down the row (between his looms) and
fire any son-of-a-bitch I choose without excuse
or reason more than that I don’t like his face.
Rose and I didn’t know each other when we both went to the Paterson strike around the first war and worked in the Pagent. She went regularly to feed Jack Reed in jail and I listened to Big Bill Haywood, Gurley Flynn and the rest of the big hearts and helping hands in Union Hall. And look at the damned thing now.
They broke him all right .
—the old boy himself, a Limey,
his head full of castles, the pivots of that
curt dialectic (while it lasted), built himself a
Balmoral on the alluvial silt, the rock-fall skirt-
ing the volcanic upthrust of the “Mountain”
—some of the windows
of the main house illuminated by translucent
laminae of planed pebbles (his first wife
admired them) by far the most authentic detail
of the place; at least the best
to be had there and the best artifact .
The province of the poem is the world.
When the sun rises, it rises in the poem
and when it sets darkness comes down and
the poem is dark .
and lamps are lit, cats prowl and men
read, read—or mumble and stare
at that which their small lights distinguish
or obscure or their hands search out
in the dark. The poem moves them or
it does not move them. Faitoute, his ears
ringing . no sound . no great city,
as he seems to read —
a roar of books
from the wadded library oppresses him
until
his mind begins to drift .
Beautiful thing:
— a dark flame,
a wind, a flood—counter to all staleness.
Dead men’s dreams, confined by these walls, risen,
seek an outlet. The spirit languishes,
unable, unable not from lack of innate ability —
(barring alone sure death)
but from that which immures them pressed here
together with their fellows, for respite .
Flown in from before the cold or nightbound
(the light attracted them)
they sought safety (in books)
but ended battering against glass
at the high windows
The Library is desolation, it has a smell of its own
of stagnation and death .
Beautiful Thing!
—the cost of dreams.
in which we search, after a surgery
of the wits and must translate, quickly
step by step or be destroyed—under a spell
to remain a castrate (a slowly descending veil
closing about the mind
cutting the mind away) .
SILENCE!
Awake, he dozes in a fever heat,
cheeks burning . . loaning blood
to the past, amazed . risking life.
And as his mind fades, joining the others, he
seeks to bring it back—but it
eludes him, flutters again and flies off and
again away .
O Thalassa, Thalassa!
the lash and hiss of water
The sea!
How near it was to them!
Soon!
Too soon .
—and still he brings it back, battering
with the rest against the vents and high windows
(They do not yield but shriek
as furies,
shriek and execrate the imagination, the impotent,
a woman against a woman, seeking to destroy
it but cannot, the life will not out of it) .
A library — of books! decrying all books
that enfeeble the mind’s intent
Beautiful thing!
The Indians were accused of killing two or three pigs—this was untrue, as afterward proved, because the pigs had been butchered by the white men themselves. The following incident is concerned with two of the Indians who had been captured by Kieft’s soldiers because of the accusations: The braves had been turned over to the soldiers, by Kieft, to do with as they pleased.
The first of these savages, having received a frightful wound, desired them to permit him to dance the Kinte Kaye, a religious use among them before death; he received, however, so many wounds that he dropped dead. The soldiers then cut strips down the other’s body…. While this was going forward Director Kieft, with his Councillor (the first trained physician in
fire any son-of-a-bitch I choose without excuse
or reason more than that I don’t like his face.
Rose and I didn’t know each other when we both went to the Paterson strike around the first war and worked in the Pagent. She went regularly to feed Jack Reed in jail and I listened to Big Bill Haywood, Gurley Flynn and the rest of the big hearts and helping hands in Union Hall. And look at the damned thing now.
They broke him all right .
—the old boy himself, a Limey,
his head full of castles, the pivots of that
curt dialectic (while it lasted), built himself a
Balmoral on the alluvial silt, the rock-fall skirt-
ing the volcanic upthrust of the “Mountain”
—some of the windows
of the main house illuminated by translucent
laminae of planed pebbles (his first wife
admired them) by far the most authentic detail
of the place; at least the best
to be had there and the best artifact .
The province of the poem is the world.
When the sun rises, it rises in the poem
and when it sets darkness comes down and
the poem is dark .
and lamps are lit, cats prowl and men
read, read—or mumble and stare
at that which their small lights distinguish
or obscure or their hands search out
in the dark. The poem moves them or
it does not move them. Faitoute, his ears
ringing . no sound . no great city,
as he seems to read —
a roar of books
from the wadded library oppresses him
until
his mind begins to drift .
Beautiful thing:
— a dark flame,
a wind, a flood—counter to all staleness.
Dead men’s dreams, confined by these walls, risen,
seek an outlet. The spirit languishes,
unable, unable not from lack of innate ability —
(barring alone sure death)
but from that which immures them pressed here
together with their fellows, for respite .
Flown in from before the cold or nightbound
(the light attracted them)
they sought safety (in books)
but ended battering against glass
at the high windows
The Library is desolation, it has a smell of its own
of stagnation and death .
Beautiful Thing!
—the cost of dreams.
in which we search, after a surgery
of the wits and must translate, quickly
step by step or be destroyed—under a spell
to remain a castrate (a slowly descending veil
closing about the mind
cutting the mind away) .
SILENCE!
Awake, he dozes in a fever heat,
cheeks burning . . loaning blood
to the past, amazed . risking life.
And as his mind fades, joining the others, he
seeks to bring it back—but it
eludes him, flutters again and flies off and
again away .
O Thalassa, Thalassa!
the lash and hiss of water
The sea!
How near it was to them!
Soon!
Too soon .
—and still he brings it back, battering
with the rest against the vents and high windows
(They do not yield but shriek
as furies,
shriek and execrate the imagination, the impotent,
a woman against a woman, seeking to destroy
it but cannot, the life will not out of it) .
A library — of books! decrying all books
that enfeeble the mind’s intent
Beautiful thing!
The Indians were accused of killing two or three pigs—this was untrue, as afterward proved, because the pigs had been butchered by the white men themselves. The following incident is concerned with two of the Indians who had been captured by Kieft’s soldiers because of the accusations: The braves had been turned over to the soldiers, by Kieft, to do with as they pleased.
The first of these savages, having received a frightful wound, desired them to permit him to dance the Kinte Kaye, a religious use among them before death; he received, however, so many wounds that he dropped dead. The soldiers then cut strips down the other’s body…. While this was going forward Director Kieft, with his Councillor (the first trained physician in
Similar Books
