Paterson (Revised Edition) (11 page)

C
.

Dr. P.:

This is the simplest, most outright letter I’ve ever written to you; and you ought to read it all the way through, and carefully, because it’s about you, as a writer, and about the ideas regarding women that you expressed in your article on A. N., and because in regard to myself, it contains certain information which I did not think it necessary to give you before, and which I do think now you ought to have. And if my anger in the beginning makes you too angry to go on from there—well, that anger of mine isn’t there in the last part, now as I attach this post-script.

C
.

And if you don’t feel like reading it even for those reasons, will you then do so,
please
, merely out of fairness to me—much time and much thought and much unhappiness having gone into those pages.

Cities, for Oliver, were not a part of nature. He could hardly feel, he could hardly admit even when it was pointed out to him, that cities are a second body for the human mind, a second organism, more rational, permanent and decorative than the animal organism of flesh and bone: a work of natural yet moral art, where the soul sets up her trophies of action and instruments of pleasure.

—The Last Puritan.
S
ANTAYANA
.

I love the locust tree

the sweet white locust

How much?

How much?

How much does it cost

to love the locust tree

in bloom?

A fortune bigger than

Avery could muster

So much

So much

the shelving green

locust

whose bright small leaves

in June

lean among flowers

sweet and white at

heavy cost

A cool of books

will sometimes lead the mind to libraries

of a hot afternoon, if books can be found

cool to the sense to lead the mind away.

For there is a wind or ghost of a wind

in all books echoing the life

there, a high wind that fills the tubes

of the ear until we think we hear a wind,

actual     .

to lead the mind away.

Drawn from the streets we break off

our minds’ seclusion and are taken up by

the books’ winds, seeking, seeking

down the wind

until we are unaware which is the wind and

which the wind’s power over us     .

to lead the mind away

and there grows in the mind

a scent, it may be, of locust blossoms

whose perfume is itself a wind moving

to lead the mind away

through which, below the cataract

soon to be dry

the river whirls and eddys

first recollected.

Spent from wandering the useless

streets these months, faces folded against

him like clover at nightfall, something

has brought him back to his own

mind     .

in which a falls unseen

tumbles and rights itself

and refalls—and does not cease, falling

and refalling with a roar, a reverberation

not of the falls but of its rumor

unabated

Beautiful thing,

my dove, unable and all who are windblown,

touched by the fire

and unable,

a roar that (soundless) drowns the sense

with its reiteration

unwilling to lie in its bed

and sleep and sleep, sleep

in its dark bed.

Summer! it is summer     .

—and still the roar in his mind is

unabated

The last wolf was killed near the Weisse Huis in the year 1723

Books will give rest sometimes against

the uproar of water falling

and righting itself to refall filling

the mind with its reverberation

shaking stone.

Blow! So be it. Bring down! So be it. Consume

and submerge! So be it. Cyclone, fire

and flood. So be it. Hell, New Jersey, it said

on the letter. Delivered without comment.

So be it!

Run from it, if you will. So be it.

(Winds that enshroud us in their folds—

or no wind). So be it. Pull at the doors, of a hot

afternoon, doors that the wind holds, wrenches

from our arms — and hands. So be it. The Library

is sanctuary to our fears. So be it. So be it.

— the wind that has tripped us, pressed upon

us, prurient or upon the prurience of our fears

— laughter fading. So be it.

Sit breathless

or still breathless. So be it. Then, eased

turn to the task. So be it   :

Old newspaper files,

to find — a child burned in a field,

no language. Tried, aflame, to crawl under

a fence to go home. So be it. Two others,

boy and girl, clasped in each other’s arms

(clasped also by the water) So be it. Drowned

wordless in the canal. So be it. The Paterson

Cricket Club, 1896. A woman lobbyist. So

be it. Two local millionaires — moved away.

So be it. Another Indian rock shelter

found — a bone awl. So be it. The

old Rogers Locomotive Works. So be it.

Shield us from loneliness. So be it. The mind

reels, starts back amazed from the reading     .

So be it.

He turns: over his right shoulder

a vague outline, speaking     .

Gently!
Gently!

as in all things an opposite

that awakes

the fury, conceiving

knowledge

by way of despair that has

no place

to lay its glossy head—

Save only—not alone!

Never, if possible

alone!    to escape the accepted

chopping block

and a square hat!     .

The “Castle” too to be razed. So be it. For no

reason other than that it is
there
, in-

comprehensible;    of no USE! So be it. So be it.

Lambert, the poor English boy,

the immigrant, who built it

was the first

to oppose the unions:

This is MY shop. I reserve the right (and he did)

to walk down the row (between his looms) and

fire any son-of-a-bitch I choose without excuse

or reason more than that I don’t like his face.

Rose and I didn’t know each other when we both went to the Paterson strike around the first war and worked in the Pagent. She went regularly to feed Jack Reed in jail and I listened to Big Bill Haywood, Gurley Flynn and the rest of the big hearts and helping hands in Union Hall. And look at the damned thing now.

They broke him all right     .

—the old boy himself, a Limey,

his head full of castles, the pivots of that

curt dialectic (while it lasted), built himself a

Balmoral on the alluvial silt, the rock-fall skirt-

ing the volcanic upthrust of the “Mountain”

—some of the windows

of the main house illuminated by translucent

laminae of planed pebbles (his first wife

admired them) by far the most authentic detail

of the place; at least the best

to be had there and the best artifact     .

The province of the poem is the world.

When the sun rises, it rises in the poem

and when it sets darkness comes down and

the poem is dark     .

and lamps are lit, cats prowl and men

read, read—or mumble and stare

at that which their small lights distinguish

or obscure or their hands search out

in the dark. The poem moves them or

it does not move them.   Faitoute, his ears

ringing     .     no sound     .     no great city,

as he seems to read —

a roar of books

from the wadded library oppresses him

until

his mind begins to drift     .

Beautiful thing:

— a dark flame,

a wind, a flood—counter to all staleness.

Dead men’s dreams, confined by these walls, risen,

seek an outlet. The spirit languishes,

unable, unable not from lack of innate ability —

(barring alone sure death)

but from that which immures them pressed here

together with their fellows, for respite     .

Flown in from before the cold or nightbound

(the light attracted them)

they sought safety (in books)

but ended battering against glass

at the high windows

The Library is desolation, it has a smell of its own

of stagnation and death     .

Beautiful Thing!

—the cost of dreams.

in which we search, after a surgery

of the wits and must translate, quickly

step by step or be destroyed—under a spell

to remain a castrate (a slowly descending veil

closing about the mind

cutting the mind away)     .

SILENCE!

Awake, he dozes in a fever heat,

cheeks burning     .     .     loaning blood

to the past, amazed     .     risking life.

And as his mind fades, joining the others, he

seeks to bring it back—but it

eludes him, flutters again and flies off and

again away     .

O Thalassa, Thalassa!

the lash and hiss of water

The sea!

How near it was to them!

Soon!

Too soon     .

—and still he brings it back, battering

with the rest against the vents and high windows

(They do not yield but shriek

as furies,

shriek and execrate the imagination, the impotent,

a woman against a woman, seeking to destroy

it but cannot, the life will not out of it)     .

A library — of books! decrying all books

that enfeeble the mind’s intent

Beautiful thing!

The Indians were accused of killing two or three pigs—this was untrue, as afterward proved, because the pigs had been butchered by the white men themselves. The following incident is concerned with two of the Indians who had been captured by Kieft’s soldiers because of the accusations: The braves had been turned over to the soldiers, by Kieft, to do with as they pleased.

The first of these savages, having received a frightful wound, desired them to permit him to dance the Kinte Kaye, a religious use among them before death; he received, however, so many wounds that he dropped dead. The soldiers then cut strips down the other’s body…. While this was going forward Director Kieft, with his Councillor (the first trained physician in the colony) Jan de la Montagne, a Frenchman, stood laughing heartily at the fun, and rubbing his right arm, so much delight he took in such scenes. He then ordered him (the brave) to be taken out of the fort, and the soldiers bringing him to the Beaver’s Path, he dancing the Kinte Kaye all the time, mutilated him, and at last cut off his head.

There stood at the same time, 24 or 25 female savages, who had been taken prisoners, at the north-west corner of the fort: they held up their arms, and in their language exclaimed. “For shame! for shame! such unheard of cruelty was never known, or even thought of, among us.”

They made money of sea-shells. Bird feathers. Beaver skins. When a priest died and was buried they encased him with such wealth as he possessed. The Dutch dug up the body, stole the furs and left the carcass to the wolves that roamed the woods.

Doc, listen — fiftyish, a grimy hand

pushing back the cap: In gold —

Volunteers of America

I got

a woman outside I want to marry, will

you give her a blood test?

From 1869 to 1879 several crossed the falls on a tight rope (in the old pictures the crowd, below, on the dry rocks in their short sleeves and summer dresses look more like water-lilies or penguins than men and women staring up at them): De Lave, Harry Leslie and Geo. Dobbs—the last carrying a boy upon his shoulders. Fleetwood Miles, a semi-lunatic, announced that he too would perform the feat but could not be found when the crowd had assembled.

The place sweats of staleness and of rot

a back-house stench     .     a

library stench

It is summer! stinking summer

Escape from it—but not by running

away. Not by “composition.” Embrace the

foulness

—the being taut, balanced between

eternities

A spectator on Morris Mountain, when Leslie had gone out with a cookstove strapped to his back—tugged at one of the guy-ropes, either out of malice or idleness, so that he almost fell off. Having carried the stove to the center of the rope he kindled a fire in it, cooked an omelet and ate it. It rained that night so that the later performance had to be postponed.

But on Monday he did the Washerwoman’s Frolic, in female attire, staggering drunkenly across the chasm, going backward, hopping on one foot and at the rope’s center lay down on his side. He retired after that having “busted” his tights—to the cottage above for repairs.