like pie-plates. The stars fell
one by one into his eyes and burnt
There is a geography which holds
its hands just so far from the breast
and pushes you away, crying so.
He went on to strange hills where
the stones were still warm from feet,
and then on and on. There were clouds
at his knees, his eyelashes
had grown thick from the colds,
as the fur of the bear does
in winter. Perhaps, he thought, I am
asleep, but he did not freeze to death.
There were little green needles
everywhere. And then manna fell.
He knew, above all, that he was now
approved, and his strenght increased.
He saw the world below him, brilliant
as a floor, and steaming with gold,
with distance. There were occasionally
rifts in the cloud where the face
of a woman appeared, frowning. He
had gone higher. He wore ermine.
He thought, why did I come? and then,
I have come to rule! The chamois came.
The chamois found him and they came
in droves to humiliate him. Alone,
in the clouds, he was humiliated.
For Grace, After a Party
You do not always know what I am feeling.
Last night in the warm spring air while I was
blazing my tirade against someone who doesn't interest
me, it was love for you that set me afire,
and isn't it odd? for in rooms full of
strangers my most tender feelings writhe and
bear the fruit of screaming. Put out your hand,
isn't there
an ashtray, suddenly, there? beside
the bed? And someone you love enters the room
and says wouldn't
you like the eggs a little
different today?
And when they arrive they are
just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather
is holding.
On Looking at "La Grande Jatte," the Czar Wept Anew
1 He paces the blue rug. It is the end of summer, the end of his excursions in the sun. He may now close his eyes as if they were tired flowers and feel no sense of duty towards the corridor, the recherche, the trees; they are all on his face, a lumpy portrait, a painted desert. He is crying. Only a few feet away the grass is green, the rug he sees is grass; and people fetch each other in and out of shadows there, chuckling and symmetrical.
The sun has left him wide-eyed and alone, hysterical
for snow, the blinding bed, the gun. "Flowers, flowers,
flowers!" he sneers, and echoes fill the spongy trees.
He cannot, after all, walk up the wall. The skylight
is sealed. For why? for a change in the season,
for a refurbishing of the house. He wonders if,
when the music is over, he should not take down
the drapes, take up the rug, and join his friends
out there near the lake, right here beside the lake!
"O friends of my heart!" and they will welcome him
with open umbrellas, fig bars, handmade catapults!
Despite the card that came addressed to someone else,
the sad fisherman of Puvis, despite his own precious
ignorance and the wild temper of the people, he'll try!
2 Now, sitting in the brown satin chair, he plans a little meal for friends. So! the steam rising from his Pullman kitchen fogs up all memories of Seurat, the lake, the summer; these are over for the moment, beyond the gusets, the cooking sherry and the gin; such is the plate for sporadic chitchat and meat. But as the cocktail warms his courageous cockles he lets the dinner burn, his eyes widen with sleet, like a cloudburst fall the summer, the lake and the voices! He steps into the mirror, refusing to be anyone else, and his guest observe the waves break.
3 He must send a telegram from the Ice Palace, although he knows the muzhiks don't read; "If I am ever to find these trees meaningful I must have you by the hand. As it is, they strtch dusty fingers into an obscure sky, and the snow looks up like a face dirtied with tears. Should I cry out and see what happens? There could only be a stranger wandering in this landscape, cold, unfortunate, himself froze fast in winter eyes." Explicit Rex
Romanze, or The Music Students
1 The rain, its tiny pressure on your scalp. like ants passing the door of a tobacconist. "Hello!" they cry, their noses glistening. They are humming a scherzo ny Tcherepnin. They are carrying violin cases. With their feelers knitting over their heads the blue air, they appear at the door of the Conservatory and cry "Ah!" at the honey of its outpourings. They stand in the street and hear the curds drifting on the top of the milk of Conservatory.
2 They had thought themselves in Hawaii when suddenly the pines, trembling with nightfulness, shook them out of their sibyllance. The surf was full of outriggers racing like slits in the eye of the sun, yet the surf was full of great black logs plunging, and then the surf was full of needless. The surf was bland and white, as pine trees are white when, in Paradise, no wind is blowing.
3 In Ann Arbor on Sunday afternoon at four-thirty they went to an organ recital: Messiaen, Hindemith, Czerny. And in their ears a great voice said "To have great music we must commission it. To commission great music we must have great commissioners." There was a blast! and summer was over
4 Rienzi! A rabbit is sitting in the hedge! it is a brown stone! it is the month of October! it is an orange bassoon! They've benn standing on this mountain for forty-eight hours without flinching. Well, they are soldiers, I guess, and it is all marching magnificently by.
The Three-Penny Opera
I think a lot about
the Peachums: Polly
and all the rest are
free and fair. Her jewels
have price tags in case
they want to change
hands, and