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Minna and Myself
_MAXWELL BODENHEIM_
Pagan Publishing Company
New York City :: :: :: 1918
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Our thanks to the following publications, for their kindness
in permitting us to reprint, in this volume,
poems that have appeared in their pages:
The _Little Review_; _Poetry_; the _New Republic_;
the _Century_; the New York _Tribune_;
the _Touchstone_; the _Seven
Arts_; the _Pagan_; the _Egoist_.
Copyright, 1918.
Pagan Publishing Co. New York
DEDICATED BY BOTH OF US TO
FEDYA RAMSAY
CONTENTS
MINNA
Poems
MYSELF
Poems
THE MASTER POISONER
A One-Act Poetic Play by Maxwell Bodenheim and
Ben Hecht
POET’S HEART
A Poetic Play in One Act
A FOREWORD
It is hard for me to realize that this is a first volume of verse. Most
of the initial ventures that have passed under my jaundiced eye have
been precisely what such early collections are expected to be. They
were, as Wilde expressed it somewhere, “promissory notes--that are never
met.”... But though it is hard for me to believe that this is a first
book, it is still harder for me to believe that this is Maxwell
Bodenheim’s first book. In these days of the much advertised “poetic
renaissance,” when the _Dial_ out-radicals the _Little Review_, and even
the New York _Tribune_ prints _vers-libre_ on its editorial page, I
expected to see nothing less than Bodenheim’s Collected works.... This
pleasure will evidently have to be deferred.... Meanwhile, here is an
indication, and no slight one, of how distinguished and decorative that
collection will be. Without Kreymborg’s caustic and acerb irony, or
Johns’ fluent lyricism, Bodenheim has something that neither they nor,
for that matter, any of his colleagues in “_Others_” possess. I refer to
his extreme sensitivity to words. Words, under his hands, have
unexpected growths; placid nouns and sober adjectives bear fantastic
fruit. It is a strange and often magic potion he brews from them; dark
and fiery liquids that he pours into curiously designed cups. Sometimes
he gets drunk with his own distillation, and reels between preciosity
and incoherence. Sometimes the mixture is so strong that even his
metaphors, crowding about each other, become inextricably mixed. But as
a rule, Bodenheim is as clear-headed as he is colorful. Among the
younger men he has no superior in his use of the verbal _nuance_.
But it is not merely as word-juggler that Bodenheim shines. He has an
imagination that he uses both as a tool and as a toy. Personally, I care
more for Bodenheim when he plays with his images (as in “Poet to His
Love,” “Hill Side Tree” and certain of the poems to “Minna”), than when
his figures attempt to build or destroy something (as in “To An Enemy,”
“The Interne,” “Soldiers”). It is as a decorator that his gifts serve
him best. Even such an intimate picture as “Factory Girl” is saved from
mawkishness by his delicate sense of design. The composition in which
Death is seen as
“...a black slave with little silver birds
Perched in a sleeping wreath upon his head”
has a quality that suggests the Beardsley of “Under the Hill.” In the
realm of the whimsical-grotesque, Bodenheim walks with a light but sure
footstep.
There are doubtless other things--sharper and more important--in the
following poems that will attract many. But the ones that I have found
seem to have a quiet, unofficial, dignity of their own. Others may ask
for more. For me, they are sufficient.
LOUIS UNTERMEYER.
MINNA
I
Twilight pushes down your eyes
With shimmering, pregnant fingers
That leave you covered with still-born touch.
With little whips of dead words
Silence cuts your lips to a keener red.
Your heart strikes its bed of dark mirth, in death,
And your hands lie over it, guarding the corpse.
Night will soon whisk away this room
But you are already invisible.
II
Your cheeks are spent diminuendos
Sheering into the rose-veiled silence of your lips.
Your eyes are gossamer coquettes
Ringed with the sparkling breath of dead loves.
Your body strays into lanterns of form
Strewing the night within this room....
The light dies; you are still
And spill the frolicing night of your heart
Over the darkness about you, making it pale.
III
Your criss-crossed ringlets of hair
Are tipped with faltering opalescence.
At dawn a lost smile ever returns
And hides in your hair because he fears
The solemn marble profile of your face.
His presence caresses your lips to wings of color
That beat against each other and release
Dulcet, feathery tinges of love descending to your heart.
And thus, each morning, your rising heart
Wears a new bridal robe.
IV
Moonlight bends over black silence,
Making it bloom to wild-flowers of sound
That only green things can hear.
A wind sprawls over an orchard,
Frightening its silent litany to sound.
A thread of star-light has fallen to this tree
And curls among its leaves, tangling them to silence....
Standing amidst these things, Beloved,
We feel the words our hearts cannot form.
V
Pain is a country cousin of yours.
He flings buds of awakening desires
Upon the stately weddings in your heart,
And laughs.
You must teach him better manners;
Bind his mouth with pale sleep;
Caress him with trailing hands
That loosen the buds he has stolen, into flowers.
VI
We met upon nearby hill-tops of our lives
And shook the dust from us, revealing flame-laced clothes
And eyeing each other in the same moment.
You curved a longing to the wave of your arm:
A longing for dark rest crossed by unbidden gifts.
And my eyes deepened in answer....
Then we floated down to the valley between us:
The valley ringed with smooth honey-combs of sleep.
VII
You have a morning-glory face
Whose edges are sensitive to light
And curl in beneath the burden of a smile.
Remembered silence returns to the morning-glory
And lattices its curves
With shades of golden reverberations.
Then the morning-glory’s heart careens to loves
Whose scent beats on the sky-walls of your soul.
VIII
You draw my heart about you, as a cloak,
And your words steal over it like a reluctant color:
A color of pain that fears to die.
My heart ripples with your slight turning
But sometimes moves when you are still,
Beckoning to longings that have not reached your mouth.
IX
Sedate and archaic, a twilight-frilled haze
Walks over the meadows like rolled-out centuries
Quivering in sprightly welcome.
Trees pushed down by silence;
Trees lolling in comely abandon;
Trees pungently flamboyant,
Their leaves spinning in the wind’s golden elusiveness.
Trees probing the shrilly sensitive sunset
Like little, laced nightmares leaning
Upon a scarlet breast;
Trees sprinkling their stifled mockery
Upon the blue tomb of the air;
Trees, are you silenced beings
Whitening into the winding paradise
Of old loves seeking a second death?
And has this archaic, twilight-frilled haze
Moulded me to your semblance?
X
The wrinkled grimaces of eastern skies
Are caught on the Chinese mirrors of your eyes
And lie, pallid and benign.
Your mouth is a senile dragon
Spitting fire-fly words from its vermillion shroud.
Your cheeks are shrunken silences of Gods
Paling out upon ivoried Nirvanas of silk.
Your face holds fugitive bits of your heart
That wandered away and returned to rest.
XI
Your body was puzzling, like a half-made figure
Till the final shaping of your voice came
And riotous secrets of lines curved out
And trembled upon your limbs.
Then silence touched your body to motion:
Your limbs released fleeing andantes of pain
And your heart flung little crescents of budding caresses
Into the waiting hunger of your eyes.
XII
You are a well sprayed with cool rubies of sound
In which I bathe and rise with another skin
Like moon-stone passion slyly courting
The light breath of a tired dream.
I drop my heart into the depths
Of your disheveled serenity,
And stroll off empty.
When my heart has merged to your shades of pearl quietness
I return and once more drop within you.
XIII
The mellow anger of his hair
Disputes his sleepy girl’s face.
His robe glows like a painted wound
Upon the bent meditation of his body.
His hands are so thin that silence bruises them:
Thin from the pressure brought by endless prayers...
When you were with me I did not know
That your voice was pouring him out in molten colors
To be shaped by the fingers of my memory--
This prince-made-of-many-deal-loves.
XIV
Sometimes jaded, sometimes tranquil,
Your eyes invade the tumult of your face.
Your lips are the remnants of a love
That made a sunset-cup of your face.
The movements of your body
Caress the couch you sit on into sound
That seems to answer your words.
You are restless because upon this couch
The cold touch of your lover lies
And seeps into you, reaching your heart.
XV
Your arms, in faltering crescendos,
Wander through the room
Tinted with expectation of night.
The room seems a tottering tomb
Through which you roam with hands
Striving to press each form into the shape
Of someone buried beneath you....
Only when night sprays the room with his breath
Do you change to that which you seek.
XVI
Two walls, dizzy with rain-touch
And suffused with gauzily amorous sunlight,
Creep over a hill and meet.
And so our foreheads touch.
Silence between our hands grows into clasped music
Sprinkling our finger-tips with attenuated chords of touch.
Our hearts weave low songs to this accompaniment:
So low that even silence cannot hear.
XVII
Afternoon sunlight limps tenuously away,
Leaving a snarled retrospect of golden foot-marks.
The sea is pregnant with gracious discords
That falteringly shroud the sleep-rhythmed breasts of winds.
The sky is a genially vacant stare.
Remaining touches of starlight
Tremble the leaves when air is still....
And so my love for you strolls through this day,
Picking up forgotten hints of its heart.
XVIII
_Maiden_
My heart is a slovenly russet peasant-girl
Flirting with staidly immaculate swains.
_Youth_
And mine is summer-rain
Strewing itself in mirthful swirls
Over the odorous pain of flowers
That long to dance.
_Maiden_
My heart will walk through yours,
Holding its crushed robe in both hands
And quieting, with gentle nakedness,
The mirthful rain and odorous pain in your heart.
_Youth_
When your heart leaves mine it will be an old woman
With two of my shrunken flowers for her breasts.
XIX
Your breast is the bridal-couch of our stillness.
The restless beggar of our breath
Leaves the folding of stillness, reeling with gifts,
With dreams in which we glimpse our own scars.
We give these reflections of scars to stillness
And she turns them into bitter hummingbirds
Offering us the colored death of song
Held out in her enticing hands.
XX
Like prayers born dead, long shadows
Strew the floor and clutch at your feet,
But buoyant with paint you walk to and fro.
The room is garlanded with unseen eyes
That you must evade lest they touch you into sight
And send you, naked, into the moonlight.
XXI
Your body is a closed fan
Holding long brush-strokes of glowing repose.
Your words clumsily unloosen the fan
And it dips to the rustling birth of forgotten doubts.
Your soul bears the fan lightly in his hand
And waves to the mirror his blind eyes cannot touch.
XXII
The gown you wear is curiously like sound--
Tangles of dahlia-murmurs taking shape
In shrinking, mellow sprays.
The everlasting journey of your heart
Gliding over a sleepy litany
That winds through scattered star-flowers of regrets:
The everlasting journey of your heart
Is like a fragile traveler of sound--
A murmur seeking the love that gave it birth.
XXIII
Whenever a love dies within you,
Griefs, phosphorescent with unborn tears,
Cut the glowing hush of a meadow within you:
Griefs striking their pearl-voiced cymbals
And shaping the silences once held by your love.
Your new love blows a trumpet of sunlight
Into the meadow, and your griefs
Leap into the echo and return to you.
XXIV
We blew a luminous confusion of thoughts
Upon the silence of our souls,
Staining it to little, weeping tints.
Our hands pressed serpentine pain into each other
And stroked it away to twilights of relief.
Our lips shook before the tread of coming words,
But closed again, finding no need for them.
XXV
Upon an arched sarcophagus of pain
Are figures painted in arrested embraces
With outlines so light that we must bend close to see:
Old loves almost merging to one tone
Of pale regret that holds
An inner glow of dead weeping.
Our lips cling and our breath winds to a hand
With touch like summer rain
Blending the arrested figures upon the arched sarcophagus of pain.
XXVI
Make of your voice, a dawn
Dropping little gestures upon my forehead,
While slumber-edged thoughts rise in my head
And wave back greetings droll and confused.
Pain has jested with the whirling night
And both vanish like an untold prayer,
So, make of your voice, a dawn
Dropping little gestures upon my forehead.
XXVII
Your mind is a little, clandestine pastel
Shaped into a posture of rigid grief.
Its colors huddle together
And make a stunted, aching lyric....
Ah frail-flowered moment preceding reality--
Your eyelids open; the little pastel dies.
MYSELF
POET TO HIS LOVE
An old silver church in a forest
Is my love for you.
The trees around it
Are words that I have stolen from your heart.
An old silver bell, the last smile you gave,
Hangs at the top of my church.
It rings only when you come through the forest
And stand beside it.
And then, it has no need for ringing,
For your voice takes its place.
DEATH
I shall walk down the road.
I shall turn and feel upon my feet
The kisses of Death, like scented rain.
For Death is a black slave with little silver birds
Perched in a sleeping wreath upon his head.
He will tell me, his voice like jewels
Dropped into a satin bag,
How he has tip-toed after me down the road,
His heart made a dark whirlpool with longing for me.
Then he will graze me with his hands
And I shall be one of the sleeping, silver birds
Between the cold waves of his hair, as he tip-toes on.
TO GEORGIE MAY
The ruins of your face were twined with youth.
Vines of starlight questioned your face when you smiled.
Your eyes dissolved over distances
And steeped the graves of many loves.
Night was kind to your body:
The careless vehemence of curves
Softened beneath your darkly-loosened dress.
And your heart toyed with an emotion
That left you vague hunger poised over death.
POET-VAGABOND GROWN OLD
The dust of many roads has been my grey wine.
Surprised beech-trees have bowed
With me, to the plodding morning
Humming tunes frail as webs of dead perfume,
To his love in golden silks, the departed moon.
Maidens like rose-flooded statues
Have bathed me in the wine of their silence.
But now I walk on, alone.
And only after watching many evenings,
Do I dance a bit with dying wisps of moon-light,
To persuade myself that I am young.
BLIND
Blinder than oak-trees in the wind
Endlessly weaving sighs into a poem
To sight,
He sits, the light of one pale purple lantern
Seeping into his dream-hollowed face,
Like floating, transparent words
Pale with unuttered meanings.
He mends a flute and sighs as though
Its shadow leaned heavily upon his heart
And told him things his dead eyes could not grasp.
LOVE
You seemed a caryatid melting
Into the wind-blown, dark blue temple of the sky.
But you bent down as I came closer, breaking the image.
When I passed, you raised your head
And blew the little feather of a smile upon me.
I caught it on open lips and blew it back.
And in that moment we loved,
Although you stood still waiting for your lover,
And I walked on to my love.
HILL-SIDE TREE
Like a drowsy, rain-browned saint,
You squat, and sometimes your voice
In which the wind takes no part,
Is like mists of music wedding each other.
A drunken, odor-laced peddler is the morning wind.
He brings you golden-scarfed cities
Whose voices are swirls of bells burdened with summer;
And maidens whose hearts are galloping princes.
And you raise your branches to the sky,
With a whisper that holds the smile you cannot shape.
INTRUSION
The lilies sag with rain-drops:
Their petals hold fire that does not break out.
(As though it slept between vapor-silk
It could not burn).
And a young breeze stumbles upon the lilies
And strokes them with his spinning hands....
The lilies and the young breeze are not unlike
Your silence and the rush of soft words breaking it.
CHANGE
I came upon a maiden
Blowing rose petals in the air
And catching them, as they fell,
Upon quick fingertips
Her laugh fell lighter than the petals
And dropped little gestures upon my forehead.
I gave her sadness and she blew it up
As she had blown the rose petals:
And it almost seemed joy as her fingers caught it.
But I was only a wanderer plaited with dust,
Who gave her new petals to play with.
PORTRAITS
I
You were in the room, yet your body
Was stone cut in drooping lines
And hued with decorous puzzling pinks and browns.
Even your hair seemed an elfin wig
Carelessly thrown upon your stone head.
And your eyes were hollows cradling broken shadows.
When you spoke your body did not change:
It was as though a flock of sleepy birds
Had issued from your stone mouth.
II
Vague words tapered off to pale weariness,
And sunlight was night smiling in his sleep.
Your hands moved as though they sought a dying emotion:
Your lips, drawn back, seemed evading sound.
When twilight fell upon us,
Like night striving to forget his dream,
We had long since passed out of the room.
MEETING
A mood whose heart was a flagon of ashes,
Met another mood whose lips were stained
With the odors of sleeping wine-songs.
The second mood kissed the breast of the first
And filled the ashen flagon with his pale purple breath.
Then the two moods died, and he who bore them,
Being an old man, sat down to make others.
COTTON-PICKER
Like the arms of a child lifting shining white lilies
from a little brown pond,
Sunlight drew songs from this lithe, grimacing negress
Whose skin was smoother than the cloudless sky above her.
The flecks of cotton they picked brought a changing white stupor
To the negroes about her, but she swung down her row,
With broad smiles cutting her pent-up satin face.
And though the afternoon slowly pressed down her back,
She never ceased humming to her joyous Christ.
FRIENDSHIP
Grey, drooping-shouldered bushes scrape the edges
Of bending swirls of yellow-white flowers.
So do my thoughts meet the wind-scattered color of you.
A green-shadowed trance of water
Is splintered to little, white tasseled awakenings
By the beat of long, black oars.
So do my thoughts enter yours.
Split, brown-blue clouds press into each other
Over hills dressed in mute, clinging haze.
So do my thoughts slowly form
Over the draped mystery of you.
FACTORY GIRL
Why are your eyes like dry brown flower-pods,
Still, gripped by the memory of lost petals?
I feel that if I touched them
They would crumble to falling brown dust
And you would stand with blindness revealed.
Yet, you would not shrink, for your life
Has been long since memorized,
And eyes would only melt out against its high walls.
Besides, in the making of boxes
Sprinkled with crude forget-me-nots,
One is curiously blessed if ones eyes are dead.
DEATH
I
A fan of smoke in the long, green-white revery of the sky,
Slowly curls apart.
So shall we rise and widen out in the silence of air.
II
An old man runs down a little yellow road
To an out-flung, white thicket uncovered by morning.
So shall I swing to the white sharpness of death.
INTERLUDE
Sun-light recedes on the mountains, in long gold shafts,
Like the falling pillars of a temple.
Then singing silence almost too nimble for ears:
The mountain-tenors fling their broad voices
Into the blue hall of the sky,
And through a rigid column of these voices
Night dumbly walks.
Night, crushing sound between his fingers
Until it forms a lightly frozen couch
On which he dreams.
CHORUS GIRL
Her voice was like rose-fragrance waltzing in the wind.
She seemed a shadow stained with shadow colors
Swinging through waves of sunlight.
Perhaps her heart was an old minstrel
Sleepily pawing at his little mandolin.
OLD AGE
In me is a little painted square
Bordered by old shops, with gaudy awnings.
And before the shops sit smoking, open-bloused old men,
Drinking sunlight.
The old men are my thoughts:
And I come to them each evening, in a creaking cart,
And quietly unload supplies.
We fill slim pipes and chat,
And inhale scents from pale flowers in the center of the square....
Strong men, tinkling women, and dripping, squealing children
Stroll past us, or into the shops.
They greet the shopkeepers, and touch their hats or foreheads to me....
Some evening I shall not return to my people.
TO ONE DEAD
I walked upon a hill
And the wind, made solemnly drunk with your presence,
Reeled against me.
I stooped to question a flower,
And you floated between my fingers and the petals,
Tying them together.
I severed a leaf from its tree
And a water-drop in the green flagon
Cupped a hunted bit of your smile.
All things about me were steeped in your remembrance
And shivering as they tried to tell me of it.
TO A DISCARDED STEEL RAIL
Straight strength pitched into the surliness of the ditch:
A soul you have--strength has always delicate, secret reasons.
Your soul is a dull question.
I do not care for your strength, but your stiff smile at Time:
A smile which men call rust.
TO AN ENEMY
I despise my friends more than you.
I would have known myself but they stood before the mirrors
And painted on them images of the virtues I craved.
You came with sharpest chisel, scraping away the false paint.
Then I knew and detested myself, but not you,
For glimpses of you in the glasses you uncovered
Showed me the virtues whose images you destroyed.
SOLDIERS
The smile of one face is like a fierce mermaid
Floating dead in a little pale-brown pond.
The lips of one are twisted
To a hieroglyphic of silence.
The face of another is like a shining frog.
Another face is met by a question
That digs into it like sudden claws.
Beside it is a face like a mirror
In which a stiffened child dangles....
Dead soldiers, in a sprawling crescent,
Whose faces form a gravely mocking sentence.
FORGETFULNESS
Happier than green-kirtled apple-trees
Waving their soft-rimmed fans of light
And taking the morning mist, in quick breaths,
You sit in the woven meditation and surprise
Of a morning uncovering its wind-wreathed head.
And yet within the light stillness of your soul
Dream-heavy guards sleep uneasily
Over the body of your last slain sorrow.
THE INTERNE
O the agony of having too much power!
In my passive palm are hundreds of lives.
Strange alchemy, they drain my blood.
My heart becomes iron; my brain copper; my eyes silver; my lips brass.
Merely by twitching a supple finger, I twirl lives from me,
Strong-winged or fluttering and broken.
They are my children: I am their mother and father.
I watch them live and die.
REAR PORCHES OF AN APARTMENT BUILDING
A sky that has never known sun, moon, or stars,
A sky that is like a dead, kind face
Would have the color of your eyes,
O servant-girl singing of pear-trees in the sun
And scraping the yellow fruit you once picked
When your lavender-white eyes were alive.
On the porch above you sit two women
With faces the color of dry brown earth;
They knit grey rosettes and nibble cakes.
And on the porch above them are three children
Gravely kissing each other’s foreheads,
And an ample nurse with a huge red fan....
The death of the afternoon to them
Is but the lengthening of blue-black shadows on brick walls.
TO ONE DEAD
Shaking nights, noons tame and dust-quiet, and wind-broken days
Were hands modelling your face.
Yet people glanced at you and pass on.
And now they speak of you,
Quickly weighing tiny, stray chips of you:
They who did not know you.
THE MASTER-POISONER
MAXWELL BODENHEIM and BEN HECHT
PEOPLE
Sobe The Poisoner
Fana His Wife
Maldor His Assistant
_The Poisoner’s living-room. Purple velvet draperies embroidered with
huge lavendar and orange lilies hang over the rear wall, completely
covering it. One great scarlet cushion, four feet high and five feet
wide, stands at the center of the wall against the draperies. The right
and left walls have two small, narrow windows near the top, through
which a dimly glowing light pours, forming a triangle as it strikes the
floor. A narrow tall entrance blocked by orange-colored portieres stands
in the center of the right and left walls. The floor is black and
uncovered. A huge black candle three inches wide and five feet high
emerges from a black urn in the center of the floor, bisecting the
triangle formed by the two streams of pale light. White and scarlet
cushions are scattered about the floor. On two of these cushions sit
Sobe, the Poisoner, and Maldor, his Assistant. They sit to the left and
right of the candle, eyeing each other with a softly-smiling melancholy.
Sobe is tall, black-bearded, condor-faced, and clad in an orange robe,
and black sandals. Maldor is short and smooth-shaven, with the face of a
sleepy girl. He wears a white robe and sandals._
Maldor (_puzzled and wistful, speaks softly to the Poisoner_)
A secretion from the intestines of the cane-rat found in the
Hwang-Ho river, sprinkled with the pollen of jasmine-flowers,
produces a most wonderful poison, O Master. When dropped into the
eyes of a virgin, this poison will cause her face to contract in a
twitching crescendo.
Sobe (_speaks listlessly_)
The eyes of a virgin are too blank for a poisoner’s relish.
Maldor (_speaks with eager, hopeful emphasis_)
The virgin, O Master, provides only the unimportant tinge to the
process. The relish lies in the pompous complexity of the poison.
Sobe
Complexity is but a shattered mirror.
Maldor (_still hopefully_)
From the irridescent dimples of the Medusae fish I have extracted a
saffron liquid, O master, which mixed with the larvae of
dragon-flies, completes a most satisfactory poison. Administered in
microscopic doses, it creates ribbons of flame in the blood and its
enchanting victim expires, glowing with strange, phosphorescent
colors.
Sobe
I am sick of suavely terrifying poisons.
Maldor (_speaks wistfully_)
What strange delicacy makes you almost brutal tonight, O Master?
Sobe (_speaks as to himself_)
Wearisome poisons. A droll flutter ... and then always that dainty
monotony--death.
Maldor (_speaks swiftly_)
But surely our work still holds you, O Master. You have not become
reconciled to the empty ferocity of death!
Sobe (_speaks gently_)
Ah, Maldor, our poisons lend their little flourishes merely to
life. I would like to poison death.
Maldor (_speaks aggrievedly_)
But master, those cringing writhings, those indelicate squirmings
and jocund acrobatics which our most fastidious poisons
produce--what more tender satisfaction!
Sobe (_listlessly_)
They are but interludes leaving me languidly envious of death, my
master.
Maldor (_speaks with indignation_)
You have no master! Your last poison of moth-blood produced an
effect so exquisitely monstrous that even death was appalled. Ah,
the bones of an old woman, dissolving within her, left her body, a
loose grimace.
Sobe
I am sick of all these sterile grimaces.
Maldor (_speaks slowly_)
Some new and lethal poem has sighed itself into your heart.
Sobe (_softly_)
There are no poisons remaining. We have signalled death with many
diverting gestures. We have fitted too many clownish shrouds.
Maldor
You are wistfully nervous. Some dream has burned your heart to an
ashen bag.
Sobe
I will tell you, Maldor, what I have done.
Maldor
Surely, you have found no last contortion for life.
Sobe
I have found the ultimate contortion.
Maldor
Some nibbling horror....
Sobe
No, Beauty.
Maldor (_after a pause_)
Beware, master, beauty is life’s revenge upon death.
Sobe
You know very little. Beauty is the devourer of death.
Maldor (_speaks slowly_)
What poison is this?
Sobe (_speaks gently_)
A drop taken into the blood, no more. The skin becomes a
milk-tinted pond in which wine-ghosts timidly bathe. The eyes, like
purple breasted birds, beat against the day. The mouth blooms into
splendours. Ah, Maldor, the drop releases beauty from her thousand
prisons. The victim stands washed in a flood of light before which
imagination dies.
Maldor (_speaks maliciously_)
What unique philanthropy is this? Has Sobe the Poisoner dreamed of
immortality?
Sobe (_gently_)
Sobe the Poisoner has made a drop of poison which will create
beauty and death. In the soul of its victim these two monsters meet
and strive against each other. Immortal beauty and death remain
clutched in a stifling caress. The poison, as it works upon its
victim, renders her more radiant and beautiful each moment, and
each moment it paralyses her heart.
Maldor
And then what happens?
Sobe
Bereft of life, but with a beauty which must resist death, the
tortured one remains my own. Thus with my poison I become death’s
master. Thus that which should die, does not die. Thus death
advancing creates a flame which it cannot stifle.
Maldor
Beware.
Sobe (_speaks with quickened emphasis_)
Death is my slave. I summon him. I open a jewelled gate which he
cannot pass.
Maldor (_speaks softly_)
I do not like this poison.
Sobe (_who smiles_)
You are an amateur of death, Maldor.
Maldor (_softly_)
I do not like this poison.
Sobe
I will tell you another virtue of this poison, which perhaps will
entice your fears.
Maldor
What is this virtue?
Sobe
Other poisons I have made provided us only with that little
frenzied prelude to death. Our victims have amused us somewhat,
with unconscious heavings--little, docile marionettes in the
torments of poisons. But now, Maldor, our subject, inspired by the
ever-increasing loveliness of her body, by the ever-growing flame
of her beauty, resists in a torment beyond those instinctive spasms
and dimly-felt agonies. Her overwhelming desire to prolong her
beauty makes the struggle against death wondrously hideous.
Maldor
But since you say she cannot die, where will those struggles lead
her?
Sobe
I do not know. I know only that a woman whose beauty feeds upon the
shadows of death, must amuse us with a miracle.
Maldor (_softly_)
The virtue of this poison does not appeal to me. The miracle you
promise is cluttered with subtle doubts. Death, betrayed, may
blindly wander. Let us rather return to our pathetically certain
poisons and revel in the final froth-sprinkled caperings of life.
Ah, the powdered hair of the white caterpillar, steeped in
moon-light, will cause the eyes to swell out of their sockets, and
the tongue to burst.
Sobe (_gently_)
Where is Fana?
Maldor
Fana!
Sobe
Summon Fana to me.
Maldor
Master, do not summon Fana.
Sobe
I shall make Fana beautiful.
(_Fana draws aside the portieres at the left. Fana is tall, with a
majestic ugliness. She is dressed in a dark brown robe. Her face is
swathed in a pale brown veil, knotted at the nape of the neck, and
falling almost to her feet. She stands motionless. The two men turn and
stare at her._)
Sobe (_softly_)
I shall bring the poison.
(_He rises and departs through the right entrance. Maldor rises and
continues to look steadily at Fana._)
Fana (_gently_)
I heard the word beauty.
Maldor
What else did you hear?
Fana
I heard only the word beauty.
Maldor
The master is evil tonight.
Fana
More evil than always?
Maldor
Even more.
Fana
What does he do?
Maldor
He frightens me with a mockery of death.
Fana
What did he say of beauty?
Maldor
Fana, go before he returns.
(_Maldor quickly walks to the right entrance, draws aside the portieres,
and peers cautiously out. He returns quickly to Fana._)
Maldor (_speaking quickly_)
He has a poison to make you beautiful.
Fana
Ah!
Maldor
Go!
Fana
Is he weary of my ugliness?
Maldor
No. He has no thought for you. He seeks to enslave his master,
Death.
Fana
But I did hear him speak of beauty.
Maldor (_desperately_)
He means to make you the flowered tomb of beauty. I can tell you no
more. Go!
Fana
Why do you tell me this? I have seen you smile upon things less
subtle than tombs.
Maldor
I love you.
Fana
It is easy to love that which is veiled. But perhaps you love me
because my face is so gentle a poison.
Maldor
I know not ugliness. It is a mood which has forsaken me. I plead
with you to go.
(_Maldor hears Sobe’s footfalls and seats himself impassively upon his
cushion._)
Fana (_softly_)
I shall remain.
(_Sobe enters. He bows to Fana._)
Sobe
Ah, Fana, I shall make your stay pleasant.
_Fana_--
Yes, Master.
(_She seats herself behind the candle between Sobe and Maldor._)
_Sobe_ (_gently_)--
You are very ugly, Fana. You wear a veil because you are ugly.
_Fana_--
I heard you speak of beauty.
_Sobe_--
Your body is like a broken cloud. Your face is like a pottery that
crumbles in the light. You are not beautiful.
_Fana_ (_softly_)--
Why do you tell me this so carefully?
_Sobe_--
To make you dream.
_Fana_--
Dreams are mirrors in which I do not care to look.
_Sobe_--
I have a poison that will open your hearts to dreams.
_Fana_--
The dream which poison brings is too long.
_Sobe_--
This poison brings two dreams. One of beauty and one of death.
Would you listen to them?
_Fana_--
Listening to dreams one avoids the dreariness of sleep.
_Sobe_ (_gently_)--
You are very ugly, Fana. I have a poison which will make you
beautiful.
_Fana_--
To lie beautiful in death is a lyric privilege, but so faint an
echo.
_Sobe_--
You reason too simply. I cannot promise you life. Perhaps your
pleasure will be only that of one who greets a phantom lover. A
moment of loveliness and the thought of eternal beauty embalmed in
a dark dream, may be all that shall be given to you before death.
Fana
And what else is possible?
Sobe
It is possible that you will become so beautiful that you cannot
die. It is possible that Death, feeding your beauty, will exhaust
itself in a last gentle caress. Then you will still live, and
Death, a eunuch, will drag himself after you.
Fana
But why do you speak so eagerly? Surely your only interest does not
lie in my exchanging one veil for another.
Maldor (_breaking his silence softly_)
No, Fana, my master dreams of edged subtleties.
Sobe
Make them simple with your telling, Maldor.
Maldor
My master is weary of ordinary effects. He has watched too many
frenzied struggles. No longer do they intrigue him. He yearns for
something elaborate. He has dreamed of more fragile tortures. The
poison he will give you brings no pain, but the beauty it creates
within you will sharpen to madness your desire to live, and my
master will sit and look into your eyes.
Sobe
Have you finished, Maldor?
Maldor
Yes.
Sobe (_gently_)
I desire another assistant, Fana. As you see, one who will serve me
more faithfully, and whose loves are not so obvious. I will tell
you why I am so eager. I wish simply to master death.
Fana
Have you the poison?
Sobe
Here.
(_He takes from his robe a small flagon and hands it to her._)
Sobe
I have hidden the drop in wine.
(_Fana rises and lifts her veil from her mouth. She drinks, smiling at
Maldor, who sits and stares impassively ahead of him. Sobe rises and
moves to the back of the room, watching her._)
Fana
I have drunk.
Sobe (_softly_)
Unveil yourself.
(_Fana unveils herself._)
Sobe
Ah!
(_He draws aside a panel portiere in the rear draperies, and a long
narrow mirror is revealed._)
Sobe
Look.
Fana
Ah!
Sobe (_gazing at her intently_)
You are beautiful.
Fana (_whispering_)
I grow more beautiful.
Sobe (_he speaks as if growing dazed_)
Your eyes....
Fana
My eyes are like madly swinging torches.
Sobe
Your mouth....
Fana
My mouth is like the little red door to a palace.
Sobe
Your hair....
Fana (_eyeing the mirror still_)
My hair is like a misty pageant.
Sobe
Your body....
Fana
The wine of my body drenches my clothes.
Sobe
You grow more beautiful.
Fana (_becomes exultant_)
My beauty gathers over me like rose-flooded armor.
Sobe (_whispering_)
Death slashes at your armor.
Fana (_exultant_)
I cannot die.
Sobe
The poison glides softly through your blood.
Fana (_she speaks softly_)
I cannot die.
(_She turns and looks at him._)
Sobe (_shrinking back_)
Do not look upon me.
(_Fana flings out both her arms and moves toward him. She speaks in a
strange voice._)
Fana
What pleasures do you see in my eyes?
Sobe (_gasping_)
The poison ... take it away....
Fana (_she sings_)
My beauty, my beauty is a wildly chanting torrent.
Sobe (_speaks and holds his throat and gasps_)
Death staggers from you ... and death blindly wanders....
Fana (_comes closer to him and speaks mockingly_)
Ah, poisoner.
Sobe (_in anguish_)
My heart breaks. (_He staggers; speaks faintly._) I am Death’s
master!
(_He staggers another step forward and pitches headlong across the
scarlet cushion on which he sat. Maldor leans forward and touches his
throat as Fana softly laughs._)
Maldor
He is dead.
(_Maldor straightens himself and stares impassively ahead of him. Fana
remains an instant staring at herself in the mirror, then turns, and
with an enigmatic smile, passes out of the room._)
[Curtain]
POET’S HEART
PEOPLE
The Mad Shepherd
The Narcissus Peddler
The Slender Nun
The Wine Jar Maiden
The Poet
_A great window of palest purple light. The lower corner of the window
is visible. A dark purple wall frames the window, and narrow rectangles
of the wall, below and to the left of the window-corner, are visible.
Before the window corner is the portion of a pale pink floor. One tall
thin white candle stands against the dark purple rectangle of wall to
the left of the window-corner. It bears a narrow flame which remains
stationary. Soft and clear light pours in from the window-corner and dim
shapes stand behind it. The Mad Shepherd appears from the left. He holds
a reed to his lips, but does not blow into it. A long brown cloak drapes
him: black sandals are on his feet. His black hair caresses his
shoulders; his face is young. He pauses, three-fourths of his body
framed by the palest purple window-corner._
The Mad Shepherd (_addressing the palest purple window-corner_)
I’ve lost a tune. It’s a spirit-rose, and a reed-limbed boy ran
before me and whisked it past my ears before I could seize him.
Have you seen him, window clearer than the clashing light-bubbles
in a woman’s eyes? (_A pause._) I sat on a rock in the midst of my
sheep and smiled at the piping of my young soul, as it climbed a
spirit-tree. Soon it would whirl joyously on the tip of the tree,
and my heart would turn with it. Then the song brushed past me and
made my head a burning feather dropping down. I stumbled after it,
over the sun-dazed hills, and the reed-limbed boy would often stop,
touch both of my eyes with the song-flower, and spring away. I saw
him dance into this black palace. I followed, through high
corridors, to you, palest purple window, towering over me like a
silent mass of breath-clear souls. He has gone. Palest purple
window, tell me where he is?
(_There is a short silence. The Mad Shepherd stands despairingly
fingering his reed. The Narcissus Peddler appears from the right. He is
an old man, a huge basket of cut narcissus strapped to his back. His
body is tall and slender; his face a bit yellow, with a long
silver-brown beard. His head is bare. He wears a black velvet coat, pale
yellow shirt, soft grey, loose trousers, and black sandals. He rests his
basket upon the floor. The Mad Shepherd takes a step toward him,
wearily._)
The Narcissus Peddler
A Voice walked into me, one day. How he found me, sleeping between
two huge purple hills, I do not know. He said with a laugh that had
ghosts of weeping in it that he knew a garden where narcissus
flowers grew taller than myself. What was there to do?--my soul and
I, we had to walk with him. He led us to this palace, spinning the
thread of a laugh behind him so that we could follow. But now he
has gone, and there is no garden--only a palest purple window.
The Mad Shepherd
We can leap through this window, but it may be a trap.
The Narcissus Peddler
Or a dream?
The Mad Shepherd
Perhaps this is a dream that is true--an endless dream.
The Narcissus Peddler
Can that be death?
Mad Shepherd (_pointing to the other’s basket_)
With death, you would have left your narcissus behind you, for
fragrance itself.
Peddler
If my life has melted to an endless dream, my chase is over. I
shall sit here and my soul will become an endless thought of
narcissus.
(_He seats himself beside his basket; Shepherd stands despairingly; the
Slender Nun appears from the right: She is small and her body like a
thin drooping stem; she wears the black dress of a nun but her child
face is uncovered. Her feet are bare. She stops, standing a step away
from the Peddler._)
The Slender Nun
I see a candle that is like an arm stiffened in prayer. (_She
pauses._) Palest purple window, is my soul standing behind you and
spreading to light that gently thrusts me down? A flamed-loosed
angel lifted it from me. I ran after him. He seemed to touch you,
window, like a vapor kiss dying upon pale purple silk. (_A
pause._) Must I stand here always waiting for my soul, like a
flower petal pressed deep into the earth by passing feet?
The Shepherd
You have lost a soul and I a tune. Let me make you the tune and you
make me your soul. You could sit with me on my rock in the hills
and make a soul of my reed-rippling, and, piping of you, I might
weave a new tune.
The Nun
Can you give me a soul that will be Christ floating out in clear
music? Only then I would go with you.
Shepherd (_sadly_)
My music is like the wet, quick kiss of rain. It knows nothing of
Christ.
(_A short silence._)
(_The Wine-Jar Maiden appears from the right. She is tall and pale
brown; upon her head is a long pale green jar; her hair is black and
spurts down. Her face is wide but delicately twisted. She wears a thin
simple pale green gown, with a black girdle about her waist, one
tasseled end hanging down. She stops a little behind the Slender Nun,
and lowers her wine-jar to the floor. The Nun turns and partly faces
her. The Narcissus Peddler looks up from where he has sat, in a reverie,
beside his basket._)
The Wine-Jar Maiden
My heart was a wine jar stained with the roses of frail dreams and
filled with wine that had turned to shaking, purple mist. One day I
felt it wrenched from me, and mist-drops that flew from it, as it
left, sank into my breast and made me shrink. I could not see the
thief, but I followed the scent of my heart trailing behind him.
It brought me here; but at this palest purple window it died. Scent
of my heart, have you spread over this huge window, and must I
stand forever looking upon you?
(_The Narcissus Peddler slowly rises and takes a stride toward the
palest purple window._)
The Narcissus Peddler
That dim shape behind the window--I believe it is a huge narcissus.
I am a rainbow-smeared knave to stand here juggling little golden
balls of dreams. I shall spring through the window.
The Slender Nun
Take my hand when you spring. Perhaps this is God’s forehead, and
we shall melt into it, like billows of rain washing into a cliff.
The Wine-Jar Maiden
If I leap through this window, a cloak of my heart-scent may hang
to me. I shall touch the cloak, now and then, and that shall be my
life.
The Mad Shepherd
I must sit here, and whirl with my young spirit. If I cannot knit
together strands of music better than the tune I ran after, then I
should not have chased it.
(_After a short silence the Narcissus Peddler and the Slender Nun, hand
in hand, leap through the window-corner and vanish. The Wine Jar Maiden
leaps after them, a moment later, and also disappears. The Mad Shepherd
sits down and blows little fragments of piping into his reed, long
pauses separating them. As he does this, he looks up at the window, his
head motionless. The Narcissus Peddler, the Slender Nun and the Wine
Jar_ _Maiden appear from the left walking slowly, in single file, as
though in a trance. The Narcissus Peddler stands beside his basket,
which he left behind him; the Wine Jar Maiden beside her jar, and the
Slender Nun between them._)
The Mad Shepherd (_looking up, astonished_)
You return, like sleep-drooping poplar trees that have been given
wings, and after long journeyings, fly back to their little
blue-green hills.
The Narcissus Peddler
After we sprang we found ourselves in a high corridor, whose air
was like the breath of a dying maiden--the corridor we first walked
down, before we came to this palest purple window.
The Mad Shepherd (_wonderingly_)
A dream with a strange, buried, quivering palace whose doors are
closed....
(_The poet quietly appears from the right. He is dressed in a deep
crimson robe, pale brown turban and black sandals; his head is bare. He
surveys the others a moment, then touches the shoulder of the Wine Jar
Maiden. She turns and stares at him. The others turn also._)
You are all in my heart--a wide space with many buried, black
palaces, huge pale-purple windows, hills with rocks for mad
shepherds, strolling flower-venders, wine-jar maidens dancing in
high courtyards hushed with quilted star-light, and sometimes a
slender nun walking alone through the aisles of old reveries. I
have woven you into a poem, and you were drawn on by me. But when
my poems are made I take my people to a far-off garden in my heart.
There we sit beneath one of the shining trees and talk. There I
shall give you your soul, your heart, your song--and your huge
narcissus flower. And out of them make other poems, perhaps? Who
knows? Come.
(_He leads them away._)
