Paterson (Revised Edition) (6 page)

—Studies of the Greek Poets
, John Addington Symonds

Vol. I, p. 284

Thickets gather about groups of squat sand-pine,

all but from bare rock   .   .

—a scattering of man-high cedars (sharp cones), antlered sumac   .

—roots, for the most part, writhing

upon the surface

(so close are we to ruin every

day!)

searching the punk-dry rot

Walking   —

The body is tilted slightly forward from the basic standing

position and the weight thrown on the ball of the foot,

while the other thigh is lifted and the leg and opposite

arm are swung forward (fig. 6
B
). Various muscles, aided   .

Despite my having said that I’d never write to you again, I do so now because I find, with the passing of time, that the outcome of my failure with you has been the complete damming up of all my creative capacities in a particularly disastrous manner such as I have never before experienced.

For a great many weeks now (whenever I’ve tried to write poetry) every thought I’ve had, even every feeling, has been struck off some surface crust of myself which began gathering when I first sensed that you were ignoring the real contents of my last letters to you, and which finally congealed into some impenetrable substance when you asked me to quit corresponding with you altogether without even an explanation.

That kind of blockage, exiling one’s self from one’s self—have you ever experienced it? I dare say you have, at moments; and if so, you can well understand what a serious psychological injury it amounts to when turned into a permanent day-to-day condition.

How do I love you? These!

(He hears! Voices   .   indeterminate! Sees them moving, in groups, by twos and fours—filtering off by way of the many bypaths.)

I asked him, What do you do?

He smiled patiently, The typical American question.

In Europe they would ask, What are you doing? Or
,

What are you doing now?

What do I do? I listen, to the water falling. (No

sound of it here but with the wind!) This is my entire

occupation.

No fairer day ever dawned anywhere than May 2, 1880, when the German Singing Societies of Paterson met on Garret Mountain, as they did many years before on the first Sunday in May.

However the meeting of 1880 proved a fatal day, when William Dalzell, who owned a piece of property near the scene of the festivities, shot John Joseph Van Houten. Dalzell claimed that the visitors had in previous years walked over his garden and was determined that this year he would stop them from crossing any part of his grounds.

Immediately after the shot the quiet group of singers was turned into an infuriated mob who would take Dalzell into their own hands. The mob then proceeded to burn the barn into which Dalzell had retreated from the angry group.

Dalzell fired at the approaching mob from a window in the barn and one of the bullets struck a little girl in the cheek…. Some of the Paterson Police rushed Dalzell out of the barn [to] the house of John Ferguson some half furlong away.

The crowd now numbered some ten thousand,

“a great beast!”

for many had come from the city to join the conflict. The case looked serious, for the Police were greatly outnumbered. The crowd then tried to burn the Ferguson house and Dalzell went to the house of John McGuckin. While in this house it was that Sergeant John McBride suggested that it might be well to send for William McNulty, Dean of Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church.

In a moment the Dean set on a plan. He proceeded to the scene in a hack. Taking Dalzell by the arm, in full view of the infuriated mob, he led the man to the hack and seating himself by his side, ordered the driver to proceed. The crowd hesitated, bewildered between the bravery of the Dean and     .

Signs everywhere of birds nesting, while

in the air, slow, a crow zigzags

with heavy wings before the wasp-thrusts

of smaller birds circling about him

that dive from above stabbing for his eyes

Walking —

he leaves the path, finds hard going

across-field, stubble and matted brambles

seeming a pasture—but no pasture     .

old furrows, to say labor sweated or

had sweated here     .

a flame,

spent.

The file-sharp grass   .

When! from before his feet, half tripping,

picking a way, there starts     .

a flight of empurpled wings!

—invisibly created (their

jackets dust-grey) from the dust kindled

to sudden ardor!

They fly away, churring! until

their strength spent they plunge

to the coarse cover again and disappear

—but leave, livening the mind, a flashing

of wings and a churring song   .

AND a grasshopper of red basalt, boot-long,

tumbles from the core of his mind,

a rubble-bank disintegrating beneath a

tropic downpour

Chapultepec! grasshopper hill!

—a matt stone solicitously instructed

to bear away some rumor

of the living presence that has preceded

it, out-precedented its breath   .

These wings do not unfold for flight—

no need!

the weight (to the hand) finding

a counter-weight or counter buoyancy

by the mind’s wings

He is afraid! What then?

Before his feet, at each step, the flight

is renewed. A burst of wings, a quick

churring sound     :

couriers to the ceremonial of love!

—aflame in flight!

—aflame only in flight!

No flesh but the caress!

He is led forward by their announcing wings.

If that situation with you (your ignoring those particular letters and then your final note) had belonged to the inevitable lacrimae rerum (as did, for instance, my experience with Z.) its result could not have been (as it
has
been) to destroy the validity for me myself
of
myself, because in that case nothing to do with my sense of personal identity would have been maimed—the cause of one’s frustrations in such instances being not
in
one’s self nor in the other person but merely in the sorry scheme of things. But since your ignoring those letters was not “natural” in that sense (or rather since to regard it as unnatural I am forced, psychologically, to feel that what I wrote you about, was sufficiently trivial and unimportant and absurd to merit your evasion) it could not but follow that that whole side of life connected with those letters should in consequence take on for my own self that same kind of unreality and inaccessibility which the inner lives of other people often have for us.

—his mind a red stone carved to be

endless flight

Love that is a stone endlessly in flight,

so long as stone shall last bearing

the chisel’s stroke

.     .     and is lost and covered

with ash, falls from an undermined bank

and—begins churring!

AND DOES, the stone after the life!

The stone lives, the flesh dies

—we know nothing of death.

—boot long

window-eyes that front the whole head,

Red stone! as if

a light still clung in them     .

Love

combating sleep

___________

the sleep

piecemeal

Shortly after midnight, August 20, 1878, special officer Goodridge, when in front of the Franklin House, heard a strange squealing noise down towards Ellison Street. Running to see what was the matter, he found a cat at bay under the water table at Clark’s hardware store on the corner, confronting a strange black animal too small to be a cat and entirely too large for a rat. The officer ran up to the spot and the animal got in under the grating of the cellar window, from which it frequently poked its head with a lightning rapidity. Mr. Goodridge made several strikes at it with his club but was unable to hit it. Then officer Keyes came along and as soon as he saw it, he said it was a mink, which confirmed the theory that Mr. Goodridge had already formed. Both tried for a while to hit it with their clubs but were unable to do so, when finally officer Goodridge drew his pistol and fired a shot at the animal. The shot evidently missed its mark, but the noise and powder so frightened the little joker that it jumped out into the street, and made down into Ellison Street at a wonderful gait, closely followed by the two officers. The mink finally disappeared down a cellar window under the grocery store below Spangermacher’s lager beer saloon, and that was the last seen of it. The cellar was examined again in the morning, but nothing further could be discovered of the little critter that had caused so much fun.

Without invention nothing is well spaced,

unless the mind change, unless

the stars are new measured, according

to their relative positions, the

line will not change, the necessity

will not matriculate: unless there is

a new mind there cannot be a new

line, the old will go on

repeating itself with recurring

deadliness: without invention

nothing lies under the witch-hazel

bush, the alder does not grow from among

the hummocks margining the all

but spent channel of the old swale,

the small foot-prints

of the mice under the overhanging

tufts of the bunch-grass will not

appear: without invention the line

will never again take on its ancient

divisions when the word, a supple word,

lived in it, crumbled now to chalk.

Under the bush they lie protected

from the offending sun—

11 o’clock

They seem to talk

—a park, devoted to pleasure: devoted to   .   grasshoppers!

3 colored girls, of age! stroll by

—their color flagrant,

their voices vagrant

their laughter wild, flagellant, dissociated

from the fixed scene     .

But the white girl, her head

upon an arm, a butt between her fingers

lies under the bush     .     .

Semi-naked, facing her, a sunshade

over his eyes,

he talks with her

—the jalopy half hid

behind them in the trees—

I bought a new bathing suit, just

pants and a brassiere   :

the breasts and

the pudenda covered—beneath

the sun in frank vulgarity.

Minds beaten thin

by waste—among

the working classes SOME sort

of breakdown

has occurred. Semi-roused

they lie upon their blanket

face to face,

mottled by the shadows of the leaves

upon them, unannoyed,

at least here unchallenged.

Not undignified.     .     .

talking, flagrant beyond all talk

in perfect domesticity—

And having bathed

and having eaten (a few

sandwiches)

their pitiful thoughts do meet

in the flesh—surrounded

by churring loves! Gay wings

to bear them (in sleep)

—their thoughts alight,

away

.     .     among the grass

Walking   —

across the old swale—a dry wave in the ground

tho’ marked still by the line of Indian alders

.     .     they (the Indians) would weave

in and out, unseen, among them along the stream

.     come out whooping between the log