Last time I fell in a shower room I bled like a tumbril dandy and the hotel longed to be rid of me. Taken to the town clinic, I described how I tripped on a steel rim and found my head in the wardrobe. Scalp-sewn and knotted and flagged I thanked the Frau Doktor and fled, wishing the grab-bar of age might be bolted to all civilization and thinking of Rome’s eighth hill heaped up out of broken amphorae.
When, anytime after sixty, or anytime before, you stumble
The grey sky, lighter & darker greys, lights between & delicate lavenders also blue-greys in smaller strokes, & swashes of mauve-grey on the Hudson— openings
Red slippers in a shop-window, and outside in the street, flaws of grey, windy sleet!
Behind the polished glass, the slippers hang in long threads of red, festooning from the ceiling like stalactites of blood, flooding the eyes of passers-by with dripping colour, jamming their crimson reflections against the windows of cabs and tram-cars, screaming their claret and salmon into the teeth of the sleet, plopping their little round maroon lights upon the tops of umbrellas.
The row of white, sparkling shop fronts is gashed and bleeding, it bleeds red slippers. They spout under the electric light, fluid and fluctuating, a hot rain—and freeze again to red slippers, myriadly multiplied in the mirror side of the window.
They balance upon arched insteps like springing bridges of crimson lacquer; they swing up over curved heels like whirling tanagers sucked in a wind-pocket; they flatten out, heelless, like July ponds, flared and burnished by red rockets.
Snap, snap, they are cracker-sparks of scarlet in the white, monotonous block of shops.
They plunge the clangour of billions of vermilion trumpets into the crowd outside, and echo in faint rose over the pavement.
People hurry by, for these are only shoes, and in a window, farther down, is a big lotus bud of cardboard whose petals open every few minutes and reveal a wax doll, with staring bead eyes and flaxen hair, lolling awkwardly in its flower chair.
One has often seen shoes, but whoever saw a cardboard lotus bud before?
The flaws of grey, windy sleet beat on the shop-window where there are only red slippers.
II Thompson’s Lunch Room—Grand Central Station
Study in Whites
Wax-white— Floor, ceiling, walls. Ivory shadows Over the pavement Polished to cream surfaces By constant sweeping. The big room is coloured like the petals Of a great magnolia, And has a patina Of flower bloom Which makes it shine dimly Under the electric lamps. Chairs are ranged in rows Like sepia seeds Waiting fulfilment. The chalk-white spot of a cook’s cap Moves unglossily against the vaguely bright wall— Dull chalk-white striking the retina like a blow Through the wavering uncertainty of steam. Vitreous-white of glasses with green reflections, Ice-green carboys, shifting—greener, bluer—with the jar of moving water. Jagged green-white bowls of pressed glass Rearing snow-peaks of chipped sugar Above the lighthouse-shaped castors Of grey pepper and grey-white salt. Grey-white placards: “Oyster Stew, Cornbeef Hash, Frankfurters”: Marble slabs veined with words in meandering lines. Dropping on the white counter like horn notes Through a web of violins, The flat yellow lights of oranges, The cube-red splashes of apples, In high plated épergnes. The electric clock jerks every half-minute: “Coming!—Past!” “Three beef-steaks and a chicken-pie,” Bawled through a slide while the clock jerks heavily. A man carries a china mug of coffee to a distant chair. Two rice puddings and a salmon salad Are pushed over the counter; The unfulfilled chairs open to receive them. A spoon falls upon the floor with the impact of metal striking stone, And the sound throws across the room Sharp, invisible zigzags Of silver.
III An Opera House
Within the gold square of the proscenium arch, A curtain of orange velvet hangs in stiff folds, Its tassels jarring slightly when someone crosses the stage behind. Gold carving edges the balconies, Rims the boxes, Runs up and down fluted pillars. Little knife-stabs of gold Shine out whenever a box door is opened. Gold clusters Flash in soft explosions On the blue darkness, Suck back to a point, And disappear. Hoops of gold Circle necks, wrists, fingers, Pierce ears, Poise on heads And fly up above them in coloured sparkles. Gold! Gold! The opera house is a treasure-box of gold. Gold in a broad smear across the orchestra pit: Gold of horns, trumpets, tubas; Gold—spun-gold, twittering-gold, snapping-gold Of harps. The conductor raises his baton, The brass blares out Crass, crude, Parvenu, fat, powerful, Golden. Rich as the fat, clapping hands in the boxes. Cymbals, gigantic, coin-shaped, Crash. The orange curtain parts And the prima-donna steps forward. One note, A drop: transparent, iridescent, A gold bubble, It floats . . . floats . . . And bursts against the lips of a bank president In the grand tier.
IV Afternoon Rain in State Street
Cross-hatchings of rain against grey walls, Slant lines of black rain In front of the up and down, wet stone sides of buildings. Below, Greasy, shiny, black, horizontal, The street. And over it, umbrellas, Black polished dots Struck to white An instant, Stream in two flat lines Slipping past each other with the smoothness of oil. Like a four-sided wedge The Custom House Tower Pokes at the low, flat sky, Pushing it farther and farther up, Lifting it away from the house-tops, Lifting it in one piece as though it were a sheet of tin, With the lever of its apex. The cross-hatchings of rain cut the Tower obliquely, Scratching lines of black wire across it, Mutilating its perpendicular grey surface With the sharp precision of tools. The city is rigid with straight lines and angles, A chequered table of blacks and greys. Oblong blocks of flatness Crawl by with low-geared engines, And pass to short upright squares Shrinking with distance. A steamer in the basin blows its whistle, And the sound shoots across the rain hatchings, A narrow, level bar of steel. Hard cubes of lemon Superimpose themselves upon the fronts of buildings As the windows light up. But the lemon cubes are edged with angles Upon which they cannot impinge. Up, straight, down, straight—square. Crumpled grey-white papers Blow along the side-walks, Contorted, horrible, Without curves. A horse steps in a puddle, A white, glaring water spurts up In stiff, outflaring lines, Like the rattling stems of reeds. The city is heraldic with angles, A sombre escutcheon of argent and sable And countercoloured bends of rain Hung over a four-square civilization. When a street lamp comes out, I gaze at it for full thirty seconds To rest my brain with the suffusing, round brilliance of its globe.
V An Aquarium
Streaks of green and yellow iridescence, Silver shiftings, Rings veering out of rings, Silver—gold— Grey-green opaqueness sliding down, With sharp white bubbles Shooting and dancing, Flinging quickly outward. Nosing the bubbles, Swallowing them, Fish. Blue shadows against silver-saffron water, The light rippling over them In steel-bright tremors. Outspread translucent fins Flute, fold, and relapse; The threaded light prints through them on the pebbles In scarcely tarnished twinklings. Curving of spotted spines, Slow up-shifts, Lazy convolutions: Then a sudden swift straightening And darting below: Oblique grey shadows Athwart a pale casement. Roped and curled, Green man-eating eels Slumber in undulate rhythms, With crests laid horizontal on their backs. Barred fish, Striped fish, Uneven disks of fish, Slip, slide, whirl, turn, And never touch. Metallic blue fish, With fins wide and yellow and swaying Like Oriental fans, Hold the sun in their bellies And glow with light: Blue brilliance cut by black bars. An oblong pane of straw-coloured shimmer, Across it, in a tangent, A smear of rose, black, silver. Short twists and upstartings, Rose-black, in a setting of bubbles: Sunshine playing between red and black flowers On a blue and gold lawn. Shadows and polished surfaces, Facets of mauve and purple, A constant modulation of values. Shaft-shaped, With green bead eyes; Thick-nosed, Heliotrope-coloured; Swift spots of chrysolite and coral; In the midst of green, pearl, amethyst irradiations.
Outside, A willow-tree flickers With little white jerks, And long blue waves Rise steadily beyond the outer islands.
Doctor, you say there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don’t see,
Purple as tulips in May, mauve into lush velvet, purple as the stain blackberries leave on the lips, on the hands, the purple of ripe grapes sunlit and warm as flesh.
Every day I will give you a color, like a new flower in a bud vase
Four-fifty. The palings of Trinity Church Burying Ground, a few inches above the earth, are sunk in green light. The low stones like pale books knocked sideways. The bus so close to the curb that brush-drops of ebony paint stand out wetly, the sunlight seethes with vibrations, the sidewalks on Whitehall shudder with subterranean tremors. Overhead, faint flickers
crackle down the window-paths: limpid telegraphy of the
There may be pink with white or white with rose Or there may be white with rose and pink with mauve Or even there may be white with yellow and yellow with blue Or even if even it is rose with white and blue And so there is no yellow there but by accident.
beside me in this garden are huge and daisy-like (why not? are not oxeye daisies a chrysanthemum?), shrubby and thick-stalked, the leaves pointing up the stems from which the flowers burst in
It started about noon. On top of Mount Batte, We were all exclaiming. Someone had a cardboard And a pin, and we all cried out when the sun Appeared in tiny form on the notebook cover.
It was hard to believe. The high school teacher We’d met called it a pinhole camera, People in the Renaissance loved to do that. And when the moon had passed partly through
A hears by chance a familiar name, and the name involves a riddle of the past. B, in love with A, receives an unsigned letter in which the writer states that she is the mistress of A and begs B not to take him away from her. B, compelled by circumstances to be a companion of A in an isolated place, alters her rosy views of love and marriage when she discovers, through A, the selfishness of men. A, an intruder in a strange house, is discovered; he flees through the nearest door into a windowless closet and is trapped by a spring lock. A is so content with what he has that any impulse toward enterprise is throttled. A solves an important mystery when falling plaster reveals the place where some old love letters are concealed. A-4, missing food from his larder, half believes it was taken by a “ghost.” A, a crook, seeks unlawful gain by selling A-8 an object, X, which A-8 already owns.
1 When in his twenties a poetry's full strength Burst into voice as an unstopping flood, He let the divine prompting (come at length) Rushingly bear him any way it would And went on writing while the Ferry turned From San Francisco, back from Berkeley too, And back again, and back again. He learned
Orange peels, burned letters, the car lights shining on the grass, everything goes somewhere—and everything we do—nothing ever disappears. But changes. The roar of the sun in photographs. Inching shorelines. Ice lines. The cells of our skin; our meetings, our solitudes. Our eyes.
A bee careens at the window here; flies out, released: a life without harm, without shame. That woman, my friend, circling against her life, a married life; that man, my friend,
Ce qui est beau à Leningrad, c’est Saint Petersbourg. What fellow traveller returned from the U.S.S.R., Burdened with souvenirs in the form of second thoughts, said That, rephrasing the Slavic platitude as a reactionary epigram? Thence One must count oneself privileged to have escaped empty-handed, Frisked in exit by the incompetent customs of the country Who got everything backwards, inspecting my papers with a glass: Bourgeois formalism apart, my handwriting looks like a decadent cipher.
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