The first face of the Scene appeared all obscure, & nothing perceiu’d but a darke Rocke, with trees beyond it; and all wildnesse, that could be presented; Till, at one corner of the cliffe, aboue thé Horizon, the Moone began to shew….
1
The news stirred first in very dead of winter:
A rumor of new breathing by late spring,
New lungs for the world’s air, planets’ new center,
New eyes brimming new colors-a new everything!
The ticking kaleidoscope rearranged its tenses;
The present faded; future’s the true noon.
As both the man and woman grew new senses
They laughed at sun, set all their dials by Soon.
The streets and rooms they moved in rang unreal
Since not yet real to the child; say someone’s dream
Strange as drowned cities where the cursive eel
Flashes in alleys. A curtain-time scene:
Whether they shifted vases, turned a page
All seemed last-minute touches on a stage.
2
The stage and a man’s life-long before Avon
Cynical Palladas saw we “play a part.”
Though of that scenery or the gapes it gave on
Hard to say which is model and which art.
Down the steep aisles of a murky vast
Theater, all seats empty, he and she
Go groping backstage; from a passionate past
Glitter the lurid flats of cloud and sea.
On one dark door a blurred name and a star;
Many costumes: banker, burglar, streaming sheik;
Many props: sword, castle, couch, arrogant car,
High enough balconies to break a neck.
He sits down; a most “practicable” bed;
She feels a dagger and the edge runs red.
3
Up with the drowsy curtain! No more slumber
Hear the telephone dinning at midnight in the west?
The far-off hospital nudging his number:
The baby is born sooner than they guessed.
O thousand miles of wire, you may well be humming
To tractors and farms and fences and silos and signboards
and, well,
Say to those huddled towns, say: Someone’s coming.
Out with your bunting; bang on that firebell.
But in deserted halls of the long dorm
Corners piled with luggage jostle and sigh.
The window faint in lightning is breathing warm.
And look: pandemonium in the sky
As moons (a trick of tears) are bobbing in tens;
Each star is twenty stars! What a wild lens!
4
In the cradle, furled, unfurled, anemone fingers
Stir celluloid susurrus and pink chime;
How they shall hook him where he brags and lingers,
Old mustache-tugging, flint, foreclosing Time.
Let him rasp let him grin let him wheedle: must disgorge.
Palms must twist up, slow-open tense as traps
Restoring coins, curls, girls in the Greek surge,
And tears that fell pitting forlorn war-maps.
Then yours (anemone) rain-wandering panes
All joy at dusk; the Magi’s intense shed;
Skill with a knife, decision, pits and cranes;
Tall midnight prodding many a guess at God
Quanta, continua love. From love you are;
O plunge unaging in the enraging star!
5
A six-month old discoverer, this baby
Goggles for days at his elate right hand
Till his head falters and blue eyes blur. Maybe
He gurgles an off-vowel sound, nodding bland.
Then the hand hovers, sways like a pink flower
What will you do with it turned brusque and human?
Half floral and half bird no more-tweed power,
Wristwatch-consulter and cigared acumen?
On keyboard, dashboard, surfboard, labor-relations board
O use it better than we, your likely future;
Manage for human hope bones’ pirate hoard
And trick the tumblers of combustible nature.
Or, mildlier made, project us. Call desire
Two cups on midnight throw-rugs by the fire.
6
One day they learned that sorrow wore old tweed,
That lounging disaster spoke a soft hello.
Not where the wounds of wreck or battle bleed
But in the dullish office you all know.
Many searchlights locked and rusted on that scene
Throw blacker shapes than noon: there the child lies;
Doctors are curt, averted; what they mean
Concern shows livelier in the mother’s eyes.
In her tight fingers round a rubber lamb
She brought to show them all: See he can play.
Now if calamity with his drunkard’s aim
Or grief with minimizing hands–if they
Edge up or shriek in the shrubs-no gasp, no start:
This is one routine they know by heart.
7
Confronting that fact’s what-about-it shrug
In a pink mist of danker friends and family,
They started to take metaphor like a drug,
To lay on open wounds emollient simile.
As: tears are the best lens for seeing sky.
Or: thunder’s blue-steel piston clears the air.
But when alone they sobered, eye to eye,
The big skywriting withered, wasn’t there.
What was? Why some irrelevance and flummery:
They noted eyes blurred less in blurring rain,
That cheeks flushed in the snow at least-in summary
Though past and future’s gone, some Now remains.
No mountain blazing candid, no, not one
They picked up pebbles and these argued stone.
8 (Antimasque)
Because someone was gone, they bought a dog,
A collie pup, black, orange, flashy white.
He gnawed on table legs, troubled the rug;
His growls and pokings varied the empty night.
Except for that red flopping tongue, a fawn.
Intense but scattering, coffee-eyed. At play
White as piano-keys on the green lawn
His paws improvised snatches of ballet.
(The grinning show that Must Go On; the voice
Without past, without future, crying rejoice.)
This dog, this gawk, this zealot of frivolity,
Bounding assiduous sniffer hung with hair,
What could a romping fetish of this quality
Do in that house, with that shadow there?
Oh nothing. They knew that. The insane dancer
Was queried: Dance Dance was all the answer.
9
One day they made the abandoned beach their home
(Sky’s electric-blue; sea’s throbbing plum)
And watched the ivory spindles of the foam
Shaped by curved chisels and a big windy thumb.
They loved it here, and would have–none of that!
Rusty with sand the near-in waves grate no;
The folly-printed shore utters no flat;
Wave erasing wave erasing wave shakes no.
(Above, the clouds’ untidy pompous scrawl
Means no if it means anything at all.)
More no’s flurry their mind than gulls that view.
He stared till this conceit swirled out of spray:
He saw exclaiming waves turn W
(This lettered man) and combers cave like K
So, having soared to now, thought’s numbing O
Dove deepsea-panoplied down phosphorous know.
10
Know? But know what? Addenda from such minus?
Any true time from clockhands so bent back?
A city from ruins
Once crystal halls now staring hollow and black?
Two cups all seesaw splinters, telephone’s tremor,
Hard Time foreclosing on what appeared free?
As (almost obscene memento of summer)
A white dog dances by the terrible sea.
Well, they know this: the cloud-ornate proscenium
Where Place-Time whirs a gilt rococo cage
With clowns and cats performing—no millenium
Here. They observed from many-roped backstage
And clanking cellarage. But admired much art
Seeing the works of the bright world apart.
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