Brutal like all Olympic games,
Though fought with smiles and Christian names
And less dramatic, This dialectic strife between The civil gods is just as mean, And more fanatic.
What high immortals do in mirth Is life and death on Middle Earth;
Their a-historic Antipathy forever gripes All ages and somatic types, The sophomoric
Who face the future's darkest hints With giggles or with prairie squints
As stout as Cortez, And those who like myself turn pale As we approach with ragged sail The fattening forties.
The sons of Hermes love to play, And only do their best when they
' Are told they oughtn't; Apollo's children never shrink From boring jobs but have to think Their work important.
Related by antithesis, A compromise between us is Impossible;
Respect perhaps but friendship never: |
Falstaff the fool confronts forever The prig Prince Hal.
If he would leave the self alone, Apollo's welcome to the throne,
Fasces and falcons; He loves to rule, has always done it; The earth would soon, did Hermes run it, Be like the Balkans.
i
But jealous of our god of dreams, His common-sense in secret schemes
To rule the heart; Unable to invent the lyre,
Creates with simulated fire 1
Official art.
And when he occupies a college, Truth is replaced by Useful Knowledge;
He pays particular '
Attention to Commercial Thought, Public Relations, Hygiene, Sport, In his curricula.
Athletic, extrovert and crude, For him, to work in solitude
Is the offence, The goal a populous Nirvana: His shield bears this device: Mens sana Qui maJ y pense.
Today his arms, we must confess, From Right to Left have met success, His banners wave
From Yale to Princeton, and the news From Broadway to the Book Reviews Is very grave.
His radio Homers all day long In over-Whitmanated song
That does not scan, With adjectives laid end to end, Extol the doughnut and commend The Common Man.
His, too, each homely lyric thing On sport or spousal love or spring
Or dogs or dusters, Invented by some court-house bard For recitation by the yard In filibusters.
To him ascend the prize orations And sets of fugal variations
On some folk-ballad, While dietitians sacrifice A glass of prune-juice or a nice Marsh-mallow salad.
Charged with his compound of sensational Sex plus some undenominational
Religious matter, Enormous novels by co-eds Rain down on our defenceless heads Till our teeth chatter.
In fake Hermetic uniforms Behind our battle-line, in swarms
That keep alighting, His existentialists declare That they are in complete despair, Yet go on writing.
No matter; He shall be defied; White Aphrodite is on our side:
What though his threat To organize us grow more critical? Zeus willing, we, the unpolitical, Shall beat him yet.
Lone scholars, sniping from the walls Of learned periodicals, Our facts defend, Our intellectual marines, Landing in little magazines Capture a trend.
By night our student Underground At cocktail parties whisper round
From ear to ear; Fat figures in the public eye Collapse next morning, ambushed by Some witty sneer.
In our morale must lie our strength: So, that we may behold at length
Routed Apollo's Battalions melt away like fog, Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue, Which runs as follows:—
Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases, Thou shalt not write thy doctor's thesis
On education, Thou shalt not worship projects nor Shalt thou or thine bow down before Administration.
Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon World-Affairs, Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit With statisticians nor commit A social science.
Thou shalt not be on friendly terms With guys in advertising firms,
Nor speak with such As read the Bible for its prose, Nor, above all, make love to those Who wash too much.
Thou shalt not live within thy means Nor on plain water and raw greens.
If thou must choose Between the chances, choose the odd; Read The New Yorker, trust in God; And take short views.
1946
64
The Fall of Rome
(FOR CYRIL CONNOLLY)
The piers are pummelled by the waves; In a lonely field the rain Lashes an abandoned train; Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns; Agents of the Fisc pursue Absconding tax-defaulters through The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send The temple prostitutes to sleep; All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may Extoll the Ancient Disciplines, But the muscle-bound Marines Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity, Little birds with scarlet legs, Sitting on their speckled eggs, Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, i
Silently and very fast. ♦
January 1947 (
65
In Praise of Limestone
If it form the one landscape that we the inconstant ones
Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes
With their surface fragrance of thyme and beneath A secret system of caves and conduits; hear these springs That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving
Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain The butterfly and the lizard; examine this region
Of short distances and definite places: What could be more like Mother or a fitter background
For her son, for the nude young male who lounges Against a rock displaying his dildo, never doubting
That for all his faults he is loved, whose works are but Extensions of his power to charm? From weathered outcrop
To hill-top temple, from appearing waters to Conspicuous fountains, from a wild to a formal vineyard,
Are ingenious but short steps that a child's wish To receive more attention than his brothers, whether By pleasing or teasing, can easily take.
Watch, then, the band of rivals as they climb up and down Their steep stone gennels in twos and threes, sometimes Arm in arm, but never, thank God, in step; or engaged
On the shady side of a square at midday in Voluble discourse, knowing each other too well to think
There are any important secrets, unable To conceive a god whose temper-tantrums are moral
And not to be pacified by a clever line Or a good lay: for, accustomed to a stone that responds,
They have never had to veil their faces in awe Of a crater whose blazing fury could not be fixed;
Adjusted to the local needs of valleys Where everything can be touched or reached by walking,
Their eyes have never looked into infinite space Through the lattice-work of a nomad's comb; born lucky,
Their legs have never encountered the fungi And insects of the jungle, the monstrous forms and lives
With which we have nothing, we like to hope, in common. So, when one of them goes to the bad, the way his mind works
Remains comprehensible: to become a pimp Or deal in fake jewelry or ruin a fine tenor voice
For effects that bring down the house could happen to all But the best and the worst of us ...
That is why, I suppose, The best and worst never stayed here long but sought Immoderate soils where the beauty was not so external,
The light less public and the meaning of life Something more than a mad camp. "Come!" cried
the granite wastes, "How evasive is your humor, how accidental i