In Quest of Candlelighters

IN QUEST OF CANDLELIGHTERS

BY KENNETH PATCHEN AFLAME AND AFUN OF WALKING FACES AN ASTONISHED EYE LOOKS OUT OF THE AIR A SHEAF OF EARLY POEMS A SURPRISE FOR THE BAGPIPE-PLAYER BECAUSE IT IS • BEFORE THE BRAVE BUT EVEN SO • CLOTH OF THE TEMPEST COLLECTED POEMS • DOUBLEHEADER FABLES & OTHER LITTLE TALES FIRST WILL & TESTAMENT GLORY NEVER GUESSES • HALLELUJAH ANYWAY HURRAH FOR ANYTHING IN QUEST OF CANDLELIGHTERS MEMOIRS OF A SHY PORNOGRAPHER ORCHARDS, THRONES & CARAVANS OUT OF THE WORLD OF PATCHEN PANELS FOR THE WALLS OF HEAVEN PICTURES OF LIFE AND DEATH POEMSCAPES • POEMS OF HUMOR & PROTEST RED WINE & YELLOW HAIR SEE YOU IN THE MORNING SELECTED POEMS • SLEEPERS AWAKE THE DARK KINGDOM • THE FAMOUS BOATING PARTY THE JOURNAL OF ALBION MOONLIGHT THE LOVE POEMS OF KENNETH PATCHEN THE TEETH OF THE LION THEY KEEP RIDING DOWN ALL THE TIME THREE PROSE CLASSICS TO SAY IF YOU LOVE SOMEONE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ENGLISH WHEN WE WERE HERE TOGETHER WONDERINGS

IN QUEST OF CANDLELIGHTERS

KENNETH PATCHEN

A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK

Copyright © 1939, 1946, 1972 by Kenneth Patchen Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 71-183393 All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Panels For the Walls of Heaven is reprinted from the original plates by special arrangement with Bern Porter, Bern Porter Books, Berkeley, California, 1946, and Rockland, Maine, 1971. First published clothbound and as ND Paperbook 334 in 1972 Published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland & Stewart, Limited Manufactured in the United States of America New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin by New Directions Publishing Corporation, 333 Sixth Avenue, New York 10014

CONTENTS Panels for the Walls of Heaven Angel-Carver Blues Bury Them in God They Keep Riding Down All the Time

FOR MIRIAM

PANELS FOR THE WALLS OF HEAVEN

We had hearts the field white white. Glass bird on the hill she said she loved me I remember how I used to think life would not be wounded but we came to a village at the base of the glass bird. I am a man. Bird of glass as tall as a fifty-foot eye. There is nothing wrong with anything but me. I am not able to judge whether we are welcome here. The doors of the houses are open but no the doors are closed. We will sleep outside tonight and she is with me. White grass is not grass you can lie down on comfortably. It grows into your skin as you sleep. I am not going to be glad we have hearts if all they can do is break. It's funny when you become aware of your heart it's as though you can feel it beating in the sky and in nearly everything except yourself really. When she raises her dress it's my heart I put in her growing down through my body and coming out there to go in her and be her heart O God this is a serious thing. The first star of night shines through the glass bird and one of its cold eyes seems to wink. There is a living one here. O damn damn the birds of glass! There is nothing wrong with me but life. I spit on your closed doors. I wet these dead fields with my blood. I'd like to be God for about five minutes O wouldn't I just thr ow my weight around.

I guess I'd just about fix it so nobody'd ever have to be hungry again or cold or lonely or sitting waiting for the dirty bastards to start another war O wouldn't I give the beautiful a workout

But it's too late. In my heart I know it's too late.

oh black sky above the world I see all the dreams of men dead there Life and Death kissing horribly in the nothingness

The eyes of my girl are shutting in sleep. I hold her in my arms. Come out all the things I love O hold us in your arms.

The moon is a white mouth eating the poor heads of trees. O come out all the things I love and hold us in your arms

There was a mutter of rain on the leaves and we went back in the house. She stood by the door and I sat down near the table. We'd spent our last cent getting ready. With any luck he wouldn't notice how little we ate. It started to rain harder. I drummed my fingers on the table. She walked over and sat down on my knee. It was getting gray outside the door and a damp cold crept in around us. I drummed my fingers on the table. She got up and went to stand by the door again. I suddenly felt like crying. A car came down the road and rattled past without slowing. I put my hand in my pocket before I remembered. I'd smoked the last of the cigarettes out in the yard. She turned and smiled at me. I stood up to move over to her, then instead I went round pulling the shades down. It was almost dark now. The rain went on and on. Some crazy night bird started jabbering.

A car going the other way went by, its radio blaring. She struck a match. There were twelve candles and she lighted every one of them. The rain stopped. We heard someone stumbling down the road. I walked quickly to the door and stared out. The sound stopped. She came to stand beside me. The stumbling sound began again. The headlights of a car shone through the dark. There was no one on the road. It splashed by. I put my hand on her arm. She didn't seem to notice. I went back and sat down. One of the candles had guttered out. I drummed my fingers on the table. Slowly she turned to face me. There were tears in her eyes. We both knew that he'd never come now. And we could hear the sound out in the night that might have been somebody dragging a heavy object along beside him.

Prodigious goals —Flakes boat starmarsh —Great highone I care what happens to every human O I live locked in that —the smell of a stone in the sun —Locked in my heart are all the slender still silences of the grove and there too the black cries and the pierced beggars in fluttering doorways—Call through the howling O someone thinks of greater deeds than lying and murder. Every mouth sucks at life and is filled in one way or another.

Hounds playing tennis on a pale bridge. The grim asses of trains bluther down the valley. Even hard things hide. But life does not break.

Let us shout in our cages. Under the invisible is a man's heart. I am like you. We are things of the same kind. We two standing here among the hideous statues. I urge you to protest this murderous swindle. Do it.

I walk out into the streets of this city.

They have made liars of all these people. They have made them cheat and do murder. Their faces are afraid, and ugly. They live with hatred in their hearts. They love nothing at all. Everything in this city is ugly. It is a sort of death to walk here. A filth of lies and hopelessness covers everything. I go into a lunchroom and order coffee. Every table is taken. I stand in a corner and drink the coffee. I have a feeling that at any moment somebody will blow up and start clawing everyone within reach. But they just sit around in there and make noise. I get out as fast as I can.

Prodigious dreams—I walk down and sit on a bench by the river. An old man sits down beside me. A sour vomit smell comes off his clothes. He picks his nose and hums a popular song. I move on to another bench. Two girls are sitting there smoking. They don't look at me. Then I notice what their hands are doing. A shout from over by the drinking fountain and a man lurches down the path with blood streaming down his chin. I wait a minute, then set off for home. You, — The meaning is in the wonder.

Towns and seas and all poor devils everywhere. In no way is life ever changed. Through acceptance of the mystery, peace. And only through peace can come acceptance of the mystery. We are not open. The glory can not come in. How soon after our best things is the taste bitter again. As of this earth and what I am on this earth —I fiercely wish to protect the things I love. They fill my eyes with tears—the things I love. Suppose they are nothing—They are all I have.

I met her in the summertime. There were red flowers in the lanes and all the trees had birds in them. We lay down in the grass and I opened her dress and I put my fingers on her cool breasts and I put my mouth upon her mouth. After a little and all the birds were singing I walked her home and she went in and closed the door. She closed the door and I went away. The night came and the sky filled with stars and I walked back to her house and I knocked on the door. An old man came and let me in and he said we've been expecting you. On a great table bread and cheese and wine were laid. There were white candles and red flowers all about and at the table sat the girl. I looked around for the old man but he was gone and she said don't be frightened not everything in the world is evil. We ate the bread and cheese and drank the wine and I said after a little I shall wake and I shall have tears in my eyes because you are not with me and because everything in the world is evil. Then the door opened and the old man came in and he blew out one of the candles. I got to my feet and said it is late and I must go. But you can not go she said for all the long sweet night we shall lie in each other's arms and there will be nothing can hurt us. I looked around for the old man but he was gone and I said after a little I shall wake and I shall be sick at heart because you are not in my arms and all the long black night will be stretched out before me. Then she took my hand and led me to a cot with a scarlet cover

that stood in the corner of the room beside the stairs. But as she stepped out of her dress and I saw the beauty of her thighs and I saw the way her belly was curved for my touch and her shoulders and her throat and I was hungry to put my hands upon her and to put my lips on her soft mouth and to whisper of all the wonder of the world and to tell her that I loved her O to tell her and to tell her that all was not evil on earth another candle snuffed out and I saw something coming down the stairs and I started to scream O God there are no flowers in the lanes and all the birds are stricken dumb in the trees in these black trees O Father what is the way out of this black hell and why do I always return to this house to this strange house where all the beauty and horror of being alive pours in on me in such a flood that I sink to my knees, cursing, O God I see something coming down the stairs and its face is the face of every human being on this earth and this bread I eat is its flesh and this wine is its blood and this woman I hold in my arms is its soul and I say soul expecting the sneers and the laughter I want you to laugh see what a fool I am see what a neat tune I can play literature is such fun and so amusing to while away an idle hour O laugh you poor stricken bastards in the black ruins of your world and in these black ruins I stand and shout praise of God O my poor lost brothers if any of you has poems to write write them now O if any of you has anything to add to the long tall dignity of human

creation please add it now O if any of you has a pure heart let that heart beat in praise of God for O my brothers the world is dying and we will not let it die O since we have no power to stop these madmen who will destroy the world let us stand here praising God and I say this knowing of the sneers and the laughter O see what a fool I am for it's really just poppycock to speak of the destruction of the world oh we grant that they have the means to do it but it's nonsense to think that anyone would be mad enough to actually want to do it O I say look at your hands they are smeared with the blood of human beings and O I say look at your lives and at all your smug works they are smeared with the blood of human beings and I tell you there is no difference between murdering the human beings you have already murdered and murdering every human being on earth O I weep at the monstrous horror of this crime against man and against God! if you have blood on your hands take them off this page. I get out of bed and cross to the window. A milk wagon clatters down the street, a mangy little dog trailing after it in the pale, frosty light. In a nearby house somebody coughs. The stars begin to flicker out. A tree steps out of the gray jelly. I scratch in under my armpits, yawning. At last she stirs and calls over sleepily. Nothing wrong, I tell her. Go back to sleep. Actually it's nothing new for her to wake up and find me sitting in this chair beside the window. I wish Christ would come back to

earth, or something like that. Now an alarm-clock goes off next door. I light a cigarette. I draw the smoke deep into my lungs, then let it out again. A man comes out a couple doors down and takes the milk in. It's much lighter and everything looks sort of drab and defenseless, like the dog. Two girls hurry along and every so often one of them lunges down to yank up her stocking. More people. A taxi. I stamp the cigarette out. All the stars are gone. Quietly I get back into bed. My shoulder touches her arm. She half wakes and I lie very still. That summer is a long way off now. I can't remember what the flowers looked like. Wild roses, I think. We both got sick eating crabapples—that I remember. I don't know why everytime I think of God the old gent who ran the auto camp comes back to me. Sometimes in my dreams I see him standing in the doorway of our cabin with a flashlight in his hand, and I can see the rain splattering on his hat . . . I don't think anyone else has ever seen us in bed together, like that. I remember how angry I was—so angry I couldn't say anything for a minute; but in my dreams the whole thing is all twisted out of focus, and he's there to see if we're all right. It's funny how things get into your mind as one thing, and stay on though you're only half aware of it as something altogether different.

And no one ever works alone.

Flowers. Put the stone women HERE. I love a thing with heart. HUGE AWFULLY WELL-dear trees and the homes of men hurry the great tongues of sleep. Dead trash of "reality." The lips of earth sloshing their green spittal of seas. I run my fingers over the stone women. Thoughts of mountains are thinking in their wombs.

There is a dandy sun today. Have you change for ten dullards sir?

Look you have a life use it. No one ever works alone. Building O blast it to hell for love everyway he who is lost hesitates. I love a thing with huge.

Gategeese the windopeninghosts of air. I’ll bloody your damn nose, you rat-chewed bastard. My towers are—come if you like: I won't forget your kindness. Flee gently. Now is the I wouldn't kid you time to hide. My towers are clean. There is only one thing that matters and that is life. No one ever works alone.

So it's not ugly. I don't protest great God I demand. All this ratty lying murderous swindle of a world be damned. There's a dandy sun today. When are we going to throw the bastards off our backs. Art has no place for lies.

Jesus the stone it's hard and it warms like a hand in the sun. Three black white horses. Look you have a life put your soul in it. When you buy a suit don't just get something that will look good on the clerk. If you won't mind I'm going to say haystack.

The leaves fall. The chances lessen. Nothing of flesh is safe. I at any rate cannot resist trying a little one-step on the brink. What are you in terror of? The baby fox goes to sleep under the tree. The stone women stir restlessly. Let us fear the best for that is truly frightening.

"fruitful and purified"—an identity in the Invisible—nothing is contradicted, all remains —instruction never saves, it lifts but what it lifts is itself—ambition is the weakness of all great spirits who in acceptance will find the despair they seek—the physician can only cure when he is willing to assume your disease—to be shunned is to be God a little—

We are in hell. I think if I said that we are in hell few would believe it. Haven't you any fight left you poor stricken bastards.

What sort of theory can any man make about the human spirit! In for a spiritual awakening are we? You know Joe I think that's a lot of frogdirt. The brightest boys have all sold out. They can't get on the cross because even their snot thinks what's the best thing for snot that will absolutely offend nobody. But I am exaggerating — they are quite willing not only to offend but to murder an ybody their "governments" tell them to. With all proper respect for metric nicety, let it be said. These disgusting little lice!

Everywhere. That's it. The men everywhere. The whole kit and caboodle. His life and my life. This tragic bug—A MAN. Standing all of us in one body with one heart and one head. There is never anything difficult about love. It's when you go off the track —and there's nothing not a damn thing off the track except the darkness —Pleasure! fun! all the senses bringing men to love one another— I read it in the paper, that's where I saw it, it said Shares in U. S. Steel—the horribly mangled flesh of human beings—I don't want any shares in that.

Ay now Christ this brugen of fishes with dead men's faces these giddy pals of sleep's buzzing deep—this briny swallowing mouth of the ancient unborn mother of us all—I am convinced now that I know nothing whatever of what the world really is. I lift my soul to what I can but the sigh in the bone is not stilled.

Let us present our duties with some humility as it gets dark now. In case there is no paradise, we will not have soiled the curtain with our tugging—but actually I'd rather take a nothing I loved to my grave than a something I have every reason to hate.

ghost in the bluehearing grove More tongueless than pity. Quiet as a breast. Alive above the moving death of men. Roon rose and the patient lips of the snow. And a golden wood here under the sky. Half-lived and unintent the dreamscape leaning under the sky. 333,000, grinforms "adorn" FEVERLY, 000,000, naked, silent, and tremendously delighted. Veiled in nakedness, an extreme disguise. Here are the tranquil souls of twigs. Clunns and ands. We fade they frenzy frozenly as starry weather lofts a bird for in that profound cave all our father sleeps. Hey creatures!

Conditions are Queen. Fullswirl care in the gadgets of kissing. Flesh cottages. Crowing pigflowers spray at the wall. Roon down it's five o'clod. The more ways the samer way. One thing peeps at all. Like life it's safe for awhile.

Harmony always rejects power. Winning loss is a miraculous adventure, and has the brave stature of dust.

Don't get lost, get losing. Toward the sea all things flow in its wisdom. The troubled have felt the strings. Horizons always end something too. Vice in art, as in life, is not looking at what cannot be seen. The beautiful brutal hands fondle alike the thoughts of snakes and the lusts of angels. The garments of Shakespeare hang in the closet beside the fool's—each with the marks of the loom upon it, neither altering the set of the shuttle in any fashion whatever. Oh ghost in the heartseeing grove tell me are there any coats at all that will fit the life of a man in this world More voiceless than love. Peaceful as a breast. Alive above the terrible agony of men. No really I'd prefer not to. There are enough. It isn't really that. The hell I suppose. My own house—why should I always return to where I haven't been. Let you now—I am speaking to myself—come a little nearer to where I am. It may be true that that is a better place to be. Wonder is nicer than hell. I'm all sold on the beautiful. I hate with all my guts this sloppail they've got us in. It's just that I can't get any of these damn coats to hold still long enough for me to get my arms in.

brownish pond

bird with an Injured toe

the bird is watching

the bird is watching

the floating body with its muddygold hair

here are 5 more words

the spaces between horses

●

are cold beautiful girls which I will describe as not being asleep

Look all you sonsofbitches the spaces between horses are cold Beautiful girls which I have described as being wonderfully awake

●

LIFE AND

rotten damn cities rotten damn sheep rotten damn world damn rotten world Hurrah! dirtsplittingtohell up into the flame

Sky black black clouds and black rain falls. That blond wound does not show. Sun is out. The black rain falls and the serpent of darkness has eaten the sun. My father used to kick me in the behind when I'd forget to scrape the mud off my shoes before walking into the parlor. I hate to imagine what would happen if any of my heads ever got away. Dear soul—no, it won't help any now. The pale eyes of pigs slip back into the womb and the black rain comes down. A group of people are walking along the wall. They have a number of lives in a tin box which they would have me kiss but I move quickly out of their way. It is beginning to annoy me that I left my cigarettes in my other coat but I can confess without having a cigarette poking out of my face. The trouble started before we were little more than moved in. As a matter of significant detail, the curtains had not yet been put up at the tiny windows, and the broken lock on the back door was still not fixed. I was helping her with the supper dishes and since we were both tired and out-of-sorts we said little. As I was putting the last cup on its hook I said it'll drive both of us mad if we don't talk about it. She said oh then you've heard it too! I thought maybe it was just—I put my arms around her and said nobody's nerves could play them tricks like that honey. Then she cried and I could feel some of the tenseness going out of her. Oh darling she said why did you wait so long to tell

me! I thought the voices and the pounding were just going on in my own head. I laughed. I couldn't help it though she drew back in terror. At last I managed to say so you think it's just in your own head eh? I led her out to the yard in front of the house. Stars and a new moon. I was very excited. Plainly now we could hear the shouting of the workmen and the noise of stakes being driven into the ground and of stones groaning down log runways. Even the labored snorting of horses. It seems to be coming from over there she whispered pointing to a place about fifty feet from where we were standing. You stay here I told her and I started to walk slowly over. She called for me to come back but I went on and as I got near I could smell the giant labor of the men and horses and the stone burning the wood. The commands were in a language I had never before heard and of course I could see nothing. I stopped about ten feet away and considered what I had to lose. I was covered with sweat and my skin pressed in on me like a sheet of hairy fire. I walked right into it and the noise filled my ears with blood and two trucks hit head-on just under the ground. Then there was silence and I felt a drop of rain on my face. I turned around and I started to walk back toward her. She said what are you doing wandering about like this in the rain darling? I went to see if I could find out what they're building I answered wondering if she would try to get away with it. She took my arm and led me into the house and into

our bedroom with its peeling wallpaper and the broken pane in the little window over the dresser and she sat up in bed her eyes big with fear and she said oh my God you scared me where have you been? I sank down in the chair by the window. She got out of bed and came over and put her hand on my shoulder. Why darling she exclaimed your pajamas are sopping wet. At last I managed to say I thought I heard something moving around in the yard. She went in the bathroom and got a towel and while she was drying my hair I looked out of the window and I could see them building the wall. There were at least a dozen men and two teams of horses and though they seemed to be working in what amounted to a frenzy there wasn't a sound. And then she heated up some milk. She poured the steaming milk into a glass and while I was waiting for it to cool I said it's nice of you to go to all this bother for me. She came over and settled on my knee and she said don't be silly darling and I watched the steam rising from the milk and it was all I could do to keep the tears out of my eyes and she said it's cool enough to drink now. And then she put the light out in the kitchen and we went into the bedroom and she pulled the shade down over that window and she said why don't you read for awhile and when I said no she said well we'll just leave the lamp on anyway. And then she fell asleep and I watched the night out and I didn't really care one way or another. The next day I sat out on the

porch. The wind was rushing new clouds into the sky and about halfway through the afternoon it started to rain hard. I was surprised to see my brother walking across the field toward the house and I sprang up and ran down to warn him but before I could make him hear above the storm he had reached the wall and the foreman set him to work on the highest level. Then one of the workmen looked over at me and I said what are you doing here in the rain and she said please come back into the house darling people will begin to get suspicious if they see you wandering around like this with your face and hands smeared with mud. I said angrily suspicious of what I was just going to speak to my brother when you made them all go away. She took my arm and started to lead me back into the house and when she didn't try to remind me that my brother was dead I knew she had a plan and I broke away from her and I ran into the woods. When it got dark I sank down under a tree and fell asleep. The cold woke me up and something standing beside me in the dark said I was sent here to take you home. I stood up and a hand took hold of my sleeve and led me back to the house. I walked in and she was sitting at the kitchen table with her face buried in her arms. When she looked up her eyes were swollen and red and deep lines came away from her mouth. I said I'm sorry I frightened you honey I won't go away like that again. But she didn't seem to hear me and when I bent over and kissed her forehead

she didn't lift her eyes. Then she got up and went on tip-toe into the bedroom. My mouth felt dry and I went over to the sink but I couldn't get the faucet to turn. I pounded and hammered but I couldn't get it to turn. I wonder why she doesn't come out to see what I'm making all the noise about. Things never seem to work right in new houses. Finally I gave it up and went into the bedroom. There was a man in the bed and she was standing there looking down at him and crying. Then as I watched she bent over and kissed him on the forehead but his eyes didn't open and a lot of people came into the room and stood silently there. I looked out of the window. The wall is finished. I can't help thinking that it is a pretty hideous wall. The sky is full of black clouds which on any ordinary occasion would plunge the earth in darkness but a great light shines down upon the wall and through the beautiful light a group of people are walking. They have a number of deaths in a golden chest which they'd have you see. There are any number of better ones than this. And O God the black rain falls. My father used to kick me in the behind when I'd forget to scrape the mud off my shoes before I went into the parlor. Father look what I have on my shoes now.

a white apple with your mother's eyes looking out of it

life weeps in this dark wood

world without end

oh my dear brothers

L I F E

D E A T H

Is it too late to save him?

monst ersarew akingi nallth

●

●

eblood ygard ensof hisworld

right now I insist that

right now some where a beautiful girl is sitting on the bank of a river with a copy of this book in her hands and right now she has a rose in her hair oh Jesus

RIGHT NOW!

Peace in this blue field. Bird any damn kind. Clouds cloudsclouds clouds. Hurry, grass.

Watch all lemon cow you want. Did you notice that pretty cow colored like a lemon walking by a minute ago?

Nobody ever green fox had a girl like mine. I'd swear something green just flew past then! She lets me do it.

So asleep hell she breathes like a baby. Hurry, grass. You'll have to get a lot more beautiful than that before I'll let you cover her.

ENTER A BLOOD-FLECKED LOUSE EMPTYING ITS STOMACH ON ALL YOUR GODDAMNED WORLD

A Man: Whhhhhhhh.

A Woman: Nhhhhhhhh.

(There is a very loud explosion.)

Whhhhhhhh: A man.

Nhhhhhhhh: A woman.

The Very Loud Explosion: Oh, you mean the stuff that screamed?

Istilllo Terror and pity weep at the grave Man, that ignoble geography, sinks into the Behold, the fairest songs taste snot on their lips

hello

hello

hello

God's pale bunch huddle together in the dark.

Then trample us! Since love and mercy are a lie, let there be an end! Glory and love—black earth covers them. Pssst! look down here

down here's where all the human beings are guess it doesn't matter but I think the horror of what is going to happen to us would drive You mad

Soon, cows singing. Giants polish marriages. Tell you what, I expect the Miracle. So, giants giants polishing songs. Cows undertake shocking marriages. You heard me, I await miracles. The cow will do something beautiful before she's through. A city hasn't a chance, from this— God. Lake. Seven. Nose. Brown. Tent.

—select Nose. Benny

had a Nose but O Christ how the snow drifts in over poor Benny's grave and And what! THE NAME OF THIS SONG IS DIE NOW with your dreary eyes glazin O hold that Tiger blearing quite. Cows don't change much. Odd —in a time of hesitation—isn't it? This question is addressed to giants everywhere. 6 oz. of baking soda a velvet slipper crammed full of eyelashes of snails an unanswered letter or two

Aug. 17: It started

to rain in the early morning, and continued, with growing intensity, until dark, to rain. Sally, despite, or perhaps because of, her alley, sure hands out the high-class jelly. Phone mother. Do this without fail. What has she ever done to you? "in the midst over the head of Christ, stand three angels, and the midmost of them bears scales in his hands, wherein are the souls being weighed against the accusations of the Accuser, and on either side of him stands another angel, blowing a long trumpet, held downwards, and their long, long raiment, tight across the front, falls down over their feet, heavy, vast, ungirt; and at the corners of this same division stand two other angels, and they too are blowing long trumpets held downwards, so that their blast goes round the world and through it; and the dead are rising between the robes of the angels with their hands many of them lifted to heaven'' a particularly vulgar word in orange neons over a drugstore three pretty baby mice, freshly drowned a swift boot in the teeth of this world

To freedom! To the freedom of all men! Down with their lies and their murders!

Oh, yes—cows stars rivers giants—If you watch carefully now I am going to ask you to get down on your knees with me and think about what is being done to human beings as you read this.

leeth— sometimes a village, whitened spoor of death A dung-bug Harry lookout—sun black jits spearing plump fields This hour like no other—borbeasts slobber in the pastoral silt of bells Now little girl eat your supper gods have peaceful minds because they eat their oatmeal what's the matter Bess Marie with a little romp or two when the old fuss' not looking Hell what a big thing the sea. Let's go to the Idea of a chair. Brick thrown at grandma. I said to him look Jack nobody's gonna say that to MY SISTER Reading a newspaper in a cornfield. See you at Tony's. I'll begin this now with the remark christ it's lonely being a man. Suppose the pieces only really fit when you're dead. I have enough sugar but I will take a touch more cream. If elected, that is. The Antique Madonna. See how relaxed. A week from now, Havana—with a million bucks in my kick!

Fools never get the nosebleed Stars like fishguts in a bucket. The verb hat. I won't, kiss you if, you don't want? me to, Bess Marie. Somebody told me today that there's a bill up before Congress which calls for the amputation of the legs of all persons of sixteen

or over. I forget what it is supposed to ameliorate. Lawson denies locking horse . . . "It was an old barn anywhoa. "

and three are twelve minus two add one. Harry in his yellow shoes wonders how the devil he's going to kill another night in this one-hearse burg. Lay the innkeep's daughter whispers the glittering little verce of Sin but our Harry is two shy for that. Bess Marie is not Willie's mother. Bess Marie lives four thousand miles from here and is only mentioned at all because it was her idea about the chair. The only time I ever laughed harder at grandma was when she got her ear caught in the cupboard door. Harry has taken his .32 out of his pocket now. Harry look it's no good in the city either. It's the nuts they've got you by Harry boy. Write Lawson a letter explaining the whole thing. Tell him you found them in bed together —the fine grind for Silex. Explain to Lawson that you only took your rod out to clean it. Lawson's a good guy—He knows what a bitch Bess Marie was how she had soft golden hair and a rosebud kisser Willie Lawson's a right guy—He'll understand how her brains could have looked just like oatmeal spilled out all over the pillowslip.

Bloodspout lamp milkgreenmilk they never asked me so I never told them when you come to the green druss turn shrilly and run like hell it won't help the game's no good any look you weigh it Big Juicy Kill I think the reason is the power is without any glory whatever is . green . a . color . green . or . an . object. like . a smile is is enough to get you through the day is coming right down to it your idea of fun is doing it the hard way going to help keep your marbles in place is settling your bull in fill your kind of people is it getting about time to put a few things of some purity together so that any dreer or bobling spin or felthy nane or chaivened spoke green thigh wrist ounce of shame green Green Is The Thought Of The Sea Bones clattering on a grin of sind respect for things comes first I've been awake at night seeing the way people suffer without any hope that the foot will ever lift off their necks it isn't right that human beings should be eaten alive. City. Lark. Finger. Kind men die. The grass breast is without nourishment. The dry paws of words who me honey go on go on say it tell them I'm hiding in here oh I should never have come to bed with you you and your Aristotle technique certainly mam if it isn't a good book we've got it paws of words picking the noses of dead men. Lampspout blood The leetle

men are getting scairt of their world. Charlie Hearse is hobbling your way and the promised awa

THE NATURE OF REALITY Bed.

Apple. Sly bird.

Policeman.

Famine

Rod of milk.

Dice.

Groan. Stone

Towel.

Divot. "Put some on mine"

Six or Tad Prichard.

THE REALITY OF NATURE Seeking death growth peace conflict birth "Put some in me."

life decay madness silence dissolution Tad Prichard or none.

grocer have you any Hethnid pears

they have a delightful sunny taste The Thought Of

is the first one called

THE PANEL OF LONGING IN BEAUTY AND HORROR

Grayscub. Whitetiger wading across the air. It is my turn to tell O all the angels have told of the whitetiger wading across the air. Pleasing death O come pleasing death for I am tired of being alive. It is my turn to die O all the angels have warned of the beautiful white tiger wading across the air. Pleasing death O come with your quiet hands upon my life for I am tired of being alive. The light fades in my room these chairs take on hideous shapes in the half -dark. Pleasing death O come pleasing death for I am sick in my heart and I would die. There is no face I want to see there is no voice I want to hear O pleasing death come with your gentle hands and blot out this grief which has only itself to mourn. There is no woman I want to love there is no man I want to friend O pleasing death come with your quiet hands upon my life and rub out this pain which has only itself to wound. That a tree stands in a field —that a flower opens to the sun—that the thighs of a girl are soft and warm —that the wings of a fly make patterns as beautiful as the snow 's— O what are any of these to me for I am sick in my heart and I would die. There is no faith I can turn to there is nothing to hope for at all O come pleasing death with your brutal hands and stop this throat

which has only itself to damn. I feel about the room in the half dark I touch chairs tables the pictures on the wall I touch the face of her who waits for me to end this dreary monstrous day and go to bed. I touch her face and I know how little we are how everyone of us is crying inside where no one can see. Life is without meaning, gray and dull. Birds, stars, trees, stones—what good are they? What use are any of these to me? I have known rain and wind and snow— I have known a thousand rooms and towns I have seen and done what all of us have to see and to do O God what good is any of this! of what use is any of this to me! I am tired of stars and of the rain and of all these towns and of everything that's ever been done or said on this earth O pleasing death come with your terrible hands and blot out this noise which has only itself to stir. That men have said God there is a God—that men have said the beauty of a woman is as a flame in a holy place—that men have made cities and sent motors down the roadless heights—What good is it to say there is a God when there is no sign of God at all? What sort of beauty is this that rots like a piece of meat in the sun? What manner of building is this that we are all waiting here like cornered rats? The whitetiger is wading across the air and his eyes are fixed on nothingness. It is my turn to tell O all the angels have sung of the death of the world. Once it might have mattered which of the millions of lives I wanted to live—this house, and not that—this woman, not that one—this belief, and not that—but how can it

matter now? Unless death has rooms and streets and being hurt when the things you love are hurt —unless—I will not say ... Ice on a dead bough. Dirty socks in a bureau drawer—ah, yes, my jollies! and yes my pretty scubs! See me in my grim sullen yeddle waiting for the world to go pa-tit-pa-tettle—and indeed indeed all over the toost went the strangely be-waildering soond of the shoost. It is such a poor thing, this putting words on paper while the world is dying O what difference does it make what is said now what difference does it make what little noise goes up from any of us when all the long howling weight of an eternal silence is pressing down upon us and if we cry God God and cry God God and if we cry God God and so we cry and if we cry God God and oh my love my pretty dear and all these poor majesties that live on the earth these birds and sheep and turtles these rivers and hills and the snow and the little wood under the blue sky and all the nights you've lain in my arms oh my love my pretty one there is such sorrow in my heart there is such pain in me for all the world is dying and I have no place to take thee and I have no place to take thee. Now it is my turn to tell O all the fallen of heaven are watching out of his eyes as he wades toward us. The whitetiger is wading across the air and I feel about this room in the half -dark I touch the faces of my father and mother the pale floating dogs and wagons of childhood the blustery day I found a nest of baby qu ail in the orchard and fat sweaty-handed Thomas Rovane killed them

with a pointed stick. Pleasing death O come with your stern hands upon my life for I am sick at heart and I would die. There is no voice I want to hear there is no faith I can hold O come d eath and put your cold lips upon my life for I am tired of everything and I would die. Men, sun, fields, temples—what good are they? What use are any of these to me? I have known rain and wind and snow—I have knelt in a thousand shacks and spit on a thousa nd thrones I have cursed and praised what all of us have to damn and to sing O God what good is any of this! of what value is any of this to me! I am weary of the sun and of the fields and of all the mountains and the seas and of everything that's ever bee n dreamed or attempted on this earth O pleasing death come with your gentle hands and cancel out this enterprise which has only its own nothingness to harry. That men have said Truth there is a Truth—that men have said the grandeur of the sun is a torch in the hand of God—that men have paved the wilderness and sent slim boys down the roads of angels—what good is it to say there is Truth when everything around us is a lie? What good is the sun when we are all blind in this darkness? What manner of noble achievement is this that we are all cowering here like beaten curs in a ditch? The whitetiger is wading across the air and his breath is chill on our faces. The world is dying and we are all lost in the folds of the robe of that incredible dreamer into whose consciousness we shall wake. Toad astir on a rusty watch. Smiling child in a pool of

snakes. I touch your face and I know how lonely you are how every one of you is crying deep inside where no one can see. Life is without meaning, ugly and drab. It is my turn now to tell O all the fallen of heaven have told of the terrible whitetiger wading across the nothingness toward us. Pleasing death O come pleasing death for I am tired of being alive. The light fades in this room and bloody paws tear at my heart. It is such a poor thing, this putting senseless marks on a paper when your soul is dead O what does it matter what bright juice oozes out of any head what does it matter how well the silken beautiful drums of art are thumped when all the long hideous whiteness of an everlasting void is stretched out here before us and if we cry God God and cry God God and if we cry Father Father and so we cry and always we cry God God and oh my pretty one my darling and all these sad majesties that live on the earth these lions and bears and doves these shores and thickets and the snow and the peaceful little wood under the blue sky oh my own love my pure sweet there is such anguish in my heart there is this black fear in me for all the world of God and man is dying and I have no place to take thee and oh my darling I have no place at all to take thee.

ANGEL-CARVER BLUES

ALL SUMMER LONG the birds had been happy. There is a color called blue and that's what the sky was. It wouldn't have rained at all if the fields and brooks and toads hadn't their orders in early. At night when it got dark and the stars came out we'd stand close together so we wouldn't get too hurt. We don't really know what the stars are. I've often thought it's wonderful to be alive. One day at one of those sales-of-unclaimed-articles which the post office puts on I bought a little tin bucket with some thick, gummy stuff in it and when I took it home and poured some out on the table there were eleven Chinese children with velvet slippers on their feet. About three drops' worth, that was—and the bucket was brim-full. I knew it was illegal but I just couldn't stop spilling it out on the table. They were such pretty damn little kids! And that's why, though they've made a big effort to hush it up, there're more Chinese in Great Spit Falls, Montana, than there are in the Ch'en Hsiu Province of Tu Fu itself, to cite only one instance; and on a 40c. purchase, that's not bad at all, though somebody else might have remembered his mother with an avocado all wrapped in tissue paper bearing the grower's stamp instead. My older sister used to tease me that my toenails would be coming through my heel if I didn't cut them soon, but I never noticed she married much except that S. American general who didn't have two tents to rub together. People can sometimes be very nasty to each other. I wake up at night wanting to cry. When I was about two years old I got this feeling of being in a pit and every little while somebody'd dump a load of filth down on me— most of you have had a crack at it—dumping in the stinking filth of your lives, I mean.

But you're a bunch of poor bastards wandering around in the horrible dark like I am and sometimes at night I wake up wanting to cry. The first thing we knew the summer was over and we were back on Murdock Street in our cozy little three-room, cold-water flat. Honey and I had the big room with the orange and black wall paper to the right of the kitchen, and the other room, which was sort of dark in the daytime, was Junior's, not having any windows. Five chicken salesmen slept in the kitchen from three until six in the morning—a rather bad business arrangement since we never saw them to collect any rent, though there'd be anywhere from ten to fifteen dozen eggs on the sewing machine when we'd wake up. Junior will be sixty-seven next August. We met him in the park. Alf, Honey said, how about we have shredded fish for supper? I said, That's a good idea, Honey. You take any fish, fry it in a shallow pan, and then grate it very fine with onions. It goes particularly nice on the long macaroni with a bottle of red wine and maybe a black olive or so. We had candles too and later a couple people dropped in and we read Donne and talked about the situation in the world. Everybody went home happier, I think. Running out of bags for the eggs, we tore up some shoeboxes and did the best we could that way. Then Junior and I went for a walk and Honey took a bath and wrote a short letter to her folks telling them to expect us the following week-end. I didn't much like to go there because her three brothers would watch their chance to take me into the other room and beat me up. The green cover on our bed had big yellow dragons on it. A little man was getting off his motorcycle on the wall above our one easy chair. Painted in 1921 by somebody H. V. Rook. The last thing before the light went out I'd look at it. Honey, are you asleep? I guess she's asleep. Jesus it's good to have her in bed beside me. 

Next day the angels didn't turn out so well but I made one tiger I liked. That bastard Mr. Cracken came around and asked me to jazz it up a bit how the hell would anybody buy with me mooning around and I said all right Mr. C. thinking a bit of jazzing up wouldn't do you any harm you stiff-necked bum. It was true I only sold three sculping-sets the whole morning. For one thing, the soap just didn't seem to be with me at all. Usually I can tell as soon as I take a piece up in my hand. I had to fight it all through the tiger which I decided to call King Boy Tuesday, and take him home with me. About eleven o'clock Junior came in and borrowed half a buck for carfare out to see some long-hoofed goats he was thinking of investing in. I skipped lunch to see if I could get Tuesday's tail to hang a little better. Mr. Macy walked by and smiled at me. Honey was waiting out front at five-thirty and we went off to our place on 171st Street. This was a gloomy old deserted building which we'd passed one Sunday as we were going out to have a look at the swans somebody found swimming around in his flooded cellar of a fine morning. Having a great inflamed eye on the bottom of each of their feet, they were covered with thick, bristly hair. I ran on in ahead to the big room we'd picked for our own and throwing off my clothes tore around cursing at the top of my lungs. I really told them what I thought of the situation in the world. Honey took a big can of lampblack and smeared herself over with it from head to toe. Then she was a queen in Africa and all her people loved her and thought she was the wisest and most beautiful queen on earth. When we'd worked it out we got cleaned up and went home feeling as crisp as paper mice. Junior wasn't there so we ate without him. It started to rain and the young woman from across the hall came in and played Bach on our little pump-organ. We didn't know her name but

she had golden hair coming down over her shoulders and her face was so beautiful you'd think your heart would stop. We touched her sleeve at the door and blowing out all but one candle stretched out on the bed side by side. Out in the fog on the river the boats were telling their stories of loneliness and wonder. What is the matter with us, Alf? Honey said very softly. What do you mean, what's the matter with us? I'm so happy, she said. When the candle burned out we lay still again.  All the King Boys were watching me from the mantel when I went in to eat breakfast but Junior hadn't come back. That made we had eighteen Tuesdays. There were forty-one Fridays, so you can see that if you thought Tuesday was the best for King Boys you were quite wrong about it. We had no name for the angels. While I was eating my sunny-sides I remembered something which happened three years ago. (Honey and I've been married sixteen months. I met her in the shoemaker's. She was getting a new lift.) It was very early in the morning and I was out in the rhubarb patch snipping off dead leaves. I heard like the whole ground shaking and I looked up to see a man about a hundred feet tall just stepping across the river. He was naked and as he got nearer I could hear that he was singing something very sad and full of pain. I couldn't make out all the words but it had to do with all of us and the sorry way we treat one another, and how the dreams are dead and we are like lost children being butchered by a maniac in a dark wood. I guess I must have looked surprised because when he saw me he took me up very gently in his hand and raised me to his face and through the great tender lips, blackened and twisted by the flames, he told me what was going to happen to us.

And then he put me down very gently and went away. Somehow I never got around to telling Honey anything about that. One egg will sometimes take a shorter time to eat than another but even so I thought Junior would show up before I finished the three dozen. When he didn't I asked Honey if she'd planned anything special for Easter and went off to work. There was a long line of people waiting patiently in front of an open sewer near the corner. The first time I saw it I thought there'd be something in the paper about it that night—but never a word. Why, one morning in the space of twenty minutes I counted over seven hundred jumping in myself, some of them hardly more than infants who might better have been home sleeping in their warm, snug cribs while mother tried to remember the formula through her hang-over. If this particular little pastime really catches on—and I don't know what's to stop it—there won't be a properly-functioning sewer in all the length and breadth of this great land of ours. I got on the wrong bus and sat next to a girl who wondered what the hell I was up to until I'd carved in the first face on my totem-pole. That way my fingers are all limber by the time I get to work.  A lady asked me to do an expectant bull and I was working in under his flank to leave that little dab there when she suddenly grabs my arm and I damn near cut my finger off. Oh now you've spoiled it! cries she. And how was I to know that's what you meant by 'expectant,' my good woman? But the shelfful of bears I'd dripped the blood on was all sold within ten minutes. I hope this doesn't give Mr. C. any ideas, I thought; but he didn't get around until midafternoon and without my having to ask refused me a raise the swindler. He'll never have any luck, that man! He only imagines that his seventy five a week will bring him happiness—I mean the real,

solid happiness that money can't buy, ever . . . the happiness that comes with respect in one's own community, with the admiration and enmity of the people with whom one comes in daily conflict . . . ah no, Mr. Cracken, the pressure of a baby's tender foot on your instep; the brief, clammy caress of the voracious jelly-louse; the tiny, nearly-inaudible shuffle of aged snails coupling on a wet stone— ah no, indeedee, Mr. C. As I left the store and stepped out onto the thronged sidewalk, I had a sudden impulse to look up at the sky.  Soon Edgar and Jimmy Boat dropped by in time for coffee. Soon had a bad headache and we all took turns rubbing the back of his neck. Alf, Jimmy said about ten o'clock, do you think the working man's ever gonna get a break in this country? I mean not just a lousy crumb now and then but maybe his chair pulled right up to the lousy table, hey? It's all right all this lousy nice talk and signed magazine articles by lousy damn college punks but when are we gonna get the right end of the lousy stick, hey? So I'm thinking maybe my old man was right after all, I sure as hell think the old boy was right after all, hey. You take now this lousy— Christ's sake, Soon said, give it a rest! Your old man stand in the rain without his hat, I got to catch cold? Hold the match. Honey said, I don't understand how you mean about Jimmy's father, Soon. Without his hat. When there's a law he's got to read them magazines of his, maybe then I'll listen. Some days if I'm smart I'd kick the bastard off the bridge. Twenty-five cents for a magazine without pictures! Now he wants pictures, hey! You don't get your fill kids starving right out in fronta where the lousy big boys are inside swillin away—in every-day life you don't see enough of it—I'll off you the bridge, hey!

Don't some of the magazines cost fifteen? I asked, hoping to divert them. Yeah. Say, you kids like to eat with me and Tessie some night next week? That's not my coat. That'd be swell, Honey said. What night? Hey—Wednesday? Hell, Soon, Jimmy said, I gotta bowl next Wednesday. Who said anything about you, you bastard? Soon said, grinning. Plenty people haven't even got a pot. Thursday would be nice for us, Honey said. Grace takes the kids to the movies, Jimmy said. I gave them each a couple dozen and everything was set for Friday. Tess was nowhere dredging a fillet but we couldn't help that. In fact, as it happened, we didn't get over there for supper anyway. Alf, are you asleep? Huh-uh. I'm beginning to get worried about Junior. Tomorrow, you're in the drugstore, get me a cake shave-soap. There's one in your drawer. I saw it when I was looking for the rent-receipt. I'm going to start keeping my extras on stuff like that in the medicine-chest. This way I have to look through the whole house. Not if you'd ever think to look in your drawer first. But if you want me to I can move some of his things off the third shelf-just temporarily. No, I'll give that drawer a good straightening-out one of these days. Did you find the rent thing? Yes. Oh, Alf, Junior's such a baby! You don't think somebody could have hurt him or anything? I'll have a look around out there tomorrow, Honey. Now go to sleep like a good girl. Here. 

The long-hoofed goat man lived about a mile and a half out of town. He showed me over the place and said there'd been no old man with a withered arm around there as far as he knew but he'd ask his son Ray when he got back from his milk-delivery in about an hour. I had some coffee in the house and everytime I'd look out of the window for the truck I'd feel the eyes of the man and his wife watching me. There was a geranium with withered leaves standing on the cracked oilcloth they'd covered the windowsill with. Finally Ray came and his father went out in the yard and talked to him a bit before bringing him in. I knew Ray wouldn't be able to help me out. He had bad teeth and his shoes were covered with a white powder. The woman kept her hands down under the table. The hooves of the goats had come up waist-high on me. As soon as I saw them I'd thought it was a smuggler's dream come true. Waiting until the farmer's back was turned, I'd tapped a hoof-it was hollow all right. What was that the farmer'd exclaimed, wheeling around. Oh, you mean this? I'd said, knocking out my pipe on one of their long, saber-like horns. And all up and down the herd there'd come an answering taptap-tap. Why should anyone want to bring pigmies in? I'd thought idly. Sharp teeth, the farmer'd said, laughing without his eyes. What do you mean, sharp teeth? Wood-worms. We feed them pulp. It might be nice if you went now, the woman said, pointing a double-barreled shotgun at my belly button. Thanks for the coffee, I said; but I don't think they heard me— nobody's voice can carry five miles. You see, I knew what that dope Ray had on his shoes. 

As I got up on our landing I noticed that the door to the Bach girl's room was open and I heard what I guessed were deep sighing noises coming out of it. Not knowing what a bum guesser I was, I hurried past and on in to tell Honey as little as I could about what I had stumbled into out at the goat farm. Phew! she said and I took my rubbers off and threw them out the window. Where's Junior? I'm starved. What have we got to eat? Alf, please—Had he been out there? You mean Junior? Oh, now look-Well had he? No. Look, Honey— Don't touch me! Say, I didn't do it. Ah, kid—That doesn't help any. You'll just get your pretty nos— What'd the police say? What do you mean, what did— Oh, damnit you make me sick! You can't go out without your coat . . . Hon— I was out in the hall before the scream had hardly left her lungs. Honey was standing rigid in the doorway of the room I'd guessed the sighing was coming from. I missed that one all right. You don't sigh when you're being strangled. But I didn't miss Honey when she fell. I couldn't blame her for going out. The ceiling light was on and the Bach girl wasn't beautiful anymore. There'd been no light on in there when I'd passed about two minutes before. I never could figure out why that light had been turned on.  The police came and did all their ugly business and went away.

After the house was quiet we heard a mouse start gnawing in there. It began to rain. No one came to see us. Every little while the mouse would stop as though it was listening to something. All we could hear was the rain. Even the chicken salesmen didn't show up. We watched the day come fumbling at the windows like an old man with a withered arm.  I got up about ten and made some strong tea. Honey said a cup of good strong tea would be just the thing, and then didn't touch it. Harriet and her kid sister dropped in in the middle of the afternoon to take Honey out shopping but after sitting around for a few minutes went off to visit some galleries instead. Let's go out to eat tonight, Honey. Where? I feel like spaghetti, I don't know about you. Oh, that'll be a lot of fun. We'll try that new place. Jack Renner said their ravioli was marvelous. It wasn't fun but Jack knew what he was talking about. There was just enough garlic in their sauce—not insolent, but nicely proud of its place in the world. Boyd and Wilma were waiting out front for us when we got back. They were all excited because one of their folks had sent them six hundred dollars and they had just decided to go ahead and have a baby. Boyd had brought along a bottle but we told them some other night. We knew them well enough for that and they went away early. The mouse stopped before it hardly got its mouth full.

I didn't hear the bell ring, Honey said. The knock was repeated. I opened the door and two strange men stood there. You Amoeba? the one smelling of cheap perfume asked, rubbing a hairy fist into his eyes and yawning. Yes, I'm Mr. Amoeba, I said; adding superfluously, Won't you come in? for they were already sitting side by side on our couch. Sen-Sen's sleepy, the little one with the piggie bank explained. That they can see for themselves, Palmer, the big one declared, taking out a tiny packet and tossing some pellets into his mouth. You got a glass water, mister? Certainly. I handed it to him and he downed it in a single gulp. Thanks, I'll have another. About the tenth glass, I said, Herring? No, Carter. My friend there's Palmer. You've heard of Jingle Palmer, haven't you, Mac? I like the noise it makes, Jingle said, giving it another shake. It's his kidneys, He can't help it. I didn't have to ask what he couldn't help. Any minute I expected the people under us to come tearing up with a plumber. Was there anything else you wanted to do here, Mr. Sen-Sen? I asked, handing him the end of a hose I'd rigged up to the faucet. It's not what we do here that's important, he stated, breaking open a fresh packet; it's what you say here, egghead. You'd be an egghead too, I thought. I said, moving my feet up to another rung, What do you want me to say about, goatherd? He moved the hose to the other side of his mouth. How did you get wise to that, sunny-sides? I knew there had to be some simple reason for those goats having long hoofs, I said quietly. Nature just moved in to keep them from drowning, that's all. They stood up. The little one said, Where's the paper was in Raianne's? A long steel barrel had shot out of the nose of the pig and Jingle had a finger crooked in the loop of its tail.

Who's Raianne? Sen-Sen spat a pellet into my eye. Talk or I'll let you have another one, he barked. I don't like cheap candy anyway let alone in my eye, so I said, That's it, huh? Yeah, that's it. You mean the paper with the white powder on it I scooped up in the girl who played Bach's? Bach's, The Turf News, Patty's Original Green Sheet, I want the dope, bub, he growled, puckering. So they were brother and sister, I said shiveringly as I remembered the soft lovely grace of her and the warped, defeated evil in Ray's tiny, too-closely-set, goatpuncher's son's eyes. What I don't get, Jingle said, is why he killed her. That's simple, I said evenly. When Junior turned up out at the farm they naturally figured he was there to put the arm on them or he'd talk. And just what would this hypoethical Junior talk about, granting there ever was such a character? Sen-Sen demanded dryly. He had long since abandoned the disguise of aquaphobe and was meditatively sipping his bourbon highball like anybody else. Roul Ruscara, their natty assistant, had done an expert job of mopping up the puddle and was now happily occupied in painting a mural on the side of our combination bathtubkitchentable. Incest, of course, I retorted, excusing myself and going into the other room to see if Honey was all right. She was curled up daintily on Junior's old sea chest and having her first real sleep in four days. I put my mother's old paisley shawl around her shoulders and returned to my impatient guests. He means the thing they hint at about William Jennings Bryan, Palmer was explaining. I heard a guy up at Cooper Union on it once. Those days the all-night movies didn't open til ten.

It was the old lady put Ray up to it. The thought of the scandal was too much for her, I said. With Junior out of the running all she had to worry about was that somebody might tumble to her son as a murderer—but these days a lot of mothers are even a little proud of that. Sen-Sen yawned. Fork over the paper so's we can blow. I'm up all last night with the Major. He just lays there with that hurt look in his big yellow eyes. I still think it's nothing but hairballs, Jingle said, slipping the safety off his porcine rod. I checked the first time you said that. They're just like always was, Sen-Sen said. You sure this is the right paper, Amoeba? Smell it, I said simply. Talc. Ray uses it after he shaves, I simply said. He turned the cheap valentine over in his hairy fingers. The smartest of them always slip up on something, he said, incredulous perplexity making his voice sound as though it came from a throat as he handed the incriminating missive to his confederate. To my dere sister with lov, Jingle Palmer read, the marrow in his bones turning to a thin bouillon under the sheer horror of it. Blindly they turned and fled the room. I suppose even falling down six flights of stairs was a relief after what they had just been through. I shrugged and my shoulders moved up and down.  The ringing of the doorbell awakened me at five the next morning. It was the Italian fellah on the second floor had forgotten, and was singing off, his key. I lugged the bastard up and got him into bed. He insisted I join him in that high part from Carmen and we both had tears streaming down when we got through.

Alla man'sa beautiful, 'm ri? We alia gon' someday lova—no more kill, no more kicka my ass an' tell me Tony you'ra too old a jobba, 'm ri'? 'S sonabit' this crappa me Tony Favrino too olda— here! afeel this arm! 'M ri'! Then we did the high part again and he fell asleep. I dropped a five dollar bill under the chair where his clothes were and went back upstairs. Just as I was settled and half dozing off the doorbell rang again. I'll be goddamned! Now what are you getting up for? The doorbell again. I had my ears buried in the pillow. That's quite a stunt. You know what I mean. I'm sorry, Honey, I woke you up swearing. Don't be silly. You're entitled to a little swear now and then. But I'm doing too much of it lately. Wonder where my other shoe went to. Oh for Christ sake hold your damn horses! Imagine some idiot jabbing away like that this time the morning. It may be a telegram. I think the change's in your other pants. I went down and opened the outside door. Yeah? The vacancy. What is it, a two-room? You rang my bell to ask about a vacancy? The super didn't answer. I rang all the bells. Oh, you did. Well, you just come to hell back and try the super at some godly hour. He put his foot in the door. I gotta find a room, mister. She's sick. She was a skinny kid of about seventeen-eighteen with a peaked, sullen look. Well take your daughter around to some agency or something—whatever the hell you do in a case like this—I don't know. Mabel's my wife. The agency would ask a lot of questions. What floor's the room on, mister?

What's the matter with questions? We eloped. Mabel's folks'd be after her to come home. My name's Jed Bains, Jedro Bains, and this is my wife, Mabel Lawson. He stuck a boney fist into my hand. It was all I could do not to wipe it off on my pantleg. He had a blue jaw and was about fifty years old. How-do-you-do. I was feeling a bigger fool by the minute. Are you really sick? I said to the girl. She spoke so low I could hardly make it out. I'm all right. Her voice was disturbing in its rough beauty. What floor'd you say? I'll just go up and have a look. When'd you eat last, Mabel? Some of the bitterness went out of her face and she was just a scared kid biting her lip to keep from crying. She looked down at her shoes and didn't say anything. You guessed it, mister, I only got a little better'n four bucks. Figure the room for that. I'll have me a job in a day or two. I'm a mason—stone up there, but I can do bricks. We hitched her from Maine. That's where we're from. Augusta, Augusta, Maine. I never figured to let on to nobody about Mabel not eatin since day afore yesterday. We Mainers come a proud lot, mister. Don't talk much but we do our figurin— I know my wife would like to meet you, Mabel. We were just going to have breakfast and if you'd be willing to make the coffee, say, while the eggs are frying, why— I'll be glad to make the coffee. Her voice sent shivers up and down my spine.  The Bains took the room.  A lot of times when you say something funny it's to keep from crying. To hell with this whole damn mess of a world.

Honey and I used to imagine a lot of nice things together. Once I picked up a little duck made of soap in the five-and-ten and Honey said it would be nice to carve things like lions and bears and angels. Then we went on to imagining how after a while maybe one of those lions or bears or angels would come alive. Honey got very excited and clapped her hands together. And the angel would fall in love with me, she said, her eyes all full of light. Oh let's make up a whole story. All right, what happens when the angel falls in love with you? Suppose—suppose that's how you make your living, you're a famous sculptor—No. Wait, you carve little animals out of soap so people will buy the tools you carve them with— Like a demonstrator. That's it. You work in a department store and one day you bring this extra special angel home—Wait, first you bring a lot of tigers and wolves and things and we have them all upon the fireplace— All right, what happens about the angel? Why, the angel is death of course. Some fun. Oh don't spoil it. Let's see . . . The reason I die is that you don't love me anymore. Fat chance. You go off with another woman and— Why would I want to do that, for Christ sake? Because she has a strange and terrible attraction for you. Even though you love me, you still have to go off with her. I thought I didn't love you anymore? Oh don't be silly. And finally you come back to me and because of hardship and so on I'm dying of t.b. or something. Let's play some records, what do you say? And to show your love for me, you carve this beautiful angel— the most beautiful angel the world has ever seen. And the angel comes to life, tra-la. And I go off to heaven with him.

Honey, good God let's talk about something else! I remember another time we pretended the murder of a girl with golden hair who was going to be an opera singer, I think it was. Then we clowned it into a big scramble with dope-addicts and gangsters all mixed-up in it. We had a lot of fun making-up all sorts of things. I've been writing some of it down so you could see what it was like. At first Junior was a gypsy with huge silver earrings and a red mustache three feet from tip to tip. The notion of the chicken salesmen sleeping in the kitchen tickled us more than anything. I don't know why. The dream hide-out on 171st Street was something I thought up. You get the idea. You've got to have something in this damn world to keep you from going crazy. Because I am sitting here in the half-dark by Honey's bed and Honey is dying. God I don't want her to die. Please God I don't want her to die. 

BURY THEM IN GOD

My father walks into the kitchen with the alertness of one expecting great events. There is a curious, half-startled sorrow on his blackened face. I follow him into the cellarway and watch in silence while he takes off his mill clothes. The smell of rancid oil and smoke pours from his tired body. "When did she die?" I cannot answer. I want to pound him with my fists. You dirty, cheap, sweaty-nosed monster. . . Noreen is dead! Does it make no difference to you? 'When did she die?' as calmly as 'Is supper ready?' I can see him at the head of the table, making thick noises with his lips as he wolfs the best pieces of meat; and Noreen is sitting in the chair beside him, her eyes never lifting, eating hesitantly, on edge to anticipate his next roar. The butter! Damnit! why don't you listen when I ask for something! Yes father, I'm sorry. And mother moving like a wornout ghost from one plate to the next. . . Woman! for God's sake sit down and stop fussing over them. If they ain't got sense enough to feed themselves, then let them starve. . . Yes, yes, yes Tom, yes father. He takes a cake of Lava from the shelf over the sink and soaps his chest and belly. Rivulets of dirt follow the muscle ridges in jerky, tormented descent. His biceps whirl into sudden balls that stretch the skin to breaking. You stinking great ox. My father can beat up your father. 240 pounds of sheer beating-up. Watch this! and he laughs as the steel bar bends like sluggish jelly in his hands. I look at the clock. It is four in the morning. She has been dead almost three hours. The sound of weeping and hushed voices comes to us as the parlor door is opened. Before my mother can speak, he asks, "Anyone come yet?"

Uncle George and Aunt Anne, Uncle Jim and his second wife, Mr. and Mrs. Town, Joe, Bessie. . . Carl is at the phone now; it will take a day or so for some of them to get here, Uncle Ed from Michigan, Cousin Will from Pennsylvania, and Sally, and Red Williams, and Big Sam, and . . . "The priest was with her to the end. He said she died" (and my mother sobs uncontrollably) "so happy. Oh Tom, I can't stand it, I can't stand it." My father bends over awkwardly to unlace his shoes; their steel plates gleam ominously in the light. He opens his mouth to speak, coughs instead, a dry, sharp, heat-withered cough. For the first time I realize that they do not want me with them. I put down the Argosy-All-Story-Weekly. I place it carefully beside me on my cot-bed. I am frantic with love. Rain beats softly on the window. My body arches, tense, quivering. I have been lying on my stomach reading and waiting for Noreen to come in from her date. She is late tonight. A new fellow, a fellow who plays in the K of C band. I seem to have a third eye, I can see them in the parked car, his mouth close to her ear, just at the point where the fine hair is so altogether different from any on me; always I wanted to touch her face, run my lips along the line of her mouth—not kiss her, of course I did that—but in the way I moved to do it, show her that in me she had someone whose worship would keep her pure forever. And I am terrified, lost, dissolved as though in a nightmare. I am not curious about the ending of the story I have been reading. I know how it ends. I know that the little grim man in the light sedan is going to elude the police only to die from the bite of the tiny spider which is even now inching down over his sleeping face. I move a chair near the bed that I may have an unobstructed view of his agony. The man's heavy breathing causes the spider to swing gently on its web-spit, like a censer in a devil's church. Now the horrible manicles unclench—I scream and the little murderer opens one eye sleepily—it's only a story,

he says in mild disapproval. I feel like laughing. I know that I cannot enter a story and tell people what to do. But I can. Of course I can. Father Riley, I say, and Father Riley strides out of the sacristy, rubbing his pink hands together like a small boy making a snow ball. Listen, you big cheese, I'm not going to be a priest when I grow up and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it—if you smoked one. I don't intend to spend all my life standing in front of an altar dressed in skirts like a woman. Then I wonder if it happens to Father Riley. Until tonight I had always thought that it only happened when a man did that to his wife. I hear the car turning in at the drive. I want to rush down and tell Noreen about it. Noreen, I was just lying here on my stomach reading and suddenly something burst inside me— like a beautiful light which you can taste and hear . . . Noreen, I. . . and I wonder if that can happen to her, if it will feel like that, and I want her to feel it, I want to give that to her, I want to remove it from me and give it to her—but something won't let me think it. What happened is for her, the rich, churning joy, but what I have of it now is not as it was then. I begin to scheme. I try to imagine a woman's body, a wife's body. I try to visualize the places which have been hidden from me. I have a new weapon. I am eager to make war. My father's sweat rushes into my blood. I want to go to the church and light all the candles because I have died and because I have been born. I fall asleep wondering what the priests do . . . why is it a sin? What would they say if a twelve year old boy had a wife? Buckets of black tea, cake, sandwiches, ice cream. Death is a thing that swells you up, you want to cry over everyone and laugh at everything. Besides, the men have a nip or two. Death brings the chickens home to roost . . . indeed, ta ta, such a lovely young girl, and only seventeen—with her life before her, cluck, cluck. More tea, Mrs. Town? Aunt Anne? Ave Maria.

My father is in fine spirits. The carburetor on his car has been on the blink for months, but Uncle Ed, never man better with machinery, no sooner arrives than he fixes it. That reminds someone of the time someone's car was stuck out on the road and after they had got a tow-car out—in the middle of the night at that—the damn thing's just plain out of gas! Cousin Will, tell Tom here what you said to that Republican when he offered you a cigar to vote for him. . . But the chief talk is of Uncle Jim's second wife. She's not a day under forty but boy is she a number wow! Watch out she don't set her cap for you. I hate her. I want to kick her in the belly. Coming into the house where Noreen. . . What's the matter with the boy? looks a bit blue around the gills. Took him hard, eh? Yes, you slimy-faced lizard, it took me hard. Stephen, my older brother, hangs about the men like a puppy expecting a kick and being caressed. As the day goes on, he expands with their good spirits. Ah, it's good to be a man and listen to men talk. How is Effie? Fine. She says it's easier to have twins. Guess the second one learns to get out from the first. No, that ain't it—the second shoves the first one out. And shoves so hard, he falls out himself, I suppose. Gloria in excelsis deo. Yeah, Young Fred's going to the dogs pretty fast. Knocked Old Fred down when he told him to stop bringing women to the house. Old Fred should talk. He did have some pips in his day, didn't he? Heard the story bout him? Which one? Seems when he'd come into the poolroom all the boys would say, Clap, clap, here comes Freddie. My mother's face is red from weeping and from standing over the hot stove. The women are shoving things into their mouths

and having the time of their lives between bites. I watch a huge piece of berry pie disappear under Aunt Anne's little black mustache. The fat breasts jiggle with grief and merriment. . . I get up from my desk and cross to the window. An owl-gray dusk lowers over the city, a brutal darkness which seems to have the proportions of a human being bringing news of war to his waiting fellows. An ambulance lurches down the street, its red headlights advertising the latest delight in civilization's brothel—I am told that before the war of '14, crowds would gather along driveways which led to the accident wards, avid for sexual excitation. Religion and war will give Mr. Nobody an orgasm when all else has failed. O the Elk and the Moose and the Lion—have you ever watched them come out of their convention halls? Isn't it too much to hope that they would have the manly dignity to beat up their wives? I think it is. War is easier. Race hatred is a great pecker-raiser. Think of all the hot beds a war with Germany would make. The average American woman of fifty is a pooped-out hag, and it's small wonder—you can't expect them to live out their lives with these 'over-grown boys' and come through without dry bleeding somewhere. My own people had no such trouble: they were respecters of dirt. They could have brought me along all right . . . but I would still be groping around in the cave . . . maybe not sitting here waiting for war . . . I am standing turns, lucky tonight to get work, the rougher is just coming out of a drunk and I get his place and the sheets come wolfing out of the rolls and I move my tongs to take them knowing that when I get home the kids will just be getting up for school and the wife will be moving around saying Stephen get washed and get to bed I've got a big washing to do today. I stand at the sink and soap my belly. . . But I am not thinking of these things. I feel a hot breath in my ear and the arms of a huge blonde woman are around me. Her body is wonderfully soft and warm. Your sister is better off

now. No pain, no sorrow, no misery. The words pour over me like a puppy's tongue over a bruised hand. My face sinks into her breast. I am wildly happy. Suddenly I know what a woman is. I can believe in God. I can understand what it is about Uncle Jim's wife that sets the men after her. This body is the purest and wisest thing on earth. It is so much stronger than they are. It rises big and sure above their brutal talk. A joyous flower opens in me. . . I press against her in an ecstasy of devotion. I am glad that Noreen is dead. My fingertips touch that innocent death, my mouth sweetens on the importance of the living who contemplate the beautiful workings of death. Everything in me runs in a great torrent through the scent of the funeral wreaths and lodges in this peaceful body which is mine and which no man may ever again have as it is this moment, all my worship kicking and beating and trampling this purity that it may be gouged out of her and put deep in me. You dirty little brat! You ugly little beast! I can feel the impression of her hand on my cheek. Shame and disgust empty me of childhood. The whole damn sweating and tugging world is at my heels now. Her face is coarse, bloated like a bag of snot. I begin to understand why the men make dirt of the word they use to describe what they want of her. That is my word now, and I shall say it as they do. The priest walked to the railing and lifted his eyes to The Father and his voice to the mourners who sat there waiting peacefully to be told that it was all for the best. He was a lean man with a fat look. His hands caressed the bible as though it were the belly of Mrs. God. From time to time he squeezed a nipple and the divine milk poured out with his words. Never having had a daughter of his own he was eminently qualified to console my parents in the loss of theirs. He ate of their flesh and drank of their blood and had every right to spit it back in their faces. He was a doctor of the soul and his instruments were made of honey and hell-fire. They paid him to tell them what punks they were. His eyes went off in opposite directions and he

had to turn his head sideways to look at you—with a Devil and a God to supervise, I suppose being cockeyed was a distinct advantage to him; he had them both well in hand, at any rate. I watched his right eye for awhile. My father had a way of clacking his false teeth when his attention was held by anything—he bought them at thirty, not because they were needed but because he thought they looked better than his own; he used to leave them lying about the house because they hurt his mouth, and I have never experienced anything more predatorily savage than those teeth snapping out at me from the most unexpected places. The priest had him clacking. I moved nearer my mother and her shaking body beat gently against me. Stephen, on her other side, was enjoying the adulation which our position accorded us. A frog could have peed down his neck and he wouldn't have noticed it. One of father's favorite expressions. You could have goosed him with a nun's glove. Another. My father was not a Catholic. The Church was just another thing for mother to fret about. He didn't like the priests because he said they talked and acted like W.C.T.U. women. Why the Pope's nothing but an oily-haired wop. But Father Riley had him clacking. This beautiful young gi-rl cut down in the first flower of her unfolding womanhood. O better, better I say, better that this untainted maiden should leave this valley of sorrow . . . clack, clack . . . If it be the will of G-od. . . O happy, happy these my children who follow unsullied the dictates of their Ma-ker . . . if then, O grieving parents, and friends of this poor sorrowing mother, of this grief-burdened father . . . clack, clack . . . if then it be His all-beautiful will. . . Maiden. I am left with that word. I know in a vague fashion what it means. The fact of this thing stands between me and Noreen's death. It robs the event of all meaning. It is as though I walk at night across a long bridge and there is only the shore which faces me and only the brilliantly-lighted city in whose every window I see her face and her eyes pleading with the

terrible man who is crossing the room to her. They stand looking at each other while I walk them nearer and just as I am near enough to call—the lights go out, I can't see her now, I want to see her but it is dark around me and the bridge is crumbling into the water. Suddenly I understand what it is. I am jealous of death. She was defenseless, alone, and he took her. He is white, his eyes, hands, arms, hair, white, and his breath is white as he speaks to her . . . mingling then, she too becomes white and I sink down through the water while she rides into the sky with that white . . . that cold, flower-scented white bridegroom whose awful lips are sealed on hers forever. When Father Riley has everybody crying nicely, he quits. We file out of the church like schoolboys from a whorehouse, ashamed and yet strangely elated. We've got badges marked God all over us. I sit with my family in the car behind the hearse. We worm through the streets flaunting our dreadful burden in the faces of the curious. We're not as good as a circus but they watch because there are a lot of us and we're all doing the same thing. My father turns his head to admire a new real-estate development. Clack, clack. Great little burg. I notice that the right rear tire on the hearse is almost flat. I pray that they will have to stop and fix it—all the coops opening and all the chickens hopping out 'O for heaven's sake! A flat tire on the way to the graveyard. . .'—but it doesn't seem to be losing very much air. My mother's sobs mingle with father's clacking. Stephen is watching the back of the driver's neck as though he expected it to explode. Absently he fingers a pimple. We swing in at the gate and thread through avenues of graves. Big monuments jostle little ones—class distinction to the end, a desperate last show in implacable stone. There it is! A hole in the ground, ten by six by four. They get the ugly box out and after mumbling over it some

more they lower it on ropes and throw the dirt in. The undertaker's helper is already busy pumping air into the tire. There is a rap on my door and I go to open. Swanson is forty, a poet with two published books and a manuscript which has been kicking around in publishers' offices for several years. He came in clean and hard on the wave of 'proletarian' writing and was left high and dry when it receded. He refuses to spike his guns and as a result they don't go off at all. It hurts him to think that with the phonies revolution was nothing more than a literary fashion—to be thrown out like a dirty sock. He writes anger now. He has bogged down in hating people who are not worthy of notice. He has lost the thread of the argument, Villon's, Heine's, Melville's. While I am making coffee he wanders over to the bookcase and examines the poetry shelf. Who's this guy? He reads off the title, flicks through the pages. . . Listen to this. He reads slowly, drumming out the words. Boy, is that crap. Why're they all so damned constipated? Bet you could clean up with a physic for all these half-ass metaphysicals. Jesus, they just can't get it out. . . You know, I haven't read a decent poem in months. In months? I say. You're lucky. Who the hell is there? he demands, coming over for coffee. I hear so much talk . . . whosis, whatsis, and when I read the stuff—crap. Maybe you don't hear the right talk, I tell him. Yeah? He looks eager. You heard something good? I shake my head and we drink the coffee. What you working on now? A short story. It's not that thing you were telling me about? The kid and his sister. . .? Yes, the kid and his sister. What the devil can you do with that? The kid learns to masturbate and it's mixed up with death. . .

And the sister. . . Did you get in the stuff about the old man? Some of it. I'm only about half way through. Look, I've got an idea. The kid finds the old man in the aunt's bed just before they're ready to go off to the funeral. . . What does that do? What do you mean, what does that do? Look. . . Swanson. Yeah? Why do you write? What do you mean, why do I write? It's as good a way to blow time as any. . . Did you ever think that . . . oh what the hell. Think what? Nothing. Let's forget it. Ok, I'll tell you what I think. I think that you have never written a goddamn thing that amounts to two cents. I think that you go around with the notion that because you happened to be born in a mill town, it puts a little gravy on your ass. I think that you've got the idea that you're a pretty bright little boy. This crappy story about the kid . . . what've you got? You ring in the Catholic church, ok, the Catholic church. You moon about what a prick your old man was . . . so what? And you got the damnedest, sweetest, prettiest damn sister who kicks the bucket and maybe you wanted to sleep with her . . . so what? you did, you didn't, it wouldn't kill her . . . maybe she'd like it . . . all right, you learn what life is, lying on your belly in a bed, so what? Want me to tell you what to do with your damned story. . . What makes you think I wanted her? I give you that much credit. You know a funny thing, Swanson? I can't wait. It does make a difference . . . being born in a mill town. Get down off that horseshit New York wise-guy stuff. You're not going to kid me with any of that straight-from-the-shoulder

junk. . . I'll tell you something. . . I haven't put a damn thing in that story I didn't sweat blood over. . . Some guys sweat blood over the ball scores. . . . . . And just what the hell you get out of coming around here and BS-ing about the way I write. . . I came for coffee. All right, you've got the coffee. Bye then, Little Boy Blue. You should boy blue me . . . sitting on your tail all day in the 42nd Street library and goosing the ghosts of all the old farts. . . What old farts do you refer to? Old long-shirt Whitman who never opened his trap but a couple prairies and the Mississippi river jumped out; old stomach-ulcer Hawthorne . . . you know what you do over there . . . mooning over all the birdturd about how tough it is to be an artist in America . . . it's hard to do anything anywhere if you can't do it . . . and what the devil are all your smart critics doing about the boys who are in there now? Van Wyck Brooks, sure, Brooks, or maybe some of the little magazine-critic punks . . . they're so damn busy figuring out why Mark Twain had his ordeal, that fifty better guys could rot under their noses and they wouldn't know it . . . when the smell gets too bad they may move up to Edwin A. Robinson. . . Keep your pants on, you're disturbing the ants. And where do you come in . . . spewing your guts out about the working class? That's where your revolution will hit . . . straight down through the whole damn heap of filth where you'll find them, squatting on their rumps and hating every Goddamn thing you stand for . . . if you mean cheap, degraded, rotten pigs, then I'll know you're not talking through your hat about the working class. They'll rise up against their masters. . . Sure, they'll rise up, to build a bigger manure pile than they had the last time. Please, Mister, kin I join your Party? Sneer, you jackass . . . go on home and knock out a poem

about how when the workers march into the streets it will be May 1st and everything. It's freaky intellectuals like you who take all the guts out of the struggle between the exploiters and the exploited . . . knock all the howling rubbish about 'the workers' out of your head. Jesus, think of all the poison that's been poured into them! Wake them up, for God's sake wake them up! but don't come bleating to me about how fine and noble they are. . . You sound drunk, little boy. Look, you bastard, go out in the street and listen to your working class champing at the bit to sink its teeth into the Japanese or German working class . . . and most of the writing skunks are hell-bent to hop on Roosevelt's war wagon . . . 'Save Democracy'—for the bankers. . . You're all balled up, dicky bird. I'm not so balled up that I spend my time with a gang of crapshooting intellectual turncoats. I suppose I do. No you don't Swanson and I'm sorry I got sore but why the hell must you pull that stuff about the divine right of the workers to be sonsabitches. Now get out of here. I'm expecting Mary and I don't want your ugly puss around when she comes. Look, better take my advice about the old man in the aunt's bed. . . I'll put you in the aunt's bed. Is she nice? She's an A1 member of the working class. That's good enough for me. So long, Swanson. Bye, blue eyes. The candles stand like two huge white carrots bleeding through their tops. Black eyelashes make a rigid net over her dead eyes. This is where you are? The whole box of your body empty of all but its cold meat. . . You would be afraid of this

thing that lies here without feeling, without reason, without faith, joy or pain. . . If you were to walk into the room now, Noreen, you would scream in terror of all this whiteness that they have put where you were. White, a white thing . . . yet the hair is like your hair, silken, beautifully soft. . . There is a new ring on your finger and the stone writhes like a green snake in the light of the candles. All right, Swanson, I can't go back there. . . Lost in the far sleep that reaches out for my people on the byways of the world, lost in the thick snore of my father and rotted in the breasts of my mother, withered in the years that have brought me to this night, this night as it advances its westering course to my own death; this night, then, Swanson, all of us amassed like squirming maggots in the gut of being alive and waiting for something to snap that we may be dead. Hollow the organ of memory groaning against all the broken stops. Empty the arms we hold out to the parts of ourselves that other people have taken. Haunted the tread of the feet that have wandered off from our bodies. In how many desolate places am I walking now? Is it strange that our pieces writhe through our sleep with every mouth screaming and with every nerve howling against the cavity of our disrupted souls? Is it strange at all, Swanson, that we are selecting the instruments of our own slaughter? Observe, I feel over all the knives in the case, selecting the one with the keenest edge—you can understand that—it is foul luck to find yourself equipped fully, the victim, maybe a person you despise, or better, nearly, someone you love, and then discover that instead of effecting a clean, deep wound, your blade only sogs the flesh, tearing rather than cutting. I believe that you will appreciate the dream of all the hurt and the hounded, an opening, even the tiniest, into the fabric of the past—the desire to mutilate the dead—not only those who died in body then, but also those who, being alive now, are dead in that time; for, is it not clear, Swanson, that the only survivors of that time, are the dead? We live only across one

surface of time. Only the dead have a continuity of life, being predictable for those who continue to advance from that time. We can distinguish their features, because we are not afraid of them. We can remember nothing we fear; we remember only the fear. So it is, Swanson, I can tell you that of that hour and that time, only Noreen lives. All else is fantasy and crawling nightmare. Consider, to have a twelve year old boy trailing from you like a monstrous foetus, shoving into your life, being you. No, there is madness, there is the dissolution that gathers the advancing symbolism of living into a tight hysteria that feeds on itself. My God, how we name everything! How we lie sprawled in the filth of our labels! Are we to be only the cemeteries where are buried our million images? Kill the shadow people, kill the brutes who belly after us, their bloody, grasping paws rending and tearing all that we do. Stay in the now, Swanson; give them back all their smooth tricks for making cattle of our people; tell them to rub their noses in it when they start putting the working class on their neat shelf with the rest of their junk. A human being will walk out from under any tit-waving word of theirs. Of course there will be a new world and if you think it will be built on veneration for the sloth and ignorance of those down under now, you are a traitor to that better world. You are a traitor and a low-life, yellow-bellied skunk. I arrange the knives in the case . . . the quick, good blades that thirst for murder. I go down into the cellar and find the thing I want, a thick board with a long nail sticking up out of it And they said unto him, Thou art mad. But he continued to affirm that it was so. Then said they, It is his angel craftily I entered the room where they are gathered round the coffin But he continued knocking: and when they had opened the door, and saw him, they were as beasts caught in a hunter s net first I swing out at my mother and the nail catches her in the cheek tearing out flesh adrip with blood and milk and when they were past the first and the second ward, they came unto the iron gate which held them off

the city; which opened to them and thunder came and thunder came and thunder came and fire was upon the earth my father rushes at me and I get him in the temple and he goes down And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man I manage to reach a few of the others and I lay about me for the sake of the dream that is in my heart for these my people And he said, How can I, except some man shall guide me? I am chuckling under my breath and finally I get over to Noreen and bending over I whisper they've all gone now Noreen they won't put their dirty muggs in your face anymore and then I raise the dripping club and hit her just under the eye but no single drop of blood comes and forthwith the angel departed from him It is enough that I love them. Allowing her dress to slip from her she stands naked before me. Mary, I want to say, you are all purity and goodness, Mary, Mary. . . I believe in the god of us. And I turn out the light. The city noises are hushed now . . . a whistle . . . a foghorn out in the silent bay . . . a faint call . . . Mary. Mmmm. . . Are you asleep? Hnnna. . . That story, Mary—the one I was telling you about. . . Mm. . . I know how to end it now. End what? The story. . . Oh, that . . . think about it in the morning. No, Mary, I may lose it if I wait. Well, what's the matter with the way you were going to end it? That was all a lie. I want to tell the truth now. . . What is the truth? I didn't shout at my father before the people who had come for the funeral.

No, what then? I didn't call him names and beat him with my fists. Don't get excited . . . I can believe it. I didn't tell them all what I thought of them. . . You've said that half a dozen times. . . The thing happened the night before the funeral. I had gone in to be alone with her. I wanted to feel what death was. The candles had burned low and the Christ on the little silver crucifix was jumping up and down in the wavering light— suddenly I saw that she was breathing. . . Go on, I'm listening. My chest drew in in a gob of terror. I expected her lips to part. . . The touch of the hand on my shoulder caused me to sway and I felt a strong arm go round me. Turning, I looked into the face of my father. His jaw was set in a line of great suffering and tears flowed from his eyes. His hold grew tighter on my arm and as I stood watching with him I saw that the candle flame was steady and that her breast was still. Mary. Mmmm. . . Did you hear what I said? Of course. You went in to be alone with your sister for the last time. . . All right, you go back to sleep, I know how to finish it now. Ah, no . . . it'll keep until morning. I put my arms around her and stare at the gray patch of window. Her breathing is even, deep and secure. Slowly I get out of bed, cross to the desk and snap the light on. I begin to write: It happened fifteen years ago in Ohio. I was a sensitive lad, inclined to be a goddamned, ratfaced, little sonofabitch. . . Hail Mary and twelve Our Fathers. Hail Mamie and Tom and Jim and Swanson and Willie and me and you and Father Riley too. . .

THEY KEEP RIDING DOWN ALL THE TIME

THE SEA has enough trouble without bothering about what happens to us. From a room in the great room we watch the gulls diving in and out of the golden fingers and I know it doesn't care though we are quite breathlessly wonderful from doing what we were intended to do. I move away and she raises her arms above her head and says what a beautiful morning. We have been here two weeks now. The man who drove us down has a son with a good job in Washington. All I saw on the whole trip was fat junior sitting at a polished desk with a braised guinea hen just starting to glide into his major intestine. The stone pots on the flagged-terrace have salt on their ugly lips. Once the home of a retired captain, the place had a basso from the Met in it before us; webby nets crowd wigs and swords on the wall, and the ghosts of torrid nights and shipwrecks dismal as old photographs flirt dankly over the thighs of blackened timbers. Jesus Christ why can't everything be that beautiful! She faces me on her side and her soft wet mouth bursts like a plum against my teeth. I move so that we are together. Her fingers dig into my back, slowly unbend. There is a loud knock on the door. I slip my pants on and after waiting a minute cross over and throw the bolt. The hall is empty. I yell down to Mrs. Gabery. She went to market about an hour ago. Damn, she's always at market. The sound of elephants with iron legs and Mrs. Gabery comes into the room her arms laden with dishes of steaming food. The four of us sit on the edge of the bed and eat like crazy, like we hadn't eaten for months. Baby keeps trying to shove against me. Concrete posts with a box spring, the bed. Baby, don't jiggle, Mrs. Gabery says. Remember how that singer broke his leg in the cellar last time you jiggled too much. But mama, I want a man.

Well, you'll just have to wait. So far they're all too small. Baby sniffles. Nobody gives a damn about my sex urge. She pops an eye of the roast suckling into her mouth. Jill winks at me. She thinks it's a joke. Hardly. Yesterday Baby caught me in the hall. Four hundred pounds and a timbered wall are the bread of a pretty nasty sandwich. The postman came in with three letters. One of them was from the king asking me to tea the next day at five sharp. The kingdom being a small one I didn't get up when he came in. His den was tiled with Kraft cheese boxes and his goatee grew down well below his belt buckle, of gold. Awfully good of you to come. King. Yes. I asked him what he thought of floors. He said that always having been used to floors he hadn't really thought much about them one way or the other. This led us into other, more intimate discussions. When he was twelve, the first time. Twice since. Glancing idly at his goatee, I said: It would be wrong to say that covers a multitude of sins. He handed me a thousand kreggor note. Buy Jill a ybosde with it, he said simply. I took his hand warmly before I remembered my cigar, a Philly which I don't really like. The other two letters were from ybosde growers, one specializing in the water kind, the other, land. I finally bought one from a guy who had a place between the two farms. I like it very much, Jill said, but what's that terrible smell? It had a little kangaroo-like pouch fastened to the outside of its hindlegs and it wasn't until days later that I got wise to what it was for and sprinkled lime into it.

The day Ned Bolton came over from Scranton we all went for a dip. I never could warm up to Ned but my brother was in the C.C.C.'s with him and it did my heart good to see that Baby could swim circles under him. She had seven rings on her right hand and I could count four of them on the inside of his leg. The ybosde had a long snout and I spent most of the time jumping ten feet out of the water. But as I slept that night it was a clean pouch I had shoved into my face—dear little Sten. Jill insisted that I shorten its name. The Bruise left today. My brother always did admire a man who could take it. Vice versa, poor Baby. Jill and I sat up late talking and watching the stars ride up and down on the dark water like the corks of a great fisherman. There is a fence. Green butterflys hover over the head of an old man which is placed on the highest paling. Someone is thinking of home. Someone is wondering what will happen to human beings now that nobody really has a home. Someone's eyes fill with tears. He is a fool. Chop off his goddamned arms and legs why don't you. Jill. Yes, darling. Go to sleep. You too. It's nearly daylight. Does life have meaning? Horses of a blind king stagger down a road made of the torn bodies of soldiers. A flower opens to the sun. Jill and I are leading impossible lives in an impossible world. People hate poetry. People hate those who are not corrupt. House by the sea. An ancient house. Iron and salt make rainbows in the fireplace. Tell me a story, Jill. Tell me how

beautiful men and women once lived in a safe world. Because we are damned. I hear the waves beating against the rocks. Stand naked before me, Jill. Let us go to bed and be beautiful together for a little while. It is too late to live. Only our love is alive. That is the only way we can remember the beautiful. That is the only way we can keep their corruption from touching us. Trees clouds dogs— Hurrah for human beings! I hear the beating of a heart. It drowns out every other sound. God has enough trouble without bothering about what happens to us. A man is a fool to be evil. The wind told me. The wind that is blowing in from the graveyard of this world. They keep riding down all the time. You can't stop them. They keep riding down all the time and you can't stop them. Nobody ever stopped them and nobody ever will stop them. There is a huge log on the edge of a meadow. Someone is sitting on the log. Her face is swollen with weeping. At her feet is an old woman. Mother and daughter. Mrs. Gabery and Baby. Baby is so fat that huge chunks of flesh leap about her when she walks. Her eyes are tiny as a pig's. A figure walks out of the woods. A giant of a man in a red coat carrying a huge basket in his hand. Shoving Mrs. Gabery away with his foot, he hauls Baby up and rips her dress off all in one motion. Then—Now he takes the cover from the basket and he and Baby eat dozens of roast ham sandwiches without a word. When Mrs. Gabery tries to get a little piece of meat which has fallen into some dry leaves, Baby gives her such a clout that she swallows her upper plate. Then—And heaps more delicious sandwiches.

Finally Baby waddles off with her giant, munching happily, looking a proper sow without her clothes and the print of leaves on her rump. They keep riding down all the time. Nobody can ever stop them. Goodbye, Baby. Have a hell of a good time. Do you know which one you want to ride down for you? Ned Bolton was always afraid of his father. Why his old man used to scare the living daylights out of him by just saying pass me the butter huh. One day last week a trolley went off the track in good old Scranton, Pa., making an upper and a lower Bolton Sr. Nobody saw the thing that gave that trolley a nudge, nohow. They just keep riding down all the time. No one can ever stop them. Which one do you want to ride down for you? A last flick of the golden wrench. A final check on the silver pipes. That's right—just pull the chain. Whoosh! Now who ever saw a happier ybosde? You can't stop them. They keep riding down all the time. What kind do you want to ride down for you? Jill, the night is beautiful out on the water. Now and then the lights of a passing ship nod by like blurred faces in a dream. Flying cold wool drifts in at the window. We are quite alone in the house now. The old woman has gone to church to pray for the soul of her daughter. Death takes everyone, my Jill. Death sends them riding down. A timber creaks below stairs somewhere. A foghorn bellows out on the dark water. I am very happy tonight. Once upon a time an angel grew discontented in heaven, and flew down here—to stand in this room. Tiny golden flames played over his forehead. He held a golden bird in his

hand, and the eyes of the golden bird were as jewels brighter than the crimson coat of a giant. Now the angel, as you will guess, became sleepy in the unaccustomed sound of the sea— and the hard, bright eyes of the bird seemed to look out of the sound at last, Jill, as though they were what his hearing saw and what he actually wanted to see instead of this world where murder and doubt and fear have their slimy claws in every one. The eyes of the golden bird nod by on the water like the lights of a passing ship. The fog blows in at the window. Flames dance on your shoulders as you undress before the fire. As you stretch out naked on the couch I know that wherever the angel is now he will be dreaming that his hands are parting your thighs and that he is lying in the love-attitude above you; and lying here, O my love, I can enter his dream and see through the eyes of the golden bird into a world where all the creatures of God live at peace with one another. Dear poor angels and men, place your arms in love about someone—soon enough the sound of death's cold and terrible sea shall put us all to sleep. I was sitting on the terrace in the sun reading a dull book by an Australian when Jocko Mudrose came up and whistled over some music he'd written the night before. I told him I'd have to hear it on the piano before I could get much idea of it. A crab scuttled past his chair and Jocko squashed it under his dirty bare foot. You bastard, why'd you have to do that! He stood up, swaying, drunk as a sunbeam in a garden—Why don't you tell me it stinks and have done with it? I said I'd had the crab in mind. He said who the———hell gives a damn about a crab, you and your runny-assed mooning around! I opened the book again. Say, lad, my pretty lad now, Jocko said in his best voice, would you have a bottle of the lovely anywhere abouts? A short swig to keep the mists of the bitter morning from eating the—lungs out of your friend here. I gave him a drink and invited him for supper. He walked off down

the beach, his dark face, scarred by the tongs of hell, withdrawn and lonely, sending a shadow across the heart of the morning, and mine. Shortly after the three kids in their blue dresses came and danced until I went down and gave them each a dime. I hear the beating of a heart. A clown with a little three-legged dog walking across a meadow. Seven great white birds winging past high overhead. There should be no wall between a man and his life. An ancient house beside the sea. Brothers, time is getting short. A wild flower in the footprint of a madman. There isn't much time left now. Does life have a meaning? Where is the larger kingdom? Better a father who hates, than one who is indifferent; better the nightmare of sight, than the gray unseeing of all these poor devils; better to kneel before a throne that doesn't exist, than to be caught with your pants down in the temple of the human heart. Jill came back from shopping about three o'clock with a bag full of light green melons and three dozen balls of colored twine, mostly yellow, blue and turkey red. I asked her if it was hot in the square and she said not very. We quartered the melons and dropped them into jars of china tea, where they would remain for three weeks less five and a half days, an old Eastern recipe for the cure of almost everything you can think of. Then I went down and told Mrs. Gabery-Wills what we wanted for supper. Tid Wills was playing his dulcimer and singing songs of the time of Elizabeth. For a just-married couple they were quite casual and relaxed; I thought they were happy, and I said so. Tid grinned and shifted his tobacco. A dish fell off a shelf and broke with a loud bang on the stone floor.

Back upstairs I placed all the balls of twine in the old seachest, just in case. Which one do you want to ride down for you? It started to rain. The sea was all gray and forlorn looking. I stood for a moment watching the waves smash in against the rocks, then I went over and took Jill's hand and kissed it. One of the Shane-of-the-Cliffs boys dashed in, and said there was a liner piled-up out beyond Frog's Head Light. I took my glass and had a look, but I couldn't see a damn thing what with all the fog and the oily smudge of barges tossing about like the combs of crazy, sad cocks. Finally the tormented jangle of a ship's bell drifted in and I said I hope to hell they're not too long at it. Tid said sometimes you can hear the bell a good ten minutes afterwards. I asked him what he was talking about and his sightless eyes staring out on the dark water he said she's already under may God rest their souls. O they keep riding down all the time. Nobody can ever stop them. Some from the light and some from the darkness—O see with what stern tenderness they keep riding down on this world! In this year . . . eternal joy of things. Serene embrace of colors and the wondrous charity of trees. Fountain—tears of stone filling the eyes of mountains—again, one from all—by nature related to everything—There is no guilt; against you is nothing. Be little if you would know peace. Wisdom is in identity. Over thought is love. The child weeps because you are afraid. A box. In the box is a golden chair. Roses have merry funerals. Wait for me. I want to go with you. It's beautiful. Let them say what they will. Let them tell you a pack of lies. Let them pretend all they want. I see the naked girls lying on the bank of the river. Their hands fashion harps for the wind to play. They are getting slowly to their feet now. Which one do you want? They float off into the air like soft, gentle birds. Which one do you want to ride down for you?

I fill my pipe and look out over the water. Somewhere I hear the beating of a great heart. It drowns out every other sound. Just what are all you fat swine squatting around on your haunches waiting for anyway! Jocko was late. Mrs. G-W was as sore as a thumb because she'd gone all out and more to placate her than anything else Jill and I fell to and ate everything down to the last crumb which didn't bother our friend any since when he did come he was that potted you could have set a plate of snakes and sheepdirt in front of him with a big spoon to wind them on and lots of grated cheese and red wine to wash it down. Right away he started to tell us what he thought about everything and Jill helped her clear the table and the two of them went down trying not to listen to wash the dishes. I'd heard it all fifty times before but Jocko his legs wide spread to keep the floor under them said he believed the whole———world was one———stink from start to finish and all that———talk of brotherhood and the rest of that ———added up to a bunch of boyscouts———against a wall on a pretty dark night if you asked him and all that in the least mattered was a good———in the morning and a———or two every third day and would I please tell him the———use of writing music or reading books when all the———time he either had a pain in his———gut or a mess of———bugs dribbling off his——— ———. In the middle of it I picked up the Australian tome and a shadow fell across Robert's pallid cheek. He felt that if Clarice had had greater depths of character from the outset of their relationship the whole———lot of swindlers could shove their bag of tricks up their———yet he knew that to the extent that his own inner wishes were thwarted, as Baudelaire's, as the full-fleshed Wagner's, in a larger, more real sense I could come down off my———highhorse and admit that I didn't believe one tenth of the ———I was dishing out when all the———time I knew damn well that the only———thing any of us could count on was having a nice fat worm crawl in and out of our———"Oh,

there you are, my pet. I thought Merton had told you I wanted to see you in the study." She's not herself today, he thought idly, flicking some lint off his sleeve with practiced———in my hand, oh tell me, Mr. William Shakespeare———, which shall it be now, the———bedroom or the———can? There was a timid knock on the door and before I could decide whether to open it or not Jocko did. A young woman said, I was told I'd find Mr. Mudrose here. I said, Why, uh . . . won't you sit down please? Thanks. I hope I haven't missed him. You see, I've come all the way from Omaha to study with him. Jocko had stretched out on the couch with a newspaper over his head and I hoped he'd fall asleep. How about a cup of coffee? I said. Thank you very much. I could use one. It's nasty out. I went downstairs to get the coffee and to ask Jill what the hell. Mrs. G-W got all excited and made up a bunch of sandwiches and a fresh pot. When we got back up Jocko and the girl were standing out on the terrace together and he was saying well maybe Schoenberg a little. We are all in this together. Heroes and thieves skulking through a ruined garden being left at the last as vague ghosts to stand among the overturned statues that once were our lives; and oh my poor gentlemen and ladies, the pain and the terror and the loss shall stand there too. Gone is the noise of the legends of youth and of joy; we are not so much awaiting death as dying now— and here, late at night in this stillness, I can hear what that sweet business sounds like.———Knock-souled little sonofagun, for whom is the gray sleeping not a better industry than any man ever told of . . . The dark gives all, and the dark takes nothing back. Huk! raise your voices and let's all be free! This game's for keeps. People are being starved to death all over the world.

I don't know why it is every time I think I'm going to be able to settle back and listen to Tid play his dulcimer and sing those beautiful old songs somebody has to come in and spoil everything. Today the District Nurse on her semi-annual round. A twig of a woman, her skin dark and with a greenish tinge to her hair, she wanted to know if any of us had any infectious diseases, and she was very surprised when I couldn't get a word out I was laughing so hard. At any rate, I showed her the way down to where the hermits live just across the county line. Since there are about twenty of them and every single one with something new like a washing machine or a short-wave radio to show me I didn't get back home until well after dark. Nurse said that never in her whole life had she seen a neater or more healthful place than their village. I could have told her that there are some mighty mean poker hounds among them—fact is, one day I could sit down and try to figure out how many vacuum cleaners and women and complete plumbing units I'd bought that particular bevy of retiring lads. Jill had a nice roast and new potatoes and hot baking soda biscuits ready and after we ate Mrs. G-W came up for the dirty dishes and I told her I thought she was the best cook in the country but she seemed to have her mind on other things and I wondered if Tid had given her the shiner. After we had been in bed awhile Jill said tomorrow I'm going to wash all the curtains. I said ah do it some other day. She snuggled close and we listened to the rain beating down on the roof. I said ra-ain ra-ain ra-ain and Jill said rain-rain rain-rain rain-rain. It will always matter to someone. So with ceaseless flowing, the liquid monuments gleam in the half-dark———(statues of the later great). The weather doesn't decide what it will be: but man does. Love is always ahead a little way.

Great bear, you come out of that bush this minute! O great bear, great bear—my pappy's jug is dry— And life is always a head a little way. Which one do you want to ride down for you? Fish swim through the thoughts of the drowned. A sunken bell tolls up from the sea . . . And the great bear looks coldly down. After we had been in bed awhile Jill said one of these days you should go into town and get your shoes half-soled and I said I'd do it the first of the week. The rain was coming down in buckets now and the dying embers sizzled in the grate. I couldn't think of anything more to think about so I went to sleep. The kingdom being a great one he didn't get up when I came in. Sten is moving his flippers lazily by the fire, his webbed toes curling and uncurling in sheer delight, and across the room Jill is mending socks and munching on slivers of raw potato. Sometimes I think that every man's life has a meaning in a greater life which is being lived by a single creature whose nerves and cells and tissues we are. Just as there is no star, but stars; no tree, but trees; no brook or hill or sea which exists alone from all others of its kind; no road, but roads whose direction is everywhere; just as there is no pain or joy or fear which has not been felt by all of us; so must there forever be no man, but men whose lives cross and recross in a majestic pattern, unknowing, unstained, and beautiful, therefore, beyond comprehension. We are, to put it another way, cells in the brain of God. How strange it is to remember things we have known.

To see, as I see now, three women picking flowers in the rain beside a wall. Their faces are turned from me, and I can't hear what they say;—hundreds of years ago one of them is telling how a young man in their village had a dream that while he was walking along the sea a great wave washed something in at his feet and when he bent over he saw an angel lying there its face scarred as though by a terrible fire, and as I look out of the window now I can see a struggling figure on the sand—oh look! the wave has drowned out its screams . . . the tortured, feeble thrashing of a wing . . . and the sea is empty again. Jocko comes in and looks at us both as though he expected some change in our faces, and then he says as matter-of-factly as he can, Catherine and I are getting married in the morning. As I release his hand, I say, How about a drink? He grins like a kid. Not now, I've got to copy off a score tonight—sort of a little surprise for Cathy. Jill says, How sweet!—what a nice wedding present. Jocko grunts. Nothing of the kind. I don't believe in their damn weddings. He stoops to scratch Sten under the chin—You see, Catherine wants to go back to Omaha. I hand him a drink. He takes two more, fast, and hurries off. Just before we went to sleep, I said to Jill, Now what in the hell would any one want to go back to Omaha for? To be with her mother for the first one. Huh? You're just like all men, you never notice anything. This morning we picked wild flowers and put them on Baby's grave. A card arrived from Ned Bolton saying he was thinking of going up to Montreal to get into the used-furniture business with his cousin. Lime is up four cents a pound and Sten has the runs.

Ah, ah, now, the red glow in the sky over the world. How can it be that no one sees it? O the stench of the burning grease on the axles of this universal destruction . . . I understand because I have displaced the thing that troubled me, like a thinking wheel entering the water. One face is always stretched in so as to blur with truth—sad trumpets of flesh blowing away from their goddamned bandstands. My God! — are all these shadowy figures angry because I said "The papers will be put in order at the very earliest convenient moment"? A most grievous error has been made. Meanwhile and to whit: from this day forward—oh do not expect me to relent!—what is believed to be hallucinatory and of the nature of faith (to be despised) now, will be seen to be rather cunningly real tomorrow; it's the result that counts, you should know. Culture is not imitation: each man is new, and sees things in a new way—this is why 'critics' are kept so busy trying to keep paintings under the dead hand of the painter (etc.); why at a certain time a bit of charred wood may appeal more than the most beautiful sunset. When art gives pleasure it finds a pleasure there to receive it—a new pocket every time. Each line of a book must overcome and dispense with the line which precedes it, the coarse wiping out the fine, etc. A change of gait—and often, even, a change of mount. How dull (and copyclerkish) it would be to write at one's best all the time. How idle to praise freedom, and to do your own work like a slave. Suppose I suddenly want to break in to say that a yellow bird can eat more violets than all the lions in Africa—Where on all

this earth is there any man with any right of any kind whatever to tell me I can't say it! Jesus! you snivelling little meddlers, get back to your knitting. PARIS, AUGUST 11,1946. I've never been there. Jill's arms are covered with flour up to the elbows. Rain. The mind corrects the senses. Two birds competitively picking at the mouth of a cigarette holder. What is dynamic is ever demanding to be opposed. So far the only ones who have a right to judge are the works of art themselves. It isn't wrong to think anything about an artistic creation; but what's thought is usually silly. The function of the artist is to express love. What most people fail to understand is not the artist's work, but his essential unwordliness in wanting to give love. People in a book should be independent of people out of books. Literary living is bad enough without a literature that "lives." Actually, for the last thirty years, there hasn't been any artistic excuse for the writing of novels. The bad thing is that all the forms are wornout and flabby. The cult of the mediocre in everything . . . The only art form that's worth a damn is when a man tries to offer up something out of himself, out of his own head, his own emotions, his own dreams, his own heart, his own guts—the rest is vomit-smeared cardboard; one dimensional; a made-up fraud. "Is my daddy in there at the bar by any chance I beg your pardon sir." Hi diddle Harry, why do young girls want to marry? The ape is not an undertaker.

—Choice of 'subject'—Hell of the world. People jammed into pigsties, shivering in the cold, lying down on filthy mats with empty bellies . . . Plastic fish. Lamp hanging in space. Do you think it will rain blood soon? Depth of rhythm—Art should not amuse. All great things work for the good of everyone. The pressures are always rushing together. Face Of A Thing 42 Inches High And 13 Inches Wide; first a deep purple, then sour, washed-out intent; marked by spotted hands—letters Y, T, & groat (in subtle patterns of an outmoded splendor)—a sort of trailing robe badly in need of the most elementary care; to the left of the face, partly on and partly off the sleeve of the robe, the half of a huge white rose; angry conversations washing back and forth; groups of houses and paper bridges fixed insecurely on the bloated lips, as though there was every reason to believe that they would glance off on better endeavors at the first opportunity; many sobbing chariots pointed straight out (moons with orange boats at sleepy sail if the water of dead leaves doesn't quite please you there are steps leading to the Inside); but my God the birds and trains and honors or look at it this way the dim floating loused-up cups remind a sort of touching a definite the coils of leaf on leaf and life and it does move and then so smooth and its hand over the mouth R green flesh within pray we gentle be and not afraid beast eat this spotted head as should it speak O see the dancing weeps and no leaf or robe or great areas of breathing space unmarred by towns or chairs or wrens or castles they turn so much time spent and unholy savagely beating at a wall stained by horror O should the lips of the Terrible One open and should those eyes awake and every leaf and spoon and voice and every gentle shape and texture and sound and touch of all the things I love and I would with the dancing of love and truth and faith

and all the passion and wonder and magnificent beauty of this world weep. —And O my girl turn your naked breasts against my chest and let my hands release their fever on your thighs and belly and throat O let my mouth suck the dear breath out of your lungs and let my hurting need and hunger like a fire of bulls pour themselves clean into your soft waiting flesh and let no sparrow anywhere fall or any sad guy get kicked out into the street O let the rain and the snow and the bitter wind beat in vain on the shacks of the poor and keep that beautiful goddam horn blaring away right in the face of all their filthy governments. I say let the love of a few men for freedom and brotherhood and whatever the hell word you can think of they haven't dribbled their pious crap on grow like a huge and beautiful flower up over the bloody counters of the world so that all men can get a load of it and let them keep their lying mouths off peace and equality and freedom for all these swindling bastards ever want is bigger wars and more hatred and to get their chains on the souls and bodies of everyone O come on you lovely goddam horn and blow that smug look off all their lousy murderous pusses And—O baby listen yonder sweet little train! It's sure got its throttle out now honey . . . "My Jesus would you look at this town! O suns with red boats at tugging sail glide off on the hill forever in sorrow that we must die that every day we wear out a little I say come to the doors of your houses and see that my love is pure as a rose in the snow and that her hair and eyes and shoulders remind an agony of touching a dream of angels the coils of leaf on trembling leaf and it does move and then so halfasleep with parted lips murmuring my name O soft flesh within pray I gentle be and all the towns and unused designs for trees and bridges and now the smoke of cottages the smell of new bread a friend at table with wine they rest here with us O God

let the cold and the sickness and the fear be lifted a little from these poor devils lost in the black wood of the world O let a few sparrows fall but show a little light down for so many lost in the black wood of this world and everywhere the cold rain and the wind and the snow beating upon the living huddled here like sick dogs in the night O should the eyes of the Merciful One open and should that voice speak and every golden leaf and brook and human heart O and every innocent pattern and desire and song of all things I have to love O I would with the victory of love and truth and brotherhood and all the passion and mystery and holy beauty of this world put away the horn which is blaring now in the teeth of any and all evils everywhere. They keep riding down all the time. You can't stop them. They keep riding down all the time and you can't stop them. Nobody ever stopped them and nobody ever will stop them. Jill. Yes, darling. Are you hungry? Starved. I thought you might be asleep. Here, wait'll I find the light—and I was sure you would be. How deep in peace tonight are trees, sea and sky. Gone may be the dreams of men from this place, but something else surely has not gone—perhaps it is waiting for the dreams to come back. The sad fists of the water close and unclose on the sand, as though they had lost something too. Step of words over the dead . . . Lie down! lie down! O lie down all you fair ones! You've got lots of time to get used to forever.

I hear the beating of a heart. It drowns out every other sound . . . And there is the weeping of the world in it. Summers die like old women in unmade beds. The use of gardens is not obvious to roads. There is never anything to betray but yourself. Into the All—how few are everyone—Of leaf on leaf. Footprints of the whirlpool. . . a blasted fruit . . . men standing in the snow peeling the skin off their horses . . . Wait for it to drop. It looks rather sticky. Hold it! I have to make a phone call. Anytime you're ready— No, you go first. No, you. Ah, go soak your head! Trudging into the village with Jill a couple of days ago, we had a most pleasant feeling of anticipation with fresh and singing morning building its temporal house of fields and vines and birds around us, and with now and then a man in faded overalls or a girl in bright cotton dress plowing and watering plants on the porch or cutting grass by a wall or nursing a golden-haired child; indeed, so moving was that unaffected and old-fashioned harmony of things being done and the direct simplicity of lines into foxes edging against my dear fellow you would think that two people could walk quietly down a road

without whipping the English language into a sour froth and anyway hell there weren't any bearded fishes leaping over hedges or wild swan peeping morosely through the tattered folds of the weekly paper which covered old Timothy Gremert's red barn; hence, betwixt the lot of us, unexcitedly enough, since almost anything will do in a pinch, it certainly should be clear to the authorities by now, that eight straw hampers, three folding cots, a pair of tin earmuffs, five hundred pounds of blue salt, sixteen bath towels with 'Yours' and 'Mine' embroidered on them, a monkey's nuts (well-handled), and twenty-two very sleepy detectives inquiring the way to go round the mulberry bush, are sufficient evidence that this great nation conceived in lubricity, dedubetted to the propupotamus that all men if laid end to end would be as good a way as any to make a bit of a prediction as to the kind of equality they really have in mind. We went into a drugstore and bought a year's supply of headache pills, arranging with the furniture-movers next door to have them delivered at the silo we had rented for that purpose. As we came out into the street, a man was standing near the curb with hair on his head; we watched him for a full half second. Then, something rather subtly profound happened: down the block there tore a fat cleric followed by a wildly shouting gang of kids; just in front of us they overtook him and, yanking his robe aside, commenced a most spirited taffy pull. Having no more use for one hypocritical gangster than for another, I thought that quite unwittingly the little hoodlums had opened up an hitherto unexplored avenue of social criticism; for instance, how jolly if the banker and the manufacturer, who specialize in taking food out of the bellies of people, were to be showered with same literally—I could, though I'm sure my point is already clear, see a lot of justice in what was happening to the representative of an organized swindle calculated to drain off the very life blood of its poor victims. And then it wasn't so nice: getting an arm free, he whipped a machine gun out from under his robe—probably presented to him in the confessional by one of the returned

parish lads who'd lifted it off a "Christian" "hun" he'd been lucky enough to kill first—a couple of kids looked rather horribly devout as they fingered their red beads in the filth of the gutter. Across the sea someone is shaving by a gas-jet, and the golden grass comes away from her legs like sleep off a hickory burr. Too often—we had a double-rich malted at the counter beside a man careless on the score of personal cleanliness—as Herodotus and Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, used to say: The mischief comes not when the quincunx of Beastlike Princes rattling their crawléd swords declare a lack of patience with let's say an actual lonelonglying ghost but on the contrary when the danger in the nibbling lost is overlooked and they all that is of sleep and sleeping's sleep and the sleep of sleeping's sleeping sleep begins in the marrow of the dead pot-bugs to whoop and holler Jesus Christ I'd do anything for a dollar. Finally gave in and took Mrs. G-W, Tid, Tid's brother and his wife and their seven children, Jill, Jill's old school-friend Becky Grace, Jill's mother and father, and her mother's father's mother's father, my brother Edgar and the two Indian girls he lives with, and Sten and his new wife Tur, to the big annual fair at the county seat. It was such a hot day that the prize bulls seemed to have wet sponges hanging down in back of them. All Tid's brother Willie's brats got candy cotton to rub off on my sleeve and up the front of my pants, while old Cyrus, Jill's mother Mable's father Tronkner's mother Hannah's sire, had a nervous habit of sounding like somebody having a fit in a dry cane-break every time he walked. As the day wore on, Sybil and Milking-Machine-Me-No-Like-But-Him-Benefit-Nice-Farmer-Huh, Eddie's pretty little pennies, decided they wanted a ride on the merry-go-round—I suppose a psychologist would have the answer; but anyway, as soon as those horses and buffaloes and such-like started to plunge up and down, one of them (let's make it Sybil) suddenly began to swing a mean Chippawa shillelagh while the other went happily round helping herself to

skin with hair on it. I had to pay the fine, of course. Then we all got hungry and Becky Grace, deciding that now was as soon a time as any to show that she'd read all the titles on the St. John's list at the rate of 463 words per minute, cried oh how clever of you to let Sten carry the lunch basket and reached her hand in for it. Tur'd have a much better choice, since the female ybosde makes a practice of going only in the evenings at four minutes past eight—but what liberal education could be expected to acquaint one with an important bit of information like that? Tid got roaring drunk and Mrs. G-W had to be carried home; I really think that if he would learn not to hook his left so much he could begin using some of her insurance to help him find a young wife who would listen to his songs instead of cooking wonderful food and trying to make his days complete and happy all the time. When we, at twilight—and the birds writing their prettiest sayings on the hushed air—all of us so wan and worn and wonderful—got back, I wasn't really very surprised to discover that someone had been looking through my balls of twine in the old seachest. Then, sitting before the roaring fire, with good books and pictures and people around— old Cyrus curled up like a little brown doll asleep in my arms— Jill watching Tur with our stopped clock held ready in her hand—(Do you think blood will rain down out of the sky before morning?) I got tears in my eyes as Tid played and sang: Oh don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt— Sweet Alice whose hair was so brown, Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile, And trembled with fear at your frown? In the old churchyard in the valley, Ben Bolt, In a corner obscure and alone, They have fitted a slab of the granite so gray, And Alice lies under the stone. . . .

When a person comes in the room without warning, you always half-expect to see yourself. —River. Shadowy dog. By no hellish chance is it of no concern. I regret the passing of every cloud, that they go with such great uncaring. Poetry without singularity is as unthinkable as a dreamer without a dream. Unimaginable glory, unattainable truth—but what else are truth and glory about! When fire is burned—and the Great place their presents down at the feet of the Horrible and the Beautiful Or is it a lie! Ashes on ashes. Pappy's jug gone quite dry. Never oppose what seems strange in yourself. That is the only part which is aware. Three women are picking flowers in the rain beside a wall— and I think they are talking about what is going to happen to us, for their eyes never turn this way. O my Jill, let us go to bed now and be safe together for a little while. I hear a terrible beast sniffing at the roofs of our world. Madmen slouch on the thrones of power, and bloody flesh dribbles down their chins as they feast. They are content. There is no scarcity of food for them. Arise O my brothers! throw off your chains! Arise and —but where? how? to what end? There are no "leaders." There are only men who would have power too.

A terrible beast is sniffing at the roofs of our world, and its eyes are gleeful as it watches fools stirring the lightning in little lead pails. Ah, soon there will be power enough to satisfy the most greedy man on earth—but no one will be alive to hear it come. I hear the beating of a heart. It drowns out every other sound . . . And there is the weeping of God in it. O love, the figures are blurring on the hill . . . Cold winds blow through the dark wood. The winter of death drives on the world . . . O sing! O sing! ring all the blood-smeared bells! This is what they wanted! this is their kind of brotherhood! Poor Christ and the dreams of men— The shit of monsters raining down on a blackened grave. A piety. At haste shrieking captives tied to Seblenors by red lakes. The awful plumage of nothingness over everything. Wild child Weep! There is no Word between us and the darkness now. The crawling fabric of hell over all things O wild innumerable child weep for the sons of men have reached a summit where hairy eyes fill with tears of fun. Girls of leaf and brilliance of wave about the marble pillars where mouths of brides and decaying flowers whisper mea regna in peace and floating towers at their belling chores O give me delight at the thudding of unseen households candles of trees under the moon proud barns full of lovers panting as larks and caravans spill out of their thighs and give me though I say and

help and hope and it green within the sound rebound and bring loss and light and deep and dark and spit of wolves and the greasy bones of dying and jolly sing jolly the only wise thing left is pretty pretty folly O always and everywhere girls of leaf and joy and the faith and joy of leaves of girls dancing on the bright tree fall to dust, and die There is a fence. Black butterflies circle the head of the young man which has been stuck up on the highest paling. Someone is thinking of home. Someone is wondering what will happen to human beings now that nobody really has a home. Someone's eyes fill with tears. He is a fool. Why don't you cut him up in little pieces and feed him to the pigs? I've bought Jill a little wooden bucket. It isn't a very big one, but it's big enough for our purpose. We put a tiny fish in it—a fish with brown spots on its white belly. We put six tiny stones in it. Jill had on her silk blouse and the shoes with the silver buckles. She looked very nice. There were clouds in the sky. The waves came right in at our feet. Then we put a couple of pieces of string in—string that had been lying around the house doing nobody any good. The three kids in their blue dresses came and I gave them each a quarter. A hoarse cry drifts in from the sea. It will always matter to someone. This ancient house standing in the wilderness . . . My God! O my God! hurrah for human beings! We had really wanted to be alone. Jill was deep in a book and I had a couple letters I'd been putting off until it was downright

criminal. But hell somebody comes all the way out through the rain to see you and you've got to make it seem as though you'd just been sitting around hoping they'd show up. They brought a lot of smoked meat and cheese and magazines and two kinds of wine and pretty soon we were all talking at once about philosophy and painting and how often to bathe puppies and a very hard-faced girl read poetry to bring a lump to your throat and some jackass dropped a lighted cigarette in on the twine just as the slow movement of the Jupiter was coming to a close. It was three o'clock when the last ones left. I lighted them down the rock steps with my flash. They said they'd had a swell time. The bitter smell of seaweed blew in on the rain. Back inside again I asked Jill if she'd got too tired. She said she wasn't tired at all but she did have the beginnings of a headache. I opened the door a minute. The sobbing buoys were making quite a din and the wind was getting an edge to it. We tidied things up enough not to break our necks in the morning and put out the light. I put my arms around her and she went to sleep. Every little while the fire would go poof as some rain blew down the chimney. The smell of seaweed made my nose smart. The moaning went on out on the sea. I hoped they'd all got home all right. Morning like a wounded oyster slithered across the window. Jesus they were nice people! I hoped they'd never come again. Mrs. G-W showed me a lot of snapshots of Baby this morning. One I looked at a long time—skinny little girl of ten or so standing under an apple tree—a stone wall with vines growing over it —in the background a man passing on a bike. Tid chewed his tobacco and belched contentedly every now and then.

While I was trying to find some new things to put in the bucket, a horseman rode by. I had a couple of things in my hands, but I didn't think they would do. Jill was standing off a little way watching me. I had a bit of broken shell and the cover of a tomato can and perhaps half a dozen birthday favors in a badly soiled paper box. I didn't think any of them would do. A cloud crossed the sun. The ocean hissed at my feet. String and stone and little fish— Now the horseman is reining in before us O look what he has in his hands! O look what he has in his hands? And O all going striding great Lord here wonders pile up their gigantic birds and ministering shores fires flame as quietly strength comes out of the mouths of crags and blue deer run through forests of water and wings and the thoughts of gardens arrange the pebbles of paradise on the softly breathing sand where we two lie our naked bodies wrapped in love's chemical change O inbees outthrones hearseeing maidens of roses sleepflecked bands of riders plunge through what desolation glory and truth know and O give evil no quarter anywhere O send light and lend sight O give no fire flame that it do another will than the greatest for in this black country hounds toss on fields of crying children and it is always beginning so it can end life beginning youth love and the cry of a rose beginning and evil beginning and the two who lie fast asleep now by the sea and all the whelming reach of sea and sky and golden hill and the touch of a hand beginning Christ only to end and to go down blackened in the fire beginning O life youth love and the cry of a rose. Christ how warm and sweet does she sleep in my arms!

Dear friends, lovers of truth and freedom, enemies of all that degrades and enslaves the spirit of our fellows on this earth—O of all that makes them blind and crass and afraid—and of all that causes them to lose sight of the star which shakes the very heavens with its grandeur and its beauty—O my dear friends, let the bloody crumbs fall from the table of evil: we will not touch them; let the darkness come down to cover everything now: O we will have had our eyes turned to the light! and I think that light will continue to shine whether any man is alive to see it or not. I hear the beating of a great heart. It drowns out all the little noise of wars and hatred and evil . . . O there is the wonder and nobility and incomparable majesty of every human being on earth in it! Now the summer is dying. Petals drift down on the hushed paths of the garden. In the woods brown trumpets play muted songs of dead lovers, and sleepy little deaths in red and yellow cloaks hold awesome carnival. I wander about taking down screens and putting mothballs into warped drawers in case the mice might like a little soccer on some dull afternoon. Jill, with a streak of soot down her nose, is flying around with a mop and a pail like we were just moving in instead of—going back. Shirts, dresses, books, records, snapshots, and a battered cocoon—put them all nicely in place, and slam down the lid. Hey! it's starting to rain again. Sheets, pillowcasesone night on the mattress won't hurt us. Somehow I feel like crying too. The statue of the little girl in the garden looking quite forlorn —and beautiful. I'd almost chucked the damn thing out the day we came. I walk slowly across the sand. The waves are breaking on the gray rocks. Rain beats down on the rocks and on the gray sea. I empty the tiny wooden bucket out on the sand. A gull tosses like a scrap of gray paper up in the gray sky.

Jill comes to stand beside me. The soot has smudged on her nose. I put my arm around her. Suddenly I think I know what it is. I believe I can tell you. The rain beats down on our faces. Far out on the gray sea a tiny moving speck—coming nearer as we watch. Shipwreck— Or a wondrous horseman riding in across the gray and troubled sea—? Our eyes fill with tears as we stand here. O which one do you want to ride down for you!

KENNETH PATCHEN In Quest of Candlelighters One of his most important and characteristic works, this new collection makes available two of Kenneth Patchen's long out-of-print books: Panels for the Walls of Heaven and They Keep Riding Down All the Time. Both were published in 1946; the first by Bern Porter in Berkeley, California, the second by Padell Publishers in New York. Also included are Patchen's only short story, "Bury Them in God," from New Directions 1939, and a section from an early version of Sleepers Awake, "Angel-Carver Blues." The rich variety of prose, poetry (concrete and otherwise), and illustrations establishes In Quest of Candlelighters as one more reason why Patchen has been called "a oneman literary movement." "Patchen is the only major poet—and prose writer if it comes to that—who is still to be plumbed, explored, or really understood. Rich the prospect for him, and for us!" —PETER YATES . . . a writer of superb daring and invention, the author of a few passages which are comparable to the most intuitively beautiful writing ever done." —JAMES DICKEY Cover photograph: the author in 1945; design by Gertrude Huston [Other Patchen Paperbooks: Aflame and Afun of Walking Faces (fables & drawings), NDP292, $1.50; Because It Is (poems and drawings), NDP83, $1.50; But Even So (picture-poems), NDP265, $1.25; Collected Poems, NDP284, $3.95; Doubleheader (poems), NDP211, $1.50; Hallelujah Anyway (picture-poems), NDP219, $1.25; The Journal of Albion Moonlight (novel), NDP99, $1.95; Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer (novel) , NDP205, $1.95; Out of the World of Patchen (slipcased set of four), $5.50; Selected Poems, NDP160, $1.50; Sleepers Awake (novel), NDP286, $2.75; Three Prose Classics (slip-cased set), $6.85; Wonderings (poems and drawings), NDP320, $1.75.] A NEW DIRECTIONS PAPERBOOK

NDP334

$1.95