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Title : Poems

Author : Marianne Moore

Release date : August 3, 2020 [eBook #62833]

Language : English

Credits : Produced by Paul Marshall, Tim Lindell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS *** 

  

  

   POEMS
  

  

   
    BY MARIANNE MOORE
   
  

  

   LONDON
   

   THE EGOIST PRESS
   

   
    2 Robert Street, Adelphi, W.C.
   
  

  

   1921
  

  

   
    Several of these poems appeared in
   
   
    The Egoist
   
   ;
   

   
    others in
   
   
    The Dial
   
   ,
   
    Others
   
   
    and
   
   
    Contact
   
   .
  

  

  

   
    CONTENTS
   
  

  

  

   
    

     
      PEDANTIC LITERALIST
     
     
      
       5
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      TO A STEAM ROLLER
     
     
      
       6
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      DILIGENCE IS TO MAGIC AS PROGRESS IS TO FLIGHT
     
     
      
       6
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      THOSE VARIOUS SCALPELS
     
     
      
       7
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      FEED ME, ALSO, RIVER GOD,
     
     
      
       8
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      TO WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS ON TAGORE
     
     
      
       8
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      HE MADE THIS SCREEN
     
     
      
       9
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      TALISMAN
     
     
      
       9
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      BLACK EARTH
     
     
      
       10
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      “HE WROTE THE HISTORY BOOK,” IT SAID
     
     
      
       12
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      YOU ARE LIKE THE REALISTIC PRODUCT OF AN IDEALISTIC
     
     
     
     
     
    

    

     
      SEARCH FOR GOLD AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW
     
     
      
       12
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      REINFORCEMENTS
     
     
      
       13
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      ROSES ONLY
     
     
      
       13
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      IN THIS AGE OF HARD TRYING NONCHALANCE IS GOOD, AND
     
     
      
       14
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      THE FISH
     
     
      
       14
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      MY APISH COUSINS
     
     
      
       16
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      WHEN I BUY PICTURES
     
     
      
       17
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      PICKING AND CHOOSING
     
     
      
       18
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      ENGLAND
     
     
      
       19
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      DOCK RATS
     
     
      
       20
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      RADICAL
     
     
      
       21
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      POETRY
     
     
      
       22
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      IN THE DAYS OF PRISMATIC COLOR
     
     
      
       23
      
     
     
     
    

    

     
      IS YOUR TOWN NINEVEH?
     
     
      
       24
      
     
     
     
    

   
  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 5]
    
   
  

  

   
    POEMS
   
  

  

   
    BY MARIANNE MOORE
   
  

  

  

   
   
   

    PEDANTIC LITERALIST
   

  

  

   

    

     
      Prince Rupert’s drop, paper muslin ghost,
     
     
      white torch—“with pow’r to say unkind
     
     
      things with kindness, and the most
     
     
      irritating things in the midst of love and
     
     
      tears,” you invite destruction.
     
    

    

     
      You are like the meditative man
     
     
      with the perfunctory heart; its
     
     
      carved cordiality ran
     
     
      to and fro at first, like an inlaid and roy’l
     
     
      immutable production;
     
    

    

     
      then afterward “neglected to be
     
     
      painful” and “deluded him with
     
     
      loitering formality,
     
     
      doing its duty as if it did it not,”
     
     
      presenting an obstruction
     
    

    

     
      to the motive that it served. What stood
     
     
      erect in you, has withered. A
     
     
      little “palm-tree of turned wood”
     
     
      informs your once spontaneous core in its
     
     
      immutable reduction.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 6]
    
   
  

  

   

    TO A STEAM ROLLER
   

  

  

   

    

     
      The illustration
     
     
      is nothing to you without the application.
     
     
      You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down
     
     
      into close conformity, and then walk back and forth on them.
     
    

    

     
      Sparkling chips of rock
     
     
      are crushed down to the level of the parent block.
     
     
      Were not “impersonal judgment in æsthetic
     
     
      matters, a metaphysical impossibility,” you
     
    

    

     
      might fairly achieve
     
     
      it. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive
     
     
      of one’s attending upon you, but to question
     
     
      the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
   
   

    DILIGENCE IS TO MAGIC AS
    

    PROGRESS IS TO FLIGHT
   

  

  

   

    

     
      With an elephant to ride upon—“with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,”
     
     
      she shall outdistance calamity anywhere she goes.
     
     
      Speed is not in her mind inseparable from carpets. Locomotion arose
     
     
      in the shape of an elephant, she clambered up and chose
     
     
      to travel laboriously. So far as magic carpets are concerned, she knows
     
     
      that although the semblance of speed may attach to scarecrows
     
     
      of æsthetic procedure, the substance of it is embodied in such of those
     
     
      tough-grained animals as have outstripped man’s whim to suppose
     
     
      them ephemera, and have earned that fruit of their ability to endure blows,
     
     
      which dubs them prosaic necessities—not curios.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 7]
    
   
  

  

   

    THOSE VARIOUS SCALPELS
   

  

  

   

    

     
      Those
     
     
      various sounds consistently indistinct, like intermingled
     
     
      echoes
     
     
      struck from thin glass successively at random—the
     
     
      inflection disguised: your hair, the tails of two
     
     
      fighting-cocks head to head in stone—like sculptured
     
     
      scimitars re-
     
     
      peating the curve of your ears in reverse order: your eyes,
     
     
      flowers of ice
     
    

    

     
      and
     
     
      snow sown by tearing winds on the cordage of disabled
     
     
      ships: your raised hand
     
     
      an ambiguous signature: your cheeks, those rosettes
     
     
      of blood on the stone floors of French châteaux, with
     
     
      regard to which guides are so affirmative:
     
     
      your other hand
     
    

    

     
      a
     
     
      bundle of lances all alike, partly hid by emeralds from
     
     
      Persia
     
     
      and the fractional magnificence of Florentine
     
     
      goldwork—a collection of half a dozen little objects
     
     
      made fine
     
     
      with enamel in gray, yellow, and dragonfly blue: a lemon, a
     
    

    

     
      pear
     
     
      and three bunches of grapes, tied with silver: your dress, a
     
     
      magnificent square
     
     
      cathedral of uniform
     
     
      and at the same time, diverse appearance—a species of
     
     
      vertical vineyard rustling in the storm
     
     
      of conventional opinion. Are they weapons or scalpels?
     
     
      Whetted
     
    

    

     
      to
     
     
      brilliance by the hard majesty of that sophistication which
     
     
      is su-
     
     
      perior to opportunity, these things are rich
     
     
      instruments with which to experiment but surgery is
     
     
      not tentative: why dissect destiny with instruments
     
     
      which
     
     
      are more highly specialized than the tissues of destiny
     
     
      itself?
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 8]
    
   
  

  

   

    FEED ME, ALSO, RIVER GOD,
   

  

  

   

    

     
      lest by diminished vitality and abated
     
     
      vigilance, I become food for crocodiles—for that quicksand
     
     
      of gluttony which is legion. It is there—close at hand—
     
     
      on either side
     
     
      of me. You remember the Israelites who said in pride
     
    

    

     
      and stoutness of heart: “The bricks are fallen down, we will
     
     
      build with hewn stone, the sycamores are cut down, we will change to
     
     
      cedars”? I am not ambitious to dress stones, to renew
     
     
      forts, nor to match
     
     
      my value in action, against their ability to catch
     
    

    

     
      up with arrested prosperity. I am not like
     
     
      them, indefatigable, but if you are a god you will
     
     
      not discriminate against me. Yet—if you may fulfil
     
     
      none but prayers dressed
     
     
      as gifts in return for your gifts—disregard the request.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
   
   

    TO WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS ON TAGORE
   

  

  

   

    

     
      It is made clear by the phrase,
     
     
      even the mood—by virtue of which he says
     
    

    

     
      the thing he thinks—that it pays,
     
     
      to cut gems even in these conscience-less days;
     
    

    

     
      but the jewel that always
     
     
      outshines ordinary jewels, is your praise.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 9]
    
   
  

  

   

    HE MADE THIS SCREEN
   

  

  

   

    

     
      not of silver nor of coral,
     
     
      but of weatherbeaten laurel.
     
    

    

     
      Here, he introduced a sea
     
     
      uniform like tapestry;
     
    

    

     
      here, a fig-tree; there, a face;
     
     
      there, a dragon circling space—
     
    

    

     
      designating here, a bower;
     
     
      there, a pointed passion-flower.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
   
   

    TALISMAN
   

  

  

   

    

     
      Under a splintered mast,
     
     
      torn from ship and cast
     
     
      near her hull,
     
    

    

     
      a stumbling shepherd found
     
     
      embedded in the ground,
     
     
      a sea-gull
     
    

    

     
      of lapis lazuli,
     
     
      a scarab of the sea,
     
     
      with wings spread—
     
    

    

     
      curling its coral feet,
     
     
      parting its beak to greet
     
     
      men long dead.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 10]
    
   
  

  

   

    BLACK EARTH
   

  

  

   

    

     
      Openly, yes,
     
     
      with the naturalness
     
     
      of the hippopotamus or the alligator
     
     
      when it climbs out on the bank to experience the
     
    

    

     
      sun, I do these
     
     
      things which I do, which please
     
     
      no one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub-
     
     
      merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object
     
    

    

     
      in view was a
     
     
      renaissance; shall I say
     
     
      the contrary? The sediment of the river which
     
     
      encrusts my joints, makes me very gray but I am used
     
    

    

     
      to it, it may
     
     
      remain there; do away
     
     
      with it and I am myself done away with, for the
     
     
      patina of circumstance can but enrich what was
     
    

    

     
      there to begin
     
     
      with. This elephant skin
     
     
      which I inhabit, fibred over like the shell of
     
     
      the coco-nut, this piece of black glass through which no light
     
    

    

     
      can filter—cut
     
     
      into checkers by rut
     
     
      upon rut of unpreventable experience—
     
     
      it is a manual for the peanut-tongued and the
     
    

    

     
      hairy toed. Black
     
     
      but beautiful, my back
     
     
      is full of the history of power. Of power? What
     
     
      is powerful and what is not? My soul shall never
     
    

    

     
      be cut into
     
     
      by a wooden spear; through-
     
     
      out childhood to the present time, the unity of
     
     
      life and death has been expressed by the circumference
     
    

    

     
      described by my
     
     
      trunk; nevertheless, I
     
     
      perceive feats of strength to be inexplicable after
     
     
      all; and I am on my guard; external poise, it
     
     
      
       [Pg 11]
      
     
    

    

     
      has its centre
     
     
      well nurtured—we know
     
     
      where—in pride, but spiritual poise, it has its centre where?
     
     
      My ears are sensitized to more than the sound of
     
    

    

     
      the wind. I see
     
     
      and I hear, unlike the
     
     
      wandlike body of which one hears so much, which was made
     
     
      to see and not to see; to hear and not to hear;
     
    

    

     
      that tree trunk without
     
     
      roots, accustomed to shout
     
     
      its own thoughts to itself like a shell, maintained intact
     
     
      by who knows what strange pressure of the atmosphere; that
     
    

    

     
      spiritual
     
     
      brother to the coral
     
     
      plant, absorbed into which, the equable sapphire light
     
     
      becomes a nebulous green. The I of each is to
     
    

    

     
      the I of each,
     
     
      a kind of fretful speech
     
     
      which sets a limit on itself; the elephant is?
     
     
      Black earth preceded by a tendril? It is to that
     
    

    

     
      phenomenon
     
     
      the above formation,
     
     
      translucent like the atmosphere—a cortex merely—
     
     
      that on which darts cannot strike decisively the first
     
    

    

     
      time, a substance
     
     
      needful as an instance
     
     
      of the indestructibility of matter; it
     
     
      has looked at the electricity and at the earth-
     
    

    

     
      quake and is still
     
     
      here; the name means thick. Will
     
     
      depth be depth, thick skin be thick, to one who can see no
     
     
      beautiful element of unreason under it?
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 12]
    
   
  

  

   

    “HE WROTE THE HISTORY BOOK,” IT SAID
   

  

  

   

    

     
      There! You shed a ray
     
     
      of whimsicality on a mask of profundity so
     
     
      terrific that I have been dumbfounded by
     
     
      it oftener than I care to say.
     
     
      
       The
      
      book? Titles are chaff.
     
    

    

     
      Authentically
     
     
      brief and full of energy, you contribute to your father’s
     
     
      legibility and are sufficiently
     
     
      synthetic. Thank you for showing me
     
     
      your father’s autograph.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
   
   

    YOU ARE LIKE THE REALISTIC PRODUCT
    

    OF AN IDEALISTIC SEARCH FOR GOLD
    

    AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW
   

  

  

   

    

     
      Hid by the august foliage and fruit of the grape vine,
     
     
      twine
     
     
      your anatomy
     
     
      round the pruned and polished stem,
     
     
      chameleon.
     
     
      Fire laid upon
     
     
      an emerald as long as
     
     
      the Dark King’s massy
     
     
      one,
     
     
      could not snap the spectrum up for food as you have done.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 13]
    
   
  

  

   

    REINFORCEMENTS
   

  

  

   

    

     
      The vestibule to experience is not to
     
     
      be exalted into epic grandeur. These men are going
     
     
      to their work with this idea, advancing like a school of fish through
     
    

    

     
      still water—waiting to change the course or dismiss
     
     
      the idea of movement, till forced to. The words of the Greeks
     
     
      ring in our ears, but they are vain in comparison with a sight like this.
     
    

    

     
      The pulse of intention does not move so that one
     
     
      can see it, and moral machinery is not labelled, but
     
     
      the future of time is determined by the power of volition.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
   
   

    ROSES ONLY
   

  

  

   

    

     
      You do not seem to realise that beauty is a liability rather than
     
     
      an asset—that in view of the fact that spirit creates form we are justified in
     
     
      supposing
     
     
      that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the unit, stiff and sharp,
     
     
      conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and liking for everything
     
     
      self-dependent, anything an
     
    

    

     
      ambitious civilisation might produce: for you, unaided to attempt through sheer
     
     
      reserve, to confute presumptions resulting from observation, is idle. You
     
     
      cannot make us
     
     
      think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are brilliant, it
     
     
      is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing of pre-eminence.
     
     
      You would look, minus
     
     
      thorns—like a what-is-this, a mere
     
    

    

     
      peculiarity. They are not proof against a worm, the elements, or mildew
     
     
      but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance without
     
     
      co-ordination? Guarding the
     
     
      infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to
     
     
      the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be remembered too
     
     
      violently,
     
     
      your thorns are the best part of you.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 14]
    
   
  

  

   

    IN THIS AGE OF HARD TRYING
    

    NONCHALANCE IS GOOD, AND
   

  

  

   

    

     
      really, it is not the
     
     
      business of the gods to bake clay pots. They did not
     
     
      do it in this instance. A few
     
     
      revolved upon the axes of their worth
     
     
      as if excessive popularity might be a pot;
     
    

    

     
      they did not venture the
     
     
      profession of humility. The polished wedge
     
     
      that might have split the firmament
     
     
      was dumb. At last it threw itself away
     
     
      and falling down, conferred on some poor fool, a privilege.
     
    

    

     
      Taller by the length of
     
     
      a conversation of five hundred years than all
     
     
      the others, there was one, whose tales
     
     
      of what could never have been actual—
     
     
      were better than the haggish, uncompanionable drawl
     
    

    

     
      of certitude; his by-
     
     
      play was more terrible in its effectiveness
     
     
      than the fiercest frontal attack.
     
     
      The staff, the bag, the feigned inconsequence
     
     
      of manner, best bespeak that weapon, self protectiveness.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
   
   

    THE FISH
   

  

  

   

    

     
      wade
     
     
      through black jade.
     
     
      Of the crow-blue mussel shells, one
     
     
      keeps
     
     
      adjusting the ash heaps;
     
     
      opening and shutting itself like
     
    

    

     
      an
     
     
      injured fan.
     
     
      The barnacles which encrust the
     
     
      side
     
     
      of the wave, cannot hide
     
     
      there for the submerged shafts of the
     
     
      
       [Pg 15]
      
     
    

    

     
      sun,
     
     
      split like spun
     
     
      glass, move themselves with spotlike swift-
     
     
      ness
     
     
      into the crevices—
     
     
      in and out, illuminating
     
    

    

     
      the
     
     
      turquoise sea
     
     
      of bodies. The water drives a
     
     
      wedge
     
     
      of iron through the iron edge
     
     
      of the cliff, whereupon the stars,
     
    

    

     
      pink
     
     
      rice grains, ink
     
     
      bespattered jelly-fish, crabs like
     
     
      green
     
     
      lilies and submarine
     
     
      toadstools, slide each on the other.
     
    

    

     
      All
     
     
      external
     
     
      marks of abuse are present on
     
     
      this
     
     
      defiant edifice—
     
     
      all the physical features of
     
    

    

     
      ac-
     
     
      cident—lack
     
     
      of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns
     
     
      and
     
     
      hatchet strokes, these things stand
     
     
      out on it; the chasm side is
     
    

    

     
      dead.
     
     
      Repeated
     
     
      evidence has proved that it can
     
     
      live
     
     
      on what cannot revive
     
     
      its youth. The sea grows old in it.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 16]
    
   
  

  

   

    MY APISH COUSINS
   

  

  

   

    

     
      winked too much and were afraid of snakes. The zebras, supreme in
     
     
      their abnormality; the elephants with their fog-colored skin
     
     
      and strictly practical appendages
     
     
      were there, the small cats and the parrakeet—
     
     
      trivial and humdrum on examination, destroying
     
     
      bark and portions of the food it could not eat.
     
    

    

     
      I recall their magnificence, now not more magnificent
     
     
      than it is dim. It is difficult to recall the ornament,
     
     
      speech, and precise manner of what one might
     
     
      call the minor acquaintances twenty
     
     
      years back; but I shall never forget—that Gilgamesh among
     
     
      the hairy carnivora—that cat with the
     
    

    

     
      wedge-shaped, slate-gray marks on its forelegs and the resolute tail,
     
     
      astringently remarking: “They have imposed on us with their pale,
     
     
      half fledged protestations, trembling about
     
     
      in inarticulate frenzy, saying
     
     
      it is not for all of us to understand art, finding it
     
     
      all so difficult, examining the thing
     
    

    

     
      as if it were something inconceivably arcanic, as
     
     
      symmetrically frigid as something carved out of chrysopras
     
     
      or marble—strict with tension, malignant
     
     
      in its power over us and deeper
     
     
      than the sea when it proffers flattery in exchange for hemp,
     
     
      rye, flax, horses, platinum, timber and fur.”
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 17]
    
   
  

  

   

    WHEN I BUY PICTURES
   

  

  

   

    

     
      or what is closer to the truth, when I look at
     
     
      that of which I may regard myself as the
     
     
      imaginary possessor, I fix upon that which would
     
     
      give me pleasure in my average moments: the satire upon curiosity,
     
     
      in which no more is discernible than the intensity of the mood;
     
    

    

     
      or quite the opposite—the old thing, the medi-
     
     
      æval decorated hat box, in which there
     
     
      are hounds with waists diminishing like the waist of the hour-glass
     
     
      and deer, both white and brown, and birds and seated people; it may be no
     
     
      more than a square
     
     
      of parquetry; the literal biography perhaps—in letters stand-
     
    

    

     
      ing well apart upon a parchment-like expanse;
     
     
      or that which is better without words, which means
     
     
      just as much or just as little as it is understood to
     
     
      mean by the observer—the grave of Adam, prefigured by himself; a bed of
     
     
      beans
     
     
      or artichokes in six varieties of blue; the snipe-legged hiero—
     
    

    

     
      glyphic in three parts; it may be anything. Too
     
     
      stern an intellectual emphasis, i-
     
     
      ronic or other—upon this quality or that, detracts
     
     
      from one’s enjoyment; it must not wish to disarm anything; nor may the
     
     
      approved tri-
     
     
      umph easily be honoured—that which is great because something else
     
     
      is small.
     
    

    

     
      It comes to this: of whatever sort it is, it
     
     
      must make known the fact that it has been displayed
     
     
      to acknowledge the spiritual forces which have made it;
     
     
      and it must admit that it is the work of X, if X produced it; of Y, if made
     
     
      by Y. It must be a voluntary gift with the name written on it.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 18]
    
   
  

  

   

    PICKING AND CHOOSING
   

  

  

   

    

     
      Literature is a phase of life: if
     
     
      one is afraid of it, the situation is irremediable; if
     
     
      one approaches it familiarly,
     
     
      what one says of it is worthless. Words are constructive
     
     
      when they are true; the opaque allusion—the simulated flight
     
    

    

     
      upward—accomplishes nothing. Why cloud the fact
     
     
      that Shaw is selfconscious in the field of sentiment but is otherwise re-
     
     
      warding? that James is all that has been
     
     
      said of him but is not profound? It is not Hardy
     
     
      the distinguished novelist and Hardy the poet, but one man
     
    

    

     
      “interpreting life through the medium of the
     
     
      emotions.” If he must give an opinion, it is permissible that the
     
     
      critic should know what he likes. Gordon
     
     
      Craig with his “this is I” and “this is mine,” with his three
     
     
      wise men, his “sad French greens” and his Chinese cherries—Gordon Craig, so
     
    

    

     
      inclinational and unashamed—has carried
     
     
      the precept of being a good critic, to the last extreme. And Burke is a
     
     
      psychologist—of acute, raccoon-
     
     
      like curiosity. Summa diligentia;
     
     
      to the humbug, whose name is so amusing—very young and ve-
     
    

    

     
      ry rushed, Cæsar crossed the Alps on the “top of a
     
     
      diligence.” We are not daft about the meaning but this familiarity
     
     
      with wrong meanings puzzles one. Humming-
     
     
      bug, the candles are not wired for electricity.
     
     
      Small dog, going over the lawn, nipping the linen and saying
     
    

    

     
      that you have a badger—remember Xenophon;
     
     
      only the most rudimentary sort of behaviour is necessary
     
     
      to put us on the scent; a “right good
     
     
      salvo of barks,” a few “strong wrinkles” puckering the
     
     
      skin between the ears, are all we ask.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 19]
    
   
  

  

   

    ENGLAND
   

  

  

   

    

     
      with its baby rivers and little towns, each with its abbey or its cathedral;
     
     
      with voices—one voice perhaps, echoing through the transept—the
     
     
      criterion of suitability and convenience; and Italy with its equal
     
     
      shores—contriving an epicureanism from which the grossness has been
     
    

    

     
      extracted; and Greece with its goats and its gourds, the nest of modified illusions:
     
     
      and France, the “chrysalis of the nocturnal butterfly” in
     
     
      whose products, mystery of construction diverts one from what was originally
     
     
      one’s
     
     
      object—substance at the core: and the East with its snails, its emotional
     
    

    

     
      shorthand and jade cockroaches, its rock crystal and its imperturbability,
     
     
      all of museum quality: and America where there
     
     
      is the little old ramshackle victoria in the south, where cigars are smoked on the
     
     
      street in the north; where there are no proof readers, no silkworms,
     
     
      no digressions;
     
    

    

     
      the wild man’s land; grass-less, links-less, language-less country—in which
     
     
      letters are written
     
     
      not in Spanish, not in Greek, not in Latin, not in shorthand
     
     
      but in plain American which cats and dogs can read! The letter “a” in psalm
     
     
      and calm when
     
     
      pronounced with the sound of “a” in candle, is very noticeable but
     
    

    

     
      why should continents of misapprehension have to be accounted for by the
     
     
      fact? Does it follow that because there are poisonous toadstools
     
     
      which resemble mushrooms, both are dangerous? In the case of mettlesomeness
     
     
      which may be
     
     
      mistaken for appetite, of heat which may appear to be haste, no con-
     
    

    

     
      clusions may be drawn. To have misapprehended the matter, is to have confessed
     
     
      that one has not looked far enough. The sublimated wisdom
     
     
      of China, Egyptian discernment, the cataclysmic torrent of emotion compressed
     
     
      in the verbs of the Hebrew language, the books of the man who is able
     
    

    

     
      to say, “I envy nobody but him and him only, who catches more fish than
     
     
      I do,”—the flower and fruit of all that noted superi-
     
     
      ority—should one not have stumbled upon it in America, must one imagine
     
     
      that it is not there? It has never been confined to one locality.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 20]
    
   
  

  

   

    DOCK RATS
   

  

  

   

    

     
      There are human beings who seem to regard the place as craftily
     
     
      as we do—who seem to feel that it is a good place to come
     
     
      home to. On what a river; wide—twinkling like a chopped sea under some
     
     
      of the finest shipping in the
     
    

    

     
      world: the square-rigged four-master, the liner, the battleship, like the two-
     
     
      thirds submerged section of an iceberg; the tug—strong moving thing,
     
     
      dipping and pushing, the bell striking as it comes; the steam yacht, lying
     
     
      like a new made arrow on the
     
    

    

     
      stream; the ferry-boat—a head assigned, one to each compartment, making
     
     
      a row of chessmen set for play. When the wind is from the east,
     
     
      the smell is of apples; of hay, the aroma increased and decreased
     
     
      suddenly as the wind changes;
     
    

    

     
      of rope; of mountain leaves for florists. When it is from the west, it is
     
     
      an elixir. There is occasionally a parrakeet
     
     
      arrived from Brazil, clasping and clawing; or a monkey—tail and feet
     
     
      in readiness for an over-
     
    

    

     
      ture. All palms and tail; how delightful! There is the sea, moving the bulk-
     
     
      head with its horse strength; and the multiplicity of rudders
     
     
      and propellers; the signals, shrill, questioning, peremptory, diverse;
     
     
      the wharf cats and the barge dogs—it
     
    

    

     
      is easy to overestimate the value of such things. One does
     
     
      not live in such a place from motives of expediency
     
     
      but because to one who has been accustomed to it, shipping is the
     
     
      most congenial thing in the world.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 21]
    
   
  

  

   

    RADICAL
   

  

  

   

    

     
      Tapering
     
     
      to a point, conserving everything,
     
     
      this carrot is predefined to be thick.
     
     
      The world is
     
     
      but a circumstance, a mis-
     
     
      erable corn-patch for its feet. With ambition,
     
     
      imagination, outgrowth,
     
    

    

     
      nutriment,
     
     
      with everything crammed belligerent-
     
     
      ly inside itself, its fibres breed mon-
     
     
      opoly—
     
     
      a tail-like, wedge-shaped engine with the
     
     
      secret of expansion, fused with intensive heat
     
     
      to the color of the set-
     
    

    

     
      ting sun and
     
     
      stiff. For the man in the straw hat, stand-
     
     
      ing still and turning to look back at it—
     
     
      as much as
     
     
      to say my happiest moment has
     
     
      been funereal in comparison with this, the con-
     
     
      ditions of life pre-
     
    

    

     
      determined
     
     
      slavery to be easy and freedom hard. For
     
     
      it? Dismiss
     
     
      agrarian lore; it tells him this:
     
     
      that which it is impossible to force, it is
     
     
      impossible to hinder.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 22]
    
   
  

  

   

    POETRY
   

  

  

   

    

     
      I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
     
     
      Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers that there
     
     
      is in
     
     
      it after all, a place for the genuine.
     
     
      Hands that can grasp, eyes
     
     
      that can dilate, hair that can rise
     
     
      if it must, these things are important not because a
     
    

    

     
      high sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
     
     
      useful; when they become so derivative as to become unintelligible, the
     
     
      same thing may be said for all of us—that we
     
     
      do not admire what
     
     
      we cannot understand. The bat,
     
     
      holding on upside down or in quest of something to
     
    

    

     
      eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
     
     
      a tree, the immovable critic twinkling his skin like a horse that feels a flea,
     
     
      the base-
     
     
      ball fan, the statistician—case after case
     
     
      could be cited did
     
     
      one wish it; nor is it valid
     
     
      to discriminate against “business documents and
     
    

    

     
      school-books”; all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
     
     
      however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not
     
     
      poetry,
     
     
      nor till the autocrats among us can be
     
     
      “literalists of
     
     
      the imagination”—above
     
     
      insolence and triviality and can present
     
    

    

     
      for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we have
     
     
      it. In the meantime, if you demand on one hand, in defiance of their opinion—
     
     
      the raw material of poetry in
     
     
      all its rawness and
     
     
      that which is, on the other hand,
     
     
      genuine then you are interested in poetry.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 23]
    
   
  

  

   

    IN THE DAYS OF PRISMATIC COLOR
   

  

  

   

    

     
      not in the days of Adam and Eve but when Adam
     
     
      was alone; when there was no smoke and color was
     
     
      fine, not with the fineness of
     
     
      early civilization art but by virtue
     
     
      of its originality, with nothing to modify it but the
     
    

    

     
      mist that went up, obliqueness was a varia-
     
     
      tion of the perpendicular, plain to see and
     
     
      to account for: it is no
     
     
      longer that; nor did the blue red yellow band
     
     
      of incandescence that was color, keep its stripe: it also is one of
     
    

    

     
      those things into which much that is peculiar can be
     
     
      read; complexity is not a crime but carry
     
     
      it to the point of murki-
     
     
      ness and nothing is plain. A complexity
     
     
      moreover, that has been committed to darkness, instead of granting it-
     
    

    

     
      self to be the pestilence that it is, moves all a-
     
     
      bout as if to bewilder with the dismal
     
     
      fallacy that insistence
     
     
      is the measure of achievement and that all
     
     
      truth must be dark. Principally throat, sophistication is as it al-
     
    

    

     
      ways has been—at the antipodes from the init-
     
     
      ial great truths. “Part of it was crawling, part of it
     
     
      was about to crawl, the rest
     
     
      was torpid in its lair.” In the short legged, fit-
     
     
      ful advance, the gurgling and all the minutiæ—we have the classic
     
    

    

     
      multitude of feet. To what purpose! Truth is no Apollo
     
     
      Belvedere, no formal thing. The wave may go over it if it likes.
     
     
      Know that it will be there when it says:
     
     
      “I shall be there when the wave has gone by.”
     
    

   

  

  

  

   
    
     [Pg 24]
    
   
  

  

   

    IS YOUR TOWN NINEVEH?
   

  

  

   

    

     
      Why so desolate?
     
     
      And why multiply
     
     
      in phantasmagoria about fishes,
     
     
      what disgusts you? Could
     
     
      not all personal upheaval in
     
     
      the name of freedom, be tabood?
     
    

    

     
      Is it Nineveh
     
     
      and are you Jonah
     
     
      in the sweltering east wind of your wishes?
     
     
      I, myself have stood
     
     
      there by the aquarium, looking
     
     
      at the Statue of Liberty.
     
    

   

  

  

  

   Printed at the Pelican Press, 2 Carmelite Street, E.C.
  

  

  

   

    Transcriber’s Notes:
   

   

   

    Typographical errors have been silently corrected.