Is uncontrollable,
And is under the garden wall.
I am overtaken by terror
Thinking of my father’s fathers,
And of my own will.
In the Naked Bed, in Plato’s Cave
In the naked bed, in Plato’s cave,
Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall,
Carpenters hammered under the shaded window,
Wind troubled the window curtains all night long,
A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding,
Their freights covered, as usual.
The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram
Slid slowly forth.
Hearing the milkman’s chop,
His striving up the stair, the bottle’s chink,
I rose from bed, lit a cigarette,
And walked to the window. The stony street
Displayed the stillness in which buildings stand,
The street-lamp’s vigil and the horse’s patience.
The winter sky’s pure capital
Turned me back to bed with exhausted eyes.
Strangeness grew in the motionless air. The loose
Film grayed. Shaking wagons, hooves’ waterfalls,
Sounded far off, increasing, louder and nearer.
A car coughed, starting. Morning, softly
Melting the air, lifted the half-covered chair
From underseas, kindled the looking-glass,
Distinguished the dresser and the white wall.
The bird called tentatively, whistled, called,
Bubbled and whistled, so! Perplexed, still wet
With sleep, affectionate, hungry and cold. So, so,
O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail
Of early morning, the mystery of beginning
Again and again,
while History is unforgiven.
The Beautiful American Word, Sure
The beautiful American word, Sure,
As I have come into a room, and touch
The lamp’s button, and the light blooms with such
Certainty where the darkness loomed before,
As I care for what I do not know, and care
Knowing for little she might not have been,
And for how little she would be unseen,
The intercourse of lives miraculous and dear.
Where the light is, and each thing clear,
Separate from all others, standing in its place,
I drink the time and touch whatever’s near,
And hope for day when the whole world has that face:
For what assures her present every year?
In dark accidents the mind’s sufficient grace.
Far Rockaway
“the cure of souls.” HENRY JAMES
The radiant soda of the seashore fashions
Fun, foam, and freedom. The sea laves
The shaven sand. And the light sways forward
On the self-destroying waves.
The rigor of the weekday is cast aside with shoes,
With business suits and the traffic’s motion;
The lolling man lies with the passionate sun,
Or is drunken in the ocean.
A socialist health takes hold of the adult,
He is stripped of his class in the bathing-suit,
He returns to the children digging at summer,
A melon-like fruit.
O glittering and rocking and bursting and blue
— Eternities of sea and sky shadow no pleasure:
Time unheard moves and the heart of man is eaten
Consummately at leisure.
The novelist tangential on the boardwalk overhead
Seeks his cure of souls in his own anxious gaze.
“Here,” he says, “With whom?” he asks, “This?” he questions,
“What tedium, what blaze?”
“What satisfaction, fruit? What transit, heaven?
Criminal? justified? arrived at what June?”
That nervous conscience amid the concessions
Is a haunting, haunted moon.
Someone Is Harshly Coughing as Before
Someone is harshly coughing on the next floor,
Sudden excitement catching the flesh of his throat:
Who is the sick one?
Who will knock at the door,
Ask what is wrong and sweetly pay attention,
The shy withdrawal of the sensitive face
Embarrassing both, but double shame is tender
— We will mind our ignorant business, keep our place.
But it is God, who has caught cold again,
Wandering helplessly in the world once more,
Now he is phthisic, and he is, poor Keats
(Pardon, O Father, unknowable Dear, this word,
Only the cartoon is lucid, only the curse is heard),
Longing for Eden, afraid of the coming war.
The past, a giant shadow like the twilight,
The moving street on which the autos slide,
The buildings’ heights, like broken teeth,
Repeat necessity on every side,
The age requires death and is not denied,
He has come as a young man to be hanged once more!
Another mystery must be crucified,
Another exile bare his complex care,
Another spent head spill its wine, before
(When smoke in silence curves
from every fallen side)
Pity and Peace return, padding the broken floor
With heavy feet.
Their linen hands will hide
In the stupid opiate the exhausted war.
Tired and Unhappy, You Think of Houses
Tired and unhappy, you think of houses
Soft-carpeted and warm in the December evening,
While snow’s white pieces fall past the window,
And the orange firelight leaps.
A young girl sings
That song of Gluck where Orpheus pleads with Death;
Her elders watch, nodding their happiness
To see time fresh again in her self-conscious eyes:
The servants bring the coffee, the children retire,
Elder and younger yawn and go to bed,
The coals fade and glow, rose and ashen,
It is time to shake yourself! and break this
Banal dream, and turn your head
Where the underground is charged, where the weight
Of the lean buildings is seen,
Where close in the subway rush, anonymous
In the audience, well-dressed or mean,
So many surround you, ringing your fate,
Caught in an anger exact as a machine!
A Young Child and His Pregnant Mother
At four years Nature is mountainous,
Mysterious, and submarine. Even
A city child knows this, hearing the subway’s
Rumor underground. Between the grate,
Dropping his penny, he learned out all loss,
The irretrievable cent of fate,
And now this newest of the mysteries,
Confronts his honest and his studious eyes—
His mother much too fat and absentminded,
Gazing far past his face, careless of him,
His fume, his charm, his bedtime, and warm milk,
As soon the night will be too dark, the spring
Too late, desire strange, and time too fast,
This first estrangement is a gradual thing
(His mother once so svelte, so often sick!
Towering father did this: what a trick!)
Explained too cautiously, containing fear,
Another being’s being, becoming dear:
All men are enemies: thus even brothers
Can separate each other from their mothers!
No better example than this unborn brother
Shall teach him of his exile from his mother,
Measured by his distance from the sky,
Spoken in two vowels,
I am I.
Sonnet: O City, City
To live between terms, to live where death
Has his loud picture in the subway ride,