Five Poems

I

He who has never tasted the grapes of Canaan can only view

them from Pisgah.

I have my tides, O sea-foamed Venus, dearer than watercress,

pipkins, thyme and clymene. You once held me by the cord of

my navel, but I have not died to live in Mahomet's paradise.

Would that I could gather up my love to me as one does one's

fate, or measure her nature as God does the sea.

We are a weary race that hates seedtime. Poor Persephone, who

is Maying springtime, and the coming up of flowers! We re-

member only what we seed, and Persephone goes down into the

earth after Spring and Summer vegetation only because Pluto

gave her pomegranate seeds to remember him, but if the seed

perish, Persephone will die, and memory shall pass from the

earth.

A manof humble blood, with a soul of Kidron, needs a Rachel,

but I labored for years in the weary fields for Leah.

u

The world is a wound in my soul, and I have sought the living

waters in meditation, and the angelical fountains in the desert of

Beersheba for solitude, for what health there is in friendship

comes when one is alone.

I shed tears on the Mount of Olives because people no longer

care for each other, but my friends have lacked the character for

the vigil. There is no Cana wine in human affections that are not

always awake, for people who do not trouble about each other

are foes.

It is humiliating being the lamb and bleating to each passerby,

"Feed me!" What is the use of saying that men are stones when

I know I am going to try to turn them into bread.

I am afraid to say that people are truthful. When a man tells

me he is honest I press my hand close to my heart where I keep

my miserable wallet. Ifhe says he has any goodness in him, l avoid

him, for I trust nobody who has so little fear of the evils that

grow and ripen in us while we imagine we have one virtuous

trait. These demons lie in ambush in the thick, heady coverts of

the blood, where hypocrisy and egoism fatten, waiting to mock

or betray us in any moment of self-esteem.

Thave no faith in a meek man, and regard anyone that shows a

humble mien as one who is preparing to make an attack upon me,

for there is some brutish, nether fault in starved vanity.

Yet once a friend leaned as gently on my coat as that disciple

had on the bosom of the Saviour, and I went away, not know-

ing by his affection whether I was the John Christ was said to have

loved most. I whispered thanks to my soul because he leaned

upon me, for I shall never know who I am ifI am not loved.

m

Do I not know that the Mother of Knowledge is Memory

whose sister is death.

I have been weak grass in the wind for fifty years, and have

had no rest since Jared breakfasted on the Tigris. My mornings

have been put out, and the midday sun has gone from me, and

Thave not heard the earth singing in my flesh since God breathed

upon the first nettles and potherbs.

Jacob in his strength dreamed that the he-goats and the rams

leaped upon the sheep, but in my days I sleep as John in the crypt

at Ephesus or as Philip in Hierapolis, for I was born to die.

Can I say that my Mother walked in the sun, grew tomatoes

in her back yard, or that I knelt at her bedside to kiss her wrinkled,

suffering arm before she went to sleep? For five years she went to

her bed as to Gethsemane.

Did my Father fill space? Did either of them feed time, the

greediest worm?

Each man has slain his mother and father, and though they lie,

neglected, suffering worms, in cheap, unreverenced graves, they

will sap the nation, for they yet live by the pangs we have given

them.

Iv

No one knows himself except later, as he was yesterday at

Erech, Ur, or in some reedy, Sumerian hut. An act that does not

provide one with a tone of remoteness encumbers eyeless man.

Am I Paul or Peter, or John, or what Acts have I?

Either I am an historical character or I do not exist. I believe

that Antony passed the winter of 38 to 37 B.C. in Athens, and

that Cleopatra lived because she coveted Herod's palm groves at

Jericho; that is history, the cash logic; but I deny that the twelve

disciples are anything but water and spirit, for spirit has no size or

weight. They lack animal egoism and any freedom of will which

makes them as incorporeal as I. The whole of the New Testa-

ment is a forgery; there is no sweeter or more spurious honey-

comb than Golgotha.

. There is no perfidy, lust, murder I have not imagined in my

heart. Iam a coxcomb and fear myself most when I am modest.

Having so many feelings is a sign of the lack of control of one's

spittle, for one cannot go about healing the blind as Christ did

with clay and sputum.

My most evil seasons come when I have little strength. When

I am torpid, having no volition for human goodness, I issue a

caveat to my soul, saying "Do not go outside, a passerby will

curse you. Do not listen for the door knocker, this is sloth. Pay

no heed to the telephone, it makes the ears gross and slattern, for

these are the wild, rooting sows on the head that hanker after

the mire of the sty."

Iam two Lazaruses, for everyone is double. I am he that Christ

brought forth from the dead, and I am Lazarus in Abraham's

bosom. Would that I were coffined in the earth of the prophets,

where none could see me, or put his heel upon my soul.

v

Much flesh walks upon the earth void of heart and warm liver,

for it is the spirit that dies soonest.

Some men have marshland natures with mist and sea-water in

their intellects, and are as sterile as the Florida earth which De

Soto found in those meager, rough Indian settlements, and their

tongues are fierce, reedy arrows. They wound and bleed the

spirit, and their oaks and chestnut trees and acorns are wild, and a

terrible, barren wind from the Atlantic blows through their blood

as pitiless as the primitive rivers De Soto's soldiers could not ford.

Do not attempt to cross these mad, tumid rivers, boreal and

brackish, for water is unstable, and you cannot link yourself to it.

There are also inland, domestic men who are timid pulse and

vetch, and though they may appear as stupid as poultry rooting

in the mire, they are housed people, and they have orchards and

good, tamed wine that makes men loving rather than predatory;

go to them, and take little thought of their ignorance which

brings forth good fruits, for here you may eat and not be on guard

for the preservation of your soul.

People who have domestic animals are patient, for atheism and

the stony heart are the result of traveling: sorrow never goes any-

where. Were we as content as our forefathers were with labor in

the fallow, or as a fuller with his cloth, or a drayman with his

horses and mules, we would stay where we are, and that is praying.

There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling

feathers, for they show their souls to everyone, and everything

that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone

cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they

are slain every moment.

God forgive me for my pride; though I would relinquish my

own birthright for that wretched pottage of lentils which is

friendship, I mistrust every mortal.

Each day the alms I ask of heaven is not to have a new chagrin

which is my daily bread.