Whatever god a person believes in, in whatever way he believes (no two are exactly alike), as one of the crowd he believes
and only believes in that
in which there is only one way of believing.
Few people accept each other and most will never do anything properly,
but the crowd rejects no one, joining the crowd is the only thing all men can do.
Only because of that can we say all men are our brothers,
superior, because of that,
to the social exoskeletons: When
have they ever ignored their queens, for one second stopped work
on their provincial cities, to worship The Prince of this world like us,
at this noon, on this hill, in the occasion of this dying.
Spring 1954
IV Nones
What we know to be not possible, Though time after time foretold By wild hermits, by shaman and sybil
Gibbering in their trances, Or revealed to a child in some chance rhyme
Like wiJJ and kill, comes to pass Before we realize it: we are surprised At the ease and speed of our deed
And uneasy: It is barely three, Mid-afternoon, yet the blood Of our sacrifice is already .
Dry on the grass; we are not prepared |
For silence so sudden and so soon; (
The day is too hot, too bright, too still, Too ever, the dead remains too nothing. What shall we do till nightfall?
The wind has dropped and we have lost our public.
The faceless many who always Collect when any world is to be wrecked,
Blown up, burnt down, cracked open, Felled, sawn in two, hacked through, torn apart,
Have all melted away: not one Of these who in the shade of walls and trees
Lie sprawled now, calmly sleeping, Harmless as sheep, can remember why
He shouted or what about So loudly in the sunshine this morning;
All if challenged would reply —"It was a monster with one red eye, A crowd that saw him die, not L"— The hangman has gone to wash, the soldiers to eat: We are left alone with our feat.
The Madonna with the green woodpecker,
The Madonna of the fig-tree, The Madonna beside the yellow dam,
Turn their kind faces from us And our projects under construction,
Look only in one direction, Fix their gaze on our completed work:
Pile-driver, concrete-mixer, Crane and pickaxe wait to be used again,
But how can we repeat this? Outliving our act, we stand where we are, As disregarded as some
Discarded artifact of our own,
Like torn gloves, rusted kettles, Abandoned branch-lines, worn lop-sided Grindstones buried in nettles.
This mutilated flesh, our victim,
Explains too nakedly, too well, The spell of the asparagus garden,
The aim of our chalk-pit game; stamps, Birds' eggs are not the same, behind the wonder
Of tow-paths and sunken lanes, Behind the rapture on the spiral stair,
We shall always now be aware Of the deed into which they lead, under
The mock chase and mock capture, The racing and tussling and splashing,
The panting and the laughter, Be listening for the cry and stillness
To follow after: wherever The sun shines, brooks run, books are written, There will also be this death.
Soon cool tramontana will stir the leaves,
The shops will re-open at four, The empty blue bus in the empty pink square
Fill up and depart: we have time To misrepresent, excuse, deny,
Mythify, use this event While, under a hotel bed, in prison,
Down wrong turnings, its meaning Waits for our lives: sooner than we would choose,
Bread will melt, water will burn, And the great quell begin, Abaddon
Set up his triple gallows At our seven gates, fat Belial make
Our wives waltz naked; meanwhile It would be best to go home, if we have a home, In any case good to rest.
That our dreaming wills may seem to escape
This dead calm, wander instead On knife edges, on black and white squares, i
Across moss, baize, velvet, boards, '
Over cracks and hillocks, in mazes
Of string and penitent cones, Down granite ramps and damp passages,
Through gates that will not relatch And doors marked Private, pursued by Moors
And watched by latent robbers, To hostile villages at the heads of fjords,
To dark chateaux where wind sobs In the pine-trees and telephones ring,
Inviting trouble, to a room, Lit by one weak bulb, where our Double sits Writing and does not look up.
That, while we are thus away, our own wronged flesh
May work undisturbed, restoring The order we try to destroy, the rhythm
We spoil out of spite: valves close And open exactly, glands secrete, - Vessels contract and expand At the right moment, essential fluids
Flow to renew'exhausted cells, Not knowing quite what has happened, but awed
By death like all the creatures Now watching this spot, like the hawk looking down
Without blinking, the smug hens Passing close by in their pecking order,
The bug whose view is balked by grass, Or the deer who shyly from afar Peer through chinks in the forest.
July 1950
V Vespers
If the hill overlooking our city has always been known as Adam's Grave, only at dusk can you see the recumbent giant, his head turned to the west, his right arm resting for ever on Eve's haunch,
can you learn, from the way he looks up at the scandalous pair, what a citizen really thinks of his citizenship,
just as now you can hear in a drunkard's caterwaul his rebel sorrows crying for a parental discipline, in lustful eyes perceive a disconsolate soul,
scanning with desperation all passing limbs for some vestige of her faceless angel who in that long ago when wishing was a help mounted her once and vanished:
For Sun and Moon supply their conforming masks, but in this hour of civil twilight all must wear their own faces.
And it is now that our two paths cross.
Both simultaneously recognize his Anti-type: that I am an Arcadian, that he is a Utopian.
He notes, with contempt, my Aquarian belly: I note, with alarm, his Scorpion's mouth.
He would like to see me cleaning latrines: I would like to see him removed to some other planet.
Neither speaks. What experience could we possibly share?
Glancing at a lampshade in a store window, I observe it is too hideous for anyone in their senses to buy: He observes it is too expensive fora peasant to buy.
Passing a slum child with rickets, I look the other way: He looks the other way if he passes a chubby one.
I hope our senators will behave like saints, provided they don't reform me: He hopes they will behave like baritoni cattivi, and, when lights burn late in the Citadel,
I (who have never seen the inside of a police station) am shocked and think: "Were the city as free as they say, after sundown all her bureaus would be huge black stones.":
He (who has been beaten up several times) is not shocked at all but thinks: "One fine night our boys will be working up there."
You can see, then, why, between my Eden and his New Jerusalem, no treaty is negotiable.
In my Eden a person who dislikes Bellini has the good manners not to get born: In his New Jerusalem a person who dislikes work will be very sorry he was born.
In my Eden we have a few beam-engines, saddle-tank locomotives, overshot waterwheels and other beautiful pieces of obsolete machinery to play with: In his New Jerusalem even chefs will be cucumber-cool machine minders.
In my Eden our only source of political news is gossip: In his New Jerusalem there will be a special daily in simplified spelling for non-verbal types.
In my Eden each observes his compulsive rituals and superstitious tabus but we have no morals: In his New Jerusalem the temples will be empty but all will practice the rational virtues.
One reason for his contempt is that I have only to close my eyes, cross the iron footbridge to the tow-path, take the barge through the short brick tunnel and