Come on, get going. The tide’s in
Leise, leise! Lentement! Che va piano,
va lontano! Virtue,
my kitten, is a complex reward in all
languages, achieved slowly.
. which reminds me
of an old friend, now gone .
—while he was still
in the hotel business, a tall and rather beautiful young woman came to his desk one day to ask if there were any interesting books to be had on the premises. He, being interested in literature, as she knew, replied that his own apartment was full of them and that, though he couldn’t leave at the moment—Here’s my key, go up and help yourself.
She thanked him and
went off. He forgot all about her.
After lunch he too
went to his rooms not remembering until he was at the door that he had no key. But the door was unlatched and as he entered, a girl was lying naked on the bed. It startled him a little. So much so that all he could do was to remove his own clothes and lie beside her. Quite comfortable, he soon fell into a heavy sleep. She also must have slept.
They wakened later,
simultaneously, much refreshed.
—another, once gave me
an old ash-tray, a bit of
porcelain inscribed
with the legend, La Vertue
est toute dans l’effort
baked into the material,
maroon on white, a glazed
Venerian scallop . for
ashes, fit repository
for legend, a quieting thought:
Virtue is wholly
in the effort to be virtuous .
This takes connivance,
takes convoluted forms, takes
time! A sea-shell .
Let’s not dwell on childhood’s
lecherous cousins. Why
should we? Or even on
as comparatively simple
a thing as the composite
dandelion that
changes its face overnight . Virtue,
a mask: the mask,
virtuous .
Kill the explicit sentence, don’t you think? and expand our meaning—by verbal sequences. Sentences, but not grammatical sentences: dead-falls set by schoolmen. Do you think there is any virtue in that? better than sleep? to revive us?
She used to call me her
country bumpkin
Now she is gone I think
of her as in Heaven
She made me believe in
it . a little
Where else could she go?
There was
Something grandiose
about her .
Man and woman are not
much emphasized as
such at that age: both
want the same
thing . to be amused.
Imagine me
at her funeral. I sat
way back. Stupid,
perhaps but no more so
than any funeral.
You might think she had
a private ticket.
I think she did; some
people, not many,
make you feel that way.
It’s in them.
Virtue, she would say .
(her version of it)
is a stout old bird,
unpredictable. And
so I remember her,
adding,
as she did, clumsily,
not being used to
such talk, that —
Nothing does, does
as it used to do
do do! I loved her.
All the professions, all the arts,
idiots, criminals to the greatest
lack and deformity, the stable parts
making up a man’s mind — fly
after him attacking ears and eyes:
small birds following marauding
crows, in ecstasies . of fear
and daring
The brain is weak. It fails mastery,
never a fact.
To bring himself in,
hold together wives in one wife and
at the same time scatter it,
the one in all of them .
Weakness,
weakness dogs him, fulfillment only
a dream or in a dream. No one mind
can do it all, runs smooth
in the effort: toute dans l’ effort
The greyhaired President
(of Haiti), his women and children,
at the water’s edge,
sweating, leads off finally, after
delays, huzzahs, songs for pageant reasons
over the blue water .
in a private plane
with his blonde secretary.
Scattered, the fierceness
of knowledge comes flocking down again—
souvenir of childhood,
the skull of the white stone .
There was Margaret of the big breasts
and daring eyes who carried
her head, where her small brain rattled,
as the mind might wish,
at the best, to be carried. There was
Lucille, gold hair and blue eyes, very
straight, who
to the amazement of many, married a
saloon keeper and lost her modesty.
There was loving Alma, who wrote a steady
hand, whose mouth never wished for
relief. And the cold Nancy, with small
firm breasts .
You remember?
. a high
forehead, she who never smiled more
than was sufficient but whose broad
mouth was icy with pleasure startling
the back and knees! whose words were
few and never wasted. There were
others — half hearted, the over-eager,
the dull, pity for all of them, staring
out of dirty windows, hopeless, indifferent,
come too late and a few, too drunk
with it — or anything — to be awake to
receive it. All these
and more — shining, struggling flies
caught in the meshes of Her hair, of whom
there can be no complaint, fast in
the invisible net — from the back country,
half awakened — all desiring. Not one
to escape, not one . a fragrance
of mown hay, facing the rapacious,
the “great” .
The whereabouts of Peter the Dwarf’s grave was unknown until the end of the last century, when, in 1885, P. Doremus, undertaker, was moving bodies from the cellar of the old church to make room for a new furnace, he disinterred a small coffin and beside it a large box. In the coffin was the headless skeleton of what he took to be a child until he opened the large box and found therein an enormous skull. In referring to the burial records it was learned that Peter the Dwarf had been so buried.
Yellow, for genius, the Jap said. Yellow
is your color. The sun. Everybody looked.
And you, purple, he added, wind over water.
My serpent, my river! genius of the fields,
Kra, my adored one, unspoiled by the mind,
observer of pigeons, rememberer of
cataracts, voluptuary of gulls! Knower
of tides, counter of hours, wanings and
waxings, enumerator of snowflakes, starer
through thin ice, whose corpuscles are
minnows, whose drink, sand .
Here’s to the baby,
may it thrive!
Here’s to the labia
that rive
to give it place
in a stubborn world.
And here’s to the peak
from which the seed was hurled!
In a deep-set valley between hills, almost hid
by dense foliage lay the little village.
Dom
inated by the Falls the surrounding country
was a beautiful wilderness where mountain pink
and wood violet throve: a place inhabited only
by straggling trappers and wandering Indians.
A print in colors by Paul Sandby, a well known
water color artist of the eighteenth century,
a rare print in the Public Library
shows the old Falls restudied from a drawing
made by Lieut. Gov. Pownall (excellent work) as he
saw it in the year 1700.
The wigwam and the tomahawk, the Totowa tribe .
On either side lay the river-farms resting in
the quiet of those colonial days: a hearty old
Dutch stock, with a toughness to stick and
hold fast, although not fast in making improvements.
Clothing homespun. The people raised their own
stock. Rude furniture, sanded floors, rush
bottomed chair, a pewter shelf of Brittania
ware. The wives spun and wove — many things
that might appear disgraceful or distasteful today
The Benson and Doremus estates for years were
the only ones on the north side of the river.
Dear Doc: Since I last wrote I have settled down more, am working on a Labor newspaper (N. J. Labor Herald, AFL) in Newark. The owner is an Assemblyman and so I have a chance to see many of the peripheral intimacies of political life which is in this neighborhood and has always had for me the appeal of the rest of the landscape, and a little more, since it is the landscape alive and busy.
Do you know that the west side of the City Hall, the street, is nicknamed the Bourse, because of the continual political and banking haggle and hassel that goes on there?
Also I have been walking the streets and discovering the bars—especially around the great Mill and River streets. Do you know this part of Paterson? I have seen so many things—negroes, gypsies, an incoherent bartender in a taproom overhanging the river, filled with gas, ready to explode, the window facing the river painted over so that the people can’t see in. I wonder if you have seen River Street most of all, because that is really the heart of what is to be seen.
I keep wanting to write you a long letter about deep things I can show you, and will some day—the look of streets and people, events that have happened here and there.
A.G.
. . . . . .
There were colored slaves. In 1791 only ten
houses, all farm houses save one, The Godwin
Tavern, the most historic house in Paterson,
on River Street: a swinging sign on a high
post with a full length picture of Washington
painted on it, giving a squeaking sound when
touched by the wind.
Branching trees and ample gardens gave
the village streets a delightful charm and
the narrow old-fashioned brick walls added
a dignity to the shading trees. It was a fair
resort for summer sojourners on their way
to the Falls, the main object of interest.
The sun goes beyond Garret Mountain
as evening descends, the green of its pine
trees, fading under a crimson sky until
all color is lost. In the town candle light
appears. No lighted streets. It is as dark
as Egypt.
There is the story of the cholera epidemic
the well known man who refused to bring his
team into town for fear of infecting them
but stopped beyond the river and carted his
produce in himself by wheelbarrow — to the
old market, in the Dutch style of those days.
Paterson, N. J., Sept. 17—Fred Goodell Jr., twenty-two, was arrested early this morning and charged with the murder of his six-months-old daughter Nancy, for whom police were looking since Tuesday, when Goodell reported her missing.
Continued questioning from last night until 1 a.m. by police headed by Chief James Walker drew the story of the slaying, police said, from the $40-a-week factory worker a few hours after he refused to join his wife, Marie, eighteen, in taking a lie detector test.
At 2 a.m. Goodell led police a few blocks from his house to a spot on Garrett Mountain and showed them a heavy rock under which he had buried Nancy, dressed only in a diaper and placed in a paper shopping bag.
Goodell told the police he had killed the child by twice snapping the wooden tray of a high chair into the baby’s face Monday morning when her crying annoyed him as he was feeding her. Dr. George Surgent, the county physician, said she died of a fractured skull.
There was an old wooden bridge to Manchester, as
Totowa was called in those days, which
Lafayette crossed in 1824, while little
girls strewed flowers in his path. Just
across the river in what is now called the Old
Gun Mill Yard was a nail factory where
they made nails by hand.
I remember going down to the old cotton
mill one morning when the thermometer was
down to 13 degrees below on the old bell
post. In those days there were few steam
whistles. Most of the mills had a bell post
and bell, to ring out the news, “Come to work!”
Stepping out of bed into a snow drift
that had sifted in through the roof; then,
after a porridge breakfast, walk
five miles to work. When I got there I
did pound the anvil for sartin’, to keep
up circulation.
In the early days of Paterson, the breathing
spot of the village was the triangle square
bounded by Park Street (now lower Main St.)
and Bank Street. Not including the Falls it
was the prettiest spot in town. Well shaded
by trees with a common in the center where
the country circus pitched its tents.
On the Park Street side it ran down to
the river. On the Bank Street side it ran
to a roadway leading to the barnyard of
the Goodwin House, the barnyard taking up
part of the north side of the park.
The circus was an antiquated affair, only
a small tent, one ring show. They didn’t
allow circuses to perform in the afternoon
because that would close up the mills. Time
in those days was precious. Only in the
evenings. But they were sure to parade their
horses about the town about the time the
mills stopped work. The upshot of the
matter was, the town turned out to the circus
in the evening. It was lighted
in those days by candles especially
made for the show. They were giants fastened
to boards hung on wires about the tent,
a peculiar contrivance. The giant candles
were placed on the bottom boards, and two
rows of smaller candles one above the other
tapering to a point, forming a very pretty
scene and giving plenty of light.
The candles lasted during the performance
presenting a weird but dazzling spectacle
in contrast with the showy performers —
Many of the old names and some of the
places are not remembered now: McCurdy’s
Pond, Goffle Road, Boudinot Street. The
Town Clock Building. The old-fashioned
Dutch Church that burned down Dec. 14, 1871
as the clock was striking twelve midnight.
Collet, Carrick, Roswell Colt,
Dickerson, Ogden, Pennington . .
The part of town called Dublin
settled by the first Irish immigrants. If
you intended residi
ng in the old town you’d
drink of the water of Dublin Spring. The
finest water he ever tasted, said Lafayette.
Just off Gun Mill yard, on the gully
was a long rustic winding stairs leading
to a cliff on the opposite side of the river.
At the top was Fyfield’s tavern — watching
the birds flutter and bathe in the little
pools in the rocks formed by the falling
mist — of the Falls . .
Paterson, N. J., January 9, 1850:—The murder last night of two persons living at the Goffle, within two or three miles of this place has thrown our community into a state of intense excitement. The victims are John S. Van Winkle and his wife, an aged couple, and long residents of this county. The atrocious deed was accomplished as there appears no doubt by one John Johnson, a laboring farmer, and who at the time was employed by some of his neighbors in the same capacity. So far as we have been able to gather the particulars, it would seem that Johnson effected an entrance into the house through an upper window, by means of a ladder, and descending to the bedroom of his victims below, accomplished his murderous purpose by first attacking the wife who slept in front, then the husband, and again the wife.
The second attack appears to have immediately deprived the wife of life; the husband is still living but his death is momentarily expected. The chief instrument used appears to have been a knife, though the husband bears one or more marks of a hatchet. The hatchet was found next morning either in bed or on the floor, and the knife on the window sill, where it was left by the murderer in descending to the ground.
A boy only slept in the same dwelling….. The fresh snow, however, enabled his pursuers to find and arrest their man….. His object was doubtless money (which, however, he seemed not to have obtained).
Johnson inquired why they had tied him, “what have I done?” …. He was taken to the scene of murder and shown the objects of his barbarous cruelty, but the sight produced no other sensible effect than to extort from him an expression of pity, he denying any knowledge of participation in the inhuman butchery.
Trip a trap o’troontjes
De vaarkens in de boontjes—
De koeien in de klaver—
De paarden in de haver—
De eenden in de waterplas,
Plis! Plas!
Zoo groot mijn kleine Derrick was!
You come today to see killed
killed, killed
as if it were a conclusion
—a conclusion!
a convincing strewing of corpses
—to move the mind
as tho’ the mind
can be moved, the mind, I said
Paterson (Revised Edition) Page 15
