Paterson (Revised Edition)
Page 6
Here a young man, perhaps sixteen,
is sitting with his back to the rock among
some ferns playing a guitar, dead pan .
The rest are eating and drinking.
The big guy
in the black hat is too full to move .
but Mary
is up!
Come on! Wassa ma’? You got
broken leg?
It is this air!
the air of the Midi
and the old cultures intoxicates them:
present!
—lifts one arm holding the cymbals
of her thoughts, cocks her old head
and dances! raising her skirts:
La la la la!
What a bunch of bums! Afraid somebody see
you?
Blah!
Excrementi!
—she spits.
Look a’ me, Grandma! Everybody too damn
lazy.
This is the old, the very old, old upon old,
the undying: even to the minute gestures,
the hand holding the cup, the wine
spilling, the arm stained by it:
Remember
the peon in the lost
Eisenstein film drinking
from a wine-skin with the abandon
of a horse drinking
so that it slopped down his chin?
down his neck, dribbling
over his shirt-front and down
onto his pants—laughing, toothless?
Heavenly man!
—the leg raised, verisimilitude .
even to the coarse contours of the leg, the
bovine touch! The leer, the cave of it,
the female of it facing the male, the satyr—
(Priapus!)
with that lonely implication, goatherd
and goat, fertility, the attack, drunk,
cleansed .
Rejected. Even the film
suppressed : but . persistent
The picnickers laugh on the rocks celebrating
the varied Sunday of their loves with
its declining light—
Walking—
look down (from a ledge) into this grassy
den
(somewhat removed from the traffic)
above whose brows
a moon! where she lies sweating at his side:
She stirs, distraught,
against him—wounded (drunk), moves
against him (a lump) desiring,
against him, bored .
flagrantly bored and sleeping, a
beer bottle still grasped spear-like
in his hand .
while the small, sleepless boys, who
have climbed the columnar rocks
overhanging the pair (where they lie
overt upon the grass, besieged—
careless in their narrow cell under
the crowd’s feet) stare down,
from history!
at them, puzzled and in the sexless
light (of childhood) bored equally,
go charging off .
There where
the movement throbs openly
and you can hear the Evangelist shouting!
—moving nearer
she—lean as a goat—leans
her lean belly to the man’s backside
toying with the clips of his
suspenders .
—to which he adds his useless voice:
until there moves in his sleep
a music that is whole, unequivocal (in
his sleep, sweating in his sleep—laboring
against sleep, agasp!)
—and does not waken.
Sees, alive (asleep)
—the fall’s roar entering
his sleep (to be fulfilled)
reborn
in his sleep—scattered over the mountain
severally .
—by which he woos her, severally.
And the amnesic crowd (the scattered),
called about — strains
to catch the movement of one voice .
hears,
Pleasure! Pleasure!
—feels,
half dismayed, the afternoon of complex
voices its own—
and is relieved
(relived)
A cop is directing traffic
across the main road up
a little wooded slope toward
the conveniences:
oaks, choke-cherry,
dogwoods, white and green, iron-wood :
humped roots matted into the shallow soil
—mostly gone: rock out-croppings
polished by the feet of the picnickers:
sweetbarked sassafras .
leaning from the rancid grease:
deformity—
—to be deciphered (a horn, a trumpet!)
an elucidation by multiplicity,
a corrosion, a parasitic curd, a clarion
for belief, to be good dogs :
NO DOGS ALLOWED AT LARGE IN THIS PARK
II.
Blocked.
(Make a song out of that: concretely)
By whom?
In its midst rose a massive church. . . And it all came to me then—that those poor souls had nothing else in the world, save that church, between them and the eternal stony, ungrateful and unpromising dirt they lived by …..
Cash is mulct of them that others may live
secure
. . and knowledge restricted.
An orchestral dullness overlays their world
I see they—the Senate, is trying to block Lilienthal and deliver “the bomb” over to a few industrialists. I don’t think they will succeed but . . that is what I mean when I refuse to get excited over the cry, Communist! they use to blind us. It’s terrifying to think how easily we can be destroyed, a few votes. Even though Communism is a threat, are Communists any worse than the guilty bastards trying in that way to undermine us?
We leap awake and what we see
fells us .
Let terror twist the world!
Faitoute, sick of his diversions but proud of women,
his requites, standing with his back
to the lions’ pit,
(where the drunken
lovers slept, now, both of them)
indifferent,
started again wandering—foot pacing foot outward
into emptiness . .
Up there.
The cop points.
A sign nailed
to a tree: Women.
You can see figures
moving beyond the screen of the trees and, close
at hand, music blurts out suddenly.
Walking —
a
cramped arena has been left clear at the base
of the observation tower near the urinals. This
is the Lord’s line: Several broken benches
drawn up in a curving row against the shrubbery
face the flat ground, benches on which
a few children have been propped by the others
against their running off .
Three middle aged men with iron smiles
stand behind the benches—backing (watching)
the kids, the kids and several women—and
holding,
a cornet, clarinet and trombone,
severally, in their hands, at rest.
There is also,
played by a woman, a portable organ . .
Before them an old man,
wearing a fringe of long white hair, bareheaded,
his glabrous skull reflecting the sun’s
light and in shirtsleeves, is beginning to
speak—
calling to the birds and trees!
Jumping up and down in his ecstasy he beams
into the empty blue, eastward, over the parapet
toward the city .
.
. . . . . . .
There are people—especially among women—who can speak only to one person. And I am one of those women. I do not come easily to confidences (though it cannot but seem otherwise to you). I could not possibly convey to any one of those people who have crossed my path in these few months, those particular phases of my life which I made the subject of my letters to you. I must let myself be entirely misunderstood and misjudged in all my economic and social maladjustments, rather than ever attempt to communicate to anyone else what I wrote to you about. And so my having heaped these confidences upon you (however tiresome you may have found them and however far I may yet need to go in the attainment of complete self-honesty which is difficult for anyone) was enough in itself to have caused my failure with you to have so disastrous an effect upon me.
Look, there lies the city!
—calling with his back
to the paltry congregation, calling the winds;
a voice calling, calling .
Behind him the drawn children whom his suit
of holy proclamation so very badly fits,
winkless, under duress, must feel
their buttocks ache on the slats of the sodden
benches.
But as he rests, they sing—when
prodded—as he wipes his prismed brow.
The light
fondles it as if inclined to form a halo—
Then he laughs:
One sees him first. Few listen.
Or, in fact, pay the least
attention, walking about, unless some Polock
with his mouth open tries to make it out,
as if it were some Devil (looks into the faces
of a young couple passing, laughing
together, for some hint) What kind of priest
is this? Alarmed, goes off scowling, looking
back.
This is a Protestant! protesting—as
though the world were his own .
—another,
twenty feet off, walks his dog absorbedly
along the wall top)—thoughtful of the dog—
at the cliff’s edge above a fifty foot drop .
. . alternately the harangue, followed
by horn blasts surmounting
what other sounds . they quit now
as the entranced figure of a man resumes—
But his decoys bring in no ducks—other than
the children with their dusty little minds
and happiest non sequiturs.
No figure
from the clouds seems brought hovering near
The detectives found a note on the kitchen table addressed to a soldier from Fort Bragg, N. C. The contents of the letter showed that she was in love with the soldier, the detective said.
This is what the preacher said: Don’t think
about me. Call me a stupid old man, that’s
right. Yes, call me an old bore who talks until
he is hoarse when nobody wants to listen. That’s
the truth. I’m an old fool and I know it.
BUT . !
You can’t ignore the words of Our Lord Jesus
Christ who died on the Cross for us that we
may have Eternal Life! Amen.
Amen! Amen!
shouted the disciples standing behind the
benches. Amen!
—the spirit of our Lord that gives
the words of even such a plain, ignorant fellow
as I a touch of His Own blessed dignity and
and strength among you . .
I tell you—lifting up his arms—I bring
the riches of all the ages to you here today.
It was windless and hot in the sun
where he was standing bareheaded.
Great riches shall be yours!
I wasn’t born here. I was born in what we call
over here the Old Country. But it’s the same
people, the same kind of people there as here
and they’re up to the same kind of tricks as over
here—only, there isn’t as much money
over there—and that makes the difference.
My family were poor people. So I started to work
when I was pretty young.
—Oh, it took me a long time! but
one day I said to myself, Klaus, that’s my name,
Klaus, I said to myself, you’re a success.
You have worked hard but you have been
lucky.
You’re
rich—and now we’re going to enjoy ourselves.
Hamilton saw more clearly than anyone else with what urgency the new government must assume authority over the States if it was to survive. He never trusted the people, “a great beast,” as he saw them and held Jefferson to be little better if not worse than any.
So I came to America!
Especially in the matter of finances a critical stage presented itself. The States were inclined to shrug off the debt incurred during the recent war—each state preferring to undertake its own private obligations separately. Hamilton saw that if this were allowed to ensue the effect would be fatal, to future credit. He came out with vigor and cunning for “Assumption,” assumption by the Federal Government of the national debt, and the granting to it of powers of taxation without which it could not raise the funds necessary for this purpose. A storm followed in which he found himself opposed by Madison and Jefferson.
But when I got here I soon found out that I
was a pretty small frog in a mighty big pool. So
I went to work all over again. I suppose
I was born with a gift for that sort of thing.
I throve and I gloried in it. And I thought then
that I was happy. And I was — as happy
as money could make me.
But did it make me GOOD?
He stopped to laugh, healthily, and
his wan assistants followed him,
forcing it out—grinning against
the rocks with wry smiles .
NO! he shouted, bending
at the knees and straightening himself up
violently with the force of his emphasis—like
Beethoven getting a crescendo out of an
orchestra—NO!
It did not make me good. (His clenched fists
were raised above his brows.) I kept on making
money, more and more of it, but it didn’t make
me good.
America the golden!
with trick and money
damned
like Altgeld sick
and molden
we love thee bitter
land
Like Altgeld on the
corner
seeing the mourners
pass
we bow our heads
before thee
and take our hats
in hand
And so
one day I heard a voice … a voice—just
as I am talking to you here today. . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . And the voice said,
Klaus, what’s the matter with you? You’re not
happy. I am happy! I shouted back,
I’ve got everything I want. No, it said.
Klaus, that’s a lie. You’re not happy.
And I had to admit it was the truth. I wasn’t
happy. That bothered me a lot. But I was pig-
headed and when I thought it over I said
to myself, Klaus, you must be getting old
to let things like that worry you.
. . . . . . then one day
our blessed Lord came to me and put His hand
on my shoulder and said, Klaus, you old fool,
you’ve been working too hard. You look
tired and worried. Let me help you.
I am worried, I replied, but I don’t know what to
do
about it. I got everything that money can
buy but I’m not happy, that’s the truth.
And the Lord said to me, Klaus, get rid of your
money. You’ll never be happy until you do that.
As a corollary to the famous struggle for assumption lay the realization among many leading minds in the young republic that unless industry were set upon its feet, unless manufactured goods could be produced income for taxation would be a myth.
The new world had been looked on as a producer of precious metals, pelts and raw materials to be turned over to the mother country for manufactured articles which the colonists had no choice but to buy at advanced prices. They were prevented from making woolen, cotton or linen cloth for sale. Nor were they allowed to build furnaces to convert the native iron into steel.
Even during the Revolution Hamilton had been impressed by the site of the Great Falls of the Passaic. His fertile imagination envisioned a great manufacturing center, a great Federal City, to supply the needs of the country. Here was water-power to turn the mill wheels and the navigable river to carry manufactured goods to the market centers: a national manufactury.
Give up my money!
—with monotonous insistence
the falls of his harangue hung featureless
upon the ear, yet with a certain strangeness
as if arrested in space
That would be a hard thing
for me to do. What would my rich friends say?
They’d say, That old fool Klaus Ehrens must
be getting pretty crazy, getting rid of his
cash. What! give up the thing I’d struggled all
my life to pile up—so I could say I was rich?
No! that I couldn’t do. But I was troubled
in mind.
He paused to wipe his brow while
the singers struck up a lively hymn tune.
I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t
sleep for thinking of my trouble so that
when the Lord came to me the third time I was
ready and I kneeled down before Him
and said, Lord, do what you will with me!
Give away your money, He said, and I
will make you the richest man in the world!
And I bowed my head and said to Him, Yea, Lord.
And His blessed truth descended upon me and filled
me with joy, such joy and such riches as I
had never in my life known to that day and I said
to Him, Master!
In the Name of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Amen.
Amen! Amen! echoed the devout assistants.
Is this the only beauty here?
And is this beauty—
torn to shreds by the