Collected Poems 1947-1997 Page 5

Return, and so forsake the light.”

  The darkness that is half disguised

  In the Zodiac of my dream

  Gazed on me in his bleak eyes,

  And I became what now I seem.

  Once my crown was silk and black;

  I have dreamed, and I awake.

  Now that time has wormed my cheek,

  Horns and willows me bespeak.

  Paterson, December 1949

  Long Live the Spiderweb

  Seven years’ words wasted

  waiting on the spiderweb:

  seven years’ thoughts

  harkening the host,

  seven years’ lost

  sentience naming images,

  narrowing down the name

  to nothing,

  seven years’:

  fears

  in a web of ancient measure;

  the words dead

  flies, a crop

  of ghosts,

  seven years’:

  the spider is dead.

  Paterson, Spring 1950

  The Shrouded Stranger

  1

  The Shroudy Stranger’s reft of realms.

  Abhorred he sits upon the city dump.

  His broken heart’s a bag of shit.

  The vast rainfall, an empty mirror.

  2

  A Dream

  He climbed over the rim

  of the huge tower

  looking down afraid,

  descended the escarpment

  over sheaves of rock,

  crossed railyard gullies

  and vast river-bridges

  on the groundward slope

  under an iron viaduct,

  coming to rivulet

  in a still meadow

  by a small wood

  where he stood trembling

  in the naked flowers,

  and walked under oak

  to the house of folk.

  3

  I dreamed I was dreaming again

  and decided to go down the years

  looking for the Shrouded Stranger.

  I knew the old bastard

  was hanging around somewhere.

  I couldn’t find him for a while;

  went looking under beds,

  pulling mattresses off,

  and finally discovered him

  hiding under the springs

  crouched in the corner:

  met him face to face at last.

  I didn’t even recognize him.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t think

  it was me after all,” he said.

  4

  Fragmenta Monumenti

  It was to have a structure, it

  was going to tell a story;

  it was to be a mass of images

  moving on a page, with

  a hollow voice at the center;

  it was to have told of Time

  and Eternity; to have begun

  in the rainfall’s hood and moon,

  and ended under the street light

  of the world’s bare physical

  appearance; begun among vultures

  in the mountains of Mexico,

  traveled through all America

  and ended in garbage on River Street;

  its first line was to be

  “Be with me Shroud, now—”

  and the last “—naked

  on broken bottles

  between the brick walls,”

  being THE VISION OF THE SHROUDED STRANGER OF THE NIGHT.

  Paterson-New York, 1949-September 1950

  An Imaginary Rose in a Book

  Oh dry old rose of God,

  that with such bleak perfume

  changed images to blood

  and body to a tomb,

  what fragrance you have lost,

  and are now withered mere

  crimson myth of dust

  and recollection sere

  of an unfading garden

  whereof the myriad life

  and all that flock in blossom,

  none other met the knife.

  Paterson, Early 1950

  Crash

  There is more to Fury

  Than men imagine

  Who drive a pallid jury

  On a pale engine.

  In a spinning plane,

  A false machine,

  The pilot drops in flame

  From the unseen.

  Paterson, Early 1950

  The Terms in Which I Think of Reality

  a.

  Reality is a question

  of realizing how real

  the world is already.

  Time is Eternity

  ultimate and immovable;

  everyone’s an angel.

  It’s Heaven’s mystery

  of changing perfection:

  absolutely Eternity

  changes! Cars are always

  going down the street,

  lamps go off and on.

  It’s a great flat plain;

  we can see everything

  on top of the table.

  Clams open on the table,

  lambs are eaten by worms

  on the plain. The motion

  of change is beautiful,

  as well as form called

  in and out of being.

  b.

  Next: to distinguish process

  in its particularity with

  an eye to the initiation

  of gratifying new changes

  desired in the real world.

  Here we’re overwhelmed

  with such unpleasant detail

  we dream again of Heaven.

  For the world is a mountain

  of shit: if it’s going to

  be moved at all, it’s got

  to be taken by handfuls.

  c.

  Man lives like the unhappy

  whore on River Street who

  in her Eternity gets only

  a couple of bucks and a lot

  of snide remarks in return

  for seeking physical love

  the best way she knows how,

  never really heard of a glad

  job or joyous marriage or

  a difference in the heart:

  or thinks it isn’t for her,

  which is her worst misery.

  Paterson, Spring 1950

  The Night-Apple

  Last night I dreamed

  of one I loved

  for seven long years,

  but I saw no face,

  only the familiar

  presence of the body:

  sweat skin eyes

  feces urine sperm

  saliva all one

  odor and mortal taste.

  Paterson, Spring 1950

  Cézanne’s Ports

  In the foreground we see time and life

  swept in a race

  toward the left hand side of the picture

  where shore meets shore.

  But that meeting place

  isn’t represented;

  it doesn’t occur on the canvas.

  For the other side of the bay

  is Heaven and Eternity,

  with a bleak white haze over its mountains.

  And the immense water of L’Estaque is a go-between

  for minute rowboats.

  Paterson, Summer 1950

  The Blue Angel

  Marlene Dietrich is singing a lament

  for mechanical love.

  She leans against a mortarboard tree

  on a plateau by the seashore.

  She’s a life-sized toy,

  the doll of eternity;

  her hair is shaped like an abstract hat

  made out of white steel.

  Her face is powdered, whitewashed and

  immobile like a robot.

  Jutting out of her temple, by an eye,

  is a little white key.

  She gazes through dull blue pupils

  set in the white
s of her eyes.

  She closes them, and the key

  turns by itself.

  She opens her eyes, and they’re blank

  like a statue’s in a museum.

  Her machine begins to move, the key turns

  again, her eyes change, she sings

  —you’d think I would have thought a plan

  to end the inner grind,

  but not till I have found a man

  to occupy my mind.

  Dream, Paterson, Mid-1950

  Two Boys Went Into a Dream Diner

  and ate so much the bill was five dollars,

  but they had no idea

  what they were getting themselves into,

  so they shoveled

  garbage into a truck in the alley

  to make up for the food.

  After about five minutes, wondering

  how long they would have

  to work off what it cost, they asked

  the diner owner when

  their penance or pay would be over.

  He laughed.

  Little did they realize—they were

  so virginal—

  that a grown worker works half a day

  for money like that.

  Paterson, Mid-1950

  A Desolation

  Now mind is clear

  as a cloudless sky.

  Time then to make a

  home in wilderness.

  What have I done but

  wander with my eyes

  in the trees? So I

  will build: wife,

  family, and seek

  for neighbors.

  Or I

  perish of lonesomeness

  or want of food or

  lightning or the bear

  (must tame the hart

  and wear the bear).

  And maybe make an image

  of my wandering, a little

  image—shrine by the

  roadside to signify

  to traveler that I live

  here in the wilderness

  awake and at home.

  Paterson, Mid-1950

  In Memoriam: William Cannastra, 1922–1950

  He cast off all his golden robes

  and lay down sleeping in the night,

  and in a dream he saw three fates

  at a machine in a shroud of light.

  He yelled “I wait the end of Time;

  be with me, shroud, now, in my wrath!

  There is a lantern in my grave,

  who hath that lantern all light hath.”

  Alas! The prophet of this dream

  is sunken in the dumbing clime:

  much is finished, much forgotten

  in the wrack and wild love of time.

  It’s death that makes man’s life a dream

  and heaven’s splendor but a wave;

  light that falls into the sea

  is swallowed in a starving cave.

  Skin may be visionary till the crystal

  skull is coaled in aged shade,

  but underground the lantern dies,

  shroud must rot, and memory fade.

  Who talks of Death and Angel now,

  great angel darkened out of grace?

  The shroud enfolds your radiant doom,

  the silent Parcae change the race,

  while the man of the apocalypse

  shall with his wrath lie ever wed

  until the sexless womb bear love,

  and the grave be weary of the dead,

  tragical master broken down

  into a self-embodied tomb,

  blinded by the sight of death,

  and woven in the darkened loom.

  Paterson, September 1950

  Ode: My 24th Year

  Now I have become a man

  and know no more than mankind can

  and groan with nature’s every groan,

  transcending child’s blind skeleton

  and all childish divinity,

  while loomed in consanguinity

  the weaving of the shroud goes on.

  No two things alike; and yet

  first memory dies, then I forget

  one carnal thought that made thought grim:

  but that has sunk below time’s rim

  and wonder ageing into woe

  later dayes more fatal show:

  Time gets thicker, light gets dim.

  And I a second Time am blind,

  all starlight dimmed out of the mind

  that was first candle to the morn,

  and candelabra turned to thorn.

  All is dream till morn has rayed

  the Rose of night back into shade,

  Messiah firmament reborn.

  Now I cannot go be wild

  or harken back to shape of child

  chrystal born into the aire

  circled by the harte and bear

  and agelesse in a greene arcade,

  for he is down in Granite laid,

  or standing on a Granite stair.

  No return, where thought’s completed;

  let that ghost’s last gaze go cheated:

  I may waste my days no more

  pining in spirituall warre.

  Where am I in wilderness?

  What creature bore my bones to this?

  Here is no Eden: this is my store.

  September 1950–1951

  How Come He Got Canned at the Ribbon Factory

  Chorus of Working Girls

  There was this character come in

  to pick up all the broken threads

  and tie them back into the loom.

  He thought that what he didn’t know

  would do as well as well did, tying

  threads together with real small knots.

  So there he was shivering in his shoes,

  showing his wish to be a god of all the knots

  we tended after suffering to learn them up.

  But years ago we were employed by Mr. Smith

  to tie these knots which it took us all

  of six months to perfect. However he showed

  no sign of progress learning how after five

  weeks of frigid circumstances of his own

  making which we made sure he didn’t break

  out of by freezing up on him. Obviously

  he wasn’t a real man anyway but a goop.

  New York, Late 1950

  The Archetype Poem

  Joe Blow has decided

  he will no longer

  be a fairy.

  He involves himself

  in various snatches

  and then hits

  a nut named Mary.

  He gets in bed with her

  and performs

  as what in his mind

  would be his usual

  okay job,

  which should be solid

  as a rock

  but isn’t.

  What goes wrong here?

  he says

  to himself. I want

  to take her

  but she doesn’t want

  to take me.

  I thought I was

  giving her * * *

  and she was giving

  me a man’s

  position in the world.

  Now suddenly she lays

  down the law.

  I’m very tired, she says,

  please go.

  Is this it? he thinks.

  I didn’t want it

  to come to that but

  I’ve got to get out

  of this situation.

  So the question

  resolves itself: do

  you settle for her

  or go? I wouldn’t

  give you a nickel,

  you aren’t much of a doll

  anyway. And he

  picks up his pride

  and puts on his pants

  —glad enough

  to have pants to wear—

  and goes.
/>   Why is it that versions

  of this lack

  of communication are

  universal?

  New York, Late 1950

  A Typical Affair

  Living in an apartment with a gelded cat

  I found a maiden—and left her there.

  I seek a better bargain; and that aunt,

  that aunt of hers was an awful nuisance.

  Seriously, between us, I think I did right

  in all things by her. And I’ll see her again,

  and we’ll become friendly (not lovers) because

  I have to work with her in the shoestore.

  She knows, too. And it will be interesting

  tomorrow to see how she acts. If she’s

  friendly (or even loving) I will resist:

  albeit so politely she’ll think she has

  been complimented. And one night

  drunk maybe we’ll have a ball.

  Paterson, December 1950

  A Poem on America

  America is like Russia.

  Acis and Galatea sit by the lake.

  We have the proletariat too.

  Acis and Galatea sit by the lake.

  Versilov wore a hair shirt

  and dreamed of classical pictures.

  The alleys, the dye works,

  Mill Street in the smoke,

  melancholy of the bars,

  the sadness of long highways,

  negroes climbing around

  the rusted iron by the river,

  the bathing pool hidden

  behind the silk factory

  fed by its drainage pipes;

  all the pictures we carry in our mind

  images of the thirties,

  depression and class consciousness

  transfigured above politics

  filled with fire

  with the appearance of God.

  Early 1951

  After Dead Souls

  Where O America are you

  going in your glorious

  automobile, careening

  down the highway

  toward what crash

  in the deep canyon

  of the Western Rockies,

  or racing the sunset

  over Golden Gate