In ragtime, when my mother ran away
From flat Ontario with Art to play
A fair Ophelia on the two-a-day
Time of that time, she was just seventeen
And far behind her figure and her face
In bearing, aim, and point: one more good kid
To swell a progress or to farce a scene
With slim impersonations of a race
Of royal losers, which is what she did.
Until, until. Until, in Buffalo,
The Rep played out its string and let her go,
And she tried out before the morning show
By gaslight in the cold Academy
For right end in the chorus, which required
An elemental sense of rhythm, and
A dauntless liking for variety,
And a good pair of legs, which she had. Hired,
She danced split weeks across the level land.
In Dayton, at the little Lyceum,
She was first billed with Andy as a team—
Shannon &Anderson—a waking dream
Worth thirty dollars weekly. Soon, in Troy,
Her act was spotted by Gus McAdoo,
Who made her both a single and a star
At twenty; and, in the blood-tasting joy
Of early triumph, barely twenty-two,
She played the Palace just before the war.
The times forbid me to imagine all
The grandnesses of that high music hall
Upon her opening, when, at her call,
Packards and Pierces inlaid new-laid snow
With their non-skid tread, largely loitering
While their Van Bibber owners drank her in
Through two-power pearl Zeiss glasses, in a glow
Of carbon-arc limelight wherein she sang,
En Dutch girl, to those white fronts that were men,
“When I wore a tulip.” Many a rose
Made its red way toward her ravished nose
With its eleven peers and one of those
White cards of invitation and entrée
To a man’s world of idleness and grace,
Leather and liquor and less fluent night
Exchanges than one would expect, and day
After day embowered alone to face
Oneself returning singly from the night.
“You great big beautiful doll,” she sang, but “No,”
She said to her appraisers, who would go
To any lengths for her after the show.
I wonder why she did. Perhaps she saw
No commonness in their inheritance
And her upstart career; perhaps she felt
The condescension in their bids, their law
Of put and call. Instead, she chose to dance
And sing on in the hand that chance had dealt.
I wonder, too: was it her Irish pride
That made her tell the man she would not ride,
And so turn down a role with Bonafide
Films, Limited, and so turn down a road
That was to lead to giving up the stage
And taking up the piano, to her glory,
And winning the Bach prize, and having sowed
Such seeds and oats, at last to marriage,
And so to me? But that’s another story.
The brick plant like a school. The winter set
Of East Grand Boulevard. The violets
Of dawn relent to let us see the first
Shift of its students hurrying to class
Distinction in the undistinguished mass
Concealing offices and cubicles,
Great drawing rooms with draftsmen on their stools,
Foremen’s rude cabins bringing outdoors in,
Craftsmen’s workbenches littered with their trim
Brushes and colors, and, in Main, the lines
Of workers in their hundreds vanishing,
With our perspective, at the end of all
The crucial stations in their longsome hall.
Here comes my father. Look how thin he is.
See snowflakes flower on the blank plat of his
Forehead. Note his black hair. In hand,
He has already all the instruments
(Pre-war and German in their provenance)
To tap and die a life. Intolerant
To the last thousandth, they encompass all
Protracted elevations of his soul,
And in their narrow ink lines circumscribe
The isometric renderings of pride
Which will propel him through the glacial years
While he designs the sun and planet gears.
Now winter leaves off worrying our old slum,
And summer comes.
Already docks,
Daisies and dandelions, thistles and hollyhocks
Begin to camouflage the tin in vacant lots.
(Some vegetable god ordains these plots
Of plants to rule the earth.
Their green clothes mask the birth
Marks of a blight.)
Look down the street: there is nobody in sight
As far as Mount Elliott Avenue (where
We kids in knickers took a double dare
To hop a Grand Trunk freight;
Where, every night,
Those marvellous whistles came from).
This dead kingdom,
Composed of empty shanties under the sun,
The arc lamp swinging overhead (the one
That hung there in 1930), the same sidewalks
Of dog-eared squares of slate marked with the chalks
Of the persisting children, the sad board
Fences which shored
Up private property falling into the alley,
This was Jerusalem, our vivid valley.
In our dead neighborhood
Now nothing more can come to any good.
Least of all the Victorian orphanage that still stands
Behind an ironic fence on its own grounds
Diagonally opposite.
The convict children have forsaken it:
In one mad prison break, foiling their guards,
They burst out from its wards—
Long as the Hall of Mirrors, high as a kite,
Carved like a cuckoo clock, capped with grey slate—
Leaving an archive of curses on its walls,
A dado of dirt at hand height in its halls,
And a declivity in each doorsill.
Now the street-Arabian artillery
Has lobbed a brick into each gallery
And opened every window from afar.
Each outer door, ajar,
Is a safe conduct to the rat,
The mouse, the alley cat.
Under its exaggerated eaves,
The orphanage endures. Here nothing leaves,
Nothing arrives except ailanthus trees.
My thirst for the past is easy to appease.
Fifty years after Capt. Leverett Saltonstall’s Harvard junior varsity be came the first American eight to win the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley in England, Saltonstall ... will lead his crew back to the scene of its triumph. Every man who pulled an oar in the victorious 1914 Harvard crew, as well as the coxswain, is not only alive but is preparing to return to Henley on July 1. They will take to a shell again on the picturesque Thames course during the forthcoming regatta.
— The New York Times
Fair stands the wind again
For nine brave Harvard men
Sung by both tongue and pen,
Sailing for Henley
Fifty years after they
Won the great rowing fray
On Independence Day,
Boyish and manly.
On Independence Day
Fifty light years away
They took the victor’s bay
From mighty Britain.
They were a City joke
Till they put up the stroke
And their strong foemen broke,
As it is written.
Leverett Saltonstall
Is the first name of all
That noble roll we call,
That band of brothers.
Curtis, Talcott, and Meyer,
Morgan and Lund set fire
To England’s funeral pyre,
They and three others.
That young and puissant crew
Quickened their beat and flew
Past all opponents, who
Watched them in wonder.
Fifty years later, we
See them across the sea
Echo that memory
Like summer thunder.
Fair stands the wind again;
Thames, bear them softly, then.
Far came these rowing men
In every weather.
What though their stroke has slowed?
(How long they all have rowed!)
Oarsmen, accept our ode,
Blades of a feather.
A single bed. A single room. I sing
Of man alone on the skew surface of life.
No kith, no kin, no cat, no kid, no wife,
No Frigidaire, no furniture, no ring.
Yes, but the perfect state of weightlessness
Is a vacuum the natural mind abhors:
The strait bed straightway magnetizes whores;
The bare room, aching, itches to possess.
Thus I no sooner shut the tan tin door
Behind me than I am at once at home.
Will I, nill 1, a budget pleasure dome
Will rear itself in Suite R-34.
A pleasure dome of Klees and Watteaus made,
Of chairs and couches from the Fair Exchange,
Of leavings from the previous rich and strange
Tenant, of fabrics guaranteed to fade.
Here I will entertain the young idea
Of Cambridge, wounded, winsome, and sardonic;
Here I will walk the uttermost euphonic
Marches of English, where no lines are clear.
Here I will take the interchangeable
Parts of ephemerid girls to fit my bed;
Here death will first enter my freshman head
On a visitor’s passport, putting one tangible
Word in my mouth, a capsule for the day
When I will be evicted from my home
Suite home so full of life and damned to roam
Bodiless and without a thing to say.
An orphan home. But into this eclectic
Mass of disasters sails Mrs. Circassian,
Maid without parallel, queen beyond question
Of household gods, gas and electric.
She puts the room right with a basilisk
Look, pats it into shape like a pillow;
Under her hard hand, the Chinese willow
Learns how to live with an abstraction. Risk
All and win all is her maiden motto,
Which makes mere matter fall into its place,
Dress right and form platoons to save its face,
And suffers Pollock to lie down with Watteau.
Struck dumb by love among the walruses
And whales, the off-white polar bear with stuffing
Missing, the mastodons like muddy busses,
I sniff the mothproof air and lack for nothing.
A general grant enabled the erection,
Brick upon brick, of this amazing building.
Today, in spite of natural selection,
It still survives an orphan age of gilding.
Unvarnished floors tickle the nose with dust
Sweeter than any girls’ gymnasium’s;
Stove polish dulls the cast-iron catwalk’s rust;
The soot outside would make rival museums
Blanch to the lintels. So would the collection.
A taxidermist has gone ape. The cases
Bulging with birds whose differences defy detection
Under the dirt are legion. Master races
Of beetles lie extinguished in glass tables:
Stag, deathwatch, ox, dung, diving, darkling, May.
Over the Kelmscott lettering of their labels,
Skeleton crews of sharks mark time all day.
Mark time: these groaning boards that staged a feast
Of love for art and science, since divorced,
Still scantily support the perishing least
Bittern and all his kin. Days, do your worst:
No more of you can come between me and
This place from which I issue and which I
Grow old along with, an unpromised land
Of all unpromising things that live and die.
This brick ark packed with variant animals—
All dead—by some progressive-party member
Steams on to nowhere, all the manuals
Of its calliope untouched, toward December.
Struck dumb by love among the walruses
And whales, the off-white polar bear with stuffing
Missing, the mastodons like muddy busses,
I sniff the mothproof air and lack for nothing.
Clowning with you, I fell into Lake Waban
In late November and ended up in Stillman.
Was a loose kiss in the dark Agora
Worth such an earache and so much penicillin?
Why, yes. Where else was my grandmother’s house
Open for business? Where else was the “in”
Sheet signed by three white shifts of nursing mothers?
Where else was food so innocent and filling?
Where else could wards make only children brothers?
Where else, if you were young and weak and willing
And suitably infected, would they ease you
Of all impediments except your childhood,
One almost insupportable snatch of river
Twisting to westward, and the smell of woodwork?
Today some civil servant must deliver
Us from all this strong languor and abolish
Our ultimate retreat, which he has done.
Passing the site, driving along the river,
I see apartments sprung up from the ashes
Of my late childhood. Farther east, the skyline
Is made and broken by a topless tower
Of wet white concrete painted by Dong Kingman.
Its name is Hygiene. Its mauve curtains shelter
New men who need not ever go to Stillman.
Clowning with you, I fell into Lake Waban.
I wonder where you currently are matron.
I wonder if you ever think of clowning.
I wonder if I could have stayed in Stillman.
Walking the town as if I owned it all—
Each lilac leafing out in Brattle Street,
Each green vane in the hollow square guarding
The gargoyles on Memorial Hall, each inch
Of rubber tubing in the Mallinckrodt
Chemical Laboratory, each
Particle who would learn and gladly teach,
Each English bicycle chained to its rack,
Each green bag humping on its scholar’s back,
Each tally for a Cambridge traffic death,
Each boyish girl who makes you catch your breath,
Each Argyle sock, each Bursar’s bill, each ounce
Of shag, each brick, each doctorate—as if
I owned the entire spring-wound town, I walk
Up the north path to University Hall.
The Master’s teeth squeak as he sprinkles me
(Too hot to handle) with a mist of spit
That dries quite coolly. “Edwards, I’ve got some
Rough news for you.” In his glazed, padded, blue
Old double-breasted serge suit and his bat-
Wing bow tie (navy, with pink polka dots),
He lets me have it right between the eyes,
His aces on the table, man to boy.
“Look, if there’s one thing I can’t tolerate
It’s smart guys that won’t work. The deans are soft
On geniuses. Not me. What we need more
Of is Midwestern athletes who get C’s.”
He stands up to reveal that his brown vest
Is perfectly misbuttoned. “Now, don’t think
That I’m the least bit sorry about you.
I’m sorry for your mother and your dad.
You let them down. Now, you get out of here
And do something worthwhile. Work with your hands.
Stick with it two years. Maybe they’ll take you back.
Okay, fella? That’s it. Now let’s shake.”
We shake. I shake in secret with the shame of it.
The ghost goes south, avoiding well-worn ways
Frequented by his friends. Instead, he slips
Into loose shadows on the sunless side
Of the least-travelled street. But even there,
One with a bony finger points him out
And pierces him with questions. Zigzagging,
He hedges hastily back to his route,
Which leads on past his windows, tendrilly
Embraced already by the outriders
Of summer’s ivy, past his pipes and books
And dirty shirts and mother’s picture, past
The dining hall where his name is still good
For a square meal, no questions asked, and past
The common room which is too good for him.
Across the Drive his beast heaves into view:
A monster boathouse lolling on the bank
Of the high river, backside in the water.
Inside, he greets the landlord’s black-haired daughter,
Miss Jacobs, with a nod, and goes upstairs
To put his chamois-seated crew pants on.
Then, past the ranks of Compromises, he
Walks out to the land’s end of the long float,
Selects his Single, and stands out to sea.
With gin, prosciutto, and Drake’s Devil Dogs
In a brown-paper bag, I climb the Hill
On Saturday, the thirty-first of May,
Struck by the sun approaching apogee,
Green comments issued by the Common trees,
Mauve decadence among magnolias,
The moving charcoal shadows on the brown
Stone of the moving brownstone where I live,
And a spring breath of Lux across the Charles.
My key mutters the password; I step in
To the dense essence of an entire past:
Rugs, chicken, toilets, Lysol, dust, cigars.
Through that invisible nerve gas (which leads
In time to total incapacity),
I climb the two flights to my little flat.
Done with the Devil Dogs, I take the brush
Out of the tooth glass and decant my first
Gin of the afternoon. In half an hour
She will be here. All is in readiness:
The bedspread taut, the ashtrays wiped, a glass
Swiped from the bathroom down the hall, a small
Plate of prosciutto canapés. Now Fu
Manchu reclines at ease in his hideaway,
While his nets, broadcast, sweep their victim in
To an innocuous address on Pinckney Street.
Now Lou the Loser uses all his ten
Thumbs to count up the minutes till she comes,
Or till (more likely, with his luck) she never shows.
The gin sets up a tickle in my toes.
I blow my nose. The room is hot. A fly
Does dead-stick landings on my neck. She’s late.
The doorbell rings. I barrel down the stairs
To meet the coolest copy I have seen
Of Sally on the steps. Up in my room,
I fix her gin and secretly survey
This manifestation by which I have so
Astoundingly been visited: a girl.
She walks on her long legs, she talks out loud,
She moves her hand, she shakes her head and laughs.
Is this mechanical marvel to be mine?
Quite paralyzed, I nod and nod and nod
And smile and smile. The gin is getting low
In my tooth glass. The hour is getting on.
Gin and adrenalin finally rescue me
(With an assist from Sally) and I find
My lips saluting hers as if she were
My stern commanding officer. No fool,
She puts us on an equal footing. Soon
My strategies and tactics are as toys
Before the gallop of her cavalry
That tramples through my blood and captures me.
Later, as racy novels used to say,
Later, I turn to see the westering sun
Through the ailanthus stipple her tan side
With yellow coin dots shaped to fit her skin.
This Sally now does like a garment wear
The beauty of the evening; silent, bare,
Hips, shoulders, arms, tresses, and temples lie.
I watch her as she sleeps, the tapering back
Rising and falling on the tide of breath;
The long eyelashes lying on her cheek;
The black brows and the light mouth both at rest;
A living woman not a foot away.
The west wind noses in at the window,
Sending a scent of soap, a hint of her
Perfume, and the first onions of the night
Up the airshaft to where I lie, not quite alone.