The farm house lingers, though averse to squareWith the new city street it has to wearA number in. But what about the brookThat held the house as in an elbow-crook?I ask as one who knew the brook, its strengthAnd impulse, having dipped a finger-lengthAnd made it leap my knuckle, having tossedA flower to try its currents where they crossed.The meadow grass could be cemented downFrom growing under pavements of a town;The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.Is water wood to serve a brook the same?How else dispose of an immortal forceNo longer needed? Staunch it at its sourceWith cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrownDeep in a sewer dungeon under stoneIn fetid darkness still to live and run—And all for nothing it had ever doneExcept forget to go in fear perhaps.No one would know except for ancient mapsThat such a brook ran water. But I wonderIf, from its being kept forever under,These thoughts may not have risen that so keepThis new-built city from both work and sleep.
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,On a white heal-all, holding up a mothLike a white piece of rigid satin cloth—Assorted characters of death and blightMixed ready to begin the morning right,Like the ingredients of a witches' broth—A snow-drop spider, a flower like froth,And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?What brought the kindred spider to that height,Then steered the white moth thither in the night?What but design of darkness to appal?—If design govern in a thing so small.
And so to-day—they lay him away—the boy nobody knows the name of—the buck private—the unknown soldier—the doughboy who dug under and diedwhen they told him to—that's him.
Down Pennsylvania Avenue to-day the riders go,men and boys riding horses, roses in their teeth,stems of roses, rose leaf stalks, rose dark leaves—the line of the green ends in a red rose flash.
Skeleton men and boys riding skeleton horses,the rib bones shine, the rib bones curve,shine with savage, elegant curves—a jawbone runs with a long white slant,a skull dome runs with a long white arch,bone triangles click and rattle,elbows, ankles, white line slants—shining in the sun, past the White House,past the Treasury Building, Army and Navy Buildings,on to the mystic white Capitol Dome—so they go down Pennsylvania Avenue to-day,skeleton men and boys riding skeleton horses,stems of roses in their teeth,rose dark leaves at their white jaw slants—and a horse laugh question nickers and whinnies,moans with a whistle out of horse head teeth:why? who? where?
("The big fish—eat the little fish—the little fish—eat the shrimps—and the shrimps—eat mud,"—said a cadaverous man—with a black umbrella—spotted with white polka dots—with a missingear—with a missing foot and arms—with a missing sheath of musclessinging to the silver sashes of the sun.)
And so to-day—they lay him away—the boy nobody knows the name of—the buck private—the unknown soldier—the doughboy who dug under and diedwhen they told him to—that's him.
If he picked himself and said, "I am ready to die,"if he gave his name and said, "My country, take me,"then the baskets of roses to-day are for the Boy,the flowers, the songs, the steamboat whistles,the proclamations of the honorable orators,they are all for the Boy—that's him.
If the government of the Republic picked him saying,"You are wanted, your country takes you"—if the Republic put a stethoscope to his heartand looked at his teeth and tested his eyes and said,"You are a citizen of the Republic and a soundanimal in all parts and functions—the Republic takes you"—then to-day the baskets of flowers are all for the Republic,the roses, the songs, the steamboat whistles,the proclamations of the honorable orators—they are all for the Republic.
And so to-day—they lay him away—and an understanding goes—his long sleep shall beunder arms and arches near the Capitol Dome—there is an authorization—he shall have tomb companions—the martyred presidents of the Republic—the buck private—the unknown soldier—that's him.
The man who was war commander of the armies of the Republicrides down Pennsylvania Avenue—The man who is peace commander of the armies of the Republicrides down Pennsylvania Avenue—for the sake of the Boy, for the sake of the Republic.
(And the hoofs of the skeleton horsesall drum soft on the asphalt footing—so soft is the drumming, so soft the roll callof the grinning sergeants calling the roll call—so soft is it all—a camera man murmurs, "Moonshine.")
Look—who salutes the coffin—lays a wreath of remembranceon the box where a buck privatesleeps a clean dry sleep at last—look—it is the highest ranking generalof the officers of the armies of the Republic.
(Among pigeon corners of the Congressional Library—they file documents quietly, casually, all in a day's work—this human document, the buck private nobody knows the name of—they file away in granite and steel—with music and roses, salutes, proclamations of the honorable orators.)
Across the country, between two ocean shore lines,where cities cling to rail and water routes,there people and horses stop in their foot tracks,cars and wagons stop in their wheel tracks—faces at street crossings shine with a silenceof eggs laid in a row on a pantry shelf—among the ways and paths of the flow of the Republicfaces come to a standstill, sixty clockticks count—in the name of the Boy, in the name of the Republic.
(A million faces a thousand miles from Pennsylvania Avenue stay frozen with a look, a clocktick, a moment— skeleton riders on skeleton horses—the nickering high horse laugh, the whinny and the howl up Pennsylvania Avenue: who? why? where?)
(So people far from the asphalt footing of Pennsylvania Avenue look, wonder, mumble—the riding white-jaw phantoms ride hi-eeee, hi-eeee, hi-yi, hi-yi, hi-eeee—the proclamations of the honorable orators mix with the top-sergeants whistling the roll call.)
If when the clockticks counted sixty,when the heartbeats of the Republiccame to a stop for a minute,if the Boy had happened to sit up,happening to sit up as Lazarus sat up, in the story,then the first shivering language to drip off his mouthmight have come as, "Thank God," or "Am I dreaming?"or "What the hell" or "When do we eat?"or "Kill 'em, kill 'em, the..."or "Was that ... a rat ... ran over my face?"or "For Christ's sake, gimme water, gimme water,"or "Blub blub, bloo bloo...."or any bubbles of shell shock gibberishfrom the gashes of No Man's Land.
Maybe some buddy knows,some sister, mother, sweetheart,maybe some girl who sat with him oncewhen a two-horn silver moonslid on the peak of a house-roof gable,and promises lived in the air of the night,when the air was filled with promises,when any little slip-shoe loveycould pick a promise out of the air.
"Feed it to 'em,they lap it up,bull ... bull ... bull,"Said a movie news reel camera man,Said a Washington newspaper correspondent,Said a baggage handler lugging a trunk,Said a two-a-day vaudeville juggler,Said a hanky-pank selling jumping-jacks."Hokum—they lap it up," said the bunch.
And a tall scar-face ball player,Played out as a ball player,Made a speech of his own for the hero boy,Sent an earful of his own to the dead buck private:"It's all safe now, buddy,Safe when you say yes,Safe for the yes-men."
He was a tall scar-face battlerWith his face in a newspaperReading want ads, reading jokes,Reading love, murder, politics,Jumping from jokes back to the want ads,Reading the want ads first and last,The letters of the word JOB, "J-O-B,"Burnt like a shot of bootleg boozeIn the bones of his head—In the wish of his scar-face eyes.
The honorable orators,Always the honorable orators,Buttoning the buttons on their prinz alberts,Pronouncing the syllables "sac-ri-fice,"Juggling those bitter salt-soaked syllables—Do they ever gag with hot ashes in their mouths?Do their tongues ever shrivel with a pain of fireAcross those simple syllables "sac-ri-fice"?
(There was one orator people far off saw.He had on a gunnysack shirt over his bones,And he lifted an elbow socket over his head,And he lifted a skinny signal finger.And he had nothing to say, nothing easy—He mentioned ten million men, mentioned them as having gone west, mentioned them as shoving up the daisies.We could write it all on a postage stamp, what he said.He said it and quit and faded away,A gunnysack shirt on his bones.)
Stars of the night sky,did you see that phantom fadeout,did you see those phantom riders,skeleton riders on skeleton horses,stems of roses in their teeth,rose leaves red on white-jaw slants,grinning along on Pennsylvania Avenue,the top-sergeants calling roll calls—did their horses nicker a horse laugh?did the ghosts of the boney battalionsmove out and on, up the Potomac, over on the Ohioand out to the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Red River,and down to the Rio Grande, and on to the Yazoo,over to the Chattahoochee and up to the Rappahannock?did you see 'em, stars of the night sky?
And so to-day—they lay him away—the boy nobody knows the name of—they lay him away in granite and steel—with music and roses—under a flag—under a sky of promises.
On a mountain-side the real estate agentsPut up signs marking the city lots to be sold there.A man whose father and mother were IrishRan a goat farm half-way down the mountain;He drove a covered wagon years ago,Understood how to handle a rifle,Shot grouse, buffalo, Indians, in a single year,And now was raising goats around a shanty.Down at the foot of the mountainTwo Japanese families had flower farms.A man and woman were in rows of sweet peasPicking the pink and white flowersTo put in baskets and take to the Los Angeles market.They were clean as what they handledThere in the morning sun, the big people and the baby-faces.Across the road, high on another mountain,Stood a house saying, "I am it," a commanding house.There was the home of a motion picture directorFamous for lavish whore-house interiors,Clothes ransacked from the latest designs for womenIn the combats of "male against female."The mountain, the scenery, the layout of the landscape,And the peace of the morning sun as it happened,The miles of houses pocketed in the valley beyond—It was all worth looking at, worth wondering about,How long it might last, how young it might be.
The strong men keep coming on.They go down shot, hanged, sick, broken.They live on, fighting, singing, lucky as plungers.
The strong men ... they keep coming on.The strong mothers pulling them from a dark sea, a great prairie, a long mountain.
Call hallelujah, call amen, call deep thanks.The strong men keep coming on.
This flower is repeatedout of old winds, out ofold times.
The wind repeats these, itmust have these, over andover again.
Oh, windflowers so fresh,Oh, beautiful leaves, herenow again.
The domes overfall to pieces.The stones underfall to pieces.Rain and icewreck the works.The wind keeps, the windflowerskeep, the leaves last,The wind young and strong letsthese last longer than stones.
(Born 1775. Died 1847)
[1]The best account of John Chapman's career, under the name "Johnny Appleseed," is to be found inHarper's Monthly Magazine, November, 1871.
[1]The best account of John Chapman's career, under the name "Johnny Appleseed," is to be found inHarper's Monthly Magazine, November, 1871.
To be read like old leaves on the elm tree of Time.Sifting soft winds with sentence and rhyme.
To be read like old leaves on the elm tree of Time.
Sifting soft winds with sentence and rhyme.
In the days of President Washington,The glory of the nations,Dust and ashes,Snow and sleet,And hay and oats and wheat,Blew west,Crossed the Appalachians,Found the glades of rotting leaves, the soft deer-pastures,The farms of the far-off futureIn the forest.Colts jumped the fence,Snorting, ramping, snapping, sniffing,With gastronomic calculations,Crossed the Appalachians,The east walls of our citadel,And turned to gold-horned unicorns,Feasting in the dim, volunteer farms of the forest.Stripedest, kickingest kittens escaped,Caterwauling "Yankee Doodle Dandy,"Renounced their poor relations,Crossed the Appalachians,And turned to tiny tigersIn the humorous forest.Chickens escapedFrom farmyard congregations,Crossed the Appalachians,And turned to amber trumpetsOn the ramparts of our Hoosiers' nest and citadel,Millennial heraldsOf the foggy mazy forest.Pigs broke loose, scrambled west,Scorned their loathsome stations,Crossed the Appalachians,Turned to roaming, foaming wild boarsOf the forest.The smallest, blindest puppies toddled westWhile their eyes were coming open,And, with misty observations,Crossed the Appalachians,Barked, barked, barkedAt the glow-worms and the marsh lights and the lightning-bugs,And turned to ravening wolvesOf the forest.Crazy parrots and canaries flew west,Drunk on May-time revelations,Crossed the Appalachians,And turned to delirious, flower-dressed fairiesOf the lazy forest.Haughtiest swans and peacocks swept west,And, despite soft derivations,Crossed the Appalachians,And turned to blazing warrior soulsOf the forest,Singing the waysOf the Ancient of Days.And the "Old ContinentalsIn their ragged regimentals,"With bard's imaginations,Crossed the Appalachians.AndA boyBlew westAnd with prayers and incantations,And with "Yankee Doodle Dandy,"Crossed the Appalachians,And was "young John Chapman,"Then"Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed,"Chief of the fastnesses, dappled and vast,In a pack on his back,In a deer-hide sack,The beautiful orchards of the past,The ghosts of all the forests and the groves—In that pack on his back,In that talisman sack,To-morrow's peaches, pears and cherries,To-morrow's grapes and red raspberries,Seeds and tree souls, precious things,Feathered with microscopic wings,All the outdoors the child heart knows,And the apple, green, red, and white,Sun of his day and his night—The apple allied to the thorn,Child of the rose.Porches untrod of forest housesAll before him, all day long,"Yankee Doodle" his marching song;And the evening breezeJoined his psalms of praiseAs he sang the waysOf the Ancient of Days.
Leaving behind august Virginia,Proud Massachusetts, and proud Maine,Planting the trees that would march and trainOn, in his name to the great Pacific,Like Birnam wood to Dunsinane,Johnny Appleseed swept on,Every shackle gone,Loving every sloshy brake,Loving every skunk and snake,Loving every leathery weed,Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed,Master and ruler of the unicorn-ramping forest,The tiger-mewing forest,The rooster-trumpeting, boar-foaming, wolf-ravening forest,The spirit-haunted, fairy-enchanted forest,Stupendous and endless,Searching its perilous waysIn the name of the Ancient of Days.
Painted kings in the midst of the clearingHeard him asking his friends the eaglesTo guard each planted seed and seedling.Then he was a god, to the red man's dreaming;Then the chiefs brought treasures grotesque and fair,—Magical trinkets and pipes and guns,Beads and furs from their medicine-lair,—Stuck holy feathers in his hair,Hailed him with austere delight.The orchard god was their guest through the night.
While the late snow blew from bleak Lake Erie,Scourging rock and river and reed,All night long they made great medicineFor Jonathan Chapman,Johnny Appleseed,Johnny Appleseed;And as though his heart were a wind-blown wheat-sheaf,As though his heart were a new-built nest,As though their heaven house were his breast,In swept the snow-birds singing glory.And I hear his bird heart beat its story,Hear yet how the ghost of the forest shivers,Hear yet the cry of the gray, old orchards,Dim and decaying by the rivers,And the timid wings of the bird-ghosts beating,And the ghosts of the tom-toms beating, beating.
While you read, hear the hoof-beats of deer in the snow.And see, by their track, bleeding footprints we know.
While you read, hear the hoof-beats of deer in the snow.
And see, by their track, bleeding footprints we know.
But he left their wigwams and their love.By the hour of dawn he was proud and stark,Kissed the Indian babes with a sigh,Went forth to live on roots and bark,Sleep in the trees, while the years howled by—
Calling the catamounts by name,And buffalo bulls no hand could tame,Slaying never a living creature,Joining the birds in every game,With the gorgeous turkey gobblers mocking,With the lean-necked eagles boxing and shouting;Sticking their feathers in his hair,—Turkey feathers,Eagle feathers,—Trading hearts with all beasts and weathersHe swept on, winged and wonder-crested,Bare-armed, barefooted, and bare-breasted.
While you read, see conventions of deer go by.The bucks toss their horns, the fuzzy fawns fly.
While you read, see conventions of deer go by.
The bucks toss their horns, the fuzzy fawns fly.
The maples, shedding their spinning seeds,Called to his appleseeds in the ground,Vast chestnut-trees, with their butterfly nations,Called to his seeds without a sound.And the chipmunk turned a "summer-set,"And the foxes danced the Virginia reel;Hawthorne and crab-thorn bent, rain-wet,And dropped their flowers in his night-black hair;And the soft fawns stopped for his perorations;And his black eyes shone through the forest-gleam,And he plunged young hands into new-turned earth,And prayed dear orchard boughs into birth;And he ran with the rabbit and slept with the stream.And he ran with the rabbit and slept with the stream.And so for us he made great medicine,And so for us he made great medicine,In the days of President Washington.
To be read like faint hoof-beats of fawns long goneFrom respectable pasture, and park and lawn,And heartbeats of fawns that are coming againWhen the forest, once more, is the master of men.
To be read like faint hoof-beats of fawns long gone
From respectable pasture, and park and lawn,
And heartbeats of fawns that are coming again
When the forest, once more, is the master of men.
Long, long after,When settlers put up beam and rafter,They asked of the birds: "Who gave this fruit?Who watched this fence till the seeds took root?Who gave these boughs?" They asked the sky,And there was no reply.But the robin might have said,"To the farthest West he has followed the sun,His life and his empire just begun."
Self-scourged, like a monk, with a throne for wages,Stripped like the iron-souled Hindu sages,Draped like a statue, in strings like a scarecrow,His helmet-hat an old tin pan,But worn in the love of the heart of man,More sane than the helm of Tamerlane,Hairy Ainu, wild man of Borneo, Robinson Crusoe—Johnny Appleseed;And the robin might have said,"Sowing, he goes to the far, new West,With the apple, the sun of his burning breast—The apple allied to the thorn,Child of the rose."
Washington buried in Virginia,Jackson buried in Tennessee,Young Lincoln, brooding in Illinois,And Johnny Appleseed, priestly and free,Knotted and gnarled, past seventy years,Still planted on in the woods alone.Ohio and young Indiana—These were his wide altar-stone,Where still he burnt out flesh and bone.Twenty days ahead of the Indian, twenty years ahead of the white man,At last the Indian overtook him, at last the Indian hurried past him;At last the white man overtook him, at last the white man hurried past him;At last his own trees overtook him, at last his own trees hurried past him.Many cats were tame again,Many ponies tame again,Many pigs were tame again,Many canaries tame again;And the real frontier was his sun-burnt breast.
From the fiery core of that apple, the earth,Sprang apple-amaranths divine.Love's orchards climbed to the heavens of the West,And snowed the earthly sod with flowers.Farm hands from the terraces of the blestDanced on the mists with their ladies fine;And Johnny Appleseed laughed with his dreams,And swam once more the ice-cold streams.And the doves of the spirit swept through the hours,With doom-calls, love-calls, death-calls, dream-calls;And Johnny Appleseed, all that year,Lifted his hands to the farm-filled sky,To the apple-harvesters busy on high;And so once more his youth began,And so for us he made great medicine—Johnny Appleseed, medicine-man.ThenThe sun was his turned-up broken barrel,Out of which his juicy apples rolled,Down the repeated terraces,Thumping across the gold,An angel in each apple that touched the forest mold,A ballot-box in each apple,A state capital in each apple,Great high schools, great colleges,All America in each apple,Each red, rich, round, and bouncing moonThat touched the forest mold.Like scrolls and rolled-up flags of silk,He saw the fruits unfold,And all our expectations in one wild-flower-written dream,Confusion and death sweetness, and a thicket of crab-thorns,Heart of a hundred midnights, heart of the merciful morns.Heaven's boughs bent down with their alchemy,Perfumed airs, and thoughts of wonder.And the dew on the grass and his own cold tearsWere one in brooding mystery,Though death's loud thunder came upon him,Though death's loud thunder struck him down—The boughs and the proud thoughts swept through the thunder,Till he saw our wide nation, each State a flower,Each petal a park for holy feet,With wild fawns merry on every street,With wild fawns merry on every street,The vista of ten thousand years, flower-lighted and complete.
Hear the lazy weeds murmuring, bays and rivers whispering,From Michigan to Texas, California to Maine;Listen to the eagles, screaming, calling,"Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Appleseed,"There by the doors of old Fort Wayne.
In the four-poster bed Johnny Appleseed built,Autumn rains were the curtains, autumn leaves were the quilt.He laid him down sweetly, and slept through the night,Like a bump on a log, like a stone washed white,There by the doors of old Fort Wayne.
Oh, gipsies, proud and stiff-necked and perverse,Saying: "We tell the fortunes of the nations,And revel in the deep palm of the world.The head-line is the road we choose for trade.The love-line is the lane wherein we camp.The life-line is the road we wander on.Mount Venus, Jupiter, and all the restAre finger-tips of ranges clasping roundAnd holding up the Romany's wide sky."
Oh, gipsies, proud and stiff-necked and perverse,Saying: "We will swap horses till the doom,And mend the pots and kettles of mankind,And lend our sons to big-time vaudeville,Or to the race-track, or the learned world.But India's Brahma waits within their breasts.They will return to us with gipsy grins,And chatter Romany, and shake their curlsAnd hug the dirtiest babies in the camp.They will return to the moving pillar of smoke,The whitest toothed, the merriest laughers known,The blackest haired of all the tribes of men.What trap can hold such cats? The RomanyHas crossed such delicate palms with lead or gold,Wheedling in sun and rain, through perilous years,All coins now look alike. The palm is all.Our greasy pack of cards is still the bookMost read of men. The heart's librarians,We tell all lovers what they want to know.So, out of the famed Chicago Library,Out of the great Chicago orchestras,Out of the skyscraper, the Fine Arts Building,Our sons will come with fiddles and with loot,Dressed, as of old, like turkey-cocks and zebras,Like tiger-lilies and chameleons,Go west with us to California,Telling the fortunes of the bleeding world,And kiss the sunset, ere their day is done."
Oh, gipsies, proud and stiff-necked and perverse,Picking the brains and pockets of mankind,You will go westward for one-half hour yet.You will turn eastward in a little while.You will go back, as men turn to Kentucky,Land of their fathers, dark and bloody ground.When all the Jews go home to Syria,When Chinese cooks go back to Canton, China,When Japanese photographers returnWith their black cameras to Tokio,And Irish patriots to Donegal,And Scotch accountants back to Edinburgh,You will go back to India, whence you came.When you have reached the borders of your quest,Homesick at last, by many a devious way,Winding the wonderlands circuitous,By foot and horse will trace the long way back!Fiddling for ocean liners, while the danceSweeps through the decks, your brown tribes all will go!Those east-bound ships will hear your long farewellOn fiddle, piccolo, and flute and timbrel.I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry.
That hour of their homesickness, I myselfWill turn, will say farewell to Illinois,To old Kentucky and Virginia,And go with them to India, whence they came.For they have heard a singing from the Ganges,And cries of orioles,—from the temple caves,—And Bengal's oldest, humblest villages.They smell the supper smokes of Amritsar.Green monkeys cry in Sanskrit to their soulsFrom lofty bamboo trees of hot Madras.They think of towns to ease their feverish eyes,And make them stand and meditate forever,Domes of astonishment, to heal the mind.I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry.
What music will be blended with the windWhen gipsy fiddlers, nearing that old land,Bring tunes from all the world to Brahma's house?Passing the Indus, winding poisonous forests,Blowing soft flutes at scandalous temple girls,Filling the highways with their magpie loot,What brass from my Chicago will they heap,What gems from Walla Walla, Omaha,Will they pile near the Bodhi Tree, and laugh?They will dance near such temples as best suit them,Though they will not quite enter, or adore,Looking on roofs, as poets look on lilies,Looking at towers, as boys at forest vines,That leap to tree-tops through the dizzy air.I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry.
And with the gipsies there will be a kingAnd a thousand desperadoes just his style,With all their rags dyed in the blood of roses,Splashed with the blood of angels, and of demons.And he will boss them with an awful voice.And with a red whip he will beat his wife.He will be wicked on that sacred shore,And rattle cruel spurs against the rocks,And shake Calcutta's walls with circus bugles.He will kill Brahmins there, in Kali's name,And please the thugs, and blood-drunk of the earth.I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry.
Oh, sweating thieves, and hard-boiled scalawags,That still will boast your pride until the doom,Smashing every caste rule of the world,Reaching at last your Hindu goal to smashThe caste rules of old India, and shout:"Down with the Brahmins, let the Romany reign."
When gipsy girls look deep within my handThey always speak so tenderly and sayThat I am one of those star-crossed to wedA princess in a forest fairy-tale.So there will be a tender gipsy princess,My Juliet, shining through this clan.And I would sing you of her beauty now.And I will fight with knives the gipsy manWho tries to steal her wild young heart away.And I will kiss her in the waterfalls,And at the rainbow's end, and in the incenseThat curls about the feet of sleeping gods,And sing with her in canebrakes and in rice fields,In Romany, eternal Romany.We will sow secret herbs, and plant old roses,And fumble through dark, snaky palaces,Stable our ponies in the Taj Mahal,And sleep out-doors ourselves.In her strange fairy mill-wheel eyes will waitAll windings and unwindings of the highways,From India, across America,—All windings and unwindings of my fancy,All windings and unwindings of all souls,All windings and unwindings of the heavens.I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry.
We gipsies, proud and stiff-necked and perverse,Standing upon the white Himalayas,Will think of far divine Yosemite.We will heal Hindu hermits there with oilBrought from California's tall sequoias.And we will be like gods that heap the thunders,And start young redwood trees on Time's own mountains.We will swap horses with the rising moon,And mend that funny skillet called Orion,Color the stars like San Francisco's street-lights,And paint our sign and signature on highIn planets like a bed of crimson pansies;While a million fiddles shake all listening hearts,Crying good fortune to the Universe,Whispering adventure to the Ganges waves,And to the spirits, and all winds and gods.Till mighty Brahma puts his golden palmWithin the gipsy king's great striped tent,And asks his fortune told by that great love-lineThat winds across his palm in splendid flame.
Only the hearthstone of old IndiaWill end the endless march of gipsy feet.I will go back to India with themWhen they go back to India whence they came.I know all this, when gipsy fiddles cry.
I come of a mighty race.... I come of a very mighty race....Adam was a mighty man, and Noah a captain of the moving waters,Moses was a stern and splendid king, yea, so was Moses....Give me more songs like David's to shake my throat to the pit of the belly,And let me roll in the Isaiah thunder....
Ho! the mightiest of our young men was born under a star in the midwinter....His name is written on the sun and it is frosted on the moon....Earth breathes him like an eternal spring: he is a second sky over the Earth.
Mighty race! mighty race!—my flesh, my fleshIs a cup of song,Is a well in Asia....I go about with a dark heart where the Ages sit in a divine thunder....My blood is cymbal-clashed and the anklets of the dancers tinkle there....Harp and psaltery, harp and psaltery make drunk my spirit....I am of the terrible people, I am of the strange Hebrews....Amongst the swarms fixed like the rooted stars, my folk is a streaming Comet,Comet of the Asian tiger-darkness,The Wanderer of Eternity, the eternal Wandering Jew....
Ho! we have turned against the mightiest of our young menAnd in that denial we have taken on the Christ,And the two thieves beside the Christ,And the Magdalen at the feet of the Christ,And the Judas with thirty silver pieces selling the Christ,—And our twenty centuries in Europe have the shape of a CrossOn which we have hung in disaster and glory....
Mighty race! mighty race!—my flesh, my fleshIs a cup of song,Is a well in Asia.
(For J. S. and L. U.)
Should youlay ear to these lines—you will not catcha distant drum of hoofs,cavalcade of Arabians,passionate horde bearing down,destroying your citadel—but maybe you'll hear—should you justlisten at the right place,hold it tenaciously,give your full blood to the effort—maybe you'll note the startof a single step,always persistently faint,wavering in its movementbetween coming and going,never quite arriving,never quite passing—and tell me which it is,you or Ithat you greet,searching a mutual being—and whether two aren't closerfor the labor of an ear?
She lets the hydrant water run:He fancies lonely, banal,bald-headed mountains,affected by the dailycaress of the tropical sun,weeping tears the length of brooksdown their faces and flanks.She lets the hydrant water run:He hearkens Father Sebastiancooking and spreading homely themesover an inept-looking clavierconfounding the wits of his childrenand all men's childrendown to the last generation.He marvels at the paradox,drums his head with the tattoo:how can a thing as small as heshape and maintain an artout of himself universal enoughto carry her daily vigilto crystalled immortality?She lets the hydrant water run.
It's all very well for yousuddenly to withdrawand say, I'll come again,but what of the bruises you've left,what of the green and the blue,the yellow, purple and violet?—don't you be telling us,I'm innocent of these,irresponsible of happenings—didn't we see you steal next to her,tenderly,with your silver mist about youto hide your blandishment?—now, what of what followed, eh?—we saw you hover close,caress her,open her pore-cups,make a cross of her,quickly penetrate her—she opening to you,engulfing you,every limb of her,bud of her, pore of her?—don't call these things, kisses—mouth-kisses, hand-kisses,elbow, knee and toe,and let it go at that—disappear and promisewhat you'll never perform:we've known you to slink awayuntil drought-time,drooping-time,withering-time:we've caught you crawling offinto winter-time,try to cover what you've donewith a long white scarf—your own frozen tears(likely phrase!)and lilt your,I'll be back in spring!Next spring, and you know it,she won't be the same,though she may look the sameto you from where you are,and invite you down again!
It's the mixture of peasantrymakes him so slow.He waggles his headbefore he speaks,like a cowbefore she crops.He bends to the habitof dragging his feetup under him,like a measuring-worm:some of his forefathers,stooped over books,ruled short straight linesunder two rows of figuresto keep their thin savingsfrom sifting to the floor.Should you strike himwith a question,he will blink twice or thriceand roll his head about,like an owlin the pin-pricksof a dawn he cannot see.There is mighty little fleshabout his bones,there is no gustoin his stride:he seems to waitfor the blow on the buttocksthat will drive himanother step forward—step forward to what?There is no land,no house,no barn,he has ever owned;he sits uncomfortableon chairsyou might invite him to:if you did,he'd keep his hat in handagainst the momentwhen some silent pausefor which he hearkenswith his ear to one sidebids him move on—move on where?It doesn't matter.He has learnedto shrug his shoulders,so he'll shrug his shoulders now:caterpillars do itwhen they're halted by a stick.Is there a sky overhead?—a hope worth flying to?—birds may know about it,but it's birdsthat birds descend from.
You had best be very cautious howyou say, I love you.If you accent the I,she has an opening for,who are youto strut on aheadand hint there aren't others,aren't, weren't and won't be?Blurt out the love,she has suspicion for, so?—why not hitherto?—what brings you bragging now?—and what'll it be hereafter?Defer to the you,she has certitude for, me?thanks, lad!—but why argue about it?—or fancy I'm lonesome?—do I look as though you had to?And having determined howyou'll say it,you had next best ascertain whomit is that you say it to.That you're sure she's the one,that there'll never be another,never was one before.And having determined whomand having learned how,when you bring these together,inform the far of the intimate—like a bubble on a pond,emerging from below,round wonderment completedby the first sight of the sky—what good will it do,if she shouldn't, I love you?—a bubble's but a bubble once,a bubble grows to die.
Death alonehas sympathy for weariness:understandingof the waysof mathematics:of the struggleagainst giving up what was given:the plus one minus oneof nitrogen for oxygen:and the unequal odds,you a cellagainst the universe,a breath or twoagainst all time:Death alonetakes what is leftwithout protest, criticismor a demand for morethan one can givewho can giveno more than was given:doesn't even ask,but accepts it as it is,without examination,valuation,or comparison.
(For W. W.)
The Occident and the Orient,posterior and posterior,sitting tight, holding fastthe culture dumped by themon to primitive America,Atlantic to Pacific,were monumental colophonsa disorderly country fellow,vulgar Long Islander.not overfond of the stenchchoking native respiration,poked down off the shelfwith the aid of somemere blades of grass;and deliberately climbing up,brazenly usurping one endof the new America,now waves his spears aloftand shouts down valleys,across plains,over mountains,into heights:Come, what man of youdares climb the other?