The Imitation of Faust

While I, here in this rented room, under

The hooded lamp, squeeze my brains,

Exhaust the battery of my eyes

And drain the fuel of my veins,

The night is rocked with thunder.

The unexpected violent summer storm

Draws me to the window where

I watch the rain boil in gutters,

Steam as it sucks down sewers.

Tonight the murderer is abroad

And the stranger is doped in the sailor's den.

Tonight, beneath the chandeliers,

While I grow hunchbacked in a world of men,

The tall women move in their atmospheres.

Shall I make this art my mephistopheles,

Conjure cars, success, women from it?

Thunder and lightning! and while

My backstage angel sings

Tl walk my simple devil from the wings

And like the restless scholar made invisible

Enter the hazards of actual lives,

Then come, the night is going.

We will be late for supper in the reserved suite.

Enter with the apologetic waiter

Who enters with the hot tray and the smoking meat.

The orders are we are not to be disturbed.

We too have sent the orchids with the witty note,

Enclosed the rope of pearls in the candy box,

Those pearls that pulse now at the basin of her throat.

Mark this man: he is dangerous

And at his gesture trips are cancelled, fortunes undone,

The bride deserted on the honeymoon bed.

Is this the coveted world you came to admire?

The perfect teeth a world of cripples envies?

The barbered jowls above the correct attire?

Mark him closer:

Though he stirs the demitasse with an engraved spoon

How shall he feel secure

Whose universe is founded on what his stocks will do at noon?

What friend shall he trust when a bribe has bought friends?

'What woman when a fur has bought women?

Chromium, sleeping powders, the private car,

None of these shall avail him in the insomniac night

When, turning in the darkness toward the butler's room,

He sees himself a falling meteor.

Meanwhile continue, since you must know it all.

Stand behind the gambler at the green table,

Intense and weary with the long play.

He winces at the ace that passes him,

The jack needed and the queen drawn.

Night thins and washes into day

And cold and cramped he deals into the dawn.

Upstairs at the private theatre party

The company is waiting for the first reviews.

The young author leans against the cocktail table.

Whether he will be a failure or a famous man tomorrow

The Times will tell him or the morning News.

Nevertheless the blonde who hangs upon his arm,

The ambitious understudy in the show,

Is banking heavily on the play's success,

And now she has a playwright will not let him go.

Down the hall the retired couple

Living on their dividends, spend an evening home,

Mother with her knitting, Father with the radio.

John writes from Cleveland the family's fine

And Sue's marine she did at college is hanging on the wall.

The world is ordered to an obvious Methodist design

And God, with a slight Peoria accent, hovers over all.

The suburban emperor orders his evening papers and his pills.

The potted plants shadow the faces in the main salon.

But the elderly attendant in the tiled lavatory below

In the small morning hours talks with Christ

As the bell captain planning a racetrack kill,

Desiring the grandeur of the royal suite,

Delivers the pint of scotch and the water, iced.

Now bring me the Helen of my desire.

Though I have searched the cabins of luxury liners,

Sought her on the observation roof among the clouds,

Shall I find her tonight perhaps among these diners,

Lounging in the cocktail lounge,

Or when the theatres empty their late crowds?

I shall have boys deliver baskets of flowers.

I shall call the desk and tell them not to ring.

When shall I hear her step upon the stair?

For I have followed her through revolving doors,

Through doors that opened by an electric eye,

And when the music was loudest in the pit,

And when the loges called obscenely to the stage,

Her face was there and I desired it.

She will make me forget all humiliation

And cancel the disappointments I have known

For when she moves the Mediterranean is bluer.

And I shall kiss her palms and upturned feet

And on her eyelids weigh my heavy mouth

Until the night is filled with tropical guitars

And winds from Florida blow through this northern room

And fruit falls in all the orchards of the south.

Back. And the storm dying. From where I came.

The batik nailed over the bed. The private letters with my name.

The hour approaches, that hour

'When the heart is emptiest and when fears

Of failure and our own incompetence destroy us.

In that hour the devil that served us reappears.

Then pace the rug in the parlor. Turn the radio on.

Envy those who are not curious about heaven or hell,

Envy those who are not asked to bring back grapes in winter.

They are decent, they pay their debts, their sons are strong,

Though at night their catarrhs rattle in their throats,

While I, uncertain of the world where I belong,

Examining the heavens for a secret sign,

Inviting to dinner the outcast scholars and the dead,

Wait for the malevolent voice I know so well,

Wait for the appointed hour to strike,

The trapdoor opens slowly and I scream at sight of hell.