CHICAGO

I am mature, a man child, in America, in the West, in the great valley of the Mississippi. My head arises above the cornfields. I stand up among the new corn.

I am a child, a confused child in a confused world. There are no clothes made that fit me. The minds of men cannot clothe me. Great projects arise within me. I have a brain, and it is cunning and shrewd.

I want leisure to become beautiful, but there is no leisure. Men should bathe me with prayers and with weeping, but there

are no men.

Now from now-from today I shall do deeds of fiery meaning. Songs shall arise in my throat and hurt me.

I am a little thing, a tiny little thing on the vast prairies. I know nothing. My mouth is dirty. I cannot tell what I want. My feet are sunk in the black swampy land, but I am a lover. I love life. In the end love shall save me.

The days are long-it rains-it snows. I am an old man. sweeping the ground where my grave shall be.

I am

Look upon me, my beloved, my lover who does not come. I am raw and bleeding, a new thing in a new world. I run swiftly o'er bare fields. Listen-there is the sound of the tramping of many feet. Life is dying in me. I am old and palsied. I am just at the beginning of my life.

Do you not see that I am old, O my beloved? Do you not understand that I cannot sing, that my songs choke me? Do you not see that I am so young I cannot find the word in the confusion of words?

EVENING SONG

Back of Chicago the open fields-were you ever there?
Trains coming toward you out of the West-

Streaks of light on the long grey plains? Many a song—
Aching to sing.

I've got a grey and ragged brother in my breast-
That's a fact.

Back of Chicago the open fields-were you ever there?
Trains going from you into the West-

Clouds of dust on the long grey plains.
Long trains go West, too-in the silence.
Always the song—
Waiting to sing.

AMERICAN SPRING SONG

In the spring, when winds blew and farmers were plowing fields, It came into my mind to be glad because of my brutality.

Along a street I went and over a bridge.

I went through many streets in my city and over many bridges. Men and women I struck with my fists, and my hands began to bleed.

Under a bridge I crawled, and stood trembling with joy

At the river's edge.

Because it was spring and soft sunlight came through the cracks

of the bridge,

I tried to understand myself.

Out of the mud at the river's edge I molded myself a god

A grotesque little god with a twisted face,

A god for myself and my men.

You see now, brother, how it was.

I was a man with clothes made by a Jewish tailor;
Cunningly wrought clothes, made for a nameless one.

I wore a white collar and someone had given me a jeweled pin
To wear at my throat.

That amused and hurt me too.

No one knew that I knelt in the mud beneath the bridge

In the city of Chicago.

You see I am whispering my secret to you.

I want you to believe in my insanity and to understand that I love God

That's what I want.

And then, you see, it was spring,

And soft sunlight came through the cracks of the bridge.

I had been long alone in a strange place where no gods came.

Creep, men, and kiss the twisted face of my mud god.
I'll not hit you with my bleeding fists—

I'm a twisted God myself.

It is spring and love has come to me.
Love has come to me and to my men.

A VISIT

Westward the field of the cloth of gold.

It is fall- see the gold in the dust of the fields.

Lay the golden cloth upon me. It is night and I come through the streets to your window.

The dust and the words are all gone, brushed away. Let me sleep.

Walter Conrad Arensberg

VOYAGE À L'INFINI

The swan existing

Is like a song with an accompaniment

Imaginary.

Across the glassy lake,

Across the lake to the shadow of the willows,

It is accompanied by an image

As by Debussy's

"Reflets dans l'eau."

The swan that is

Reflects

Upon the solitary water-breast to breast

With the duplicity:

"The other one!"

And breast to breast it is confused.

O visionary wedding! O stateliness of the procession! It is accompanied by the image of itself

Alone.

At night

The lake is a wide silence,

Without imagination.

AT DAYBREAK

I had a dream and I awoke with it-
Poor little thing that I had not unclasped
After the kiss good-by.

And at the surface how it gasped

This thing that I had loved in the unlit

Depth of the drowsy sea.

Ah me!

This thing with which I drifted toward the sky.

Driftwood upon a wave

Senseless the motion that it gave.

TO HASEKAWA

Perhaps it is no matter that you died.
Life's an incognito which you saw through:
You never told on life-you had your pride;
But life has told on you.

DIALOGUE

Be patient, Life, when Love is at the gate,
And when he enters let him be at home.
Think of the roads that he has had to roam.
Think of the years that he has had to wait.

But if I let Love in I shall be late.
Another has come first-there is no room.
And I am thoughtful of the endless loom-
Let Love be patient, the importunate.

O Life, be idle and let Love come in,
And give thy dreamy hair that Love may spin.

But Love himself is idle with his song.

Let Love come last, and then may Love last long.

Be patient, Life, for Love is not the last.

Be patient now with Death, for Love has passed.