Authors: Lorine Niedecker
Collecte Works (8 page)
Transubstan- / tiation of acro- / bats, moon-eyes / and downward / mouth. Round- / acres intrude / a nose where / no listening / ever came. / Smooth out the / substance of your / acetylene worry.
Jesus, I'm / going out / and throw / my arms / around.
DOMESTIC AND UNAVOIDABLE
Voices from dining room and hall off study. Voices of old man and old woman as their shadows pass back and forth with trays of food and drink, near entrance of study—their forms are reflected on wall of study. The curtain rises on a young man seated at desk in the study, busy with pencil, paper, ruler. The only light is shed from a reading lamp onto desk and leaving rest of room in comparative darkness. A confused murmur of voices of men and women from dining room soon becomes merely a suspicion of sound as of air in a tunnel or as a loud speaker of a radio turned on but not speaking—movement in stillness out of which the action of the words comes clear.
| Gentleman gentle— | …. Miserly…. |
| Woman high— | …. motion…. |
| Woman low— | …. intensifies a goal…. |
| Gentleman loud— | …. and a featherman's…. |
| Woman husky— | …. hat. |
| Old man— | ( with bottle and spoon ) Take every hour when necessary; the complaint must be necessary several hours. |
| Gentleman gentle— | …. Ex—…. |
| Gentleman loud— | …. collect…. |
| Woman high— | …. in trinity…. |
| Woman low— | …. and doubly the canticle…. |
| Woman husky— | …. waste. |
| Old man— | They don't have a minister; they have a doctor. |
| Woman husky— | Oh, do you think we should indoctrinate at certain points? |
| Gentleman loud— | Well, one thing…. |
| Woman low— | …. announces a fabricoid…. |
| Woman high— | …. and another…. |
| Gentleman gentle— | …. assembles a divinity. |
| Gentleman loud— | Downstairs I tender the right…. |
| Old woman— | After dinner the women smoke and the men retire to the front room. |
| Woman high— | Some men, they say, entered the forest today; it was a bad omen; not long after a tree fell. |
| Young man in study— | Will they come in scarlet or in the month of the first canterbury bells? |
| Woman low— | Have you been…. |
| Woman high— | …. to the bread-eaters' lately? |
| Young man in study— | Marigolds in stink-orange. |
| Old woman— | I suppose if they need stones she'll have to go along; they'll want time to pay for em. |
| Young man— | Always through windows a curtain about somebody else. ( He gets up to look through curtains—whether door or window audience cannot tell .) |
| Woman low— | ( Near ) When I'm alone it's an open day. I clouded myself on him. |
| Woman husky— | But surely there is another who scenes passably? |
| Woman low— | ( Nearer ) Night that opens its puny residua unoccupied of sleep…. |
| Young man— | ( Now back at desk, looks up quickly at curtains, is silent. ) ( Even “sound” ceases. There is now and while young girl and man are to talk normal and absolute quiet. Girl's voice, for she is never seen, is intimate. ) |
| Young girl plain— | Garden plans? I couldn't pre-arrange a garden. I'd hate to come upon a flower and find I'd put it there. |
| Young man— | Who are you? |
| Young girl— | O.S.R. Return. |
| Young man— | Only scientists have three initials and a last name. |
| Young girl— | My hand scratches seeds of whorfels. |
| Young man— | She's unconscious. It must be her strong will that does it. |
| Young girl— | And corners are precarious beasts. They put a wall of weeping between us, suffering, the technologic absolute. |
| Young man— | ( Shifting in his chair ) My dear, I have other affiliations. It's been penciled and ruled. My life is elsewhere. ( Confused murmur begins off stage. ) |
| Young girl illumined— | Oh, I shouldn't want you to be faithful to me alone. ( Study light is off immediately. Servant's pantomimes again, definite. ) |
| Old man— | ( Puts his arm around the old woman ) That's a very good mousetrap. |
| Old Woman— | How comes? ( Confused murmur becomes “sound”. Light is turned on as if by someone unseen; no one there; light goes off again .) |
| Gentleman gentle— | Minockua…. |
| Woman high— | ….the day is fattening…. |
| Gentleman loud— | ….Brimble…. |
| Woman husky— | …. the Brand…. ( Doors close, keys jingle. ) Curtain . |
THE PRESIDENT OF THE HOLDING COMPANY
PRESIDENT
I will enforce it that after supper you speak about dusk.
SECRETARY
I have this concrete immolence
VOICE OUTSIDE
this messenger from the dead.
PRESIDENT
Have you looked up Sumatra's defence of cat-tails?
SECRETARY
Pardon sir, who gives you frantic worry when the rest of us boop on the stairs?
PRESIDENT
I consume it my dignity
VOICE OUTSIDE
to go straight to the devil
PRESIDENT
Stuff and retain him…I'll have him by the stem of his hat.
SECRETARY
O Matchbox, save him, he's the best timidity we have.
PRESIDENT
O why am I tired why haven't I
a circumlocus of design
someone to come in and say
the pears smell ripe here . .
But I'm bound to the fears of my weathers.
Are you ready to release the evening?
SECRETARY
Maygo is waving his voice by the well.
PRESIDENT
Success like raisins comes first in the mouth.
But who wants a mouthful of raisins?
VOICES OUTSIDE
Sylva Wergles was a worty witchwoo
She lived by the side of a tree.
She combed the worldside for pennies and peas
And woo-ed a few sallies to sea.
O my, said the counterfeit judge, By the boo
You cost me a tendril and then a long shoot.
Get thee from me and relate
How frogs come out of a gate.
SECRETARY
It can't be commercial poetry.
PRESIDENT
I doubt its prowess. It lacks compulsion.
VOICES OUTSIDE
O sweet little Tilda's an open sale
She comes from a baudy and lands in a gale.
She tunes up the strings of her gay rig-a-roo
And plays a high banner to how so come who.
PRESIDENT
The traffic is ended. The last star is a bonded issue.
Sighing is extinct. I've gone to the morning entry.
FANCY ANOTHER DAY GONE
The glare from the brass horn makes sun-brown satin fit smoothly the girl by the window. Even the young man is straight and bright.
SHE
Please come. I want you to justify my landscape.
(She looks out of the window and lights the late afternoon
.)
HE
I love you magnificently. I've had every drop of blood from the moonstone put into a venture for you.
SHE
(takes his hands)
It's a high hurt.
HE
The plight of the individual is our happy finale.
(Both absorbed by the glow move out.)
GRANDMOTHER
(sidling the luminous flood
) She picks and promises and castillates the dew. And he's a tin whistle substitute, works for the wonder constructor who eats and then expectorates when he wants to build a lake where a hill is.
The family, entering, pales and points after tea-time.
MOTHER
Studying? Why so stupid, son.
STUDY BOY
(in khaki)
They're putting us thru an elemental dog-trot in sargonic culture. We're now at the hammer and fan wheel stage,—star-falling comes next.
MOTHER
And this painting, daughter, that you hold so dear . .
FATHER
A silk contortion heavily blotched toward the centre.
DAUGHTER
He has issued also complaints in vast design.
BLUE TIE SON
The very devil of a good thought.
GRANDMOTHER
He ate a mushroom for breakfast. He can't be divine anymore.
MOTHER
He wears that kind of practitioner's overcoat . .
BLUE TIE
He repeatedly assumes his dais.
FATHER
All the same, I'd write him and ask what his inventions are.
DAUGHTER
He's done a great deal with words that look like pictures.
FATHER
I don't suppose a father ever cocktailed his hopes to that.
(chorus by two small children skipping in and out):
I don't suppose a man ever, no, I don't suppose a man ever.
MOTHER
What unbooked revelry . .
GRANDMOTHER
Today let us weep for tomorrow may be fraught with foolishness.
MOTHER
(
pauses in front of daughter before going off completely)
Darling, you've some bad laughter lines.
DAUGHTER
But facts are a mass of coercives.
(Children dance in to tea-table and away.
)
GRANDMOTHER
Not a raisin goes to cookie in this house but what they know it.
STUDY BOY
(The room grows an even, late daylight—Study boy takes his books nearer the window.)
This map has a cherry expedition punctured by toothpicks to rescind a felled hatred. Wind me a furlough. I'm bound to need air.
SLEEPY SON
Feathering Heights—how they can dance up there.
BLUE TIE
And let their seams out in the wind…
SLEEPY
Sweet pillow, Madge. What exquisite tether and release.
A little difficult, tho, to be a constant wind.
STUDY BOY
Oh you don't use the right weapons.
(small children and Grandmother sing out):
“Rings on your fingers,
bells on your toes,”
Tether your feathers,
Tar all your foes . .
DAUGHTER
Flightful conceit….
GRANDMOTHER
Somnambule enchants a wiry daisy, curvets and comes back.
STUDY BOY
I prefer my women on paper.
BLUE TIE
(looking into cup)
Concatenations streaking a bird with a tail-light.
SLEEPY
Hang your tea-cup relations.
BLUE TIE
(idling about the room, glances over father's shoulder at magazine)
Literate man would like to hear from readers interested in talking about things that count.
STUDY BOY
What's a dismissed attavater?
BLUE TIE
It means the ease comes out of the sound.
FATHER
It's what is called imminent custody.
(piano fortissimo from a nearby key)
DAUGHTER
Beethoven's ironworks.
(The room is a strong dusk and the window steel-blue)
(pianoworks)
STUDY BOY
Don't invert me. I wasn't so smelted in a long time.
(
Piano fades along with the family, the Octaves of Point Lessening.)
Tomes at the window establish the smoke scene as the night of the mandolin query.
HE
Vertebrate lives spread the hour. On the instable count no face line ever vented approach.
SHE
Is the midnight capsule ready to gloat?
HE
It's only lachrymose and octo-even by the enervator on the tombstone. Fentry the watchman restored his eyesight on that.