1
Carry clapping bundles of lath-strips, adjust, dig, saw on a diagonal,
hammer a thousand ends fast and discover afterward the lattice-arbor
top’s two clean lines in a dust of dew. There are days when leaves have
knife’s edges and one sees only eye-pupils, fixes every catchpenny in a
shop window and every wire against the sky but—goes puzzled from vista to
vista in his own house staring under beds for God knows what all.
* * * * *
_A lattice screen say fifty feet long by seven high, such a thing as
is built to cut off some certain part of a yard from public view, is
surprisingly expensive to put up. The wooden strips alone, if they are
placed at all close together must be figured solid, as if it were a board
fence. Then there are the posts, the frames, the trimming, the labor and
last of all the two coats of paint. Is it a wonder the artisan cannot
afford more than the luxury of these calculations._
2
Imperceptibly your self shakes free in all its brutal significance, feels
its subtle power renewed and abashed at its covered lustihood breaks
to the windows and draws back before the sunshine it sees there as before
some imagined figure that would be there if—ah if—But for a moment your
hand rests upon the palace window sill, only for a moment.
3
It is not fair to be old, to put on a brown sweater. It is not just
to walk out of a November evening bare headed and with white hair in the
wind. Oh the cheeks are ruddy enough and the grin broad enough, it’s
not that. Worse is to ride a wheel, a glittering machine that runs
without knowing to move. It is no part of the eternal truth to wear white
canvas shoes and a pink coat. It is a damnable lie to be fourteen. The
curse of God is on her head! Who can speak of justice when young men
wear round hats and carry bundles wrapped in paper. It is a case for
the supreme court to button a coat in the wind, no matter how icy. Lewd
to touch an arm at a crossing; the shame of it screams to the man in a
window. The horrible misery brought on by the use of black shoes is more
than the wind will ever swallow. To move at all is worse than murder,
worse than Jack the Ripper. It’s lies, walking, spitting, breathing,
coughing lies that bloom, shine sun, shine moon. Unfair to see or be
seen, snatch-purses work. Eat hands full of ashes, angels have lived on
it time without end. Are you better than an angel? Let judges giggle
to each other over their benches and use dirty towels in the anteroom.
Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw! at the heads of felons.… There was a baroness lived in
Hungary bathed twice monthly in virgin’s blood.
* * * * *
_A mother will love her children most grotesquely. I do not mean by that
more than the term “perversely” perhaps more accurately describes. Oh I
mean the most commonplace of mothers. She will be most willing toward
that daughter who thwarts her most and not toward the little kitchen
helper. So where one is mother to any great number of people he will
love best perhaps some child whose black and peculiar hair is an exact
replica of that of the figure in Velasques’, Infanta Maria Theresa or
some Italian matron whose largeness of manner takes in the whole street.
These things relate to inner perfections which it would be profitless to
explain._