bang bang bang bang bang, and the man’s felt hat falling off, and his head sinking down on his breast, and the niggers flocking like ravens, flocking and cawing, while the murderer (a fireman whom I knew, who owned a pet monkey) stood there in his shirt sleeves, unmoving, as if surprised at what he’d done … Was it he who walked past the porch, a year later, in shirt sleeves, carrying an empty coal scuttle? Back from the penitentiary, or the chain gang?… Disappointed at not seeing the mark on his face. If I had kissed him — or perhaps it didn’t show anyway. Somebody said — Harry it was — that one of his eyes had come out and rolled across the floor. The bloodstained mattress had been put in the outhouse — I and Harry went and looked at it, pretending that we were looking for the kittens. Felo de se. Being pushed forward, in the crowd at the cemetery, to the edge of the grave. Sandy soil. An arrangement of pulleys and bands of canvas. Ashes to ashes. A little dust taken in the same parson’s clean fingers. And dust to dust. Then the shovels, more businesslike. — My father. My father which art in earth. It was just over there he took my picture once, on the bluff by the river. In the white duck sailor suit. Hollow be thy name.… Julian, who said that it was always in the presence of death, or in the thought of it, that life, and therefore love (reproductive) most astonishingly asserted itself. He meant the merely physical. Quite understandable. Ain’t Nature horrible? Love and Death. In Latin almost the same — ditto Italian. Death sacred and love profane. Eunice telling me of her friend the trained nurse, Miss Paine. Miss Paine was fond of poetry, she read Keats and Shelley. Periodically, she developed a taste for lubricious fiction. Presbyterian. Strong self-control, — but also strong passions. On that case in East Orange, on the night when the father died, the son, aged eighteen, through whose room she had to pass, put out his hand to her. She said afterward she couldn’t understand it — it had seemed so right. So absolutely right. The strain, the exhaustion, the grief, all breaking down into this other, this divine ecstasy, in which suffering has supremely its place. Her only experience of passion. Age: thirty. For a month afterward she did nothing but pray: the whole of Sunday spent at church. Forgive us, for we know not what we do. MISERY. A child crying somewhere. The most desolating of all sounds is the sound of a child crying. Harrowing — makes you feel helpless. Might as well run, but then you can’t forget it. The echo rings in your ear. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh … oo-oo-oo … ah-h-h-h … oo-oo-oo-oo … the first thing we do when born is cry. All language therefore must develop out of the sound of crying — it is probably most affecting when plangent for that reason. Make a note of that — and remember it. Spring it on somebody as if I’d always known it. There, there darling, don’t cry. There, there, darling, don’t cry. By baby bunting. When the bough breaks the cradle will fall. Lullaby. Traumerei. My father whistled the Lorelei to the cat — he had a theory that the Lorelei, whistled slowly, was infuriating to cats. But the cat seemed to be delighted. He would now be — let me see. He was thirty-seven. From nought is 8. Fifty-five. What would he think of me, I wonder. Would I be afraid of him still? I am taller than you are. I am more intelligent than you are. Freer from fetishes than you are … Look! You see that scar? You gave that to me, holding my hand in the gas jet … You see these plays? they come from the deep wound you inflicted on my soul … You see the unhappy restlessness with which I wander from continent to continent, this horrified and lack-luster restlessness which prevents me from loving one person or place for more than a season, driving me on, aimless and soulless? This is what you did to me by depriving me of my mother … Think of Silberstein saying that he wants to find his mother. He wants to die. O God — O God. To die — to die in the middle of a deep sleep, to sink deeper and deeper into the darkness … That’s of course, what he wanted — that poem he left on the table — the darkness—“closer, closer all about, Blotting all the light of living out.” Intra-uterine reversion. Perhaps the fact that he—will prevent me. Explode it. It was a sort of exhibitionism, leaving a poem on the table like that — defeated ego. Vanity. See what a great spirit has left you. Mighty, I spread my wings and left you … I suppose I liked him when I was very small, before the other kids were born — before I can remember. He must then have fascinated me and drawn me out powerfully and skillfully. Yes, I can feel that he did. There was something angelic about him — later it became diabolic. The angel that revolted. My God, what basilisk eyes, eyes that shot through you, tearing out thoughts, blood, and vertebrae. “Where is that other letter?” “There wasn’t any other letter.” “Look at me. Where is that other letter?” “But there wasn’t any other letter.” “You brought back three letters. Do you deny that you gave one of them to your mother?” “There were only two letters!” “Why did you sneak in by the back door?” “It was because there were some boys I didn’t want to meet—” “Don’t lie to me!.. Why did you come in by the back door?” “It was because I saw ‘Butch’ Gleason.” … O God have mercy upon us. Pity us and have mercy upon us. Shine down upon us, star of the sea, and guide us gently to the haven of Heaven. Manumit us from slavery to our passions; deliver us from the tyranny of all-too-human reason. Take from us that part which makes us to suffer, and at whose bidding we bring suffering to others. And lead us down into darkness forever. MISERY … Can never change the swan’s black legs to white. Curious I should have opened to that line when I tried the sortes Shakespeareanae. The devilish double entendre. Swan — ugly duckling — play-wright=compensation. Black legs=black leg=rotter=inferiority. My abiding sense of sin. The feeling of being dishonest and filthy. This is probably the cause of my curious failure in all human relationships. This is why I try to write plays. This is why, when I feel a friendship failing, feel myself failing to attract or hold by means of personal charm (a fake), I begin trying to impress—let my plays fight my personal battles for me. Take my new play MS. to Cynthia tomorrow. Yes — the impulse is perfectly clear. This is what I can do—this is the angelic sort of being I am! Read and admire! Sound me and wonder! I sit near you with eyes modestly downcast while you read. You wouldn’t think, to look at me, that this rather harmless nice creature harbored in his soul such a shattering power … How disgusting!.. Never, never again will I show my work personally to a living soul. Publish it, get it performed — yes, since that seems to be the mechanism by which I preserve my sanity. But employ it as a secondary sexual characteristic — a bloodshot erect crest — a rainbow-eyed tail — a mating call!.. The Bulgarian weasel. That hideous tramp on the stage who said he would now give an imitation of the cry of the young Bulgarian weasel to its mother. “Mommer!..” in a quiet restrained voice. “Mommer!” … It was during the same performance that the Russian girl, playing the xylophone, looked at me so fixedly and invitingly. Did I go round by the stage door? Can’t remember. Probably not … Perhaps it’s because I fear my rainbow tail won’t be liked, won’t make a sufficient impression—? That would simply add, of course, to my ruling sense of inferiority … I wonder what it was about me that always made people laugh. In streets … On street cars … How I hated to get into street cars or trains, facing all the staring people! Probably only my self-consciousness and sheepishness and furtiveness that attracted attention? Then I would blush. Always blushing — with a sense of guilt, of having been found out … Does your mother know you’re out? That was when I had on that gray Norfolk suit. It probably