Toward the Gulf Part 3

She was married twice.

Both husbands fled from her insatiable embraces.

At thirty-two she became a woman on a telephone list, Subject to be called, And for two years ran through a daily orgy of s.e.x, When blindness came on her, as it came on her father before her, And she became a Christian Scientist, And led an exemplary life.

Deborah was a Puritan of Puritans, Her list of unmentionable things Tabooed all the secrets of creation, Leaving politics, religion, and human faults, And the mistakes most people make, And the natural depravity of man, And his freedom to redeem himself if he chooses, As the only subjects of conversation.

As a twister of words and meanings, And a skilled welder of fallacies, And a swift emerger from ineluctable traps of logic, And a wit with an adder's tongue, And a laugher, And an unafraid facer of enemies, Oppositions, hatreds, She never knew her equal.

She was at once very cruel, and very tender, Very selfish and very generous Very little and very magnanimous.

Scrupulous as to the truth, and utterly disregardless of the truth.

Of the keenest intuitions, yet gullible, Easily used at times, of erratic judgment, a.n.a.lytic but pursuing with incredible swiftness The falsest trails to her own undoing-- All in all the strangest mixture of colors and scent Derived from father and mother, But mixed by whom, and how, and why?

Now for the son named Herman, rebel soul.

His brow was like a loaf of bread, his eyes Turned from his father's blue to gray, his nose Was like his mother's, skin was dark like hers.

His shapely body, hands and feet belonged To some patrician face, not to Marat's.

And his was like Marat's, fanatical, Materialistic, fierce, as it might guide A reptile's crawl, but yet he crawled to peaks Loving the hues of mists, but not the mists His father loved. And being a rebel soul He thought the world all wrong. A nothingness Moving as malice marred the life of man.

'Twas man's great work to fight this Giant Fraud, And all who praise and serve Him. 'Tis for man To free the world from error, suffer, die For liberty of thought. You see his mother Is in possession of one part of him, Or all of him for some time.

So he lives Nursing the dream (like father he's a dreamer) That genius fires him. All the while a gift For a.n.a.lytics stored behind that brow, That bulges like a loaf of bread, is all Of which he well may boast above the man He hates as but a slave of faith and fear.

He feeds luxurious doubt with Omar Khyam, But for long years neglects the jug of wine.

And as for "thou" he does not wake for years, Is a pure maiden when he weds, the grains Run counter in him, end in knots at times.

He takes from father certain tastes and traits, From mother certain others, one can see His mother's s.e.x re-actions to his father, Not pa.s.sed to him to make him celibate, But holding back in sleeping pa.s.sions which Burst over bounds at last in l.u.s.t, not love.

Not love since that great engine in the brow Tears off the irised wings of love and bares The poor worm's body where the wings had been: What is it but desire? Such stuff in rhyme In music over what is but desire, And ends when that is satisfied!

He's a crank.

And follows all the psychic thrills which run To cackles o'er the world. It's Looking Backward, Or Robert Elsmere, Spencer's Social Statics, It's socialism, Anarchism, Peace, It's non-resistance with a swelling heart, As who should say how truer to the faith Of Jesus am I, without hope or faith, Than churchmen. He's a prohibitionist, The poor's protagonist, the knight at arms Of fallen women, yelling at the rich Whose wicked greed makes all the prost.i.tutes-- No prost.i.tutes without the wicked rich!

But as he ages, as the bitter days Approach with perorations: O ye vipers, The engine in him changes all the world, Reverses all the wheels of thought behind.

For Nietzsche comes, and makes him superman.

He dumps the truth of Jesus over--there It lies with his youth's textual skepticism, And laughter at the supernatural.

Now what's the motivating principle Of such a mind? In youth he sought for rules Wherewith to trail and capture truths. He found it In James McCosh's Logic, it was this: Lex Exclusi Tertii aut Medii, Law of Excluded Middle speaking plain: A thing is true, or not true, never a third Hypothesis, so G.o.d is or is not.

That's very good to start with, how to end And how to know which of the two is false-- He hunted out the false, as mother did-- Requires a tool. He found it in this book, Reductio ad absurdum; let us see Excluded middle use reductio.

G.o.d is or G.o.d is not, but then what G.o.d?

Excluded Middle never sought a G.o.d To suffer demolition at his hands Except the G.o.d of Illinois, the G.o.d Grown but a little with his followers Since Moses lived and Peter fished. So now G.o.d is or G.o.d is not. Let us a.s.sume G.o.d is and use reductio ad absurdum, Taking away the rotten props, the posts That do not fit or hold, and let Him fall.

For if he falls, the other postulate That G.o.d is not is demonstrated. See A universe of truth pa.s.s on the way Cleared by Excluded Middle through the stuff Of thought and visible things, a way that lets A greater G.o.d escape, uncaught by all The nippers of reductio ad absurdum.

But to resume his argument was this: G.o.d is or G.o.d is not, but if G.o.d is Why pestilence and war, earthquake and famine?

He either wills them, or cannot prevent them, But if he wills them G.o.d is evil, if He can't prevent them, he is limited.

But G.o.d, you say, is good, omnipotent, And here I prove Him evil, or too weak To stay the evil. Having shown your G.o.d Lacking in what makes G.o.d, the proposition Which I oppose to this, that G.o.d is not Stands proven. For as evil is most clear In sickness, pain and death, it cannot be There is a Power with strength to overcome them, Yet suffers them to be.

And so this man Went through the years of life, and stripped the fields Of beauty and of thought with mandibles Insatiable as the locust's, which devours A season's care and labor in an hour.

He stripped these fields and ate them, but they made No meat or fat for him. And so he lived On his own thought, as starving men may live On stored up fat. And so in time he starved.

The thought in him no longer fed his life, And he had withered up the outer world Of man and nature, stripped it to the bone, Nothing but skull and cross-bones greeted him Wherever he turned--the world became a bottle Filled with a bitter essence he could drink From long accustomed doses--labeled poison And marked with skull and cross-bones. Could he laugh As mother laughed? No more! He tried to find The mother's laugh and secret for the laugh Which kept her to the end--but did she laugh?

Or if she laughed, was it so hollow, forced As all his laughter now was. He had proved Too much for laughter. Nothing but himself Remained to keep himself, he lived alone Upon his stored up fat, now daily growing To dangerous thinness.

So with love of woman.

He had found "thou" the jug of wine as well, "Thou" "thou" had come and gone too many times.

For what is s.e.x but touch of flesh, the hand Is flesh and hands may touch, if so, the loins-- Reductio ad absurdum, O you fools, Who see a wrong in touch of loins, no wrong In clasp of hands. And so again, again With his own tools of thought he bruised his hands Until they grew too callous to perceive When they were touched.

So by a.n.a.lysis He turned on everything he once believed.

Let's make an end!

Men thought Excluded Middle Was born for great things. Why that bulging brow And a.n.a.lytic keen if not for greatness?

In those old days they thought so when he fought For lofty things, a youthful radical Come here to change the world! But now at last He lectures in back halls to youths who are What he was in his youth, to acid souls Who must have bitterness, can take enough To kill a healthy soul, as fiends for dope Must have enough to kill a body clean.

And so upon a night Excluded Middle Is lecturing to prove that life is evil, Not worth the living--when his auditors Behold him pale and sway and take his seat, And later quit the hall, the lecture left Half finished.

This had happened in a twinkling: He had made life a punching bag, with fists, Excluded Middle and Reductio, Had whacked it back and forth. But just as often As he had struck it with an argument That it is not worth living, snap, the bag Would fly back for another punch. For life Just like a punching bag will stand your whacks Of hatred and denial, let you punch Almost at will. But sometime, like the bag, The strap gives way, the bag flies up and falls And lies upon the floor, you've knocked it out.

And this is what Excluded Middle does This night, the strap breaks with his blows. He proves His strength, his case and for the first he sees Life is not worth the living. Life gives up, Resists no more, flys back no more to him, But hits the ceiling, snap the strap gives way!

The bag falls to the floor, and lies there still-- Who now shall pick it up, re-fasten it?

And so his color fades, it well may be The crisis of a long neurosis, well What caused it? But his eyes are wondrous clear Perceiving life knocked out. His heart is sick, He takes his seat, admiring friends swarm round him, Conduct him to a carriage, he goes home And sitting by the fire (O what is fire?

The miracle of fire dawns on his thought, Fire has been near him all these years unseen, How wonderful is fire!) which warms and soothes Neuritic pains, he takes the rubber case Which locks the images of father, mother.

And as he stares upon the oval brow, The eyes of blue which flash the light of faith, Preserved like dendrites in this silver s.h.i.+mmer, Some spectral speculations fill his brain, Float like a storm above the sorry wreck Of all his logic tools, machines; for now Since pains in back and shoulder like to father's Fall to him at the age that father had them, Father has entered him, has settled down To live with him with those neuritic pangs.

Thus are his speculations. Over all How comes it that a sudden feel of life, Its wonder, terror, beauty is like father's?

As if the soul of father entered in him And made the field of consciousness his own, Emotions, powers of thought his instruments.

That is a horrible atavism, when You find yourself reverting to a soul You have not loved, despite yourself becoming That other soul, and with an out-worn self Crying for burial on your hands, a life Not yours till now that waits your new found powers-- Live now or die indeed!

SAMUEL BUTLER ET AL.

Let me consider your emergence From the milieu of our youth: We have played all the afternoon, grown hungry.

No meal has been prepared, where have you been?

Toward sun's decline we see you down the path, And run to meet you, and perhaps you smile, Or take us in your arms. Perhaps again You look at us, say nothing, are absorbed, Or chide us for our dirty frocks or faces.

Of running wild without our meals You do not speak.

Then in the house, seized with a sudden joy, After removing gloves and hat, you run, As with a winged descending flight, and cry, Half song, half exclamation, Seize one of us, Crush one of us with mad embraces, bite Ears of us in a rapture of affection.

"You shall have supper," then you say.

The stove lids rattle, wood's poked in the fire, The kettle steams, pots boil, by seven o'clock We sit down to a meal of hodge-podge stuff.

I understand now how your youth and spirits Fought back the drabness of the village, And wonder not you spent the afternoons With such bright company as Eugenia Turner-- And I forgive you hunger, loneliness.

But when we asked you where you'd been, Complained of loneliness and hunger, spoke of children Who lived in order, sat down thrice a day To cream and porridge, bread and meat.

We think to corner you--alas for us!

Your anger flashes swords! Reasons pour out Like anvil sparks to justify your way: "Your father's always gone--you selfish children, You'd have me in the house from morn till night."

You put us in the wrong--our cause is routed.

We turn to bed unsatisfied in mind, You've overwhelmed us, not convinced us.

Our sense of wrong defeat breeds resolution To whip you out when minds grow strong.

Up in the moon-lit room without a light, (The lamps have not been filled,) We crawl in unmade beds.

We leave you pouring over paper backs.

We peek above your shoulder.

It is "The Lady in White" you read.

Next morning you are dead for sleep, You've sat up more than half the night.

We have been playing hours when you arise, It's nine o'clock when breakfast's served at last, When school days come I'm always late to school.

Shy, hungry children scuffle at your door, Eye through the crack, maybe, at nine o'clock, Find father has returned during the night.

You are all happiness, his idlest word Provokes your laughter.

He shows us rolls of precious money earned; He's given you a silk dress, money too For suits and shoes for us--all is forgiven.

You run about the house, As with a winged descending flight and cry Half song, half exclamation.