“Who’d miss an opportunity to meetA poet so distinguished?” I was sweetOf me to come! I desperately triedTo ask my questions. They were brushed aside:“Perhaps some other time.” The journalistStill had her scribblings. I should not insist.She plied me with fruit cake, turning it all780 Into an idiotic social call.“I can’t believe,” she said, “that it is you!I loved your poem in the Blue Review.That one about Mon Blon. I have a nieceWho’s climbed the Matternhorn. The other pieceI could not understand. I mean the sense.Because, of course, the sound – But I’m so dense!”
She was. I might have persevered. I mightHave made her tell me more about the whiteFountain we both had seen “beyond the veil”790 But if (I thought) I mentioned that detailShe’d pounce upon it as upon a fondAffinity, a sacramental bond,Uniting mystically her and me,And in a jiffy our two souls would beBrother and sister trembling on the brinkOf tender incest. “Well,” I said, “I thinkIt’s getting late…”It’s getting late…”I also called on Coates.He was afraid he had mislaid her notes.He took his article from a steel file:800 “It’s accurate. I have not changed her style.There’s one misprint – not that it matters much:Mountain, not fountain. The majestic touch.”
Life Everlasting – based on a misprint!I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,And stop investigating my abyss?But all at once it dawned on me that thisWas the real point, the contrapuntal theme;Just this: not text, but texture; not the dreamBut topsy-turvical coincidence,810 Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.Yes! It sufficed that I in life could findSome kind of link-and-bobolink, some kindOr correlated pattern in the game,Plexed artistry, and something of the samePleasure in it as they who played it found.
It did not matter who they were. No sound,No furtive light came from their involuteAbode, but there they were, aloof and mute,Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns820 To ivory unicorns and ebony fauns;Kindling a long life here, extinguishingA short one there; killing a Balkan king;Causing a chunk of ice formed on a high —Flying airplane to plummet from the skyAnd strike a farmer dead; hiding my keys,Glasses or pipe. Coordinating theseEvents and objects with remote eventsAnd vanished objects. Making ornamentsOf accidents and possibilities.
830 Stormcoated, I strode in: Sybil, it isMy firm conviction – “Darling, shut the door.Had a nice trip?” Splendid – but what is moreI have returned convinced that I can gropeMy way to some – to some – “Yes, dear?” Faint hope.
Canto four
Now I shall spy on beauty as none hasSpied on it yet. Now I shall cry out asNone has cried out. Now I shall try what noneHas tried. Now I shall do what none has done.And speaking of this wonderful machine:840 I’m puzzled by the difference betweenTwo methods of composing: A, the kindWhich goes on solely in the poet’s mind,A testing of performing words, while heIs soaping a third time one leg, and B,The other kind, much more decorous, whenHe’s in his study writing with a pen.
In method B the hand supports the thought,The abstract battle is concretely fought.The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar850 A canceled sunset or restore a star,And thus it physically guides the phraseToward faint daylight through the inky maze.
But method A is agony! The brainIs soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain.A muse in overalls directs the drillWhich grinds and which effort of the willCan interrupt, while the automatonIs taking off what he has just put onOr walking briskly to the corner store860 To buy the paper he has read before.
Why is it so? Is it, perhaps, becauseIn penless work there is no pen-poised pauseAnd one must use three hands at the same time,Having to choose the necessary rhyme,Hold the completed line before one’s eyes,And keep in mind all the preceding tries?Or is the process deeper with no deskTo prop the false and hoist the poetesque?For there are those mysterious moments when870 Too weary to delete, I drop my pen;I ambulate – and by some mute commandThe right word flutes and perches on my hand.
My best time is the morning; my preferredSeason, midsummer. I once overheardMyself awakening while half of meStill slept in bed. I tore my spirit free,And caught up with myself – upon the lawnWhere clover leaves cupped the topaz of the dawn,And where Shade stood in nightshirt and one shoe.880 And then I realized that this half tooWas fast asleep; both laughed and I awokeSafe in my bed as day its eggshell broke,And robins walked and stopped, and on the dampGemmed turf a brown shoe lay! My secret stamp,The Shade impress, the mystery inborn.Mirages, miracles, midsummer morn.
Since my biographer may be too staidOr know too little to affirm that ShadeShaved in his bath, here goes:Shaved in his bath, here goes: “He’d fixed a sort890 Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel supportRunning across the tub to hold in placeThe shaving mirror right before his faceAnd with his toe renewing tap-warmth, he’dSit like a king there, and like Marat bleed.”
The more I weigh, the less secure my skin;In places it’s ridiculously thin;Thus near the mouth: the space between its wickAnd my grimace, invited the wicked nick.Or this dewlap: some day I must set free900 The Newport Frill inveterate in me.My Adam’s apple is a prickly pear:Now I shall speak of evil and despairAs none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight,Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpateThrough strawberry-and-cream the gory messAnd find unchanged that patch of prickliness.
I have my doubts about the one-armed blokeWho in commercials with one gliding strokeClears a smooth path of flesh from ear to chin,910 Then wipes his faces and fondly tries his skin.I’m in the class of fussy bimanists.As a discreet ephebe in tights assistsA female in an acrobatic dance,My left hand help, and holds, and shifts its stance.
Now I shall speak… Better than any soapIs the sensation for which poets hopeWhen inspiration and its icy blaze,The sudden image, the immediate phraseOver the skin a triple ripple send920 Making the little hairs all stand on endAs in the enlarged animated schemeOf whiskers mowed when held up by Our Cream.
Now I shall speak of evil as none hasSpoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;The white-hosed moron torturing a blackBull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,930 Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.