哈特克兰诗集

王敖

Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  PORPHYRO IN AKRON [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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I


1          Greeting the dawn,
2          A shift of rubber workers presses down
3          South Main.
4          With the stubbornness of muddy water
5          It dwindles at each cross-line
6          Until you feel the weight of many cars
7          North-bound, and East and West,
8          Absorbing and conveying wearines,---
9          Rumbling over the hills.


10        Akron, "high place",---
11        A bunch of smoke-ridden hills
12        Among rolling Ohio hills.


13        The dark-skinned Greeks grin at each other
14        In the streets and alleys.
15        The Greek grins and fights with the Swede,---
16        And the Fjords and the Aegean are remembered.


17        The plough, the sword,
18        The trowel,---and the monkey wrench!
19        O City, your axles need not the oil of song.
20        I will whisper words to myself
21        And put them in my pockets.
22        I will go and pitch quoits with old men
23        In the dust of a road.

[Page 151 ]

II


24        And some of them "will be Americans",
25        Using the latest ice-box and buying Fords;
26        And others,---


27                         I remember one Sunday noon,
28        Harry and I, "the gentlemen",---seated around
29        A table of raisin-jack and wine, our host
30        Setting down a glass and saying,---


31                         "One month,---I go back rich.
32        I ride black horse.... Have many sheep."
33        And his wife, like a mountain, coming in
34        With four tiny black-eyed girls around her
35        Twinkling like little Christmas trees.


36        And some Sunday fiddlers,
37        Roumanian business men,
38        Played ragtime and dances before the door,
39        And we overpayed them because we felt like it.

[Page 152 ]

III


40        Pull down the hotel counterpane
41        And hitch yourself up to your book.

42        "Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
43        And threw warm gules on Madeleine\'s fair breast,
44        As down she knelt for heaven\'s grace and boon..."


45        "Connais tu le pays...?"


46        Your mother sang that in a stuffy parlour
47        One summer day in a little town
48        Where you had started to grow.
49        And you were outside as soon as you
50        Could get away from the company
51        To find the only rose on the bush
52        In the front yard.......


53        But look up, Porphyro,---your toes
54        Are ridiculously tapping
55        The spindles at the foot of the bed.


56        The stars are drowned in a slow rain,
57        And a hash of noises is slung up from the street.
58        You ought, really, to try to sleep,
60        Even though, in this town, poetry\'s a
60        Bedroom occupation.


[Page 153 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  A PERSUASION [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          If she waits late at night
2          Hearing the wind,
3          It is to gather kindnesses
4          No world can offer.


5          She has drawn her hands away.
6          The wind plays andantes
7          Of lost hopes and regrets,---
8          And yet is kind.


9          Below the wind,
10        Waiting for morning
11        The hills lie curved and blent
12        As now her heart and mind.


[Page 154 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932 / Laforgue, Jules, 1860-1887 (orig.):  THREE LOCUTIONS DES PIERROTS
from the French of Jules Laforgue [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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I


1          Your eyes, those pools with soft rushes,
2          O prodigal and wholly dilatory lady,
3          Come now, when will they restore me
4          The orient moon of my dapper affections?


5          For imminent is that moment when,
6          Because of your perverse austerities,
7          My crisp soul will be flooded by a languor
8          Bland as the wide gaze of a Newfoundland.


9          Ah, madame! truly it\'s not right
10        When one isn\'t the real Gioconda,
11        To adaptate her methods and deportment
12        For snaring the poor world in a blue funk.
II


13        Ah! the divine infatuation
14        That I nurse for Cydalise
15        Now that she has fled the capture
16        Of my lunar sensibility!


17  True, I nibble at despondencies
18        Among the flowers of her domain
19        To the sole end of discovering
20        What is her unique propensity!


21        ---Which is to be mine, you say?
22  Alas, you know how much I oppose
23        A stiff denial to postures
24        That seem too much impromptu.

[Page 155 ]

III


25        Ah! without the moon, what white nights,
26        What nightmares rich with ingenuity!
27        Don\'t I see your white swans there?
28        Doesn\'t someone come to turn the knob?


29  And it\'s your fault that I\'m this way.
30        That my conscience sees double,
31        And my heart fishes in troubled water
32        For Eve, Gioconda, and Dalila.


33        Oh, by the infinite circumflex
34  Of the archbeam of my cross-legged labours,
35        Come now,---appease me just a little
36        With the why-and-wherefore of Your Sex!


[Page 156 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE GREAT WESTERN PLAINS [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The little voices of prairie dogs
2          are tireless ...
3          They will give three hurrahs
4          alike to stage, equestrian, and pullman,
5          and all unstintingly as to the moon.


6          And Fifi\'s bows and poodle ease
7          whirl by them centred in the lap
8          of Lottie Honeydew, movie queen,
9          toward lawyers and Nevada.


10        And how much more they cannot see!
11        Alas, there is so little time,
12        the world moves by so fast these days!
13        Burrowing in silk is not their way---
14        and yet they know the tomahawk.


15        Indeed, old memories come back to life;
16        pathetic yelps have sometimes greeted
17        noses pressed against the glass.


[Page 157 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  AMERICA\'S PLUTONIC ECSTASIES [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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with homage to E. E. Cummings


1          preferring laxatives to wine
2          all america is saying
3          "how are my bowels today?" and
4          feeling them in every way and
5          peering
6          for the one goat (unsqueezable)
7          that kicked out long ago---


8          or, even thinking
9          of something---Oh!
10        unbelievably---Oh!
11        HEADY!---those aromatic LEMONS!
12        that make your colored syrup fairly
13        PULSE!---yes, PULSE!


14        the nation\'s lips are thin and fast
15        with righteousness. Yet if
16        memory serves there is still
17        catharsis from gin-daisies as well as
18        maiden-hair ferns, and the BRONX
19        doesn\'t stink at all


20                                 These
21        and other natural grammarians are ab-
22        so-loot-lee necessary
23        for a FREE-ER PASSAGE---(NOT
24        to india, o ye faithful,
25        but a little BACK DOOR DIGNITY)


[Page 158 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  INTERLUDIUM
To "La Montagne" by Lachaise [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Thy time is thee to wend
2          with languor such as gains
3          immensity in gathered grace; the arms
4          to spread; the hands to yield their shells


5          and fostering
6          thyself, bestow to thee
7          illimitable and unresigned
8          (no instinct flattering vainly now)


9          Thyself
10        that heavens climb to measure, thus
11        unfurling thee untried,---until
12        from sleep forbidden now and wide
13        partitions in thee---goes


14        communicant and speeding new
15        the cup again wide from thy throat to spend
16        those streams and slopes untenanted thou
17        hast known.... And blithe


18        Madonna, natal to thy yielding
19        still subsist I, wondrous as
20        from thine open dugs shall still the sun
21        again round one more fairest day.


[Page 159 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  MARCH [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Awake to the cold light
2          of wet wind running
3          twigs in tremors, Walls
4          are naked. Twilights raw---
5          and when the sun taps steeples
6          their glistenings dwindle
7          upward ...


8                            March
9          slips along the ground
10        like a mouse under pussy---
11        willows, a little hungry.


12        The vagrant ghost of winter,
13        is it this that keeps the chimney
14        busy still? For something still
15        nudges shingles and windows:


16        but waveringly,---this ghost,
17        this slate-eyed saintly wraith
18        of winter wanes
19        and knows its waning.


[Page 160 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE BROKEN TOWER [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn
2          Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell
3          Of a spent day---to wander the cathedral lawn
4          From pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell.


5          Have you not heard, have you not seen that corps
6          Of shadows in the tower, whose shoulders sway
7          Antiphonal carillons launched before
8          The stars are caught and hived in the sun\'s ray?


9          The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower;
10        And swing I know not where. Their tongues engrave
11        Membrane through marrow, my long-scattered score
12        Of broken intervals ... And I, their sexton slave!


13        Oval encyclicals in canyons heaping
14        The impasse high with choir. Banked voices slain!
15        Pagodas, campaniles with reveilles outleaping---
16        O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain!...


17        And so it was I entered the broken world
18        To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
19        An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
20        But not for long to hold each desperate choice.


21        My word I poured. But was it cognate, scored
22        Of that tribunal monarch of the air
23        Whose thigh embronzes earth, strikes crystal Word
24        In wounds pledged once to hope,---cleft to despair?


25        The steep encroachments of my blood left me
26        No answer (could blood hold such a lofty tower
27        As flings the question true?)---or is it she
28        Whose sweet mortality stirs latent power?---

[Page 161 ]

29        And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes
30        My veins recall and add, revived and sure
31        The angelus of wars my chest evokes:
32        What I hold healed, original now, and pure ...


33        And builds, within, a tower that is not stone
34        (Not stone can jacket heaven)---but slip
35        Of pebbles,---visible wings of silence sown
36        In azure circles, widening as they dip


37        The matrix of the heart, lift down the eye
38        That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower ...
39        The commodious, tall decorum of that sky
40        Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower.


[Page 163 ]

POEMS UNPUBLISHED BY CRANE
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[Page 165 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  A SONG FOR HAPPY FEAST DAYS [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          A song for happy feast days,
2          A song for fortune\'s spurns,
3          In merry and consoling lays---
4          The cheery songs of Bobbie Burns.


[Page 166 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  SONNET [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Ere elfish Night shall sift another day
2          Hope-broken \'neath her ebon scepter\'s keep,
3          Or the fainting soul\'s last flames all trembling creep
4          White-taper-like, and paler, pulse away,
5          Then shalt thou come, O Saint, in magic sway
6          Of midnight\'s purple organ-breath, and sweep
7          Brave echoes from the spooming coast to steep,
8          Blue heights where cone-wood calls near summits spray
9          Frost-fringes through thine octaves ... And from shades
10        Of moon-fled valleys, there shall rise a rift,
11        The supplication of all earth, mute serenades,
12        Whispering, "Cecilia, Saint, leave us thy gift."
13        And sleep shalt thou bestow, the final song,
14        And Time shall set the morning stars adrift.


[Page 167 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE MOTH THAT GOD MADE BLIND [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Among cocoa-nut palms of a far oasis,
2          Conceived in the light of Arabian moons,
3          There are butterflies born in mosaic date-vases,
4          That emerge black and vermeil from yellow cocoons.


5          Some say that for sweetness they cannot see far,---
6          That their land is too gorgeous to free their eyes wide
7          To horizons which knife-like would only mar
8          Their joy with a barren and steely tide---


9          That they only can see when their moon limits vision,
10        Their mother, the Moon, marks a halo of light
11        On their own small oasis, ray-cut, an incision,
12        Where are set all the myriad jewelleries of night.


13        So they sleep in the shade of black palm-bark at noon,
14        Blind only in day, but remembering that soon
15        She will flush their hid wings in the evening to blaze
16        Countless rubies and tapers in the oasis\' blue haze.


17        But over one moth\'s eyes were tissues at birth
18        Too multiplied even to center his gaze
19        On that circle of paradise cool in the night;---
20        Never came light through that honey-thick glaze.

[Page 168 ]



21        And had not his pinions with signs mystical
22        And rings macrocosmic won envy as thrall,
23        They had scorned him, so humbly low, bound there and tied
24        At night like a grain of sand, futile and dried.


25        But once though, he learned of that span of his wings,---
26        The florescence, the power he felt bud at the time
27        When the others were blinded by all waking things;
28        And he ventured the desert,---his wings took the climb.


29        And lo, in that dawn he was pierroting over,---
30        Swinging in spirals round the fresh breasts of day.
31        The moat of the desert was melting from clover
32        To yellow,---to crystal,---a sea of white spray---


33        Till the sun, he still gyrating, shot out all white,---
34        Though a black god to him in a dizzying night;---
35        And without one cloud-car in that wide meshless blue
36        The sun saw a ruby brightening ever, that flew.


37        Seething and rounding in long streams of light
38        The heat led the moth up in octopus arms:
39        The honey-wax eyes could find no alarms,
40        But they burned thinly blind like an orange peeled white.


41        And the torrid hum of great wings was his song
42        When below him he saw what his whole race had shunned---
43        Great horizons and systems and shores all along
44        Which blue tides of cool moons were slow shaken and sunned.

[Page 169 ]



45        A little time only, for sight burned as deep
46        As his blindness before had frozen in Hell,
47        And his wings atom-withered,---gone,---left but a leap:---
48        To the desert,---back,---down,---still lonely he fell.


49        I have hunted long years for a spark in the sand;---
50        My eyes have hugged beauty and winged life\'s brief spell.
51        These things I have:---a withered hand;---
52        Dim eyes;---a tongue that cannot tell.


[Page 170 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  TO EARTH [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Be earnest, Earth,---and kind.
2          This flower that opened in the storm
3          Has fallen with the after-hush.
4          Be earnest, Earth,---and kind.


[Page 171 ]

王敖

Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  MEDUSA [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          "Fall with me
2          Through the frigid stars:
3          Fall with me
4          Through the raving light:---
5          Sink
6          Where is no song
7          But only the white hair of aged winds.


8          Follow
9          Into utterness,
10        Into dizzying chaos,---
11        The eternal boiling chaos
12        Of my locks!


13        Behold thy lover,---
14        Stone!"


[Page 172 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  MEDITATION [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          I have drawn my hands away
2          Toward peace and the grey margins of the day.
3          The andante of vain hopes and lost regret
4          Falls like slow rain that whispers to forget,---
5          Like a song that neither questions nor replies
6          It laves with coolness tarnished lips and eyes.


7          I have drawn my hands away
8          At last to touch the ungathered rose. O stay,
9          Moment of dissolving happiness! Astir
10        Already in the sky, night\'s chorister
11        Has brushed a petal from the jasmine moon,
12        And the heron has passed by, alas, how soon!


13        I have drawn my hands away
14        Like ships for guidance in the lift and spray
15        Of stars that urge them toward an unknown goal.
16        Drift, O wakeful one, O restless soul,
17        Until the glittering white open hand
18        Of heaven thou shalt read and understand.


[Page 173 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  EPISODE OF HANDS [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The unexpected interest made him flush.
2          Suddenly he seemed to forget the pain,---
3          Consented,---and held out
4          One finger from the others.


5          The gash was bleeding, and a shaft of sun
6          That glittered in and out among the wheels,
7          Fell lightly, warmly, down into the wound.


8          And as the fingers of the factory owner\'s son,
9          That knew a grip for books and tennis
10        As well as one for iron and leather,---
11        As his taut, spare fingers wound the gauze
12        Around the thick bed of the wound,
13        His own hands seemed to him
14        Like wings of butterflies
15        Flickering in sunlight over summer fields.


16        The knots and notches,---many in the wide
17        Deep hand that lay in his,---seemed beautiful.
18        They were like the marks of wild ponies\' play,---
19        Bunches of new green breaking a hard turf.


20        And factory sounds and factory thoughts
21        Were banished from him by that larger, quieter hand
22        That lay in his with the sun upon it.
23        And as the bandage knot was tightened
24        The two men smiled into each other\'s eyes.


[Page 174 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE BRIDGE OF ESTADOR
&&&&
An Impromptu, Aesthetic TIRADE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Walk high on the bridge of Estador,
2          No one has ever walked there before.
3          There is a lake, perhaps, with the sun
4          Lapped under it,---or the dun
5          Bellies and estuaries of warehouses,
6          Tied bundle-wise with cords of smoke.


7          Do not think too deeply, and you\'ll find
8          A soul, an element in it all.


9          How can you tell where beauty\'s to be found?
10        I have heard hands praised for what they made;
11        I have heard hands praised for line on line;
12        Yet a gash with sunlight jerking through
13        A mesh of belts down into it, made me think
14        I had never seen a hand before.
15        And the hand was thick and heavily warted.


16        High on the bridge of Estador
17        Where no one has ever been before,---
18        I do not know what you\'ll see,---your vision
19        May slumber yet in the moon, awaiting
20        Far consummations of the tides to throw
21        Clean on the shore some wreck of dreams....


22        But some are twisted with the love
23        Of things irreconcilable,---
24        The slant moon with the slanting hill:

[Page 175 ]

25        O Beauty\'s fool, though you have never
26        Seen them again, you won\'t forget.
27        Nor the Gods that danced before you
28        When your fingers spread among stars.


29           And you others,---follow your arches
30        To what corners of the sky they pull you to,---
31        The everlasting eyes of Pierrot,
32           Or, of Gargantua, the laughter.


[Page 176 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  AFTER JONAH [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          In my beginning was the memory, somehow
2          contradicting Jonah, that essential babe
3          of unbaptised digestion, being a nugget
4          to call pity on Jerusalem and on Nature, too.


5          We have his travels in the snare so widely
6          ruminated,---of how he stuck there, was reformed,
7          forgiven, also---
8          and belched back like a word to grace us all.


9          There is no settling tank in God. It must be borne
10        that even His bowels are too delicate to board
11        a sniping thief that has a pious beard.
12        We must hail back the lamb that went unsheared.


13        O sweet deep whale as ever reamed the sky
14        with high white gulfs of vapor, castigate
15        our sins, but be hospitable as Hell.
16        And keep me to the death like ambergris,
17        sealed up, and unforgiven in my cell.


[Page 177 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  EUCLID AVENUE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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To be or not to be---?


1          But so to be the denizen stingaree---
2          As stertorous as nations romanized may throw
3          Surveys by Maytimes slow.... Hexameters
4          Suspending jockstraps for gangsters while the pil---


5          Bland (grim)aces Plutarch\'s perch. And angles
6          Break in folds of crêpe that blackly drape
7          The broken door ... Crouch so. Amend


8          Then; and clinch.


9          Sweep....
10        Clean is that cloven Hoof. Then reap
11        Strain, clasp oblivion as though Chance
12        Could absent all answer save the chosen rant.


13        Stop now, as never, never. Speak


14        As telegrams continue, write, strike
15        Your scholarship (stop) through broken ribs; jail
16        (Stripe) answers Euclid. Einstein curves, but does not
17        Quail. Does Newton take the Eucharist on rail
18        Nor any boulevard no more? I say ...


19        For there are statues, shapes your use
20        Repeals. Youse use. You\'re prevalent,---prevail!
21        Youse
22        Food once more and souse, like all me under sail.
23        My friends, I never thought we\'d fail.


24        That dirty peacock\'s pride, once gory God\'s own story:
25        It didn\'t belong no more; no, never did glory

[Page 178 ]

26        Walk on Euclid Avenue, as didn\'t Wm.
27        Bleached or blacked, whichever \'twas. What milk
28        We\'ve put in blasted pigs! I says ... O, well---


29        But I say, what a swell chance, boys. No more
30        Cancers, jealousy, tenements or giblets! Death, my boys,
31        Nor blinkers either---


32        Four shots at who-knows-how---how


33        Many-it-was unsupervised


34        Grabbed right outa my mouth that final chew---
35        Right there on Euclid Avenue.


[Page 179 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  OF AN EVENING PULLING OFF A LITTLE EXPERIENCE
(with the english language) [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1                                            by
2                                                                                              NIGHTS
3  EEEEEECCCUUUMMMMMMIIINNGGGSSS (for short)       69


4                                                        wrists web rythms
5                           and the poke-
6                                      ,dot smile;
7                           of Genevive
8                                                                    talks
9                           back


10                         i KNew,kneW my feet
11                         ?go on) were an applesauce
12                                                                part
13                  of yoU belching POCHETTEkeepit
14                         upyou s,uede
15                         ballbearing


16                                         celery = grin


17                         remind of-of la guerre


18                      UM
19                         Trimvirate (creamed dancing bitches)
20                         corking with Helene, (exactly you make)
21                         my perpendicularly crowdedPOCKets


22                                               smilepoke


23                   ,,besides: which
24                         April has
25                         a

[Page 180 ]

26                         word to say: classy )eh(!
27                         while blundering fumbiguts gather       accu
28                   rate little, O-SO masturbations in/
29                                                                        to
30                         fractions of heaven. Hold  tight   bless
31                         worms trilling rimple flock to
32                         sad iron


33                                      goats of
34                                         love-
35                                           semi-colon
36                                           piping (dash)


[Page 181 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  WHAT NOTS? [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1                             to chorus of:"O bury me not
2                                               In the lone prairie-ee,
3                                               Where the wild coyotes
4                                               Will how-ow-owl at me!"


5          What is a What Not
6          if what is not negates
7          what is not what
8          you thought it was   ?


9          O berenberg not
10        in Laocoön trot---


11        No;   what is not
12        esperanto may well be
13        Lessing to what
14        not Guthries
15        plus pot shot double-
16        double-you Williams:


17        so    clams open not
18        to the naughty What Not   !


19        What a lot of rot, not what
20        grandma was hot about, you
21  say:     so
22        wot I too.     But


23        what knots and dots
24        remind you of forget-
25        me-nots        ?


[Page 182 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  IN A COURT [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          His hand changed in the kitchen
2          by the fire: she moved a little,
3          like wax against his gaze
4          that followed flame and transfusion,---
5          every spark meshed white, a part
6          of his most solemn appetite.


7          I looked into the kitchen where
8          they sat.
9          Breathless I was that peace should come
10        where fat is to be grasped and lean
11        is clenched,
12        and fingers are a teeth that taste
13        and smell.


[Page 183 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  WITH A PHOTOGRAPH TO ZELL, NOW BOUND FOR SPAIN [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          From Brooklyn Heights one sees the bay:
2          And, anchored at my window sill,
3          I\'ve often sat and watched all day
4          The boats stream by against the shrill
5          Manhattan skyline,---endlessly
6          Their mastheads filing out to sea.


7          And just so, as you see me here
8          (Though kodaked somewhat out of focus,
9          My eyes have still the proper locus)
10        I\'m flashing greetings to your pier,
11        Your ship, your auto-bus in France---
12        All things on which you glide or prance
13        Down into sunny Spain, dear Zell.
14        Good berths, good food and wine as well!


15        I hope to know these wishes a true
16        Forecasting. Let me hear from you.
17        Enclose some petals from a wall
18        Of roses in Castile, or maybe garden stall;
19        While I\'ll be waiting at this old address,
20        Dear Aunt, God-mother, Editress!


[Page 184 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  SUPPLICATION TO THE MUSES ON A TRYING DAY [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

"How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest,
The seagull\'s wings shall---"


1          Hold it in a high wind. The fender curving over the
2          breastplate, and all in high gear. I watched to see the
3          river rise. The forests had all given out their streams
4          and tributaries. When would the bones of De Soto come
5          down in the wild rinse? And when would Ponce de Leon
6          remember Hammerfest?... There were periods when the
7          salt-rising bread broke out all over me in heinous sores.
8          If you can\'t abuse a machine, why have it! Machines
9          are made for abuse.... Fool-proof! Human beings were never
10        jetted, conceived, articulated, ejected, nursed,
11        spanked, corrected, educated, harangued, married, divorced,
12        petted, emasculated, loved and damned, jailed and liberated,
13        besides being plastered, frightened and mangled, pickled
14        and strangled---THEY were never meant to be abused!


15        Thou art no more than Chinese to me, O Moon! A simian
16        chorus to you, and let your balls be nibbled by the flirt-
17        atious hauchinango. The tide would rise---and did. I held
18        the crupper by a lasso conscripted from white mice tails
19        spliced to the fore-top gallant. Old Mizzentop rose, but
20        all in vain. It was a wild night among the breakers and
21        the smooth racoons. All the pistols came dressed in white
22        lattice, winking as never before; but the prawns held out
23        till nearly daybreak,---simpering, simpering and equivocating.
24        By the time I reached Berlin---or was it Shanghai?---there
25        were no more stitches for wounds, nor tortoises for teles-
26        copes. "What a waste of eternity!" I exclaimed into the ear
27        of the most celebrated microphone you ever smashed. Then
28        the wind rose, and I strangled in the embraces of a derelict
29        aigrette.

[Page 185 ]



30        These dermatologists of Mozambique have got hold of me since.
31        They say my digits fidget, that I\'m but a follicle of my
32        former fratricide.... What shall I do? I
33        masticate firmly and bite off all my nails. I practise in-
34        vention / to the brink of intelligibility. I insult all my
35        friends and ride ostriches furiously across the Yukon, while
36        parrots berate me to the accompaniment of the most chaste
37        reticules. By all the mystery of Gomorrha, I ask, what can a
38        gaping gastronomist gather in such a gulch of simulation?!!


[Page 186 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  ETERNITY [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

September---remember!
October---all over.
BARBADIAN ADAGE


1          After it was over, though still gusting balefully,
2          The old woman and I foraged some drier clothes
3          And left the house, or what was left of it;
4          Parts of the roof reached Yucatan, I suppose.
5          She almost---even then---got blown across lots
6          At the base of the mountain. But the town, the town!


7          Wires in the streets and Chinamen up and down
8          With arms in slings, plaster strewn dense with tiles,
9          And Cuban doctors, troopers, trucks, loose hens ...
10        The only building not sagging on its knees,
11        Fernandez\' Hotel, was requisitioned into pens
12        For cotted negroes, bandaged to be taken
13        To Havana on the first boat through. They groaned.


14        But was there a boat? By the wharf\'s old site you saw
15        Two decks unsandwiched, split sixty feet apart
16        And a funnel high and dry up near the park
17        Where a frantic peacock rummaged amid heaped cans.
18        No one seemed to be able to get a spark
19        From the world outside, but some rumor blew
20        That Havana, not to mention poor Batabanó,
21        Was halfway under water with fires
22        For some hours since---all wireless down
23        Of course, there too.


24                                           Back at the erstwhile house
25        We shoveled and sweated; watched the ogre sun
26        Blister the mountain, stripped now, bare of palm,
27        Everything---and lick the grass, as black as patent
28        Leather, which the timed white wind had glazed.

[Page 187 ]

29        Everything gone---or strewn in riddled grace---
30        Long tropic roots high in the air, like lace.
31        And somebody\'s mule steamed, swaying right by the pump,
32        Good God! as though his sinking carcass there
33        Were death predestined! You held your nose already
34        Along the roads, begging for buzzards, vultures ...
35        The mule stumbled, staggered. I somehow couldn\'t budge
36        To lift a stick for pity of his stupor.


37                                                               For I
38        Remember still that strange gratuity of horses
39        ---One ours, and one, a stranger, creeping up with dawn
40        Out of the bamboo brake through howling, sheeted light
41        When the storm was dying. And Sarah saw them, too---
42        Sobbed, Yes, now---it\'s almost over. For they know;
43        The weather\'s in their noses. There\'s Don---but that one, white
44        ---I can\'t account for him! And true, he stood
45        Like a vast phantom maned by all that memoried night
46        Of screaming rain---Eternity!


47                                                    Yet water, water!
48        I beat the dazed mule toward the road. He got that far
49        And fell dead or dying, but it didn\'t so much matter.


50        The morrow\'s dawn was dense with carrion hazes
51        Sliding everywhere. Bodies were rushed into graves
52        Without ceremony, while hammers pattered in town.
53        The roads were being cleared, injured brought in
54        And treated, it seemed. In due time
55        The President sent down a battleship that baked
56        Something like two thousand loaves on the way.
57        Doctors shot ahead from the deck in planes.
58        The fever was checked. I stood a long time in Mack\'s talking
59        New York with the gobs, Guantanamo, Norfolk,---
60        Drinking Bacardi and talking U.S.A.


[Page 188 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE SAD INDIAN [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          Sad heart, the gymnast of inertia, does not count
2          Hours, days---and scarcely sun and moon---
3          The warp is in the woof---and his keen vision
4          Spells what his tongue has had---and only that---
5          How more?---but the lash, lost vantage---and the prison
6          His fathers took for granted ages since---and so he looms


7          Farther than his sun-shadow---farther than wings
8          ---Their shadows even---now can\'t carry him.
9          He does not know the new hum in the sky
10        And---backwards---is it thus the eagles fly?


[Page 189 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  HIEROGLYPHIC [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  
1          Did one look at what one saw
2          Or did one see what one looked At?


[Page 191 ]

INCOMPLETE WORKS


[Page 192 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THIS WAY WHERE NOVEMBER ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          This way where November takes the leaf
2          to sow only disfigurement in early snow
3          mist gained upon the night I delved, surely
4          as the city took us who can meet and go
5          (who might have parted, keen beyond any sea,
6          in words which no wings can engender now).


7          For this there is a beam across my head;
8          its weight not arched like heaven full, its edge
9          not bevelled, and its bulk that I accept,
10        triumphing not easily upon the brow ...


11        And, margined so, the sun may rise aware
12        (I must have waited for so devised a day)
13        of the old woman whistling in her tubs,
14        and a labyrinth of laundry in the courted sky;
15        while inside, downward passing steps
16        anon not to white buildings I have seen,
17        leave me to whispering an answer here
18        to nothing but this beam that crops my hair.


19        Vaulted in the welter of the east be read,
20        "These are thy misused deeds."---
21        And the arms, torn white and mild away, be bled.


[Page 193 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THOU CANST READ NOTHING ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          Thou canst read nothing except through appetite
2          And here we join eyes in that sanctity
3          Where brother passes brother without sight,
4          But finally knows conviviality ...


5          Go then, unto thy turning and thy blame.
6          Seek bliss then, brother, in my moment\'s shame.
7          All this that baulks delivery through words
8          Shall come to you through wounds prescribed by swords:


9          That hate is but the vengeance of a long caress,
10        And fame is pivotal to shame with every sun
11        That rises on eternity\'s long willingness ...
12        So sleep, dear brother, in my fame, my shame undone.


[Page 194 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  TO LIBERTY [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          Out of the seagull cries and wind
2          On this strange shore I build
3          The virgin. They laugh to hear
4          How I endow her, standing
5          Hair mocked by the sea, her lover
6          A dead sailor that knew
7          Not even Helen\'s fame.


8          Light the last torch in the wall,
9          The sea wall. Bring her no robes yet.
10        They have not seen her in this harbor;
11        Eyes widely planted, clear, yet small.
12        And must they overcome the fog,
13        Or must we rend our dream?


14        Provide these manners, this salute
15        The brows feed on, anticipate this sanction.
16        Things become separate, final---
17        While I become more whole
18        Infinite---the gradual all
19        Which is a laugh at last
20        Struggles


[Page 195 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  TO THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE\'S STATUE
Martinique
Image of Constancy [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 2Kb]  

1          You, who contain augmented tears, explosions
2          Have kissed, caressed the model of the hurricane
3          Gathered and made musical in feathered fronds
4          The slit eclipse of moon in palm-lit bonds
5          Deny me not in this sweet Caribbean dawn
6          You, who have looked back to Leda, who have seen the Swan
7          In swirling rushes, urged the appointed charge,
8          Outdid our spies and hoodwink sputum,
9          Now you may compute your lecheries---
10        As well as I, but not with her,---


11        I own it still---that sure deliberation---
12        Leave, leave that Caribbean praise to me
13        Who claims a devout concentration
14        To wage you surely out of memory---
15        Your generosity dispose relinquishment and care.
16        Thy death be sacred to all those who share
17        Love and the breath of faith, momentous bride
18        You did not die for conquerors at your side
19        Nor for that fruit of mating that is widowed pride


[Page 196 ]

王敖

Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  A POSTSCRIPT [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          Friendship agony! words came to me
2          at last shyly. My only final friends---
3          the wren and thrush, made solid print for me
4          across dawn\'s broken arc. No; yes ... or were they
5          the audible ransom, ensign of my faith
6          toward something far, now farther than ever away?


7          Remember the lavender lilies of that dawn,
8          their ribbon miles, beside the railroad ties
9          as one nears New Orleans, sweet trenches by the train
10        after the western desert, and the later cattle country;
11        and other gratuities, like porters, jokes, roses ...


12        Dawn\'s broken arc! and noon\'s more furbished room!
13        Yet seldom was there faith in the heart\'s right kindness.
14        There were tickets and alarm clocks. There were counters and schedules;
15        and a paralytic woman on an island of the Indies,
16        Antillean fingers counting my pulse, my love forever.


[Page 197 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE PILLAR AND THE POST [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          What you may yank up readiest Yank---
2          May not so well serve your purpose as your plaint
3          When you have no one but the devil---to thank
4          And you wretched with your clean-limbed taint---


5          Of strangling the Argives of the palms---
6                  Midas of motion---love those lingering
7          instants that bespeak a careful manure for all
8          your progeny---and ask the sun what time it
9          is before your fingers lose their ten---in biological
10        and betrothèd answer to the ambitious monkey synthesis
11             that you adore.


[Page 198 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE VISIBLE THE UNTRUE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  
to E. O.


1          Yes, I being
2          the terrible puppet of my dreams, shall
3          lavish this on you---
4          the dense mine of the orchid, split in two.
5          And the fingernails that cinch such
6          environs?
7          And what about the staunch neighbor tabulations,
8          with all their zest for doom?


9          I\'m wearing badges
10        that cancel all your kindness. Forthright
11        I watch the silver Zeppelin
12        destroy the sky. To
13        stir your confidence?
14        To rouse what sanctions---? toothaches?


15        The silver strophe ... the canto
16        bright with myth ... Such
17        distances leap landward without
18        evil smile. And, as for me ...


19        The window weight throbs in its blind
20        partition. To extinguish what I have of faith.
21        Yes, light. And it is always
22        always, always the eternal rainbow
23        And it is always the day, the farewell day unkind.


[Page 199 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  A TRAVELLER BORN [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 2Kb]  

1          Of sailors---those two Corsicans at Marseille,---
2          The Dane at Paris and the Spanish abbé
3          With distance, lizard-like, green as Pernod;
4          Its cargo drench, its wet inferno
5          Condenses memory. The abbey colonnade, the vesperal Fountain---
6          Oh, sudden apple-math of ripe night fallen!
7          Concluding handclasp, cider, summer-swollen
8          Folds, and is folden in the echoing mountain....


9          Yields and is shielded, wrapt in traffic flame,
10        The One, this crucifix that bears a name
11        Like Science, and the Pasteur Institute ...
12        That home for serums keeps the student mute
13        Until the Fourteenth of July---
14        (Contain the Paternosters and waive the West wind By)


15        When midnight to lamp bruised black
16        That nuisance silhouette unhands me
17        On the ceiling---the midnight clasp extends
18        (My shadow to myself)
19        To all the courtesies of foreign friends---


20        I read it clear of anything that bows
21        Less of the midnight than that midnight shows
22        Into intrinsic skeletal sincerity---
23        Less than the stoker or the pilot knows
24        More than the statesman or the plowman shows....


25        This rhetoric sincere that blinds its flame
26        To yield it without smoke, intense and sure
27        The flower\'s unwithered in vase with name
28        And so the traveller\'s home\'s a foreign Cure


[Page 200 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  HAVANA ROSE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 2Kb]  
1             Let us strip the desk for action---now we have a horse
2          in Mexico.... That night in Vera Cruz---verily for me "the
3          True Cross"---let us remember the Doctor and my thoughts,
4          my humble, fond remembrances of the great bacteriologist
5                 ... The wind, that night, the clamour
6  of incessant shutters, trundle doors---and the cheroot
7               watchman---
8          tiptoeing the successive patio balconies with a typical pis-
9                 tol---trying to muffle doors---and the
10        pharos shine---the mid-wind midnight stroke of it, its
11               milk-light regularity
12        above my bath partition through the
13        lofty, dusty glass---Cortez---Cortez---hiscrumbled palace in the
14  square---the typhus in a trap, the Doctor\'s rat trap.
15        Where? Somewhere in Vera Cruz---to bring---to take---
16        to mix---to ransom---to deduct---to cure....
17        The rats played ring around the rosy (in their basement
18              basinette)---the Doctor
19        slept supposedly in #35---thus in my wakeful watch at
20               least---the
21  lighthouse flashed ... whirled ... delayed, and struck---
22              again, again. Only the Mayans surely slept---
23        whose references to typhus and whose records
24        spurted the Doctor into something nigh those
25        metaphysics that are typhoid plus---and had engaged
26        him once before to death\'s beyond and back again
27  ---antagonistic wills---into immunity. Tact,
28        horsemanship, courage were germicides to him....
29        Poets may not be doctors, but doctors are rare
30        poets when roses leap like rats---and too,
31        when rats make rose nozzles of pink death around
32  white teeth....

[Page 201 ]

33           And during the wait over dinner at La Diana,
34        the Doctor had said---who was American also---
35        "You cannot heed the negative---, so might go on
36        to undeserved doom ... must therefore loose yourself
37  within a pattern\'s mastery that you can conceive, that
38        you can yield to---by which also you
39        win and gain that mastery and happiness which
40        is your own from Birth."


[Page 202 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  PURGATORIO [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          My country, O my land, my friends---
2          Am I apart,---here from you in a land
3          Where all your gas lights---faces,---sputum gleam
4          Like something left, forsaken,---here am I---
5          And are these stars---the high plateau---the scents
6          Of Eden---and the dangerous tree---are these
7          The landscape of confession---and if confession
8          So absolution? Wake pines---but pines wake here.
9          I dream the too-keen cider---the too-soft snow.
10        Where are the bayonets that the scorpion may not grow?
11        Here quakes of earth make houses fall---
12        And all my countrymen I see rush toward one stall.
13        Exile is thus a purgatory---not such as Dante built


14        But rather like a blanket than a quilt
15        And I have no decision---is it green or brown
16        That I prefer to country or to town?
17        I am unraveled, umbilical anew,
18        So ring the church bells here in Mexico---
19        (They ring too obdurately here to need my call)
20        And what hours they forget to chime I\'ll know
21        As one whose altitude at one time was
22                                      not


[Page 203 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE CIRCUMSTANCE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  
To Xochipilli


1          The anointed stone, the coruscated crown---
2          The drastic throne, the
3          Desperate sweet eyepit-basins of a bloody foreign clown---
4          Couched on bloody basins floating bone
5          Of a dismounted people. ...


6          If you could buy the stones,
7          Display the stumbling bones
8          Urging your unsuspecting
9          Shins, sus-
10        Taining nothing in time but more and more of Time,
11        Mercurially might add but would
12        Subtract and concentrate. ... If you
13        Could drink the sun as did and does
14        Xochipilli,---as they who\'ve
15        Gone have done, as they
16        Who\'ve done. ... A god of flowers in statued
17        Stone ... of love---


18        If you could die, then starve, who live
19        Thereafter, stronger than death smiles in flowering stone;---
20        You could stop time, give florescent
21        Time a longer answer back (shave lightning,
22        Possess in halo full the winds of time)
23        A longer answer force, more enduring answer
24        As they did---and have done. ...


[Page 205 ]

FRAGMENTS


[Page 206 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  TO BUDDHA [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  
1          You are quite outside of such issues,
2          The polished bottom of your sound font
3          Is taught to ride in heaven, and you know
4          The tangents of desire the other quells


[Page 207 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  WHERE GABLES PACK ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Where gables pack the rainless
2          fulsome sky
3          permit a song as comes into the street


4          permit a song that swings with ropes
5          and skipping feet
6          above the laughter that rebounds below.


[Page 208 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  WELL/WELL/NOT-AT-ALL [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1                     Yakka-hoola-hikki-doola
2                     Pico-della-miran-dohhh-la
3                     leonarda-della-itchy-vinci
4                     es braust ein Ruf wie
5                           DONNERHALL
6          pffffff !


[Page 209 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  YOU ARE THAT FRAIL ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          You are that frail decision that devised
2          Their lowest common multiple of human need,
3          And on that bleak assumption risked the prize
4          Forgetfulness of all you bait for greed ...


[Page 210 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE MASTERS [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Their brains are smooth machines that colonize
2          The sun,---their eyes are atoms of a split hereafter.
3          They must explain away all moan and laughter,
4          Then ticket, subdivide and overrule
5          Each former entity      
6          I saw them turn old Demos from the stage
7          And mock their hearts because their hearts spoke better,
8          Elaborate all, divided school by school


[Page 211 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  HER EYES HAD ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Her eyes had the blue of desperate days,
2          Freezingly bright; I saw her hair unfurl,
3          Unsanctioned, finally, by anything left her to know
4          She had learned that Paradise is not a question of eggs
5          If anything, it was her privilege to undress
6          Quietly in a glass she had guarded
7          Always with correcting states before.


8          It was this, when I asked her how she died,
9          That asked me why her final happy cry
10        Should not have found an echo somewhere, and I stand
11        Before her finally, as beside a wall, listening as though
12        I heard the breath of Holofernes toast
13        Judith\'s cold bosom through her righteous years.


[Page 212 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  O MOON, THOU COOL ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          O moon, thou cool sibilance of the sun, we utmost love
2          A Quaker in the sky the clouds resign---
3          For that ye yield one answer, one above
4          All else of midnight---that we shall not
5          I begged a mediator in thy sign
6                              thy free industry
7          Thy leap and petal over the stiff edge
8          Where no one else dare set the wedge
9          O the moon crops weather on the spine
10        Of every buckwheat that the bee takes in in his prime
11        Your mother, sibilance of the sun, is the vine


[Page 213 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE SEA RAISED UP ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The sea raised up a campanile ... The wind I heard
2          Of brine partaking, whirling into shower
3          Of column that breakers sheared in shower
4          Back into bosom,---me---her, into natal power ...


[Page 214 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  SO DREAM THY SAILS ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          So dream thy sails, O phantom bark
2          That I thy drownèd men may speak again
3          Perhaps as once Will Collins spoke the lark,
4          And leave me half adream upon the main.


5          For who shall lift head up to funnel smoke,
6          And who trick back the leisured winds again
7          As they were fought---and wooed? They now but stoke
8          Their vanity, and dream no land in vain.


9          Of old there was a promise, and thy sails
10        Have kept no faith but wind, the cold stream
11        ---The hot fickle wind, the breath of males
12        Imprisoned never, no not soot and steam


[Page 215 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  I HAVE THAT SURE ENCLITIC ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          I have that sure enclitic to my act
2          Which shall insure no dissonance to fact.
3          Then Agamemnon\'s locks grow to shape
4          Without my forebear\'s priceless model of the ape. ...
5          Gorillas die---and so do humanists---who keep
6          Comparisons clear for evolution\'s non-escape
7          And man the deathless target, of his own weak sheep ...


[Page 216 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  SHALL I SUBSUME ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Shall I subsume the shadow of the world---
2          The sun-spot that absolves us all? In fine
3          There is the wisp, there is the phantom,
4          "Fantisticon", in the comedy where we meet.
5          The interlude without circumvention
6          This, between the speech of shells and battle gases.
7          I know this effort by the slant of the obdurate moon.
8          She, at worst, is the chancel---of our worst reflection


9          Immeasurable scope of veins, imprisoned within mood
10        Whereon the distance thrives---O jealousy of space!
11        I, these cameos, carve---thy caverns limitless achieve---
12        These arteries explore. What is the extent of the sod?
13        And where is the clod blown up with


[Page 217 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  TENDERNESS AND RESOLUTION [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Tenderness and resolution
2          What is our life without a sudden pillow---
3          What is death without a ditch?


4          The harvest laugh of bright Apollo
5          And the flint tooth of Sagittarius
6          Rhyme from the same jaw---(closing cinch by cinch)
7          And pocket us who, somehow, do not follow,
8          As though we knew those who are variants---
9          Charms---that each by each refuse the clinch


10        With desperate propriety, whose name is writ
11        In wider letters than the alphabet,---
12        Who is now left to vary the Sanscrit
13        Pillowed by


14        My wrist in the vestibule of time---who
15        Will hold it---wear the keepsake, dear, of time---
16        Return the mirage on a coin that spells
17        Something of sand and sun the Nile defends. ...


[Page 218 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  TIME CANNOT BE WORN ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Time cannot be worn strapped to the supple wrist
2          Like any buckled jewel or bangle; no,
3          Lady, though fingers that attach it twist
4          The oyster from its shell, may guide the bow
5          Across cool strings that lift a lasting claim
6          Upon Eternity. No, Lady,


[Page 219 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  I ROB MY BREAST ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          I rob my breast to reach those altitudes---
2          To meet the meaningless concussion of
3          Pure heights---Infinity resides below. ...
4          The obelisk of plain infinity founders below,
5          My vision is a grandiose dilemma---


6          Place de la Concorde! Across that crowded plain---
7          I fought to see the stricken bones, the noble
8          Carcass of a general, dead Foch, proceed
9          To the defunct pit of Napoleon---in honor
10        Defender, not usurper.


11        My countrymen,---give form and edict---
12        To the marrow. You shall know
13        The harvest as you have known the spring
14        But I believe that such "wreckage" as I find
15        Remaining presents evidence of considerably more
16        Significance than do the cog-walk gestures
17        Of a beetle in a sand pit.


[Page 220 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  ENRICH MY RESIGNATION ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Enrich my resignation as I usurp those far
2          Feints of control---hear rifles blown out on the stag
3          Below the aeroplane---and see the fox\'s brush
4          Whisk silently beneath the red hill\'s crag
5          ---Extinction stirred on either side
6          Because love wonders, keeps a certain mirth---
7          Die, Oh, centuries, die, as Dionysius said,
8          Yet live in all my resignation---
9          It is the moment, now, when all---
10        The heartstrings spring, unlaced---Oh thou fiend and


11                   Here is the peace of the fathers


[Page 221 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  ALL THIS ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          All this---and the housekeeper---
2          Written on a blotter, Hartford, Bridgeport---
3          The weekend at Holyoke
4          His daughters act like kings
5          Pauline and I, the Harvard game
6          ---A brand new platform
7          Way on Stutzing up to Spring
8          ---Not a cent, not a cent, wish we\'d known beforehand.


9          And the last of the Romanoffs
10        Translated the International Code
11        Tea and toast across radios
12        Swung into lullabies.
13        His father gave him the store outright
14        ---All sorts of money, Standard Oil
15        And his two sons, their fourth or fifth cousins
16        How well he carried himself
17        And a stick all the time


[Page 222 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE ALERT PILLOW ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The alert pillow, the hayseed spreads
2          And mountains wasting carpet---
3          O willows, drooping forecast---tears?
4          That demiurge, turf earns the station
5          Whereby candles are bought and hymns
6          Sparkle alone in wastebaskets and whereto
7          Scythes, those seldom spears---by
8          Poets urged---so their sunset crescents
9          Swiftly and like iron sweep acceptance


[Page 223 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THERE ARE THE LOCAL ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          There are the local orchard boughs
2          With apples---August boughs---their unspilled spines
3          Inter-wrenched and flocking with gold spousal wine
4          Like hummocks drifting in the autumn shine


[Page 224 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  DUST NOW IS ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  
1          Dust now is the old-fashioned house
2          Where Jacob dreamed his ladder climb,---
3          Thankfully fed both hog and mouse
4          And mounted rung on rung of rhyme


[Page 225 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THEY WERE THERE ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          They were there falling;
2          And they fell. And their habitat
3          Left them. And they fell.
4          And what they remembered was---
5          Dismembered. But they fell.
6          And now they dispel
7          Those wonders that posterity constructs,
8          By such a mystery as time obstructs;
9          And all the missions and votaries
10        And old maids with their chronic coteries
11        Dispense in the old, old lorgnette views
12        What should have kept them straight in pews.
13        But doesn\'t confuse
14        These Indians, who scan more news
15        On the hind end of their flocks each day
16        Than all these tourists bring their way.


[Page 226 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  TO CONQUER VARIETY [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  
1          I have seen my ghost broken
2          My body blessed
3          And Eden
4          Scraped from my mother\'s breast
5          When the charge was spoken
6          Love dispossessed
7          And the seal broken. ....


[Page 227 ]


A NOTE ON THE EDITORIAL METHOD
The aim of this edition is to produce a text of the published and unpublished poems of Hart Crane that is as close as possible to his latest intention in his most authoritative form of each poem. Consequently, his latest copy meant for the printer, or the subsequent form of the text closest to that copy, has been chosen as Crane\'s intended text, for, as modern textual theory recognizes, they are the forms with highest reliability in both micro- and macro-elements. When the printer\'s copy has not survived---often the case with Crane\'s poems---the first printing, which is the next closest text to the printer\'s copy, is used for the text in this edition. If some other form is closer or more reliable, it is discussed in the Notes. Since any incomplete or fragmentary pieces have a less than certain authorial intention inherent in their extant forms, the editor has deduced Crane\'s intended text according to the poet\'s usual practice. This criterion is based on careful study of Crane\'s habits of living and writing, and informed by a complete collation of all Crane\'s variants in order to determine a text in the absence of a fair copy. It is central, though, that the texts provided here are primarily the author\'s, not this editor\'s; nor those of Crane\'s other editors, whose alterations are not cited unless it is necessary and space allows. This text and its emendations have been shaped, however, by a critical interpretation of other editors\' readings of dubious passages, especially in works that are less than complete. Thus this edition emends defective texts only by using forms which are demonstrably Crane\'s, or because there is a patent error that he missed that should be corrected.
The editor has not imposed consistency regarding capitalization or punctuation, unless it is clear that such inconsistencies derive from an oversight or from the unauthorized license of editor or compositor. Any need for editorial emendation is justified in the Notes (if the correction is not an obvious one), as is the rationale concerning the "KEY WEST" folder. The present edition normalizes the number and spacing of dots if the poet\'s form is ambiguous or erratic, unless he specifically noted (as in "Cape Hatteras," for example) that his form of the ellipsis should remain intentionally at variance from the norm. Thus the closeup placement

[Page 228 ]
of four dots represents the period directly after the last quoted word, and the spaced placement (as in three dots) represents an ellipsis that begins in mid-sentence and the fourth dot indicates the final period. Other normalizations are mainly a matter of mechanical presentation. Heading capitals in the first line of a poem or section of a poem are silently altered in this edition. Line- and page-breaks, if they obscure stanzaic structure and are clearly a result only of house style, are altered---and discussed in the Notes when need be. All digraphs have been emended, since they are the imposition of house style. Anomalous typographical usage has been normalized when it does not originate in Crane\'s documents, or if it is inconsequential, such as the upper- or lower-case letters of a title and final periods in titles or sections of poems. Line counts for separate poems are literal and consecutive; one word counts as a line if it is written as a line in Crane\'s last extant version. Poems part of a series, such as the sections of "For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen," "Voyages," or THE BRIDGE, are line-numbered separately (and not continuously from first to last section of the poem) for reasons of convenience rather than because of assumptions about such sequences of poems as more or less unified.



[Page 229 ]


Epilogue
Br THE BRIDGE A Poem by HART CRANE (New York: Horace Liveright, 1930).
c. circa. about
HC Hart Crane
WB White Buildings: Poems by Hart Crane (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1926).
In order to afford precise distinctions for the reader\'s recognition of HC\'s development as an artist in light of his complete as well as not finished work, the editor has grouped The Poems of Hart Crane into seven parts, along with Notes on dates of composition and first publication by HC, and other relevant information regarding the source of each poem, editorial emendation of the poems, and explanations of significant critical elements as space allows. The first two sections consist of HC\'s two separately published books. The next five parts comprise complete, incomplete, and fragmentary works. By distinguishing incomplete works from fragments, one soon realizes that HC left the former in a relatively finished if not complete fair-copy form compared to his verse fragments. HC gave titles to all the incomplete works except those which begin "This Way Where November..." and "Thou Canst Read Nothing...". To only four of the fragments did HC give titles. One of them, "The Masters," HC himself designated as a "fragment note," while the other three are only pieces or fragments of works that he never developed. The grouping of incomplete works apart from fragments provides the discrimination necessary for the reader\'s immediate comprehension of, and insight into, HC\'s incomplete works as such, and his fragments such as they are, namely parts of works that have survived in not even an incomplete form.
Therefore, HC\'s intentions for sequence of publication of his major works in separate book form are accorded primacy, and his third tentative book or section of a book of collected poems follows (with justification in the Notes). Although it is not known what HC would have done with his incomplete works and fragments, in the absence of his clear intentions, they are grouped after his purposely separate publications

[Page 230 ]
(White Buildings and THE BRIDGE), a provisionally distinct collection ("KEY WEST"), poems published individually but uncollected by him, and works he did not publish himself. Thus The Poems of Hart Crane presents each text according to the place it takes along a continuum varying from separate publications to fragments. Such a sequence comes closest to how HC would have intended his editor to present his extant compositions to future readers eager to have for the first time the complete canon of all his ninety-two poems (besides those in HC\'s two books published in his lifetime) available in one volume.




Copyright © 1933, 1958, 1966 by Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 1986 by Marc Simon

曾园

为克兰提一下。最近他的全集出来了。

王敖

你是说“美国图书馆”的版本吗？应该是去年出的。

曾园

去年9月份。多了书信选。今天纽约时报的书评才出来。

小雅

<p>哪位达人能把他的&lt;桥&gt;翻译一下,只看了&lt;布鲁克林大桥&gt;和一些片段,喜欢得不得了,自己尝试看愿文,基础一般,相当吃力,有些表达性的文字还是弄不明白!</p><p>王敖兄辛苦了!</p>[em02]

小雅

这么好的帖子，顶上去