I was Little Albert. Nine months old in the famous film. In a white cotton nightie, on a lab table sitting upright facing a camera. Remember me? Sure. You do.
Fall a scrimage of yellow leaves today All over Lincoln Park Like the mask of the Yellow Mule who travels between the next world and Tibet inside its house of glass in the Field Museum by the lake. I am carrying the night. I am carrying it as if it were a dark blue dish with stars for the dinner of the Dalai Lama.
So it did not come as a surprise—a relief, almost—when we heard the tac-tac-tac of machine guns and the thud of grenades rising up from the woods below. The Germans were advancing again through the tangle of bomb-shattered branches, clearing a path with axe-blows, foreheads crushed beneath the overhang of great steel helmets, gleaming eyes fixed dead ahead. The rest of that day was bitter, and many of us fell forever headlong in the grass. But toward evening the voice of battle began to diminish, and then from the depths of the forest we could hear the song of the wounded: the serene, monotonous, sad-hopeful song of the wounded, joining the chorus of birds hidden in the foliage as they welcomed the return of the moon. It was still daylight, but the moon was rising sweetly from behind the forested mountains of Reims.
It was green against a white and tender sky…
A moon from the forest of Ardennes, a moon from the country of Rimbaud, of Verlaine, a delicate green moon, round and light,
To-night again the moon’s white mat Stretches across the dormitory floor While outside, like an evil cat The pion prowls down the dark corridor, Planning, I know, to pounce on me, in spite For getting leave to sleep in town last night. But it was none of us who made that noise, Only the old brown owl that hoots and flies
No moon floods the memory of that night only the rain I remember the cold rain against our faces and mixing with your tears only the rain I remember the cold rain and your mouth soft and warm no moon no stars no jagged pain of lightning only my impotent tongue and the red rage within my brain
How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country. PART I It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
I He did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red, And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead, The poor dead woman whom he loved, And murdered in her bed.
Ach, in den Armen hab ich sie alle verloren, du nur, du wirst immer wieder geboren .... —Rilke, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge The twilight falls; I soften the dusting feathers, And clean again.
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