The People, Yes Page 2

  He was cold, sure, and what they call elevated.

  Meaning it was justice and not personal malice

  Handing out stiff death with regards, compliments,

  Calling each number like Nemesis in knickerbockers.

  The show he put on was a little too good.

  He was a lone wolf all on his own.

  And Jesse James beat his record.

  And John Brown was a far more profound sketch,

  John Brown who was locked up and didn’t stay locked,

  John Brown who was buried deep and didn’t stay so.

  In a Colorado graveyard

  two men lie in one grave.

  They shot it out in a jam over who owned

  One corner lot: over a piece of real estate

  They shot it out: it was a perfect dud.

  Each cleansed the world of the other.

  Each horizontal in an identical grave

  Had his bones cleaned by the same maggots.

  They sleep now as two accommodating neighbors.

  They had speed and no control.

  They wanted to go and didn’t know where.

  “Revenge takes time and is a lot of bother,”

  said a released convict who by the code

  of Monte Cristo should have shot twelve

  jurymen and hanged one judge and crucified

  one prosecuting attorney and hung by

  thumbs two police officers and four

  prominent citizens.

  “In my case,” he added, “it pays to have a

  good forgettery.”

  7

  Neither wife nor child had Mr. Eastman and the manner of his death was peculiar.

  Around a fireplace in his home one night he entertained eight old friends, saying to one woman at the door at eleven o’clock, “I’m leaving you,” she rejoining, “No, I’m leaving you.”

  But Mr. Eastman, the kodak king of exactly how many millions he wasn’t sure, knew better as to whether he was leaving her or she him.

  After a good night of sleep and breakfast he met two lawyers and a secretary, rearranging codicils in his will And when they lingered and delayed about going, he said, “You must be going, I have some writing to do,”

  And they had a feeling, “Well, this is one of Mr. Eastman’s jokes, he has always had his odd pleasantries.”

  And again Mr. Eastman knew better than they that there was a little writing to be done and nobody else could do it for him.

  They went—and Mr. Eastman stepped into a bathroom, took his reliable fountain pen and scribbled on a sheet of paper:

  “My work is finished. Why wait?”

  He had counted the years one by one up to seventy-seven, had come through one paralytic stroke, had seen one lifelong friend reduced by a series of strokes to childish play at papercutting four years in bed and the integrity of the mind gone.

  He had a guess deep in his heart that if he lived he might change his will; he could name cases; as the will now stood it was a keen dispersal for science, music, research, and with a changing mind he might change his will.

  Cool he was about what he was doing for he had thought about it along the slopes of the Genesee Valley of New York and along the coasts of Africa and amid babbling apes of the jungle.

  He inspects in the bath-room an automatic revolver, a weapon tested and trusted, loaded, oiled, operating.

  He takes a towel and wets it, placing it over the heart, the idea being that in case he shoots himself there will be no soot nor splatter and a clean piece of workmanship.

  His preparations are considered and thorough and he knows the credit for the deed can never possibly go to anyone but himself.

  Then he steps out, the hammer falls, he crosses over, takes the last barrier.

  He knows thereafter no console organist will call of a morning to play Bach or Handel while he eats breakfast.

  His last testament stands secure against the childishness of second childhood.

  8

  Mildred Klinghofer whirled through youth in bloom.

  One baby came and was taken away, another came and was taken away.

  From her windows she saw the cornrows young and green

  And later the final stand of the corn and the huddled shocks

  And the blue mist of a winter thaw deepening at evening.

  In her middle forties her first husband died.

  In her middle sixties her second husband died.

  In her middle seventies her third husband died.

  And she died at mid-eighty with her fourth husband at the bedside.

  Thus she had known an editor, a lawyer, a grocer, a retired farmer.

  To the first of them she had borne two children she had hungered for.

  And deep in her had stayed a child hunger.

  In the last hours when her mind wandered, she cried imperiously, “My baby! give me my baby!”

  And her cries for this child, born of her mind, in her final moments of life, went on and on.

  When they answered, “Your baby isn’t here” or “Your baby is coming soon if you will wait,” she kept on with her cry,

  “My baby! let me hold my baby!”

  And they made a rag doll

  And laid it in her arms

  And she clutched it as a mother would.

  And she was satisfied and her second childhood ended like her first, with a doll in her arms.

  There are dreams stronger than death.

  Men and women die holding these dreams.

  Yes, “stronger than death”: let the hammers beat on this slogan.

  Let the sea wash its salt against it and the blizzards drive wind and winter at it.

  Let the undersea sharks try to break this bronze murmur.

  Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder.

  Blame the frustrate? Some of them have lived stronger than death.

  Blame only the smug and scrupulous beyond reproach.

  Who made the guess Shakespeare died saying his best plays didn’t get written?

  Who swindles himself more deeply than the one saying, “I am holier than thou”?

  “I love you,”

  said a great mother.

  “I love you for what you are

  knowing so well what you are.

  And I love you more yet, child,

  deeper yet than ever, child,

  for what you are going to be,

  knowing so well you are going far,

  knowing your great works are ahead,

  ahead and beyond,

  yonder and far over yet.”

  9

  A father sees a son nearing manhood.

  What shall he tell that son?

  “Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.”

  And this might stand him for the storms

  and serve him for humdrum and monotony

  and guide him amid sudden betrayals

  and tighten him for slack moments.

  “Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.”

  And this too might serve him.

  Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.

  The growth of a frail flower in a path up

  has sometimes shattered and split a rock.

  A tough will counts. So does desire.

  So does a rich soft wanting.

  Without rich wanting nothing arrives.

  Tell him too much money has killed men

  and left them dead years before burial:

  the quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs

  has twisted good enough men

  sometimes into dry thwarted worms.

  Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.

  Tell him to be a fool every so often

  and to have no shame over having been a fool

  yet learning something out of every folly

  hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies

  thus arriving at intimate understanding

  of a world numbe
ring many fools.

  Tell him to be alone often and get at himself

  and above all tell himself no lies about himself

  whatever the white lies and protective fronts

  he may use amongst other people.

  Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong

  and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.

  Tell him to be different from other people

  if it comes natural and easy being different.

  Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.

  Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural.

  Then he may understand Shakespeare

  and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,

  Michael Faraday and free imaginations

  bringing changes into a world resenting change.

  He will be lonely enough

  to have time for the work

  he knows as his own.

  10

  The Australian mounted infantryman now teaches

  in a western state college.

  Once he studied at the University of Heidelberg

  and took a doctor’s degree.

  Once he slept on newspapers, pink sheets, three

  weeks in Grant Park, Chicago

  Keeping a tight hold on his certificate awarded

  by the University of Heidelberg.

  Once he lived six weeks in a tent looking in the

  face the Great Sphinx of Egypt.

  Once of a morning shaving he happened to ask the

  battered and worndown Sphinx,

  “What would you say if I should ask you to tell

  me something worth telling?”

  And the Sphinx broke its long silence:

  “Don’t expect too much.”

  11

  An Englishman in the old days

  presented the Empress of Russia

  with a life-sized flea made of gold

  and it could hop.

  She asked the court:

  “What can we Russians do

  to equal this marvel?”

  A Minister took it away

  and brought it back soon after.

  He had seen to it

  and had the monogram of the Empress

  engraved on each foot of the ilea

  though it would no longer hop.

  This is a case in point

  as told by Salzman

  who came from the Caucasus

  and had it from a man who was there.

  In Tiflis, his home town,

  Salzman knew a merchant

  who stood in the front door

  and spoke to passersby,

  to possible customers:

  “Come inside.

  We’ve got everything—

  even bird’s milk.”

  And this merchant weighed his hand

  along with what he sold his patrons

  and each evening after business hours

  he threw holy water on his hand

  saying, “Cleanse thyself, cleanse thyself.”

  Among the peasants Salzman heard:

  “He should be the owner of the land

  who rubs it between his hands every spring.”

  Wood rangers in the forest of the czar

  came in and talked all night.

  They spoke of forest sounds:

  “The cry of a virgin tree at its first cut

  of the ax stays in the air.

  “The sound of the blow that kills a snake

  is in the air till sundown.

  “The cry of the child wrongfully punished

  stays in the air.”

  And this was in the old days

  and they are a fine smoke

  a thin smoke.

  The people move

  in a fine thin smoke,

  the people, yes.

  12

  The scaffolding holds the arch in place

  till the keystone is put in to stay.

  Then the scaffolding comes out.

  Then the arch stands strong as all the

  massed pressing parts of the arch

  and loose as any sag or spread

  failing of the builders’ intention, hope.

  “The arch never sleeps.”

  Living in union it holds.

  So long as each piece does its work

  the arch is alive, singing, a restless choral.

  13

  The oatstraw green turns gold turns ashen and

  prepares for snow.

  The earth and the grass hold grand international

  confabulations with the sun.

  Along the Arkansas or the Po grass testifies to

  loam of earth alive yet.

  The rivers of the earth run into the sea, return

  in fog and rain alive yet.

  The shuttlings go on between field and sky and

  keep corn potatoes beans alive yet.

  The Illinois corn leaves spoken to in high winds

  run in sea waves of sun silver.

  Alive yet the spillover of last night’s moonrise

  brought returns of peculiar cash

  a cash of thin air alive yet.

  On the shores of Lake Michigan

  high on a wooden pole, in a box,

  two purple martins had a home

  and taken away down to Martinique

  and let loose, they flew home,

  thousands of miles to be home again.

  And this has lights of wonder

  echo and pace and echo again.

  The birds let out began flying

  north north-by-west north

  till they were back home.

  How their instruments told them

  of ceiling, temperature, air pressure,

  how their control-boards gave them

  reports of fuel, ignition, speeds,

  is out of the record, out.

  Across spaces of sun and cloud,

  in rain and fog, through air pockets,

  wind with them, wind against them,

  stopping for subsistence rations,

  whirling in gust and spiral,

  these people of the air,

  these children of the wind,

  had a sense of where to go and how,

  how to go north north-by-west north,

  till they came to one wooden pole,

  till they were home again.

  And this has lights of wonder

  echo and pace and echo again

  for other children, other people, yes.

  The red ball of the sun in an evening mist

  Or the slow fall of rain on planted fields

  Or the pink sheath of a newborn child

  Or the path of a child’s mouth to a nipple