Louis Simpson

A man walks beside them with a whip that he cracks. The cart they draw is painted with Saracens and Crusaders, fierce eyes and ranks of spears. They are on the steep road that goes up the mountain. Their neat-stepping hoofs appear to be flickering in the sun, raising dust. They are higher than the roofs on which striped gourds and melons lie ripening. They move among the dark green olives that grow on the rocks. they dwindle as they climb ... vanish around a corner and reappear walking on the edge of a precipice. They enter the region of mist and darkness. I think I can see them still: a pair of yoked oxen the color of ivory or smoke, with red tassels, in the gathering dusk.

. . . life which does not give the preference to any other life, of any previous period, which therefore prefers its own existence . . . Ortega y Gasset Neither on horseback nor seated, But like himself, squarely on two feet, The poet of death and lilacs Loafs by the footpath. Even the bronze looks alive Where it is folded like cloth. And he seems friendly. “Where is the Mississippi panorama And the girl who played the piano? Where are you, Walt? The Open Road goes to the used-car lot. “Where is the nation you promised? These houses built of wood sustain Colossal snows, And the light above the street is sick to death. “As for the people—see how they neglect you! Only a poet pauses to read the inscription.” “I am here,” he answered. “It seems you have found me out. Yet did I not warn you that it was Myself I advertised? Were my words not sufficiently plain? I gave no prescriptions, And those who have taken my moods for prophecies Mistake the matter.” Then, vastly amused—“Why do you reproach me? I freely confess I am wholly disreputable. Yet I am happy, because you found me out.” A crocodile in wrinkled metal loafing . . . Then all the realtors, Pickpockets, salesmen and the actors performing Official scenarios, Turned a deaf ear, for they had contracted American dreams. But the man who keeps a store on a lonely road, And the housewife who knows she’s dumb, And the earth, are relieved. All that grave weight of America Cancelled! Like Greece and Rome. The future in ruins! The castles, the prisons, the cathedrals Unbuilding, and roses Blossoming from the stones that are not there . . . The clouds are lifting from the high Sierras, The Bay mists clearing, And the angel in the gate, the flowering plum, Dances like Italy, imagining red.

Vandergast to his neighbors— the grinding of a garage door and hiss of gravel in the driveway. He worked for the insurance company whose talisman is a phoenix rising in flames ...non omnis moriar. From his desk he had a view of the street— translucent raincoats, and umbrellas, fluorescent plate-glass windows. A girl knelt down, arranging underwear on a female dummy— sea waves and, on the gale, Venus, these busy days, poised in her garter belt and stockings. * The next day he saw her eating in the restaurant where he usually ate. Soon they were having lunch together elsewhere. She came from Dallas. This was only a start, she was ambitious, twenty-five and still unmarried. Green eyes with silver spiricles ... red hair ... When he held the car door open her legs were smooth and slender. “I was wondering,” she said, “when you'd get round to it,” and laughed. * Vandergast says he never intended having an affair. And was that what this was? The names that people give to things ... What do definitions and divorce-court proceedings have to do with the breathless reality? O little lamp at the bedside with views of Venice and the Bay of Naples, you understood!Lactona toothbrush and suitcase bought in a hurry, you were the witnesses of the love we made in bed together. Schrafft's Chocolate Cherries, surely you remember when she said she'd be true forever, and, watching “Dark Storm,” we decided there is something to be said, after all, for soap opera, “if it makes people happy.” * The Vandergasts are having some trouble finding a buyer for their house. When I go for a walk with Tippy I pass the unweeded tennis court, the empty garage, windows heavily shuttered. Mrs. Vandergast took the children and went back to her family. And Vandergast moved to New Jersey, where he works for an insurance company whose emblem is the Rock of Gibraltar— the rest of his life laid out with the child-support and alimony payments. As for the girl, she vanished. Was it worth it? Ask Vandergast. You'd have to be Vandergast, looking through his eyes at the house across the street, in Orange, New Jersey. Maybe on wet days umbrellas and raincoats set his heart thudding. Maybe he talks to his pillow, and it whispers, moving red hair. In any case, he will soon be forty.

A siren sang, and Europe turned away From the high castle and the shepherd’s crook. Three caravels went sailing to Cathay On the strange ocean, and the captains shook Their banners out across the Mexique Bay. And in our early days we did the same. Remembering our fathers in their wreck We crossed the sea from Palos where they came And saw, enormous to the little deck, A shore in silence waiting for a name. The treasures of Cathay were never found. In this America, this wilderness Where the axe echoes with a lonely sound, The generations labor to possess And grave by grave we civilize the ground.

A man stood in the laurel tree Adjusting his hands and feet to the boughs. He said, “Today I was breaking stones On a mountain road in Asia, When suddenly I had a vision Of mankind, like grass and flowers, The same over all the earth. We forgave each other; we gave ourselves Wholly over to words. And straightway I was released And sprang through an open gate.” I said, “Into a meadow?” He said, “I am impervious to irony. I thank you for the word ... I am standing in a sunlit meadow. Know that everything your senses reject Springs up in the spiritual world.” I said, “Our scientists have another opinion. They say, you are merely phenomena.” He said, “Over here they will be angels Singing, Holy holy be His Name! And also, it works in reverse. Things which to us in the pure state are mysterious, Are your simplest articles of household use— A chair, a dish, and meaner even than these, The very latest inventions. Machines are the animals of the Americans— Tell me about machines.” I said, “I have suspected The Mixmaster knows more than I do, The air conditioner is the better poet. My right front tire is as bald as Odysseus— How much it must have suffered! Then, as things have a third substance Which is obscure to both our senses, Let there be a perpetual coming and going Between your house and mine.”

Look! From my window there’s a view of city streets where only lives as dry as tortoises can crawl—the Gallapagos of desire. There is the day of Negroes with red hair and the day of insane women on the subway; there is the day of the word Trieste and the night of the blind man with the electric guitar. But I have no profession. Like a spy I read the papers—Situations Wanted. Surely there is a secret which, if I knew it, would change everything! 2 I have the poor man’s nerve-tic, irony. I see through the illusions of the age! The bell tolls, and the hearse advances, and the mourners follow, for my entertainment. I tread the burning pavement, the streets where drunkards stretch like photographs of civil death and trumpets strangle in electric shelves. The mannequins stare at me scornfully. I know they are pretending all day to be in earnest. And can it be that love is an illusion? When darkness falls on the enormous street the air is filled with Eros, whispering. Eyes, mouths, contrive to meet in silence, fearing they may be prevented. 3 O businessmen like ruins, bankers who are Bastilles, widows, sadder than the shores of lakes, then you were happy, when you still could tremble! But all night long my window sheds tears of light. I seek the word. The word is not forthcoming. O syllables of light ... O dark cathedral ...

Swing and sway with Sammy Kaye Everyone at Lake Kearney had a nickname: there was a Bumstead, a Tonto, a Tex, and, from the slogan of a popular orchestra, two sisters, Swing and Sway. Swing jitterbugged, hopping around on the dance floor, working up a sweat. Sway was beautiful. My heart went out to her when she lifted her heavy rack of dishes and passed through the swinging door. She was engaged, to an enlisted man who was stationed at Fort Dix. He came once or twice on weekends to see her. I tried talking to him, but he didn’t answer ... out of stupidity or dislike, I could not tell which. In real life he was a furniture salesman. This was the hero on whom she had chosen to bestow her affections. I told her of my ambition: to write novels conveying the excitement of life ... the main building lit up like a liner on Saturday night; the sound of the band ... clarinet, saxophone, snare drum, piano. He who would know your heart (America) must seek it in your songs. And the contents of your purse ... among Kleenex, aspirin, chewing gum wrappers, combs, et cetera. “Don’t stop,” she said, “I’m listening. Here it is!” flourishing her lighter. * In the afternoon when the dishes were washed and tables wiped, we rowed out on the lake. I read aloud ...The Duino Elegies, while she reclined, one shapely knee up, trailing a hand in the water. She had chestnut-colored hair. Her eyes were changing like the surface with ripples and the shadows of clouds. “Beauty,” I read to her, “is nothing but beginning of Terror we’re still just able to bear.” * She came from Jersey, the industrial wasteland behind which Manhattan suddenly rises. I could visualize the street where she lived, and see her muffled against the cold, in galoshes, trudging to school. Running about in tennis shoes all through the summer ... I could hear the porch swing squeak and see into the parlor. It was divided by a curtain or screen ... “That’s it,” she said, “all but the screen. There isn’t any.” When she or her sister had a boyfriend their mother used to stay in the parlor, pretending to sew, and keeping an eye on them like Fate. At night she would lie awake looking at the sky, spangled over. Her thoughts were as deep and wide as the sky. As time went by she had a feeling of missing out ... that everything was happening somewhere else. Some of the kids she grew up with went crazy ... like a car turning over and over. One of her friends had been beaten by the police. Some vital fluid seemed to have gone out of him. His arms and legs shook. Busted springs. * She said, “When you’re a famous novelist will you write about me?” I promised ... and tried to keep my promise. Recently, looking for a toolbox, I came upon some typewritten pages, all about her. There she is in a canoe ... a gust of wind rustling the leaves along the shore. Playing tennis, running up and down the baseline. Down by the boathouse, listening to the orchestra playing “Sleepy Lagoon.” Then the trouble begins. I can never think of anything to make the characters do. We are still sitting in the moonlight while she finishes her cigarette. Two people go by, talking in low voices. A car door slams. Driving off ... “I suppose we ought to go,” I say. And she says, “Not yet.”

In my grandmother’s house there was always chicken soup And talk of the old country—mud and boards, Poverty, The snow falling down the necks of lovers. Now and then, out of her savings She sent them a dowry. Imagine The rice-powdered faces! And the smell of the bride, like chicken soup. But the Germans killed them. I know it’s in bad taste to say it, But it’s true. The Germans killed them all. * In the ruins of Berchtesgaden A child with yellow hair Ran out of a doorway. A German girl-child— Cuckoo, all skin and bones— Not even enough to make chicken soup. She sat by the stream and smiled. Then as we splashed in the sun She laughed at us. We had killed her mechanical brothers, So we forgave her. * The sun is shining. The shadows of the lovers have disappeared. They are all eyes; they have some demand on me— They want me to be more serious than I want to be. They want me to stick in their mudhole Where no one is elegant. They want me to wear old clothes, They want me to be poor, to sleep in a room with many others— Not to walk in the painted sunshine To a summer house, But to live in the tragic world forever.

On the lawn at the villa— That’s the way to start, eh, reader? We know where we stand—somewhere expensive— You and I imperturbes, as Walt would say, Before the diversions of wealth, you and I engagés. On the lawn at the villa Sat a manufacturer of explosives, His wife from Paris, And a young man named Bruno, And myself, being American, Willing to talk to these malefactors, The manufacturer of explosives, and so on, But somehow superior. By that I mean democratic. It’s complicated, being an American, Having the money and the bad conscience, both at the same time. Perhaps, after all, this is not the right subject for a poem. We were all sitting there paralyzed In the hot Tuscan afternoon, And the bodies of the machine-gun crew were draped over the balcony. So we sat there all afternoon.

My father in the night commanding No Has work to do. Smoke issues from his lips; He reads in silence. The frogs are croaking and the street lamps glow. And then my mother winds the gramophone; The Bride of Lammermoor begins to shriek— Or reads a story— About a prince, a castle, and a dragon. The moon is glittering above the hill. I stand before the gateposts of the King— So runs the story Of Thule, at midnight when the mice are still. And I have been in Thule! It has come true— The journey and the danger of the world, All that there is To bear and to enjoy, endure and do. Landscapes, seascapes ... where have I been led? The names of cities—Paris, Venice, Rome— Held out their arms. A feathered god, seductive, went ahead. Here is my house. Under a red rose tree A child is swinging; another gravely plays. They are not surprised That I am here; they were expecting me. And yet my father sits and reads in silence, My mother sheds a tear, the moon is still, And the dark wind Is murmuring that nothing ever happens. Beyond his jurisdiction as I move Do I not prove him wrong? And yet, it’s true They will not change There, on the stage of terror and of love. The actors in that playhouse always sit In fixed positions—father, mother, child With painted eyes. How sad it is to be a little puppet! Their heads are wooden. And you once pretended To understand them! Shake them as you will, They cannot speak. Do what you will, the comedy is ended. Father, why did you work? Why did you weep, Mother? Was the story so important? “Listen!” the wind Said to the children, and they fell asleep.