The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem

by Jeremy Noel-Tod

  Walk

  Over the street the white clouds meet, and sheer away without touching.

  On the sidewalks, boys are playing marbles. Glass marbles, with amber and blue hearts, roll together and part with a sweet clashing noise. The boys strike them with black and red striped agates. The glass marbles spit crimson when they are hit, and slip into the gutters under rushing brown water. I smell tulips and narcissus in the air, but there are no flowers anywhere, only white dust whipping up the street, and a girl with a gay Spring hat and blowing skirts. The dust and the wind flirt at her ankles and her neat, high-heeled patent leather shoes. Tap, tap, the little heels pat the pavement, and the wind rustles among the flowers on her hat.

  A water-cart crawls slowly on the other side of the way. It is green and gay with new paint, and rumbles contentedly, sprinkling clear water over the white dust. Clear zigzagging water, which smells of tulips and narcissus.

  The thickening branches make a pink grisaille against the blue sky.

  Whoop! The clouds go dashing at each other and sheer away just in time. Whoop! And a man’s hat careers down the street in front of the white dust, leaps into the branches of a tree, veers away and trundles ahead of the wind, jarring the sunlight into spokes of rose-colour and green.

  A motor-car cuts a swathe through the bright air, sharp-beaked, irresistible, shouting to the wind to make way. A glare of dust and sunshine tosses together behind it, and settles down. The sky is quiet and high, and the morning is fair with fresh-washed air.

  Midday and Afternoon

  Swirl of crowded streets. Shock and recoil of traffic. The stock-still brick façade of an old church, against which the waves of people lurch and withdraw. Flare of sunshine down side-streets. Eddies of light in the windows of chemists’ shops, with their blue, gold, purple jars, darting colours far into the crowd. Loud bangs and tremors, murmurings out of high windows, whirring of machine belts, blurring of horses and motors. A quick spin and shudder of brakes on an electric car, and the jar of a church-bell knocking against the metal blue of the sky. I am a piece of the town, a bit of blown dust, thrust along with the crowd. Proud to feel the pavement under me, reeling with feet. Feet tripping, skipping, lagging, dragging, plodding doggedly, or springing up and advancing on firm elastic insteps. A boy is selling papers, I smell them clean and new from the press. They are fresh like the air, and pungent as tulips and narcissus.

  The blue sky pales to lemon, and great tongues of gold blind the shop-windows, putting out their contents in a flood of flame.

  Night and Sleep

  The day takes her ease in slippered yellow. Electric signs gleam out along the shop fronts, following each other. They grow, and grow, and blow into patterns of fire-flowers as the sky fades. Trades scream in spots of light at the unruffled night. Twinkle, jab, snap, that means a new play; and over the way: plop, drop, quiver, is the sidelong sliver of a watchmaker’s sign with its length on another street. A gigantic mug of beer effervesces to the atmosphere over a tall building, but the sky is high and has her own stars, why should she heed ours?

  I leave the city with speed. Wheels whirl to take me back to my trees and my quietness. The breeze which blows with me is fresh-washed and clean, it has come but recently from the high sky. There are no flowers in bloom yet, but the earth of my garden smells of tulips and narcissus.

  My room is tranquil and friendly. Out of the window I can see the distant city, a band of twinkling gems, little flower-heads with no stems. I cannot see the beer-glass, nor the letters of the restaurants and shops I passed, now the signs blur and all together make the city, glowing on a night of fine weather, like a garden stirring and blowing for the Spring.

  The night is fresh-washed and fair and there is a whiff of flowers in the air.

  Wrap me close, sheets of lavender. Pour your blue and purple dreams into my ears. The breeze whispers at the shutters and mutters queer tales of old days, and cobbled streets, and youths leaping their horses down marble stairways. Pale blue lavender, you are the colour of the sky when it is fresh-washed and fair … I smell the stars … they are like tulips and narcissus … I smell them in the air.

  Amy Lowell (1916)

  The Moon

  New York, April 23

  To Alfonso Reyes

  Broadway. Evening. Signs in the sky that make one dizzy with color. New constellations: The Pig, all green, dancing and waving greetings to the left and right with his straw hat, the Bottle which pops its ruddy cork with a muted detonation against a sun with eyes and a mouth, the Electric Stocking which dances madly by itself like a tail separated from a salamander, the Scotchman who displays and pours his whiskey with its white reflections, the Fountain of mallow-pink and orange water through whose shower, like a snake, pass hills and valleys of wavering sun and shade, links of gold and iron (that braid a shower of light and another darkness …), the Book which illuminates and extinguishes the successive imbecilities of its owner, the Ship which every moment, as it lights up, sails pitching toward its prison, to run aground immediately in the darkness … and …

  The moon! Let’s see! Look at it between those two tall buildings over there, above the river, over the red octave beneath, don’t you see it? Wait, let’s see! No … is it the moon or just an advertisement of the moon?

  Juan Ramón Jiménez (1916), translated from the Spanish by H. R. Hays

  London Notes

  In Park Lane

  Long necked feminine structures support almost without grimacing the elegant discomfort of restricted elbows.

  Hyde Park

  Commonplace, titanic figures with a splendid motion stride across the parched plateau of grass, little London houses only a foot high huddle at their heels.

  Under trees all the morning women sit sewing and knitting, their monotonous occupation accompanying the agreeable muddle of their thoughts.

  In the Row. Vitality civilized to a needle’s-point; highly-bred men and horses pass swiftly in useless delightful motion; women walk enamoured of their own accomplished movements.

  British Museum

  Gigantic cubes of iron rock are set in a parallelogram of orange sand.

  Ranks of black columns of immense weight and immobility are threaded by a stream of angular volatile shapes. Their trunks shrink quickly in retreat towards the cavernous roof.

  Innumerable pigeons fret the stone steps with delicate restlessness.

  Egyptian Gallery

  In a rectangular channel of space light drops in oblique layers upon rows of polished cubes sustaining gods and fragments.

  Monstrous human heads without backs protrude lips satisfied with the taste of pride.

  Seductive goddesses, cat-faced and maiden-breasted sit eternally stroking smooth knees.

  Reading-Room

  This colossal globe of achievement presses upon two hundred cosmopolitan foreheads, respectfully inclined.

  Piccadilly

  The embankment of brick and stone is fancifully devised and stuck with flowers and flags.

  Towers of scaffolding draw their criss-cross pattern of bars upon the sky, a monstrous tartan.

  Delicate fingers of cranes describe beneficent motions in space.

  Glazed cases contain curious human specimens.

  Nature with a brush of green pigment paints rural landscape up to the edge of the frame.

  Pseudo-romantic hollows and hillocks are peopled by reality prostrate and hostile.

  Fleet Street

  Precious slips of houses, packed like books on a shelf, are littered all over with signs and letters.

  A dark, agitated stream straggles turbulently along the channel bottom; clouds race overhead.

  Curiously exciting are so many perspective lines, withdrawing, converging; they indicate evidently something of importance beyond the limits of sight.

  Jessie Dismoor (1915)

  Street Circus

  In the middle of that crowd there is a child who is dancing, a man lifting weights. His arms with blue tattoos
call on the sky to witness their useless strength.

  The child dances, lightly, in tights too big for him, lighter than the balls he’s balancing himself on. And when he passes the hat, no one gives anything. No one gives for fear of making it too heavy. He is so thin.

  Pierre Reverdy (1915), translated from the French by Ron Padgett

  from Tender Buttons

  A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass.

  A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

  Dirt and Not Copper.

  Dirt and not copper makes a color darker. It makes the shape so heavy and makes no melody harder. It makes mercy and relaxation and even a strength to spread a table fuller. There are more places not empty. They see cover.

  A New Cup and Saucer.

  Enthusiastically hurting a clouded yellow bud and saucer, enthusiastically so is the bite in the ribbon.

  A Little Bit of a Tumbler.

  A shining indication of yellow consists in there having been more of the same color than could have been expected when all four were bought. This was the hope which made the six and seven have no use for any more places and this necessarily spread into nothing. Spread into nothing.

  Red Roses.

  A cool red rose and a pink cut pink, a collapse and a sold hole, a little less hot.

  In Between.

  In between a place and candy is a narrow foot-path that shows more mounting than anything, so much really that a calling meaning a bolster measured a whole thing with that. A virgin a whole virgin is judged made and so between curves and outlines and real seasons and more out glasses and a perfectly unprecedented arrangement between old ladies and mild colds there is no satin wood shining.

  A Sound.

  Elephant beaten with candy and little pops and chews all bolts and reckless reckless rats, this is this.

  Roastbeef.

  In the inside there is sleeping, in the outside there is reddening, in the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling. In the evening there is feeling. In feeling anything is resting, in feeling anything is mounting, in feeling there is resignation, in feeling there is recognition, in feeling there is recurrence and entirely mistaken there is pinching. All the standards have steamers and all the curtains have bed linen and all the yellow has discrimination and all the circle has circling. This makes sand.

  Very well. Certainly the length is thinner and the rest, the round rest has a longer summer. To shine, why not shine, to shine, to station, to enlarge, to hurry the measure all this means nothing if there is singing, if there is singing then there is the resumption.

  The change the dirt, not to change dirt means that there is no beefsteak and not to have that is no obstruction, it is so easy to exchange meaning, it is so easy to see the difference. The difference is that a plain resource is not entangled with thickness and it does not mean that thickness shows such cutting, it does mean that a meadow is useful and a cow absurd. It does not mean that there are tears, it does not mean that exudation is cumbersome, it means no more than a memory, a choice and a reestablishment, it means more than any escape from a surrounding extra. All the time that there is use there is use and any time there is a surface there is a surface, and every time there is an exception there is an exception and every time there is a division there is a dividing. Any time there is a surface there is a surface and every time there is a suggestion there is a suggestion and every time there is silence there is silence and every time that is languid there is that there then and not oftener, not always, not particular, tender and changing and external and central and surrounded and singular and simple and the same and the surface and the circle and the shine and the succor and the white and the same and the better and the red and the same and the centre and the yellow and the tender and the better, and altogether.

  Considering the circumstances there is no occasion for a reduction, considering that there is no pealing there is no occasion for an obligation, considering that there is no outrage there is no necessity for any reparation, considering that there is no particle sodden there is no occasion for deliberation. Considering everything and which way the turn is tending, considering everything why is there no restraint, considering everything what makes the place settle and the plate distinguish some specialties. The whole thing is not understood and this is not strange considering that there is no education, this is not strange because having that certainly does show the difference in cutting, it shows that when there is turning there is no distress.

  In kind, in a control, in a period, in the alteration of pigeons, in kind cuts and thick and thin spaces, in kind ham and different colors, the length of leaning a strong thing outside not to make a sound but to suggest a crust, the principal taste is when there is a whole chance to be reasonable, this does not mean that there is overtaking, this means nothing precious, this means clearly that the chance to exercise is a social success. So then the sound is not obtrusive. Suppose it is obtrusive, suppose it is. What is certainly the desertion is not a reduced description, a description is not a birthday.

  Lovely snipe and tender turn, excellent vapor and slender butter, all the splinter and the trunk, all the poisonous darkning drunk, all the joy in weak success, all the joyful tenderness, all the section and the tea, all the stouter symmetry.

  Around the size that is small, inside the stern that is the middle, besides the remains that are praying, inside the between that is turning, all the region is measuring and melting is exaggerating.

  Rectangular ribbon does not mean that there is no eruption it means that if there is no place to hold there is no place to spread. Kindness is not earnest, it is not assiduous it is not revered.

  Room to comb chickens and feathers and ripe purple, room to curve single plates and large sets and second silver, room to send everything away, room to save heat and distemper, room to search a light that is simpler, all room has no shadow.

  There is no use there is no use at all in smell, in taste, in teeth, in toast, in anything, there is no use at all and the respect is mutual.

  Why should that which is uneven, that which is resumed, that which is tolerable why should all this resemble a smell, a thing is there, it whistles, it is not narrower, why is there no obligation to stay away and yet courage, courage is everywhere and the best remains to stay.

  If there could be that which is contained in that which is felt there would be a chair where there are chairs and there would be no more denial about a clatter. A clatter is not a smell. All this is good.

  The Saturday evening which is Sunday is every week day. What choice is there when there is a difference. A regulation is not active. Thirstiness is not equal division.

  Anyway, to be older and ageder is not a surfeit nor a suction, it is not dated and careful, it is not dirty. Any little thing is clean, rubbing is black. Why should ancient lambs be goats and young colts and never beef, why should they, they should because there is so much difference in age.

  A sound, a whole sound is not separation, a whole sound is in an order.

  Suppose there is a pigeon, suppose there is.

  Looseness, why is there a shadow in a kitchen, there is a shadow in a kitchen because every little thing is bigger.

  The time when there are four choices and there are four choices in a difference, the time when there are four choices there is a kind and there is a kind. There is a kind. There is a kind. Supposing there is a bone, there is a bone. Supposing there are bones. There are bones. When there are bones there is no supposing there are bones. There are bones and there is that consuming. The kindly way to feel separating is to have a space between. This shows a likeness.

  Hope in gates, hope in spoons, hope in doors, hope in tables, no hope in daintiness and determination. Hope in dates.

  Tin is not a can and a stove is hardly. Tin is not necessary and neither is a stretche
r. Tin is never narrow and thick.

  Color is in coal. Coal is outlasting roasting and a spoonful, a whole spoon that is full is not spilling. Coal any coal is copper.

  Claiming nothing, not claiming anything, not a claim in everything, collecting claiming, all this makes a harmony, it even makes a succession.

  Sincerely gracious one morning, sincerely graciously trembling, sincere in gracious eloping, all this makes a furnace and a blanket. All this shows quantity.

  Like an eye, not so much more, not any searching, no compliments.

  Please be the beef, please beef, pleasure is not wailing. Please beef, please be carved clear, please be a case of consideration.

  Search a neglect. A sale, any greatness is a stall and there is no memory, there is no clear collection.

  A satin sight, what is a trick, no trick is mountainous and the color, all the rush is in the blood.

  Bargaining for a little, bargain for a touch, a liberty, an estrangement, a characteristic turkey.

  Please spice, please no name, place a whole weight, sink into a standard rising, raise a circle, choose a right around, make the resonance accounted and gather green any collar.

  To bury a slender chicken, to raise an old feather, to surround a garland and to bake a pole splinter, to suggest a repose and to settle simply, to surrender one another, to succeed saving simpler, to satisfy a singularity and not to be blinder, to sugar nothing darker and to read redder, to have the color better, to sort out dinner, to remain together, to surprise no sinner, to curve nothing sweeter, to continue thinner, to increase in resting recreation to design string not dimmer.