beady eyes over his glistening cheeks
Blinked like a hurrying pig’s:
His protuberent lips wiggled themselves
In amourous expectancy
While little beads of ecstasy bedewed his brow.
I turned my chair around and raised my paper.
Suddenly I heard her cry, “Oh, Mister!
That fuzzy stuff you made me drink--my head!”
And she grabbed her coat and slithered along the floor
To the front door, calling over her shoulder.
“Don’t come. I want some air,
I’ll be back in a minute or two.”
After a startled forward step
He settled back and called the waiter,
Who hurried to busy himself expectantly
With the inevitable reckoning.
By the time it was ready, Mr. Amourous-One
Was deep in the stock reports and dead to the world.
The waiter stood on one foot and then on the other,
Finally wandering off.
After some twenty minutes of troubled scrutiny
The paper was laid down,
And Mr. Amourous
Looked at his watch and jumped,
Then turned the bill and burrowed in his pocket,
Pulling out change.
Next came a leather wallet--
And then what a bellowing rent the astonished air!
“Eight hundred dollars gone!” he yelled.
“Hi! get that girl, I tell you, GET THAT GIRL!”
But nobody stirred.
Exploiter and Exploited--
_CONVERSE_
They were two disembodied heads on bath cabinets,
Just like “Une tête de femme” by Rodin, in a show,
Save that each head was topped
By a ruffled rubber cap,
One rose-lined grey, one brown.
They were two female heads,
And yet they were not pretty,
At least not then.
They fixed their level-fronting eyes on a sanitary wall
In front of them
And waited.
The Bath Attendant turned a crank,
Consulted a thermometer, and vanished.
Time draggled warmly by.
Finally one head heaved a heavy sigh and turned itself
And looked at the other head,
Which bit its lip and frowned.
Since names seem meaningless
When souls converse,
Let us call these souls quite simply Grey and Brown.
The one that heaved and turned itself was Brown;
The one that bit its lip was Grey.
“Are you pretending that you didn’t see me?”
Queried Brown.
“Oh no!” said Grey.
“I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you,” said Brown.
“And why not now?”
“And why not now?” said Grey.
“You may as well understand,” continued Brown,
“You’ve got to give him up.”
“Him up?” said Grey.
“That’s what I said,” said Brown.
“You very well know
His duty is to me. I bear his name,
I’ve given him seven children and a step,
All likely boys.
He’s very fond of them, you know.”
“I know,” said Grey.
“Well, what have you got to say?” Brown trembled on.
“Why don’t you speak?”
Grey murmured softly,
“Isn’t it hot in these?”
Brown looked at her and laughed.
“You’re pretty cool,” she said,
“But I’d like to tell you here and straight and now,
I’m tired of nonsense,
Tired of worrying,
And very, very tired of him and you.”
“Of him and me,” said Grey.
“I’ve cried and then I’ve laughed
And said I didn’t care,”
Said whimpering Brown.
“I’ve dressed myself up beautifully
And then again I’d slump,”
Said sniffling Brown.
“But nothing mattered.
If he came home bright and gay, of course I’d know
He’d been with you,
And if he came home different, then I’d know
He wished he were,
So gradually it didn’t matter much
Which way he was.
And then I thought I’d try and keep
The boys from knowing,
So I’d make up lies and plan;
With seven and the step
It took considerable planning,
But luckily the little ones don’t notice.
And now I’ve got you here, I’m going to have my say!”
“Your say,” said Grey.
“I’m going to get your promise here and now
To give him up for good,
Do you understand?”
“For good,” said Grey.
“Oh yes, I understand.”
“Or else,” and beetling Brown
Grew dark and terrible,
“You’ll be the co-respondent in a suit!”
“A suit,” said Grey.
“I said a suit,” said Brown,
“I mean a suit.
Moreover, as you haven’t said a word
I’ll bring it soon.”
“It soon,” said Grey.
And then the Attendant came,
Looked at the clock and then the thermometer,
Got sheets and led them out.
“Unless--” said Brown.
“Oh yes, unless--” said Grey.
_WINDOW-WISHING_
Oh yes, we get off regular
By half past six,
And six on Saturdays.
Sister an’ I go marketing on Saturday nights,
Everything’s down.
Besides there’s Sunday comin’;
You can sleep,
Oh my, how you can sleep!
No mother shakin’ you
To “get up now,”
No coffee smell
Hurryin’ you while you dress,
No Beauty Shop to get to on the tick of the minute
Or pony up a fine.
Sister an’ I go window-wishin’
Sunday afternoon, all over the Loop.
It’s lots of fun.
First she’ll choose what she thinks is the prettiest
Then my turn comes.
You mustn’t ever choose a thing
The other’s lookin’ at,
And when a window’s done
The one that beats
Can choose the first time when we start the next.
The hats are hardest
’Specially when they’re turnin’ round and round.
But window-wishin’s great!
Then there’s the pictures,
Bully ones sometimes,
Sometimes they’re queer.
Sister an’ I go in ’most every Sunday.
We took Mother ’long last week,
But she didn’t like ’em any too well.
Mother’s old, you know,
We have to kinda humour her.
Next day she couldn’t remember a single thing
But the lions on the steps.
You know what happened the other night?
Sister and I didn’t know just what to do,--
A gentleman came to see us.
He said Jim asked him to
Sometime when he was near.
Jim’s my brother, you know.
He lives down state.
We have to send him part of our wages regular,
Sister an’ I;
He doesn’t seem to get a steady place,
And Mother likes us to.
She’s dotty on Jim.
Sometimes I get real nasty--
A great big man like that!
Anyway his friend came walkin’ in
And said Jim sent his love.
Sister an’ I didn’t exactly know what to do,
And Mother looked so queer!
Her dress was awful dirty.
He said he was livin’ in Chicago,
And Sister said she hoped
He had a place he liked.
He only stayed a little while,
Till half past eight,
And then he took his hat
From under the chair he was sittin’ on
And went away.
I said just now it happened the other night,
But it was seven weeks ago last Friday evening.
He said he’d come again.
I dunno as he will,
Sister an’ I keep wonderin’.
We dressed up-every night for quite a while
And stayed in Sundays.
Yesterday we thought
We’d go down window-wishin’
And what do you think?
Just as she’d picked a lovely silver dress
Sister jerked my arm,
Then all of a sudden there she was
Cryin’ and snifflin’ in her handkerchief
Standin’ there on the sidewalk,
And what do you think she said?
“I’d like to kill the woman that wears that gown!”
I tell you I was scared,
She looked so queer,
But she’s all right today.
Oh thank you, two o’clock next Saturday the tenth?
I’ll put it down,
A shampoo and a wave, you said?
I’ll keep the time,
Good-morning.
_A LITTLE OLD WOMAN_
There’s a twinkling little old woman
Brings me sandwiches after my Turkish bath.
Her cheeks are brown and pink,
And her eyes, behind her gold-bowed spectacles,
Smile in a curious fashion as if to say
“I know you’re worried about that letter in the pocket of your dress,
Hanging out there, but I’ll take care of it.”
She sets the tray down on a chair beside my couch
And trots away to another languid lady in a sheet,
And as I fall asleep she says to me
“Don’t worry honey, I’ll take care of it.”
Perhaps it’s only in my dreams she says it,
But anyway she’s there.
Once after she had hooked me up
She raised her sober dress
To show me that she too could wear a lace-trimmed petticoat;
And a dainty thing it was, with tiny rosebuds
Festooned all around.
She dropped her skirt and laughed.
“I’ve got one ... too,” she said.
This was uncanny, so I said Good-day.
Next time I went I met him at the door
With a market basket!
It seems he brought the dainties every day
She made up into sandwiches for us who lolled about.
I took a look at him,--
A delicate, chiselled face with soft blue eyes,
Under his chin from ear to ear a fringe of yellow down,
Around a bald spot, curls of whity-gold;
He blinked a little as she gave him charges
Then wandered thoughtfully away
Clutching his basket.
He wore a black frock coat too big for him,
And on his head, a round black hat like a French Curé’s.
So that was why she wore the petticoat
And smiled so knowingly--
But how she worked!
I wouldn’t work like that.
Perhaps she kept that little thing for pleasuring.
Well, this is a woman’s world, why not,
If so be that he pleased her?
The steamy, scented atmosphere that day
Seemed teeming with intrigue;
I looked at the strapping, bare-legged wench
Who brought my sheet
Enquiring mutely, “Have you got a lover?”
And when a person next me roused herself
To ask the time,
I thought, “Ah-ha! He’s waiting!”
It chanced when sandwiches were brought
I found myself alone
With her of the spectacles and petticoat.
I wanted to go to sleep,
But I wanted more to find out how
She got a lover,
And how she kept him.
After some skirmishing I asked straight out,
“Was that your husband with the market basket?”
“My husband’s dead,” she said, and grinned
And took a chair beside my couch.
“Who is he, then?” I said.
“He’s mine,” she answered. “Mine!
I paid for him five hundred dollars cool,
And now he likes me!”
I sat up at that.
“You paid for him?” I gulped.
“Why yes, he lived up-stairs, you know.
His heart is bad; he hadn’t any cash;
He got hauled up on a breach-of-promise suit;
I paid it for him.
Now he lives with me!”
She emphasized her “me” triumphantly.
I looked her over.
Certainly there was something there of vividness,
Of quick vitality.
He and his funny hat and goldy curls--
Well, anything may be.
“Are you happy now?” I asked.
She smiled and bridled.
“The business pays,” she said.
“You ladies pay good prices for your food
And then the tips besides.
He gets the things for me and brings ’em fresh,
Then what do you suppose he does the rest of the time?
(His heart is bad, you know)
Writes verses all day long for the Sunday papers;
Mostly they don’t get in,
But every now and then he gets two dollars.
I bought him an Underwood last week.
He was so pleased,
Only the punctuation isn’t right.
It isn’t a second-hand; cost me a hundred and twenty-five;
I saved it up--”
The bell rang and she rose.
“Say! please don’t tell them anything about--
About--my husband.”
And she vanished.
II
_DESIGN_
If all the world’s a stage, why do we know
Naught of the drama we the actors play?
Are we but puppets, we who come and go
Mumbling our parts through life’s quick-passing day?
What if some master hand design the show
Planning a spacious pattern cunningly!
Time, color, drifting human shapes all go
Into a great discordant harmony:
Let this one’s part be cast in delicate grey,
Let this a heavy purple shadow be,
Here let there come one clear, cold, bluish ray
And here--but hold! one actor suddenly
In desperate rebellion cries his part--
A scarlet tumult from his own hot heart.
_THE WORLD CRY_
Joy, light, and love I crave
And shall discover--
Life’s wild adventure opening to my will:
High thought and brave,
The rapture of a lover,
The Vision gleaming from yon western hill.
Beyond my present sight
There lies some sweet allure,
Some crested glory waiting to be won;
Shimmering in light,
Beautiful and sure,
Beckoning bright hands that call me on.
I know not where it lies,
Nor whither I go, nor how
The way is paved--with pleasure or with pain;
But the search is in my eyes,
And the dust upon my brow
Shall turn to aureoled gold when I attain.
* * * * *
Oh, old old hope--
Unfulfilled desire!
Pitiful the faith,
Beautiful the fire!
Know, soul who criest,
Thy gleaming from afar,
Thy quest of wild adventure,
Thy sweet far star
Shall be the bitter path
To a high stern goal;
So bow thy head
To thine own soul.
_BROWN SANDS_
My stallion impatiently
Stamps at my side,
Into the desert far
We two shall ride.
Brown sands around us fly,
Winds whistle free,
The desert is sharing
Gladness with me.
The madness of motion
Is mine again.
Forgotten forever
Sorrow and pain.
Into the desert far
Swiftly we flee,
Knowing the passionate
Joy of the free.
_SEEKING_
Swift like the lark
Out of the dark
One cometh, singing;
Silent in flight
Out of the night
Answer is winging.
Forth to the dawn
Leaps like a fawn
A cry of high greeting,
Into the sun
Two that have run
Seeking, are meeting.
_MAY 11, 1915_
A prayer is forming on my tightened lips--
Lord grant that I may keep my soul from hate!
I have known love, I have been pitiful,
Lord, I would keep my grief compassionate!
Pain-maddened cries I hear from out the sea,
Upstaring at me, faces of the dead;
Those silent bodies seem to call aloud,
Those silent souls are still and comforted.
And we are here to bear the weight of pain--
Oh, keep the poison from its awful task!
Lord, let me be as they are ere I hate,
Let me love on! this, this is what I ask!
However long the way, there is a turning,
Somewhere beyond the storm there lies a land
Where Peace abides, where love shall live again,
And men shall greet with friendly outstretched hand
While little children laugh, and women weep
With happiness--Oh, Lord, until that hour
Keep Thou my hope, keep Thou my tenderness,
Keep Thou my trust in Thy far-seeing power!
_WATCHERS_
I watch the Eastern sky
For a sign of dawn
Long delayed.
Such stillness is around
That every separate sense
Is twice-attuned, twice-powerful,
And loneliness enwraps me like a sea
Into whose unplumbed depths I must go down:
A sea unsatisfied
Where drifting shapes, wan-eyed,
Reach forth wan arms
Towards them who pause to look at their own souls
Mirrored upon the sea.
Somewhere a loon
Sends forth its weary cry across the dark.
Oh, wailing bird, I know, I know!
I think tonight the soul of the world is desolate
And you and I its watchers.
Yet cease! oh cease!
The night air quivers and resounds
To bear your cry across the sleeping lake,
And I would have your silence
While I make
My own complaint.
For I would ask why we who have so little space
To live and love and wonder
Must go down into eternal mystery
Alone:
And I would know
Why, since that awful loneliness must be,
We go about as strangers here on earth
And meet and laugh and mock and part again
With never a look into each others’ eyes,
With never a question of each others’ pain.
So, even as I hear your melancholy plaint
Across the sleeping lake,
I send my questing cry across the world--
And as I watch and listen,
Through the stillness
There comes to me an echoing and a far reverberation
Of the many who have gone
Into the limitless mystery,
And thus they speak--
“We too have known your questing,
We too have stretched our arms forth to the night
And clasped its nothingness,
We too have lived and loved and wondered
For a little space
And then gone onward,
And we seek across the silence
To send our voices
Out, out, across the dark.”
Is it your voice I hear, oh far, strange bird,
Or is it theirs--
Theirs who have gone onward
Alone and unafraid?
Is there an answer I may sometime find,
Or is it that our lips are dumb,
Our eyes are blind,
When love would come?
* * * * *
Now faint light comes upon the shadowy sky,
The East is waking and the day begins.
You send your cry across the quivering lake,
I send my question out across the world,
We watch, we two,
Alone.
_TO MAURICE BROWNE_
(_On his creation of Capulchard in Cloyd Head’s “Grotesques.”_)
Shadows are round me as the dawn breaks,
Shadows with long white swaying arms
And anguished faces.
I see them meet and touch and part
Crying their desire,
While a bitter figure moulds them
In a shifting decoration
Which enchants, eludes and maddens,
Imprisoning my dreams.
Now they plead and droop and cower,
Holding wan hands
To whatever gods there be,
Praying intercession
From the malign enchantment
Of their decorative doom
Whence they weep their silent tears.
Oh, Draughtsman terrible
Who puts out the moon and stars,
Who smiles and waves a hand
And puppet hearts are broken,
Let them love!
Only a moment in a theater,
Only a moment under the stars,
All there may be before the end--
Let them love!
* * * * *
The show is over.
The swaying puppets of a little longer hour
Go forth and cry out their desire
To a Master of Decoration,--
Their God unseen,
And He, like you, smiles, puts forth a hand
And blots the moon and stars
And tears the glory from the earth and sky
And cries:
“Back to your places, fools!
You shall not love!”
_PRAYERS_
Day by day I tread my appointed way
Greeting the sun with dutiful intent,
Seeing his slow decline into the West,
Watching draw near my night of quietude.
Each day I see fade slowly back to join
Those other days, unlived, unloved, unmourned,
That have passed by in grave processional
With never a golden one to mark their passing.
Sometimes at night I ask the friendly stars
“Tell me, what do I here? Why have I breath
And this fair body in a world of shadows?
Why do I live?”
But the stars shine silently
And make no answer.
Sometimes I ask of God,
“Dear Lord, I love Thee well
But Thou art far away--
Couldst Thou not send to me
Someone on earth to love?
So should I love Thee more.”
But God sends no one.
Sometimes I ask the far tumultuous sea,
“Oh Sea, give me of your great beating heart!
Let me be swept on the whirlwind,
Let me be lulled and rocked,
Let me be storm-tossed, made mad,
Then--let me perish!”
But the Sea roars on unheeding.
So day by day I tread my appointed way
Greeting the sun with dutiful intent,
Seeing his slow decline into the West,
Watching draw near my night of quietude.
_MY BOAT AND I_
My staunch little boat is tugging at its moorings
Eager to be free,
Eager to slip out on the great waters
Beyond the returning tides,
Out to the unknown sea.
My staunch little boat, unwilling prisoner,
Frets and pulls at the anchor chain
While the wind calls,
“Come! come!
I will bear you
Out to the unknown sea!”
Long time my boat and I have plied the harbour
On little busy journeyings intent,
Long time with wistful gazing
I have listened to the calling--
The winds with buffeting caress,
The waves with ceaseless urge--
Calling “Rest, rest, rest,
Rest on an unknown sea.”
And now we are away
Into the mystery.
Quietly the swaying waters
Rock and beguile and soothe us
That we may not know
We are so far away.
Along the shore
Are hands stretched out.
What would you with me now,
Oh pleading hands?
I come not to you any more,
I have set my sail
Out to the unknown sea,
Would you have me stay adventuring?
Would you have me come again
To be amidst you
With alien eyes and a heart unquiet?
Oh cease your crying!
I come not back.
Long time my little boat and I
Have fretted at the mooring,
Long time we have looked out beyond the bar
With a great questioning, and a great wonder,
And then, an hour came which held the parting
And we slipped
Out, out, to the unknown sea.
* * * * *
The hands stretched out have faded from my sight,
The shore is dim,
The mountains fade into the limitless blue,
Only the wind and the sea companion me,
Singing
“Rest, rest, rest,
Rest on an unknown sea.”
_PICTURES_
I saw a little boy go hurrying
Towards an old man nodding in the sun.
He tweaked him by the sleeve
And gazed at him with insistent frowning eyes
Asking his question.
The old man blinked and muttered
And the child let go his sleeve
And drooped and turned away.
* * * * *
I saw a mother counselling her daughter
About her lover, and the girl was sullen,
Looking from out averted eyes
For means to go to him;
And the mother bowed her head
And turned away.
* * * * *
I saw two lovers meet with hungry arms,
And kiss and speak and kiss again--
Then speak with challenging tones and fall apart.
I saw them turn with tightened lips made dumb
And eyes quick-quenched and dark.
Slowly they went their ways.
* * * * *
I saw a woman kneeling in a church,
Her head was bent upon worn hands
Clasped tightly.
Her dress was black and poor.
After a time she rose and shook her head,
Then beat her fist upon the rail
And clattered noisily down the aisle.
At the door she paused,
Narrowed her eyes at the holy water
And passed on.
_FORWARD, SINGING!_
Listen, girl, stand there near me,
Give me your two fluttering hands,
Then listen.
Little hurrying human beings
Are important and significant
Only in so far as they can stand alone.
Most of them stand sideways,
Propping themselves
Against this brother or that brother
Or this sister or that sister,
Leaving each prop
Only to carom swiftly to the next.
Now shall not every one of these
Sometime discover
If his prop fall down
He falls as well?
Listen, beautiful child,
I would carve my destiny alone!
As a keen-eyed captain steers his ship
By the light of the far north star
Awake, alert, alone.
So, laughing girl
Whom I call to my side,
Hear!
I stand by myself.
I can love, aye, with a fierce flame,
But I love none so much, no man, no woman,
That his passing or his forgetfulness
Shall undo me.
I and my soul
Stand beyond the need of comforting.
None has power to make me
Helpless, incomplete, beholden.
Now, bright child, golden girl,
Warm woman with the fluttering hands
Whom desire has brought,
Will you come to my arms?
I will give you love,
No other lover can give you love like mine,
Come!
Ah, that is well:
Quick, your mouth,
And then forward, singing!
But,--if you had not come,
Laughing girl,
I would have gone forward singing
Alone!
_BARBERRIES_
You say I touch the barberries
As a lover his mistress?
What a curious fancy!
One must be delicate, you know,
They have bitter thorns.
You say my hand is hurt?
Oh no, it was my breast,
It was crushed and pressed--
I mean--why yes, of course, of course--
There is a bright drop, isn’t there?
Right on my finger,
Just the color of a barberry,
But it comes from my heart.
Do you love barberries?
In the autumn
When the sun’s desire
Touches them to a glory of crimson and gold?
I love them best then.
There is something splendid about them;
They are not afraid
Of being warm and glad and bold,
They flush joyously
Like a cheek under a lover’s kiss,
They bleed cruelly
Like a dagger wound in the breast,
They flame up madly for their little hour,
Knowing they must die--
Do you love barberries?
_TWO PATHS_
Today it seemed God bent to me and said,
“Pilgrim, you are weary, are you unaware
You have two paths?”
And I answered, wondering,
“Tell me of them that I may choose.”
And God said
“You have set your face towards a far goal,
To be attained
Only with heartbreak of endeavor.
It is written should you choose this path
Many times you shall faint and falter,
Raising yourself with bruised hands
And bewildered eyes,
And when at last
You see the ending of the journey,
Before eternal silence comes,
You shall hear
A little clamouring and tinkling of men’s voices:
But you will smile quietly
And turn away.”
“And the other path?” I asked.
In a different voice God said,
“The other path is short,
It ends but a little way ahead,
There is no attainment, no acclaim;
Only darkness, quiet,
Rest from desire,
And memory
In the heart of the beloved.”
And I answered,
“I have chosen.”
_WHEN YOU COME_
(“There was a girl with him for a time. She took him to her room when
he was desolate and warmed him and took care of him. One day he could
not find her. For many weeks he walked constantly in that locality in
search of her.”--From Life of Francis Thompson.)
When you come tonight
To our small room
You will look and listen--
I shall not be there.
You will cry out your dismay
To the unheeding gods;
You will wait and look and listen--
I shall not be there.
There is a part of you I love
More than your hands in mine at rest;
There is a part of you I love
More than your lips upon my breast.
There is a part of you I wound
Even in my caress;
There is a part of you withheld
I may not possess.
There is a part of you I hate--
Your need of me
When you would be alone,
Alone and free.
When you come tonight
To our small room
You will look and listen--
I shall not be there.
_REST_
Often I have listened curiously
To the sound of a simple word
All seemed to know,
And wondered why I could not find
Its meaning.
Often I have dreamed
Of that great Nothingness,
That Silence which shall come,
And asked if that
Were rest.
To the unquiet sea
I have gone down
Seeking companionship,
Calling out to the beating waves
“Do you too ask for rest?”
Of the wind and the rain
Singing their requiem
Over dead summer
I have asked,
“You will be quiet soon;
Where do you find rest?”
To the white moon
Sailing serenely
I have said,
“You are dim and old and cold;
Have you found rest?”
To the eternal sun
Uprising solemnly
I have cried out,
“And this new day you bring,
Will it hold my rest?”
Once to my heart tumultuous
There came a gleaming,
A far prophecy that like a fairy benison descending
Gave answer to my questioning--
Strange message lit with wonderment--
“Deep in the city’s labyrinthine heart
There shall be moonlight for us and white song.”
So ran the words,
And like a diapason of sweet sound
Across the stillness,
Echoing, profound,
There crept the promise,--rest.
And then--you came.
I turned to find your hand, your arms, your breast.
Deep in the city’s labyrinthine heart
You held me close, at rest.
_MORITURUS TE SALUTO_
When one goes hence
By his own hand alone
We look aside.
In a hushed tone
We say--“What pain has gone before
The sudden end?”
But I shall go
Because I know
No longer can the earth
Hold any other joy for me
Like this.
One night we had together,
Only one.
In all the years
For all my tears
The gods have given me
Only one night,
And it is over.
Now I am glad to go
Into the Silence.
I have breathed the heights.
I should but know
The level ways and paths
Of little valleys,
I will not, this should be.
So, Beloved,
Remember
It is because of happiness,
Not sorrow,
That I go.
From the far coolness
Of eternity
I shall look out
To the grave stars,
Singing.
_FLASHLIGHTS_
The winter dusk creeps up the Avenue
With biting cold.
Behind bright window panes
In gauzy garments
Waxen ladies smile
As shirt-sleeved men
Hustle them off their pedestals for the night.
Along the Avenue
A girl comes hurrying,
Holding her shawl.
She stops to look in at the window.
“Oh Gee!” she says, “look at the chiffon muff!”
A whimpering dog
Falters up to cringe against her skirt.
A man in his shirt sleeves lolls against a tree,
His feet stick out,
His hands lie on the grass, palms up.
He stares ahead.
Now and again he turns himself
As from the enshrouding darkness forms emerge
Dragging their feet, arms interlocked,
Wan faces raised to the flare of light.
Sometimes these kiss,
Scream in brief laughter, or throw their bodies
Prone on the welcoming earth.
The man watches them, then turns his head,
Gets himself upon his feet
And walks away.
Candles toppling sideways in tomato cans
Sputter and sizzle at head and foot.
The gaudy patterns of a patch-work quilt
Lie smooth and straight
Save where upswelling over a silent shape.
A man in high boots stirs something on a rusty stove
Round and round and round,
As a new cry like a bleating lamb’s
Pierces his brain.
After a time the man busies himself
With hammer and nails and rough-hewn lumber
But fears to strike a blow.
Outside the moonlight sleeps white upon the plain
And the bark of a coyote shrills across the night.
A woman rocking, rocking, rocking,
A small hand waving, nestling:
Outside, lights blurred to starriness
And summer rain.
* * * * *
Little waves slap softly and monotonously
Against the pier:
A triangle of geese honk by;
On the darkening sand
Fresh lines traced with a stick--
“I am sorry, Forgive,”
And a little oblong mound with a cross of twigs.
Near by a girl’s hat and dainty scarf.
A smell of musk
Comes to him pungently through the darkness.
On the screen
Scenes from foreign lands
Released by the censor
Shimmer in cool black and white
Historic information.
He shifts his seat sideways, sideways--
A seeking hand creeps to another hand,
And a leaping flame
Illuminates the historic information.
Within the room, sounds of weeping
Low and hushed:
Without, a man, beautiful with the beauty
Of young strength,
Holds pitifully to the handle of the door.
He hiccoughs and turns away
While a hand organ plays
“The hours I spend with thee, dear heart.”
A pink feather atop of a greying white straw hat,
A peek-a-boo waist and skirt showing a line of stocking
Above white shoes,
Stand in front of a judge
Who leans over a desk of golden oak
And summons forward a sulky, slouching boy.
“You are required by this Court,” says the judge,
“To pay over to this woman
One-third of your weekly wage
For the support of your innocent child.”
And the clerk of the court calls out
“Next on the docket?”
_FLOODGATES_
THE MAN
Dear, try to understand.
I wish that you could see,
Now I am free
Of all the fret and torment,
The little daily miseries of love,
That I can take you in my arms at night
With a quick tenderness,
With a new delight,
Yet go my way untroubled if I do not find you,
Forgetting in my zest for many things
There is a you.
I wonder if you can ever understand?
Do you not know
That I would go
Forth now to meet life’s great adventuring
Alone?
I would be unloosed from why and wherefore,
I would not be stayed
By sorrowing or rejoicing,
Even the enchantment of your nearness,
Or your touch at night
Is powerless any more
To come between my loneliness and me.
They say that prisoners grow to love their chains,
So now, after long years of bitter reaching out,
Of crying to the winds
And clasping only shadows of my dreaming,
I love my torment.
We are such old companions,
Loneliness and I!
We have learned to ask but little of each other;
There is no longer any turning away
With hurt, averted eyes;
So, Beloved,
Let me keep my loneliness for friend,
The only friend I trust.
When you and I first met
And looked to each other’s eyes
Our swift desire,
I gave with reckless hands
My life into your keeping.
Upon your eyes, your words, your body’s grace
I hung, poor fool, a-tremble;
For you had power
To blot the brightening day,
To irradiate the night,
With your sweet hands
To lift me to the mountains where the spirits danced
Or drag me through a hell of furious pain.
And you would like to have that power again
In your two hands?
Oh no, my little one,
No, my pretty one,
Henceforward
For all your sighing
You shall but have my sudden, strong caresses,
My tenderness, my love,
But know
That out, out, out I go
Into the sun
Alone.
THE WOMAN
So, Man of mine!
I may henceforward ask
Only your strong caresses?
I am your little one,
I am your pretty one,
Even your Beloved, now that you are free
Of little fret and torment.
I may give you pleasuring,
But no more pain.
Is that your meaning?
I would be clear at last.
Oh Man of mine,
We are standing face to face,
Now let there shine
The search-light of our speech
Across the night of silence.
Before us two
There lie dim years for traversing,
Behind, a mist
Through which we long time groped
With futile hands,
And now, today, we meet.
Dear, do I not know
That there were gleams across the darkness--
Swift lightenings
Towards which we onward pressed
As, for an instant,
Seeing our far quest
Within our grasp?
Perhaps these were your beckoning hands,
Your dancing spirits on the mountain peaks,
But not for long we saw them.
And now today it seems
That I must find
What shall be done
When you go out alone
Into the sun.
I have so often watched your silent face,
Your quiet mouth,
Your smooth, white brow,
And longed for speech!
I have so often wished to tell
Of pent-up treasures in my breast
You could not find!
I would have given you such golden wealth
Had you but come!
Had you but said “I want your all.”
But you were dumb.
You went your ways silently
And never asked my gift.
Dear, day by day I lifted to your lips
A chalice brimming with rich wine,
And you but sipped a little and turned away,
And the wine was spilled.
The years have passed:
There may not be upgathering
Of wasted days,
As seasons flushed and waned
We have sown and reaped and harvested.
Now, what shall come?
I cannot go forth
As you, into the Sun
Alone,
I cannot take
My loneliness by the hand
For chosen friend, as you.
I am a woman and I want
Not tenderness,
Not strong caresses only,
But the soul of you,
My Man.
THE MAN
Dear, give me your hands,
Look into my eyes and tell me
If you can find the soul of me.
I think it has gone questing.
Call it back!
Recapture the wingèd thing,
And I will give it gladly
Into your keeping.
But, dear heart, be fearful--
Souls are delicate.
What if mine died long since,
What time it gave up seeking
To find your own?
Your eyes are wet, forgive!
Let there be no more hurting,
Joy there has been in our meeting.
I would banish weeping.
Let the still waters wash away pain
Into the sea of forgetting.
Still may we look into each other’s eyes,
Still answer to the senses’ quick demand,
But as the years have marked us in their passing
So must we go onward--
Hand in hand still,
Yet alone.
_CHLOROFORM_
(_Written in collaboration with Arthur Davison Ficke._)
A sickening odour, treacherously sweet,
Steals through my sense heavily.
Above me leans an ominous shape,
Fearful, white-robed, hooded and masked in white.
The pits of his eyes
Peer like the portholes of an armoured ship,
Merciless, keen, inhuman, dark.
The hands alone are of my kindred;
Their slender strength, that soon shall press the knife
Silver and red, now lingers slowly above me,
The last links with my human world ...
... The living daylight
Clouds and thickens.
Flashes of sudden clearness stream before me,--and then
A menacing wave of darkness
Swallows the glow with floods of vast and indeterminate grey.
But in the flashes
I see the white form towering,
Dim, ominous,
Like some apostate monk whose will unholy
Has renounced God; and now
In this most awful secret laboratory
Would wring from matter
Its stark and appalling answer.
At the gates of a bitter hell he stands, to wrest with eager fierceness
More of that dark forbidden knowledge
Wherefrom his soul draws fervor to deny.
The clouds have grown thicker; they sway around me
Dizzying, terrible, gigantic; pressing in upon me
Like a thousand monsters of the deep with formless arms.
I cannot push them back, I cannot!
From far, far off, a voice I knew long ago
Sounds faintly thin and clear.
Suddenly in a desperate rebellion I strive to answer,--
I strive to call aloud,--
But darkness chokes and overcomes me:
None may hear my soundless cry.
A depth abysmal opens,
Receives, enfolds, engulfs me,--
Wherein to sink at last seems blissful
Even though to deeper pain....
O respite and peace of deliverance!
The silence
Lies over me like a benediction.
As in the earth’s first pale creation-morn
Among winds and waters holy
I am borne as I longed to be borne.
I am adrift in the depths of an ocean grey
Like seaweed, desiring solely
To drift with the winds and waters; I sway
Into their vast slow movements; all the shores
Of being are laved by my tides.
I am drawn out toward spaces wonderful and holy
Where peace abides,
And into golden æons far away.
But over me
Where I swing slowly,
Bodiless in the bodiless sea,
Very far,
Oh very far away,
Glimmeringly
Hangs a ghostly star
Toward whose pure beam I must flow resistlessly.
Well do I know its ray!
It is the light beyond the worlds of space,
By groping, sorrowing man yet never known--
The goal where all men’s blind and yearning desire
Has vainly longed to go
And has not gone:--
Where Eternity has its blue-walled dwelling-place,
And the crystal ether opens endlessly
To all the recessed corners of the world,
Like liquid fire
Pouring a flood through the dimness revealingly;
Where my soul shall behold, and in lightness of wonder rise higher
Out of the shadow that long ago
Around me with mortality was furled.
I rise where have winds
Of the night never flown;
Shaken with rapture
Is the vault of desire.
The weakness that binds
Like a shadow is gone.
The bonds of my capture
Are sundered with fire!
This is the hour
When the wonders open!
The lightning-winged spaces
Through which I fly
Accept me, a power
Whose prisons are broken--
* * * * *
... But the wonder wavers--
The light goes out.
I am in the void no more; changes are imminent.
Time with a million beating wings
Deafens the air in migratory flight
Like the roar of seas--and is gone ...
And a silence
Lasts deafeningly.
In darkness and perfect silence
I wander groping in my agony,
Far from the light lost in the upper ether--
Unknown, unknowable, so nearly mine.
And the ages pass by me,
Thousands each instant, yet I feel them all
To the last second of their dragging time.
Thus have I striven always
Since the world began.
And when it dies I still must struggle ...
* * * * *
The voice I knew so long ago, like a muffled echo under the sea
Is coming nearer.
Strong hands
Grip mine.
And words whose tones are warm with some forgotten consolation,
Some unintelligible hope,
Drag me upward in horrible mercy;
And the cold once-familiar daylight glares into my eyes.
He stands there,
The white apostate monk,
Speaking low lying words to soothe me.
And I lift my voice out of its vales of agony
And laugh in his face,
Mocking him with astonishment of wonder.
For he has denied;
And I have come so near, so near to knowing....
Then as his hand touches me gently, I am drawn up from the lonely abysses,
And suffer him to lead me back into the green valleys of the living.
_THE BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY_
Where are you, Dear?
What is it that I hold--
A shape, a phantom, who will not ease my pain?
O Beloved! My beloved!
What is it comes between our seeking arms?
Lip to lip we press
And breast to breast,
Straining to overleap the barrier,
And all the while we know
We are apart.
We know tomorrow we shall be
More horribly
Alone.
Do you remember
When we first cried out each to each?
How the valleys rang with laughter and gay words
And eager promises?
Do you remember how we told each other
Pain was over,
That nothing now could come
We could not still with kisses?
Do you remember those first days
When the world was lost in a dream and a forgetting
And eternity was ours?
Then, as the years followed,
Do you remember how we found
That pain must be?
How, heavy-hearted, we gazed bewildered
Into each other’s eyes,
Asking, why?
One night you would not speak,
And when I pressed you for your cause of silence
You said “I tried to tell you once
My heart’s dim heaviness,
But you are a man, you can never understand.”
And then I saw
That we were far away from one another,
For I had thought the same.
And after
In a quick ache of sympathy
We kissed and clung,
And then you slept.
I heard the little sobbing breaths
Like a hurt child’s
Of a loneliness I had no power to soothe.
We asked so much!
We looked to each other as some look to God,
And when God came not
And our lifted hands were empty
We cried out that love was dead.
We have grown patient since
And pitifully wise,
We see how little may be given,
And we are thankful
Lest there be nothing.
Yet even when I lay my wearied head
Upon your knees and fall asleep
To waken with your hand on my hot brow,
Then, when I thank God, if there be a God,
For you--
We are apart.
Yesterday I watched you
Protect the child against the winter cold.
Warmly you wrapped him
While his baby face laughed back at you
From its frame of softest fur:
I think a great hand comes and wraps us so,
Each in his loneliness as in an enfolding garment,
That we shall be ready
To make our last great journeying
Alone.
As the years go onward
Little by little we turn
And draw away from love’s dominion,
Little by little we loose the clinging hands
That hinder from adventuring,
Oftener and more often
We go apart
To ask ourselves
The inevitable question.
The friends we seek are questioners
Who strive, like us, to cross with thoughts
The illimitable void:
Therefore, Dear, give over
Trying to comfort,
Give over the wish to yield me
All I need--
Once long ago I lost myself in you,
Once long ago I was but part of you,
Bereft without you,
Mad for lack of you,
Now I am I,
Preparing to go onward
When the end shall come
Alone.
III
STORIES IN METRE
_THE PRISONER_
“We had a prisoner once,” the Warden said,
“Who was no common man. I could not say
To make it clear, where lay the difference,
And yet, and yet,--something was there I know.”
“Tell me of him,” I said, drawing a chair,
Knowing that in the old man’s heart there lay
Many a story.
“Willingly,” he answered,
“Yet when all’s said, you’ll know no more than I
Why his words puzzle me; why, when I pass
His cell, I always think that I can see
His eyes, his following eyes, that seemed to ask
Over and over again, some kind of question.”
He thought a moment, then began his story
As if by careful measuring of his words
He tried to make me see what he found dim.
“You know the row of cells,” he said, “they built
To make the fourth row ’round the hollow square?
They front the East, and so I put him there.
I’d hardly like to say what was the reason,--
It seems so foolish; but, the day he came,
Just as the big door opened, I had seen
Him turn his head, and this is what he said:
‘And it is I,--I, who have loved the Dawn!’
A queer thing, wasn’t it? I suppose he thought
That he would never see it any more.
“It’s strange how little things come back to you!
I can remember when he saw his cell
He bent his head, making a kind of greeting,
Then quickly stepped across and glanced around:
‘And this is what I have to call my home’
Was what he thought, I guess. It always seems
To sicken me somehow, to show ’em in,
The hopeful ones the most, I know so well
How soon the eager look will disappear!”
“But tell me what he was in prison for?”
I said, and met the old man’s quick “What for?
Oh well, there wasn’t room enough outside.
Why do you want to know? What does it matter?
He was no common man. You’d think by now
I’d stop my foolish bothering. I’m used
Enough, God knows, to tangled human threads--
Oh what’s the use to try and tell it now?
I’m such a fool! I can’t go by his cell
Without the wondering clutching at me here!”
He laid his hand upon his breast; I thought
His mind had dwelt too long with pain, and now
His fancies troubled him. “Mad then, perhaps?”
I asked, and saw my blundering words had been
Salt to a wound. He turned away and said
“No, no, he was not that, not mad,” and stepped
Beside a shelf of little useless things
Fumbling among them.