consciously remember? A lot, probably. A warm and happy place with kind people whom it trusted — irrecoverably lost. Paradise lost. Where are they — where is that wonderful house? Ask the policeman. Good God it was a cruel thing to do — to take it in for a few weeks and then put it out in the streets like that. How horrible the suffering of any young thing can be. Speechless suffering, suffering that does not understand — the child punished by the parent whose nerves are on edge. Struck for reasons which it cannot conceive — dogs and cats the same way. Man’s inhumanity to dogs and cats. Cattle too, driven into the abattoir — no wonder there are complaints by the S.P.C.A. “Those who eat meat do not realize that it is not invariably at the first blow of the poleax—” etc. Falling down on their knees and bleeding, looking at man with surprise — that look ought to be enough to destroy the human race. Lex talionis. Cruelty is inevitable — all that one can possibly do is to minimize it. We could live on nuts and vegetables — but I go right on eating beefsteaks just the same … The consciousness, though, of a lost kitten — what an extraordinary thing it must be. I suppose it’s exactly like ours, except that it can’t be partly linguistic — probably almost wholly visual, a kaleidoscopic series of pictures. Memory? Hm. Not so easy. Perhaps in that case all it really felt was the terrifying unfamiliarity, strangeness, and of course the discomfort. It would be sentimental to ascribe any more than that — to think of it as being as aware as I was, thinking in bed about it, of the wildness of the night, the wind, the strange shutters banging on strange walls of strange houses, the torn puddles under lamplight, the deluge of driven rain rattling against windows, solid water sousing down from eaves. Yes, I remember how sharply and dreadfully I visualized it — seeing the black street blattering with water, a green shutter hanging from one hinge — and refusing (shutting my eyes) to visualize the kitten as somewhere out in it—damned cowardice, sentimental cowardice!.. I remember getting out of bed early in the morning and tiptoeing down to the back door to let in the maltese. The time my father scolded me for it. “Don’t ever do it again, understand!.. I thought it was someone who had broken into the house — a thief — and I very nearly shot you … Next time, I will shoot you!” … Perhaps that’s the source — that extraordinary cruelty both to the kitten and to me. I can’t remember what I felt about it at the time — but it must have been appalling. That’s the sort of thing, in one’s childhood, that’s “part of one’s experience of the world”—the discovery of the sort of nightmare into which we are born. MISERY. A voice cried sleep no more. There’s one did swear in his sleep, and one cried Murder. Murder equals redrum. That’s poetic justice. I waste a lot of time in logolatry. I am a verbalist, Cynthia — a tinkling symbolist. I am the founder and leader of the new school of literature — The Emblemists. I wear a wide black hat, a dirty shirt, boots with spurs, and shave once a month. Traces of egg can be seen at the corners of my mouth. I am hollow-cheeked, exophthalmic, prognathous: I express my views at any and all times, savagely, and with a conscious minimum of tact. I glory in my dirtiness — I am a Buddhist — I look at you with sleepy cynicism to prove it — utterly indifferent to the needs of the body. Nevertheless, I eat heartily, and I make no bones about the tiresome necessities of sex. I am, into the bargain, slightly mad. I have persecution mania. They try to ignore me — they slander me — they suppress mention of me — they whisper about me and laugh. Insults are heaped upon me, but I stride on, magnificent, a genius manifest; the winds of my poems whirl them about and make them whimper. Ha ha! That last phrase, Cynthia — would you believe it? — was actually used about me by a famous poet in an interview — something I had said annoyed him. “The winds of my poems … make him whimper,”—that’s what he said. That reminds me of an article I saw once — in the New York Nation, was it? — called “Wind in Tennyson.” Perfectly serious! Isn’t it incredible, the singular things people will do … I do them myself … Yes … From time to time … I am a poet of the Greenwich Village school — slightly eccentric, but really quite commonplace. I make a point of never sleeping more than once with the same woman. Hilda J—? Yes. Sophie S—? Yes. Irma R—? Yes. Madeline T—? Yes. And Irma’s sister, too. And her seven cousins from Utica. And every actress in the Jack-in-the-box Theater. Typists, poetesses, dancers, reciters, fiddlers, and organists. I have a particular passion for organists. You can see me any noontime at that charming little café in Sixth Avenue — you know the one. I look pale and bored. I carry yellow gloves and a stick, and my utter indifference to everything around me convinces you that I am distinguished. I can tell you all the secrets of all these people. That girl in the corner? Takes morphia. For ten years has been writing a novel, which nobody has seen. Smokes, drinks, swears, twice attempted suicide. M—, the dancer, gave her an “an unmentionable disease” … That other little girl, dark and pale, with one eye higher than the other? A hanger-on — the hetaira type. A nice girl, nevertheless, and once or twice has really fallen in love. No moral sense whatever — a rotten family in Flatbush. She is hard up most of the time — on the one occasion when I slept with her I found it necessary (or charitable) to give her a pair of my B.V.D.’s … I am an unsuccessful artist, wandering from one city to another: New York, Chicago, Boston. Everywhere I carry with me a portfolio of my sketches, drawings, etchings, color washes, pastels. I show them to people on trains, I show them to people in restaurants, or on park benches. I have a large pale head with shiny sleek yellow hair and the yellow stubble on my cheeks and chin glistens in the sunlight. Once I grew a beard — but although I adopt the pose of indifference to public opinion, I must admit that the jokes of small boys, and the more violent comments of roughs, finally led me to shave it off. “Look at the Bowery Jesus!” they cried: “Pipe the Christ!” … One critic referred to me as “that immoral and hypocritical fin de siécle Jesus” … In Chicago, I ran a private dance hall. In Boston, I conducted a tea shop and edited a little magazine. In New York, I have sold cigars, dictionaries, soap and fountain pens. In St. Louis, I nearly died of flu. When Hurwitz, the poet, came to see me I was lying under a sheet, like a corpse. “Why don’t you take your shoes off?” he said, seeing my feet which protruded. “They are off,” I said. It was only that I hadn’t washed them for some time. I practice a saintly contempt for the physical … Yes … I am all these. A little flower of the slime … For a time, I was X, the novelist, the dabbler in black arts, alchemy, hashish, and all known perversions. How fearfully wicked I was! Women shuddered when I was pointed out to them: when I touched them, they fainted. I collected slippers — a hundred and sixty-three. The fifty-seven varieties were child’s play to me, and the sixty-nine, and the one thousand. You know that poem of Whitman’s — something about “bussing my body all over with soft balsamic busses”? That’s me — the omnibus. In my rooms, with a few expensively dressed women who considered themselves New York’s most refined, I celebrated The Black Mass. One of these women, I discovered, was a cynomaniac … Several women have supported me … While the stenographer was paying my bills, I was absorbed in a passion for an Italian