We heard cremationists guffaw and snort
At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort
As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.
We all avoided criticizing faiths.
The great Starover Blue reviewed the role
Planets had played as landfalls of the soul.
The fate of beasts was pondered. A Chinese 630 Discanted on the etiquette at teas
With ancestors, and how far up to go.
I tore apart the fantasies of Poe,
And dealt with childhood memories of strange
Nacreous gleams beyond the adults’ range.
Among our auditors were a young priest
And an old Communist. Iph could at least
Compete with churches and the party line.
In later years it started to decline:
Buddhism took root. A medium smuggled in 640 Pale jellies and a floating mandolin.
Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept
All is allowed, into some classes crept;
And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb,
A school of Freudians headed for the tomb.
That tasteless venture helped me in a way.
I learnt what to ignore in my survey
Of death's abyss. And when we lost our child
I knew there would be nothing: no self-styled
Spirit would touch a keyboard of dry wood 650 To rap out her pet name; no phantom would
Rise gracefully to welcome you and me
In the dark garden, near the shagbark tree.
"What is that funny creaking - do you hear?"
"It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear."
"If you're not sleeping, let's turn on the light.
I hate that wind! Let's play some chess." "All right."
"I'm sure it's not the shutter. There - again."
"It is a tendril fingering the pane."
"What glided down the roof and made that thud?" 660 «It is old winter tumbling in the mud.»
«And now what shall I do? My knight is pinned.»
Who rides so late in the night and the wind?
It is the writer’s grief. It is the wild
March wind. It is the father with his child.
Later came minutes, hours, whole days at last,
When she'd be absent from our thoughts, so fast
Did life, the woolly caterpillar run.
We went to Italy. Sprawled in the sun.
On a white beach with other pink or brown 670 Americans. Flew back to our small town.
Found that my bunch of essays The Untamed
Seahorse was «universally acclaimed»
(It sold three hundred copies in one year).
Again school started, and on hillsides, where
Wound distant roads, one saw the steady stream
Of carlights all returning to the dream
Of college education. You went on
Translating into French Marvell and Donne.
It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane 680 Lolita Swept from Florida to Maine.
Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died.
The Crashaw Club had paid me to discuss
Why Poetry Is Meaningful to Us.
I gave my sermon, a dull thing but short.
As I was leaving in some haste, to thwart
The so-called "question period" at the end,
One of those peevish people who attend
Such talks only to say they disagree 690 Stood up and pointed with his pipe at me.
And then it happened — the attack, the trance,
Or one of my old fits. There sat by chance
A doctor in the front row. At his feet
Patly I fell. My heart had stopped to beat,
It seems, and several moments passed before
It heaved and went on trudging to a more
Conclusive destination.
Give me now
Your full attention. I can't tell you how
I knew - but I did know that I had crossed 700 The border. Everything I loved was lost
But no aorta could report regret.
A sun of rubber was convulsed and set;
And blood-black nothingness began to spin
A system of cells interlinked within
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.
I realized, of course, that it was made
Not of our atoms; that the sense behind
710 The scene was not our sense. In life, the mind
Of any man is quick to recognize
Natural shams, and then before his eyes
The reed becomes a bird, the knobby twig
An inchworm, and the cobra head, a big
Wickedly folded moth. But in the case
Of my white fountain what it did replace
Perceptually was something that, I felt,
Could be grasped only by whoever dwelt
In the strange world where I was a mere stray.
720 And presently I saw it melt away:
Though still unconscious I was back on earth.
The tale I told provoked my doctor’s mirth.
He doubted very much that in the state
He found me in «one could hallucinate
Or dream in any sense. Later, perhaps,
But not during the actual collapse.
No, Mr. Shade.» But, Doctor, I was dead!
He smiled. «Not quite: just half a shade,» he said.
However, I demurred. In mind I kept
Replaying the whole thing. Again I stepped 730 Down from the platform, and felt strange and hot,
And saw that chap stand up, and toppled, not
Because a heckler pointed with his pipe,
But probably because the time was ripe
For just that bump and wobble on the part
Of a limp blimp, an old unstable heart.
My vision reeked with truth. It had the tone,
The quiddity and quaintness of its own
Reality. It was. As time went on.740 Its constant vertical in triumph shone.
Often when troubled by the outer glare
Of street and strife, inward I’d turn, and there,
There in the background of my soul it stood,
Old Faithful! And its presence always would
Console me wonderfully. Then, one day,
I came across what seemed a twin display.
It was a story in a magazine
About a Mrs. Z. whose heart had been
Rubbed back to life by a prompt surgeon's hand.750 She told her interviewer of «The Land
Beyond the Veil» and the account contained
A hint of angels, and a glint of stained
Windows, and some soft music, and a choice
Of hymnal items, and her mother’s voice;
But at the end she mentioned a remote
Landscape, a hazy orchard — and I quote:
«Beyond that orchard through a kind of smoke
I glimpsed a tall white fountain — and awoke.»
If on some nameless island Captain Schmidt 760 Sees a new animal and captures it,
And if, a little later, Captain Smith
Brings back a skin, that island is no myth.
Our fountain was a signpost and a mark
Objectively enduring in the dark,
Strong as a bone, substantial as a tooth,
And almost vulgar in its robust truth!
The article was by Jim Coates. To Jim
Forthwith I wrote. Got her address from him.
Drove west three hundred miles to talk to her.770 Arrived. Was met by an impassioned purr.
Saw that blue hair, those freckled hands, that rapt
Orchideous air — and knew that I was trapped.
"Who'd miss the opportunity to meet
A poet so distinguished?" It was sweet
Of me to come! I desperately tried
To ask my questions. They were brushed aside:
"Perhaps some other time." The journalist
Still had her scribblings. I should not insist.
She plied me with fruit cake, turning it all 780 Into an idiotic social call.
«I can’t believe,» she said, «that it is you!
I loved your poem in the Blue Review.
That one about Mon Blon. I have a niece
Who’s climbed the Matterhorn. The other piece
I could not understand. I mean the sense.
Because, of course, the sound — But I’m so dense!»
She was. I might have persevered. I might
Have made her tell me more about the white
Fountain we both had seen "beyond the veil" 790 But if (I thought) I mentioned that detail
She’d pounce upon it, as upon a fond
Affinity, a sacramental bond,
Uniting mystically her and me,
And in a jiffy our two souls would be
Brother and sister trembling on the brink
Of tender incest. «Well,» I said, «I think
It’s getting late…»
I also called on Coates.
He was afraid he had mislaid her notes.
He took his article from a steel file: 800 «It’s accurate. I have not changed her style.
There’s one misprint — not that it matters much:
Mountain, not fountain. The majestic touch.»
Life Everlasting - based on a misprint!
I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,
And stop investigating my abyss?
But all at once it dawned on me that this
Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme;
Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But a topsy-turvical coincidence,810 Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.
Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern in the game,
Plexed artistry, and something of the same
Pleasure in it as they who played it found.
It did not matter who they were. No sound,
No furtive light came from their involute
Abode, but there they were, aloof and mute,
Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns 820 To ivory unicorns and ebon fauns;
Kindling a long life here, extinguishing
A short one there; killing a Balkan king;
Causing a chunk of ice formed on a high
Flying airplane to plummet from the sky
And strike a farmer dead; hiding my keys,
Glasses or pipe. Coordinating these
Events and objects with remote events
And vanished objects. Making ornaments
Of accidents and possibilities.
830 Stormcoated, I strode in: Sybil, it is
My firm conviction — «Darling, shut the door.
Had a nice trip?» Splendid — but what is more
I have returned convinced that I can grope
My way to some — to some — «Yes, dear?» Faint hope.
Canto Four
Now I shall spy on beauty as none has
Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as
None has cried out. Now I shall try what none
Has tried. Now I shall do what none has done.
And speaking of this wonderful machine: 840 I’m puzzled by
