For The Marriage of Faustus and Helen

White Buildings

“And so we may arrive by Talmud skillAnd profane Greek to raise the building upOf Helen’s house against the Ismaelite,King of Thogarma, and his habergeonsBrimstony, blue and fiery; and the forceOf King Abaddon, and the beast of Cittim;Which Rabbi David Kimchi, Onkelos,And Aben Ezra do interpret Rome. “-THE ALCHEMIST.I

The mind has shown itself at timesToo much the baked and labeled doughDivided by accepted multitudes.Across the stacked partitions of the day-Across the memoranda, baseball scores,The stenographic smiles and stock quotationsSmutty wings flash out equivocations.

The mind is brushed by sparrow wings;Numbers, rebuffed by asphalt, crowdThe margins of the day, accent the curbs,Convoying divers dawns on every’ cornerTo druggist, barber and tobacconist,Until the graduate opacities of eveningTake them away as suddenly to somewhereVirginal perhaps, less fragmentary, cool.There is the world dimensional forthose untwisted by the love of thingsirreconcilable …And yet, suppose some evening I forgotThe fare and transfer, yet got by that wayWithout recall,-lost yet poised in traffic.Then I might find your eyes across an aisle,Still flickering with those prefigurations-Prodigal, yet uncontested now,Half-riant before the jerky window frame.

There is some way, I think, to touchThose hands of yours that count the nightsStippled with pink and green advertisements.And now, before its arteries turn darkI would have you meet this bartered blood.Imminent in his dream, none better knowsThe white wafer cheek of love, or offers wordsLightly as moonlight on the eaves meets snow.

Reflective conversion of all thingsAt your deep blush, when ecstasies threadThe limbs and belly, when rainbows spreadImpinging on the throat and sidesInevitable, the body of the worldWeeps in inventive dust for the hiatusThat winks above it’, bluet in your breasts.

The earth may glide diaphanous to death;But if I lift my arms it is to bendTo you who turned away once, Helen, knowingThe press of troubled hands, too alternateWith steel and soil to hold you endlessly.I meet you, therefore, in that eventual flameYou found in final chains, no captive thenBeyond their million brittle, bloodshot eyes;White, through white cities passed on to assumeThat world which comes to each of us alone.

Accept a lone eye riveted to your plane,Bent axle of devotion along companion waysThat beat, continuous, to hourless days-0ne inconspicuous, glowing orb of praise.

II

Brazen hypnotics glitter here;Glee shifts from foot to foot,Magnetic to their tremulo.This crashing opera bouffe,Blest excursion! this ricochetFrom roof to roof-Know, Olympians, we are breathlessWhile nigger cupids scour the stars!

A thousand light shrugs balance usThrough snarling hails of melody.White shadows slip across the floorSplayed like cards from a loose hand;Rhythmic ellipses lead into cantersUntil somewhere a rooster banters.

Greet naively-yet intrepidlyNew soothings, new amazementsThat cornets introduce at every turn-And you may fall downstairs with meWith perfect grace and equanimity.Or, plaintively scud past shoresWhere, by strange harmonic lawsAll relatives, serene and cool,Sit rocked in patent armchairs.

O, I have known metallic paradisesWhere cuckoos clucked to finchesAbove the deft catastrophes of drums.While titters hailed the groans of deathBeneath gyrating awnings I have seen

The incunabula of the divine grotesque.This music has a reassuring way,

The siren of the ’ springs of guilty song-Let us take her on the incandescent waxStriated with nuances nervositiesThat we are heir to: she is still so young,She cannot frown upon her as she smiles,Dipping here in this cultivated stormAmong slim skaters of the gardened skies.

III

Capped arbiter of beauty in this streetThat narrows -darkly into motor dawn,You, here beside m/e, delicate ambassadorOf intricate slain numbers that ariseIn whispers, naked of steel;religious gunman!Who faithfully, yourself, will fall too soon,And in other ways than as the wind settlesOn the sixteen thrifty bridges of the city:Let us unbind our throats of fear and pity.

We even,Who drove speediest destructionIn corymbulous formations of mechanics,-Who hurried the hill breezes, spouting malicePlangent over meadows, and looked downOn rifts of torn and empty housesLike old women with teeth unjubilantThat waited faintly, briefly and in vain:

We know, eternal gunman, our flesh remembersThe tensile boughs, the nimble blue plateaus,The mounted, yielding cities of the air!

That saddled sky that shook down verticalRepeated play of fire-no hypogeumOf wave or rock was good against one hour.We did not ask for that, but have survived,And will persist to speak again beforeAll stubble streets that have not curvedTo memory, or known the ominous lifted arm

That lowers down the arc of Helen’s browTo saturate with blessing and dismay.

A goose, tobacco and cologne-Three winged and gold-shod prophecies of heaven,The lavish heart shall always have to leavenAnd spread with bells and voices, and atoneThe abating shadows of our conscript dust.

Anchises’ navel, dripping of the sea,-The hands Erasmus dipped in gleaming tides,Gathered the voltage of blown blood and vine;Delve upward for the new and scattered wine,O brother-thief of time, that we recall.Laugh out the meager penance of their daysWho dare not share with us the breath released,The substance drilled and spent beyond repairFor golden, or the shadow of gold hair.

Distinctly praise the years, whose volatileBlamed bleeding hands extend and thresh the heightThe imagination spans beyond despair,Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer.

from White Buildings (1926)