The poet bounds through space with Night.
Together they observe
The bleeding, cheated mob
Of bodies robbed by one quick thrill.
Cold, exact, and fanciful,
They drop the new designs of words
Upon a vastly obvious contortion.
Poet and night can see
No difference between
The peasant, groveling and marred,
And smoother men who cringe more secretly.
Yet they give these men
The imaginary distinctions of words.
Compassionate poet and night.
You say: “With glaring details
Attended by the voices of men,
Morning will attack the poet.
Men will brandish adjectives.
Tenuous! Stilted! Artificial!
Dreams of warm permanence
Will grasp the little weapons
Furnished by the servant-mind.
Dreams … ah, lady, let us leave
The more precise and polished dream
Of our sadness, and surpass
The scoundrel, beggar, fool, and braggart
Fused into a loose convulsion
Called by men amusement.
Laughter is the explosive trouble
Of a soul that shakes the flesh.
Misunderstanding the signal
Men fly to an easy delight.
Causes, obscure and oppressed,
Cleave the flesh and become
Raped by earthly intentions.
Thus the surface rôles of men
Throw themselves upon the stranger,
Changing his cries with theirs.
The aftermath is a smile
Relishing the past occurrence.
Lady, since you desire
To clutch the meaning of this sound and pause,
Laugh and smile with me more sadly
And with that attenuated, cold
Courage never common to men.
Another window is behind us,
Needing much our laugh and smile.
II
That metaphysical prank
Known as chance—overwhelming
Lack of respect for bodies
And the position of objects—
Gathers three men and arranges them
Side by side in a street-car.
Freudian, poet, and priest—
Ah, lady, they have not lost
The unreal snobbishness
With which their different minds
Withdraw from one another.
Their thought does not desire
Only to be distinct
And adventurous.
They must also maintain
An extreme aloofness;
Throw the obliterating adjective;
Fix a rock and perch upon it.
Chance, the irresistible humorist,
Has lured their bodies together,
With that purity of intention
Not appreciated by men.
With a smile not impersonal
But trampling on small disputes,
We scan the minds and hearts of these men.
The Freudian is meditating
Upon a page within his essay
Where the narrative sleep of a woman
Clarifies her limbs and breast.
He does not know that men
Within their sleep discover
Creative lips and eyes stamped out by life;
That coarse and drooling fish-peddlers
Change to Dostoyevskies;
Morbid morgue-attendants
Snatch the sight of Baudelaire;
Snarling, cloudy cut-throats
Steal the shape of François Villon.
Men within their slumber
Congratulate the poetry,
Prose, and art that life reviles
Within their stifled consciousness.
Their helpless imaginations
Throw off the soiled and cramped
Weight of memorized realities.
The Freudian in the street-car
Ties this freedom to a creed,
Narrowing the broad escape
Until it fits the lunge of limbs.
We leave him, rubbing his nose
To catch the upheaval of triumph,
And look upon the more removed
Body of the poet.
Lady, poets heal
Their slashed and poisoned loneliness
With words that captivate
The bald, surrounding scene:
Words that grip the variations
Crowded underneath each outward form,
Governed by the scrutiny
Of mind, and heart, and soul.
Transcending the rattle of this car
And every other gibberish
Uttered by civilization,
The poet plans his story.
Life, an old man, cryptic and evanescent,
Tries to sell some flowers
To Death, who is young and smiles.
Lady, this poet is also young—
Tingling, candid somersault of youth—
And his words only catch
Surface novelties of style.
Different phrases drape one thought.
“An old man 3 thirds asleep”
Replaces “an old man completely asleep.”
Ah, these endless dressmakers.
They hang a new or faded gown
Upon the shapes of life:
They do not cut beneath the mould
And clutch the huddled forms that wait
For