STROPHE

  Ours is the most powerful nation in the world. It has had a decade of unparalleled prosperity.… Yet it is still producing a literature which sounds sometimes as if it were written by an unemployed homosexual.…

  ANTISTROPHE

  I’m going to write a novel, hey,

      I’ll write it as per Life:

  I’m going to say, “What a splendid day!”

      And, “How I love my wife!”

  Let heroines be once again

      Pink, languid, soft, and tall,

  For from my pen shall flow forth men

      Heterosexual.

  STROPHE

  Atomic fear or not, the incredible accomplishments of our day are surely the raw stuff of saga.

  ANTISTROPHE

  Raw stuff shall be the stuff of which

      My saga will be made:

  Brown soil, black pitch, the lovely rich,

      The noble poor, the raid

  On Harpers Ferry, Bunker Hill,

      Forefathers fairly met,

  The home, the mill, the hearth, the Bill

      Of Rights, et cet., et cet.

  STROPHE

  Nobody wants Pollyanna literature.

  ANTISTROPHE

  I shan’t play Pollyanna, no,

      I’ll stare facts in the eye:

  Folks come and go, experience woe,

      And, when they’re tired, die.

  Unflinchingly, I plan to write

      A book to comprehend

  Rape, fury, spite, and, burning bright,

      A sunset at The End.

  STROPHE

  In every healthy man there is a wisdom deeper than his conscious mind, reaching beyond memory to the primeval rivers, a yea-saying to the goodness and joy of life.

  ANTISTROPHE

  A wise and not unhealthy man,

      I’m telling everyone

  That deeper than the old brainpan

      Primeval rivers run;

  For Life is joy and Time is gay

      And Fortune smiles on those

  Good books that say, at some length, “Yea,”

      And thereby spite the Noes.

  The Newlyweds

  After a one-day honeymoon, the Fishers rushed off to a soft drink bottlers’ convention, then on to a ball game, a TV rehearsal and a movie preview.

  —Life

  “We’re married,” said Eddie.

  Said Debbie, “Incredi-

  ble! When is our honey-

  moon?” “Over and done,” he

  replied. “Feeling logy?

  Drink Coke.” “Look at Yogi

  go!” Debbie cried. “Groovy!”

  “Rehearsal?” “The movie.”

  “Some weddie,” said Debbie.

  Said Eddie, “Yeah, mebbe.”

  The Story of My Life

  Fernando Valenti, enthusiast, Yale graduate, and himself represented by numerous recordings of Scarlatti.

  —The Saturday Review

  Enthused I went to Yale, enthused

  I graduated. Still infused

  with this enthusiasm when

  Scarlatti called, I answered en-

  thusiastically, and thus

  I made recordings numerous,

  so numerous that I am classed,

  quite simply, as “enthusiast.”

  A Bitter Life

  Dr. Ycas [of the Quartermaster Research and Development Center, in a report to the National Academy of Sciences] holds that the ocean itself was alive. There were no living creatures in it.

  —The New York Times

  O you Dr. Ycas you!

      In one convulsive motion

  Your brain has given birth unto

      A viable young ocean.

  All monsters pale beside the new:

      The Hydra, Hap, Garuda, Ra,

  Italapas, Seb, Hua-hu

      Tiao, Gulltopr, Grendel’s ma,

  Quetzalcoatl, Kukulkan,

      Onniont, Audhumbla, Ix,

  Geryon, Leviathan,

      666,

  The ox Ahura Mazda made,

      The Fomors, deevs, Graeae,

  And others of this ilk all fade

      Alongside Ycas’ sea.

  The straits were sinews, channelways

      Were veins, and islands eyes;

  Rivers were tails, reefs bones, and bays,

      Depending on their size,

  Fists, shoulders, heads, ears, mouths, or feet.

      The fjords, as fingers, froze

  Sometimes, as did the arctic pate

      And pale antarctic toes.

  O horrid, horrid Ocean! The

      Foul grandmother of Tyr,

  Who had nine hundred crania,

      Did not look half so queer.

  It whistled with a mournful hiss

      In darkness; scared and bored,

  It lapped the land, yet every kiss

      Was stonily ignored.

  A spheric skin, or blue-green hide,

      Alone the ocean kept

  Our planet’s house, yet when it died

      One aeon, no one wept.

  A Wooden Darning Egg

  The carpentered hen

  unhinges her wings,

  abandons her nest

  of splinters, and sings.

  · · ·

  The egg she has laid

  is maple and hard

  as a tenpenny nail

  and smooth as a board.

  The grain of the wood

  adorns the thick shell

  as brown feathers do

  a young cockerel.

  The hen lifts her hackles;

  her sandpapered throat

  unwarps as she cackles

  Cross-cut! ka-ross-cut!

  Beginning to brood,

  she tests with a level

  the angle, sits down,

  and coos Bevel bevel.

  Publius Vergilius Maro, the Madison Avenue Hick

  This was in Italy. The year was the thirty-seventh before the birth of Christ. The people were mighty hungry, for there was a famine in the land.

  —the beginning of a Heritage Club advertisement, in The New Yorker, for The Georgics

  It takes a heap o’ pluggin’ t’ make a classic sell,

  Fer folks are mighty up-to-date, an’ jittery as hell;

  They got no yen to set aroun’ with Vergil in their laps

  When they kin read the latest news in twenty-four-point caps.

  Ye’ve got t’ hit ’em clean an’ hard, with simple predicates,

  An’ keep the clauses short becuz these days nobody waits

  T’ foller out a sentence thet all-likely lacks a punch

  When in the time o’ readin’ they could grab a bite o’ lunch.

  Ye’ve got t’ hand ’em place an’ time, an’ then a pinch o’ slang

  T’ make ’em feel right comfy in a Latinate shebang,

  An’ ef your taste buds curdle an’ your tum turns queasy—well,

  It takes a heap o’ pluggin’ t’ make a classic sell.

  Tsokadze O Altitudo

  Tsokadze has invented a new style—apparently without knowing it. He does not bend from the waist at all. His body is straight and relaxed and leaning far out over his skis until his face is only two feet above them, his arms at his side, his head up. His bindings and shoes are so loose that only his toes touch his skies. He gets enormous distances and his flight is so beautiful.

  —Thorlief Schjelderup, quoted in The New York Times, of a young Russian ski-jumper

  Tsokadze leans unknowingly

      Above his skis, relaxed and tall.

    ??
? He bends not from the waist at all.

  This is the way a man should ski.

  He sinks; he rises, up and up,

      His face two feet above the wood.

      This way of jumping, it is good,

  Says expert Thorlief Schjelderup.

  · · ·

  Beneath his nose, the ski-tips shake;

      He plummets down the deepening wide

      Bright pit of air, arms at his side,

  His heart aloft for Russia’s sake.

  Loose are the bindings, stiff the knees,

      Relaxed the man—see, still he flies

      And only his toes touch his skies!

  Ah, c’est beau, when Tsokadze skis.

  The One-Year-Old

  (After Reading the Appropriate Chapter in Infant and Child in the Culture of Today, by Arnold Gesell and Frances Ilg)

  Wakes wet; is promptly toileted;

  Jargons to himself; is fed;

  Executively grips a cup;

  Quadrupedal, will sit up

  Unaided; laughs; applauds; enjoys

  Baths and manipulative toys;

  Socializes (parents: shun

  Excess acculturation);

  Demonstrates prehension; will

  Masticate yet seldom spill;

  Creeps (gross motor drives are strong);

  And jargons, jargons all day long.

  Room 28

  National Portrait Gallery, London

  Remembered as octagonal, dark-panelled,

      And seldom frequented, except by me—

                           Indeed, a bower

  Attained down avenues where, framed and annalled,

      Great England’s great with truculence outlive

                           Their hour

  And staringly put up with immortality—

      The room gave rest as some libraries give.

  The visitor, approaching, brushed a girlish

      Bust of Lord Byron. Sir James George Frazer’s head,

                           An unarmed sentry,

  Austere, tormented, brazen-browed, and churlish,

      Guarded with sternness fit for Stygian gates

                           The entry

  To harmless walls where men of letters lately dead

      Were hung. The envied spot was held by Yeats.

  His mask, alone a mask among the paintings,

      Attracted to itself what little sun

                           The sky admitted.

  Half-bronze, half-black, his Janus-face at matins

      Amazed that dim arena of the less

                           Weird-witted

  Survivors of a blurred time: presbyters upon

      Whose faces grieved the ghost of earnestness.

  The whites of Rider Haggard’s eyes were showing

      When last I saw them. Conrad’s cheeks were green,

                           And Rudyard Kipling’s

  Pink profile burned against his brown works, glowing

      With royalties and loyalty to crown.

                           Fine stipplings

  Limned the long locks that Ellen Terry, seventeen,

      Pre-Raphaelite, and blonde, let shining down.

  There Stevenson looked ill and ill-depicted;

      Frail Patmore, plucked yet gamey; Henry James,

                           Our good grammarian,

  More paunched and politic than I’d expected.

      Among the lone-faced portraits loomed a trin-

                           Itarian

  Composite: Baring, Chesterton, Belloc. The frame’s

      Embellished foursquare dogma boxed them in.

  Brave room! Where are they now? In college courses,

      Perused in inferior light, then laid

                           On library tables.

  White knights mismounted on empirical horses,

      Flagbearers for a tattered heraldry

                           Of labels,

  They lacked the universe their vows deserved, and fade

      Here on the cusp, in neither century.

  Philological

  The British puss demurely mews;

  His transatlantic kin meow.

  The kine in Minnesota moo;

  Not so the gentle Devon cows:

                           They low,

  As every schoolchild ought to know.

  Mr. High-Mind

  Then went the Jury out, whose names were Mr. Blind-man, Mr. No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr. Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Lyar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. Hate-light, and Mr. Implacable.

  —The Pilgrim’s Progress

  Eleven rogues and he to judge a fool—

  He files out with the jury, but distaste

  Constricts his fluting nostrils, and his cool

  Mind turns tepid with contempt. There is brought

  A basin for him, in which to wash his hands.

  Laving his palms and fingertips, he finds

  An image of his white, proportioned thought

  Plunged in the squalid suds of other minds.

  Unmoved by Lust’s requests or Hate’s commands

  Or Superstition’s half-embarrassed bribe,

  His brain takes wing and flutters up the course

  First plotted by the Greeks, up toward the sphere

  Where issues and alternatives are placed

  In that remorseless light that knows no source.

  Here, in this saddle-shaped, expanding void,

  The wise alone have cause for breathing; here

  Lines parallel on Earth, extended, meet.

  Here priests in tweeds gyrate around the feet

  Of Fact, their bride, and hymn their gratitude

  That each toe of her ten is understood.

  From this great height, the notion of the Good

  Is seen to be a vulgar one, and crude.

  High-mind as Judge descends to Earth, annoyed,

  Despairing Justice. Man, a massy tribe,

  Cannot possess one wide and neutral eye.

  He casts his well-weighed verdict with a sigh

  And for a passing moment is distressed

  To see it coinciding with the rest.

  Tax-Free Encounter

  We have $3,000 savings to invest and believe in the dignity of man. Box Y-920.

  —Personal notice in The Saturday Review

  I met a fellow in whose hand

  Was hotly held a cool three grand.

  “Inform me of,” he said, “the best

  Technique of gaining interest.”

  “Lend money at usurious rates,”

  I said. “It soon accumulates.”

  “Oh no!” he cried. “That is unsound

  Artistically. Read Ezra Pound.”

  “Invest,” I then suggested. “Deal

  Yourself a hand in U.S. Steel.”

  He snapped, “Big businessmen are sharks.

  Peruse Das Kapital, by Marx.”

  “Then buy some U.S. Savings Bonds,

  For Our Defense, which corresponds

  To Yours an
d Mine.” He told me, “Cease!

  Defense degrades. Read War and Peace.”

  He added, “Dignity of men

  Is what we most believe in.” Then

  He slyly smiled and slowly backed

  Away, his principal intact.

  Scenic

  O when in San Francisco do

  As natives do: they sit and stare

  And smile and stare again. The view

  Is visible from anywhere.

  Here hills are white with houses whence,

  Across a multitude of sills,

  The owners, lucky residents,

  See other houses, other hills.

  The meanest San Franciscan knows,

  No matter what his sins have been,

  There are a thousand patios

  Whose view he is included in.

  The Golden Gate, the cable cars,

  Twin Peaks, the Spreckels habitat,

  The local ocean, sun, and stars—

  When fog falls, one admires that.

  Here homes are stacked in such a way

  That every picture window has

  An unmarred prospect of the Bay

  And, in its center, Alcatraz.

  Capacity

  CAPACITY 26 PASSENGERS

  —sign in a bus

  Affable, bibulous,

  corpulent, dull,

  eager-to-find-a-seat,

  formidable,

  garrulous, humorous,

  icy, jejune,

  knockabout, laden-

  with-luggage (maroon),

  mild-mannered, narrow-necked,

  oval-eyed, pert,

  querulous, rakish,

  seductive, tart, vert-

  iginous, willowy,

  xanthic (or yellow),