American Poetry, 1922 Part 10

I shall gather myself into myself again, I shall take my scattered selves and make them one, I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball Where I can see the moon and the flas.h.i.+ng sun.

I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intent, Watching the future come and the present go-- And the little s.h.i.+fting pictures of people rus.h.i.+ng In tiny self-importance to and fro.

II

~The Solitary~

My heart has grown rich with the pa.s.sing of years, I have less need now than when I was young To share myself with every comer, Or shape my thoughts into words with my tongue.

It is one to me that they come or go If I have myself and the drive of my will, And strength to climb on a summer night And watch the stars swarm over the hill.

Let them think I love them more than I do, Let them think I care, though I go alone, If it lifts their pride, what is it to me Who am self-complete as a flower or a stone?

LOUIS UNTERMEYER

MONOLOG FROM A MATTRESS

_Heinrich Heine aetat 56, loquitur:_

Can that be you, _la mouche?_ Wait till I lift This palsied eye-lid and make sure.... Ah, true.

Come in, dear fly, and pardon my delay In thus existing; I can promise you Next time you come you'll find no dying poet-- Without sufficient spleen to see me through, The joke becomes too tedious a jest.

I am afraid my mind is dull to-day; I have that--something--heavier on my chest And then, you see, I've been exchanging thoughts With Doctor Franz. He talked of Kant and Hegel As though he'd nursed them both through whooping cough And, as he left, he let his finger shake Too playfully, as though to say, "Now off With that long face--you've years and years to live."

I think he thinks so. But, for Heaven's sake, Don't credit it--and never tell Mathilde.

Poor dear, she has enough to bear already....

This _was_ a month! During my lonely weeks One person actually climbed the stairs To seek a cripple. It was Berlioz-- But Berlioz always was original.

Meissner was also here; he caught me unawares, Scribbling to my old mother. "What!" he cried, "Is the old lady of the _Dammthor_ still alive?

And do you write her still?" "Each month or so."

"And is she not unhappy then, to find How wretched you must be?" "How can she know?

You see," I laughed, "she thinks I am as well As when she saw me last. She is too blind To read the papers--some one else must tell What's in my letters, merely signed by me.

Thus she is happy. For the rest-- That any son should be as sick as I, No mother could believe."

_Ja_, so it goes.

Come here, my lotus-flower. It is best I drop the mask to-day; the half-cracked s.h.i.+eld Of mockery calls for younger hands to wield.

Laugh--or I'll hug it closer to my breast.

So ... I can be as mawkish as I choose And give my thoughts an airing, let them loose For one last rambling stroll before--Now look!

Why tears? You never heard me say "the end."

Before ... before I clap them in a book And so get rid of them once and for all.

This is their holiday--we'll let them run-- Some have escaped already. There goes one ...

What, I have often mused, did Goethe mean?

So many years ago at Weimar, Goethe said "Heine has all the poet's gifts but love."

Good G.o.d! But that is all I ever had.

More than enough! So much of love to give That no one gave me any in return.

And so I flashed and snapped in my own fires Until I stood, with nothing left to burn, A twisted trunk, in chilly isolation.

_Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam_--you recall?

I was that Northern tree and, in the South, Amalia.... So I turned to scornful cries, Hot iron songs to save the rest of me; Plunging the brand in my own misery.

Crouching behind my pointed wall of words, Ramparts I built of moons and loreleys, Enchanted roses, sphinxes, love-sick birds, Giants, dead lads who left their graves to dance, Fairies and phoenixes and friendly G.o.ds-- A curious frieze, half Renaissance, half Greek, Behind which, in revulsion of romance, I lay and laughed--and wept--till I was weak.

Words were my shelter, words my one escape, Words were my weapons against everything.

Was I not once the son of Revolution?

Give me the lyre, I said, and let me sing My song of battle: Words like flaming stars Shot down with power to burn the palaces; Words like bright javelins to fly with fierce Hate of the oily Philistines and glide Through all the seven heavens till they pierce The pious hypocrites who dare to creep Into the Holy Places. "Then," I cried, "I am a fire to rend and roar and leap; I am all joy and song, all sword and flame!"

Ha--you observe me pa.s.sionate. I aim To curb these wild emotions lest they soar Or drive against my will. (So I have said These many years--and still they are not tame.) Sc.r.a.ps of a song keep rumbling in my head ...

Listen--you never heard me sing before.

When a false world betrays your trust And stamps upon your fire, When what seemed blood is only rust, Take up the lyre!

How quickly the heroic mood Responds to its own ringing; The scornful heart, the angry blood Leap upward, singing!

Ah, that was how it used to be. But now, _Du schoner Todesengel_, it is odd How more than calm I am. Franz said it shows Power of religion, and it does, perhaps-- Religion or morphine or poultices--G.o.d knows.

I sometimes have a sentimental lapse And long for saviours and a physical G.o.d.

When health is all used up, when money goes, When courage cracks and leaves a shattered will, Then Christianity begins. For a sick Jew, It is a very good religion ... Still, I fear that I will die as I have lived, A long-nosed heathen playing with his scars, A pagan killed by weltschmerz ... I remember, Once when I stood with Hegel at a window, I, being full of bubbling youth and coffee, Spoke in symbolic tropes about the stars.

Something I said about "those high Abodes of all the blest" provoked his temper.

"Abodes? The stars?" He froze me with a sneer, "A light eruption on the firmament."

"But," cried romantic I, "is there no sphere Where virtue is rewarded when we die?"

And Hegel mocked, "A very pleasant whim.

So you demand a bonus since you spent One lifetime and refrained from poisoning Your testy grandmother!" ... How much of him Remains in me--even when I am caught In dreams of death and immortality.

To be eternal--what a brilliant thought!

It must have been conceived and coddled first By some old shopkeeper in Nuremberg, His slippers warm, his children amply nursed, Who, with his lighted meerschaum in his hand, His nightcap on his head, one summer night Sat drowsing at his door. And mused, how grand If all of this could last beyond a doubt-- This placid moon, this plump _gemuthlichkeit_; Pipe, breath and summer never going out-- To vegetate through all eternity ...

But no such everlastingness for me!

G.o.d, if he can, keep me from such a blight.

_Death, it is but the long, cool night, And Life's a dull and sultry day.

It darkens; I grow sleepy; I am weary of the light._

_Over my bed a strange tree gleams And there a nightingale is loud.

She sings of love, love only ...

I hear it, even in dreams._

My Mouche, the other day as I lay here, Slightly propped up upon this mattress-grave In which I've been interred these few eight years, I saw a dog, a little pampered slave, Running about and barking. I would have given Heaven could I have been that dog; to thrive Like him, so senseless--and so much alive!

And once I called myself a blithe h.e.l.lene, Who am too much in love with life to live.

(The shrug is pure Hebraic) ... For what I've been, A lenient Lord will tax me--and forgive.

_Dieu me pardonnera--c'est son metier._ But this is jesting. There are other scandals You haven't heard ... Can it be dusk so soon?

Or is this deeper darkness ...? Is that you, Mother? How did you come? Where are the candles?...

_Over my bed a strange tree gleams_--half filled With stars and birds whose white notes glimmer through Its seven branches now that all is stilled.

What? Friday night again and all my songs Forgotten? Wait ... I still can sing-- _Sh'ma Yisroel Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echod ..._ Mouche--Mathilde!...

WATERS OF BABYLON