(fromTroilus and Cressida, spoken by Ulysses) Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes: Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd
But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppress'd, And secret passions labour'd in her breast. Not youthful kings in battle seiz'd alive, Not scornful virgins who their charms survive, Not ardent lovers robb'd of all their bliss, Not ancient ladies when refus'd a kiss, Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die, Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinn'd awry, E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair, As thou, sad virgin! for thy ravish'd hair.
For, that sad moment, when the Sylphs withdrew, And Ariel weeping from Belinda flew, Umbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite, As ever sullied the fair face of light,
CHORUS The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far; A new Peneus rolls his fountains Against the morning star. Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
As he spoke we could hear, ever more loudly, the noise Of the burning fires; the flood of flames was coming Nearer and nearer. “My father, let me take you Upon my shoulders and carry you with me. The burden will be easy. Whatever happens, You and I will experience it together, Peril or safety, whichever it will be. Little Iülus will come along beside me. My wife will follow behind us. And you, my servants, Listen to what I say: just as you leave The limits of the city there is a mound, And the vestiges of a deserted temple of Ceres, And a cypress tree that has been preserved alive For many years by the piety of our fathers. We will all meet there, though perhaps by different ways
When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.
And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.
Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? ... in the dust, in the cool tombs?
Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns ... tell me if the lovers are losers ... tell me if any get more than the lovers ... in the dust ... in the cool tombs.
The village life, and every care that reigns O'er youthful peasants and declining swains; What labour yields, and what, that labour past, Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last; What forms the real picture of the poor, Demands a song—the Muse can give no more. Fled are those times, if e'er such times were seen, When rustic poets praised their native green;
At the Poem Society a black-haired man stands up to say “You make me sick with all your talk about restraint and mature talent! Haven’t you ever looked out the window at a painting by Matisse, Or did you always stay in hotels where there were too many spiders crawling on your visages? Did you ever glance inside a bottle of sparkling pop, Or see a citizen split in two by the lightning? I am afraid you have never smiled at the hibernation
The work has been going forward with the greatest difficulty, chiefly because I cannot concentrate. I have no feeling about whether what I am writing is good or bad, and the whole business is totally without excitement and pleasure for me. And I am sure I know the reason. It’s that I can’t stand leaving unresolved my situation with Pat. I hear from her fairly frequently, asking when I plan to come back, and she knows that I am supposed to appear at the poetry reading in the middle of January. It is not mainly loneliness I feel, though I feel it; but I have been lonely before. It is quite frankly the feeling that nothing is really settled between us, and that in the mean time I worry about how things are going to work out. This has made my work more difficult than it has ever been before.
– From a letter to his parents dated November 9, 1955, Rome.
Hardly enough for me that the pail of water Alive with the wrinkling light Brings clearness home and whiter Than mind conceives the walls mature to white, Or that the washed tomatoes whose name is given To love fulfill their bowl And the Roman sea is woven Together by threading fish and made most whole.
And now the heavens shift and the night comes in, And covers with its darkness earth and sky And the tricks of the Myrmidons. Throughout the city The Trojans, wearied by joy, lie fast asleep. And now the Greeks set out from Tenedos, Their ships proceeding in an ordered line, Under the friendly light of the silent moon, Making their way toward the shore they know so well, And when the royal galley’s beacon light Is lighted, Sinon sees it, and quietly goes, Protected by malign complicit fates, And furtively opens up the Horse’s flank And frees the Argive warriors from its womb. The Horse releases them to the open air
I am thirty this November. You are still small, in your fourth year. We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer, flapping in the winter rain, falling flat and washed. And I remember mostly the three autumns you did not live here. They said I’d never get you back again.
Hail native language, that by sinews weak Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak, And mad'st imperfect words with childish trips, Half unpronounc'd, slide through my infant lips, Driving dumb Silence from the portal door, Where he had mutely sate two years before: Here I salute thee and thy pardon ask, That now I use thee in my latter task: Small loss it is that thence can come unto thee, I know my tongue but little grace can do thee: Thou needst not be ambitious to be first, Believe me I have thither pack'd the worst: And, if it happen as I did forecast, The daintest dishes shall be serv'd up last. I pray thee then deny me not thy aid
HIgh on a Throne of Royal State, which far Outshon the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand Showrs on her Kings Barbaric Pearl and Gold, Satan exalted sat, by merit rais'd To that bad eminence; and from despair Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue Vain Warr with Heav'n, and by success untaught His proud imaginations thus displaid.
Powers and Dominions, Deities of Heav'n, For since no deep within her gulf can hold Immortal vigor, though opprest and fall'n, I give not Heav'n for lost.From this descent
After the dread tales and red yarns of the Line Anything might have come to us; but the divine Afterglow brought us up to a Welsh colony Hiding in sandbag ditches, whispering consolatory Soft foreign things. Then we were taken in To low huts candle-lit, shaded close by slitten Oilsheets, and there but boys gave us kind welcome, So that we looked out as from the edge of home, Sang us Welsh things, and changed all former notions To human hopeful things. And the next day's guns Nor any Line-pangs ever quite could blot out That strangely beautiful entry to war's rout; Candles they gave us, precious and shared over-rations— Ulysses found little more in his wanderings without doubt. 'David of the White Rock', the 'Slumber Song' so soft, and that
Who was my teacher at Harvard. Did not wear overcoat Saying to me as we walked across the Yard Cold brittle autumn is you should be wearing overcoat. I said You are not wearing overcoat. He said, You should do as I say not do as I do. Just how American it was and how late Forties it was Delmore, but not I, was probably aware. He quoted Finnegans Wake to me In his New York apartment sitting on chair
The edge of our bed was a wide grid where your fifteen-year-old daughter was hanging gut-sprung on police wheels a cablegram nailed to the wood next to a map of the Western Reserve I could not return with you to bury the body reconstruct your nightly cardboards against the seeping Transvaal cold
1 This is a slight stiff dance to a waking baby whose arms have been lying curled back above his head upon the pillow, making a flower—the eyes closed. Dead to the world! Waking is a little hand brushing away dreams. Eyes open. Here’s a new world.
_______________ There is nothing the sky-serpent will not eat. Sometimes it stops to gnaw Fujiyama, sometimes to slip its long and softly clasping tongue about the body of a sleeping child who smiles thinking its mother is lifting it.
2 Security, solidity—we laugh at them in our clique. It is tobacco to us, this side of her leg. We put it in our samovar and make tea of it. You see the stuff has possibilities. You think you are opposing the rich but the truth is you’re turning toward authority yourself, to say nothing of religion. No, I do not say it means nothing. Why everything is nicely adjusted to our moods. But I would rather describe to you what I saw in the kitchen last night—overlook the girl a moment: there over the sink (1) this saucepan holds all, (2) this colander holds most, (3) this wire sieve lets most go and (4) this funnel holds nothing. You appreciate the progression. What need then to be always laughing? Quit phrase making—that is, not of course—but you will understand me or if not—why—come to breakfast sometime around evening on the fourth of January any year you please; always be punctual where eating is concerned.
________________ My little son’s improvisations exceed min: a round stone to him’s a loaf of bread or “this hen could lay a dozen golden eggs.” Birds fly about his bedstead; giants lean over him with hungry jaws; bears roam the farm by summer and are killed and quartered at a thought. There are interminable stories at eating time full of bizarre imagery, true grotesques, pigs that change to dogs in the telling, cows that sing, roosters that become mountains and oceans that fill a soup plate. There are groans and growls, dun clouds and sunshine mixed in a huge phantasmagoria that never rests, never ceased to unfold into—the day’s poor little happenings. Not that alone. He has music which I have not. His tunes follow no scale, no rhythm—alone the mood in odd ramblings up and down, over and over with a rigor of invention that rises beyond the power to follow except in some more obvious flight. Never have I heard so crushing a critique as those desolate inventions, involved half-hymns, after his first visit to a Christian Sunday school.
3 This song is to Phyllis! By this deep snow I know it’s springtime, not ring time! Good God no! The screaming brat’s a sheep bleating, the rattling crib-side sheep shaking a bush. We are young! We are happy! says Colin. What’s an icy room and the sun not up? This song is to Phyllis. Reproduction lets death in, says Joyce. Rot, say I. to Phyllis this song is!
Comment form: