Genesis - Book One

“. . . . Me next to sleep, all that is left of Eden,"
-The one who speaks is not remarkable
In the great city, circa 1930,
His state is not uncommon in the world,
0, by no means, sleepless and seeking sleep
As one who wades in water to the thighs,
Dragging it soft and heavy near the shore;
For now his body's lapse and ignorance
Permits his heavy mind certain loose sleeves,
Loose sleeves of feeling drawing near a drowse:
He knows of dark and sleep the unity,
He knows all being's consanguinity,
All anguish sinks into the first of seas,
The sea which soothes with softness ultimate
-Thus he descends,
***************and coughs, coughs!
*******************************the old cold comes, "
Jack-in-the-box, the conscious mind snaps up!
-He wakes,
*******his fuzzed gaze strains the dark,
And at the window's outline looks, in shock,
To see a certain whiteness glitter there,
Snow! dragging him to the window
With hurried heart. The childhood love still lives in him,
Like a sweet tooth in grown-up married girls,
December's white delight, a fourth year wish,
The classic swan disguised in modern life,
Freedom and silence shining in New York!
But, standing by the window, sees the truth,
Four stories down the blank courtyard on which
The moonlight shines, diagonal and pale
-And high, the moon's half-cut and glittering shell
Shines like the ice on which electric shines-
Says to himself, "How each view may be false!"
And then the whole thing happens all over again,
Waking, walking to the window, looking out,
Seeking for snow in May, a miracle
Quick in the dozing head's compelled free mix
-He sees the snow which is not snow, but light,
The moonlight's lie, error's fecundity
Fallen from the dead planet near the roof-

Absolute dark and dream space fall on him,
And he through dark and space begins to fall,
At first afraid, then horrified, then calm.
Then the wide stillness in which dream belief
Begins, prepared for all. And he begins
Once more to tell himself all that he knows
Over and over and over and over again,
All of the lives that have come close to his,
All of his life, much mixed in memory
Many a night through which he cannot sleep,
Many a year, over and over again!

But now a voice begins, strange in the dark,
As from a worn victrola record, needle
Which skims and whirrs, a voice intoned
As of a weak old man with foreign accent,
Ironic, comic, flat and matter of fact,
With alternation measured, artificial,
*************************moaned,
And yet with sympathy, simpatico
************************* as if
A guardian angel sang!
Then other voices,
Bodiless in the dark, entered in chorus:
"He must tell all, amazed as the three Magi
When they beheld the puking child! All is
Not natural! That's Life, the Magi too
Might have remarked to one another, Life
Full of all things but what one would expect-"

And he who listened said then to himself,
"A daemon, a daemon, no doubt: who else?
Such as was heard by Socrates, perhaps,
Or an angel, the angel who struggled with Jacob,
If Jacob lived, if angels also live—“

The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me

"the withness of the body" --Whitehead

The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water's clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
--The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all.

That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
the scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

Song #149

This world is gradually becoming a place
where I do not care to be any more. Can Delmore die?
I don't suppose
in all them years a day went ever by
without a loving thought for him. Welladay.
In the brightness of his promise,

unstained, I saw him thro' the mist of the actual
blazing with insight, warm with gossip
thro' all our Harvard years
when both of us were just becoming known
I got him out of a police-station once, in Washington, the world is tref
and grief too astray for tears.

I imagine you have heard the terrible news,
that Delmore Schwartz is dead, miserably & alone,
in New York: he sang me a song
'I am the Brooklyn poet Delmore Schwartz
Harms & the child I sing, two parents' torts'
when he was young & gift-strong.

Song #157

Ten Songs, one solid block of agony,
I wrote for him, and then I wrote no more.
His sad ghost must aspire
free of my love to its own past, that ghost,
among its fellows, Mozart's, Bach's, Delmore's
free of its careful body

high in the shades which line the avenue
where I will gladly walk, beloved of one,
and listen to the Buddha.
His work downhill, I don't conceal from you,
ran and ran out. The brain shook as if stunned,
I hope he's over that,

flame may his glory in that other place,
for he was fond of fame, devoted to it,
and every first-rate soul
has sacrifices which it puts in play,
I hope he's sitting with his peers: sit, sit,
& recover & be whole.