Paterson (Revised Edition) (3 page)

they die also

incommunicado.

The language, the language

fails them

They do not know the words

or have not

the courage to use them   .

—girls from

families that have decayed and

taken to the hills: no words.

They may look at the torrent in

their minds

and it is foreign to them.   .

They turn their backs

and grow faint—but recover!

Life is sweet

they say: the language!

—the language

is divorced from their minds,

the language   .   .   the language!

If there was not beauty, there was a strangeness and a bold association of wild and cultured life grew up together in the Ramapos: two phases.

In the hills, where the brown trout slithered among the shallow stones, Ring-wood—where the old Ryerson farm had been—among its velvet lawns, was ringed with forest trees, the butternut, and the elm, the white oak, the chestnut and the beech, the birches, the tupelo, the sweet-gum, the wild cherry and the hackleberry with its red tumbling fruit.

While in the forest clustered the ironworkers’ cabins, the charcoal burners, the lime kiln workers—hidden from lovely Ringwood—where General Washington, gracing any poem, up from Pompton for rest after the traitors’ hangings could be at ease—and the links were made for the great chain across the Hudson at West Point.

Violence broke out in Tennessee, a massacre by the Indians, hangings and exile—standing there on the scaffold waiting, sixty of them. The Tuscaroras, forced to leave their country, were invited by the Six Nations to join them in Upper New York. The bucks went on ahead but some of the women and the stragglers got no further than the valley-cleft near Suffern. They took to the mountains there where they were joined by Hessian deserters from the British Army, a number of albinos among them, escaped negro slaves and a lot of women and their brats released in New York City after the British had been forced to leave. They had them in a pen there—picked up in Liverpool and elsewhere by a man named Jackson under contract with the British Government to provide women for the soldiers in America.

The mixture ran in the woods and took the general name, Jackson’s Whites. (There had been some blacks also, mixed in, some West Indian negresses, a shipload, to replace the whites lost when their ship, one of six coming from England, had foundered in a storm at sea. He had to make it up somehow and that was the quickest and cheapest way.)

New Barbadoes Neck, the region was called.

Cromwell, in the middle of the seventeenth century, shipped some thousands of Irish women and children to the Barbadoes to be sold as slaves. Forced by their owners to mate with the others these unfortunates were succeeded by a few generations of Irish-speaking negroes and mulattos. And it is commonly asserted to this day the natives of Barbadoes speak with an Irish brogue.

I remember

a
Geographic
picture, the 9 women

of some African chief semi-naked

astraddle a log, an official log to

be presumed, heads left:

Foremost

froze the young and latest,

erect, a proud queen, conscious of her power,

mud-caked, her monumental hair

slanted above the brows—violently frowning.

Behind her, packed tight up

in a descending scale of freshness

stiffened the others

and then     .     .

the last, the first wife,

present! supporting all the rest growing

up from her—whose careworn eyes

serious, menacing—but unabashed; breasts

sagging from hard use     .     .

Whereas the uppointed breasts

of that other, tense, charged with

pressures unrelieved     .

and the rekindling they bespoke

was evident.

Not that the lightnings

do not stab at the mystery of a man

from both ends—and the middle, no matter

how much a chief he may be, rather the more

because of it, to destroy him at home   .

.     .     Womanlike, a vague smile,

unattached, floating like a pigeon

after a long flight to his cote.

Mrs. Sarah Cumming, consort of the Rev. Hooper Cumming, of Newark, was a daughter of the late Mr. John Emmons, of Portland, in the district of Maine…. She had been married about two months, and was blessed with a flattering prospect of no common share of Temporal felicity and usefulness in the sphere which Providence had assigned her; but oh, how uncertain is the continuance of every earthly joy.

On Saturday, the 20th of June, 1812, the Rev. Cumming rode with his wife to Paterson, in order to supply, by presbyterial appointment, a destitute congregation in that place, on the following day…. On Monday morning, he went with his beloved companion to show her the falls of the Passaic, and the surrounding beautiful, wild and romantic scenery,—little expecting the solemn event to ensue.

Having ascended the flight of stairs (the Hundred Steps) Mr. and Mrs. Cumming walked over the solid ledge to the vicinity of the cataract, charmed with the wonderful prospect, and making various remarks upon the stupendous works of nature around them. At length they took their station on the brow of the solid rock, which overhangs the basin, six or eight rods from the falling water, where thousands have stood before, and where there is a fine view of the sublime curiosities of the place. When they had enjoyed the luxury of the scene for a considerable length of time, Mr. Cumming said, “My dear, I believe it is time for us to set our face homeward”; and at the same moment, turned round in order to lead the way. He instantly heard the voice of distress, looked back and his wife was gone!

Mr. Cumming’s sensations on the distressing occasion may, in some measure, be conceived, but they cannot be described. He was on the borders of distraction, and, scarcely knowing what he did, would have plunged into the abyss, had it not been kindly ordered in providence that a young man should be near, who instantly flew to him, like a guardian angel, and held him from a step which his reason, at the time, could not have prevented. This young man led him from the precipice, and conducted him to the ground below the stairs. Mr. Cumming forced himself out of the hands of his protector, and ran with violence, in order to leap into the fatal flood. His young friend, however, caught him once more…. Immediate search was made, and diligently continued throughout the day, for the body of Mrs. Cumming; but to no purpose. On the following morning, her mortal part was found in a depth of 42 feet, and, the same day, was conveyed to Newark.

A false language. A true. A false language pouring—a

language (misunderstood) pouring (misinterpreted) without

dignity, without minister, crashing upon a stone ear. At least

it settled it for her. Patch too, as a matter of fact. He

became a national hero in ’28, ’29 and toured the country

diving from cliffs and masts, rocks and bridges—to prove his

thesis: Some things can be done as well as others.

THE GRRRREAT HISTORY of that

old time Jersey Patriot

N.   F.   P A T E R S O N !

(N for Noah; F for Faitoute; P for short)

“Jersey Lightning” to the boys.

So far everything had gone smoothly. The pulley and ropes were securely fastened on each side of the chasm, and everything made in readiness to pull the clumsy bridge into position. It was a wooden structure boarded up on both sides, and a roof. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon and a large crowd had gathered—a large crowd for that time, as the town only numbered about four thousand—to watch the bridge placed in position.

That day was a great day for old Paterson. It being Saturday, the mills were shut down, so to give the people a chance to celebrate. Among those who came in for a good part of the celebration was Sam Patch, then a resident in Paterson, who was a boss over cotton spinners in one of the mills. He was my boss, and many a time he gave me a cuff over the ears.

Well, this day the constables were on the look for Patch, because they thought he would be on a spree and cause trouble. Patch had declared so frequently that he would jump from the rocks that he was placed under arrest at various times. He had previously been locked up in the basement under the bank with a bad case of delirium tremens, but on the day the bridge was pulled across the chasm he was let out. Some thought he was crazy. They were not far wrong.

But the happiest man in the town that day was Timothy B. Crane, who had charge of the bridge. Tim Crane was a hotel keeper and kept a tavern on the Manchester side of the Falls. His place was a great resort for circus men. Such famous circus men of the long ago as Dan Rice and James Cooke, the great bareback rider, visited him.

Tim Crane built the bridge because his rival, Fyfield, who kept the tavern on the other side of the falls, was getting the benefit of the “Jacob’s Ladder,” as it was sometimes called—the “hundred steps,” a long, rustic, winding stairs in the gorge leading to the opposite side of the river—it making his place more easy to get to…. Crane was a very robust man over six feet tall. He wore side whiskers. He was well known to the other citizens as a man of much energy and no little ability. In his manner he resembled the large, rugged stature of Sam Patch.

When the word was given to haul the bridge across the chasm, the crowd rent the air with cheers. But they had only pulled it half way over when one of the rolling pins slid from the ropes into the water below.

While all were expecting to see the big, clumsy bridge topple over and land in the chasm, as quick as a flash a form leaped out from the highest point and struck with a splash in the dark water below, swam to the wooden pin and brought it ashore. This was the starting point of Sam Patch’s career as a famous jumper. I saw that, said the old man with satisfaction, and I don’t believe there is another person in the town today who was an eye-witness of that scene. These were the words that Sam Patch said: “Now, old Tim Crane thinks he has done something great; but I can beat him.” As he spoke he jumped.

There’s no mistake in Sam Patch!

The water pouring still

from the edge of the rocks, filling

his ears with its sound, hard to interpret.

A wonder!

After this start he toured the West, his only companions a fox and a bear which he picked up in his travels.

He jumped from a rocky ledge at Goat Island into the Niagara River. Then he announced that before returning to the Jerseys he was going to show the West one final marvel. He would leap 125 feet from the falls of the Genesee River on November 13, 1829. Excursions came from great distances in the United States and even from Canada to see the wonder.

A platform was built at the edge of the falls. He went to great trouble to ascertain the depth of the water below. He even successfully performed one practice leap.

On the day the crowds were gathered on all sides. He appeared and made a short speech as he was wont to do. A speech! What could he say that he must leap so desperately to complete it? And plunged toward the stream below. But instead of descending with a plummet-like fall his body wavered in the air—Speech had failed him. He was confused. The word had been drained of its meaning. There’s no mistake in Sam Patch. He struck the water on his side and disappeared.

A great silence followed as the crowd stood spellbound.

Not until the following spring was the body found frozen in an ice-cake.

He threw his pet bear once from the cliff overlooking the Niagara rapids and rescued it after, down stream.

There is no direction. Whither? I

cannot say. I cannot say

more than how. The how (the howl) only

is at my disposal (proposal) : watching—

colder than stone   .

a bud forever green,

tight-curled, upon the pavement, perfect

in juice and substance but divorced, divorced

from its fellows, fallen low—

Divorce is

the sign of knowledge in our time,

divorce! divorce!

with the roar of the river

forever in our ears (arrears)

inducing sleep and silence, the roar

of eternal sleep   .   .   challenging

our waking—

—unfledged desire, irresponsible, green,

colder to the hand than stone,

unready—challenging our waking:

Two halfgrown girls hailing hallowed Easter,

(an inversion of all out-of-doors) weaving

about themselves, from under

the heavy air, whorls of thick translucencies

poured down, cleaving them away,

shut from the light: bare-

headed, their clear hair dangling—

Two—

disparate among the pouring

waters of their hair in which nothing is

molten—

two, bound by an instinct to be the same:

ribbons, cut from a piece,

cerise pink, binding their hair: one—

a willow twig pulled from a low

leafless bush in full bud in her hand,

(or eels or a moon!)

holds it, the gathered spray,

upright in the air, the pouring air,

strokes the soft fur—

Ain’t they beautiful!

Certainly I am not a robin nor erudite,

no Erasmus nor bird that returns to the same

ground year by year. Or if I am   .   .

the ground has undergone

a subtle transformation, its identity altered.

Indians!

Why even speak of “I,” he dreams, which

interests me almost not at all?

The theme

is as it may prove: asleep, unrecognized—

all of a piece, alone

in a wind that does not move the others—

in that way: a way to spend

a Sunday afternoon while the green bush shakes.

.      .   a mass of detail

to interrelate on a new ground, difficultly;

an assonance, a homologue

triple piled

pulling the disparate together to clarify

and compress

The river, curling, full—as a bush shakes