Mass Chants and Other Poems 9780231886239

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MASS

CHANTS

and Other Poems

MASS CHANTS and Other Poems ALAN BAER ROTHENBERG

New York • Morningside Heights KING'S C R O W N PRESS

1944

COPYRIGHT 1 9 4 4 BY

ALAN BAER ROTHENBERG Printed in the United States o f America

King's Crown Press is a division of Columbia University Press organized for the purpose of making certain scholarly material available at minimum cost. Toward that end, the publishers have adopted every reasonable economy except such as would interfere with a legible format. The work is presented substantially as submitted by the author, without the usual editorial attention of Columbia University Press.

To Vivian and Ellen

PREFACE From 1926-28,1 was an undergraduate at Columbia College penning verse as a member of John Erskine's inspiring Boar's Head Poetry Club. For many a young poet then, the task of poetry seemed to be to commit sensuous personal experiences to verse so that others might share the poet's sensitive perceptions. I, for one, believed the poet's chief function was to express his "sensitive individualism" in an era of "rugged individualism". Since the mid-twenties, great events have earthquaked the world: The Depression, The Rise of Fascism, The Global War. The sensitive and rugged individualists alike have been shaken up out of their private existences along with the rest. The alumnus of the 1920's returns now to his wartime campus to find it peopled with stalwart cadets whose individualism has been at least temporarily submerged by the uniform, the military outlook, the unity of a fighting team. The poet, too, must try to evolve with events. Instead of aiming to let the masses share his personal visions, he must now strive to voice the larger will and dreams of the times. The mass chant, "Song Of The Double-V", has attempted to capture what many are hoping and dreaming now for the post-war world. Similarly "Steel Helmets In The Mid-town Tunnel" tried to express what a great many liberals felt about war and fascism, perhaps up to and half-way through the Spanish Civil War. "Football On The Radio" tried to express what liberals hoped and doubted until the very outbreak of The Global War. The mass chant form seems particularly well adapted to the problem of voicing the larger will and dreams of the times. It allows for differences of thought and emotion between individual voices in the speech-choir. For example, in "Football On The Radio" the First Voice is that of the skeptic; the Second Voice is that of the idealist. The mass chant form is one recommended to the poet who feels that his personal aspirations merge into those of the age itself. Some of the poems in this volume had indeed more personal instigation than the mass chants. More of them, however, deal with large impersonal things which a great many people have taken very personally: The Century Of Progress Fair, the Nazi attitude towards minorities, the news from Loyalist Spain, the chances for post-war peace.

[vii]

A number of these poems have been performed before community councils, teachers' and parents' organizations, and unions. Several were submitted to the University Of Colorado Writers' Conference in 1939, to which I was awarded a scholarship for "Child's Story: A Living Newspaper On Education" (co-authored by Joel Rothenberg). "Steel Helmets In The Mid-town Tunnel" was written in answer to a challenge from the student poets in the poetry club of Julia Richman High School, N.Y.C., of which I was faculty adviser in 1938-39. "Song Of The Double-V", for which Lou Kleinman has composed choral music, was given over the radio in the spring of '44 as a presentation of The New York Newspaper Guild. ALAN BAER ROTHENBERG

May, 1944

[viii]

CONTENTS AUTHOR S PREFACE

vii

I. MASS CHANTS Song Of The Double-V

3

Steel Helmets In The Mid-town Tunnel Football On The Radio

8 12

II. IN A PERSONAL V E I N Spanish Moon, 1936

21

To Childhood

22

Scientific Love

23

Three Kisses

24

III. DESPATCHES F R O M L O Y A L I S T SPAIN 1. Air Attack

27

2. Road Raked By Fire

28

3. Ambulance Escapes Artillery

29

4. Direct Hit

30

5. Casualty List In Rome

31

6. Killed In Action: An Epitaph In Mud

32

IV. MORE S I G N S O F T H E T I M E S Season's Greetings: Berlin, 1934

35

The Traffic Was Terrific

36

The War And The Caterpillar

38

The Century Of Progress Fair: Chicago, 1933

40

V. W R I T T E N I N NO PARTICULAR Y E A R On Handicraft

47

In A Skeptical Mood

48

Tornado

49

[ix]

1. Ai/155 CHANTS

SONG OF THE DOUBLE-V* (A Post-War Fantasy In Mass Chant Form) Voice: 1st:

This is a bloody emblem on my sleeve; Look, and you may see A symbol, a sign that is graven in hope; It's the sign of the Double-V.

2nd:

You're not a corporal or a sergeant?

3rd:

A sailor or marine?

4th, 5th:

The Double-V's the strangest shield That we have ever seen.

1st:

I am a soldier of the Double-V, And that means two-fold victory, A triumph abroad and at home.

All:

We never heard o' that. What regiment y' from ?

1st:

Mine is the regiment Of the Unregimented.

2nd:

Say, what division is that?

3rd:

What branch of the service?

4th:

Maybe he's a commando or a ranger.

1st:

I never drove a tank or spun a plane —

All:

He never drove a tank or spun a plane, Or dug a trench or sunk a sub, Or dropped a bomb or killed a Hun.

2nd:

He didn't even tote a gun.

3rd:

Shucks! You don't have no fun!

4th:

Whattya do all day ? Howdya earn ya pay ?

* Choral music for this poem has been composed by Lou Kleinman of New York City.

[3]

1st:

Y' see, I'm sorta on the bench, The star of next year's team, The junior varsity of Democracy.

2nd:

Y' got credentials ?

1st:

Yes, they read: Battalion of the Unborn, Division of the Future.

A11:

Oh, what's all the shootin for ? You're not really in this war.

1st:

I'm in this war as deep as the dead, Deep as the Yanks who died at Midway, Deep as the Dutch destroyed at Rotterdam, Deep as the British strafed in Egypt or Dieppe, Deep as the Russians slain upon the steppe.

All:

And you've never killed a Hun ? You've never held a gun ?

1st:

Yet I'm in this war as deep as the wounded, Deep as the maimed, In it as far as the bombed-out millions, Far as the missing or bodies unclaimed.

All:

Yet you've never manned a tank ? Never dive-bombed a plane? Never leaped from a sinking ship ? Or stormed a pill-box in a burning metal rain ?

1st:

Nope. I never have. I have to stand by, look on, and hope, When the fascist fronts are blasted wide, And righteous hell and thunder ride Across the skies and lands and seas, And knock the savage to his knees.

All:

You have to stand by, look on, and hope? Then what kind of soldier are you ? And how are you involved?

[4]

1st:

I am a soldier In the untouched Reserves of Future Hopes. Long after the guns shall cease I'll be the Unknown Soldier of the Post-War Peace.

All:

We'll be the free-speech paratroops And the trial-by-jury tank corps.

3rd:

We'll be the echelons of racial freedom And equal justice under law,

2nd, 3rd: Long after the war. 1st:

We'll be the collective-bargaining commandos

2nd:

And the free-faith infantry

3rd, 4th: And the war correspondents On what the fight was for, Long after the war. 5th:

What was a concentration camp?

All:

We'll be Zooming 'round in rocket ships—as Peace Militia, Sliding down in gliders—as Peace Militia, Sergeants-at-Arms at the All-World Congress, Corporals-of-the-Guard at the Fair Trade Sessions, Sentries of the Union at the Food Delegations, Guardians of liberty for all our nations!

1st:

And some day, when there's International Police, We'll be the cops in the trans-Atlantic radio cars, Cruising through the stratosphere, Trying the handles of national doorways, Seeing that they're left open at night,

2nd:

According to the Charter we write.

3rd:

And our children will ask:

All:

Teacher, what were Refugees? And what was a color-line ? What were slums and unemployment?

[5]

What was a race-riot and a lynching? Why were minorities always flinching? 1st:

But these things shall never thrive again, For we'll be here:

All:

Dive-bombing despots—out of our cities, Bliteing the bigots—out of our cities, Jeeping along with autocratic prisoners, Ash-canning down on the Quisling rats!

2nd, 3rd\ Death to the leaders who let themselves be bought! Tried by their peers in the New World Court! 4th:

Tyrants to the firing squad!

1st:

Traitors to the wall!

2nd:

No quarter for the fascist!

3rd:

Let the last one fall!

6th:

Who was Quisling, Teacher?

1st:

We, the slum-clearance assault troops, And the superstition pursuit planes, We, the Four Freedoms signal corps, Long after the war.

All:

Stamping out famine—upon our farms, Blasting out ignorance—by force of arms; Fire-bombs for slavery, poverty and greed! —No need to treat these with a gentleman's creed!

2nd:

The rocket-gun for hunger And fear of the Na2i breed!

3rd:

P-40's for inertia!

All:

Mass burial for need!

1st:

Yes, we'll be the buglers, heralds, historians Of why the world was freed. For we are the soldiers of the Double-V

[6]

All:

Of every race and creed!

2nd, 3rd: We'll be the soldiers And the sailors And the airmen, 3rd, 4th:

The engineers and bombardiers,

5th, 6th:

And the WAACS and the WAVES and the nurses:

All:

The legions of peace in future years, Long after the guns shall cease.

1st:

You are the ones who'll win the war, When the fascist fronts are blasted wide, And righteous hell and thunder ride Across the skies and lands and seas, And knock the savage to his knees.

All:

You And You And

are the ones who'll win the war, together we'll win the peace. are the ones who'll win the war, together we'll win the peace!

[7]

STEEL HELMETS

IN THE MID-TOWN

TUNNEL

Voice: 1st:

I don't know.

2nd:

I don't know.

All:

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

1st:

It is strange.

4th:

What?

1st:

That seeing steel helmets in the mid-town tunnel Scratches my heart with startling fear; As if millions of ghosts were working near.

2nd:

Tremble with fear ?

3rd:

Fear of ghosts?

4th:

Of all things!

5 th:

In this cynical day and age ?

All:

Imagine!

1st:

Well, maybe I exaggerate; But at least they make me shudder!

All:

In this cynical day and age? Imagine!

1st:

When I see steel helmets in the mid-town tunnel, When I see steel hats on men in ditches . . .

2nd:

Helmets on workmen,

All:

Shoveling and digging, Sawing and picking;

2nd:

Helmets on sand-hogs,

All:

Shoveling and digging, Sawing and picking.

1st:

Digging a path for peaceful cars.

[8]

4th, 5th:

Peaceful, mind you!

3rd:

Ordinary passengers to go to Queens, Queens to Manhattan, Manhattan to Queens;

All:

Digging and cutting a path for Fords, Chevies and Buicks, Buicks and Packards!

4th:

Going out to Grandma's Under the river —

2nd:

Coming into Broadway Under the river —

All:

Breezing along to Rockefeller Center, Joy-riding out to the World's Fair Grounds! (pause)

1st: 6th:

Under the river, men should wear helmets. If they're conked on the head with a brick or tile, Conked on the head, their hats will clink;

4th:

Gravel or pebbles falling through a chink Will only make the workmen smile.

1st:

But the mere sight of helmets in the mid-town tunnel Makes me start, And want to cry: Why are some helmets NOT in tunnels ?

2nd:

Why do they wear them in open fields ?

2nd, 3rd: That's no place for hats of steel! 4//j> ' ^

| W h y do they wear them in woods and forests ?

'5th • g h a t ' s All:

n0

pl a c e

hats of steel!

Why do they wear them in streets of cities ? That's no place for hats of steel! (pause)

[9]

4th:

In tunnels, in tunnels — There's work for helmets; In mid-town tunnels, There's need for steel.

2nd:

They're not digging trenches Or Maginot lines —

3rd:

They're not setting tank traps Or laying mines—

1st:

They're digging a path for peaceful cars, Under the river —

5th:

For — Incoming produce for city-bred patrons,

4th:

Outgoing plumage for suburban matrons,

6th:

Oysters for Sardi's private cafe,

3rd:

Oil for the boats of Oyster Bay —

2nd:

Car loads of clams that will not explode; Those carrots are not a dangerous load.

1st:

Then why should seeing helmets in the mid-town tunnel Scratch my heart with startling fear ? There is no style I've seen this year,

All:

That seemed more fitting, That seemed so right, Than hats of steel that glisten and clink When gravel and pebbles fall through a chink.

1st:

Still the mere sight of helmets in the mid-town tunnel Makes me shudder, And want to cry:

All:

Why aren't all helmets in the whole wide world Working on tunnels or bridges in peace ?

2nd:

Those are the places for hats of steel!

2nd, 3rd: Why do they wear them in fields of corn?

[10]

^ ^4th 5th All:

}Th a t '•

s n0

place for hats of steel!

gleaming in subways or tunnels in peace •

Those are the places where hats of steel Shine out best, with silver that's real. Those are the places where hats of steel Shine out best, with silver that's real!

[11]

FOOTBALL

ON THE

RADIO

(A Pre-War Fantasy In Mass Chant Form) Voice: All:

F-O-O-T-B-A-L-L F-O-O-T-B-A-L-L (A locomotive cheer, accelerating) F-O-O-T-B-A-L-L Football! Football! Football!

1st:

On the radio, On the air, On the ether waves . . .

All:

There's mania on the ether waves And violence on the air.

2nd, 3rd: There's chaos at the stadium As the wild bands blare. 3rd:

Football's on the radio!

4th:

Drop everything!

5th:

The game's on the radio!

All:

Football is king!

1st:

Gridiron marauders and pigskin killers, Punching a gap through a wall of red sweaters, Shoulder-padded raiders slugging on the green, Pounding for a yard neither side will ever use.

All:

Batter down the backs, boys! Drive for the mark! Make the stands roar! Make the radios bark!

1st:

Oh radio, gift of science, Is this how you fulfill your promise ?

3rd:

The promise of wonderful waves of understanding, That could bathe all of mankind In the light of tolerance,

[12]

1st:

And could wash out all the dirty corners of superstition

3rd:

And of ignorance

All:

In the far, far corners of the earth.

2nd:

Bathed us in the light of tolerance,

3rd:

Washed us in the waves of understanding.

1st:

Oh radio, have you failed us utterly? Is football and such warlike stuff The proud fulfillment of your promise?

2nd:

Go slow! It hasn't really failed us: The world is closer than ever today, Capitol cities an evening apart; The radio has given the world A single brain and a single heart.

1st:

Yet with what create that brain and heart? With cheers for fight and bloodlust calls ?

2nd:

What's wrong with cheers for fight and bloodlust calls?

1st:

A war is coming next year they say, And what does football do to stop it?

3rd:

Hitler hounds the Jews again!

All:

Yaye Team!

4th:

Japs defeat Chinese again!

All:

Yaye Team!

5th:

A million Spanish children starve

6th:

While Rome and Berlin calmly carve.

All:

Yaye Team!

8th:

Yaye Team.

2nd:

Yaye Team.

1st:

Football on the radio, Do you ape the spirit of war ? [13]

3rd:

Once men fought with personal feud, If love were jealous or manners rude,

All:

But as football's work is slowly done, Is it teaching the millions to hate as one ?

1st:

On a Saturday, On a Sunday, On a holiday, As we sit philosophic at home, Reading of undeclared wars and opium rings, Of job-hunting masses and market-hunting kings,

3rd:

Of impotent potentates with mercenary dreams,

4th:

Of far-sighted psychopaths with dictator schemes,

1st:

As we sit — there storms through neighborly walls The gift of the century — from science's halls.

All:

The radio with football, Escape of the times!

3rd:

Boasting a public In limited climes!

1st:

There's passion on the ether waves, There's violence on the air.

3rd:

The lid's off at the stadium!

4th:

Hear the bands blare!

All:

The lid's off at the stadium ! Hear the bands blare !

1st:

That's the stuff that feeds a war-scare.

3rd:

That's the stuff all right, That would make the Germans want to fight.

1st:

We'll ask you straight now, Football on the radio, When you make our millions roar, Does that drain off our need for war ? [14]

3rd:

Franco uses Moors again.

All:

Hold that line!

4th:

Benito plots with Chamberlain.

All:

Hold that line!

5th:

The Fascist Axis grinds its ax,

6th:

While France and England turn their backs.

7 th:

Hold!

8th:

That!

3rd:

Line!

1st:

Football on the radio, Are your wars with forward passes Supplanting wars with bombs and gasses?

3rd:

When the stands are barking murder,

4th:

When the throats are filled with lust,

All:

Touchdown! Touchdown! Goal or bust!

1st:

When a million frenzied fans give vent How many killings does that prevent?

All:

When a million frenzied fans give vent How many killings does that prevent?

2nd:

I will answer: In football, the sides are matched in might.

All:

Why do they foully strangle Spain?

2nd:

In football, all men fight with equal right.

All:

Why do they still let China bleed?

2nd:

In football, the rules demand fair fight.

All:

Austrians, Czechs — The French may be next! [15]

2nd:

Spirit of Football, Spirit of Sport, You in the bleachers who love fair play, Make them do it the American way.

4th:

Kick out the ringers

5th:

And cry: "It's a frame!"

All:

Boo the appeasers of the fascist game!

2nd:

Business lays off men again.

All:

Fight! Fight! Fight!

2nd:

The Kluxers kick up hate again.

All:

Fight! Fight! Fight!

4th:

Ten million families in a rut

5th:

While Smear Committees bask in smut —

All:

Fight! Fight! Fight!

1st:

Spirit of Football, Spirit of Sport, You in the bleachers who love fair play, You at your radios who love fair play, What are you doing to outlaw war ?

All:

What are you doing to outlaw war ?

2nd:

We're not stirring hatred Of races and creeds,

4th:

We're not starving masses For the Fuehrer's needs,

2nd:

We're breeding a spirit of fairness in man.

All:

Why do they foully strangle Spain ?

2nd:

We're teaching a love for the rights of man.

All:

Why can't we all have jobs again ?

4th, 5th:

We'll kick out the ringers And cry, "It's a frame!" [16]

6th, 7th: Boo the appeasers of the fascist game. 2nd:

For the love of Peace is not dead in the world Despite the fascist war-might, And as long as there's sport and fair-play in the world, The future can be bright.

All:

For the love of Peace is not dead in the world Despite the fascist war-might, And as long as there's sport and fair-play in the world, The future can be bright!

[17]

II

IN A PERSONAL VEIN

SPANISH

MOON,

1938

There is a full spring moon tonight, My dear, let us take to cover. Let us hide in cellars and air-raid holes, This is no night for love, my lover. The moon? It is an ugly thing; The poets have lied for years; Tear up all the moon-struck verses, Laugh at their lunar tears. That thing can be no moon of beauty, Consorting and trading with death. The moon's a depraved informer, The steam of bombs on its breath. As Guernica gasped, it watched us, Its face perverted with gold, The moonlight was murderous laughter, Its face was bargain cold. That moon is a monster searchlight, The engine of pitiless brains, The moon's as grisly as bombers — How lovely the night when it rains!

[21]

TO CHILDHOOD I must be hiding mysteries in my heart, That never speak to me nor softly stir, And must have stolen in with silent whir, While wonder held my child's flood-gates apart. They're locked in chambers recondite of sleep, At ends of endless corridors and gloom, Yet I know they're there: for when through the loom Of night the sun's deft shuttle starts to creep With golden thread, as slowly I awake, Shades of sadness seeping through pervious walls Of slumber, wander in the ghostly halls Of memory. In faint hands my head they take, Hinting of beauties vague and long forgot, Recall what still is I, and yet is not.

[22]

SCIENTIFIC

LOVE

Calm, you say, Darling ? Tranquil you'd have me be ? As steadfast, yes, as Keats's star? As rooted as a tree ? Oh I am merely a mixture of air, A current of waters and sky; Within me fierce phagocytes cluster; Their motion is I. My love is merely a tincture of light, A glistening wheel of blood, That glories the faster for being near Your all-disturbing flood. My hate is only atomic fire When aeons go insane ; A splitting of monads in the night; Their clashing is my pain. Oh we are events, my Darling, Changing we'll always be; Conventions of seething elements, Nicknamed You and Me.

[23]

THREE

KISSES 1.

First Kiss You imbrue upon my lips the stain of sweet sin, Reluctant rose, burgeoning red Under the poisonous unseen ray That emanates from me, invisible as my experience. Yet how beautiful that kiss! That red scintilla in the black vase of night, That brief bud of feeling on the waste-land of the year, Grown beautiful in that unnatural light. 2.

Another, Later It is quiet here, and my head Lies pillowed on soft doubtings. About me are the writhing heads Of other girls, on veined necks. I am the father; they, my daughters. They moan for me in tantrum tones. Your face is there too, and I turn to you now, Committing today in peace, what yesterday was sin. 3The Ultimate The quiet has deepened into peace. Kisses have residence no more on lips alone, But outline warmly through the being. Then, bodiless, your very presence becomes a kiss, An accolade in the gaunt night laid Upon the midnight brow of loneliness.

[24]

Ill

DESPATCHES FROM LOYALIST SPAIN

1. AIR ATTACK Oh Spain! the castles of your storyhood Are winged over by a storm of darkling birds, Who drop their deathly eggs on your red-dripping towers; Bewitched eggs that hatch lightning and uproar! High fly these speed-thin, sun-charred birds Whose eggs produce no young, Whose eggs bring forth no image of their parents, But spurning life, commit spontaneous suicide Before they're born. How can this race survive That jettisons creation?

[27]

2.

ROAD RAKED BY FIRE Only a gun-raked road remains: A raking that leaves more dirt than before, A rake that drops sprawling dead things from its prongs, A rake that does not deign to stack things neatly in a heap For a grief-shocked farmer to gather to his barn.

[28]

3. AMBULANCE

ESCAPES

ARTILLERY

A mud-drunk ambulance staggers through the muck, Sounding no siren, daring no danger lights. A careening drunk on a caution-jag, Walking stiffly through the night. A fear-ridden celebrant, trying to reel home Along a straight line of imagined safety In the muddled darkness . . . "Sh! Sh! The wife might hear us, And fling the parlor vases at us!"

[29]

4. DIRECT HIT Scrambling for holes within the earth Like ants upon some eerie instance of disaster, Pedestrians at Pozoblanco scatter, Bend, burrow, cringe in doorways, Crouch from an unseen screeching thing. For one clipped moment, death is on its way, Driving before it the screaming air, a high-pitched female sentinel Whose wild-haired shrieking leads the killer Right to those her unkeyed voice would warn. T h e air's treble stops: "We're next!" men cry, and squint all over. T h e moment stretches, widens, yawns! "What's happened! The shell has hit! But still no sound!" Back to life the crouching statues in the street come, slowly. Timid, they crowd, all unbelieving, round the unexploded shell. "Stand back! Stand back! It may not be a dud!" They gasp away — reliving their recent death. But someone bolder than the rest, pries up the ugly nose Plowed deeply in the ground. " W h y didn't we die?" Can fascination of death so nearly missed Exceed desire for life so newly won P The shell is opened! A shout goes up! "Sawdust! Sawdust! That is all!" Into the belly of the shell they reach for handfuls; Stick the sawdust in their ears and mouths; Stuff it in their pants and shirts like gold; Kiss it dearly, eat it madly like manna; Wallow in it like parched cows in puddles. Then someone pulls a paper from the heap! And reads aloud the joyous scrawl upon it: " T h i s shell will not explode!' — A Workingman In Germany."

[30]

5. CASUALTY LIST IN ROME A democratic death list was just posted in Rome: Two hundred privates and a general's name mixed in, A general's name without his rank affixed, Plainly fraternizing in the same plebeian print With lesser dead left at Guadalahara, Spain. A crowd with strange enjoyment, cliques about the list, Enjoys for once a meeting where attendance isn't forced; (A sweet by-product of bitter grief) And weirdly wondering, someone asks: "How come the general was away from Rome?" And someone else who spies a dearer name: "Look!... My son was not in Africa! That's where they said he'd go! Why did he die this horrid death in Spain ?" The general, hidden in that democratic list, Printed in the same-sized type, buried in the same-sized grave, Might have answered coolly with tactician's skill: "Death is being in the wrong place at the right time." But a private, seeing him on that democratic list, Surrounded by the rank and file of men, Might have differed grimly with the words: "Death is being in the right place at the wrong time!"

[31]

6. KILLED IN ACTION:

AN EPITAPH

IN

MUD

Last night in a cool moonlit lull, that made this war irrelevant, He mounted the blood-toasted firing step, And poked out — with a thin covering of steel helmet around it — That mass of subtle adjustments, his head. Out toward the brutal Moors and the foul fascists he poked it With repugnance. How precious and exposed those innumerable tiny structures Webbed of bodiless filament Under the helmet — I thought. The finished marvels he had worked with care, Through dear long years of boyhood, cajoling and convolving gray matter: Tenuous little bridges, teacher called "attitudes": Love of honesty and rosy cheeks, Hatred of thieves and dirty hands; Delicate little equations, nervously poised: Life plus freedom, minus security, equals slavery; Brains plus power, minus feeling, equals mechanism; Her eyes and his smile and her eyes again . . . Finely induced patterns and functions, Beautiful and concatenated; Dutiful self-assembling webs and networks: Figurations of reading, swimming, orating, devising, comparing of objects; All ready for use — still dispensable from myriad tiny distributing houses, Now — under the helmet, quiescent, potential, the finished marvels, Staring into the Nazi nozzles of gross blunder-fingered batteries And blind-bat flying squadrons—! What reck they of peace-time patterns or useful pursuits? Last night his mass of subtle adjustments was in a field — and B A N G !

[32]

IV

MORE SIGNS OF THE TIMES

THE SEASON'S GREETINGS;

BERLIN 1934*

{Suggested by an entry in Ambassador Dodd's

Diary)

That's what the Fuehrer said: "Be kind to birds and animals," Adolph Hitler said, "For Jews, the concentration camp, For Poles, the labor yoke; For democrats who speak their minds, Castration is a poignant joke. But animals are meek and dumb," Adolph Hitler said, "Keep them clean and fat and healthy, (Man's mute and loyal friends) Horses yearn for love and kindness, Dogs are sensitive to care, Even cats resent your blindness When you overlook their fare. Treat them right and they'll respond." That's what Hitler said. What a joy to see dogs drinking, Patted, fatted, sleek and free, While citizens go piqued and shrinking, Fed on fear like you and me! "Prize the animals within our midst." Adolph Hitler said, "Glorify the beasts among us," Adolph Hitler said. Oh, isn't it a touching sight To see the feathered, furry breed Tended tenderly within the zoo . .. Dear Friend, how I wish that chimpanzee were you! * Ambassador Dodd's Diary, P. 140, Aug. 5, 1934

[35}

THE TRAFFIC WAS TERRIFIC 1. Oh the traffic is terrific on lower Broadway, The taxicabs throb like cans in a crate. "Them lights never change. Toin green. Toin green." The taxicabs leap. "Say driver, I'm late." Trucks with defense orders belly-rumble on, Like pachyderms harnessed in vibrating belts. Trolleys complaining still to their tracks, Jammed in a puzzle of passenger cars. The taximeters tick in a merry monotone, "Who cares if it's crowded! Who cares if it's jammed! I'm paid for my stalling; Tie me up and be damned!" Oh the traffic is terrific And nerves in high gear, "Who kisses my bumper Gets knocked on his ear!" 2.

The streets in Dakota have only one side, The towns lie asleep under blankets of sun. "Them lights never change. They're poiminent green." Imagine a light at a cattle run! The Conoco sign has a trio of birds, Sitting to captain an ocean of sage. "Kadoka, Dakota" the county sign reads, And its paint peels slowly, sleepy with age. The traffic jam flaps on top of the sign: "Who cares for a car! The whole prairie's a street. Pull up a spell, stranger; 'Taint often we'd meet." [36]

Oh the prairie is peaceful And nerves in low gear, "If I gits a flat-tire, I'll fix it nex' year."

[37]

THE WAR AND THE CATERPILLAR Tractor-like, by six-inch miles - W h i l e plaid leaves fall around— River-like and machinal, Perusing ponderously the ground Of a brittle twig. Solemn like a suicide, _ A moment more to pauseJealous of the ritual, Swing down! down! without a cause, Hanging from your stem. Headfirst down, the pattern spreads, The toil vast rhythm takes: Tortuously the entrails work Their downward way with downward quakes Into your small head. Ritually sure they work; The calm convulsions pack Murderously your fluid frame With singing cylinders that crack The bark of your skin. Smokeless fire and flesh compressed Within your hermit's cell; Cosmos hauling back its thread; You weave a joyous deathsome spell About your own tomb. Mystic as an atom's death, That rims the heart of things, Building your unconscious womb, Unconcerned with spring — or wings, With no fear of doom.

[38]

Brutal as this birth through death, The world contorts in war; But writhing out of darkness now, Our sightless earth may not ignore The future's pledge.

[39]

THE CENTURY

OF PROGRESS FAIR:

CHICAGO,

1933

1. The Speech-Scrambler Yes, I liked the Fair, Gear-shifting, gadget-spangled, wheel-entangled. A Century of Progress teaches us to backward talk, Like James Joyce transAtlantic telefuddling it in reverse English, On the Westinghouse speech-scrambler unit: Coney . . . Yenoc; See, it comes out backwards ? Coney . . . Yenoc; Brooklyn . . . Nylkoorb; Brooklyn . . . Nylkoorb; Edison, Ford . . . Drof, Noside. Brightly painted Coney Island all Edisoned up with a billion bulbs At James Watt-price-glory? Coney Island and Isaac Newton synchronized And speech-scrambling micro-continuous crowds. On the eternal mid-way: Silent-meshed Hoolas electro-magnetting thousands per. Let's go see nasty naked breasted Streets of Mid-West Paris . . . "Fake!" Yenoc, Yenoc! Drof, Noside, Nylkoorb! And how about that loud digesting, chromium-plated brontosaur That spews forth finished rubber Tirestones at that end ? It's a futuristic picture of a prehistoric primate. What the hell's it wheel-based on ? . . . Guy that made it went nuts and bolted. I liked the Fair I tell you, But oh, a century of men's toilet inhibitions From walking round with nothing new invented in this field! And my arches falling, falling, And my bladder calling, calling; In the last psycho-analysis, the infantry's got to gain your ground. Were I not against Coolie labor, I would grab myself [40]

One of these ginrickshaws . . . the oriental touch, Just the thing to contrast with Ford down here, With such nice unsweat-shopped college laddies For to show to box-voice populi, Rickpulling their way through college, Broad-sweatered and varsity-lettered from A to Z . . . Instead of Chinks. Get it? Law of Association: MerchandiSEX-4, Winter session, Ohio State; Like when you hear the voice on the Coffee Hour—so free from rancid oils. Catch them mentioning the Coolies that man their factories back home! No, one mustn't think of the slaves who pyramided Or who built those new-fangled splendedifices, asymmetric-wangled, Varied as tangential conversation, Or those modernistic glass and ultraviolet-drinking houses, Those air-conditioned, unhydraFOBia'd homes, With roofs alive to atmostratospheric pressure. God bless our techni-cultured homes, and us within, all indirectly lit, And bathed in glass-brick fountain arabesques, spray-gunned with coal-tar mauves, magentas; And mirrors perfume-pigmented with methyl cellulose, and sand-blast patterned with an air-brush; While all about the synthoid palace: Inkstand jewels of karolith, Beauty-rest gems of amerith, And volumes clasped with durez. Yenoc, Yenoc! Drof, Noside, Nylkoorb! 2.

Transportation But say, I liked those broad-fed, milk-canned farm girls Sent in to breasten orange-stands; And that neolithographic sabre-tooth that trade-markets with ethyl oil. [41]

Oh the fulsome fugue of advertising copy-cats! Listen to its nauseating surge and dirge, regurgitating ever higher, ever liar! " 9 0 million years we've saved this oil, Mellowing it, celloing it, hallowing it, Just for your car. Just for your car." Thoughtful of them, wasn't it? Let's 25 cents each for Transportation Building's Marriagebed-of-coal between Old and New, And see a harem of flaxen-haired looms dervish-dance, And silver-haired radios, And herbivorous presses, The new eugenic babies, The new cross-bred, plastic-eyed progeny Of this fast-conceiving century! Now, y' see, the Fords and Morgans were repentant For having incest inbred Man with Man and Thing with Thing, And Fords and Morgans were atone-bent, And they betook unto themselves automatic milking machines, And they half-breed begat: largest Railroad Systems of iron, And Rhythms with nerves of copper wire, And golden-eyed Methods, and lascivious, redbloodgreedy-lipped Krupporations — with obscenely gunpowdered noses. So now the world is populated with planetararities, chemibiographies, horticalamities, metallurgencies. Marvelous the speed that laboratoreador perchloroformed that poor creature! "Carmen" in the test-tubes. Would he react if I said: "Chronophobilious, zeitgeisted age, Sir. All the parking space for one nickotine of Time is Money." "Take it easy, Joel, you'll weltbeschmerz your life. No use in monkey-wrenching the machine, you know. Sadism is the process Neanderthal, The process gainful, patented, and folderol.

[42]

I worship Science the same as you." Ut-shup, Chase Stuart! Exhibits . . . Tehixbi ! Yenoc, Yenoc! Drof, Noside, Nylkoorb! Goddammitt yes, I liked the Fair. Matter-mangled, nerve-enjangled, The micro-macrocosmic, macro-microcosmic Fair, With its televisioned stigmatism: surveying from sky-cars and blind to poverty; _"See that atomic war within that window? Why doesn't somebody stop it?"_ Rising in airships and rooted in greed; With its Eyes Invisible and Electric Ears, Looking and listening for one-man orchestras that blend the multifararious parts Of Chevrolets, Cadillacs and Buicks, The gorgeous tinpannies and polysymphannies of fenders, horns and plates of glass unbreakable, Of singing pistons, warbling cylinders, And Moaning Becomes Electric Dynamos unbearable! Hibitex, Hibitin! Yenoc, Yenoc! Drof, Noside, Nylkoorb! Drof, Noside, Nylkoorb!

[43]

V WRITTEN IN NO PARTICULAR

YEAR

ON

HANDICRAFT

The swirl of faultless tracings on an urn Born in the bloodless womb of man's machine Is the beauty of pistons whirling clean And timeless. I can hear the steam valves churn. But in the flaw upon the Grecian vase, I see the ancient workman's hands still skip A beat, and the human fibres still grip The erring tool — beneath his baffled gaze. I, in this priceless imperfection, feel My heritage of frailty in his hands. Trembling through time, in my pulses he stands In mute dismay before his broken wheel, In that living moment when the mortal move Defaced the vast vision towards which he strove.

[47]

IN A SKEPTICAL MOOD This is a make-shift world, made in a trice, Constructed in half-time when God was tired. He left the rivets loose, just tapped them twice, Postponed the testing 'til he felt inspired. It was a sketchy job, and if man claims He is God's image, it's a cubist work, Depending for its interest on its aims; Of no intrinsic worth unless there lurk A cartoon motif of Himself, to lend A half-creative urge a vent in fun, By satirizing His creative trend, That in full vigor made the mighty sun, But in the comic and half-hearted vein, Made man — and left the painting in the rain.

[48]

TORNADO The bald-headed eagle first saw it From his nest of twigs by the side of the sky. Far off it was then, Like Hell wrapped into a long paper bag — Packed in for a trip to earth. As a long paper bag it came spinning 'Round through the air, And the demons within Sang wild as it spun, Singing and spinning An ominous chant Over the silence. Like a flowing crepe it hung Over the fields of gawky corn-stalks: Ungainly adolescent boys, soon to be slain. Then the buzz of a bumble-bee Mad and lodged in the ear! A tree-trunk totters... There just above the canyon it whirled: A witch's seething cauldron in the air, All smoked about with venom; With blasphemous sights and unexpected crimes Leaking out the porous boiling sides And flying into space, With space itself exploding . . . No one knew from whence the terror came Nor where it faded in the night, Still chanting like a distant dervish chorus, As it found the terrified horizon; But it was gone When the morning sun stared at the facts Unflinchingly . . . Gone . . . untraceable as hate that's turned to love. [49]