Blind Dawn 9780231879026

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Blind Dawn

Blind Dawn By S T A N L E Y K I D D E R W I L S O N

NEW YORK

COLUMBIA U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS 1942

COPYRIGHT 1 9 4 2 COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

PRESS,

NEW

YORK

Foreign Agents: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Humphrey

Milford,

Amen House, London, E.C. 4, England, AND B. I.

Building,

Nicol Road, Bombay, India Manufactured in the United States of America

Blind Dawn

Gail dear, it is your birthday, and I mean To write you a love letter. Yes, just that, Though after twenty years . . . shall you understand? Ah I may inch into your mind, but only On paper, only with words that can't be bent By random shafts from pertly puckered hps Or drowned in the shallows of half-listening eyes. For have you ever explored this artless fact: Few men can talk as bold as they can write. That seems a paradox. Writing, you'll say, At best is muscle-bound, a runner in splints . . . T o voice strong feeling is the natural, The ball-and-socket way: you'd gamble on it! But cut the pack again; and ask the man That hates how often he has aimed his tongue Point-blank at the swagger of even feud enemy, Though smoothly can he lunge with inkpot ice — And flesh his blade. Then, Gail, consult the lover, Cowed by his lady's glance, which, straight as reins, Or all aslant with pinwheel quirks of laughter Impishly wise, shocks back into its shell The word he yearns to speak. He cannot speak, Yet later alone, beneath his lamp's fixed gaze [ 3 ]

That neither turns a key nor archly tempts, T o couriers of song at home with the shades drawn, Send, me your yes by air wave writes full-tilt, Nonchalant master of two souls. . . . There's this, Besides: you could not hear me out with patience, Or justice. You would interrupt, deflect. Space, quiet, I need. The burden in my throat, Hot cries that stream with never an end, must 'break' In silent frugal single-file, like slides Linked breath to breath under a lens; or like Cupfuls of curfew showers that a disc of sun Sieves into slowly spending rainbow jets: Pieces of gold instead of sheets. Oh I know For stormy weather your mind is always dressed — Don't twinkle, I'll come clean, own up to brewing Most of the W h y — yet even that garb would wilt If I free-broached, in one Niagara volley, All I now feel. So humor my 'finesse.' Accept this sotto voce serial plot. It is as though on your breast with open hand The heresies of my blood I longed to lay, Striking its April wants deep into yours, Yet must no more than feather these gauche truths Across that page, a finger-tip at a time. I write you, therefore, to repeat at the risk Of doubling zero, what could never tell Itself in spoken words as it must be told

[4]

If I'm indeed to take your heart in mine . . . To raid your ears with the beating of the wings, These paper wings of a mute Pentecost.

Come, then, quite simply: Gail, I love you. — Well, That does not startle, hardly interests you. Of course, you reply, with a not too elsewhere smile, / know that. And I love you too. Have we — Your smile drifts nearer — not been man and wife Through twice ten years, three children borne and raised, Shared, too, life's bargain-counter ups and downs (For 'downs' are not so dear priced by the pair)? Is not that long togetherness, cloudless still Despite the buzz of petticoated gnats In neighborly crusades, is not that span A chevron of love? Why, even our friends poke gibes At the raw scandal of a bond so haloed! Aren't we au fond pure unit, though time and again Divided by a cradle's wistful breadth? Can marriage richer grow than that? Two girl Recruits I placed within your arms, my rivals — And once a ?tian-child lent you for return To mine. (A presentation ''first,' unique, Item de luxe.) Say, have they wedged between? Haven't they really summed us up the firmer: Not two-plus-three here making five, but one Plus one, or the highest mathematics crashes! [ 5]

Don't we, in short, so far in our children live That we live farther in each other? But yes, My Gail, all this is compass true. Each word In my heart-writing as well is copperplate. Still — can I make you see? — I now want more Than even that much, more you. Though I would not wrest One moment's savor from our keepsake hoard, One frayed edge from our five-ply singleness, Yet into the I love you of this day And this day's timeless pageant filters a new And an intoxicating difference: A headier wine in the old chipped glass, a vintage Shot with nuances of fire, that dizzily goes Not to the head indeed but to the drained heart. . . . This high-and-dry debauch, then, to record, This strange mixed ecstasy to carafe for two, Is become my eager, my relentless need, The breath I draw, my waking and my sleep.

But let me first your pledge T-square with mine (To 'drop' from corkscrews up to traveling cranes). / knew it, you'll exclaim, the tell-tale creak: He's going to analyze! Touché: yet only Such pick-and-shovel counsels will serve to clear [ 6 ]

The ground between us, rubble on which we've built A house too obviously mail-order grade, That none the less roofs stairways never designed Short of God's draughting board. These must be saved. But may I digress? . . . Though now we stoutly cleave The tumbling surf-ribbed future that sets toward The children, I invite you, for an etched moment, A bride again — one kiss and over her head! — Swaying sedately on her marriage lines, T o tip the whitecap years off memory's rim And fade me fanwise with you back to the time Our first-born was no more than a stammered prayer. It happened shortly after we were 'wed' (Ah, how we used to scream at that Woolworth word). You were at home, alone; a hundred miles Divorced us; and, without a mate that night, You found the dovecot shivery, haunted, grim, Awry with the covert sounds that stiffen silence. Fretful, unnerved, you climbed at length to bed, Quite late, lost a haphazard hour or two, Then woke to the harsh cough of the telephone. The stand was in the hall; and I see you weaving A ghostway down that funnel, your nightdress On the barred floor its fears soft-penciling. Black mouth, black mouth, how can I beat you off? You lift the receiver. Why, the wire seems dead. Hello! A smothering pause. Your temples pain. [ 7 ]

Then, thick and listless out of seesaw space: What number, please? Meanwhile, at my hotel, Business at last 'consigned,' I had parried the winks Of thirst-torn colleagues and toppled right to sleep In my one-pillow room. . . . On a bedside table The phone crooked a thin arm as if to garrotte The mutterings of my watch. Its whir now pricked The spindrift. Rousing an elbow, in the dark, I angled for the petulant chanticleer. One of the 'gang.' Come on, dig out, he burbled, The night is young yet. Friends of mine doivnstreet. Mm . . . you know, 'willing . . . both good-lookers, queens . . . Mm . . . mm . . . I yawned that I might not damn his eyes Aloud. Oh well, he had never seen you, Gail. He knew no better since he didn't know you. Bluntly enough, I told him play with his dolls But why page grownups, thank you; then, before Snuggling again, from the table I eased my watch And chimed its glib repeater, idly noting The time: two-forty-seven. So! Next day, Trading adventures, you reported how Central had murdered the wee hours, then sworn She never had rung at all, that actually She'd not put any message through since midnight. Thereafter (you continued), worry had lain [ 8 ]

Gaunt at your side and nagged you back from sleep, Droning about the riddle of that 'call.' What was the time? Yes, you could tell me that Exactly, since the bedroom clock matched minutes With you till sun-up: Just a quarter to three! My story dryly I recounted then, Naming no names, of course, and God-forbidding The Joseph's laurel I appeared to claim. You heard it only, you perceived, because Of that bizarre coincidence of the clocks; But, when I'd finished, panic bombarded us With the curt colors of a 'wild surmise.' . . . All this you must remember, and how we tried T o piece the eerie fragments, in the end Despairing of a way out through the coil Of telepathic Yea and hard-boiled Nay Save the floodlit premise that, from the first doves down, No waifs of love had ever been so attuned, No faith on the wing by love so panoplied. Now, Gail, I won't dilate, but merely ask, Was it not then our single-barreled sight, Our each-in-the-other complex, that won over Some azured Big Shot to pull strings for us: A suave ally who could make a lackey of Time? For seldom since has such enchantment mortised Our minds; and . . . don't infer too much, don't set The door too wide, but has it occurred to you That from a certain son-rise flurry this 'graft'

[9]

Began to fail? Dear, somewhere on an orbit Which borders treason to those relatives Of yours, my children, I've been seeking sky-prints Of where our step as one step first went wrong. I but present the facts, suggest you twin them W i t h the same shears: Before we parceled 'power' Among the usurpers it focused us alone — Leashed lightning which, if need arose, could whip An S O S in seconds round the earth; And since, well, Gail, we've skillfully mislaid T h e code of that ethereal telegraph. But where? Is this slim wonder panting beneath Stacked alibis in some sealed drawer, or bleeding On a gnarled hook with other unpaid bills? We're happy; were we happier? Has our love, Retyped to make three carbon copies, scaled off Minutely, child by child, into just patter, Metallic, too well learned, which might in time Cloud over with rust the pace of that first draft? This love, in a word, is it still an ageless script, Struck from a ribbon of flame, red-letter stet, Or — eie! — spent embers making believe? Gail, Gail, I must know if any salvage lives in the ash. Therefore these eddies of ink. . . . One spatter more Before I pause to jack up all the blots: I'll never admit to caring for the infants Less by a phantom corpuscle than do you. [

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4>~ By this time, dear, I think you must suspect That the I love you here engraved is not A vespers of the incandescent years, Or yet a lavender echo of Old Refrain, T o either of which you'd turn the same sweet cheek, Silly, who said you didn't? . . . But weigh my plight: If I, straight out, let go even half my heart — Gail, you'd deduce rum fever, probably mix A physic! Don't you see, then, why I back And fill, advance in wary loops, chessboard A corps of gun-shy arguments? I dare not, Simply I dare not, have you smile; or, far worse, Yield to the rape of memories from a smug past. No, Gail, your lips I will not take again Until I bend them to my smileless lips, Crushing their fond da capo curves to death. . . . But wait, do I seem to rant, unsign my vow Into your mind to tiptoe? Make me talk low. I must prepare, not 'finish' you; must lightly, With the paste tools of Once-I-was-good-at-design, Retouch the wooden negative of your eyes, Whispering you awake to sit for a new pose — Though who would blame you if you feigned me off? For it is cycles since I shrined Je t'aime In words, and the last dwindling times (ah could I black those close-ups out) you had to sue!

[ 1» ]

That needles, now, to the marrow of the wound. Yes, days I knew wherein you hourly asked, Did I — was — was I sure? Did I love you? Love? I recall that I became quite bored With the lace-petaled repetition. . . . But Do I, do you, remember the curtain fall? Neither, I fancy, could so rewind the cords. Just kiss by kiss you chilled away, and I — I ceased to wish you would! Time came, then, when My ears forgot they'd once known music. . . . Oh I want, I want to hear you intone again, in all Its lustrous singsong sameness, Are you sure? But sharper still I want to know that you T o o listen. N o w I'm the one that daily, hourly, Asks you, with the charged tumult of a stopped heart.

5>This took off as a birthday 'greeting' ten, Eleven, days ago, I've got them tabbed; And all this while we have as usual met, Mornings and evenings fitted end to end In the worn comrade groove, your own sleek date Itself no different from the score that taper Back to a springtime first. Yet these ten days — Epochs, no less, on a moonstruck calendar! — I have been living in this letter, night By night postscripting, destined, it might seem, [

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Never to stub a pen. And how my spirit Leaps, Gail, while we sit chaste and amiable As knife and fork, staid as our own andirons, Alone at table or in the woodfire's care Chirruping fitful 'news,' leaps to the clamor Of these veiled bursts from a thrush in a muffled cage; Or vaults still freer to have you buckle on The prim dull-finish glance of Not that I mind. While you denounce, as last night bag and baggage You did (and I with a putty laugh agreed!), The antics of old Mellowby next door Who will ignore the fact that his window shades Give readily and that his wife does not. Cryptic, were you, my dear? But then you fell T o musing on the picture over the hearth That we ornately call the 'Fragonard': A rather lively subject, I will confess; And whether you chaffed that wanton lady or — I'll say it here — a trifle envied her I could not tell, nor could I for my life Have edged in with the kind of twelve-inch question That clogs my stratospheric dreams: Am I 'Enlightening' one who sees herself indeed In a voluptuous painting but not me? Yet How will you react no longer irks, No longer daunts me. I have walled in fear. Whether you'll read with the unquiet blood Which stencils meteors on my brain I cannot, [ i3 1

And will not, guess. I mean to possess you, Gail, W h o l l y again, though how many selves from now I haven't a clue; but while I'm writing this path U p through disheveled wits to where you stand, Ready for all I know to unlatch your arms, I promise you at least I'll not go flabby By coupling either prayer or penance with fight, Fight to the last tart taste of sweat on the tongue. There: cautious Christ, you see, in a head-on smash W i t h the old Adam! But let them argue it out. One day you'll read, and that day may be leaden; Y e t meanwhile I'm content, shockproof as June Already flowering in the womb of March, O r August scything crops still under the plough.

6y N o doubt in one sense what I gave the children I levied away from you. (That may, to be sure, Check fifty fiftv, and what I rashly find, I find for both of us; but this duebill ledger Is not a quiz, I'm inside-outing me, Stark-stripping me; and as to you, one day Will you not bed me back into your mind?) But what a nettle subject, and a monstrous: Is love a buried talent, then, that must Be unearthed before the lover buys «- asiain? O In truth you well may rate me 'touched'; and yet I'm now convinced I deeded the children more [ 14 1

Of what I owed their mother than she could spare. Let me untwist that. I do not hint you were Even near-green jealous (Gail, if you'd only been). Besides, why spotlight twice the real, the arch Defaulter? But that's the crux, of course. I would Not make the effort — aware perhaps I lacked The space! — to put up in the same bleak ego Both you and them. . . . Ah did you, dear, half 'wise,' Mercifully shield me by not letting on? It may be so; at any rate you stood Impartial spender to both them and me. From the round table of your plenty we rose As one. Yet now I think you couldn't have mastered That part without a wear-and-tear which left Its unacknowledged lesion. Willfully You never did (I know it) reword our love; But when you confirmed to them the share I'd waived, Though you'd no less to give you had fewer to take, Though still you were rich as God you couldn't give all. And I was the crippling cause who elected in husks To cash the hopes you lavished on joint account. Or may I put it this way, gentler imaged: Although I could not lower by aripplingchord The heartsease harbor-tide that offered us All four its breast, the wharfage arc of its arms, I could and did — expertly! — shrug it back From my own heart whose gates no longer swung Full locked with its bel canto. And I pay, [ i5 ]

Pay on the nail for that sin against two loves. Down through the years I see this miser's waste Persist, see out of the corner of my mind Your smile that flutters forward, then steps aside, As home from business or a trip I first The 'family' favor with my embrace! Or again, Recall your selfless Why not to a plan That they should date me for the Princeton game, And my not noticeably sparkling offer, At their impromptu Mother's picking Yale, T o include you too. Include you: God, what tact . . . Yes, I am paying — scrimping — for the kisses I pawned From you to budget on them. And, eie, by now (It is the last lash of an upset price) You may not care a purse-string that you were robbed Or that I'd raffle what soul I've left to know I still could swell your throat with a lover's pang.

ly Then, the turn-about side. Am I baldly taking back Love from the infants to revamp for you, Or have I at length enough to go around? Don't flinch, that's not so upstage as it sounds, Nor is it more than glazed with irony: For seriously I doubt that I could muster A store which would, in your sense, 'go around' — [ '6 1

And if I could I'd still fall zones behind Your prodigal largesse! There wasn't enough, As I've been at such soap-and-water pains Here to clean breast, to float a partnership In those slack middle years when two and three Made four. And so quite honestly I've wondered, Alive to my brave penchant for singling out, Whether, in this exuberant renaissance That garments you as summer with a midday blouse, I would love the children less in loving you more. My former state of grace raises the point, At least; nor could such outcome be adjudged As other than fair, since you, Gail, were short-changed For them. Yet no, that road, which now with spikes Of bedrock shame would be sown thick for me, I shall not tread again forever. How can I vouch for this your half-shut smile demands: The smile with which you unmarried yourself to let Me calmly pocket the 'proceeds,' body and trimmings. But though you cynic me you do not know. You have not seen the revised map of my heart, Or felt the soundless quakes which rooted up Its cramped and ingrown walls, rescaffolding them On a new site with four wide equal rooms Off mine, furnished the same in sweep and sunlight, And five-pier braced to keep that way. Yet you, You dare to doubt: you who, though blindfold, pegged [ 17 J

Every inch of those plans! Come, nobody else is 'on'; Even God, not being a woman, could only guess — But haven't you glimmers now of what's happened tome? I think it may have been somewhat like this: No man can ever unriddle how mere women Face childbirth with a level look—again, And then again. For him, not life but death Rides the despotic hazard; yet his wife, Perhaps in the early months pushed hard by fears, With a relaxed wrist flags them at the brink. Why? Must not she accept from a half-seen salver Some Eden draught of unfermented peace, Of liberty and peace, stanch in the cup? Oh, credit any brand of god you use: What matter, if for her not death but life Rides the exultant hazard! Windows like that Opened for me. I dreaded bringing to birth The confused new love I felt within me striving. Through borrowed eyes (yours, dear) at last I'd gaiged The limitations which had scuttled my poise. I cried out for the morphia of desire. . . . Some clemency then sent me, not the you I craved, But an unprobed you that steadied on my lips A dawn-still blend of privilege and peace. And lo, the child, born without trickle of pain, The child that shall be called Infinity — Though all it knows of love is how to give. [

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8>Let's have it, then, that I've stopped cuddling favorites, Reduced that flair along with my ego-line, And you'll not now look blank when on the same Sustained low 'C' I affirm, I love you, you. All four of my familiars billed as one, Though each a lead, a star, a hit: so choirs The motif of my new Third Act. But, Gail, I am not fully oriented yet; Between us sprawling, a comet question-mark Fouls the depressed sky rim, prints on the eye Warped rifts that may not be there. I'm tapping time, T o meters which are depth bombs in the veins, Until I know I've light as well as legs T o gamble with. . . . Meanwhile, since I cannot feel Your feelings, my little lot I shred to floss! Well, Pisces, you've assured me, rules my 'chart,' Makes me that way; besides, you see, hereby I ravish in advance a day, the day My hopes confess, when you, these pages reading, Find that they have aflashpoint in your heart; But chiefly, by this means I may wring out Some of the mouldier clots from the half-starched role I've huddled on an out-at-elbows conceit. All this, my Gail, involves a pretty length Of patchwork film, slow motioning, in fact, The whole of our two lives. Sit tight, therefore, [ i9 ]

While past and present I 'direct' so that Together, unprompted, we may stage tomorrow — Fast off the mark and a lovers' curtain in sight. Our 'house guests,' then, again. (A thorny page T o hurdle but their congé.) Have I toward you Been drifting like a cry on the wind . . . because They are beginning now for other love Than mine to look? For it's an awkward fact That elsewhere are the little turncoats tripping. How you have grilled me for my jealousy, So crudely aired, so down-the-dream-pipe wasted! But you've not really had to lesson me: I also have with inklings coped. Yet where You long ago stretched hands to twenty-one On trial and thus discounted much of the hurt, I would not 'truckle' but plumed my ostrich chant Of a perpetual Father, Father alone, Even while I realized I'd gone off the key. . . . Not blindly (but without removing the beam! ) I dated far ahead what I knew well Was happening inside my eyes. I would Not see, I will not, if it comes to that, Until I have to crawl through a wedding ring. You twig the portrait? — rampant, unashamed, Othello as a parent. Yet, despite These naïvetés which any alienist Would hail with kindly jeers, despite the sting, [

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T h e unvarnished wrench, I feel as my children lend T o other youth the time I've sunk in them And give away the kisses I can't buy, Yet . . . yet I ask you to believe, to know, That all this merely counterpoints the theme Of my new mating song, I love you, you. And why? But in that multiple music burns T h e truth: hair-trigger balance of the 'parts' As linked now in a stave that bores through space, Like the crack flyer of some enchanted route Whose patrons never are tagged as Pullman and pleb. N o two fares any longer, dear, for me, With slithery dragtail weights and thrusts and strains Which clank to a bruising halt. For the four-track road I've booked on arrows past the side spur labeled Requital. I'd ride the rods, of course, at Their call, Tightrope if need be on a charged third rail, N o matter what they had done or failed to do; And in the headlight glare which writes today Its freehand En avant 'between the lines' I've come to know that thus I pledge you too. Next-generation time, then, simply steams up i\ly love for them; while death itself could but Refuel mine for you, which likewise now (Don't tell me war breeds only hateful words) Is Total, the all-out, nonstop, haywire kind, Unflawed by facts . . . a coinage — if you'll pardon So much mixed paint! — a coinage struck from the same Metal as God's. (Yes, richer, shinier still, [

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For God demands, God trades: remember Job And how he earned his halo?) They need me less, N o doubt, and ah, perhaps you need me more; But deficit either way just funds my game. For at last Vm clear of the red, ringed with reserves Stable — and stubborn — as the Sphinx: carte blanche T o make a shortage, any shortage, good. Here then you have my answer, somewhat labored, I grant you, and in the old idiom Of curlicue hairsplitting you deride, My answer to a riposte you well might launch. And if this answer does not iron down all The bristles of as tough a problem as ever Whipsawed an 'unsecured' Take it fro?n me, At any rate you'll realize I could hardly Fit a more useful thunderbolt in your hand.

9>Off the deep end now, plop! There's a sub-thought You'd scorn to 'wire for sound'; but poisoned shaft, Hid in the quiver of the heart, two hearts Can sear. I'll tease it out, then, and behead it, With your respectful aid, I hope. T o wit: Is it only my skyrocketing physical age That beats so fast at your nearness now? Am I Warmed over in fact on a griddle of false youth?

[« ]

Just one more faded tintype trying to blush — Poor Yorick with a boutonnière! . . . Gail, Gail, If thus you reason, I am destroyed indeed; Yet what can I align to true your sights That will not either strut or, mincing modest, Go lame before your glance? The cure's right here, Of course; for should no leeway of consent — Not pity, but a firm response in kind — Margin that glance, then for my 'talk' I might As well engage the nearest vacuum. But if your inner eye, that rendezvous Of April pulse and promise, still reads me young, Fit mate for the young license of your arms, Your breast, then nothing I might say would add A furrow of conviction. Yet this much I'll venture to let fly from a half-primed tongue: No body could rust out with you at hand. (Garish that sounds, eh, under a soft-voiced lamp Whose candle power is suspect anyway ! — Yet not perhaps so loud as to shatter your smile. At least I've faced up like a little Freud, Dotted an 'i' most lovers leave cropped in the pen.) 1 0 ^ Across the park to my strait-jacket job I walk o' mornings, as you know who fruit And cream for me 'compose,' and coffee jazz, At an unchristian hour. When back to bed,

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Then, you restore your lazy length, mine I Salute with a mild pipestem birch, and fare Forth to my not too Spartan Spartan jaunt. Now, I can still produce a bullet stride, I'll have you understand, so please look grave — But seldom do unless I must; Retard Better in general suits both muscles and mood. Of late, however, a strange stalemate has nicked My pride. I'll seem to be fairly scalping time, Forging a gait almost as landslide fast As once on prep-school legs kept me at par With greyhounds and hares; yet . . . in my wake A gust of heels; the scherzo step that barks Girl coming challenges my lead; and while I bandy pro and con as to the cost Of grinding out some character, she seals the breach And passes me. On the half-run? Askew With haste? By no means: tittuping along, At not much more, by Hermes, than a stroll! As, ruefully, then, I track those little feet That flout two stalwart brogans, Here, I muse, Is parable. For may not, in like fashion, My jaunty Romeo-drive be bogging down Although I think it's still quicksilver shod? And isn't there an odds-on chance that you, Lithely pursuing with your unslaked pace, May nip ahead of the best that I can do, And either distance me while Vm swashbuckling [ 24 ]

Through yesterday or — worse by jaded miles — Wait for me, with a set smile, to catch up? Damn it, then, why not simply backslide faster Only switched round to face the other way, I scoffed, this very morning, when, fed to the teeth B y these disgruntlings, I recalled that soon You might be en route toward me, Gail, instead — And found my bootstraps all but ballooning me, And my swung soles turned scimitars to cut down, One after one, the earthbound folk that had Been trampling me with such unseemly ease.

W h y haven't I up and taken you? Like a man! H o w thriftily that would have made, or muted, This tangled bid in hearts; and once I would have, I did. But then you were too guileless to use Finesse and I am now too 'sane' to drop it. . . . Yet were you home tonight I think — I'd just Stop thinking. F o r under my lips, ah, the young Gail Again! So what? So I sit. So I go on writing. Stout fella, eh? Though lately had I surprised A glint, a sidelong shimmer, of the dew-born look T h a t in the dry past too often sought my eyes Only to find their lids, this turbid letter Would never have cleft the banks of its first 'Gail dear'

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Much less cascaded so high. But it is eras Since (not in the vein!) with a half-sharpened frown I trimmed that lush glance to the quick; and now When round its shy plumes and tendrils I would cup Starved fingers, awake, awake to summer at last, Of all that wild-rose ritual a sapless stem Alone is left, crackling beneath my grasp: A slattern thing, but the key to a garden once. . . . Yet though I must believe one cannot offhand Charm back the glow capricious brows pinched out, I dare to nurture, in the mind's hothouses, The seedling dots and dashes of memory, T o cross these scribbled shoots with evergreen, T o drench them with the short wave-length of hope. And that is why, against all reason, Gail, I murmur, Bountiful flower that Junes ago Gave me, vie only ,its soul, its self — in short, More than God could who sent a proxy at best And portioned Him besides to the whole world — Yield me anew, a beggar shabby with debts, The sighing bouquet of your unguarded lips, Your woman's harvest-giving, which is to say, Giving beyond, yes, beyond the passion to give. O flower that brimmed with life de trop in the dark, That sampled no other sun but my built-in smile, Live, live again; and let me' stake'' you till death! But — well, I'm just not hero, or heel, enough In a single brusque volte-face to straddle the years

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I lolled through so aloofly and woo you now With a cheap gangster's stick-'em-up technique: Lord, I'd more likely drill myself than you! Instead I dig for roots that shall grow in the end Not sprigs, but girders, arches, of hardy blossoms, Fast color, Gail, from seed to song . . . trusting That by some secret spadework of your own, By 'smoking out' my half-blown twists and turns, You'll see, hear, feel me lover on the job at last. Ah, let some message escape the blinds! Tell me Tonight, if only by a cranny's breadth, That you've begun to scent a keyhole fragrance, Begun to share these garden tremors, to sift From my nerveless gaze that pecks and pecks again At your unruffled face, as in ciphers we talk, The close-computed hunger of my heart For just one gleam, one shuttered strip of tomorrow.

u y I hope I shall have finished 'starting' this Reminder of a crossroads date before Another birthday trundles round! Already A month has sped since the Gailaday it should Have graced; but always when I sought to reach Full turn fresh points of view would press on me T o press me on. (Besides, here I can clap you In the high-voltage cell of my embrace And mock your crumpled efForts to burst the bars.) [ 27 1

So one and one I've kept on trying to square In words, though it's cubes we're growing older by, Crooked as commas the answers cancel out, And yellow streaks shrivel the page. . . . Oh well, Before these bogies fasten on my power T o pink them with the rapier of second sight, I'll give my trance a 'break' and bid you read. How old are you, Gail mia, off the cuff? Let's flash the birthday note, though you'll play blind: From thirty on, few women count in tune. But come, I know of course within a decade Or two. Confide it low. . . . Impossible, It's now my cue to say, you could settle for half! And though I happen (my Bible oath) to mean Precisely that, and though you've had, poor child, Lean compliments from me, yet, all a-shrug, Houses away while barely an inch from my arms, You pout the matter over with your hand glass — And won't even then believe. Time hasn't laid A glove on you, so deftly have you sparred With the old bruiser; but just let him feint, Make a wry face, and my Diana quails Like a stalked doe. Why? Surely you can't think That to the children or to me you would look Less Kingdom-comely if you looked your years. Nor have you any mushroom vanity Such as afflicts the woman whose head is turned [

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By every turning head. No, it's much more Profound. Your dread of old age, like most women's, Caps the most talkative terrors of the grave. From every looking glass its claws reach forth: Eavesdropping slyly, it feeds on a chance pallor, Gashes sham lines round a merely tired mouth; Gets under the skin of a lax will and works From the faint heart out. You cannot reason with it. Simply you hate what burrows behind that glass. If, then, forewarned you can by no means down This ghoulish tyrant, what hope runs for me? I shall not, therefore, try; nor shall I lose Our temper by protesting that old age May wear a fadeless sunset as its right — Not even your own, dear, crisply pieced with mine! But here's my recipe to stanch your fear: Keep looking in the mirror of my eyes Alone! For mark this, there must fall at length A moment when your glass will blurt the veils Aside. That day you'll beg it, waxen lipped, T o lie, lie, go on milk-and-honey lying; But only a hard grimace will it give back. Think, now. Is this a friend to cultivate? With whom to share warm letdown hours? On whom Your negligee thoughts, your pretty powdered wiles, T o waste? No, no. Ease off while yet there's time, While yet Dame Judas smiles; descend to mere Acquaintanceship, a cup of tea; don't trust This vampire near your breast. Instead, my eyes, [

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Which cannot image you as old, wherein Your days you may add up without a qualm, Blandly at home to wrinkles that never call — For young as you like you'll always seem to me. Is this fantastic? I can't prove it, granted; But you . . . you can't disprove it, can you? Choose, then, Sweet vassal! Choose between diminishing crusts And a creamed-to-order daily ration of youth: Be thirty, Gail, and underlook it, for life. !

3>-

What is this x I-love-you, now, that yields So much to live for, so little to live on? Even yet can I distill it? . . . Oh, I've shouldered The puppets right and left, spreadeagled all The sawdust arguments I had you march Out to a dowdy death. But have I 'sold My proposition'? Is the 'approach' too shrill? Can I, on fire, with bankrupt years at stake, Command the cool It's-this-way that your glance Will pin me to, unless a rebel heart, Like mine, is hammering such hot asides That straight speech chars on the tongue. Yet I am bound — By the trite mandates of fair play as well As by the fear that you might pigeonhole [ 30 ]

My claims and dust them off one day aghast — T o urge no sale upon you, win or lose, That is not candid as a thumbprint. Though, indeed, The decks are showdown-clear. Wide stands the last Corroded hatch of a once airtight 'closed shop.' Step dragging step, you've roamed this musty cabin, While I tossed out its trappings knick by knack. What the love 'take' is not, therefore, you know: I've listed the dross tonnage, here. But the fixtures In that purged room are yours, quite yours. So now I'll try to tell you what this equity is. The payoff, Gail dear, funnels to one word. Nor is that one word 'love,' at any rate So spelt. For love once chauffeured us to the stars — And then changed gears! Would either employ this suave But wayward gadabout again, at least Without a sky-wise rider to the bond? No, the gist word, the word of words, is 'new': New you. New us. New ours. And a new, new Yes! For does it not all dovetail to a hair? Your carillon youth, its luster chiming serene Beneath my stridencies, your youth assures you: / can renew who, hourly, am renewed. Aren't you a different woman, then? But of course, As thus declared. A Gail continuously Reborn to beauty, rarer, lovelier, than [ 3i ]

T h e Gail till now I've been leisurely looking past. And I? Well, just to face that shining marvel, T h a t stealthy checkered phoenix-surge and flush, Would jolt a mummy back to life, bewitch A suit of clothes. (Look how it heats a pen! ) Yet even this blaze is only backdrop for T h e three-alarm truth I'm simmering with. If — listen — If I were not the same man that desired Your virgin snow I'd not now have the 'sight' T o paint you as the day-old Eve; yet if I weren't another, rockbottom aware at last T h a t love is give not get, I would never have learned T o break in eyes which sum the whole you up. In short, the ace word, new. A new Gail found: And here, become as a child again, one who Leafs through his teens in search of a new man, Backtracking forward out of a wordy dusk, Scouring the world you live in to find himself. . . . Does that make sense? It sounds high-flown, I fear; But think it over, level it off. And mind: Though you reject my stairway alpenstock — As well you may for I myself the steeps O f this our summit of transfiguration W i t h hobbled vision attempt — though you discard All else, there's yet that rummaged room, you know, T h a t room of the open windows and the clean floor, Sacked of the blasé litter so long my boast, Wherein there's nothing left that isn't yours.

[ 32 1

T h e truth is, Gail, you are to me two women, 'Expanded' into one. T h e woman I loved. T h e woman today I love. Each to each alien And yet the same, they telescope two throats T o bathe my eyelids as one lyric breath, Merge to immure me with one pair of hands, And what I've called my soul to Save from Wrath By a benignant bigamy. It's like T h a t muddled night gray years ago: do you Recall? T h e time when I seduced you, my Own wife! But I'm sure you do, and not perhaps W i t h unmixed rapture; though indeed few women Could quite detest the part I blindly played. Burlesque enough it was, a travesty Of what you mean and even then meant to me; Yet strangely it forecast the two-in-one guise That wreathes you now in my spinning crystal ball. So . . . may a shameless husband slow his watch Back to that hour. T h e cocktails were too strong, There's not a doubt of that; and more Barsac Riddled my guard at dinner than I knew. For when we to the library adjourned I pitched to sleep in the big chair beneath T h e 'Fragonard,' while you resumed a book. Some hours were thus erased. When I awoke [ 33 1

At length, the clock was trembling upon midnight. T h a t fact I picked up with a supple mind. But then it seemed that scarfs of lace-meshed fog, Humid as sedge through raindrift sailing aslant, Dabbed at my eyes, at all six of my senses, An elfin haze that spiraling hit or miss Slip-tied its sheer horizons round my throat, Fumbling, cajoling, primping, like wanton fingers, Only to tire of this delicate hide-and-seek, Fetter by fetter ease its yoke, and lift In brooch-caught clusters growing ever less dense . . . Till from the smother, petals on a ruched stalk, B y fits and snatches there flowered out a face. Ah for wishing-cap wings to net such wildspun beauty: For it shuttled, it swirled, frost flakes in a lily blend, Over that lifeless book. Great-coated shadows Massed to vignette its exquisite swift calm, Its ebb and flow of marble, of marble alert, Impetuous, pricked with a spray of pastel tints As if behind those lids flamed the palette of dawn. Then, suddenly, the room, throwing its arms About my taut inertia, rocked with light: Open. T h e eyes were open. Long lashed promise Buffeted mine. I struggled from my chair. T h e y . . . they were bidding me. A rickety step I ventured toward those beacon flares, then checked: Was it a peri or was it living woman T o whom my thoughts as one ache were outstretched? Haltingly, clue by clue, here-and-there lines [ 34 1

Wrote their way home: had I not learned — and cherished — This presence as my wife? Or was I tricked By an eerie unsigned likeness? I both knew And knew her not. A witch (might not she be?) Who'd counterfeited that solvent face and form T o price . . . my'morals'! For I realized, now, That she was mine to take; and realized too, With a stark thrust of guilt, that I was hers. Gail, Gail, I cried — was it taunt or kiss? — as, foundered In silken seas, I sank between your breasts, Why weren't you here to save me? What a farce, Dear, what a gaudy farce! Yet how you must Have winced. For soon you ferreted the truth From my non-compos babble, and perceived That I was laying furnace siege to you Under the quaint impression that my wife, All unaware of wrong, slept fast — and harmless — In her room upstairs. And such audacities As leased my tongue! Dimly I recollect Those clashing speeches: I called you the rudest names For being so siren-lovely, so piquant, That I would fail, betray, her in her own house; Then, in the next breath, whispered, W^ho, ivho could Resist you, sorceress, sweeter even than she! . . . Amusing, wasn't it? Bric-a-brac and mirage: Yet real, yet more than real. The tyrannies [ 35 1

Of that adulterous night in a wife's arms Still honey comb my contra-clockwise dreams. W e never talked it over. Indeed, what use? I'd talked too much already, and as for you, You couldn't, could you, very well accuse me Of sin which was but technical anyway And toward which you were criminis particeps! Faced ever woman such a fix? In fact, Was ever before dilemma quite so weird On a respectable couple visited? But there's no wife at large, of course, who wouldn't Condone an infidelity that takes The pleasing aspect of high revel with her. So . . . that was that, Gail; and I bring it up, Not wholly in step with Hoyle perhaps, to rivet The point that for a man who poems can flush From 'figgers' (by way of water as well as wine!) A woman may be multiplied ad lib And yet remain exactly, sweepingly, one. The old you and the new, with their inbetweens, Both I now plus with everything I've got, And both I covet immortally, doubles or quits.

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Again you're out tonight — that Club of yours! And why I haven't trounced you with one of my own: [ 36 ]

But there it is, posies I flay you with Instead. Though I've only 'rushes' yet to pluck And in a day or two I'll close. . . . Pin on, However, this postscript, which may help unwind The web of last night's whirligig paper-chase. Ready? You said (I had you say) we'd come through As one — one in rapport and simple faith, In the smooth empty fullness of our life Together. That's yardstick true, and it goes far, Leagues far. But not enough by firmaments As I feel now. Gail dear, I want us two Again! The selfsame pagan two of the days When either in secret would have chafed at peace Earned by the taming of a thrill; when neither, For an oblique split-second of standstill time, Would honor have weighed against a single kiss. I want us two again like that, not ruling Aside, of course, the good backlog of faith; But with the lukewarm slivers we tend rekindled Into red haste by the incendiary stars, Your protégées, which 'graphed' our first At home — A seething galaxy we've left up there Chez God! And to achieve this end of ends W e must (it is the only means) short-circuit The very symmetry we've firmly won, Scrap all our cardboard constellations and part, T o the extent, at least, that once again [ 37 ]

We'll see each other as two unfinished hearts, T w o riven halves of the same importunacy, Thirsting, completing, seizing — Lovers, in a word.

16 y N o w let's be practical. We've topped (I have, At any rate) cloud-latticed heights, where the air Is light-years in a glass; but as a staple — Gail, really we must compromise by a crag Or two! A working average regimen, That's not indeed unmitigated milk, But equally not triple-plated 'moonshine': It's that we should scheme out. But here I am, Assuming the set South Wind of your smile: In short, still turning cartwheels in the blue. . . . Yet somehow I'm convinced that I've not merely Trumped up for springboard a glib tinsel hope; Convinced that even while I've been looting the welkin Shrewd change has started to ferment in you. Our telemagic again! Incog, I follow The tunneling of havoc through your veins, Trace the faint rumor of freshets foaming there. The way, too, that you look at me, close-smiling, Demure; almost — yes, altogether — shy: H o w many robot years have creaked between Since you were shy with me? Oh, it ferments.

[ 38 ]

Yet we've not swerved by one impulsive inch From our routine of Thanks and Please. My fruit At 8 a.m. you've gone on butlering, Chilled to the rhythmic tang you know I like, And sugar-keyed by a kiss as chilled; then for The balance of the day you save up grace T o kiss me not too stiltedly off to bed! These chaste and tidy rites in all their pomp W e have kept primed; nor have we dropped a stitch Of that tough-knit accord of minds wherewith We've sewn our lives to match from the first 'click': And there is just about as much combustion As in a frenzied session of — crochet! Yet ah, my dear, I feel, and feeling know, That just beyond this corner which we've worn As hard as talons, this corner veneered, deadpanned, By our numb gropings, we shall strike a trail, An unmapped alley through tall trees which squander Leaf-falls like radiograms; and on this path I know, and knowing feel, that, chord by snug chord, Our step, recapturing its old left-right, Will 'swing' a shortcut back to Lohengrin, Our hands with the shock of live coils meet, and our hearts Change bodies in a lawless They shall pass. Then, then, my Gail, we farther shall explore This one-way Aisle of the Blest, and shall feather laughs O f ripe contentment as we emerge at length T o find ourselves breasting the clear indeed, But not in any fourth-dimensional heaven — [ 39 ]

Instead, why, we are at our own white door, Spurning the sill like truant kids too drugged With song to act adult; and at last, at last, 'Discovering' the library, where all these years Love has been nesting unsuspected. Look, There are his footprints in the dust which you (No banner housewife!) have allowed to pool Around your table-set of Keats. Then, listen, Some hand undoubtedly has speeded up The ticking of that ancient clock. And as I live, Je t'aime chalked on the 'Fragonard' . . . There, now, you see, back-flips at timber line Again. And I'm the one who would become More practical! Well, you've imbibed the corked And tasteless for so long that you may vote Such bubbles the real hosanna in jingle bells. This time, however, I'm written out. It's Game, Or nothing. Perhaps my hectics will dismay, My super-trinity of You and Me And God — in that executive order — freeze, Offend you. Should that happen, should your fingers Yet flinch from taking hold of the lightning flash, Then, I adjure you, tear these notes to crepe. Don't stab me with a pen, since I shall have caught Your soundless N o if you do not ring posthaste T o skim / too dear over the office wire. For here's my plan: this sheaf of T N T , Tight sealed and superscribed just Gail, yes, haughty [

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A s that, I'll tilt beside your plate first thing Tomorrow. You'll appraise it (so at least I've coached you in rehearsal) with a glance That quizzically jostles mine; then, if I'm right and you've begun again to count In twos, you will not budge or even allude T o such queer doings; but a soft So that's it Will crimp your lashes, and I'll fly to 'town' On the careening certainty that, in minutes, Your call will dimple the prim lips of my phone. If, on the other hand, with polite limp brows You query me, my spirit will falter indeed, But still there'll be the capsule chance that what I've here disclaimed may claim you. So I'll beg A truce until I'm off, and then myself Do some flexed waiting at my desk, with hope Fast narrowing though not completely quenched. But if — Gail, it's my last recourse — you have N o t guessed the truth and now are reading mere ink, If you are wondering how most gently you Can silence these cries (for though your mind remain Icebound, being yours it would be troubled); in a word, If I have failed, do not respond at all. Don't speak the Never that would, we both know it, wring You, loveless, nearly as deep as it would me; But, as I've said, Into the basket quick: It's torture to press dead blossoms in a locked heart. Shut out their limpet voices. Then . . . ghost back, All the way back to springtime. T w e n t y years [ 4i 1

Collect from the dial of your watch. Moth-ball The past, the blanket past so thick on the girl, So threadbare on the woman; date well ahead Your vows, the first evasion of your eyes, The swooning of their lids beneath my kiss. Forget, in short, we'd ever been pleased to meet And let me swear you mine all over again — This time in 'straight' draughts from the book of Acts Instead of the diluted Gospel brew That, stormily trying to bring alive, I've dared T o lace with the bitters of my human need. O God, you might have lent me words to drain The holy water pent up in my breast! But all regrets are idle now: for should you Turn a pinched mouth from — eie — bleak dregs in the cup Or, worse, just pretend to sip with the lacquered smile Of pity, it will so fall out because You do not crave or cannot replenish love, Raw libel both; or for the drab reason that Love has not proved his case. Proof, then, you seek; And proof my life from now to death shall render. From now to death, Gail . . . yes, and on ahead, If the road lie open, there I want you, too.

[ 42 1