哈特克兰诗集

王敖

WHITE BUILDINGS
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Epigraph
Ce ne peut être que la fin du monde, en avançant.
---RIMBAUD


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  LEGEND [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          As silent as a mirror is believed
2          Realities plunge in silence by ...


3          I am not ready for repentance;
4          Nor to match regrets. For the moth
5          Bends no more than the still
6          Imploring flame. And tremorous
7          In the white falling flakes
8          Kisses are,---
9          The only worth all granting.


10        It is to be learned---
11        This cleaving and this burning,
12        But only by the one who
13        Spends out himself again.


14        Twice and twice
15        (Again the smoking souvenir,
16        Bleeding eidolon!) and yet again.
17        Until the bright logic is won
18        Unwhispering as a mirror
19        Is believed.


20        Then, drop by caustic drop, a perfect cry
21        Shall string some constant harmony,---
22        Relentless caper for all those who step
23        The legend of their youth into the noon.


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  BLACK TAMBOURINE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The interests of a black man in a cellar
2          Mark tardy judgment on the world\'s closed door.
3          Gnats toss in the shadow of a bottle,
4          And a roach spans a crevice in the floor.


5          Aesop, driven to pondering, found
6          Heaven with the tortoise and the hare;
7          Fox brush and sow ear top his grave
8          And mingling incantations on the air.


9          The black man, forlorn in the cellar,
10        Wanders in some mid-kingdom, dark, that lies,
11        Between his tambourine, stuck on the wall,
12        And, in Africa, a carcass quick with flies.


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  EMBLEMS OF CONDUCT [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          By a peninsula the wanderer sat and sketched
2          The uneven valley graves. While the apostle gave
3          Alms to the meek the volcano burst
4          With sulphur and aureate rocks ...
5          For joy rides in stupendous coverings
6          Luring the living into spiritual gates.


7          Orators follow the universe
8          And radio the complete laws to the people.
9          The apostle conveys thought through discipline.
10        Bowls and cups fill historians with adorations,---
11        Dull lips commemorating spiritual gates.


12        The wanderer later chose this spot of rest
13        Where marble clouds support the sea
14        And where was finally home a chosen hero.
15        By that time summer and smoke were past.
16        Dolphins still played, arching the horizons,
17        But only to build memories of spiritual gates.


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  MY GRANDMOTHER\'S LOVE LETTERS [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          There are no stars tonight
2          But those of memory.
3          Yet how much room for memory there is
4          In the loose girdle of soft rain.
`
5          There is even room enough
6          For the letters of my mother\'s mother,
7          Elizabeth,
8          That have been pressed so long
9          Into a corner of the roof
10        That they are brown and soft,
11        And liable to melt as snow.


12        Over the greatness of such space
13        Steps must be gentle.
14        It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
15        It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.


16        And I ask myself:


17        "Are your fingers long enough to play
18        Old keys that are but echoes:
19        Is the silence strong enough
20        To carry back the music to its source
21        And back to you again
22        As though to her?"


23        Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
24        Through much of what she would not understand;
25        And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
26        With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  SUNDAY MORNING APPLES [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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To William Sommer


1          The leaves will fall again sometime and fill
2          The fleece of nature with those purposes
3          That are your rich and faithful strength of line.


4  But now there are challenges to spring
5          In that ripe nude with head
6                                                reared
7          Into a realm of swords, her purple shadow
8          Bursting on the winter of the world
9          From whiteness that cries defiance to the snow.


10        A boy runs with a dog before the sun, straddling
11        Spontaneities that form their independent orbits,
12        Their own perennials of light
13        In the valley where you live
14                                               (called Brandywine).


15        I have seen the apples there that toss you secrets,---
16        Beloved apples of seasonable madness
17        That feed your inquiries with aerial wine.
18        Put them again beside a pitcher with a knife,
19        And poise them full and ready for explosion---
20        The apples, Bill, the apples!


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  PRAISE FOR AN URN [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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In Memoriam: Ernest Nelson


1          It was a kind and northern face
2          That mingled in such exile guise
3          The everlasting eyes of Pierrot
4          And, of Gargantua, the laughter.


5          His thoughts, delivered to me
6          From the white coverlet and pillow,
7          I see now, were inheritances---
8          Delicate riders of the storm.


9          The slant moon on the slanting hill
10        Once moved us toward presentiments
11        Of what the dead keep, living still,
12        And such assessments of the soul


13        As, perched in the crematory lobby,
14        The insistent clock commented on,
15        Touching as well upon our praise
16        Of glories proper to the time.


17        Still, having in mind gold hair,
18        I cannot see that broken brow
19        And miss the dry sound of bees
20        Stretching across a lucid space.


21        Scatter these well-meant idioms
22        Into the smoky spring that fills
23        The suburbs, where they will be lost.
24        They are no trophies of the sun.


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  GARDEN ABSTRACT [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The apple on its bough is her desire,---
2          Shining suspension, mimic of the sun.
3          The bough has caught her breath up, and her voice,
4          Dumbly articulate in the slant and rise
5          Of branch on branch above her, blurs her eyes.
6          She is prisoner of the tree and its green fingers.


7          And so she comes to dream herself the tree,
8          The wind possessing her, weaving her young veins,
9          Holding her to the sky and its quick blue,
10        Drowning the fever of her hands in sunlight.
11        She has no memory, nor fear, nor hope
12        Beyond the grass and shadows at her feet.


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  STARK MAJOR [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The lover\'s death, how regular
2          With lifting spring and starker
3          Vestiges of the sun that somehow
4          Filter in to us before we waken.


5          Not yet is there that heat and sober
6          Vivisection of more clamant air
7          That hands joined in the dark will answer
8          After the daily circuits of its glare.


9          It is the time of sundering ...
10        Beneath the green silk counterpane
11        Her mound of undelivered life
12        Lies cool upon her---not yet pain.


13        And she will wake before you pass,
14        Scarcely aloud, beyond her door,
15        And every third step down the stair
16        Until you reach the muffled floor---


17        Will laugh and call your name; while you,
18        Still answering her faint good-byes,
19        Will find the street, only to look
20        At doors and stone with broken eyes.


21        Walk now, and note the lover\'s death.
22        Henceforth her memory is more
23        Than yours, in cries, in ecstasies
24        You cannot ever reach to share.


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  CHAPLINESQUE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          We make our meek adjustments,
2          Contented with such random consolations
3          As the wind deposits
4          In slithered and too ample pockets.


5          For we can still love the world, who find
6          A famished kitten on the step, and know
7          Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
8          Or warm torn elbow coverts.


9          We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
10        Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
11        That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
12        Facing the dull squint with what innocence
13        And what surprise!


14        And yet these fine collapses are not lies
15        More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
16        Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
17        We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
18        What blame to us if the heart live on.


19        The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
20        The moon in lonely alleys make
21        A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
22        And through all sound of gaiety and quest
23        Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  PASTORALE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          No more violets,
2          And the year
3          Broken into smoky panels.
4          What woods remember now
5          Her calls, her enthusiasms.


6          That ritual of sap and leaves
7          The sun drew out,
8          Ends in this latter muffled
9          Bronze and brass. The wind
10        Takes rein.


11        If, dusty, I bear
12        An image beyond this
13        Already fallen harvest,
14        I can only query, "Fool---
15        Have you remembered too long;


16        Or was there too little said
17        For ease or resolution---
18        Summer scarcely begun
19        And violets,
20        A few picked, the rest dead?"


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  IN SHADOW [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Out in the late amber afternoon,
2          Confused among chrysanthemums,
3          Her parasol, a pale balloon,
4          Like a waiting moon, in shadow swims.


5          Her furtive lace and misty hair
6          Over the garden dial distill
7          The sunlight,---then withdrawing, wear
8          Again the shadows at her will.


9          Gently yet suddenly, the sheen
10        Of stars inwraps her parasol.
11        She hears my step behind the green
12        Twilight, stiller than shadows, fall.


13        "Come, it is too late,---too late
14        To risk alone the light\'s decline:
15        Nor has the evening long to wait,"---
16        But her own words are night\'s and mine.


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE FERNERY [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The lights that travel on her spectacles
2          Seldom, now, meet a mirror in her eyes.
3          But turning, as you may chance to lift a shade
4          Beside her and her fernery, is to follow
5          The zigzags fast around dry lips composed
6          To darkness through a wreath of sudden pain.


7          ---So, while fresh sunlight splinters humid green
8          I have known myself a nephew to confusions
9          That sometimes take up residence and reign
10        In crowns less grey---O merciless tidy hair!

王敖

[Page 15 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  NORTH LABRADOR [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          A land of leaning ice
2          Hugged by plaster-grey arches of sky,
3          Flings itself silently
4          Into eternity.


5          "Has no one come here to win you,
6          Or left you with the faintest blush
7          Upon your glittering breasts?
8          Have you no memories, O Darkly Bright?"


9          Cold-hushed, there is only the shifting of moments
10        That journey toward no Spring---
11        No birth, no death, no time nor sun
12        In answer.


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  REPOSE OF RIVERS [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The willows carried a slow sound,
2          A sarabande the wind mowed on the mead.
3          I could never remember
4          That seething, steady leveling of the marshes
5          Till age had brought me to the sea.


6          Flags, weeds. And remembrance of steep alcoves
7          Where cypresses shared the noon\'s
8          Tyranny; they drew me into hades almost.
9          And mammoth turtles climbing sulphur dreams
10        Yielded, while sun-silt rippled them
11        Asunder ...


12        How much I would have bartered! the black gorge
13        And all the singular nestings in the hills
14        Where beavers learn stitch and tooth.
15        The pond I entered once and quickly fled---
16        I remember now its singing willow rim.


17        And finally, in that memory all things nurse;
18        After the city that I finally passed
19        With scalding unguents spread and smoking darts
20        The monsoon cut across the delta
21        At gulf gates ... There, beyond the dykes


22        I heard wind flaking sapphire, like this summer,
23        And willows could not hold more steady sound.


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  PARAPHRASE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Of a steady winking beat between
2          Systole, diastole spokes-of-a-wheel
3          One rushing from the bed at night
4          May find the record wedged in his soul.


5          Above the feet the clever sheets
6          Lie guard upon the integers of life:
7          For what skims in between uncurls the toe,
8          Involves the hands in purposeless repose.


9          But from its bracket how can the tongue tell
10        When systematic morn shall sometime flood
11        The pillow---how desperate is the light
12        That shall not rouse, how faint the crow\'s cavil


13        As, when stunned in that antarctic blaze,
14        Your head, unrocking to a pulse, already
15        Hollowed by air, posts a white paraphrase
16        Among bruised roses on the papered wall.


[Page 18 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  POSSESSIONS [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Witness now this trust! the rain
2          That steals softly direction
3          And the key, ready to hand---sifting
4          One moment in sacrifice (the direst)
5          Through a thousand nights the flesh
6          Assaults outright for bolts that linger
7          Hidden,---O undirected as the sky
8          That through its black foam has no eyes
9          For this fixed stone of lust ...


10        Accumulate such moments to an hour:
11        Account the total of this trembling tabulation.
12        I know the screen, the distant flying taps
13        And stabbing medley that sways---
14        And the mercy, feminine, that stays
15        As though prepared.


16        And I, entering, take up the stone
17        As quiet as you can make a man ...
18        In Bleecker Street, still trenchant in a void,
19        Wounded by apprehensions out of speech,
20        I hold it up against a disk of light---
21        I, turning, turning on smoked forking spires,
22        The city\'s stubborn lives, desires.


23        Tossed on these horns, who bleeding dies,
24        Lacks all but piteous admissions to be spilt
25        Upon the page whose blind sum finally burns
26        Record of rage and partial appetites.
27        The pure possession, the inclusive cloud
28        Whose heart is fire shall come,---the white wind rase
29        All but bright stones wherein our smiling plays.


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Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  LACHRYMAE CHRISTI [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Whitely, while Benzine
2          Rinsings from the moon
3          Dissolve all but the windows of the mills
4          (Inside the sure machinery
5          Is still
6          And curdled only where a sill
7          Sluices its one unyielding smile)


8          Immaculate venom binds
9          The fox\'s teeth, and swart
10        Thorns freshen on the year\'s
11        First blood. From flanks unfended,
12        Twanged red perfidies of spring
13        Are trillion on the hill.


14        And the nights opening
15        Chant pyramids,---
16        Anoint with innocence,---recall
17        To music and retrieve what perjuries
18        Had galvanized the eyes.


19                                 While chime
20        Beneath and all around
21        Distilling clemencies,---worms\'
22        Inaudible whistle, tunneling
23        Not penitence
24        But song, as these
25        Perpetual fountains, vines,---


26        Thy Nazarene and tinder eyes.


27        (Let sphinxes from the ripe
28        Borage of death have cleared my tongue
29        Once and again; vermin and rod

[Page 20 ]

30        No longer bind. Some sentient cloud
31        Of tears flocks through the tendoned loam:
32        Betrayed stones slowly speak.)


33        Names peeling from Thine eyes
34        And their undimming lattices of flame,
35        Spell out in palm and pain
36        Compulsion of the year, O Nazarene.


37        Lean long from sable, slender boughs,
38        Unstanched and luminous. And as the nights
39        Strike from Thee perfect spheres,
40        Lift up in lilac-emerald breath the grail
41        Of earth again---


42                                     Thy face
43        From charred and riven stakes, O
44        Dionysus, Thy
45        Unmangled target smile.


[Page 21 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  PASSAGE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Where the cedar leaf divides the sky
2          I heard the sea.
3          In sapphire arenas of the hills
4          I was promised an improved infancy.


5          Sulking, sanctioning the sun,
6          My memory I left in a ravine,---
7          Casual louse that tissues the buckwheat,
8          Aprons rocks, congregates pears
9          In moonlit bushels
10        And wakens alleys with a hidden cough.


11        Dangerously the summer burned
12        (I had joined the entrainments of the wind).
13        The shadows of boulders lengthened my back:
14        In the bronze gongs of my cheeks
15        The rain dried without odour.


16        "It is not long, it is not long;
17        See where the red and black
18        Vine-stanchioned valleys---": but the wind
19        Died speaking through the ages that you know
20        And hug, chimney-sooted heart of man!
21        So was I turned about and back, much as your smoke
22        Compiles a too well known biography.


23        The evening was a spear in the ravine
24        That throve through very oak. And had I walked
25        The dozen particular decimals of time?
26        Touching an opening laurel, I found
27        A thief beneath, my stolen book in hand.


28        "Why are you back here---smiling an iron coffin?"
29        "To argue with the laurel," I replied:

[Page 22 ]

30        "Am justified in transience, fleeing
31        Under the constant wonder of your eyes---."


32        He closed the book. And from the Ptolemies
33        Sand troughed us in a glittering abyss.
34        A serpent swam a vertex to the sun
35        ---On unpaced beaches leaned its tongue and drummed.
36        What fountains did I hear? what icy speeches?
37        Memory, committed to the page, had broke.


[Page 23 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE WINE MENAGERIE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Invariably when wine redeems the sight,
2          Narrowing the mustard scansions of the eyes,
3          A leopard ranging always in the brow
4          Asserts a vision in the slumbering gaze.


5          Then glozening decanters that reflect the street
6          Wear me in crescents on their bellies. Slow
7          Applause flows into liquid cynosures:
8          ---I am conscripted to their shadows\' glow.


9          Against the imitation onyx wainscoting
10        (Painted emulsion of snow, eggs, yarn, coal, manure)
11        Regard the forceps of the smile that takes her.
12        Percussive sweat is spreading to his hair. Mallets,
13        Her eyes, unmake an instant of the world ...


14        What is it in this heap the serpent pries---
15        Whose skin, facsimile of time, unskeins
16        Octagon, sapphire transepts round the eyes;
17        ---From whom some whispered carillon assures
18        Speed to the arrow into feathered skies?


19        Sharp to the windowpane guile drags a face,
20        And as the alcove of her jealousy recedes
21        An urchin who has left the snow
22        Nudges a cannister across the bar
23        While August meadows somewhere clasp his brow.


24        Each chamber, transept, coins some squint,
25        Remorseless line, minting their separate wills---
26        Poor streaked bodies wreathing up and out,
27        Unwitting the stigma that each turn repeals:
28        Between black tusks the roses shine!

[Page 24 ]

29        New thresholds, new anatomies! Wine talons
30        Build freedom up about me and distill
31        This competence---to travel in a tear
32        Sparkling alone, within another\'s will.


33        Until my blood dreams a receptive smile
34        Wherein new purities are snared; where chimes
35        Before some flame of gaunt repose a shell
36        Tolled once, perhaps, by every tongue in hell.
37        ---Anguished, the wit that cries out of me:


38        "Alas,---these frozen billows of your skill!
39        Invent new dominoes of love and bile ...
40        Ruddy, the tooth implicit of the world
41        Has followed you. Though in the end you know
42        And count some dim inheritance of sand,
43        How much yet meets the treason of the snow.


44        "Rise from the dates and crumbs. And walk away,
45        Stepping over Holofernes\' shins---
46        Beyond the wall, whose severed head floats by
47        With Baptist John\'s. Their whispering begins.


48        "---And fold your exile on your back again;
49        Petrushka\'s valentine pivots on its pin."


[Page 25 ]

王敖

Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  RECITATIVE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Regard the capture here, O Janus-faced,
2          As double as the hands that twist this glass.
3          Such eyes at search or rest you cannot see;
4          Reciting pain or glee, how can you bear!


5          Twin shadowed halves: the breaking second holds
6          In each the skin alone, and so it is
7          I crust a plate of vibrant mercury
8          Borne cleft to you, and brother in the half.


9          Inquire this much-exacting fragment smile,
10        Its drums and darkest blowing leaves ignore,---
11        Defer though, revocation of the tears
12        That yield attendance to one crucial sign.


13        Look steadily---how the wind feasts and spins
14        The brain\'s disk shivered against lust. Then watch
15        While darkness, like an ape\'s face, falls away,
16        And gradually white buildings answer day.


17        Let the same nameless gulf beleaguer us---
18        Alike suspend us from atrocious sums
19        Built floor by floor on shafts of steel that grant
20        The plummet heart, like Absalom, no stream.


21        The highest tower,---let her ribs palisade
22        Wrenched gold of Nineveh;---yet leave the tower.
23        The bridge swings over salvage, beyond wharves;
24        A wind abides the ensign of your will ...


25        In alternating bells have you not heard
26        All hours clapped dense into a single stride?
27        Forgive me for an echo of these things,
28        And let us walk through time with equal pride.


[Page 26 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  FOR THE MARRIAGE OF FAUSTUS AND HELEN [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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"And so we may arrive by Talmud skill
And profane Greek to raise the building up
Of Helen\'s house against the Ismaelite,
King of Thogarma, and his habergeons
Brimstony, blue and fiery; and the force
Of King Abaddon, and the beast of Cittim;
Which Rabbi David Kimchi, Onkelos,
And Aben Ezra do interpret Rome."
---THE ALCHEMIST.


I


1          The mind has shown itself at times
2          Too much the baked and labeled dough
3          Divided by accepted multitudes.
4          Across the stacked partitions of the day---
5          Across the memoranda, baseball scores,
6          The stenographic smiles and stock quotations
7          Smutty wings flash out equivocations.


8          The mind is brushed by sparrow wings;
9          Numbers, rebuffed by asphalt, crowd
10        The margins of the day, accent the curbs,
11        Convoying divers dawns on every corner
12        To druggist, barber and tobacconist,
13        Until the graduate opacities of evening
14        Take them away as suddenly to somewhere
15        Virginal perhaps, less fragmentary, cool.


16                There is the world dimensional for
17             those untwisted by the love of things
18             irreconcilable ...


19        And yet, suppose some evening I forgot
20        The fare and transfer, yet got by that way
21        Without recall,---lost yet poised in traffic.

[Page 27 ]



22        Then I might find your eyes across an aisle,
23        Still flickering with those prefigurations---
24        Prodigal, yet uncontested now,
25        25 Half-riant before the jerky window frame.


26        There is some way, I think, to touch
27        Those hands of yours that count the nights
28        Stippled with pink and green advertisements.
29        And now, before its arteries turn dark
30        I would have you meet this bartered blood.
31        Imminent in his dream, none better knows
32        The white wafer cheek of love, or offers words
33        Lightly as moonlight on the eaves meets snow.


34        Reflective conversion of all things
35        At your deep blush, when ecstasies thread
36        The limbs and belly, when rainbows spread
37        Impinging on the throat and sides ...
38        Inevitable, the body of the world
39        Weeps in inventive dust for the hiatus
40        That winks above it, bluet in your breasts.


41        The earth may glide diaphanous to death;
42        But if I lift my arms it is to bend
43        To you who turned away once, Helen, knowing
44        The press of troubled hands, too alternate
45        With steel and soil to hold you endlessly.
46        I meet you, therefore, in that eventual flame
47        You found in final chains, no captive then---
48        Beyond their million brittle, bloodshot eyes;
49        White, through white cities passed on to assume
50        That world which comes to each of us alone.

[Page 28 ]



51        Accept a lone eye riveted to your plane,
52        Bent axle of devotion along companion ways
53        That beat, continuous, to hourless days---
54        One inconspicuous, glowing orb of praise.

[Page 29 ]

II


55        Brazen hypnotics glitter here;
56        Glee shifts from foot to foot,
57        Magnetic to their tremulo.
58        This crashing opra bouffe,
59  Blest excursion! this ricochet
60        From roof to roof---
61        Know, Olympians, we are breathless
62        While nigger cupids scour the stars!


63        A thousand light shrugs balance us
64  Through snarling hails of melody.
65        White shadows slip across the floor
66        Splayed like cards from a loose hand;
67        Rhythmic ellipses lead into canters
68        Until somewhere a rooster banters.


69  Greet naïvely---yet intrepidly
70        New soothings, new amazements
71        That cornets introduce at every turn---
72        And you may fall downstairs with me
73        With perfect grace and equanimity.
74  Or, plaintively scud past shores
75        Where, by strange harmonic laws
76        All relatives, serene and cool,
77        Sit rocked in patent armchairs.


78        O, I have known metallic paradises
79  Where cuckoos clucked to finches
80        Above the deft catastrophes of drums.
81        While titters hailed the groans of death
82        Beneath gyrating awnings I have seen

[Page 30 ]



83        The incunabula of the divine grotesque.
84  This music has a reassuring way.


85        The siren of the springs of guilty song---
86        Let us take her on the incandescent wax
87        Striated with nuances, nervosities
88        That we are heir to: she is still so young,
89  We cannot frown upon her as she smiles,
90        Dipping here in this cultivated storm
91        Among slim skaters of the gardened skies.

[Page 31 ]

III


92        Capped arbiter of beauty in this street
93        That narrows darkly into motor dawn,---
94        You, here beside me, delicate ambassador
95        Of intricate slain numbers that arise
96  In whispers, naked of steel;
97                                             religious gunman!
98        Who faithfully, yourself, will fall too soon,
99        And in other ways than as the wind settles
100      On the sixteen thrifty bridges of the city:
101  Let us unbind our throats of fear and pity.


102                                                 We even,
103      Who drove speediest destruction
104      In corymbulous formations of mechanics,---
105      Who hurried the hill breezes, spouting malice
106  Plangent over meadows, and looked down
107      On rifts of torn and empty houses
108      Like old women with teeth unjubilant
109      That waited faintly, briefly and in vain:


110      We know, eternal gunman, our flesh remembers
111  The tensile boughs, the nimble blue plateaus,
112      The mounted, yielding cities of the air!


113      That saddled sky that shook down vertical
114      Repeated play of fire---no hypogeum
115      Of wave or rock was good against one hour.
116  We did not ask for that, but have survived,
117      And will persist to speak again before
118      All stubble streets that have not curved
119      To memory, or known the ominous lifted arm

[Page 32 ]

120      That lowers down the arc of Helen\'s brow
121  To saturate with blessing and dismay.


122      A goose, tobacco and cologne---
123      Three winged and gold-shod prophecies of heaven,
124      The lavish heart shall always have to leaven
125      And spread with bells and voices, and atone
126  The abating shadows of our conscript dust.


127      Anchises\' navel, dripping of the sea,---
128      The hands Erasmus dipped in gleaming tides,
129      Gathered the voltage of blown blood and vine;
130      Delve upward for the new and scattered wine,
131  O brother-thief of time, that we recall.
132      Laugh out the meager penance of their days
133      Who dare not share with us the breath released,
134      The substance drilled and spent beyond repair
135      For golden, or the shadow of gold hair.


136  Distinctly praise the years, whose volatile
137      Blamed bleeding hands extend and thresh the height
138      The imagination spans beyond despair,
139      Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer.


[Page 33 ]

王敖

Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  AT MELVILLE\'S TOMB [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge
2          The dice of drowned men\'s bones he saw bequeath
3          An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,
4          Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.


5          And wrecks passed without sound of bells,
6          The calyx of death\'s bounty giving back
7          A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,
8          The portent wound in corridors of shells.


9          Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,
10        Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,
11        Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;
12        And silent answers crept across the stars.


13        Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive
14        No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps
15        Monody shall not wake the mariner.
16        This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.


[Page 34 ]


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

I


1          Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
2          Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
3          They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
4          And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
5          Gaily digging and scattering.


6          And in answer to their treble interjections
7          The sun beats lightning on the waves,
8          The waves fold thunder on the sand;
9          And could they hear me I would tell them:


10        O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog,
11        Fondle your shells and sticks, bleached
12        By time and the elements; but there is a line
13        You must not cross nor ever trust beyond it
14        Spry cordage of your bodies to caresses
15        Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast.
16        The bottom of the sea is cruel.

[Page 35 ]

II


17        ---And yet this great wink of eternity,
18        Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
19        Samite sheeted and processioned where
20        Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,
21  Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;


22        Take this Sea, whose diapason knells
23        On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,
24        The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends
25        As her demeanors motion well or ill,
26  All but the pieties of lovers\' hands.


27        And onward, as bells off San Salvador
28        Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,
29        In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,---
30        Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal,
31  Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.


32        Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,
33        And hasten while her penniless rich palms
34        Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,---
35        Hasten, while they are true,---sleep, death, desire,
36  Close round one instant in one floating flower.


37        Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.
38        O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
39        Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
40        Is answered in the vortex of our grave
41  The seal\'s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.

[Page 36 ]

III


42        Infinite consanguinity it bears---
43        This tendered theme of you that light
44        Retrieves from sea plains where the sky
45        Resigns a breast that every wave enthrones;
46  While ribboned water lanes I wind
47        Are laved and scattered with no stroke
48        Wide from your side, whereto this hour
49        The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands.


50        And so, admitted through black swollen gates
51  That must arrest all distance otherwise,---
52        Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments,
53        Light wrestling there incessantly with light,
54        Star kissing star through wave on wave unto
55        Your body rocking!
56                               and where death, if shed,
57        Presumes no carnage, but this single change,---
58        Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn
59        The silken skilled transmemberment of song;


60        Permit me voyage, love, into your hands ...

[Page 37 ]

IV


61        Whose counted smile of hours and days, suppose
62        I know as spectrum of the sea and pledge
63        Vastly now parting gulf on gulf of wings
64        Whose circles bridge, I know, (from palms to the severe
65  Chilled albatross\'s white immutability)
66        No stream of greater love advancing now
67        Than, singing, this mortality alone
68        Through clay aflow immortally to you.


69        All fragrance irrefragably, and claim
70  Madly meeting logically in this hour
71        And region that is ours to wreathe again,
72        Portending eyes and lips and making told
73        The chancel port and portion of our June---


74        Shall they not stem and close in our own steps
75  Bright staves of flowers and quills today as I
76        Must first be lost in fatal tides to tell?


77        In signature of the incarnate word
78        The harbor shoulders to resign in mingling
79        Mutual blood, transpiring as foreknown
80  And widening noon within your breast for gathering
81        All bright insinuations that my years have caught
82        For islands where must lead inviolably
83        Blue latitudes and levels of your eyes,---


84        In this expectant, still exclaim receive
85  The secret oar and petals of all love.

[Page 38 ]

V


86        Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime,
87        Infrangible and lonely, smooth as though cast
88        Together in one merciless white blade---
89        The bay estuaries fleck the hard sky limits.


90  ---As if too brittle or too clear to touch!
91        The cables of our sleep so swiftly filed,
92        Already hang, shred ends from remembered stars.
93        One frozen trackless smile ... What words
94        Can strangle this deaf moonlight? For we


95  Are overtaken. Now no cry, no sword
96        Can fasten or deflect this tidal wedge,
97        Slow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight loved
98        And changed ... "There\'s


99        Nothing like this in the world," you say,
100  Knowing I cannot touch your hand and look
101      Too, into that godless cleft of sky
102      Where nothing turns but dead sands flashing.


103      "---And never to quite understand!" No,
104      In all the argosy of your bright hair I dreamed
105  Nothing so flagless as this piracy.


106                                                But now
107      Draw in your head, alone and too tall here.
108      Your eyes already in the slant of drifting foam;
109      Your breath sealed by the ghosts I do not know:
110  Draw in your head and sleep the long way home.

[Page 39 ]

VI


111      Where icy and bright dungeons lift
112      Of swimmers their lost morning eyes,
113      And ocean rivers, churning, shift
114      Green borders under stranger skies,


115  Steadily as a shell secretes
116      Its beating leagues of monotone,
117      Or as many waters trough the sun\'s
118      Red kelson past the cape\'s wet stone;


119      O rivers mingling toward the sky
120  And harbor of the phoenix\' breast---
121      My eyes pressed black against the prow,
122      ---Thy derelict and blinded guest


123      Waiting, afire, what name, unspoke,
124      I cannot claim: let thy waves rear
125  More savage than the death of kings,
126      Some splintered garland for the seer.


127      Beyond siroccos harvesting
128      The solstice thunders, crept away,
129      Like a cliff swinging or a sail
130  Flung into April\'s inmost day---


131      Creation\'s blithe and petalled word
132      To the lounged goddess when she rose
133      Conceding dialogue with eyes
134      That smile unsearchable repose---


135  Still fervid covenant, Belle Isle,
136      ---Unfolded floating dais before

[Page 40 ]

137      Which rainbows twine continual hair---
138      Belle Isle, white echo of the oar!


139      The imaged Word, it is, that holds
140  Hushed willows anchored in its glow.
141      It is the unbetrayable reply
142      Whose accent no farewell can know.


[Page 41 ]

THE BRIDGE
[End note: 1Kb]  

Epigraph

From going to and fro in the earth,
and from walking up and down in it.
THE BOOK OF JOB


[Page 43 ]

王敖

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

1          How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
2          The seagull\'s wings shall dip and pivot him,
3          Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
4          Over the chained bay waters Liberty---


5          Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
6          As apparitional as sails that cross
7          Some page of figures to be filed away;
8          ---Till elevators drop us from our day ...


9          I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
10        With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
11        Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
12        Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;


13        And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
14        As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
15        Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,---
16        Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!


17        Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
18        A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
19        Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
20        A jest falls from the speechless caravan.


21        Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
22        A rip-tooth of the sky\'s acetylene;
23        All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn ...
24        Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.


25        And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
26        Thy guerdon ... Accolade thou dost bestow

[Page 44 ]

27        Of anonymity time cannot raise:
28        Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.


29        O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
30        (How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
31        Terrific threshold of the prophet\'s pledge,
32        Prayer of pariah, and the lover\'s cry,---


33        Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
34        Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
35        Beading thy path---condense eternity:
36        And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.


37        Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
38        Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
39        The City\'s fiery parcels all undone,
40        Already snow submerges an iron year ...


41        O Sleepless as the river under thee,
42        Vaulting the sea, the prairies\' dreaming sod,
43        Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
44        And of the curveship lend a myth to God.


[Page 45 ]

I AVE MARIA
[End note: 3Kb]  

Epigraph

Venient annis, saecula seris,
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet et ingens pateat tellus
Tethysque novos detegat orbes
Nec sit terris ultima Thule.
---SENECA


[Page 47 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  AVE MARIA [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]


1          Be with me, Luis de San Angel, now---
2          Witness before the tides can wrest away [Side note: 1Kb]  
3          The word I bring, O you who reined my suit
4          Into the Queen\'s great heart that doubtful day;
5          For I have seen now what no perjured breath
6          Of clown nor sage can riddle or gainsay;---
7          To you, too, Juan Perez, whose counsel fear
8          And greed adjourned,---I bring you back Cathay!


9          Here waves climb into dusk on gleaming mail;
10        Invisible valves of the sea,---locks, tendons
11        Crested and creeping, troughing corridors
12        That fall back yawning to another plunge.
13        Slowly the sun\'s red caravel drops light
14        Once more behind us.... It is morning there---
15        O where our Indian emperies lie revealed,
16        Yet lost, all, let this keel one instant yield!


17        I thought of Genoa; and this truth, now proved,
18        That made me exile in her streets, stood me
19        More absolute than ever---biding the moon
20        Till dawn should clear that dim frontier, first seen
21        ---The Chan\'s great continent.... Then faith, not fear
22        Nigh surged me witless.... Hearing the surf near---
23        I, wonder-breathing, kept the watch,---saw
24        The first palm chevron the first lighted hill.


25        And lowered. And they came out to us crying,
26        "The Great White Birds!" (O Madre Maria, still
27        One ship of these thou grantest safe returning;
28        Assure us through thy mantle\'s ageless blue!)
29        And record of more, floating in a casque,
30        Was tumbled from us under bare poles scudding;

[Page 48 ]

31        And later hurricanes may claim more pawn....
32        For here between two worlds, another, harsh,


33        This third, of water, tests the word; lo, here
34        Bewilderment and mutiny heap whelming
35        Laughter, and shadow cuts sleep from the heart
36        Almost as though the Moor\'s flung scimitar
37        Found more than flesh to fathom in its fall.
38        Yet under tempest-lash and surfeitings
39        Some inmost sob, half-heard, dissuades the abyss,
40        Merges the wind in measure to the waves,


41        Series on series, infinite,---till eyes
42        Starved wide on blackened tides, accrete---enclose
43        This turning rondure whole, this crescent ring
44        Sun-cusped and zoned with modulated fire
45        Like pearls that whisper through the Doge\'s hands
46        ---Yet no delirium of jewels! O Fernando,
47        Take of that eastern shore, this western sea,
48        Yet yield thy God\'s, thy Virgin\'s charity!


49        ---Rush down the plenitude, and you shall see
50        Isaiah counting famine on this lee!

                    



51        An herb, a stray branch among salty teeth,
52        The jellied weeds that drag the shore,---perhaps
53        Tomorrow\'s moon will grant us Saltes Bar---
54        Palos again,---a land cleared of long war.
55        Some Angelus environs the cordage tree;
56        Dark waters onward shake the dark prow free.

                    


[Page 49 ]



57        O Thou who sleepest on Thyself, apart
58        Like ocean athwart lanes of death and birth,
59        And all the eddying breath between dost search
60        Cruelly with love thy parable of man,---
61        Inquisitor! incognizable Word
62        Of Eden and the enchained Sepulchre,
63        Into thy steep savannahs, burning blue,
64        Utter to loneliness the sail is true.


65        Who grindest oar, and arguing the mast
66        Subscribest holocaust of ships, O Thou
67        Within whose primal scan consummately
68        The glistening seignories of Ganges swim;---
69        Who sendest greeting by the corposant,
70        And Teneriffe\'s garnet---flamed it in a cloud,
71        Urging through night our passage to the Chan;---
72        Te Deum laudamus, for thy teeming span!


73        Of all that amplitude that time explores,
74        A needle in the sight, suspended north,---
75        Yielding by inference and discard, faith
76        And true appointment from the hidden shoal:
77        This disposition that thy night relates
78        From Moon to Saturn in one sapphire wheel:
79        The orbic wake of thy once whirling feet,
80        Elohim, still I hear thy sounding heel!


81        White toil of heaven\'s cordons, mustering
82        In holy rings all sails charged to the far
83        Hushed gleaming fields and pendant seething wheat
84        Of knowledge,---round thy brows unhooded now
85        ---The kindled Crown! acceded of the poles
86        And biassed by full sails, meridians reel

[Page 50 ]

87        Thy purpose---still one shore beyond desire!
88        The sea\'s green crying towers a-sway, Beyond


89        And kingdoms
90                            naked in the
91                                             trembling heart---
92               Te Deum laudamus
93                                          O Thou Hand of Fire


[Page 51 ]

II POWHATAN\'S DAUGHTER


Epigraph
"---Pocahuntus, a well-featured but wanton yong girle ... of the age of eleven or twelve years, get the boyes forth with her into the market place, and make them wheele, falling on their hands, turning their heels upwards, whom she would followe, and wheele so herself, naked as she was, all the fort over."


[Page 53 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE HARBOR DAWN [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 3Kb]  

1          Insistently through sleep---a tide of voices--- [Side note: 1Kb]  
2          They meet you listening midway in your dream,
3          The long, tired sounds, fog-insulated noises:
4          Gongs in white surplices, beshrouded wails,
5          Far strum of fog horns ... signals dispersed in veils.


6          And then a truck will lumber past the wharves
7          As winch engines begin throbbing on some deck;
8          Or a drunken stevedore\'s howl and thud below
9          Comes echoing alley-upward through dim snow.


10        And if they take your sleep away sometimes
11        They give it back again. Soft sleeves of sound
12        Attend the darkling harbor, the pillowed bay;
13        Somewhere out there in blankness steam


14        Spills into steam, and wanders, washed away
15        ---Flurried by keen firings, eddied
16        Among distant chiming buoys---adrift. The sky,


17        Cool feathery fold, suspends, distills
18        This wavering slumber.... Slowly---
19        Immemorially the window, the half-covered chair
20        Ask nothing but this sheath of pallid air.


21        And you beside me, blessd now while sirens [Side note: 1Kb]  
22        Sing to us, stealthily weave us into day---
23        Serenely now, before day claims our eyes
24        Your cool arms murmurously about me lay.


25        While myriad snowy hands are clustering at the panes---


26                 your hands within my hands are deeds;
27                 my tongue upon your throat---singing

[Page 54 ]

28                 arms close; eyes wide, undoubtful
29                                 dark
30                                       drink the dawn---
31                 a forest shudders in your hair! [Side note: 1Kb]  


32        The window goes blond slowly. Frostily clears.
33        From Cyclopean towers across Manhattan waters
34        ---Two---three bright window-eyes aglitter, disk
35        The sun, released---aloft with cold gulls hither.


36        The fog leans one last moment on the sill. [Side note: 1Kb]  
37        Under the mistletoe of dreams, a star---
38        As though to join us at some distant hill---
39        Turns in the waking west and goes to sleep.


[Page 55 ]

王敖

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

1          Macadam, gun-grey as the tunny---s belt,
2          Leaps from Far Rockaway to Golden Gate: [Side note: 1Kb]  
3          Listen! the miles a hurdy-gurdy grinds---
4          Down gold arpeggios mile on mile unwinds.


5          Times earlier, when you hurried off to school,
6          ---It is the same hour though a later day---
7          You walked with Pizarro in a copybook,
8          And Cortes rode up, reining tautly in---
9          Firmly as coffee grips the taste,---and away!


10        There was Priscilla\'s cheek close in the wind,
11        And Captain Smith, all beard and certainty,
12        And Rip Van Winkle bowing by the way,---
13        "Is this Sleepy Hollow, friend---?" And he--- [Side note: 1Kb]  


14        And Rip forgot the office hours,
15                                      and he forgot the pay;
16                    Van Winkle sweeps a tenement
17                                               way down on Avenue A,---


18        The grind-organ says ... Remember, remember
19        The cinder pile at the end of the backyard
20        Where we stoned the family of young
21        Garter snakes under ... And the monoplanes
22        We launched---with paper wings and twisted
23        Rubber bands ... Recall---recall


24                                               the rapid tongues
25        That flittered from under the ash heap day
26        After day whenever your stick discovered
27        Some sunning inch of unsuspecting fibre---
28        It flashed back at your thrust, as clean as fire.

[Page 56 ]

29        And Rip was slowly made aware
30                      that he, Van Winkle, was not here
31              nor there. He woke and swore he\'d seen Broadway
32                            a Catskill daisy chain in May---


33        So memory, that strikes a rhyme out of a box,
34        Or splits a random smell of flowers through glass---
35        Is it the whip stripped from the lilac tree
36        One day in spring my father took to me,
37        Or is it the Sabbatical, unconscious smile
38        My mother almost brought me once from church
39        And once only, as I recall---?


40        It flickered through the snow screen, blindly
41        It forsook her at the doorway, it was gone
42        Before I had left the window. It
43        Did not return with the kiss in the hall.


44        Macadam, gun-grey as the tunny\'s belt,
45        45 Leaps from Far Rockaway to Golden Gate ...
46        Keep hold of that nickel for car-change, Rip,---
47        Have you got your "Times"---?
48        And hurry along, Van Winkle---it\'s getting late!


[Page 57 ]


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

1          Stick your patent name on a signboard
2          brother---all over---going west---young man
3          Tintex---Japalac---Certain-teed Overalls ads [Side note: 1Kb]  
4          and lands sakes! under the new playbill ripped
5          in the guaranteed corner---see Bert Williams what?
6          Minstrels when you steal a chicken just
7          save me the wing for if it isn\'t
8          Erie it ain\'t for miles around a
9          Mazda---and the telegraphic night coming on Thomas


10        a Ediford---and whistling down the tracks
11        a headlight rushing with the sound---can you
12        imagine---while an EXpress makes time like
13        SCIENCE---COMMERCE and the HOLYGHOST
14  RADIO ROARS IN EVERY HOME WE HAVE THE NORTHPOLE
15        WALLSTREET AND VIRGINBIRTH WITHOUT STONES OR
16        WIRES OR EVEN RUNning brooks connecting ears
17        and no more sermons windows flashing roar
18        breathtaking---as you like it ... eh?


19                                     So the 20th Century---so
20        whizzed the Limited---roared by and left
21        three men, still hungry on the tracks, ploddingly
22        watching the tail lights wizen and converge, slip-
23        ping gimleted and neatly out of sight.

                    



24        The last bear, shot drinking in the Dakotas
25        Loped under wires that span the mountain stream.
26        Keen instruments, strung to a vast precision
27        Bind town to town and dream to ticking dream.
28        But some men take their liquor slow---and count [Side note: 1Kb]  
29        ---Though they\'ll confess no rosary nor clue---

[Page 58 ]

30        The river\'s minute by the far brook\'s year. [Side note: 1Kb]  
31        Under a world of whistles, wires and steam
32        Caboose-like they go ruminating through
33        Ohio, Indiana---blind baggage---
34        To Cheyenne tagging ... Maybe Kalamazoo.


35        Time\'s rendings, time\'s blendings they construe
36        As final reckonings of fire and snow;
37        Strange bird-wit, like the elemental gist
38        Of unwalled winds they offer, singing low
39        My Old Kentucky Home and Casey Jones,
40        Some Sunny Day. I heard a road-gang chanting so.
41        And afterwards, who had a colt\'s eyes---one said,
42        "Jesus! Oh I remember watermelon days!" And sped
43        High in a cloud of merriment, recalled
44  "---And when my Aunt Sally Simpson smiled," he drawled---
45        "It was almost Louisiana, long ago."
46        "There\'s no place like Booneville though, Buddy,"
47        One said, excising a last burr from his vest,
48        "---For early trouting." Then peering in the can,
49        "---But I kept on the tracks." Possessed, resigned,
50        He trod the fire down pensively and grinned,
51        Spreading dry shingles of a beard....


52                                                          Behind
53        My father\'s cannery works I used to see
54        Rail-squatters ranged in nomad raillery,
55        The ancient men---wifeless or runaway
56        Hobo-trekkers that forever search
57        An empire wilderness of freight and rails.
58        Each seemed a child, like me, on a loose perch,
59        Holding to childhood like some termless play.
60        John, Jake or Charley, hopping the slow freight

[Page 59 ]

61        ---Memphis to Tallahassee---riding the rods,
62        Blind fists of nothing, humpty-dumpty clods.


63        Yet they touch something like a key perhaps.
64        From pole to pole across the hills, the states
65        ---They know a body under the wide rain; [Side note: 1Kb]  
66        Youngsters with eyes like fjords, old reprobates
67        With racetrack jargon,---dotting immensity
68        They lurk across her, knowing her yonder breast
69        Snow-silvered, sumac-stained or smoky blue---
70        Is past the valley-sleepers, south or west.
71        ---As I have trod the rumorous midnights, too,


72        And past the circuit of the lamp\'s thin flame
73        (O Nights that brought me to her body bare!)
74        Have dreamed beyond the print that bound her name.
75        Trains sounding the long blizzards out---I heard
76        Wail into distances I knew were hers.
77        Papooses crying on the wind\'s long mane
78        Screamed redskin dynasties that fled the brain,
79        ---Dead echoes! But I knew her body there,
80        Time like a serpent down her shoulder, dark,
81        And space, an eaglet\'s wing, laid on her hair.


82        Under the Ozarks, domed by Iron Mountain,
83        The old gods of the rain lie wrapped in pools
84        Where eyeless fish curvet a sunken fountain [Side note: 1Kb]  
85        And re-descend with corn from querulous crows.
86        Such pilferings make up their timeless eatage,
87        Propitiate them for their timber torn
88        By iron, iron---always the iron dealt cleavage!
89        They doze now, below axe and powder horn.

[Page 60 ]



90        And Pullman breakfasters glide glistening steel
91        From tunnel into field---iron strides the dew---
92        Straddles the hill, a dance of wheel on wheel.
93        You have a half-hour\'s wait at Siskiyou,
94        Or stay the night and take the next train through.
95        Southward, near Cairo passing, you can see
96        The Ohio merging,---borne down Tennessee;
97        And if it\'s summer and the sun\'s in dusk
98        Maybe the breeze will lift the River\'s musk
99        ---As though the waters breathed that you might know
100      Memphis Johnny, Steamboat Bill, Missouri Joe.
101      Oh, lean from the window, if the train slows down,
102      As though you touched hands with some ancient clown,
103      ---A little while gaze absently below
104      And hum Deep River with them while they go.


105      Yes, turn again and sniff once more---look see,
106      O Sheriff, Brakeman and Authority---
107      Hitch up your pants and crunch another quid,
108      For you, too, feed the River timelessly.
109      And few evade full measure of their fate;
110      Always they smile out eerily what they seem.
111      I could believe he joked at heaven\'s gate---
112      Dan Midland---jolted from the cold brake-beam.


113      Down, down---born pioneers in time\'s despite,
114      Grimed tributaries to an ancient flow---
115      They win no frontier by their wayward plight,
116      But drift in stillness, as from Jordan\'s brow.


117      You will not hear it as the sea; even stone
118      Is not more hushed by gravity ... But slow,
119      As loth to take more tribute---sliding prone
120      Like one whose eyes were buried long ago

[Page 61 ]

121      The River, spreading, flows---and spends your dream.
122      What are you, lost within this tideless spell?
123      You are your father\'s father, and the stream---
124      A liquid theme that floating niggers swell.


125      Damp tonnage and alluvial march of days---
126      Nights turbid, vascular with silted shale
127      And roots surrendered down of moraine clays:
128      The Mississippi drinks the farthest dale.


129      O quarrying passion, undertowed sunlight!
130      The basalt surface drags a jungle grace
131      Ochreous and lynx-barred in lengthening might;
132      Patience! and you shall reach the hiding place!


133      Over De Soto\'s bones the freighted floors
134      Throb past the City storied of three thrones.
135      Down two more turns the Mississippi pours
136      (Anon tall ironsides up from salt lagoons)


137      And flows within itself, heaps itself free.
138      All fades but one thin skyline \'round ... Ahead
139      No embrace opens but the stinging sea;
140      The River lifts itself from its long bed,


141      Poised wholly on its dream, a mustard glow
142      Tortured with history, its one will---flow!
143      ---The Passion spreads in wide tongues, choked and slow,
144      Meeting the Gulf, hosannas silently below.


[Page 62 ]


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

1          The swift red flesh, a winter king--- [Side note: 1Kb]  
2          Who squired the glacier woman down the sky?
3          She ran the neighing canyons all the spring;
4          She spouted arms; she rose with maize---to die.


5          And in the autumn drouth, whose burnished hands
6          With mineral wariness found out the stone
7          Where prayers, forgotten, streamed the mesa sands?
8          He holds the twilight\'s dim, perpetual throne.


9          Mythical brows we saw retiring---loth,
10        Disturbed and destined, into denser green.
11        Greeting they sped us, on the arrow\'s oath:
12        Now lie incorrigibly what years between ...


13        There was a bed of leaves, and broken play;
14        There was a veil upon you, Pocahontas, bride---
15        O Princess whose brown lap was virgin May;
16        And bridal flanks and eyes hid tawny pride.


17        I left the village for dogwood. By the canoe
18        Tugging below the mill-race, I could see
19        Your hair\'s keen crescent running, and the blue
20        First moth of evening take wing stealthily.


21        What laughing chains the water wove and threw!
22        I learned to catch the trout\'s moon whisper; I
23        Drifted how many hours I never knew,
24        But, watching, saw that fleet young crescent die,---


25        And one star, swinging, take its place, alone,
26        Cupped in the larches of the mountain pass---
27        Until, immortally, it bled into the dawn.
28        I left my sleek boat nibbling margin grass ...

[Page 63 ]

29        I took the portage climb, then chose
30        A further valley-shed; I could not stop.
31        Feet nozzled wat\'ry webs of upper flows;
32        One white veil gusted from the very top.


33        O Appalachian Spring! I gained the ledge;
34        Steep, inaccessible smile that eastward bends
35        And northward reaches in that violet wedge
36        Of Adirondacks!---wisped of azure wands,


37        Over how many bluffs, tarns, streams I sped!
38        ---And knew myself within some boding shade:---
39        Grey tepees tufting the blue knolls ahead,
40        Smoke swirling through the yellow chestnut glade ...


41        A distant cloud, a thunder-bud---it grew,
42        That blanket of the skies: the padded foot
43        Within,---I heard it; \'til its rhythm drew,
44        ---Siphoned the black pool from the heart\'s hot root!


45        A cyclone threshes in the turbine crest,
46        Swooping in eagle feathers down your back;
47        Know, Maquokeeta, greeting; know death\'s best;
48        ---Fall, Sachem, strictly as the tamarack!


49        A birch kneels. All her whistling fingers fly.
50        The oak grove circles in a crash of leaves;
51        The long moan of a dance is in the sky.
52        Dance, Maquokeeta: Pocahontas grieves ...


53        And every tendon scurries toward the twangs
54        Of lightning deltaed down your saber hair.
55        Now snaps the flint in every tooth; red fangs
56        And splay tongues thinly busy the blue air ...

[Page 64 ]



57        Dance, Maquokeeta! snake that lives before,
58        That casts his pelt, and lives beyond! Sprout, horn!
59        Spark, tooth! Medicine-man, relent, restore---
60        Lie to us,---dance us back the tribal morn!


61        Spears and assemblies: black drums thrusting on---
62        O yelling battlements,---I, too, was liege
63        To rainbows currying each pulsant bone:
64        Surpassed the circumstance, danced out the siege!


65        And buzzard-circleted, screamed from the stake;
66        I could not pick the arrows from my side.
67        Wrapped in that fire, I saw more escorts wake---
68        Flickering, sprint up the hill groins like a tide.


69        I heard the hush of lava wrestling your arms,
70        And stag teeth foam about the raven throat;
71        Flame cataracts of heaven in seething swarms
72        Fed down your anklets to the sunset\'s moat.


73        O, like the lizard in the furious noon,
74        That drops his legs and colors in the sun,
75        ---And laughs, pure serpent, Time itself, and moon
76        Of his own fate, I saw thy change begun!


77        And saw thee dive to kiss that destiny
78        Like one white meteor, sacrosanct and blent
79        At last with all that\'s consummate and free
80        There, where the first and last gods keep thy tent.

                    



81        Thewed of the levin, thunder-shod and lean,
82        Lo, through what infinite seasons dost thou gaze---

[Page 65 ]

83        Across what bivouacs of thine angered slain,
84        And see\'st thy bride immortal in the maize!


85        Totem and fire-gall, slumbering pyramid---
86        Though other calendars now stack the sky,
87        Thy freedom is her largesse, Prince, and hid
88        On paths thou knewest best to claim her by.


89        High unto Labrador the sun strikes free
90        Her speechless dream of snow, and stirred again,
91        She is the torrent and the singing tree;
92        And she is virgin to the last of men ...


93        West, west and south! winds over Cumberland
94        And winds across the llano grass resume
95        Her hair\'s warm sibilance. Her breasts are fanned
96        O stream by slope and vineyard---into bloom!


97        And when the caribou slant down for salt
98        Do arrows thirst and leap? Do antlers shine
99        Alert, star-triggered in the listening vault
100      Of dusk?---And are her perfect brows to thine?


101      We danced, O Brave, we danced beyond their farms,
102      In cobalt desert closures made our vows ...
103      Now is the strong prayer folded in thine arms,
104      The serpent with the eagle in the boughs.


[Page 66 ]

王敖

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

1          The morning glory, climbing the morning long
2             Over the lintel on its wiry vine, [Side note: 1Kb]  
3          Closes before the dusk, furls in its song
4                           As I close mine ...


5          And bison thunder rends my dreams no more
6             As once my womb was torn, my boy, when you
7          Yielded your first cry at the prairie\'s door ...
8                          Your father knew


9          Then, though we\'d buried him behind us, far
10           Back on the gold trail---then his lost bones stirred ...
11        But you who drop the scythe to grasp the oar
12                        Knew not, nor heard


13        How we, too, Prodigal, once rode off, too---
14           Waved Seminary Hill a gay good-bye ...
15        We found God lavish there in Colorado
16                       But passing sly.


17        The pebbles sang, the firecat slunk away
18           And glistening through the sluggard freshets came
19        In golden syllables loosed from the clay
20                        His gleaming name.


21        A dream called Eldorado was his town,
22           It rose up shambling in the nuggets\' wake,
23        It had no charter but a promised crown
24                        Of claims to stake.


25        But we,---too late, too early, howsoever---
26           Won nothing out of fifty-nine---those years---
27        But gilded promise, yielded to us never,
28                        And barren tears ...


[Page 67 ]



29        The long trail back! I huddled in the shade
30           Of wagon-tenting looked out once and saw
31  Bent westward, passing on a stumbling jade
32                        A homeless squaw---


33        Perhaps a halfbreed. On her slender back
34           She cradled a babe\'s body, riding without rein.
35        Her eyes, strange for an Indian\'s, were not black
36                  But sharp with pain


37        And like twin stars. They seemed to shun the gaze
38           Of all our silent men---the long team line---
39        Until she saw me---when their violet haze
40                        Lit with love shine ...


41  I held you up---I suddenly the bolder,
42           Knew that mere words could not have brought us nearer.
43        She nodded---and that smile across her shoulder
44                        Will still endear her


45        As long as Jim, your father\'s memory, is warm.
46     Yes, Larry, now you\'re going to sea, remember
47        You were the first---before Ned and this farm,---
48                        First-born, remember---


49        And since then---all that\'s left to me of Jim
50           Whose folks, like mine, came out of Arrowhead.
51  And you\'re the only one with eyes like him---
52                        Kentucky bred!


53        I\'m standing still, I\'m old, I\'m half of stone!
54           Oh, hold me in those eyes\' engaging blue;
55        There\'s where the stubborn years gleam and atone,---
56                  Where gold is true!

[Page 68 ]

57        Down the dim turnpike to the river\'s edge---
58           Perhaps I\'ll hear the mare\'s hoofs to the ford ...
59        Write me from Rio ... and you\'ll keep your pledge;
60                         I know your word!


61  Come back to Indiana---not too late!
62           (Or will you be a ranger to the end?)
63        Good-bye ... Good-bye ... oh, I shall always wait
64           You, Larry, traveller---
65                                     stranger,
66                                            son,
67                                                        ---my friend---


[Page 69 ]

III CUTTY SARK
[End note: 1Kb]  

Epigraph

O, the navies old and oaken,
O, the Temeraire no more!
---MELVILLE


[Page 71 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  CUTTY SARK [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]


1          I met a man in South Street, tall
2          a nervous shark tooth swung on his chain.
3          His eyes pressed through green glass
4          ---green glasses, or bar lights made them
5          so---
6                    shine---
7                              GREEN---
8                                           eyes---
9          stepped out---forgot to look at you
10        or left you several blocks away---


11        in the nickel-in-the-slot piano jogged
12        "Stamboul Nights"---weaving somebody\'s nickel---sang---


13             O Stamboul Rose---dreams weave the rose!


14                    Murmurs of Leviathan he spoke,
15                    and rum was Plato in our heads ...


16        "It\'s S.S. Ala---Antwerp---now remember kid
17        to put me out at three she sails on time.
18        I\'m not much good at time any more keep
19        weakeyed watches sometimes snooze---" his bony hands
20        got to beating time ... "A whaler once---
21        I ought to keep time and get over it---I\'m a
22        Democrat---I know what time it is---No
23        I don\'t want to know what time it is---that
24        damned white Arctic killed my time..."


25             O Stamboul Rose---drums weave---


26        "I ran a donkey engine down there on the Canal
27        in Panama---got tired of that---
28        then Yucatan selling kitchenware---beads---

[Page 72 ]

29        have you seen Popocatepetl---birdless mouth
30        with ashes sifting down---?
31                                               and then the coast again..."


32             Rose of Stamboul O coral Queen---
33             teased remnants of the skeletons of cities---
34             and galleries, galleries of watergutted lava
35             snarling stone---green---drums---drown---


36        Sing!
37        "---that spiracle!" he shot a finger out the door ...
38        "O life\'s a geyser---beautiful---my lungs---
39        No---I can\'t live on land---!"


40        I saw the frontiers gleaming of his mind;
41        or are there frontiers---running sands sometimes
42        running sands---somewhere---sands running ...
43        Or they may start some white machine that sings.
44        Then you may laugh and dance the axletree---
45        steel---silver---kick the traces---and know---


46              ATLANTIS ROSE drums wreathe the rose,
47              the star floats burning in a gulf of tears
48              and sleep another thousand---


49                                                     interminably
50        long since somebody\'s nickel---stopped---
51        playing---


52        A wind worried those wicker-neat lapels, the
53        swinging summer entrances to cooler hells ...
54        Outside a wharf truck nearly ran him down
55        ---he lunged up Bowery way while the dawn

[Page 73 ]

56        was putting the Statue of Liberty out---that
57        torch of hers you know---


58        I started walking home across the Bridge ...

                    



59        Blithe Yankee vanities, turreted sprites, winged
60                                                British repartees, skil-
61        ful savage sea-girls
62        that bloomed in the spring---Heave, weave
63        those bright designs the trade winds drive ...


64              Sweet opium and tea, Yo-ho!
65              Pennies for porpoises that bank the keel!
66              Fins whip the breeze around Japan!


67        Bright skysails ticketing the Line, wink round the Horn
68        to Frisco, Melbourne ...
69                                          Pennants, parabolas---
70        clipper dreams indelible and ranging,
71        baronial white on lucky blue!


72               Perennial-Cutty-trophied-Sark!


73        Thermopylae, Black Prince, Flying Cloud through Sunda
74        ---scarfed of foam, their bellies veered green esplanades,
75        locked in wind-humors, ran their eastings down;


76              at Java Head freshened the nip
77              (sweet opium and tea!)
78              and turned and left us on the lee ...


79        Buntlines tusseling (91 days, 20 hours and anchored!)
80                                                         Rainbow, Leander

[Page 74 ]

81        (last trip a tragedy)---where can you be
82        Nimbus? and you rivals two---


83                        a long tack keeping---


84                                                            Taeping?
85                                                            Ariel?


[Page 75 ]

IV CAPE HATTERAS
[End note: 2Kb]  

Epigraph
The seas all crossed, weathered the capes, the voyage done ...
---WALT WHITMAN


[Page 77 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  CAPE HATTERAS [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]


1          Imponderable the dinosaur
2                                       sinks slow,
3                                               the mammoth saurian
4                                                           ghoul, the eastern
5                                                                              Cape ...
6          While rises in the west the coastwise range,
7                                                    slowly the hushed land---
8          Combustion at the astral core---the dorsal change
9          Of energy---convulsive shift of sand ...
10        But we, who round the capes, the promontories
11        Where strange tongues vary messages of surf
12        Below grey citadels, repeating to the stars
13        The ancient names---return home to our own
14        Hearths, there to eat an apple and recall
15        The songs that gypsies dealt us at Marseille
16        Or how the priests walked---slowly through Bombay---
17        Or to read you, Walt,---knowing us in thrall


18        To that deep wonderment, our native clay
19        Whose depth of red, eternal flesh of Pocahontas---
20        Those continental folded aeons, surcharged
21        With sweetness below derricks, chimneys, tunnels---
22        Is veined by all that time has really pledged us ...
23        And from above, thin squeaks of radio static,
24        The captured fume of space foams in our ears---
25        What whisperings of far watches on the main
26        Relapsing into silence, while time clears
27        Our lenses, lifts a focus, resurrects
28        A periscope to glimpse what joys or pain
29        Our eyes can share or answer---then deflects
30        Us, shunting to a labyrinth submersed
31        Where each sees only his dim past reversed ...


32        But that star-glistered salver of infinity,
33        The circle, blind crucible of endless space,

[Page 78 ]

34        Is sluiced by motion,---subjugated never.
35        Adam and Adam\'s answer in the forest
36        Left Hesperus mirrored in the lucid pool.
37        Now the eagle dominates our days, is jurist
38        Of the ambiguous cloud. We know the strident rule
39        Of wings imperious ... Space, instantaneous,
40        Flickers a moment, consumes us in its smile:
41        A flash over the horizon---shifting gears---
42        And we have laughter, or more sudden tears.
43        Dream cancels dream in this new realm of fact
44        From which we wake into the dream of act;
45        Seeing himself an atom in a shroud---
46        Man hears himself an engine in a cloud!


47        "---Recorders ages hence"---ah, syllables of faith!
48        Walt, tell me, Walt Whitman, if infinity
49        Be still the same as when you walked the beach
50        Near Paumanok---your lone patrol---and heard the wraith
51        Through surf, its bird note there a long time falling ...
52        For you, the panoramas and this breed of towers,
53        Of you---the theme that\'s statured in the cliff,
54        O Saunterer on free ways still ahead!
55        Not this our empire yet, but labyrinth
56        Wherein your eyes, like the Great Navigator\'s without ship,
57        Gleam from the great stones of each prison crypt
58        Of canyoned traffic ... Confronting the Exchange,
59        Surviving in a world of stocks,---they also range
60        Across the hills where second timber strays
61        Back over Connecticut farms, abandoned pastures,---
62        Sea eyes and tidal, undenying, bright with myth!


63        The nasal whine of power whips a new universe ...
64        Where spouting pillars spoor the evening sky,
65        65 Under the looming stacks of the gigantic power house

[Page 79 ]

66        Stars prick the eyes with sharp ammoniac proverbs,
67        New verities, new inklings in the velvet hummed
68        Of dynamos, where hearing\'s leash is strummed ...
69        Power\'s script,---wound, bobbin-bound, refined---
70        Is stropped to the slap of belts on booming spools, spurred
71        Into the bulging bouillon, harnessed jelly of the stars.
72        Towards what? The forked crash of split thunder parts
73        Our hearing momentwise; but fast in whirling armatures,
74        As bright as frogs\' eyes, giggling in the girth
75        Of steely gizzards---axle-bound, confined
76        In coiled precision, bunched in mutual glee
77        The bearings glint,---O murmurless and shined
78        In oilrinsed circles of blind ecstasy!


79        Stars scribble on our eyes the frosty sagas,
80        The gleaming cantos of unvanquished space ...
81        O sinewy silver biplane, nudging the wind\'s withers!
82        There, from Kill Devils Hill at Kitty Hawk
83        Two brothers in their twinship left the dune;
84        Warping the gale, the Wright windwrestlers veered
85        Capeward, then blading the wind\'s flank, banked and spun
86        What ciphers risen from prophetic script,
87        What marathons new-set between the stars!
88        The soul, by naphtha fledged into new reaches
89        Already knows the closer clasp of Mars,---
90        New latitudes, unknotting, soon give place
91        To what fierce schedules, rife of doom apace!


92        Behold the dragon\'s covey---amphibian, ubiquitous
93        To hedge the seaboard, wrap the headland, ride
94        The blue\'s cloud-templed districts unto ether ...
95        While Iliads glimmer through eyes raised in pride
96        Hell\'s belt springs wider into heaven\'s plumed side.
97        O bright circumferences, heights employed to fly

[Page 80 ]

98        War\'s fiery kennel masked in downy offings,---
99        This tournament of space, the threshed and chiselled height,
100      Is baited by marauding circles, bludgeon flail
101      Of rancorous grenades whose screaming petals carve us
102      Wounds that we wrap with theorems sharp as hail!


103      Wheeled swiftly, wings emerge from larval-silver hangars.
104      Taut motors surge, space-gnawing, into flight;
105      Through sparkling visibility, outspread, unsleeping,
106      Wings clip the last peripheries of light ...
107      Tellurian wind-sleuths on dawn patrol,
108      Each plane a hurtling javelin of winged ordnance,
109      Bristle the heights above a screeching gale to hover;
110      Surely no eye that Sunward Escadrille can cover!
111      There, meaningful, fledged as the Pleiades
112      With razor sheen they zoom each rapid helix!
113      Up-chartered choristers of their own speeding
114      They, cavalcade on escapade, shear Cumulus---
115      Lay siege and hurdle Cirrus down the skies!
116      While Cetus-like, O thou Dirigible, enormous Lounger
117      Of pendulous auroral beaches,---satellited wide
118      By convoy planes, moonferrets that rejoin thee
119      On fleeing balconies as thou dost glide,
120      ---Hast splintered space!


121                                            Low, shadowed of the Cape,
122      Regard the moving turrets! From grey decks
123      See scouting griffons rise through gaseous crepe
124      Hung low ... until a conch of thunder answers
125      Cloud-belfries, banging, while searchlights, like fencers,
126      Slit the sky\'s pancreas of foaming anthracite
127      Toward thee, O Corsair of the typhoon,---pilot, hear!
128      Thine eyes bicarbonated white by speed, O Skygak, see
129      How from thy path above the levin\'s lance

[Page 81 ]

130      Thou sowest doom thou hast nor time nor chance
131      To reckon---as thy stilly eyes partake
132      What alcohol of space..! Remember, Falcon-Ace,
133      Thou hast there in thy wrist a Sanskrit charge
134      To conjugate infinity\'s dim marge---
135      Anew..!


136                      But first, here at this height receive
137      The benediction of the shell\'s deep, sure reprieve!
138      Lead-perforated fuselage, escutcheoned wings
139      Lift agonized quittance, tilting from the invisible brink
140      Now eagle-bright, now
141                                    quarry-hid, twist-
142                                                             -ing, sink with
143      Enormous repercussive list-
144                                             -ings down
145      Giddily spiralled
146                            gauntlets, upturned, unlooping
147      In guerrilla sleights, trapped in combustion gyr-
148      Ing, dance the curdled depth
149                                              down whizzing
150      Zodiacs, dashed
151                             (now nearing fast the Cape!)
152                                                        down gravitation\'s
153                                                                vortex into crashed
154      .... dispersion ... into mashed and shapeless debris....
155      By Hatteras bunched the beached heap of high bravery!

                    


156      The stars have grooved our eyes with old persuasions
157      Of love and hatred, birth,---surcease of nations ...
158      But who has held the heights more sure than thou,
159      O Walt!---Ascensions of thee hover in me now

[Page 82 ]

160      As thou at junctions elegiac, there, of speed
161      With vast eternity, dost wield the rebound seed!
162      The competent loam, the probable grass,---travail
163      Of tides awash the pedestal of Everest, fail
164      Not less than thou in pure impulse inbred
165      To answer deepest soundings! O, upward from the dead
166      Thou bringest tally, and a pact, new bound
167      Of living brotherhood!


168                                         Thou, there beyond---
169      Glacial sierras and the flight of ravens,
170      Hermetically past condor zones, through zenith havens
171      Past where the albatross has offered up
172      His last wing-pulse, and downcast as a cup
173      That\'s drained, is shivered back to earth---thy wand
174      Has beat a song, O Walt,---there and beyond!
175      And this, thine other hand, upon my heart
176      Is plummet ushered of those tears that start
177      What memories of vigils, bloody, by that Cape,---
178      Ghoul-mound of man\'s perversity at balk
179      And fraternal massacre! Thou, pallid there as chalk
180      Hast kept of wounds, O Mourner, all that sum
181      That then from Appomattox stretched to Somme!


182      Cowslip and shad-blow, flaked like tethered foam
183      Around bared teeth of stallions, bloomed that spring
184      When first I read thy lines, rife as the loam
185      Of prairies, yet like breakers cliffward leaping!
186      O, early following thee, I searched the hill
187      Blue-writ and odor-firm with violets, \'til
188      With June the mountain laurel broke through green
189      And filled the forest with what clustrous sheen!
190      Potomac lilies,---then the Pontiac rose,
191      And Klondike edelweiss of occult snows!

[Page 83 ]



192      White banks of moonlight came descending valleys---
193      How speechful on oak-vizored palisades,
194      As vibrantly I following down Sequoia alleys
195      Heard thunder\'s eloquence through green arcades
196      Set trumpets breathing in each clump and grass tuft---\'til
197      Gold autumn, captured, crowned the trembling hill!


198      Panis Angelicus! Eyes tranquil with the blaze
199      Of love\'s own diametric gaze, of love\'s amaze!
200      Not greatest, thou,---not first, nor last,---but near
201      And onward yielding past my utmost year.
202      Familiar, thou, as mendicants in public places;
203      Evasive---too---as dayspring\'s spreading arc to trace is:---
204      Our Meistersinger, thou set breath in steel;
205      And it was thou who on the boldest heel
206      Stood up and flung the span on even wing
207      Of that great Bridge, our Myth, whereof I sing!


208      Years of the Modern! Propulsions toward what capes?
209      But thou, Panis Angelicus, hast thou not seen
210      And passed that Barrier that none escapes---
211      But knows it leastwise as death-strife?---O, something green,
212      Beyond all sesames of science was thy choice
213      Wherewith to bind us throbbing with one voice,
214      New integers of Roman, Viking, Celt---
215      Thou, Vedic Caesar, to the greensward knelt!


216      And now, as launched in abysmal cupolas of space,
217      Toward endless terminals, Easters of speeding light---
218      Vast engines outward veering with seraphic grace
219      On clarion cylinders pass out of sight
220      To course that span of consciousness thou\'st named
221      The Open Road---thy vision is reclaimed!
222      What heritage thou\'st signalled to our hands!

[Page 84 ]



223      And see! the rainbow\'s arch---how shimmeringly stands
224      Above the Cape\'s ghoul-mound, O joyous seer!
225      Recorders ages hence, yes, they shall hear
226      In their own veins uncancelled thy sure tread
227      And read thee by the aureole \'round thy head
228      Of pasture-shine, Panis Angelicus!
229                                                               yes, Walt,
230      Afoot again, and onward without halt,---
231      Not soon, nor suddenly,---no, never to let go
232            My hand
233                         in yours,
234                                      Walt Whitman---
235                                                              so---


[Page 85 ]

V THREE SONGS


Epigraph
The one Sestos, the other Abydos hight.
---MARLOWE


[Page 87 ]

王敖

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

1          I wanted you, nameless Woman of the South,
2          No wraith, but utterly---as still more alone
3          The Southern Cross takes night
4          And lifts her girdles from her, one by one---
5          High, cool,
6                         wide from the slowly smoldering fire
7          Of lower heavens,---
8                                    vaporous scars!


9          Eve! Magdalene!
10                                or Mary, you?


11        Whatever call---falls vainly on the wave.
12        O simian Venus, homeless Eve,
13        Unwedded, stumbling gardenless to grieve
14        Windswept guitars on lonely decks forever;
15        Finally to answer all within one grave!


16        And this long wake of phosphor,
17                                                   iridescent
18        Furrow of all our travel---trailed derision!
19        Eyes crumble at its kiss. Its long-drawn spell
20        Incites a yell. Slid on that backward vision
21        The mind is churned to spittle, whispering hell.


22        I wanted you ... The embers of the Cross
23        Climbed by aslant and huddling aromatically.
24        It is blood to remember; it is fire
25        To stammer back ... It is
26        God---your namelessness. And the wash---


27        All night the water combed you with black
28        Insolence. You crept out simmering, accomplished.
29        Water rattled that stinging coil, your


[Page 88 ]

30        Rehearsed hair---docile, alas, from many arms.
31        Yes, Eve---wraith of my unloved seed!


32        The Cross, a phantom, buckled---dropped below the dawn.
33        Light drowned the lithic trillions of your spawn.


[Page 89 ]


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

1          Outspoken buttocks in pink beads
2          Invite the necessary cloudy clinch
3          Of bandy eyes.... No extra mufflings here:
4          The world\'s one flagrant, sweating cinch.


5          And while legs waken salads in the brain
6          You pick your blonde out neatly through the smoke.
7          Always you wait for someone else though, always---
8          (Then rush the nearest exit through the smoke).


9          Always and last, before the final ring
10        When all the fireworks blare, begins
11        A tom-tom scrimmage with a somewhere violin,
12        Some cheapest echo of them all---begins.


13        And shall we call her whiter than the snow?
14        Sprayed first with ruby, then with emerald sheen---
15        Least tearful and least glad (who knows her smile?)
16        A caught slide shows her sandstone grey between.


17        Her eyes exist in swivellings of her teats,
18        Pearls whip her hips, a drench of whirling strands.
19        Her silly snake rings begin to mount, surmount
20        Each other---turquoise fakes on tinselled hands.


21        We wait that writhing pool, her pearls collapsed,
22        ---All but her belly buried in the floor;
23        And the lewd trounce of a final muted beat!
24        We flee her spasm through a fleshless door....


25        Yet, to the empty trapeze of your flesh,
26        O Magdalene, each comes back to die alone.
27        Then you, the burlesque of our lust---and faith,
28        Lug us back lifeward---bone by infant bone.


[Page 90 ]


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

1                O rain at seven,
2                Pay-check at eleven---
3                Keep smiling the boss away,
4                Mary (what are you going to do?)
5                Gone seven---gone eleven,
6                And I\'m still waiting you---


7          O blue-eyed Mary with the claret scarf,
8                Saturday Mary, mine!


9                It\'s high carillon
10              From the popcorn bells!
11              Pigeons by the million---
12              And Spring in Prince Street
13              Where green figs gleam
14              By oyster shells!


15        O Mary, leaning from the high wheat tower,
16              Let down your golden hair!


17              High in the noon of May
18              On cornices of daffodils
19              The slender violets stray.
20              Crap-shooting gangs in Bleecker reign,
21              Peonies with pony manes---
22              Forget-me-nots at windowpanes:


23        Out of the way-up nickel-dime tower shine,
24                             Cathedral Mary,
25                                                       shine!---


[Page 91 ]

VI QUAKER HILL
[End note: 1Kb]  

Epigraph

I see only the ideal. But no ideals
have ever been fully successful on
this earth.
---ISADORA DUNCAN


Epigraph

The gentian weaves her fringes,
The maple\'s loom is red.
---EMILY DICKINSON


[Page 92 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  QUAKER HILL [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]


1          Perspective never withers from their eyes;
2          They keep that docile edict of the Spring
3          That blends March with August Antarctic skies:
4          These are but cows that see no other thing
5          Than grass and snow, and their own inner being
6          Through the rich halo that they do not trouble
7          Even to cast upon the seasons fleeting
8          Though they should thin and die on last year\'s stubble.


9          And they are awkward, ponderous and uncoy ...
10        While we who press the cider mill, regarding them---
11        We, who with pledges taste the bright annoy
12        Of friendship\'s acid wine, retarding phlegm,
13        Shifting reprisals (\'til who shall tell us when
14        The jest is too sharp to be kindly?) boast
15        Much of our store of faith in other men
16        Who would, ourselves, stalk down the merriest ghost.


17        Above them old Mizzentop, palatial white
18        Hostelry---floor by floor to cinquefoil dormer
19        Portholes the ceilings stack their stoic height.
20        Long tiers of windows staring out toward former
21        Faces---loose panes crown the hill and gleam
22        At sunset with a silent, cobwebbed patience
23        See them, like eyes that still uphold some dream
24        Through mapled vistas, cancelled reservations!


25        High from the central cupola, they say
26        One\'s glance could cross the borders of three states;
27        But I have seen death\'s stare in slow survey
28        From four horizons that no one relates ...
29        Weekenders avid of their turf-won scores,
30        Here three hours from the semaphores, the Czars

[Page 93 ]

31        Of golf, by twos and threes in plaid plusfours
32        Alight with sticks abristle and cigars.


33        This was the Promised Land, and still it is
34        To the persuasive suburban land agent
35        In bootleg roadhouses where the gin fizz
36        Bubbles in time to Hollywood\'s new love-nest pageant.
37        Fresh from the radio in the old Meeting House
38        (Now the New Avalon Hotel) volcanoes roar
39        A welcome to highsteppers that no mouse
40        Who saw the Friends there ever heard before.


41        What cunning neighbors history has in fine!
42        The woodlouse mortgages the ancient deal
43        Table that Powitzky buys for only nine-
44        Ty-five at Adams\' auction,---eats the seal,
45        The spinster polish of antiquity ...
46        Who holds the lease on time and on disgrace?
47        What eats the pattern with ubiquity?
48        Where are my kinsmen and the patriarch race?


49        The resigned factions of the dead preside.
50        Dead rangers bled their comfort on the snow;
51        But I must ask slain Iroquois to guide
52        Me farther than scalped Yankees knew to go:
53        Shoulder the curse of sundered parentage,
54        Wait for the postman driving from Birch Hill
55        With birthright by blackmail, the arrant page
56        That unfolds a new destiny to fill....


57        So, must we from the hawk\'s far stemming view,
58        Must we descend as worm\'s eye to construe
59        Our love of all we touch, and take it to the Gate

[Page 94 ]

60        As humbly as a guest who knows himself too late,
61        His news already told? Yes, while the heart is wrung,
62        Arise---yes, take this sheaf of dust upon your tongue!
63        In one last angelus lift throbbing throat---
64        Listen, transmuting silence with that stilly note


65        Of pain that Emily, that Isadora knew!
66        While high from dim elm-chancels hung with dew,
67        That triple-noted clause of moonlight---
68        Yes, whip-poor-will, unhusks the heart of fright,
69        Breaks us and saves, yes, breaks the heart, yet yields
70        That patience that is armour and that shields
71        Love from despair---when love foresees the end---
72        Leaf after autumnal leaf
73                                         break off,
74                                                         descend---
75                                                                 descend---


[Page 95 ]

VII THE TUNNEL
[End note: 1Kb]  

Epigraph

To Find the Western path
Right thro\' the Gates of Wrath.
---BLAKE


[Page 97 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE TUNNEL [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]


1          Performances, assortments, résumés---
2          Up Times Square to Columbus Circle lights
3          Channel the congresses, nightly sessions,
4          Refractions of the thousand theatres, faces---
5          Mysterious kitchens.... You shall search them all.
6          Someday by heart you\'ll learn each famous sight
7          And watch the curtain lift in hell\'s despite;
8          You\'ll find the garden in the third act dead,
9          Finger your knees---and wish yourself in bed
10        With tabloid crime-sheets perched in easy sight.


11                  Then let you reach your hat
12                  and go.
13                  As usual, let you---also
14                  walking down---exclaim
15                  to twelve upward leaving
16                  a subscription praise
17                  for what time slays.


18        Or can\'t you quite make up your mind to ride;
19        A walk is better underneath the L a brisk
20        Ten blocks or so before? But you find yourself
21        Preparing penguin flexions of the arms,---
22        As usual you will meet the scuttle yawn:
23        The subway yawns the quickest promise home.


24        Be minimum, then, to swim the hiving swarms
25        ---Out of the Square, the Circle burning bright---
26        Avoid the glass doors gyring at your right,
27        Where boxed alone a second, eyes take fright
28        ---Quite unprepared rush naked back to light:
29        And down beside the turnstile press the coin
30        Into the slot. The gongs already rattle.

[Page 98 ]



31                    And so
32                    of cities you bespeak
33                    subways, rivered under streets
34                    and rivers.... In the car
35                    the overtone of motion
36                    underground, the monotone
37                    of motion is the sound
38                    of other faces, also underground---


39        "Let\'s have a pencil Jimmy---living now
40  at Floral Park
41        Flatbush---on the fourth of July---
42        like a pigeon\'s muddy dream---potatoes
43        to dig in the field-travlin the town---too---
44        night after night---the Culver line---the
45        girls all shaping up---it used to be---"


46        Our tongues recant like beaten weather vanes.
47        This answer lives like verdigris, like hair
48        Beyond extinction, surcease of the bone;
49        And repetition freezes---What


50        "what do you want? getting weak on the links?
51        fandaddle daddy don\'t ask for change---IS THIS
52        FOURTEENTH? it\'s half past six she said---if
53        you don\'t like my gate why did you
54        swing on it, why didja
55        swing on it
56        anyhow---"


57                   And somehow anyhow swing---


58        The phonographs of hades in the brain
59        Are tunnels that re-wind themselves, and love

[Page 99 ]

60        A burnt match skating in a urinal---
61        Somewhere above Fourteenth TAKE THE EXPRESS
62        To brush some new presentiment of pain---


63        "But I want service in this office SERVICE
64        I said---after
65        the show she cried a little afterwards but---"


66        Whose head is swinging from the swollen strap?
67        Whose body smokes along the bitten rails,
68        Bursts from a smoldering bundle far behind
69        In back forks of the chasms of the brain,---
70        Puffs from a riven stump far out behind
71        In interborough fissures of the mind ...?


72        And why do I often meet your visage here,
73        Your eyes like agate lanterns---on and on
74        Below the toothpaste and the dandruff ads?
75        ---And did their riding eyes right through your side,
76        And did their eyes like unwashed platters ride?
77        And Death, aloft,---gigantically down
78        Probing through you---toward me, O evermore!
79        And when they dragged your retching flesh,
80        Your trembling hands that night through Baltimore---
81        That last night on the ballot rounds, did you,
82        Shaking, did you deny the ticket, Poe?


83        For Gravesend Manor change at Chambers Street.
84        The platform hurries along to a dead stop.


85        The intent escalator lifts a serenade
86        Stilly
87        Of shoes, umbrellas, each eye attending its shoe, then
88        Bolting outright somewhere above where streets

[Page 100 ]

89        Burst suddenly in rain.... The gongs recur:
90        Elbows and levers, guard and hissing door.
91        Thunder is galvothermic here below.... The car
92        Wheels off. The train rounds, bending to a scream,
93        Taking the final level for the dive
94        Under the river---
95        And somewhat emptier than before,
96        Demented, for a hitching second, humps; then
97        Lets go.... Toward corners of the floor
98        Newspapers wing, revolve and wing.
99        Blank windows gargle signals through the roar.


100      And does the Daemon take you home, also,
101      Wop washerwoman, with the bandaged hair?
102      After the corridors are swept, the cuspidors---
103      The gaunt sky-barracks cleanly now, and bare,
104      O Genoese, do you bring mother eyes and hands
105      Back home to children and to golden hair?


106      Daemon, demurring and eventful yawn!
107      Whose hideous laughter is a bellows mirth
108      ---Or the muffled slaughter of a day in birth---
109      O cruelly to inoculate the brinking dawn
110      With antennae toward worlds that glow and sink;---
111      To spoon us out more liquid than the dim
112      Locution of the eldest star, and pack
113      The conscience navelled in the plunging wind,
114      Umbilical to call---and straightway die!


115      O caught like pennies beneath soot and steam,
116      Kiss of our agony thou gatherest;
117      Condensed, thou takest all---shrill ganglia
118      Impassioned with some song we fail to keep.
119      And yet, like Lazarus, to feel the slope,

[Page 101 ]

120      The sod and billow breaking,---lifting ground,
121      ---A sound of waters bending astride the sky
122      Unceasing with some Word that will not die...!

                    



123      A tugboat, wheezing wreaths of steam,
124      Lunged past, with one galvanic blare stove up the River.
125      I counted the echoes assembling, one after one,
126      Searching, thumbing the midnight on the piers.
127      Lights, coasting, left the oily tympanum of waters;
128      The blackness somewhere gouged glass on a sky.
129      And this thy harbor, O my City, I have driven under,
130      Tossed from the coil of ticking towers.... Tomorrow,
131      And to be.... Here by the River that is East---
132      Here at the waters\' edge the hands drop memory;
133      Shadowless in that abyss they unaccounting lie.
134      How far away the star has pooled the sea---
135      Or shall the hands be drawn away, to die?


136      Kiss of our agony Thou gatherest,
137                                      O Hand of Fire
138                                                    gatherest---


[Page 103 ]

VIII ATLANTIS
[End note: 1Kb]  

Epigraph
Music is then the knowledge of that which relates to love in harmony and system.
---PLATO


[Page 105 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  ATLANTIS [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]


1          Through the bound cable strands, the arching path
2          Upward, veering with light, the flight of strings,---
3          Taut miles of shuttling moonlight syncopate
4          The whispered rush, telepathy of wires.
5          Up the index of night, granite and steel---
6          Transparent meshes---fleckless the gleaming staves---
7          Sibylline voices flicker, waveringly stream
8          As though a god were issue of the strings....


9          And through that cordage, threading with its call
10        One arc synoptic of all tides below---
11        Their labyrinthine mouths of history
12        Pouring reply as though all ships at sea
13        Complighted in one vibrant breath made cry,---
14        "Make thy love sure---to weave whose song we ply!"
15        ---From black embankments, moveless soundings hailed,
16        So seven oceans answer from their dream.


17        And on, obliquely up bright carrier bars
18        New octaves trestle the twin monoliths
19        Beyond whose frosted capes the moon bequeaths
20        Two worlds of sleep (O arching strands of song!)---
21        Onward and up the crystal-flooded aisle
22        White tempest nets file upward, upward ring
23        With silver terraces the humming spars,
24        The loft of vision, palladium helm of stars.


25        Sheerly the eyes, like seagulls stung with rime---
26        Slit and propelled by glistening fins of light---
27        Pick biting way up towering looms that press
28        Sidelong with flight of blade on tendon blade
29        ---Tomorrows into yesteryear---and link
30        What cipher-script of time no traveller reads

[Page 106 ]

31        But who, through smoking pyres of love and death,
32        Searches the timeless laugh of mythic spears.


33        Like hails, farewells---up planet-sequined heights
34        Some trillion whispering hammers glimmer Tyre:
35        Serenely, sharply up the long anvil cry
36        Of inchling aeons silence rivets Troy.
37        And you, aloft there---Jason! hesting Shout!
38        Still wrapping harness to the swarming air!
39        Silvery the rushing wake, surpassing call,
40        Beams yelling Aeolus! splintered in the straits!


41        From gulfs unfolding, terrible of drums,
42        Tall Vision-of-the-Voyage, tensely spare---
43        Bridge, lifting night to cycloramic crest
44        Of deepest day---O Choir, translating time
45        Into what multitudinous Verb the suns
46        And synergy of waters ever fuse, recast
47        In myriad syllables,---Psalm of Cathay!
48        O Love, thy white, pervasive Paradigm...!


49        We left the haven hanging in the night---
50        Sheened harbor lanterns backward fled the keel.
51        Pacific here at time\'s end, bearing corn,---
52        Eyes stammer through the pangs of dust and steel.
53        And still the circular, indubitable frieze
54        Of heaven\'s meditation, yoking wave
55        To kneeling wave, one song devoutly binds---
56        The vernal strophe chimes from deathless strings!


57        O Thou steeled Cognizance whose leap commits
58        The agile precincts of the lark\'s return;
59        Within whose lariat sweep encinctured sing
60        In single chrysalis the many twain,---

[Page 107 ]

61        Of stars Thou art the stitch and stallion glow
62        And like an organ, Thou, with sound of doom---
63        Sight, sound and flesh Thou leadest from time\'s realm
64        As love strikes clear direction for the helm.


65        Swift peal of secular light, intrinsic Myth
66        Whose fell unshadow is death\'s utter wound,---
67        O River-throated---iridescently upborne
68        Through the bright drench and fabric of our veins;
69        With white escarpments swinging into light,
70        Sustained in tears the cities are endowed
71        And justified conclamant with ripe fields
72        Revolving through their harvests in sweet torment.


73        Forever Deity\'s glittering Pledge, O Thou
74        Whose canticle fresh chemistry assigns
75        To wrapt inception and beatitude,---
76        Always through blinding cables, to our joy,
77        Of thy white seizure springs the prophecy:
78        Always through spiring cordage, pyramids
79        Of silver sequel, Deity\'s young name
80        Kinetic of white choiring wings ... ascends.


81        Migrations that must needs void memory,
82        Inventions that cobblestone the heart,---
83        Unspeakable Thou Bridge to Thee, O Love.
84        Thy pardon for this history, whitest Flower,
85        O Answerer of all,---Anemone,---
86        Now while thy petals spend the suns about us, hold---
87        (O Thou whose radiance doth inherit me)
88        Atlantis,---hold thy floating singer late!


89        So to thine Everpresence, beyond time,
90        Like spears ensanguined of one tolling star

[Page 108 ]

91        That bleeds infinity---the orphic strings,
92        Sidereal phalanxes, leap and converge:
93        ---One Song, one Bridge of Fire! Is it Cathay,
94        Now pity steeps the grass and rainbows ring
95        The serpent with the eagle in the leaves ...?
96        Whispers antiphonal in azure swing.


[Page 109 ]

王敖

[Page 109 ]

KEY WEST
An Island Sheaf
[End note: 8Kb]  

Epigraph

The starry floor,
The wat\'ry shore,
Is given thee \'til the break of day.
---BLAKE


[Page 111 ]


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

1          The tarantula rattling at the lily\'s foot
2          Across the feet of the dead, laid in white sand
3          Near the coral beach---nor zigzag fiddle crabs
4          Side-stilting from the path (that shift, subvert
5          And anagrammatize your name---No, nothing here
6          Below the palsy that one eucalyptus lifts
7          In wrinkled shadows---mourns.


8                                                      And yet suppose
9          I count these nacreous frames of tropic death,
10        Brutal necklaces of shells around each grave
11        Squared off so carefully. Then


12        To the white sand I may speak a name, fertile
13        Albeit in a stranger tongue. Tree names, flower names
14        Deliberate, gainsay death\'s brittle crypt. Meanwhile
15        The wind that knots itself in one great death---
16        Coils and withdraws. So syllables want breath.


17        But where is the Captain of this doubloon isle
18        Without a turnstile? Who but catchword crabs
19        Patrols the dry groins of the underbrush?
20        What man, or What
21        Is Commissioner of mildew throughout the ambushed senses?
22        His Carib mathematics web the eyes\' baked lenses!


23        Under the poinciana, of a noon or afternoon
24        Let fiery blossoms clot the light, render my ghost
25        Sieved upward, white and black along the air
26        Until it meets the blue\'s comedian host.


27        Let not the pilgrim see himself again
28        For slow evisceration bound like those huge terrapin
29        Each daybreak on the wharf, their brine caked eyes;

[Page 112 ]



30        ---Spiked, overturned; such thunder in their strain!
31        And clenched beaks coughing for the surge again!


32        Slagged of the hurricane---I, cast within its flow,
33        Congeal by afternoons here, satin and vacant.
34        You have given me the shell, Satan,---carbonic amulet
35        Sere of the sun exploded in the sea.


[Page 113 ]


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

And if
Thy banished trunk be found in our dominions---
KING LEAR


1          Buddhas and engines serve us undersea;
2          Though why they bide here, only hell that\'s sacked
3          Of every blight and ingenuity---
4          Can solve.


5                        The Cross alone has flown the wave.
6          But since the Cross sank, much that\'s warped and cracked
7          Has followed in its name, has heaped its grave.
8                                                                               Oh---


9          Gallows and guillotines to hail the sun
10        And smoking wracks for penance when day\'s done!
11                                                                                   No---


12        Leave us, you idols of Futurity---alone,
13        Here where we finger moidores of spent grace
14        And ponder the bright stains that starred this Throne


15        ---This Cross, agleam still with a human Face!


[Page 114 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  TO THE CLOUD JUGGLER [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  
In Memoriam: Harry Crosby


1          What you may cluster \'round the knees of space
2          We hold in vision only, asking trace
3          Of districts where cliff, sea and palm advance
4          The falling wonder of a rainbow\'s trance.


5          Your light lifts whiteness into virgin azure ...
6          Disclose your lips, O Sun, nor long demure
7          With snore of thunder, crowding us to bleed
8          The green preëmption of the deep seaweed.


9          You, the rum-giver to that slide-by-night---,
10        The moon\'s best lover,---guide us by a sleight
11        Of quarts to faithfuls---surely smuggled home---
12        As you raise temples fresh from basking foam.


13        Expose vaunted validities that yawn
14        Past pleasantries ... Assert the ripened dawn
15        As you have yielded balcony and room
16        Or tempests---in a silver, floating plume.


17        Wrap us and lift us; drop us then, returned
18        Like water, undestroyed,---like mist, unburned ...
19        But do not claim a friend like him again,
20        Whose arrow must have pierced you beyond pain.


[Page 115 ]


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

1                 Let them return, saying you blush again for the great
2          Great-grandmother. It\'s all like Christmas.
3                 When you sprouted Paradise a discard of chewing-gum
4          took place. Up jug to musical, hanging jug just gay spiders
5          yoked you first,---silking of shadows good underdrawers for
6          owls.
7              First-plucked before and since the Flood, old hypno-
8          tisms wrench the golden boughs. Leaves spatter dawn from
9          emerald cloud-sprockets. Fat final prophets with lean ban-
10        dits crouch: and dusk is close
11                                           under your noon,
12                                           you Sun-heap, whose
13        ripe apple-lanterns gush history, recondite lightnings, irised.
14                                           O mister Señor
15                                           missus Miss
16                                           Mademoiselle
17                                           with baskets
18                                                               Maggy, come on


[Page 116 ]


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

1          Square sheets---they saw the marble only into
2          Flat prison slabs there at the marble quarry
3          At the turning of the road around the roots of the
4                mountain
5          Where the straight road would seem to ply below the
6                stone, that fierce
7          Profile of marble spiked with yonder
8          Palms against the sunset\'s towering sea, and maybe
9          Against mankind. It is at times---


10        In dusk, as though this island lifted, floated
11        In Indian baths. At Cuban dusk the eyes
12        Walking the straight road toward thunder---
13        This dry road silvering toward the shadow of the
14              quarry
15        ---It is at times as though the eyes burned hard and glad
16        And did not take the goat path quivering to the right,
17        Wide of the mountain---thence to tears and sleep---
18        But went on into marble that does not weep.


[Page 117 ]


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

1          Thy absence overflows the rose,---
2                From every petal gleam
3          Such words as it were vain to close,
4                Such tears as crowd the dream.


5          So eyes that mind thee fair and gone,
6                Bemused at waking, spend
7          On skies that gild thy remote dawn
8                More hopes than here attend.


9          The burden of the rose will fade
10              Sped in the spectrum\'s kiss.
11        But here the thorn in sharpened shade
12              Weathers all loneliness.


[Page 118 ]


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

1          Sheer over to the other side,---for see---
2          The boy straggling under those mimosas, daft
3          With squint lanterns in his head, and it\'s likely
4          Fumbling his sex. That\'s why those children laughed


5          In such infernal circles round his door
6          Once when he shouted, stretched in ghastly shape.
7          I hurried by. But back from the hot shore
8          Passed him again ... He was alone, agape;


9          One hand dealt out a kite string, a tin can
10        The other tilted, peeled end clamped to eye.
11        That kite aloft---you should have watched him scan
12        Its course, though he\'d clapped midnight to noon sky!


13        And since, through these hot barricades of green,
14        A Dios gracias, grac---I\'ve heard his song
15        Above all reason lifting, halt serene---
16        My trespass vision shrinks to face his wrong.


[Page 119 ]


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

1          Moonmoth and grasshopper that flee our page
2          And still wing on, untarnished of the name
3          We pinion to your bodies to assuage
4          Our envy of your freedom---we must maim


5          Because we are usurpers, and chagrined---
6          And take the wing and scar it in the hand.
7          Names we have, even, to clap on the wind;
8          But we must die, as you, to understand.


9          I dreamed that all men dropped their names, and sang
10        As only they can praise, who build their days
11        With fin and hoof, with wing and sweetened fang
12        Struck free and holy in one Name always.


[Page 120 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  BACARDI SPREADS THE EAGLE\'S WING [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          "ablo and Pedro, and black Serafin
2          Bought a launch last week. It might as well
3          Have been made of---well, say paraffin,---
4          That thin and blistered ... just a rotten shell.


5          "Hell! out there among the barracudas
6          Their engine stalled. No oars, and leaks
7          Oozing a-plenty. They sat like baking Buddhas.
8          Luckily the Cayman schooner streaks


9          "By just in time, and lifts \'em high and dry ...
10        They\'re back now on that mulching job at Pepper\'s.
11        "Yes, patent-leather shoes hot enough to fry
12        Anyone but these native high-steppers!"


[Page 121 ]


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

1          Big guns again.
2          No speakee well
3          But plain.


4          Again, again---
5          And they shall tell
6          The Spanish Main


7          The Dollar from the Cross.


8          Big guns again.
9          But peace to thee,
10        Andean brain.


11        Again, again---
12        Peace from his Mystery
13        The King of Spain,


14        That defunct boss.


15        Big guns again,
16        Atahualpa,
17        Imperator Inca---


18        Slain.


[Page 122 ]


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


1          Green rustlings, more-than-regal charities
2          Drift coolly from that tower of whispered light.
3          Amid the noontide\'s blazed asperities
4          I watched the sun\'s most gracious anchorite


5          Climb up as by communings, year on year
6          Uneaten of the earth or aught earth holds,
7          And the grey trunk, that\'s elephantine, rear
8          Its frondings sighing in aetherial folds.


9          Forever fruitless, and beyond that yield
10        Of sweat the jungle presses with hot love
11        And tendril till our deathward breath is sealed---
12        It grazes the horizons, launched above


13        Mortality---ascending emerald-bright,
14        A fountain at salute, a crown in view---
15        Unshackled, casual of its azured height
16        As though it soared suchwise through heaven too.


[Page 123 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE AIR PLANT
Grand Cayman [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
[End note: 1Kb]  

1          This tuft that thrives on saline nothingness,
2          Inverted octopus with heavenward arms
3          Thrust patching from a palm-bole hard by the cove---
4          A bird almost---of almost bird alarms,


5          Is pulmonary to the wind that jars
6          Its tentacles, horrific in their lurch.
7          The lizard\'s throat, held bloated for a fly,
8          Balloons but warily from this throbbing perch.


9          The needles and hack-saws of cactus bleed
10        A milk of earth when stricken off the stalk;
11        But this,---defenseless, thornless, sheds no blood,
12        Almost no shadow---but the air\'s thin talk.


13        Angelic Dynamo! Ventriloquist of the Blue!
14        While beachward creeps the shark-swept Spanish Main
15        By what conjunctions do the winds appoint
16        Its apotheosis, at last---the hurricane!


[Page 124 ]


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

1          Lo, Lord, Thou ridest!
2          Lord, Lord, Thy swifting heart


3          Naught stayeth, naught now bideth
4          But\'s smithereened apart!


5          Ay! Scripture flee\'th stone!
6          Milk-bright, Thy chisel wind


7          Rescindeth flesh from bone
8          To quivering whittlings thinned---


9          Swept---whistling straw! Battered,
10        Lord, e\'en boulders now out-leap


11        Rock sockets, levin-lathered!
12        Nor, Lord, may worm out-creep


13        Thy drum\'s gambade, its plunge abscond!
14        Lord God, while summits crashing


15        Whip sea-kelp screaming on blond
16        Sky-seethe, high heaven dashing---


17        Thou ridest to the door, Lord!
18        Thou bidest wall nor floor, Lord!


[Page 125 ]

KEY WEST
Folder Subsection


[Page 126 ]


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

1          Here has my salient faith annealed me.
2          Out of the valley, past the ample crib
3          To skies impartial, that do not disown me
4          Nor claim me, either, by Adam\'s spine---nor rib.


5          The oar plash, and the meteorite\'s white arch
6          Concur with wrist and bicep. In the moon
7          That now has sunk I strike a single march
8          To heaven or hades---to an equally frugal noon.


9          Because these millions reap a dead conclusion
10        Need I presume the same fruit of my bone
11        As draws them towards a doubly mocked confusion
12        Of apish nightmares into steel-strung stone?


13        O, steel and stone! But gold was, scarcity before.
14        And here is water, and a little wind....
15        There is no breath of friends and no more shore
16        Where gold has not been sold and conscience tinned.


[Page 127 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  ---AND BEES OF PARADISE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          I had come all the way here from the sea,
2          Yet met the wave again between your arms
3          Where cliff and citadel---all verily
4          Dissolved within a sky of beacon forms---


5          Sea gardens lifted rainbow-wise through eyes
6          I found.


7                        Yes, tall, inseparably our days
8          Pass sunward. We have walked the kindled skies
9          Inexorable and girded with your praise,


10        By the dove filled, and bees of Paradise.


[Page 128 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  TO EMILY DICKINSON [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          You who desired so much---in vain to ask---
2          Yet fed your hunger like an endless task,
3          Dared dignify the labor, bless the quest---
4          Achieved that stillness ultimately best,


5          Being, of all, least sought for: Emily, hear!
6          O sweet, dead Silencer, most suddenly clear
7          When singing that Eternity possessed
8          And plundered momently in every breast;


9          ---Truly no flower yet withers in your hand.
10        The harvest you descried and understand
11        Needs more than wit to gather, love to bind.
12        Some reconcilement of remotest mind---


13        Leaves Ormus rubyless, and Ophir chill.
14        Else tears heap all within one clay-cold hill.


[Page 129 ]

王敖

Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  MOMENT FUGUE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The syphillitic selling violets calmly
2                and daisies
3          By the subway news-stand knows
4                                  how hyacinths


5          This April morning offers
6               hurriedly
7          In bunches sorted freshly---
8                              and bestows
9          On every purchaser
10                                     (of heaven perhaps)


11        His eyes---
12                       like crutches hurtled against glass
13        Fall mute and sudden (dealing change
14            for lilies)
15        Beyond the roses that no flesh can pass.


[Page 130 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  BY NILUS ONCE I KNEW ... [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Some old Egyptian joke is in the air,
2          Dear lady---the poet said---release your hair;
3          Come, search the marshes for a friendly bed
4          Or let us bump heads in some lowly shed.


5          An old Egyptian jest has cramped the tape.
6          The keyboard no more offers an escape
7          From the sweet jeopardy of Anthony\'s plight:
8          You\'ve overruled my typewriter tonight.


9          Decisive grammar given unto queens,---
10        An able text, more motion than machines
11        Have levers for,---stampede it with fresh type
12        From twenty alphabets---we\'re still unripe!


13        This hieroglyph is no dumb, deaf mistake.
14        It knows its way through India---tropic shake!
15        It\'s Titicaca till we\'ve trod it through,
16        And then it pleads again, "I wish I knew".


[Page 131 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  TO SHAKESPEARE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Through torrid entrances, past icy poles
2             A hand moves on the page! Who shall again
3          Engrave such hazards as thy might controls---
4             Conflicting, purposeful yet outcry vain
5          Of all our days, being pilot,---tempest, too!
6             Sheets that mock lust and thorns that scribble hate
7          Are lifted from torn flesh with human rue,
8             And laughter, burnished brighter than our fate
9          Thou wieldest with such tears that every faction
10           Swears high in Hamlet\'s throat, and devils throng
11        Where angels beg for doom in ghast distraction
12           ---And fail, both! Yet thine Ariel holds his song:
13           And that serenity that Prospero gains
14           Is justice that has cancelled earthly chains.


[Page 133 ]

POEMS UNCOLLECTED BUT PUBLISHED BY CRANE
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[Page 135 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  C 33 [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          He has woven rose-vines
2          About the empty heart of night,
3          And vented his long mellowed wines
4          Of dreaming on the desert white
5          With searing sophistry.
6          And he tented with far truths he would form
7          The transient bosoms from the thorny tree.


8          O Materna! to enrich thy gold head
9          And wavering shoulders with a new light shed


10        From penitence, must needs bring pain,
11        And with it song of minor, broken strain.
12        But you who hear the lamp whisper through night
13        Can trace paths tear-wet, and forget all blight.


[Page 136 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  OCTOBER-NOVEMBER [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Indian-summer-sun
2          With crimson feathers whips away the mists;
3          Dives through the filter of trellises
4          And gilds the silver on the blotched arbor-seats.


5          Now gold and purple scintillate
6          On trees that seem dancing
7          In delirium;
8          Then the moon
9          In a mad orange flare
10        Floods the grape-hung night.


[Page 137 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE HIVE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Up the chasm-walls of my bleeding heart
2          Humanity pecks, claws, sobs, and climbs;
3          Up the inside, and over every part
4          Of the hive of the world that is my heart.


5          And of all the sowing, and all the tear-tendering,
6          And reaping, have mercy and love issued forth.
7          Mercy, white milk, and honey, gold love---
8          And I watch, and say, "These the anguish are worth."


[Page 138 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  FEAR [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The host, he says that all is well,
2          And the fire-wood glow is bright;
3          The food has a warm and tempting smell,---
4          But on the window licks the night.


5          Pile on the logs.... Give me your hands,
6          Friends! No,---it is not fright....
7          But hold me ... somewhere I heard demands....
8          And on the window licks the night.


[Page 139 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  ANNUNCIATIONS [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The anxious milk-blood in the veins of the earth,
2          That strives long and quiet to sever the girth
3          Of greenery.... Below the roots, a quickening quiver
4          Aroused by some light that had sensed,---ere the shiver
5          5 Of the first moth\'s descent,---day;s predestiny....
6          The sound of a dove\'s flight waved over the lawn....
7          The moans of travail of one dearest beside me....
8          Then high cries from great chasms of chaos outdrawn....
9          Hush! these things were all heard before dawn.


[Page 140 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  ECHOES [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1

1          Slivers of rain upon the pane,
2          Jade-green with sunlight, melt and flow
3          Upward again:---they leave no stain
4          Of all the storm an hour ago.
2

5          Over the hill a last cloud dips
6          And disappears, and I should go
7          As silently but that your lips
8          Are warmer with a redder glow.
3

9          Fresh and fragile, your arms now
10        Are circles of cool roses,---so....
11        In opal pools beneath your brow
12        I dream we quarreled long, long ago.


[Page 141 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  THE BATHERS [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Two ivory women by a milky sea;---
2          The dawn, a shell\'s pale lining restlessly
3          Shimmering over a black mountain-spear:---
4          A dreamer might see these, and wake to hear,
5          But there is no sound,---not even a bird-note;
6          Only simple ripples flaunt, and stroke, and float,---
7          Flat lily petals to the sea\'s white throat.


8          They say that Venus shot through foam to light,
9          But they are wrong.... Ere man was given sight
10        She came in such still water, and so nursed
11        In silence, beauty blessed and beauty cursed.


[Page 142 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  MODERN CRAFT [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Though I have touched her flesh of moons,
2          Still she sits gestureless and mute,
3          Drowning cool pearls in alcohol.
4          O blameless shyness;---innocence dissolute!


5          She hazards jet; wears tiger-lilies;---
6          And bolts herself within a jewelled belt.
7          Too many palms have grazed her shoulders:
8          Surely she must have felt.


9          Ophelia had such eyes; but she
10        Even, sank in love and choked with flowers.
11        This burns and is not burnt.... My modern love were
12        Charred at a stake in younger times than ours.


[Page 143 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  CARMEN DE BOHEME [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Sinuously winding through the room
2          On smokey tongues of sweetened cigarettes,---
3          Plaintive yet proud the cello tones resume
4          The andante of smooth hopes and lost regrets.


5          Bright peacocks drink from flame-pots by the wall,
6          Just as absinthe-sipping women shiver through
7          With shimmering blue from the bowl in Circe\'s hall.
8          Their brown eyes blacken, and the blue drop hue.


9          The andante quivers with crescendo\'s start,
10        And dies on fire\'s birth in each man\'s heart.
11        The tapestry betrays a finger through
12        The slit, soft-pulling:---and music follows cue.


13        There is a sweep,---a shattering,---a choir
14        Disquieting of barbarous fantasy.
15        The pulse is in the ears, the heart is higher,
16        And stretches up through mortal eyes to see.


17        Carmen! Akimbo arms and smouldering eyes;---
18        Carmen! Bestirring hope and lipping eyes;---
19        Carmen whirls, and music swirls and dips.
20        "Carmen!" comes awed from wine-hot lips.


21        Finale leaves in silence to replume
22        Bent wings, and Carmen with her flaunts through the gloom
23        Of whispering tapestry, brown with old fringe:---
24        The winers leave too, and the small lamps twinge.


25        Morning: and through the foggy city gate
26        A gypsy wagon wiggles, striving straight.
27        And some dream still of Carmen\'s mystic face,---
28        Yellow, pallid, like ancient lace.


[Page 144 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  EXILE
(after the Chinese) [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          My hands have not touched pleasure since your hands,---
2          No,---nor my lips freed laughter since \'farewell\',
3          And with the day, distance again expands
4          Voiceless between us, as an uncoiled shell.


5          Yet love endures, though starving and alone.
6          A dove\'s wings cling about my heart each night
7          With surging gentleness, and the blue stone
8          Set in the tryst-ring has but worn more bright.


[Page 145 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  POSTSCRIPT [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Though now but marble are the marble urns,
2          Though fountains droop in waning light and pain
3          Glitters on the edges of wet ferns,
4          I should not dare to let you in again.


5          Mine is a world foregone though not yet ended,---
6          An imagined garden grey with sundered boughs
7          And broken branches, wistful and unmended,
8          And mist that is more constant than all vows.


[Page 146 ]


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

1          Forgetfulness is like a song
2          That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
3          Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
4          Outspread and motionless,---
5          A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.


6          Forgetfulness is rain at night,
7          Or an old house in a forest,---or a child.
8          Forgetfulness is white,---white as a blasted tree,
9          And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
10        Or bury the Gods.


11        I can remember much forgetfulness.


[Page 147 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  TO PORTAPOVITCH
(du Ballet Russe) [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          Vault on the opal carpet of the sun,
2          Barbaric Prince Igor:---or, blind Pierrot,
3          Despair until the moon by tears be won:---
4          Or, Daphnis, move among the bees with Chloe.


5          Release,---dismiss the passion from your arms.
6          More real than life, the gestures you have spun
7          Haunt the blank stage with lingering alarms,
8          Though silent as your sandals, danced undone.


[Page 148 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  LEGENDE [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          The tossing loneliness of many nights
2          Rounds off my memory of her.
3          Like a shell surrendered to evening sands,
4          Yet called adrift again at every dawn,
5          She has become a pathos,---
6          Waif of the tides.


7          The sand and sea have had their way,
8          And moons of spring and autumn,---
9          All, save I.
10        And even my vision will be erased
11        As a cameo the waves claim again.


[Page 149 ]


Crane, Hart, 1899-1932:  INTERIOR [from The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (1986), Liveright]
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1          It sheds a shy solemnity,
2          This lamp in our poor room.
3          O grey and gold amenity,---
4          Silence and gentle gloom!


5          Wide from the world, a stolen hour
6          We claim, and none may know
7          How love blooms like a tardy flower
8          Here in the day\'s after-glow.


9          And even should the world break in
10        With jealous threat and guile,
11        The world, at last, must bow and win
12        Our pity and a smile.


[Page 150 ]