Two Poems

MY APISH COUSINS

winked too much and were afraid of snakes. The zebras, supreme in
their abnormality; the elephants with their fog-colored skin
ㅤand strictly practical appendages
ㅤㅤwere there, the small cats and the parrakeet—
ㅤㅤㅤtrivial and humdrum on examination, destroying
ㅤㅤbark and portions of the food it could not eat.

I recall their magnificence, now not more magnificent
ㅤthan it is dim. It is difficult to recall the ornament,
ㅤㅤspeech, and precise manner of what one might
ㅤㅤㅤcall the minor acquaintances twenty
ㅤㅤㅤㅤyears back; but I shall never forget—that Gilgamesh among
ㅤㅤㅤthe hairy carnivora—that cat with the

wedge-shaped, slate-gray marks on its forelegs and the resolute tail,
astringently remarking: “They have imposed on us with their pale,
ㅤhalf fledged protestations, trembling about
ㅤㅤin inarticulate frenzy, saying
ㅤㅤㅤit is not for all of us to understand art, finding it
ㅤall so difficult, examining the thing

as if it were something inconceivably arcanic, as
symmetrically frigid as something carved out of chrysopras
ㅤor marble—strict with tension, malignant
ㅤㅤin its power over us and deeper
ㅤㅤㅤthan the sea when it proffers flattery in exchange for hemp,
ㅤㅤrye, flax, horses, platinum, timber and fur.”



IN THE DAYS OF PRISMATIC COLOR

not in the days of Adam and Eve but when Adam
ㅤwas alone; when there was no smoke and color was
fine, not with the fineness of
ㅤearly civilization art but by virtue
of its originality, with nothing to modify it but the

mist that went up, obliqueness was a varia-
ㅤtion of the perpendicular, plain to see and
to account for: it is no
ㅤlonger that; nor did the blue red yellow band
of incandescence that was color, keep its stripe: it also is one of

those things into which much that is peculiar can be
ㅤread; complexity is not a crime but carry
it to the point of murki-
ㅤness and nothing is plain. A complexity
moreover, that has been committed to darkness, instead of granting it-

self to be the pestilence that it is, moves all a-
ㅤbout as if to bewilder with the dismal
fallacy that insistence
ㅤis the measure of achievement and that all
truth must be dark. Principally throat, sophistication is as it al-

ways has been—at the antipodes from the init-
ㅤial great truths. “Part of it was crawling, part of it
was about to crawl, the rest
ㅤwas torpid in its lair.” In the short legged, fit-
ful advance, the gurgling and all the minutiæ—we have the classic

multitude of feet. To what purpose! Truth is no Apollo
ㅤBelvedere, no formal thing. The wave may go over it if it likes.
Know that it will be there when it says:
ㅤ“I shall be there when the wave has gone by.”

____
From Poems, first published by The Egoist Press, London, 1921.