Complete Poems (27 page)

               Every land has its distinguishing mark.

Particular to Thessaly are horsemanship and horses;

               what marks a Spartan

               is war’s season; Media has

               its tables with their dishes;

hair marks the Celts, the Assyrians have beards.

               But the marks that distinguish

               Athens are Mankind and the Word.

The Indian Arjuna, a goodly and mild king,

hated slaughter. He never went to war.

But the dreadful god of war was greatly vexed—

(diminished was his glory, his temples emptied)—

and went in great anger to the palace of Arjuna.

The king took fright and said: “Great god,

forgive me if I cannot take a human life.”

In contempt the god replied: “You think yourself

more just than I? By words be not deceived.

No life is ever taken. Know you then that no one

is ever born, that no one ever dies.”

My soul, in the middle of the night,

is confused and paralyzed. Outside:

               its life comes into being outside itself.

And it awaits the improbable dawn.

And I await, am worn down, and am bored,

               even I, who am in it or with it.

Upon a golden charger Salome bears

    the head of John the Baptist

               to the young Greek sophist

who recoils from her love, indifferent.

The young man quips, “Salome, your own

    head is what I wanted them to bring me.”

               This is what he says, jokingly.

And her slave came running on the morrow

holding aloft the head of the Beloved,

    its tresses blond, upon a golden plate.

    But all his eagerness of yesterday

the sophist had forgotten as he studied.

He sees the dripping blood and is disgusted.

    He orders this bloodied thing to

    be taken from him, and he continues

his reading of the dialogues of Plato.

Before the god Ea created mankind, the earth was full of

               the abominable races

of Apsu—who for bodies had abysses infinite—

               and Mummu Tiamat’s wet chaos.

In those days there were Warriors with the bodies of birds;

               Folk with human bodies

and the heads of crows; and Breeds of great, enormous bulls

               with the heads of men;

and dogs that bayed all night and all the livelong day who had

               four bodies and the tails

of fish.—The good Ea and all our other gods wiped out

               those creatures

before they set mankind inside of Paradise (from which

               alas!, how pitiably they fell).

But when he found himself amid the darkness,

amid the terrifying depths of the earth,

in the company of godless Greeks,

and saw the disembodied forms emerge before him

with apparitions, and with brilliant lights,

for a moment he was afraid, this youth,

and an instinct from his pious years

returned, and he made the sign of the cross.

Immediately the Forms disappeared.

The visions were gone—the lights went out.

The Greeks sneaked glances at each other.

And the young man said: “Did you see that marvel?

My dear companions, I am afraid.

I am afraid, my friends, I want to go.

Did not you see the spirits straightaway

vanish at the moment when I made

the blessed shape of the cross?”

There was much guffawing from the Greeks.

“For shame, for shame that you should speak such words

to us, who are philosophers and sophists.

If you like, go tell such things to the man

of Nicomedia, and tell them to his priests.

Before you there appeared the greatest gods

of our illustrious Greece.

And if they left, do not think for a minute

that they were frightened by a gesture.

It’s merely that when they saw you make

that extremely base and boorish shape

their noble nature was repelled,

and they left and held you in contempt.”

This is what they said, and from his fear,

which was holy and blessed,

the foolish man recovered, and was persuaded

by the godless words of the Greeks.

The cat is distasteful to ordinary people.

Magnetic and mysterious, it wearies their

    frivolous minds; nor do they place any

               value on its charming manners. [       ]

    [                                          ]

    [                                          ]

But the soul of a cat is its lordly pride.

Liberty, its blood and its nerves.

    Its gaze is never cast down.

               In the constant concealment of its passions,

    in the clarity, the serenity

    and beauty of its stances, the discipline

of its movements, how delicate a purity of feeling

may be found. When cats day dream or slumber

    a spectral chill surrounds them.

    Then, perhaps, the ghosts of olden times

roam around them. Perhaps this vision

leads them to Bubastis; where their holy places

    flourished once, and Ramessid ritual crowned them,

    and their every movement was an augury for the priests.

               In order to make my difficult life more secure

I shall be issuing very few drafts

on the Bank of the Future.

               I doubt that it possesses very great assets.

And I’ve begun to fear that in the first crisis

it will suddenly stop making payments.

There is one joy alone, but one that’s blessed,

one consolation only in this pain.

How many thronging vulgar days were missed

because of this ending; how much ennui.

A poet has said: “The loveliest

music is the one that cannot be played.”

And I, I daresay that by far the best

life is the one that cannot be lived.

Whether I am happy or unhappy, I don’t calculate.

But one thing always I joyfully keep in sight—

that in the great addition (the addition of those I hate)

that comprises such great numbers, I don’t count

as one of the many units there. I wasn’t numbered in the great

addition. And for me that delight is sufficient.

Absinthe, datura, and hypoceme,

aconite, hellebore, and hemlock—

all of the bitter and poisonous—

give up their leaves and their terrible flowers

that they might become the great garlands

that are placed on the radiant altar—

ah, the shining altar of Malachite stone—

of the Passion both dreadful and sublime.

The goodly king feels pity for Elsa

and to the Herald he turns.

The Herald calls out, and the trumpets sound.

Ah king, I bid thee once again,

let the Herald call out one more time.

The Herald sounds the summons one more time.

                         I beg you,

I fall at your feet. Have mercy on me, mercy.

He is far away, very far, and does not hear.

Now, this one last time, let the Herald

sounds the summons. Perhaps he will appear.

                         The Herald

sounds the summons once again.

                         And see,

something white shone out on the horizon.

It has appeared, appeared—it is the swan.

Oh our misfortune, Oh misfortune, when

the king feels pity and turns mechanically

to his Herald, without very much hope.

And the Herald cries out, and the trumpets sound.

               And again he cries out and the trumpets sound;

               and again he cries out and the trumpets sound;

               but Lohengrin never comes.

And nonetheless faith would have kept the watch, inviolate.

               And who shall say the worst.

               (Better for it never to be uttered.)

               Who will come to tell us (Let’s not listen to him.

               Let’s not listen to him. They’ll have tricked him)

               the unjust accusation; and then

the challenge, another challenge from the Herald,

               the glorious arrival of Lohengrin—

               swan, and magic sword, and holy Grail—

               and in the end the single combat,

in which he was defeated by Telramund.

Death stretches out his hand

and touches a glorious general’s brow.

That evening a paper reveals the news.

A great crowd fills the sick man’s house.

His pain has paralyzed his limbs

and his tongue. He turns his gaze

and stares a long while at familiar things.

Serene, he recalls the heroes of olden days.

On the outside—he is covered by silence and stillness.

Inside—he’s devoured by envy for life, by cowardice,

leprous pleasure, foolish spite, fury, malice.

He groans deeply.—He’s expired.—The voice of every

citizen laments. “His death has ruined our city!

Virtue has died with him, O woe is me!”

Heartily know / … / The gods arrive.

—E
MERSON

RÉMONIN.—He’ll disappear at the crucial time; the gods will intervene.

Mme DE RUMIÈRES.—As in ancient tragedies? (Act II, sc. i)

Mme DE RUMIÈRES.—What is the matter?

RÉMONIN.—The Gods have arrived. (Act V, sc. x)

—A
LEXANDRE
D
UMAS
,
FILS
,
L’Etrangère

This will happen now, and later that;

and later still, in a year or two (as I reckon it),

affairs will be such, and manners such.

We won’t fret about the distant future.

What we’ll attempt is something better.

And we’ll ruin whatever we attempt;

we’ll so entangle our affairs that we’ll end up

in deep confusion. And then we’ll stop.

That will be the hour for the gods to work.

They always come, the gods. They will descend

from their machines, and some they’ll save,

others they will violently, suddenly raise

by the middle; and when they’ve brought some order

they will withdraw.—And then this man will do this,

and that man that; and in time the others

will do as they see fit. And so we will start over.

To far-off parts my mind now makes its way.

I walk around the streets of Elsinore,

I wander in the squares, and I remember

her most mournful history, that luckless king,

whom his nephew slew because of some imagined suspicions.

In all the houses of the poor they secretly

(because they were in fear of Fortinbras)

wept for him. A lover of quiet, and mild

was he; and he loved peace (the land had suffered much

from the battles of his predecessor).

He behaved with courtesy to all,

to great and small. High-handedness

he reviled, and he always sought

counsel about the kingdom’s affairs

from people who were sober and experienced.

Why his nephew killed him

they never said with any certainty.

He suspected him of a murder.

The basis of his suspicion was this:

that when, one night when he was walking on

one of the ancient battlements,

he reckoned that he saw a ghost

and with the ghost he had a conversation.

And from the ghost, presumably, he learned

of certain accusations against the king.

It must have been excitement of the imagination,

to be sure, some trick played on his eyes.

(The prince was nervous to extremes.

When he was studying in Wittenberg his fellow

students took him for a lunatic.)

A few days afterwards he went to see

his mother, so that they could have a talk

about some family matters. And suddenly

just as he was talking he became excited

and began to shout, and to cry aloud

that the ghost had appeared in front of him.

But his mother didn’t see a thing.

And on that very day he killed

an aged nobleman without any cause.

Since anyway the prince was due to leave

for England in a day or two,

the king hastened his departure

hurry-scurry, so that he might save him.

But everyone was so indignant

about the horrifying murder that rebels rose up

and tried to storm the palace gates

together with the son of the murdered man

the nobleman Laertes (a young man

who was brave, and was ambitious, too:

some of his friends cried out “Long live

King Laertes!” in the confusion).