Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson

by Sherwood Anderson

  My hands are like the mottled backs of

  poplar trees that stand upright in a

  snowstorm that blows down a hill.

  I look at my hands and think of minute

  physical things concerning myself because

  I am loath to begin again thinking of you.

  When I lift my eyes the day will be here.

  I will see the wet strands of hair falling

  across your breasts.

  Your tired eyes will look into mine.

  The uselessness of all effort will be

  indicated by the droop of your shoulders.

  An impulse toward love will tighten the

  cords of my throat.

  I will note again the nakedness of you,

  the smallness of the trunk of your body,

  the way the corners of your mouth twitch

  with weariness.

  The lids of your eyes are always very

  heavy and grey in the shifting light at the

  beginning of a day.

  How would it be with me if I could

  ride like a passenger on the back of your

  mind.

  When I have tried we both sank out of

  sight under the waters.

  Your mind should have been a boat in

  which we could lie together, sleeping and

  resting, but I am afraid then I should

  have become truly insane and run away

  in the night.

  It has not gone well with us as we

  walked, going ever more and more slowly

  forward into the drifting current of days.

  We have walked too long on the face of

  the waters. More than once I have kept

  silent when I wanted to thrust you away,

  out of my sight.

  Had I raised my hand to strike, our

  two hands would have met in the air

  above the waters.

  There would have been a more and

  more terrible hammering of sound against sound.

  Had I raised my hand to strike, my

  hand would have met your hand also

  intent upon striking.

  You have hidden yourself from me

  with lovely assurance.

  I did not want to know the thoughts

  that came to you in the midst of the day.

  I wanted your thoughts put away.

  Your legs have grown blue and as we

  stand in the waters my own legs have

  grown brittle.

  The dawn has come.

  The hammering of sound against sound

  begins in the air over our heads.

  I raise my eyes to your eyes.

  In a moment perhaps words will come to my lips.

  In a moment, my beloved, I shall tell you

  anew the story of how, in a grey dawn

  long ago, I found you standing alone.

  THE VISIT IN THE MORNING

  IT was by the sea —

  I was lying on my belly and God

  came and turned me over.

  He turned my face out of the sand, the

  yellow sightless sand.

  God caressed me and his caress was

  gentle and soft.

  Out of my eyes he took what was sightless,

  Out of my ears deafness.

  It has been permitted me to live and

  that was sweet before your time..

  The Divine inheritance God gave in

  the morning.

  He kissed my lips, my breasts, my arms,

  Then my lips again.

  Have you walked by a mountain?

  Have you walked by the sea?

  I have been in the veins of the mountains.

  I have been in each drop of water God

  spat out of his mouth.

  A wind blowing out of my ears troubled

  the waters of the seas.

  God came to me as a bird comes out

  of a bush — softly — into a breaking day.

  God came to me in a glaring light.

  I have gone into you.

  I have become of you.

  In my pocket is the key to your house.

  In my veins your blood flows.

  The breath of you inflates my lungs.

  The sweetness of you sleeps in my sleep.

  If you do not understand what I am

  saying that is of no importance.

  That the winds blow in trees and that

  deaf men walk under the branches

  leading the sightless is of no importance.

  I was by the sea when God came to me.

  He turned me over, turned my face out

  of the eyeless yellow sand.

  He kissed my lips and I became alive.

  THE DUMB MAN

  THERE is a story. I cannot tell it.

  I have no words. The story is

  almost forgotten but sometimes I remember.

  The story concerns three men in a

  house in a street. If I could say the

  words I would sing the story. I would

  whisper it into the ears of women, of

  mothers. I would run through the world

  saying it over and over. My tongue

  would be torn loose. It would rattle

  against my lips.

  The three men are in a room in a house.

  One is young and dandified. He continually laughs.

  There is a second man who has a long

  white beard. He is consumed with doubt

  but occasionally his doubt leaves him

  and he sleeps.

  A third man there is who has wicked

  eyes and who moves nervously about the

  room rubbing his hands together.

  The three men are waiting, waiting.

  Upstairs in the house there is a woman

  standing with her back to a wall, in half

  darkness by a window.

  That is the foundation of the story.

  Everything I will ever know is distilled in it.

  I remember a fourth man came to the

  house, a white silent man. Everything

  was as silent as the sea at night. His feet

  on the stone floor of the room where the

  three men were made no sound.

  The man with wicked eyes became like

  a boiling liquid. He ran back and forth

  like a caged animal. The old grey man

  was infected by his nervousness. He

  kept pulling at his beard.

  The fourth man, the white one, went

  upstairs to the woman.

  There she was — waiting.

  How silent the house was. How loudly

  all the clocks in the neighborhood ticked.

  The woman upstairs craved love. That

  must have been the story. She hungered

  for love with her whole being. She wanted

  to create in love. When the white silent

  man came into her presence she sprang

  forward. Her lips were parted. There

  was a smile on her lips.

  The white one said nothing. In his

  eyes there was no rebuke, no question.

  His eyes were as impersonal as stars.

  Downstairs the wicked one whined and

  ran back and forth like a little lost hungry

  dog. The grey one tried to follow him

  about but presently grew tired and lay

  down on the floor to sleep. He never

  awoke again.

  The dandified fellow lay on the floor

  too. He laughed and played with his

  tiny black mustache.

  I have no words to tell what happened

  in my story. I cannot tell the story.

  The white silent one may have been

  death.

  The waiting eager woman may have been life.

&nbs
p; Both the grey bearded man and the

  wicked one puzzle me. I think and think

  but do not understand them. Most of

  the time I do not think of them at all.

  I keep thinking about the dandified

  man who laughed all through my story.

  If I could understand him

  I could understand everything. I could run through

  the world telling a wonderful story. I

  would no longer be dumb.

  Why was I not given words? Why was

  I not given a mind? Why am I dumb?

  I have a wonderful story to tell but know

  no way to tell it.

  Previously printed in “The Triumph of the Egg”.

  A POET

  IF I COULD be brave enough and

  live long enough I could crawl inside

  the life of every man, woman and child

  in America. After I had gone within them

  I could be born out of them. I could

  become something the like of which has

  never been seen before. We would see

  then what America is like.

  A MAN RESTING FROM LABOR

  THIS TREE on which I am sitting in

  the forest fell down here and lies

  slowly rotting. Little crawling worms

  live in it. They are crawling near where I

  sit. The tree was not afraid or ashamed

  to fall down. The tree was not afraid or

  ashamed to grow or to die.

  The sunlight comes down through the

  leaves of these trees unafraid and unashamed.

  The wind blows when it does blow.

  A STOIC LOVER

  I SAW HER little figure near the wall.

  She did not see me though she

  sensed my presence. I was like a statue

  with folded hands and she was like a

  little dog with quivering flanks that

  coldly waits beside a farmhouse door.

  Such a tiny thing she was.

  She whined and with her fingers scratched the wall.

  Her shaking flanks made a kind of music too.

  It was not winter.

  Spring came on. The lovely breath of

  spring blew in her face. She whined and

  scratched the wall.

  I saw her nervous fingers making

  towns and streets. She played at living

  desperately. She built and built, caressed

  her own breasts, then fell to tearing at

  the wall.

  I sat stone still and watched.

  Her quivering flanks set up a tremor in

  my frame.

  My body shook and dust fell down from

  my eyes.

  I moved and lived and felt the breath of

  spring and life blow in my face.

  A YOUNG JEW

  DEARS and a life of it,

  Sitting in a room,

  Walking with my father in a street,

  Hungering,

  Hating,

  Burning my flame out in an empty place.

  The smoke from burning bodies goes

  straight up.

  Fire everywhere.

  My world is choked with smoke of

  burning men,

  With smoldering fumes of fires,

  With smoke of burning men.

  My mother’s eyes look out at burning men,

  At men who burn out in an empty place.

  My mother’s breasts are tipped with flames.

  She has suckled men in fire.

  She has suckled me in flames.

  Her breasts are tipped with flames.

  My mother’s eyes look out at burning men.

  My father’s eyes look back at old things

  burned and charred.

  They are hungering in the streets,

  Their eyes are tipped with flames,

  Their eyes flee from their bodies,

  hungering in the streets.

  THE STORY TELLER

  TALES are people who sit on the

  doorstep of the house of my mind.

  It is cold outside and they sit waiting.

  I look out at a window.

  The tales have cold hands.

  Their hands are freezing.

  A short thickly-built tale arises and

  threshes his arms about.

  His nose is red and he has two gold teeth.

  There is an old female tale sits hunched up in a cloak.

  Many tales come to sit for a moment

  on the doorstep and then go away.

  It is too cold for them outside.

  The street before the door of the house of

  my mind is filled with tales.

  They murmur and cry out, they are

  dying of cold and hunger.

  I am a helpless man — my hands

  tremble.

  I should be sitting on a bench like a tailor.

  I should be weaving warm cloth out of

  the threads of thought.

  The tales should be clothed.

  They are freezing on the doorstep of the

  house of my mind.

  I am a helpless man — my hands

  tremble.

  I feel in the darkness but cannot find the

  doorknob.

  I look out at a window.

  Many tales are dying in the street before

  the house of my mind.

  Previously printed in “The Triumph of the Egg.”

  A THINKER

  I SEE YOU, my beloved, sitting in a

  room beside me but I cannot speak

  to you. There is not time. You are young

  now but when I have turned my head to

  blow the smoke from before my eyes you

  shall grow old. I do turn my head again.

  You are a mumbling old woman. It is

  useless to speak to you. You are full of

  memories, crammed with them. There is

  no room for me to enter into you.

  It is quite true my beloved that I have

  always seen you as through a glass

  darkly. I see all life so.

  You are floating in a medium outside

  my own. That must be quite apparent.

  All men and women I have ever seen

  were floating in a medium outside my

  own. I a little understand the necessity

  for that — now. The day for the cure has

  not come. The time when God will

  breathe life into our nostrils lies lost in the future.

  That I have touched you and others

  with my hands, held you in my arms,

  caressed your tired eyes, awakened at

  night to see you asleep beside me — all

  facts, beliefs, suspicions, touching our

  belief in the reality of any approach we

  have made to each other are myths,

  fairy tales we have whispered to ourselves

  in the darkness of long nights.

  I believe that.

  However there is something more

  curious than what I am now saying to

  you. The fact of the impossibility of an

  approach to each other is so obviously

  curious. It is curious as the formation of

  a cliff may be curious. It is puzzling as

  the slippery, exhausted cross rhythms of

  waves are puzzling. You have seen the

  waves run on when the wind died on the

  face of the sea. You have seen many

  things I have seen.

  We have not approached the time

  when we may speak to each other but in

  the mornings, sometimes I have heard,

  echoing far off, the sound of a trumpet.

  It is apparent that nations cannot

  exist for us. They are the playthings of

  chi
ldren, such toys as children break

  from boredom and weariness. The branch

  of a tree is my country. My freedom

  sleeps in a mulberry bush.

  What remains that is articulate is

  simply my desire to express to you

  something out of the now, the present. It is

  morning and you have gone, quite nude,

  to bathe on a beach. I see you there and

  you are lovely. Your head is turned a

  little to one side. Listen. I have put the

  bugle to my lips. Do you hear faintly the

  sound of it, running on the face of the

  waters. How stupidly I blow the trumpet.

  There is no music in me.

  I consume myself in my own attempt

  to find myself. It is thus I die, hourly, in

  every moment.

  You must understand however that

  it is my desire to communicate to you

  something out of the now, the present.

  I am a sea and a wind sweeps across

  the face of me. My words are little

  waves, thrust up. They are attempts to

  grasp, to lay hold of a passing thing. My

  words have, I well know, little to do with

  the actuality of you and of me.

  Yesterday a disease attacked the fields

  here, back of my house. A million winged

  grasshoppers descended upon the field.

  As I walked they arose in clouds. The

  grass in the field has become suddenly

  brown and dead. What was green has

  become brown, an ashy grey. Tomorrow

  another disease, a trick of the wind, a

  match thrown into dead grass will carry

  the grasshoppers away.

  It is true that you and I have looked

  about us a little. We have seen how

  empires are formed and civilizations crushed

  as a grasshopper is crushed under foot.

  There would be tragedy in that if

  empires or civilizations mattered to us.

  If I am a sea into which you may

  throw things there is a purpose in that.

  It is that things may be thrown into me that I exist.

  Let us return to yourself and myself.

  We stand here, now, in this instant, in

  the presence of the breathing sea that is

  myself, yourself, we are in the presence

  of a wind that runs, we are at the head

  of a street, watching the people pass, we

  are in a forest under trees.

  How strong, how swift, how sure we

  are. The grasshopper in flight, the gull

  twisting and turning in the air currents