  I O local mannerisms, Coarsely woven cloaks Thrown upon the plodding, Emaciated days within this village, I have no contempt or praise To give you—no desire To rip you off, discovering Skin, and undulations known as sin, And no desire to revise you With glamorous endearments of rhyme. Slowly purchased garments Of cowardice, men wear you And aid their practised shrinking From one faint irritation Escaping nightly from their souls. Night makes men uncertain— The mystery of a curtain Different from those that hang in windows. At night the confidence of flesh Becomes less strong and men Are forced to rescue it With desperate hilarities. Observe them now within the bland Refuge of manufactured light. Between the counters of a village store They arm their flesh with feigned Convictions brought by laughter. Afterwards, as they roll along The dark roads leading to their farms, The grumbling of their souls will compete With the neighing of horses Night will lean upon them, Teasing the sturdiness of flesh. II The body of Jacob Higgins— Belated minstrel—sings and dances On the edge of the cliff. Once fiendish and accurate, His greed has now become Frivolous and unskillful, Visualizing Death as a new Mistress who must be received with lighter manners. Preparing for her coming He buys “five cents wuth of candy” For a grandchild, and with a generous cackle Tackles a chair beside the stove. Another old man, like a blurred Report of winter, seizes The firmer meaning of a joke About the Ree-publican partee. Jacob, using one high laugh, Preens himself for celestial dallying. Old men in American villages laugh To groom the mean, untidy habits Of their past existences. (They lack the stolid frankness Of European peasants.) Behind a wire lattice Bob Wentworth separates the mail With the guise of one intent On guessing the contents of a novel. Forty years have massed Exhausted lies within him, And to ease the weight he builds In the fifty people whom he knows. Agnes Holliday receives her letter With that erect, affected Indifference employed by village girls. The words of a distant lover Rouse the shallow somnambulist Of her heart, and it stares Reproachfully at an empty bed. Oh, she had forgotten: Sugar, corn, and loaves of bread. The famished alertness of her reading Curtsies to a cheap and orderly Trance known to her mind as life. Then an anxious, skittish youth Behind the counter invites her To the weekly dance at Parkertown. Concrete pleasures drive their boots Against the puny, fruitless dream ... And, Thomas Ainsley, they have given you Chained tricks for your legs and arms, And peevish lulls that play with women’s feet. You stroke the paper of your letter— An incantation to the absent figure. The night upon a country-road Is waiting to pounce upon The narrow games of these people. The power of incomprehensible sounds Will cleave their breasts and join The smothered gossip of trees, And every man will lengthen his steps And crave the narcotic safety of home. Fear is only the frantic Annoyance of a soul, Misinterpreted by flesh. |
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