From Montreal
Came a flattened tube
filled with a poster
of a picasso print
(such a descent
into affordability).
I have no such treasures for you.
I have no reason
to search for gestures
of forgiveness.
Instead
find a flower
and,
the next time you visit,
drop it softly where I will find it.
Afterwards,
See this house, how dark it is
Beneath its vast-boughed trees!
Not one trembling leaflet cries
To that Watcher in the skies--
'Remove, remove thy searching gaze,
Innocent, of heaven's ways,
Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright,
On secrets hidden from sight.'
'Secrets,' sighs the night-wind,
'Vacancy is all I find;
Every keyhole I have made
Wail a summons, faint and sad,
No voice ever answers me,
Only vacancy.'
'Once, once...' the cricket shrills,
And far and near the quiet fills
Perspiring violence derides
The pathetic collapse of dirt.
An effervescence of noises
Depends upon cement for its madness.
Electric light is taut and dull,
Like a nauseated suspense.
This kind of heat is the recollection
Of an orgy in a swamp.
Soiled caskets joined together
Slide to rasping stand-stills.
People savagely tamper
With each other's bodies,
Scampering in and out of doorways.
Weighted with apathetic bales of people
The soiled caskets rattle on.
The scene consists of mosaics
Drab discoloration
Of faces, façades, pawn-shops,
Second-hand clothing,
Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch-rooms,
Odors of rancid life...
Deadly uniformity
Of eyes and windows
Alike devoid of light...
Holes wherein life scratches--
Mangy life
Nosing to the gutter's end...
Show-rooms and mimic pillars
Flaunting out of their gaudy vestibules
Bosoms and posturing thighs...
Over all the Elevated
Droning like a bloated fly.
This is but my robe,
His Majesty gave to me.
Garments will decay.
Stuffy smell of mouldering leather,
Tattered arm-chairs, creaking doors,
Books that slovenly elbow each other,
Sown with children's scrawls and long
Worn out by contact with generations:
Tattered tramps displaying yourselves--
"We, though you broke our backs, did not complain."
If I had my way,
I would take you out and bury you quickly,
Or give you to the clean fire.
There are three ancient oaks,
That grow near to each other.
They lift their branches
High as beckoning
With outstretched arms,
For some one to come and stand
Under the canopy of their leaves.
Once long ago I remember
As I lay in the very centre,
Between them:
A rotten branch suddenly fell
Near to me.
I will not go back to those oaks:
Their branches are too black for my liking.
Two narrow files of houses scowl,
Blackened with grime, on either side
Of the road, and through them prowl
Strange men and women, shifty-eyed
And slinking, and a drink-shop throws
Its flare of yellow light adown
The cracked pavement. The gutter flows
A turbid, evil stream. A clown,
Drink-sodden, lurches by and sings
Obscenely. A woman trails behind
With old, bad eyes ; her clothing clings
Rain-soaked about her. No daring wind,
Light-hearted, from a garden blows
Its sweetness here from any rose.
He knocked, and I beheld him at the door--
A vision for the gods to verify.
“What battered ancientry is this,” thought I,
“And when, if ever, did we meet before?”
But ask him as I might, I got no more
For answer than a moaning and a cry:
Too late to parley, but in time to die,
He staggered, and lay shapeless on the floor.
When had I known him? And what brought him here?
Love, warning, malediction, hunger, fear?
Surely I never thwarted such as he?--
Again, what soiled obscurity was this:
Out of what scum, and up from what abyss,
Had they arrived--these rags of memory?
Whenever I go by there nowadays
And look at the rank weeds and the strange grass,
The torn blue curtains and the broken glass,
I seem to be afraid of the old place;
And something stiffens up and down my face,
For all the world as if I saw the ghost
Of old Ham Amory, the murdered host,
With his dead eyes turned on me all aglaze.
The Tavern has a story, but no man
Can tell us what it is. We only know
That once long after midnight, years ago,
A stranger galloped up from Tilbury Town,
Who brushed, and scared, and all but overran
That skirt-crazed reprobate, John Evereldown.
The door was gone, the jambs aslant, awry,
The roof grown over with the mosses slow,
The windows stared with blank and empty eye,
Half the panes gone. The flagstones grinned below
In gaping cracks. The foolish cattle came
About the orchard, where the unpruned trees
Held to the sky white boughs of trembling flame,
And long wild grasses brushed about our knees.
The dumb house called to us, the black, wide door
Stood open for us long and stood in vain :
Sighing we guessed those old walls held a store
Of rest for us when we should come again
Into the hollow, long and green and still —
Then turned away to cross the further hill.
Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,
And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,
And stood on the corner talking politics,
Or sat at home reading Grant’s Memoirs;
And I supported the family by washing,
Learning the secrets of all the people
From their curtains, counterpanes, shirts and skirts.
For things that are new grow old at length,
They’re replaced with better or none at all:
People are prospering or falling back.
And rents and patches widen with time;
No thread or needle can pace decay,
And there are stains that baffle soap,
And there are colors that run in spite of you,
Blamed though you are for spoiling a dress.
Handkerchiefs, napery, have their secrets—