The Carpentered Hen Read online

WHY THE TELEPHONE WIRES DIP AND THE POLES ARE CRACKED AND CROOKED

  The old men say

  young men in gray

  hung this thread across our plains

  acres and acres ago.

  But we, the enlightened, know

  in point of fact it’s what remains

  of the flight of a marvellous crow

  no one saw:

  Each pole, a caw.

  THE POPULATION OF ARGENTINA

  The Rand McNally Co.:

  How little does it know!

  How much those clerks have missed

  Who blithely list

  Argentina’s pop. as four-

  Teen million, and no more,

  And even slightly less!

  Why, I can count

  Twice that amount

  By skimming through the columns of the daily press.

  For every new edition

  Sees another harried soul

  Seek a haven from sedition,

  Flee assassins, jump parole,

  Or escape a harsh decision

  Of the anti-vice patrol

  By visiting that vast arena

  Of refugees called Argentina.

  On the pampas, it is certain,

  Lounges Richard Halliburton,

  Adolf Hitler, Martha Raye,

  Leon Trotsky’s ex-valet,

  Greta Garbo, Mildred Fletcher,

  “Fingers” Pico—you can betcher

  Bottom dollar they are there,

  Inhaling bueno air,

  As well

  As seven aunts of Sun Yat-sen,

  Plus ten

  Lost Tribes of Israel,

  Side by side

  With every Balkan prince who never died.

  Rand, recount; recount, McNally:

  There’s been some slip-up in your tally;

  Count Argentinian heads again.

  Search every cellar, scan each alley,

  And you’ll discover Axis Sally

  Playing cribbage with Hart Crane.

  EVEN EGRETS ERR

  Egregious was the egret’s error, very.

  Egressing from a swamp, the bird eschewed

  No egriot (a sour kind of cherry)*

  It saw, and reaped extremest egritude.§

  * * *

  * Obs.

  § Rare form of obs. Aegritude, meaning sickness.

  SCENIC

  O when in San Francisco do

  As natives do: they sit and stare

  And smile and stare again. The view

  Is visible from anywhere.

  Here hills are white with houses whence,

  Across a multitude of sills,

  The owners, lucky residents,

  See other houses, other hills.

  The meanest San Franciscan knows,

  No matter what his sins have been,

  There are a thousand patios

  Whose view he is included in.

  The Golden Gate, the cable cars,

  Twin Peaks, the Spreckels habitat,

  The local ocean, sun, and stars—

  When fog falls, one admires that.

  Here homes are stacked in such a way

  That every picture window has

  An unmarred prospect of the Bay

  And, in its center, Alcatraz.

  RECITATIVE FOR SORELY TESTED PRODUCTS

  I was once a tire. To bolster sales

  My cunning maker filled me full of nails.

  My treads were shredded. I was made a flat

  By great machines designed to do just that.

  I was a typewriter. Harsh was my test.

  Ten years I toiled unoiled without a rest.

  One billion times, so claim the pedagogues,

  The quick brown foxes jumped my lazy cogs.

  I used to be a watch. My tick and tock

  Were interchanged by polychronic shock.

  The bit of bounce my spring retained was sapped

  By tales of clocks alarmed, of watches strapped.

  I am a shears. My thin lips prophesy

  The Day to Come when angles cloud the sky,

  When rugs rise up, mute tools get out of hand,

  And sorely tested products scourge the land.

  All:

  Then, then, the Holy Catalogue avers,

  Will products test their manufacturers.

  CAPACITY

  CAPACITY 26 PASSENGERS

  —sign in a bus

  Affable, bibulous,

  corpulent, dull,

  eager-to-find-a-seat,

  formidable,

  garrulous, humorous,

  icy, jejune,

  knockabout, laden-

  with-luggage (maroon),

  mild-mannered, narrow-necked,

  oval-eyed, pert,

  querulous, rakish,

  seductive, tart, vert-

  iginous, willowy,

  xanthic (or yellow),

  young, zebuesque are my

  passengers fellow.

  V. B. NIMBLE, V. B. QUICK

  Science, Pure and Applied, by V. B. Wigglesworth, F.R.S., Quick Professor of Biology in the University of Cambridge.

  —a talk listed in the B.B.C. Radio Times

  V. B. Wigglesworth wakes at noon,

  Washes, shaves, and very soon

  Is at the lab; he reads his mail,

  Tweaks a tadpole by the tail,

  Undoes his coat, removes his hat,

  Dips a spider in a vat

  Of alkaline, phones the press,

  Tells them he is F.R.S.,

  Subdivides six protocells,

  Kills a rat by ringing bells,

  Writes a treatise, edits two

  Symposia on “Will Man Do?,”

  Gives a lecture, audits three,

  Has the Sperm Club in for tea,

  Pensions off an aging spore,

  Cracks a test tube, takes some pure

  Science and applies it, finds

  His hat, adjusts it, pulls the blinds,

  Instructs the jellyfish to spawn,

  And, by one o’clock, is gone.

  TUNE, IN AMERICAN TYPE

  Set and printed in Great Britain by Tonbridge Printers, Ltd., Peach Hall Works, Tonbridge, in Times nine on ten point, on paper made by John Dickenson at Croxley, and bound by James Burn at Esher.

  —colophon in a book published by Michael Joseph (London)

  Ah, to be set and printed in

  Great Britain now that Tonbridge Prin-

  ters, Limited, employ old John

  Dickenson, at Croxley. On

  his pages is Times nine-on-ten-

  point type impressed, and, lastly, when

  at Peach Hall Works the job is done,

  James Burn at Esher’s job’s begun.

  Hey nonny nonny nonny,

  Hey nonny nonny nay!

  Tonbridge! Croxley! Esher! Ah,

  is there, in America,

  a tome contrived in such sweet towns?

  No. English, English are the downs

  w2here Jim Burn, honest craftsman, winds

  beneath his load of reams; he binds

  the sheets that once John Dickenson

  squeezed flat from British pulp. Hey non-

  ny nonny, etc.

  LAMENT, FOR COCOA

  The scum has come.

  My cocoa’s cold.

  The cup is numb,

  And I grow old.

  It seems an age

  Since from the pot

  It bubbled, beige

  And burning hot—

  Too hot to be

  Too quickly quaffed.

  Accordingly,

  I found a draft

  And in it placed

  The boiling brew

  And took a taste

  Of toast or two.

  Alas, time flies

  And minutes chill;

  My cocoa lies

  Dull brown and still.

  How wearisome!

  In
likelihood,

  The scum, once come,

  Is come for good.

  SONG OF THE OPEN FIREPLACE

  When silly Sol in winter roisters

  And roasts us in our closed-up cloisters

  Like hosts of out-of-season oysters,

  The logs glow red.

  When Sol grows cool and solely caters

  To polar bears and figure skaters

  And homes are turned refrigerators,

  The flames are dead.

  And when idyllically transpires

  The merger every man desires

  Of air that nips and wood that fires,

  It’s time for bed.

  MARCH: A BIRTHDAY POEM

  for Elizabeth

  My child as yet unborn, the doctors nod,

  Agreeing that your first month shall be March,

  A time of year I know by heart and like

  To talk about—I, too, was born in March.

  March, like November a month largely unloved,

  Parades before April, who steals all shows

  With his harlequinade of things renewed.

  Impatient for that pastel fool’s approach,

  Our fathers taunted March, called him Hlyd-monath,

  Though the month is mild, and a murmurer.

  Indeed, after the Titan’s fall and shatter

  Of February, March seems a silence.

  The Romans, finding February’s ruins

  At the feet of March, heard his wind as boasting

  And hailed his guilt with a war-god’s name.

  As above some street in a cobbled sea-town

  From opposing walls two huge boards thrust

  To advertise two inns, so do the signs

  Of Pisces the Fish and Aries the Ram

  Overhang March. Depending on the day,

  Your fortunate gem shall be the bloodstone

  Or the diamond, your lucky color crimson

  Or silver gray. You shall prove affable,

  Impulsive, lucky in your friends, or cross,

  According to the counterpoint of stars.

  So press your business ventures, wear cravats,

  And swear not by the moon. If you plant wheat,

  Do it at dawn. The same for barley. Let

  The tide transplant kohlrabi, leeks, and beans.

  Toward the month’s end, sow hardy annuals.

  It was this month when Caesar fell, Stalin died,

  And Beethoven. In this month snowflakes melt—

  Those last dry crusts that huddle by the barn.

  Now kites and crocuses are hoisted up.

  Doors slap open. Dogs snuffle soggy leaves,

  Rehearsing rusty repertoires of smells.

  The color of March is the one that lies

  On the shadow side of young tree trunks.

  March is no land of extremes. Dull as life,

  It offers small flowers and minor holidays.

  Clouds stride sentry and hold our vision down,

  While underfoot the agony of roots

  Is hidden by earth. Much, much is opaque.

  The thunder bluffs, wind cannot be gripped,

  And kites and crocuses are what they are.

  Still, child, it is far from a bad month,

  For all its weight of compromise and hope.

  As modest as a monk, March shall be there

  When on that day without a yesterday

  You, red and blind and blank, gulp the air.

  POETESS

  At verses she was not inept,

  Her feet were neatly numbered.

  She never cried, she softly wept,

  She never slept, she slumbered.

  She never ate and rarely dined;

  Her tongue found sweetmeats sour.

  She never guessed, but oft divined

  The secrets of a flower.

  A flower! Fragrant, pliant, clean,

  More dear to her than crystal.

  She knew what yearnings dozed between

  The stamen and the pistil.

  Dawn took her thither to the wood,

  At even, home she hithered.

  Unto the gentle, Pan is good—

  She never died, she withered.

  POOEM

  Writing here last autumn of my hopes of seeing a hoopoe …

  —Sir Stephen Tallents in the London Times

  I, too, once hoped to have a hoopoe

  Wing its way within my scoopoe,

  Crested, quick, and heliotroopoe,

  Proud Upupa epops.

  For what seemed an eternity,

  I sat upon a grassy sloopoe,

  Gazing through a telescoopoe,

  Weaving snares of finest roopoe,

  Fit for Upupa epops.

  At last, one day, there came to me,

  Inside a crusty enveloopoe,

  This note: “Abandon hope, you doopoe;

  The hoopoe is a misanthroopoe.

  (Signed) Your far-off friend, U. e.”

  AN IMAGINABLE CONFERENCE

  (Mr. Henry Green, Industrialist, and Mr. Wallace Stevens, Vice-President of the Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co., Meet in the Course of Business)

  Exchanging gentle grips, the men retire,

  prologued by courteous bumbling at the door,

  retreat to where a rare room deep exists

  on an odd floor, subtly carpeted. The walls

  wear charts like checkered vests and blotters ape

  the green of cricket fields. Glass multiplies

  the pausing men to twice infinity.

  An inkstand of blue marble has been carven:

  no young girl’s wrist is more discreetly veined.

  An office boy misplaced and slack intrudes,

  apologizes speaking without commas

  “Oh sorry sirs I thought” which signifies

  what wellmeant wimbly wambly stuff it is

  we seem to be made of. Beyond the room,

  a gander sun’s pure rhetoric ferments

  imbroglios—zut!—of bloom. The stone is so.

  The pair confers in murmurings, with words

  select and Sunday-soft. No more is known,

  but rumor goes that as they hatched the deal,

  vistas of lilac weighted their shrewd lids.

  SUNFLOWER

  Sunflower, of flowers

  the most lonely,

  yardstick of hours,

  long-term stander

  in empty spaces,

  shunner of bowers,

  indolent bender

  seldom, in only

  the sharpest of showers:

  tell us, why

  is it your face is

  a snarl of jet swirls

  and gold arrows, a burning

  old lion face high

  in a cornflower sky,

  yet by turning

  your head, we find

  you wear a girl’s

  bonnet behind?

  THE STORY OF MY LIFE

  Fernando Valenti, enthusiast, Yale graduate, and himself represented by numerous recordings of Scarlatti.

  —The Saturday Review

  Enthused I went to Yale, enthused

  I graduated. Still infused

  with this enthusiasm when

  Scarlatti called, I answered enthusiastically, and thus

  I made recordings numerous,

  so numerous that I am classed,

  quite simply, as “enthusiast.”

  THE NEWLYWEDS

  After a one-day honeymoon, the Fishers rushed off to a soft drink bottlers’ convention, then on to a ball game, a TV rehearsal and a movie preview.

  —Life

  “We’re married,” said Eddie.

  Said Debbie, “Incredi-

  ble! When is our honey-

  moon?” “Over and done,” he

  replied. “Feeling logy?

  Drink Coke.” “Look at Yogi

  go!” Debbie cried. “Groovy!”

  “Reh
earsal?” “The movie.”

  “Some weddie,” said Debbie.

  Said Eddie, “Yeah, mebbe.”

  HUMANITIES COURSE

  Professor Varder handles Dante

  With wry respect; while one can see

  It’s all a lie, one must admit

  The “beauty” of the “imagery.”

  Professor Varder slyly smiles,

  Describing Hegel as a “sage”;

  But still, the man has value—he

  Reflects the “temper” of his “age.”

  Montaigne, Tom Paine, St. Augustine:

  Although their notions came to naught,

  They still are “crucial figures” in

  The “pageantry” of “Western thought.”

  ENGLISH TRAIN COMPARTMENT

  These faces make a chapel where worship comes easy:

  Homo enim naturaliter est animal sociale.

  The flutter of a Guardian, the riveted image

  of Combe-in-Teignhead, faded by decades of eyes,

  the sting of smoke, the coughs, the whispering

  lend flavor to piety’s honest bone.

  Half-sick, we suck our teeth, consult our thumbs,

  through brown-stained glass confront the barbered hills

  and tailored trees of a tame and castrate land.

  Sheep elegant enough for any eclogue

  browse under Constable clouds. The unnatural

  darkness swells, and passengers stir

  at the sound of tapping fingernails. Rain,

  beginning, hyphenates our racing windows.

  And hands and smiles are freed by the benediction.

  The lights, always on, now tell. One man talks,