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At Grabermann's denouncing the Retort
As detrimental to the birth of wraiths.
We all avoided criticizing faiths.
The great Starover Blue reviewed the role
Planets had played as landfalls of the soul.
The fate of beasts was pondered. A Chinese
[630] Discanted on the etiquette at teas
With ancestors, and how far up to go.
I tore apart the fantasies of Poe,
And dealt with childhood memories of strange
Nacreous gleams beyond the adults' range.
Among our auditors were a young priest
And an old Communist. Iph could at least
Compete with churches and the party line.
In later years it started to decline:
Buddhism took root. A medium smuggled in
[640] Pale jellies and a floating mandolin.
Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept
All is allowed, into some classes crept;
And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb,
A school of Freudians headed for the tomb.
That tasteless venture helped me in a way.
I learnt what to ignore in my survey
Of death's abyss. And when we lost our child
I knew there would be nothing: no self-styled
Spirit would touch a keyboard of dry wood
[650] To rap out her pet name; no phantom would
Rise gracefully to welcome you and me
In the dark garden, near the shagbark tree.
«What is that funny creaking — do you hear?»
«It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear.»
«If you're not sleeping, let's turn on the light.
I hate that wind! Let's play some chess.» «All right.»
«I'm sure it's not the shutter. There — again.»
«It is a tendril fingering the pane.»
«What glided down the roof and made that thud?»
[660] «It is old winter tumbling in the mud.»
«And now what shall I do? My knight is pinned.»
Who rides so late in the night and the wind?
It is the writer's grief. It is the wild
March wind. It is the father with his child.
Later came minutes, hours, whole days at last,
When she'd be absent from our thoughts, so fast
Did life, the woolly caterpillar run.
We went to Italy. Sprawled in the sun
On a white beach with other pink or brown
[670] Americans. Flew back to our small town.
Found that my bunch of essays The Untamed
Seahorse was «universally acclaimed»
(It sold three hundred copies in one year).
Again school started, and on hillsides, where
Wound distant roads, one saw the steady stream
Of carlights all returning to the dream
Of college education. You went on
Translating into French Marvell and Donne.
It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane
[680] Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.
Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died.
The Crashaw Club had paid me to discuss
Why Poetry Is Meaningful To Us.
I gave my sermon, a dull thing but short.
As I was leaving in some haste, to thwart
The so-called «question period» at the end,
One of those peevish people who attend
Such talks only to say they disagree
[690] Stood up and pointed his pipe at me.
And then it happened — the attack, the trance,
Or one of my old fits. There sat by chance
A doctor in the front row. At his feet
Patly I fell. My heart had stopped to beat,
It seems, and several moments passed before
It heaved and went on trudging to a more
Conclusive destination. Give me now
Your full attention.
I can't tell you how
I knew — but I did know that I had crossed
[700] The border. Everything I loved was lost
But no aorta could report regret.
A sun of rubber was convulsed and set;
And blood-black nothingness began to spin
A system of cells interlinked within
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.
I realized, of course, that it was made
Not of our atoms; that the sense behind
[710] The scene was not our sense. In life, the mind
Of any man is quick to recognize
Natural shams, and then before his eyes
The reed becomes a bird, the knobby twig
An inchworm, and the cobra head, a big
Wickedly folded moth. But in the case
Of my white fountain what it did replace
Perceptually was something that, I felt,
Could be grasped only by whoever dwelt
In the strange world where I was a mere stray.
[720] And presently I saw it melt away:
Though still unconscious I was back on earth.
The tale I told provoked my doctor's mirth.
He doubted very much that in the state
He found me in «one could hallucinate
Or dream in any sense. Later, perhaps,
But not during the actual collapse.
No, Mr. Shade.»
But, Doctor, I was dead!
He smiled. «Not quite: just half a shade,» he said.
However, I demurred. In mind I kept
[730] Replaying the whole thing. Again I stepped
Down from the platform, and felt strange and hot,
And saw that chap stand up, and toppled, not
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