In the legs and torsos
That men hug, frightened, or with glee.
He said: “Criticism in Mars
Resembles your hours of sleep.
Each night we leave creation;
Greet the steeply slanting beds;
And turn our large eyes inward
To a complicated cabaret:
Cabaret filled with relieving jigs;
Cabaret crammed with irascible magicians
Who persist in spoiling their little tricks
By proclaiming the honesty of their intentions;
Cabaret in which malice,
Dignified or torrential,
Turns creators into beetles
And slays them ingeniously;
Cabaret in which Erudition,
Tempted by emotional coquettes,
Swaggers greyly past the footlights;
Cabaret in which Lust
Defends itself with thoughtful monologues,
Stopping to expectorate
Into metaphysical cuspidors;
Cabaret in which the mind
Scorns the morphine of emotion
Until, exhausted, it is forced
Secretly to indulge in the drug;
Cabaret of toothless bickerings
That lisp like market-women
At an ancient Fair;
Cabaret in which Tolerance and Indifference
Sit on the floor below the banquet-table
And wait for crumbs that accidentally
Slip from the over-full plates;
Cabaret in which Logic
Swallows the whiskey of dogmas,
Reels to the little bed-chamber,
And gradually falls asleep;
Cabaret in which qualities,
Enlarged and beribboned, engage
In arguments with smaller qualities,
Each longing for the other’s size.”
Torban paused, and his smile,
A thread of quicksilver bettering his face,
Encouraged the purpose of my voice.
I said: “The cabaret that you describe
Reminds me of criticism on earth.”
He answered: “One difference exists.
We go to sleep before we criticize—
An excellent antidote for truth and lies!”