<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</SPAN></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">SIMPLE ACCOUNT OF A POET’S LIFE</h2>
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<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap4">IN 1892</div>
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<div class="verse">When literature and art in America</div>
<div class="verse">Presented a mildewed but decorous mien,</div>
<div class="verse">He was born.</div>
<div class="verse">During the first months of his life</div>
<div class="verse">His senses had not yet learned to endure</div>
<div class="verse">The majestic babble of old sterilities.</div>
<div class="verse">The vacuum of his brain</div>
<div class="verse">Felt a noisy thinness outside,</div>
<div class="verse">Which it could not hear or see,</div>
<div class="verse">And gave it the heavier substance</div>
<div class="verse">Of yells that were really creation</div>
<div class="verse">Fighting its way to form.</div>
<div class="verse">(When babies shriek they seek</div>
<div class="verse">Power in thought and action.</div>
<div class="verse">Life objects to their intent</div>
<div class="verse">And forces their voices to repent.)</div>
<div class="verse">At the age of four he lived inwardly,</div>
<div class="verse">With enormous shapeless emotions</div>
<div class="verse">Taking his limbs, like waves.</div>
<div class="verse">His mind was vapour censured</div>
<div class="verse">By an occasional protest</div>
<div class="verse">That mumbled and could not be heard.</div>
<div class="verse">People to him were headless figures—</div>
<div class="verse">Bodies surmounted by voices</div>
<div class="verse">That tickled like feathers, or struck like rocks.</div>
<div class="verse">Missiles thrown from moving mountain-tops</div>
<div class="verse">And leaving only resentment at their touch.</div>
<div class="verse">At ten the voices receded</div>
<div class="verse">To invisible meanings</div>
<div class="verse">That toyed with flesh-protected secrets of faces.</div>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</SPAN></span>
<div class="verse">The voices made promises</div>
<div class="verse">Which the faces continually evaded,</div>
<div class="verse">And often the voices in vengeance</div>
<div class="verse">Changed a lip or an eye-brow</div>
<div class="verse">To repeat their neglected demands.</div>
<div class="verse">When swung to him the voices</div>
<div class="verse">Were insolent enigmas,</div>
<div class="verse">Tripping him as he stood</div>
<div class="verse">Midway between fright and indifference.</div>
<div class="verse">He sometimes tittered tranquilly</div>
<div class="verse">At the obvious absurdity of this.</div>
<div class="verse">His rages were false and sprang</div>
<div class="verse">From aloof thoughts chanting over their chains.</div>
<div class="verse">The immediate cause of each rage</div>
<div class="verse">Merely opened a door</div>
<div class="verse">Upon this changeless inner condition.</div>
<div class="verse">That species of intoxicated thought</div>
<div class="verse">Which men describe as emotion</div>
<div class="verse">Used its merriment to blind his eye-sight.</div>
<div class="verse">But anger, whose real roots are in the mind,</div>
<div class="verse">Tendered him times of hot perception.</div>
<div class="verse">He noticed that children held flexible flesh</div>
<div class="verse">That wisely sought a variety of patterns—</div>
<div class="verse">Flesh intent upon correcting</div>
<div class="verse">Its closeted effect—</div>
<div class="verse">While older people enticed their flesh</div>
<div class="verse">Into erect and formal lies</div>
<div class="verse">Repeated until their patience died</div>
<div class="verse">And they tried an unpracticed rebellion.</div>
<div class="verse">This was a formless revelation,</div>
<div class="verse">Unattended by words</div>
<div class="verse">But throwing its indistinct contrast</div>
<div class="verse">Over his broad one-colored thought.</div>
<div class="verse">At sixteen he employed words</div>
<div class="verse">To flay the contrast into shapes.</div>
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</SPAN></span>
<div class="verse">At seventeen he decided</div>
<div class="verse">To emulate the gay wisdom of children’s flesh.</div>
<div class="verse">He deliberately borrowed whiskey</div>
<div class="verse">To wipe away the lessons of older people</div>
<div class="verse">Lest they intrude their sterility</div>
<div class="verse">Upon his plotting exuberance.</div>
<div class="verse">He placed his hands on women,</div>
<div class="verse">Gently, boldly, as one</div>
<div class="verse">Experimenting with a piano.</div>
<div class="verse">He stole money, begged on street-corners,</div>
<div class="verse">And answered people with an actual knife</div>
<div class="verse">Merely to give his thoughts and emotions</div>
<div class="verse">A changing reason for existence.</div>
<div class="verse">Moderation seemed to him</div>
<div class="verse">A figure half asleep and half awake</div>
<div class="verse">And mutilating the truth of each condition.</div>
<div class="verse">At twenty-four his flesh became tired,</div>
<div class="verse">And to amuse the weariness</div>
<div class="verse">His hands wrote poetry.</div>
<div class="verse">He had done this before,</div>
<div class="verse">But only as a gleeful reprimand</div>
<div class="verse">To the speed of his limbs.</div>
<div class="verse">Now he wrote with the motives of one</div>
<div class="verse">Whose flesh is passing into less visible manners.</div>
<div class="verse">At times he returned to more concrete motions,</div>
<div class="verse">To befriend the handmaiden of his flesh,</div>
<div class="verse">But gradually he longed</div>
<div class="verse">For the complete secrecy of written creation,</div>
<div class="verse">Enjoying the novelty of a hiding-place.</div>
<div class="verse">In 1962</div>
<div class="verse">He died with a grin at the fact</div>
<div class="verse">That literature and art in America</div>
<div class="verse">Were still presenting a mildewed, decorous mien.</div>
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