Chimneysmoke Part 8

QUICKENING

Such little, puny things are words in rhyme: Poor feeble loops and strokes as frail as hairs; You see them printed here, and mark their chime, And turn to your more durable affairs.

Yet on such petty tools the poet dares To run his race with mortar, bricks and lime, And draws his frail stick to the point, and stares To aim his arrow at the heart of Time.

Intangible, yet pressing, hemming in, This measured emptiness engulfs us all, And yet he points his paper javelin And sees it eddy, waver, turn, and fall, And feels, between delight and trouble torn, The stirring of a sonnet still unborn.

AT A WINDOW SILL

_To write a sonnet needs a quiet mind...._ I paused and pondered, tried again. _To write...._

Raising the sash, I breathed the winter night: Papers and small hot room were left behind.

Against the gusty purple, ribbed and spined With golden slots and vertebrae of light Men's cages loomed. Down sliding from a height An elevator winked as it declined.

Coward! There is no quiet in the brain-- If pity burns it not, then beauty will: Tinder it is for every blowing spark.

Uncertain whether this is bliss or pain The unresting mind will gaze across the sill From high apartment windows, in the dark.

THE RIVER OF LIGHT

I. Broadway, 103rd to 96th.

Lights foam and bubble down the gentle grade: Bright s.h.i.+ne chop sueys and rotisseries; In pink translucence glowingly displayed See camisole and stocking and chemise.

Delicatessen windows full of cheese-- Above, the chimes of church-bells toll and fade-- And then, from off some distant Palisade That gluey savor on the Jersey breeze!

The burning bulbs, in green and white and red, Spell out a _Change of Program Sun., Wed., Fri._, A clicking taxi spins with ruby spark.

There is a sense of poising near the head Of some great flume of brightness, flowing by To pour in gathering torrent through the dark.

THE RIVER OF LIGHT

II. Below 96th

The current quickens, and in golden flow Hurries its flotsam downward through the night-- Here are the rapids where the undertow Whirls endless motors in a gleaming flight.

From blazing tributaries, left and right, Influent streams of blue and amber grow.

Columbus Circle eddies: all below Is pouring flame, a gorge of broken light.

See how the burning river boils in spate, Channeled by cliffs of insane jewelry, Painting a rosy roof on cloudy air-- And just about ten minutes after eight, Tossing a surf of color to the sky It bursts in cataracts upon Times Square!

OF HER GLORIOUS MADNESS

The city's mad: through her prodigious veins What errant, strange, eccentric humors thrill: Day, when her cataracts of sunlight spill-- Night, golden-panelled with her window panes; The toss of wind-blown skirts; and who can drill Forever his fierce heart with checking reins?

Cruel and mad, my statisticians say-- Ah, but she raves in such a gallant way!

Brave madness, built for beauty and the sun-- In such a town who can be sane? Not I.

Of clas.h.i.+ng colors all her moods are spun-- A scarlet anger and a golden cry.

This frantic town where madcap mischiefs run They ask to take the veil, and be a nun!

IN AN AUCTION ROOM

(_Letter of John Keats to f.a.n.n.y Browne, Anderson Galleries,_ _March 15, 1920._)

To Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach.

_How about this lot?_ said the auctioneer; _One hundred, may I say, just for a start?_ Between the plum-red curtains, drawn apart, A written sheet was held.... And strange to hear (Dealer, would I were steadfast as thou art) The cold quick bids. (_Against you in the rear!_) The crimson salon, in a glow more clear Burned bloodlike purple as the poet's heart.

Song that outgrew the singer! Bitter Love That broke the proud hot heart it held in thrall; Poor script, where still those tragic pa.s.sions move-- _Eight hundred bid: fair warning: the last call:_ The soul of Adonais, like a star....

_Sold for eight hundred dollars--Doctor R.!_

EPITAPH FOR A POET WHO WROTE NO POETRY

"It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid."--Robert Louis Stevenson.

What was the service of this poet? He Who blinked the blinding dazzle-rays that run Where life profiles its edges to the sun, And still suspected much he could not see.

Clay-stopped, yet in his taciturnity There lay the vein of glory, known to none; And moods of secret smiling, only won When peace and pa.s.sion, time and sense, agree.

Fighting the world he loved for chance to brood, Ignorant when to embrace, when to avoid His loves that held him in their vital clutch-- This was his service, his beat.i.tude; This was the inward trouble he enjoyed Who knew so little, and who felt so much.

SONNET BY A GEOMETER

THE CIRCLE

Few things are perfect: we bear Eden's scar; Yet faulty man was G.o.dlike in design That day when first, with stick and length of twine, He drew me on the sand. Then what could mar His joy in that obedient mystic line; And then, computing with a zeal divine, He called ? 3-point-14159 And knew my lovely circuit 2 ? r!