Vox Populi
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Hart Crane: Chaplinesque
We make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.
For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.
We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!
And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.
The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.
~~~~
Public Domain
From White Buildings: Poems. United States: Boni & Liveright, 1926.
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Loved this poem since I first read it in high school…Crane, like Delmore Schwartz (whose Collected Poems just came out), was a singular talent, and both deserve a resurgence…their minds were keen, but their sonic architecture sets them both apart from their contemporaries.
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I agree, Keith. I love Crane’s music.
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Rich indeed. All of it.
“For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.”
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Here I am, travel delaying response, and the lines that mean so much to me, not that there aren’t many and more,
“We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.”
I heard last night (in the cloistered green reaches of Des Moines, never a sweeter urban center placed upon our heartland) at a jazz club, (Yes they have a damn fine one here!) And the singer was just drunk enough by the time he did it, (sixteen jazzmen accompanying), to sing Frank Sinatra’s song he’d written to Ava Gardner: “I’m a fool to want you,” and did so as fine as any man could have sung it—so I’m certain this morning I know the meaning of those lines, as also I heard that searing loveliness, for the first time.
Another’s poem says: “As though this were Crane himself, back from the deep, wet on the deck of the steamship…”
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Already then a poet (and what a poet!) wrote: “For we can still love the world” — so let’s continue this, please, let’s continue loving this world: it needs us to do so!
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Yes
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Is it a sign of too much screen time that I read this line and saw a giant hand deleting something on a screen? (Sorry). “Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,”
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The screen can be oppressive…
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“For we can still love the world.”
yes.
and yes to the moon in lonely alleys. and to finding the famished kittens and offering them recesses from the fury …
gorgeous.
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Yes, I love Crane’s rich rhythms and unlikely metaphors
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