Wild beasts, deep rivers and dry rocks Lay nursed on the smile of a merciful Madonna.
In a sandy. province Luther denounced as obscene
The machine that so smoothly forgave and saved If paid; he announced to the Sinful City a grinning gap
No rite could cross; he abased her before the Grace: Henceforth division was also to be her condition;
Her conclusions were to include doubt, Her loves were to bear with her fear; insecure, she endured.
Saints tamed, poets acclaimed the raging herod of the will;
The groundlings wept as on a secular stage The grand and the bad went to ruin in thundering verse;
Sundered by reason and treason the City Found invisible ground for concord in measured sound,
While wood and stone learned the shameless Games of man, to flatter, to show off, be pompous, to romp.
Nature was put to the question in the Prince's name;
She confessed, what he wished to hear, that she had no soul; Between his scaffold and her coldness the restrained style,
The ironic smile became the worldly and devout, Civility a city grown rich: in his own snob way
The unarmed gentleman did his job As a judge to her children, as a father to her forests.
In a national capital Mirabeau and his set
Attacked mystery; the packed galleries roared And history marched to the drums of a clear idea,
The aim of the Rational City. quick to admire, Quick to tire: she used up Napoleon and threw him away;
Her pallid affected heroes Began their hectic quest for the prelapsarian man.
The deserts were dangerous. the waters rough, their clothes
Absurd but, changing their Beatrices often, Sleeping little, they pushed on, raised the flag of the Word
Upon lawless spots denied or forgotten By the fear or the pride of the Glittering City;
Guided by hated parental shades, They invaded and harrowed the hell of her natural self.
Chimeras mauled them, they wasted away with the spleen,
Suicide picked them off, sunk off Cape Consumption, Lost on the Tosspot Seas, wrecked on the Gibbering Isles
Or trapped in the ice of despair at the Soul's Pole, They died, unfinished, alone; but now the forbidden,
The hidden, the wild outside were known: Faithful without faith, they died for the Conscious City.
III
Across the square, Between the burnt-out Law Courts and Police Headquarters, Past the Cathedral far too damaged to repair, Around the Grand Hotel patched up to hold reporters, Near huts of some Emergency Committee, The barbed wire runs through the abolished City.
Across the plains, Between two hills, two villages, two trees, two friends, The barbed wire runs which neither argues nor explains But where it likes a place, a path, a railroad ends, The humor, the cuisine, the rites, the taste, " The pattern of the City, are erased.
Across our sleep The barbed wire also runs: It trips us so we fall And white ships sail without us though the others weep, It makes our sorry fig-leaf at the Sneerers Ball, It ties the smiler to the double bed, It keeps on growing from the witch's head.
Behind the wire Which is behind the mirror, our Image is the same Awake or dreaming: It has no image to admire, No age, no sex, no memory, no creed, no name, It can be counted. multiplied, employed In any place, at any time destroyed.
i
Is It our friend? No; that is our hope; that we weep and It does not grieve, That for It the wire and the ruins are not the end: This is the flesh we are but never would believe, !
The flesh we die but it is death to pity;
This is Adam waiting for His City.
\
Let Our Weakness speak IV
Without me Adam would have fallen irrevocably with Lucifer;
he would never have been able to cry O felix culpa. i
It was I who suggested his theft to Prometheus; my frailty !
cost Adonis his life. 4
I heard Orpheus sing; I was not quite as moved as they say. 1
I was not taken in by the sheep's-eyes of Narcissus; I was j
angry with Psyche when she struck a light. I was in Hector's confidence; so far as it went.
Had he listened to me Oedipus would never have left Corinth; |
I cast no vote at the trial of Orestes. I fell asleep when Diotima spoke of love; I was not responsible
for the monsters which tempted St. Anthony. To me the Saviour permitted His Fifth Word from the cross;
to be a stumbling-block to the stoics. .
I was the unwelcome third at the meetings of Tristan with ■
Isolda; they tried to poison me. (
I rode with Galahad on his Quest for the San Graal; without
understanding I kept his vow. ^
I was the just impediment to the marriage of Faustus with
Helen; I know a ghost when I see one. With Hamlet I had no patience; but I forgave Don Quixote all I
for his admission in the cart. j
I was the missing entry in Don Giovanni's list; for which he I
could never account. I
I assisted Figaro the Barber in all his intrigues; when Prince |
Tamino arrived at wisdom I too obtained my reward. 1
I was innocent of the sin of the Ancient Mariner; time after |
time I warned Captain Ahab to accept happiness.
As for Metropolis, that too-great city; her delusions are not mine.
Her speeches impress me little, her statistics less; to all who
dwell on the public side of her mirrors resentments and no peace.
At the place of my passion her photographers are gathered together; but I shall rise again to hear her judged.
June 1949
69
Under Sirius
Yes, these are the dog-days, Fortunatus: The heather lies limp and dead On the mountain, the baltering torrent Shrunk to a soodling thread;
Rusty the spears of the legion, unshaven its captain, Vacant the scholar's brain Under his great hat, Drug as she may the Sibyl utters A gush of table-chat.
And you yourself with a head-cold and upset stomach, Lying in bed till noon, Your bills unpaid, your much advertised Epic not yet begun,
Are a sufferer too. All day, you tell us, you wish Some earthquake would astonish Or the wind of the Comforter's wing Unlock the prisons and translate The slipshod gathering.
And last night, you say, you dreamed
of that bright blue morning,The hawthorn hedges in bloom, When, serene in their ivory vessels, The three wise Maries come,
Sossing through seamless waters, piloted in By sea-horse and fluent dolphin: Ah! how the cannons roar, How jocular the bells as They
Indulge the peccant shore. ^
It is natural to hope and pious, of course, to believe That all in the end shall be well, But first of all, remember, So the Sacred Books foretell,
The rotten fruit shall be shaken. Would your hope make sense If today were that moment of silence Before it break and drown When the insurrected eagre hangs I
Over the sleeping town? |
How will you look and what will you do when the basalt Tombs of the sorcerers shatter And their guardian megalopods ..
Come after you pitter-patter? I
How will you answer when from their qualming spring The immortal nymphs fly shrieking And out of the open sky The pantocratic riddle breaks— "Who are you and why?" n
For when in a carol under the apple-trees The reborn featly dance, There will also, Fortunatus, Be those who refused their chance,
|
Now pottering shades, querulous beside the salt-pits,
And mawkish in their wits, i
To whom these dull dog-days Between event seem crowned with olive And golden with self-praise.
Fleet Visit
The sailors come ashore Out of their hollow ships, Mild-looking middle-class boys Who read the comic strips; One baseball game is more To them than fifty Troys.