Paterson (Revised Edition) (12 page)

The progress of the events was transmitted over the new telephone to the city from the tower of the water works. The boy, Tommy Walker, was the real hero of these adventures.

And as reverie gains and

your joints loosen

the trick’s done!

Day is covered and we see you—

but not alone!

drunk and bedraggled to release

the strictness of beauty

under a sky full of stars

Beautiful thing

and a slow moon —

The car

had stopped long since

when the others

came and dragged those out

who had you there

indifferent

to whatever the anesthetic

Beautiful Thing

might slum away the bars—

Reek of it!

What does it matter?

could set free

only the one thing—

But you!

—in your white lace dress

.     .     .

Haunted by your beauty (I said),

exalted and not easily to be attained, the

whole scene is haunted:

Take off your clothes,

(I said)

Haunted, the quietness of your face

is a quietness, real

out of no book.

Your clothes (I said) quickly, while

your beauty is attainable.

Put them on the chair

(I said. Then in a fury, for which I am

ashamed)

You smell as though you need

a bath. Take off your clothes and purify

yourself     .     .

And let me purify myself

—to look at you,

to look at you (I said)

(Then, my anger rising)     TAKE OFF YOUR

CLOTHES! I didn’t ask you

to take off your skin     .     I said your

clothes, your clothes. You smell

like a whore. I ask you to bathe in my

opinions, the astonishing virtue of your

lost body (I said)     .

—that you might

send me hurtling to the moon

.     .     let me look at you (I

said, weeping)

Let’s take a ride around, to see what the town looks like     .

Indifferent, the indifference of certain death

or incident upon certain death

propounds a riddle (in the Joyceian mode—

or otherwise,

it is indifferent which)

A marriage riddle:

So much talk of the language—when there are no

ears.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

What is there to say? save that

beauty is unheeded     .     tho’ for sale and

bought glibly enough

But it is true, they fear

it more than death, beauty is feared

more than death, more than they fear death

Beautiful thing

—and marry only to destroy, in private, in

their privacy only to destroy, to hide

(in marriage)

that they may destroy and not be perceived

in it—the destroying

Death will be too late to bring us aid     .

What end but love, that stares death in the eye?

A city, a marriage — that stares death

in the eye

The riddle of a man and a woman

For what is there but love, that stares death

in the eye, love, begetting marriage —

not infamy, not death

tho’ love seem to beget

only death in the old plays, only death, it is

as tho’ they wished death rather than to face

infamy, the infamy of old cities     .

.     .     .     a world of corrupt cities,

nothing else, that death stares in the eye,

lacking love: no palaces, no secluded gardens,

no water among the stones; the stone rails

of the balustrades, scooped out, running with

clear water, no peace     .

The waters

are dry. It is summer, it is     .     ended

Sing me a song to make death tolerable, a song

of a man and a woman: the riddle of a man

and a woman.

What language could allay our thirsts,

what winds lift us, what floods bear us

past defeats

but song but deathless song?

The rock

married to the river

makes

no sound

And the river

passes—but I remain

clamant

calling out ceaselessly

to the birds

and clouds

(listening)

Who am I?

—the voice!

—the voice rises, neglected

(with its new) the unfaltering

language. Is there no release?

Give it up. Quit it. Stop writing.

“Saintlike” you will never

separate that stain of sense,

an offense

to love, the mind’s worm eating

out the core, unappeased

—never separate that stain

of sense from the inert mass. Never.

Never that radiance

quartered apart,

unapproached by symbols     .

Doctor, do you believe in

“the people,” the Democracy? Do

you still believe — in this

swill-hole of corrupt cities?

Do you, Doctor?     Now?

Give up

the poem. Give up the shilly-

shally of art.

What can you, what

can YOU hope to conclude —

on a heap of dirty linen?

— you

a poet (ridded) from Paradise?

Is it a dirty book? I’ll bet

it’s a dirty book, she said.

Death lies in wait,

a kindly brother —

full of the missing words,

the words that never get said—

a kindly brother to the poor.

The radiant gist that

resists the final crystallization

.     in the pitch-blend

the radiant gist     .

There was an earlier day, of prismatic colors : whence to New Barbadoes came the Englishman     .

Thus it began   .

Certainly there is no mystery to the fact

that C
OSTS
S
PIRAL
A
CCORDING TO A
R
EBUS
—known

or unknown, plotted or automatic. The fact

of poverty is not a matter of argument. Language

is not a vague province. There is a poetry

of the movements of cost, known or unknown   .

The cost. The cost

and dazzled half sleepy eyes

Beautiful thing

of some trusting animal

makes a temple

of its place of savage slaughter

.     .     .     .     .     .

Try another book. Break through

the dry air of the place

An insane god

—nights in a brothel   .

And if I had   .

What then?

—made brothels my home?

(Toulouse Lautrec

again.     .     )

Say I am the locus

where two women meet

One from the backwoods

a touch of the savage

and of T.B.

(a scar on the thigh)

The other     —    wanting,

from an old culture     .

—and offer the same dish

different ways

Let the colors run     .

Toulouse Lautrec witnessed

it: limbs relaxed

—all religions

have excluded it—

at ease, the tendons

untensed     .

And so he recorded them

—a stone

thrust flint-blue

up through the sandstone

of which, broken,

but unbreakable

we build our roads     .

—we stammer and elect     .

Quit it. Quit this place. Go where all

mouths are rinsed: to the river for

an answer

for relief from “meaning”

A tornado approaches (We don’t have

tornados in these latitudes. What, at

Cherry Hill?)

It pours

over the roofs of Paterson, ripping,

twisting, tortuous     :

a wooden shingle driven half its length

into an oak

(the wind must have steeled

it, held it hard on both sides)

The church

moved 8 inches through an arc, on its

foundations —

Hum, hum!

—the wind

where it poured its heavy plaits (the face

unshowing) from the rock’s edge —

where in the updraft,

summer days, the red-shouldered hawks ride

and play

(in the up-draft)

and the poor cotton-

spinner, over the roofs, preparing to dive

.     looks down

Searching among books; the mind elsewhere

looking down     .

Seeking.

Fire burns; that is the first law.

When a wind fans it the flames

are carried abroad. Talk

fans the flames. They have

manoeuvred it so that to write

is a fire and not only of the blood.

The writing is nothing, the being

in a position to write (that’s

where they get you) is nine tenths

of the difficulty: seduction

or strong arm stuff. The writing

should be a relief,

relief from the conditions

which as we advance become — a fire,

a destroying fire. For the writing

is also an attack and means must be

found to scotch it — at the root

if possible. So that

to write, nine tenths of the problem

is to live. They see

to it, not by intellection but

by sub-intellection (to want to be

blind as a pretext for

saying, We’re so proud of you!

A wonderful gift! How
do

you find the time for it in

your busy life? It must be a great

thing to have such a pastime.

But you were always a strange

boy. How’s your mother?)

—the cyclonic fury, the fire,

the leaden flood and finally

the cost—

Your father was
such
a nice man.

I remember him well     .

Or, Geeze, Doc, I guess it’s all right

but what the hell does it mean?

With due ceremony a hut would be constructed consisting of twelve poles, each of a different species of wood. These they run into the ground, tie them together at the top, cover them entirely with bark, skins or blankets joined close together.

.     Now here is where one sits who will address the Spirit of Fire, He-Who-Lies-With-His-Eyes-Bulging-In-The-Smoke-Hole     .     Twelve
manittos
attend him as subordinate deities, half representing animals and the others vegetables. A large oven is built in the house of sacrifice     .     heated with twelve large red-hot stones.

Meanwhile an old man throws twelve pipefuls of tobacco upon the hot stones, and directly another follows and pours water on them, which occasions a smoke or vapor almost powerful enough to suffocate the persons in the tent     —

Ex qua re, quia sicubi fumus adscendit in altum; ita sacrificulus, duplicata altiori voce,
Kännakä, kännakä!
vel aliquando
Hoo Hoo!
faciem versus orientem convertit.

Whereupon as the smoke ascends on high, the sacrificer crying with a loud voice,
Kännakä, Kännakä!
or sometimes
Hoo, Hoo!
turns his face towards the east.

While some are silent during the sacrifice, certain make a ridiculous speech, while others imitate the cock, the squirrel and other animals, and make all kinds of noises. During the shouting two roast deer are distributed.

(breathing the books in)

the acrid fumes,

for what they could decipher     .

warping the sense to detect the norm, to break

through the skull of custom

to a place hidden from

affection, women and offspring — an affection

for the burning     .

It started in the car barns of the street railway company, in the paint shop. The men had been working all day refinishing old cars with the doors and windows kept closed because of the weather which was very cold. There was paint and especially varnish being used freely on all sides. Heaps of paint soaked rags had been thrown into the corners. One of the cars took fire in the night.

Breathless and in haste

the various night (of books) awakes! awakes

and begins (a second time) its song, pending the

obloquy of dawn     .

It will not last forever

against the long sea, the long, long

sea, swept by winds, the “wine-dark sea”     .

A cyclotron, a sifting     .

And there,

in the tobacco hush: in a tepee they lie

huddled (a huddle of books)

antagonistic,

and dream of

gentleness—under the malignity of the hush

they cannot penetrate and cannot waken, to be again

active but remain—books

that is, men in hell,

their reign over the living ended

Clearly, they say. Oh clearly! Clearly?

What more clear than that of all things

nothing is so unclear, between man and

his writing, as to which is the man and

which the thing and of them both which

is the more to be valued

When discovered it was a small blaze, though it was hot but it looked as tho’ the firemen could handle it. But at dawn a wind came up and the flames (which they thought were subsiding) got suddenly out of control—sweeping the block and heading toward the business district. Before noon the whole city was doomed     —

Beautiful thing

—the whole city doomed! And

the flames towering     .

like a mouse, like

a red slipper, like

a star, a geranium

a cat’s tongue or —

thought, thought

that is a leaf, a

pebble, an old man

out of a story by

Pushkin     .

Ah!

rotten beams tum-

bling,

.     an old bottle

mauled

The night was made day by the flames, flames

on which he fed—grubbing the page

(the burning page)

like a worm—for enlightenment

Of which we drink and are drunk and in the end

are destroyed (as we feed). But the flames