1
This is a slight stiff dance to a waking baby whose arms have been lying
curled back above his head upon the pillow, making a flower—the eyes
closed. Dead to the world! Waking is a little hand brushing away dreams.
Eyes open. Here’s a new world.
* * * * *
_There is nothing the sky-serpent will not eat. Sometimes it stoops to
gnaw Fujiyama, sometimes to slip its long and softly clasping tongue
about the body of a sleeping child who smiles thinking its mother is
lifting it._
2
Security, solidity—we laugh at them in our clique. It is tobacco to
us, this side of her leg. We put it in our samovar and make tea of it.
You see the stuff has possibilities. You think you are opposing the
rich but the truth is you’re turning toward authority yourself, to say
nothing of religion. No, I do not say it means nothing. Why everything
is nicely adjusted to our moods. But I would rather describe to you what
I saw in the kitchen last night—overlook the girl a moment: there over
the sink (1) this saucepan holds all, (2) this colander holds most,
(3) this wire sieve lets most go and (4) this funnel holds nothing.
You appreciate the progression. What need then to be always laughing?
Quit phrase making—that is, not of course—but you will understand me
or if not—why—come to breakfast sometime around evening on the fourth
of January any year you please; always be punctual where eating is
concerned.
* * * * *
_My little son’s improvisations exceed mine: a round stone to him’s a
loaf of bread or “this hen could lay a dozen golden eggs”. Birds fly
about his bedstead; giants lean over him with hungry jaws; bears roam
the farm by summer and are killed and quartered at a thought. There
are interminable stories at eating time full of bizarre imagery, true
grotesques, pigs that change to dogs in the telling, cows that sing,
roosters that become mountains and oceans that fill a soup plate.
There are groans and growls, dun clouds and sunshine mixed in a huge
phantasmagoria that never rests, never ceases to unfold into—the day’s
poor little happenings. Not that alone. He has music which I have not.
His tunes follow no scale, no rhythm—alone the mood in odd ramblings up
and down, over and over with a rigor of invention that rises beyond the
power to follow except in some more obvious flight. Never have I heard so
crushing a critique as those desolate inventions, involved half-hymns,
after his first visit to a Christian sunday school._
3
This song is to Phyllis! By this deep snow I know it’s springtime, not
ring time! Good God no! The screaming brat’s a sheep bleating, the
rattling crib-side sheep shaking a bush. We are young! We are happy! says
Colin. What’s an icy room and the sun not up? This song is to Phyllis.
Reproduction lets death in, says Joyce. Rot, say I. To Phyllis this
song is!
* * * * *
_That which is known has value only by virtue of the dark. This cannot
be otherwise. A thing known passes out of the mind into the muscles, the
will is quit of it, save only when set into vibration by the forces of
darkness opposed to it._