NIGHTMARE AND SOMETHING DELICATE

You mutter, with your face Pleading for more room because It has scanned a panorama: You mutter, with every difference On your face an error in size Mesmerized by the sight of a sky-line: “Life is a nightmare and something delicate.” Lady, they have made a world for you, And if you dare to leave it They will flagellate you With the bones of dead men’s thoughts, And five senses, five termagants Snapping at the uneasy mind. “No, five riotous flirts,” You say, “and each one has A thick blandishment to master the mind.” Yes, lady, through the bold disarrangement of words Life acquires with great foresight An interesting nervousness. But O lady with a decadent music Somehow silent in lines of flesh, Finding your face too small, Finding the earth too small, Have they not informed you That crowding life into seven words Is an insincere and minor epigram? And have they not reprimanded you Because you fail to observe Their vile and fervent spontaneity, These howlers of earthly shrouds? And have they neglected to drive The bluster of their knuckles against your face Because you rush from the leg and arm Anecdotes of microscopical towns, Bandying with a fantasy Which they call thin and valueless? “Life is a nightmare and something delicate,” You repeat, and then, “O yes, they have done these things To me because I take not seriously The interval between two steps Made by Death, who has grown a little tired. When Death recovers his vigor The intervals will become Shorter and shorter until No more men are alive. But now they have their chance. The wild, foul fight of life Delights in refreshing phrases— Swift-pouring tranquillities and ecstasies Atoning for the groaning stampede That desecrates the light Between each dawn and twilight. And those who stand apart Use the edged art of their minds To cut the struggling pack of bodies Into naked, soiled distinctness.” Lady, do not let them hear you. You are too delicate— Deliberately, nimbly, remotely, strongly Delicate—and you will remind them Too much of Death, who is also The swiftly fantastic compression Of every adjective and adverb Marching to nouns that live Beyond the intentions of men. Men are not able, lady, To strike his face, and in vengeance They will smear your face With the loose, long hatred of their words. I will wash your face With new metaphors and similes, Telling carefully with my hands That I love you not for your skin, And every bird at twilight Will be enviously astonished At your face now insubstantial Indeed, you have an irony That ironically doubts Whether its power is supreme, And at such times you accept The adequate distraction Of cold and shifting fantasy. This is your mood and mine, And with it we open the window To look upon the night. The night, with distinguished coherence, Is saying yes to the soul And mending its velvet integrity Torn by one forlorn Animal that bounds From towns and villages. The night is Blake in combat With an extraordinary wolf Whose head can take the mobile Protection of a smile; Whose heart contains the ferocious Lies of ice and fire; Whose heart with stiff and sinuous Promises swindles the lips and limbs of men; Whose heart persuades its confusion To welcome the martyred certainties Of cruelty and kindness; Whose brain is but a calmness Where the falsehoods of earth Can fashion masks of ideas. Welcome the wolf. Bring lyrics to fondle his hair. Summon your troops of words And exalt his gasping contortions. Lady, it is my fear That makes me give you these commands. Men will force upon you The garland of their spit If you fail to glorify, Or eagerly disrobe, The overbearing motives of their flesh. And every irony of yours Will be despised unless A hand of specious warmth Directs the twist of your blades. O lady, you are flashing detachment Clad in exquisitely careful Fantasy, and on your face Pity and irony unite To form the nimble light of contemplations. Men will dread you as they fear Death, the Ultimate Preciosity. Stay with me within this chamber And tell me that your heart Is near to a spiral of pain Curving perfectly From the squirming of a world. See, you have made me luminous With this news, and my heart, Fighting to be original, Ends its struggle in yours. Turning, we trace a crescent Of conscious imagination Upon the darkness of this room. Night and window still remain. Night, spiritual acrobat, Evades with great undulations The moans and exultations of men. His madly elastic invitation To the souls of men Gathers up the imagination Of one poet, starving in a room Where rats and scandals ravish the light. With conscious combinations of words 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 resurrection in the inner dungeon ... Poet and Freudian leave their seats To gain the sleek encouragement of supper, And only the priest remains. From the lumbering torture of years Men have wrenched a double hope, God and Christ, and sought to calm The strained deceptions of their flesh. Lady, the tarrying soul, Patient and flexible, Must often smile at the simple, Crude anticipations of men. This priest smiles and is sleepy, Thinking of coffee with cognac, And the warm, assuring duty of prayer. The outer smile is ever An unconscious obliteration. Ah, lady, logics, masks, And ecstasies forever Spurn the pregnant, black Mystery that lets them spend The tense importance of a moment. Only fantasy and irony, Incongruous brothers, Can lift themselves above The harassed interval that Death permits.