Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round In Robot Towns Read online

  And read the names and wondered how

  Clown doughnuts lay in such deep snow;

  And took cosmetic chocolate-chips

  To draw moustache on virgin lips.

  And full of candied avarice

  Blacked-out our teeth with licorice,

  And grinned like devilled ham at self

  Preserved in mirror-jars on shelf

  And saw our eyes gone berry-blue

  As all the jams this summer grew,

  And bright our lips as cherry sins

  And ripe our smile as pumpkin grins;

  And full our mind of murder/slaughter

  But clean our breath as menthol water

  That in the dripped night, dark and still

  The old dog laps from icebox sill.

  Boy Pope behold! Dog Bishop see!

  Twin celebrants in dark pantry

  Where all the pontiff’s orbs are kept:

  Crabapple multitudes, sweet slept.

  Confessional the cubby seems

  Where dog and boy feed naked dreams

  And wash it all in innocence

  From parsley/pickle/peppermints,

  To in the half-lit wild of dawn

  Uncoil in cartwheels on the lawn

  And teach drab cats to catnip take

  And Christian fasts call forth and break.

  Then up the stairs the saved child creeps

  And icebox-hid the sly dog sleeps

  And none to know their midnight sins

  Are stashed and slept in pantry bins.

  And what the moral in this lies?

  Stop boys. Leash dogs. Swat bugs. Squash flies.

  Prohibit such from pantry reach,

  Or they will salt the sugar teach,

  And rum the apple, gin the pear

  With summer sins grown unaware:

  God finds at Year’s End what was His

  Now Lucifer’s wine-cellar is.

  But … Sh! Abed the sweet boy dogs,

  And dog like boy-in-brambly-togs

  Beneath the icebox laps the gin

  Of melted Snow Maiden within;

  And boy all purrs and golden-curled

  Dreams what?

  Of blowing up the world.

  I Have a Brother, Mostly Dead

  * * *

  I have a brother, mostly dead

  And angels curled upon his head;

  Most of my life, mostly unseen,

  And yet I feel with him I’ve been

  A cohort playmate friend of Poe

  Who tours me where live friends can’t go.

  He teaches me his mortal park

  And where the firefly stops for spark

  And how the shade within the night

  Is a most fine delicious fright.

  I give him words, he gives me bone

  To play like Piper when alone;

  And so my brother, dead, you see

  Is wondrous literate company.

  Thus if my Muse says: Nevermore!

  I hear a tapping at my door;

  My brother comes to saviour me

  With graveyard biscuit, rictus tea,

  That tea in which, perused awhile

  One finds a lovely mummy’s smile

  And then again, he bids me snuff

  Egyptian dusts—one pinch enough

  To knock my timbers, sneeze my brain

  So Idea Ghosts sit up again

  To tap my eyelids, tick my nose

  And shape themselves with words for clothes.

  All this my long lost brother does,

  This sibling spent before my cause.

  He moves my hand and Lo! O Lord!

  His tombstone my Ouija Board.

  He shouts: Stay not in buried room,

  Come forth, sweet brother, flower my tomb

  With words so rare and phrase so bright

  They’ll bonfire burn away the night.

  All this to me lost brother is

  And I his live sweet Lazarus.

  His shout ignore? his cry refuse?

  No, no! Much thanks, long-dead fine Muse.

  Why Viking Lander, Why the Planet Mars?

  * * *

  Why Mars?

  Why go to find the place?

  The human race gives answer, finds a pause,

  And, no, not just Because It’s There.

  We walk the air from here to planet out beyond

  Because we’re more than fond of life and what we are.

  And what is that? you ask.

  For answer, go to Shaw,

  Dear G.B.S. speaks constantly,

  Asks Why and What are we?

  The Life Force in the Universe

  That longs to See!

  That would Become

  And in the act of being, changing, seeing, touching, growing

  Looms up as beast that knows itself

  And knows it knows and keeps on knowing.

  We are the Abyss Light that comes from Pleiades

  The stuff that, born in dark,

  Now sees and knows it sees.

  A mute flesh lately found and given tongue

  To sing strange songs that till our time remained unsung.

  And what the song, the tune?

  To fashion fires and thus outrace the Moon

  And with our new flame-tossing Ra-Egyptian chariot cars

  Fly off to land, taste, touch and know strange Mars.

  And with the knowledge gained make lasting yeast

  To grow man ten ways tall to feast

  On universe and stars

  And use as seedbed-station-birthing place

  This empty Mars.

  Again: What is this perturbed flesh, dissatisfied

  That longs to try and test what none have tried?

  Why: Force and Matter, changed to Thought and Will

  That Thought which dreams of flight in fire

  To stand us Kings on Martian hill.

  We Saviour call ourselves from earthly tomb

  And go to find a better place, a larger room.

  Mars but a Beginning,

  Real Heaven our end,

  That is the power man has to build and send

  To answer Job’s most rank despair and old outcry:

  Man need not fade and fall and, falling, die!

  Why Mars? Why Viking Lander on its way?

  To landfall Time, give man Forever’s Day …

  Unlock the doors of light-year grave

  Fling wide the portal;

  Give man the gift of stars,

  Grow him immortal.

  Put down the Dark, kill final Death,

  And sweeten Man with everlasting breath.

  We Have Our Arts so We Won’t Die of Truth

  * * *

  Know only Real? Fall dead.

  So Nietzsche said.

  We have our Arts so we won’t die of Truth.

  The World is too much with us.

  The Flood stays on beyond the Forty Days.

  The sheep that graze in yonder fields are wolves.

  The clock that ticks inside your head is truly Time

  And in the night will bury you.

  The children warm in bed at dawn will leave

  And take your heart and go to worlds you do not know.

  All this being so

  We need our Arts to teach us how to breathe

  And beat our blood; accept the Devil’s neighborhood,

  And age and dark and cars that run us down,

  And clown with Death’s-head in him

  Or skull that wears Fool’s crown

  And jingles blood-rust bells and rattles groans

  To earthquake-settle attic bones late nights.

  All this, this, this, all this—too much!

  It cracks the heart!

  And so? Find Art.

  Seize brush. Take stance. Do fancy footwork. Dance.

  Run race. Try poem. Write play.

  Milton does more than drunk God can


  To justify Man’s way toward Man.

  And maundered Melville takes as task

  To find the mask beneath the mask.

  And homily by Emily D. shows dust-bin Man’s anomaly.

  And Shakespeare poisons up Death’s dart

  And of gravedigging hones an art.

  And Poe divining tides of blood

  Builds Ark of bone to sail the flood.

  Death, then, is painful wisdom tooth;

  With Art as forceps, pull that Truth,

  And plumb the abyss where it was

  Hid deep in dark and Time and Cause.

  Though Monarch Worm devours our heart,

  With Yorick’s mouth cry “Thanks!” to Art.

  I Die, so Dies the World

  * * *

  Poor world that does not know its doom, the day I die.

  Two hundred million pass within my hour of passing,

  I take this continent with me into the grave.

  They are most brave, all-innocent, and do not know

  That if I sink then they are next to go.

  So in the hour of death they Good Times cheer

  While I, mad egotist, ring in their Bad New Year.

  The lands beyond my land are vast and bright,

  Yet I with one sure hand put out their light.

  I snuff Alaska, doubt Sun King’s France, slit Britain’s throat,

  Promote old Mother Russia out of mind with one fell blink,

  Shove China off a marble quarry brink,

  Knock far Australia down and place its stone,

  Kick Japan in my stride. Greece? quickly flown.

  I’ll make it fly and fall, as will green Eire,

  Turned in my sweating dream, I’ll Spain despair,

  Shoot Goya’s children dead, rack Sweden’s sons,

  Crack flowers and farms and towns with sunset guns.

  When my heart stops, the great Ra drowns in sleep,

  I bury all the stars in Cosmic Deep.

  So, listen, world, be warned, know honest dread.

  When I grow sick, that day your blood is dead.

  Behave yourself, I’ll stick and let you live.

  But misbehave, I’ll take what now I give.

  That is the end and all. Your flags are furled …

  If I am shot and dropped? So ends your world.

  My Love, She Weeps at Many Things

  * * *

  My love, she weeps at many things,

  I would not for the world stop up her tears;

  She came in many years of drought

  And taught me just how right was private rain

  To touch the dust with smallest storm

  With emeralds dropping from her eyes.

  My loved one weeps at many things,

  Small rings and charms, the soft alarms of birds

  Or sudden summer squall. Large thing or small:

  The way the cat puts up his bones in fur,

  Teakettle purrs and murmurs:

  Slumber. Sleep. October. Autumn. Fall.

  Sometimes I say a thing and do not know I say a Joy

  Then hear a sound and turn and there she goes full-weep.

  Pours forth the diamonds, lets out a cry

  As from a thousand hours of happy/nightmare sleep.

  In all the splendid time ahead, those years

  With yet their secret joys unsaid,

  Let no one stay her tears.

  Praise God for them and her, praise God for eyes

  That smallness see and grow it to a size,

  That see in me a fellow weeper found

  And celebrate by laying dust

  On our small ceremonial trysting ground.

  Then am I rich?

  Look here … I wear with grace

  The gifts of rain and light and love and time

  She’s made and winked and left

  To brighten my soul’s face.

  Death as a Conversation Piece

  * * *

  Oh, would we talk of it?

  It is the very staff of life to kids:

  Grand Death which cheats now this, now that,

  Now maid, now man at randy games,

  And claims what one has won with no regrets,

  Apologies, forewarnings

  That times will come when evenings and mornings

  Grow most still to muffle up your ears with earth,

  Fill mouth with dust, quicksand your eyes

  And cotton-tamp your nostrils,

  Bind your feet and hands with mummy-grass of silence,

  Smother tongue to mother dark’s dumb songs, which sung

  Collapse the bellows of your lung,

  Then, stashed like moron note in envelope of Earth,

  Fresh mailed, fresh bought

  By night, you’re bound for Nil, arrive at Naught.

  The thrill of sweetening their talk with Death

  And wild extinctions can make up an evening of chat

  Or half a year to boys and girls

  Who jump at this ripe news and nose the kill;

  All innocent sniff blood, admire Dracula

  And think the Monster neat.

  Death is a candy treat to such and all and more.

  And Life? My God! Like Mom and Dad at lunch …

  Nice folks. But … what a bore!

  Remembrance II

  * * *

  The paths are empty now and gone and sunk to grass

  Where we once passed and laid the track and showed the ways

  Through summer days, my Indian brother with his cowardly cur,

  This laggard blood who woke him summer dawns

  With yawns that smelled of Clark bars or fermented Nehi pop.

  They say that Time must have a stop. Well, stop it has:

  I came to see the old ravine last week, some forty years beyond

  My traveling there with Skip and Tom and Al:

  The well is green, but no one shouts to hear it stir;

  The trees are tall but no one apemans up the boughs;

  The clouds run paths in weed, but no boys run.

  Is this the setting of the sun of Earth?

  I turn to look at houses, streets and town and want to cry:

  Why no one here in Deeps, for Christ’s sake, why?

  No falling down the hill, no digging caves,

  No redskin braves assaulting crayfish, hurling arrows,

  Building dam?

  But then I am

  An old man now, and so perhaps I misremember

  Climbing ivies, making swings. Oh, God’s sweet blood,

  A million-dozen multitudes of summer things!

  Here where we pissed our names in sand and crossed the t’s.

  Here under bridge the Opera Phantom waited

  On star-dark nights like these

  When Skip and I ran home afraid down dank ravine

  Each street a shadowed tombyard from a movie scene.

  What, nothing here? No yells, no boys, no treehuts in the sky?

  Affronted, stunned, appalled,

  I blink my eyes, again ask: Why?

  My driver, close behind me on the hill,

  Appraises Deeps and Green and me, old man grown still.

  Perhaps, he says, the boys today have better things to do.

  I want to whirl. I stop my fist.

  My heart is torn by TV catalyst.

  I stand a moment longer, staring down

  The summer winds. Spider antennae swarm the town.

  From far doors I hear soughing giveaways.

  I know at noons

  The boys that I am seeking find cartoons

  And hide in houses like sea-creatures under rock,

  And with their parents, feet encased in Cronkite,

  Watch NO NEWS at six o’clock.

  Hearing this and seeing houses shut and strange,

  I give an ancient cry, run down the hill, and make the range

  From this side to the other of the Deep

  And with
shoes drowned in creek-spring waters, stand and weep.

  Far off I think I hear my mother’s old tin-whistle shriek,

  Skirl, long-lost but endless calling: Come!

  So the last old boy of time and summer-sleeps

  Now feeling foolish, shoes in hand,

  Makes final path and treads the milkweed

  Upward from sweet wilds and Deeps.

  And so on Home.

  J.C.—Summer '28

  * * *

  Who were those people on the summer porch in ’28

  And ’29, smoking cigars, munching Eskimo pies,

  Sneaking into the night kitchen to have a little beneath-the-icebox

  Dog-drink of wild-grape wine?

  A gathering of saints and caliphs from the East

  Fresh from a feast of Grandma’s biscuits

  Dripped in honey fresh as summer morn?

  Did any of them guess, seeing me somersault on the dark lawn

  That I was the Christ reborn?

  If so, they never said, and took the secret to the grave.

  Meanwhile I was brave, waiting to grow up

  And prove a miracle or two,

  Kill all the mosquitoes of August,

  Cause vanilla ice cream to replenish itself

  Mysteriously in iceboxes in the middle of sleepless July

  Nights.

  Clear the attic of ghosts.

  Oh, what boasts would be mine!

  We all grew up or grew old or fell dead or went away.

  Nobody does quite as he pleases, said Grandma.

  And me? Did I become Jesus?

  Almost. Not quite.

  Though even now there are times at three in the morn

  I almost feel I’m Him reborn.

  In a winter-cold bed I’m as warm as toast

  And feel like a dipper of Holy Ghost.

  I call to the Bureau. Take off, fly! Well, then, creep.

  The Bureau won’t budge. It does as it pleases.

  I cry out, “Oh, fudge,” and, one more failed Jesus,

  Fall down into sleep.

  The Young Galileo Speaks

  * * *

  O child, they said, avert your eyes.

  Avert my eyes? I said, what, from wild skies

  Where stars appear and wheel

  And fill my heart and make me feel as if I might

  This night and then another and another

  Live forever and not die?

  Turn off my gaze, shut off my will and soul from this?