That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be Angry at the Sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and
turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those
warriors,
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the
passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caeser. You are far
From Dantes feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be
duped.
Yours is not theirs.
The Answer
Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.
Let Them Alone
If God has been good enough to give you a poet
Then listen to him. But for God’s sake let him alone un-
til he is dead; no prizes, no ceremony,
They kill the man. A poet is one who listens
To nature and his own heart; and if the noise of the
world grows up around him, and if he’s tough
enough,
He can shake off his enemies but not his friends.
That is what withered Wordsworth and muffled Tenny-
son, and would have killed Keats; that is what
makes
Hemmingway play the fool and Faulkner forget his art.
Vulture
I had walker since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare
hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half shut eyelids a vul-
ture wheeling high up in the heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its
orbit narrowing, I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard
the flight feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come
nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, “My Dear bird, we are
wasting time here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you.”
But how beautiful he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering
away in the sea-light over the precipice. I tell you
solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten
by that beak and become a part of him, to share those
wings and those eyes---
What a sublime end of one’s body, what an enskyment;
What a life after death.
Rock and Hawk
Here is a symbol in which
Many high tragic thoughts
Watch their own eyes.
This gray rock, stnding tall
On the headland, where the seawind
Lets no tree grow,
Earthquake-proved, and signitureed
By ages of storms: on its peak
A falcon has perched.
I think, here is your emblem
To hang in the future sky;
Not the cross, not the hive,
But this; bright power, dark peace;
Fierce consciousness joined with final
Disinterestedness;
Life with calm death; the falcon’s
Realist eyes and act
Married to the massive
Mysticism of stone,
Which failure cannot cast down
Nor success make proud.
Their Beauty Has More Meaning
Yesterday morning enormous the moon hung low on the
ocean,
Round and yellow-rose in the glow of the dawn;
The night herons flapping home wore dawn on their
wings. Today
Black is the ocean, black and sulphur the sky,
And the white seas leap. I honestly do not know which day
is more beautiful.
I know that tomorrow or next year or in twenty years
I shall not see these things--- and it does not matter, it
does not hurt;
They will be here. And when the whole human race
Has been like me rubbed out, they will still be here:
storms, moon and ocean,
Dawn and the birds. And I say this: their beauty has
more meaning
Than the whole human race and the race of birds.
For Una
1
I built her a tower when I was young----
Sometime she will die----
I built it with my hands, I hung
Stones in the sky.
Old but still strong I climb the stone---
Sometime she will die---
Climb the steep rough steps alone,
And weep in the sky.
Never weep, never weep.
2
Never be astonished, dear.
Expect change.
Nothing is strange.
We have seen the human race
Capture all its dreams,
All except peace.
We have watched mankind like Christ
Toil up and up,
To be hanged at the top.
No longer envying the birds,
That ancient prayer for
Wings granted: therefore
The heavy sky over London
Stallion hoofed,
Falls on the roofs.
These are the falling years,
They will go deep,
Never weep, never weep.
With clear eyes explore the pit.
Watch the great fall
With religious awe.
3
It is not Europe alone that is falling
Into blood and fire.
Decline and fall have been dancing in all men’s souls
For a long while.
Sometime at the last gasp comes peace
To every soul.
Never to mine until I find out and speak
The things that I know.
4
Tomorrow I will take up that heavy poem again
About Ferguson, deceived and jealous man
Who bawled for the truth, the truth, and failed to endure
Its first least gleam. That poem bores me, and I hope will
bore
Any sweet soul that reads it, being in some ways
My very self but mostly my antipodes;
But having waved the heavy artillery to fire
I must hammer on to an end.
Tonight, dear,
Let’s forget all that, that and the war,
And enisle ourselves a little beyond,
You with this Irish whiskey, I with red wine,
While to stars go over the sleepless ocean,
And sometime after midnight I’ll pluck you a wreath
Of choosen ones; we’ll talk of love and death,
Rock solid themes, old and deep as the sea,
Admit nothing more timely, nothing less real
While the stars go over the timeless ocean,
And when they vanish we’ll have spent the night well.
Sirens
Perhaps we desire death: or why is poison so sweet?
Why do the little Sirens
Make kindlier music, for a man caught in the net of the world
Between news-cast and work-desk,-
The little chirping Sirens, alcohol, amusement, opiates,
And carefully sterilized lust,-
Than the angels of life? Really it is rather strange, for the angels
Have all the power on their side.
All the importance:- men turn away from them, preferring their own
Vulgar inventions, the little
Trivial Sirens. Here is another sign that the age needs renewal.
Shine, Perishing Republic
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence;
and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it
stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the
thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there
are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught -- they say --
God, when he walked on earth.
The Purse Seine
Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark of the moon;
daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net, unable to see the
phosphorescence of the shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting Santa Cruz; off
New Year's Point or off Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color light on the
sea's night-purple; he points and the helmsman
Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the gleaming shoal
and drifts out her seine-net. They close the circle
And purse the bottom of the net, then with great labor haul it in.
I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible, then, when the
crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall to the
other of their closing destiny the phosphorescent
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body sheeted
with flame, like a live rocket
A comet's tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside the
narrowing
Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up to watch,
sighing in the dark; the vast walls of night
Stand erect to the stars.
Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top
On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light: how could
I help but recall the seine-net
Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how beautiful
the city appeared, and a little terrible.
I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together
into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now
There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable
of free survival, insulated
From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all
dependent. The circle is closed, and the net
Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet they
shine already. The inevitable mass-disasters
Will not come in our time nor in our children's, but we and our
children
Must watch the net draw narrower, government take all powers
-or revolution, and the new government
Take more than all, add to kept bodies kept souls—or anarchy,
the mass-disasters.
These things are Progress;
Do you marvel our verse is troubled or frowning, while it keeps
its reason? Or it lets go, lets the mood flow
In the manner of the recent young men into mere hysteria, splin-
tered gleams, crackled laughter. But they are quite wrong.
There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that
cultures decay, and life's end is death.
Tower Beyond Tragedy (overture)
Tower Beyond Tragedy
ORESTES
I left the madness of the
house, to-night in the dark, with you it walks yet.
How shall I tell you what I have learned? Your mind is like a
hawk’s or like a lion’s, this knowledge
Is out of the order of your mind, a stranger language. To wild
beasts and the blood of kings
A verse blind in the book.
ELECTRA
At least my eyes can see dawn gray-
ing: tell and not mock me, our moment
Dies in a moment
ORESTES
Here is the last labor
To spend on humanity. I saw a vision of us move in the dark:
all that we did or dreamed of
Regarded each other, the man pursued the woman, the woman
clung to the man, warriors and kings
Strained at each other in the darkness, all loved or fought inward,
each one of the lost people
Sought the eyes of another that another should praise him; sought
never his own but another’s; the net of desire
Had every nerve drawn to the center, so that they writhed like a
full draught of fishes, all matted
In the one mesh; when they look backward they see only a man
standing at the beginning
Or forward, a man at the end; or upward, men in the shining
Bitter sky striding and feasting,
Whom you call Gods . . .
It is all turned inward, all your desires incestuous, the woman the
Serpent, the man the rose-red cavern,
Both human, worship forever . . .
ELECTRA
You have dreamed wretchedly.
ORESTES
I have seen the dreams of people and not dreamed them.
As for me, I have slain my mother.
ELECTRA
No more?
ORESTES
And the gate’s open
the gray boils over the mountain, I have greater
Kindred than dwell under a roof. Didn’t I say this would be dark
to you? I have cut the meshes
And fly like a freed falcon. To-night, lying on the hillside, sick
with those visions, I remembered
The knife in the stalk of my humanity; I drew it and it broke;
I entered the life of the brown forest
And the great life of the ancient peaks, the patience of stone,
I felt the change in the veins
In the throat of the mountain, a grain in many centuries, we have
our own time, not yours; and I was the stream
Draining the mountain wood; and I the stag drinking; and I was
the stars,
Boiling with light, wandering alone, each one the lord of his own
summit; and I was the darkness
Outside the stars, I included them, they were a part of me. I was
mankind also, a moving lichen
On the cheek of the round stone . . . they have not made words
for it, to go behind things, beyond hours and ages,
And be all things in all time, in their returns and passages, in the
motionless and timeless center,
In the white of the fire . . . how can I express the excellence
I have found, that has no color but clearness;
No honey but ecstasy; nothing wrought nor remembered;
no undertone nor silver second murmur
That rings in love’s voice, I and my loved are one; no desire but
fulfilled; no passion but peace,
The pure flame and the white, fierier than any passion; no time
but spheral eternity: Electra,
Was that your name before this life dawned—