There is a part of you I wound Even in my caress; There is a part of you withheld I may not possess. There is a part of you I hate Your need of me When you would be alone, Alone and free. When you come tonight To our small room You will look and listen I shall not be there. FLASH-LIGHTS Candles toppling sideways in tomato-cans The gaudy patterns of a patch-work quilt Save where upswelling over a silent shape. A man in high boots stirs something on a rusty stove Round and round and round, As a new cry like a bleating lamb's Pierces his brain. After a time the man busies himself With hammer and nails and rough-hewn lumber, But fears to strike a blow. Outside the moonlight sleeps white upon the plain And the bark of a coyote shrills across the night. II A smell of musk Comes to him pungently through the darkness. Scenes from foreign lands, Released by the censor, Shimmer in cool black and white Historic information. He shifts his seat sideways, sideways A seeking hand creeps to another hand, Illuminates the historic information. III Within the room, sounds of weeping Low and hushed: Without, a man, beautiful with the beauty Holds pitifully to the handle of the door. While a hand-organ plays, "The hours I spend with thee, dear heart." Sherwood Anderson SONG OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA They tell themselves so many little lies, my beloved. Now wait, little one-we can't sing. We are standing in a crowd, by a bridge, in the West. Hear the voices. Turn around. Let's go home I am tired. They tell themselves so many little lies. You remember, in the night we arose. We were young. There was smoke in the passage and you laughed. Was it goodthat black smoke? Look away-to the streams and the lake. We're alive: See my hand, how it trembles on the rail. Here is song, here in America, here now, in our time. Now wait. I'll go to the train-I'll not swing off into tunes. I'm all right-I just want to talk. You watch my hand on the rail of this bridge. I press down. The blood goes down, there. That steadies me; it makes me all right. Now here is how it's going to come-the song, I mean. I've watched things, men and faces. I know. First there are the broken things, myself and the others. I don't mind that I'm gone, shot to pieces. I'm part of the scheme I'm the broken end of a song myself. We are all that, here in the West, here in Chicago. Tongues clatter against teeth. There's nothing but shrill screams and a rattle. That had to be-it's a part of the scheme. Souls, dry souls, rattle around. Winter of song. Winter of song. Now, faint little voices do lift up. They are swept away in the void that's true enough. It had to be so from the very first. Pshaw, I'm steady enough-let me alone. Keokuk, Tennessee, Michigan, Chicago, Kalamazoo-don't the names in this country make you fairly drunk? We'll stand by this brown stream for hours. I'll not be swept away-watch my hand, how steady it is. To catch this song and sing it would do much, make much clear. Come close to me, warm little thing. It is night—I am cold. When I was a boy in my village here in the West, I always knew all the old men. How sweet they were quite biblical toomakers of wagons and harness and plows, sailors and soldiers and pioneers. We got Walt and Abraham out of that lot. Then a change came. Drifting along. Drifting along. You know my city, Chicago triumphant-factories and marts and the roar of machines-horrible, terrible, ugly and brutal. It crushed things down and down. Nobody wanted to hurt. They They were caught themselves. didn't want to hurt me or you. I know the old men here-millionaires. I've always known old men all my life. I'm old myself. You would never guess how old I am. Can a singer arise and sing in this smoke and grime? Can he keep his throat clear? Can his courage survive? I'll tell you what it is-now you be still. To hell with you. I'm an old empty barrel floating in the stream-that's what I am. You stand away-I've come to life. My arms lift up I begin to swim. Hell and damnation-turn me loose! isn't the roar of the trains at all. The floods come on. That Now, in the midst of the broken waters of my civilization, rhythm begins. Clear above the flood I raise my ringing voice. In the disorder and darkness of the night, in the wind and the washing waves, I shout to my brothers-lost in the flood. Little faint beginnings of things-old things dead, sweet old things— a life lived in Chicago, in the West, in the whirl of industrial America. God knows you might have become something else just like me. You might have made soft little tunes, written cynical little ditties, eh? Why the devil didn't you make some money and own an automobile? Do you believe? Now listen-I do. Say, you-now listen! Do you believe the hand of God reached down to me in the flood? I do. 'Twas like a streak of fire along my back. That's a lie, of course. The face of God looked down at me, over the rim of the world. Don't you see we are all a part of something, here in the West? We're trying to break through. I'm a song myself, the broken end of a song myself. We have to sing, you see, here in the darkness. All men have to sing poor broken things. We have to sing here in the darkness in the roaring flood. We have to find each other. Have you courage tonight for a song? Lift your voices. Come. 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 I am Look upon me, my beloved, my lover who does not come. 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? |