I Though I Knew But I Did not Know The Truth Of Growing Trees
On the suburban street, guarded by patient trees
The family houses huddled. As I passed the lamplight's teas,
In the mid-winter evening when the snow's light made
Of the glowing supper hour a blue lost shade:

A blonde girl stood at the window and looked towards the snow:
Her glance hid hatred's hot-bed, which had sickenened long ago.
And the last glances met; and I fell suddenly,

My eyes reached to touch the bark of the nearest tree,
My hands stretched to touch the rough and broken
Bark to feel, again and again, an incidence and a token
Of reality's texture. The picture window showed
(death-ridden) How often beauty conceals the heart's diseased/toad:
How often romance is a passing dance: but the tree is true:
And this is what I did not know, although I always thought
I knew how a growing tree is true.

Delmore Schwartz

PSYCHE PLEADS WITH CUPID

O heart, O dearest heart, dusk again becomes black night
As quickly as the falling of a leave: and I am left
Fondling the formless face less presence I love, quite lost:
--All that I am is seed, all that I am is morning, waiting to see,
All that I am is flower, forbidden the light and hidden
In sleep's purpose and sleep's patience, power and growth:
So I must ask again, knowing how it angers you
And knowing that you would be more angered if you knew
How much this mostly unasked question obsesses me:
Why is love dark?
Why must your face remained concealed from me?
My sisters taunt and torment me. They say
I have invented a religion, a superstition, a deity
To hide the love of a monster or monstrous usages
Nursed by love's absence, love's unquelled desire'.
Must you be hidden from me forever?
My sisters sometimes say that I will never see
The strangeness or the strange face of the deity
Tow hom I am espoused in reality or in the dark forest of fantasy'.

Does your face possess the glitter and radiance
Possessed by your voice? Your voice possesses
A bell clarity, a trumpet brilbiance, a harpsichord delicacy.
It isblessed by the gentleness of the first morning, equisitely!
Sometimes it has a sunset's roaring eloquence and turbulence.
...Yet my sisters laugh at me. And think of me
As who who is very strange, as one possessed
By lunacy, or by a dreamdispos sessed, when in all b lesedomess,
--By joy overcome, beside myself, outside myself, in ecstasy's aftermath--

-2-

'In the murderous war warred to increase
'The rich man's riches'.

So! So!

You cried then, you poor people, so you were given
What?

The usual concessions which, as usual,
Made you forget the reason for your pain.

But hunger you cannot forget; awake!

Seize your enemy, O, grasp his throat,
Demand your right to hate, your right to eat,

Have you no right to eat? He who denies it
Murders you: Deny the rich! deny

Your murderer! Shout in their perfumed ears
That you refuse to die while they are rich!

Their roar respond. He pants, the actor's pause,
To show the large emotion on his face,

--And now, shuffling, diverting gaze,
Toga'd Menenius, canny patrician, comes,
Fat and untidy, dragging his robe along,
Good-humored extravert, rosy and robust,
And not too finicky:

"Listen!" he says,

Contemptuous yet soothing, knowing their will
And their necessity; divided from them

And so against them; requiring them
And therefore politic; consoling them

With the old Platonic metaphor in which
The state, that knot of common weakness,

Consistent need, poor fear, and aching will,
Becomes an animal or organism

Wherein each organ must deny itself
That the great corpse may be well-fed.

-3-

"How metaphors may serve the ruling class,
Hypostasis itself shall soothe the poor!"
Sighs one great ghost beside me, as I stare
Knowing not where I am but everywhere,
Lavish of mind and in attention such
Each whisper thunders in the crowded air,
Striking the heart where all the meanings touch,
All pieties, all choices, every care!

"Listen", Menenius says, "Be sensible,
We do our best to handle everything,
Be patient, boys, and in the end, you know,
Everyone will be satisfied."

But now
Marcius comes striding through the burly crowd,
O like an obelisk his obvious posture,
His look as Caesar's face strict on a coin,
Barbarous strength and beauty there:

"You stink!" he cries, "You scum!" heshouts,
shocked by
Their protest, offended by their being,
Nursing in mind, older than any thought,
A hatred of all who issue sweat, urine,
Or excrement, the child's profound distaste
Once for all smitten, never, alas! outworn.

"So you assume our role, faeces of man!
The garrulity of your idleness
Swelling your vas't conceit, you arrogant
Presumptuous intolerable apes!
If the nobility would merely once
Abate their maudlin rule, I, all alone,
I, I, I,
Would thrash a hundred thousand of your kind!"

-4-

Bullying empty extravagance, his tongue
Betrays a pathic source beneath the eye,
The wound and rage not of a ruling class
(Whose prudent tact Menenius displayed,
Joking and friendly) but himself alone
Is represented in his gross excess,
Himself alone prepossessed long ago
By an antipathy un-understood,
A tenderness moving the mind unknown.

"O don't mind us, we only work here and
And, hunger breaks stone walls, and, dogs must eat,
And, meat is made for mouths. Does God provide
Grain for the rich men only?"

So Brutus stammered,
Stricken and awed by his loud prejudice:
"O now you are their tongue!" Marcius replied,
"I must consult your heart before I blink,
"You, paid official, who, on their discontent
Erect your dignity--"

A sudden cry,
A newsboy loudly shouting "War!
War is declared! The Volscians are in arms!"
Quickly the meeting is transformed,
Marcius forgets his enemy,
The bitter broken poor forget their need,
And all adjourn, each one to find his role,
In the lightning's dramatic thrust and sequent moan.

-5-

"So by death's poverty is poverty escaped,
Negation negated in the chess of death",
Says the great ghost beside me in the box,
While murmurs move the darkened audience,
"War being the state's good health, the state, alas!
Being, as knock-knifed Hegel said,
Organized pain, a formal agony:

In war's magnified ache brilliantly blared
The poor mistake their grandeur and their grief;
Adding their weakness, they affirm the state,
The stranger's grain, the stranger's wealth is seized!
The ruling class in intuition know
That thus the state persists, and thus,
By the extension of their perpetual need
Unto another's property, they are maintained,
And by the expense of anger on the stranger,
The poor are fed."

So, as the curtain falls
Upon the risen interest of all,
Marx bites his nails, resumes his revery,
Ghosts being possessed by consciousness,
Consumed by memory, and powerless.

-6-

A new scene. On a side street. Twilight
Blackens the roof-tops. Brutus and his fellow,
The voices of the poor, confer in whispers,
Hold in analysis the soul of Marcius,
Surd irreducible, a glittering diamond,
Unpurchased by their tactic or their smile,
Occult to them.

"Listen! speak quietly.
Was ever man so proud as is this Marcius?"

"No man so proud,

he has no equal, none."

"When we were made their voices did you see
How his lip formed a sneer direct at me?"

"He mocks the moon, he holds in his contempt
The shadow which he tr>Adds at noon,"

"And God himself

Is mocked, I think, in this man's singular heart."

"He is insane, alone in his fantasy,
Gazing at his sole image in a glass
Where no light shines but arbitrary pride."

"We are not safe until he's cast aside."

Another scene: it is the sitting room
Where wife and mother of the hero sew
To beguile attention while their hearts await
News of the distant war, the thunder's boom.

distant

-7-

"Sing merrily, enjoy this strong today",
So says the Roman mother, the widowed one,
Moved by her own obsession,
"Daughter, sing,
Were he my husband as he is my son,
This would delight me O much more than when
In the ecstacy of the darkness I conceived,
Moved by the thrusting self-delighting spoon
Which made my son, my spear."

So she exults
That there is war and that her son makes war,
And with an urgent dogma she insists
That the meek girl, his wife, shall also feel,
Her own harsh appetite,

while Sigmund Freyd
Mutters beside me in the haunted night,
"This is the origin, this, this is the place,
Mother in love with son and son with her,
And his aloneness in the womb began,
Always unhappy apart from that tight cache:
O womb and egg, nervous environment,
How you have marred and marked this childhood's man!
Unconscionable bag which none evade,
How your great warmth commits him to the shade."

"Ono!" The black-browed ghost in haste replies,
As the curtain falls, big furniture is moved,
And the orchestra tunes up, the hidden musician
Tightening and pricking his violin in the pit,
"But as a drowning man must cherish land,
And as in hunger bread must be soft gold,
So in a society which lives by war,
The soldier boy is best. As the assassin
Admires the knife, as the mariner
Considers the sea, as the tailor
Respects the wish to dress, O as
The leaning doctor listens for the heart,
Man murders, travels, sews and bends in fear
To get the good which the means of life make dear!
Man lives and dies for that which gives him life,
to buy the dears of life,
Every man dies for that which gives him life!
Not that poor mother, but society
Nursed him to being, taught him what to be:
She is the actual mother, only for her
Has he become the narrow murderer!"

widow

-8-

At which the curtain rises, silencing him:

Distant, we see Corioli's great fort,
We hear the shocking guns, the thud and flash;
A team in miniature is running forth
In loose array, as if involved in games,
And as two football teams in scrimmage there
Men mix and wrestle, grunt, leap forward, fall,
The rush, the furor, pop! bang! whoa!
All shows in little to our frigid gaze.
The cry, the anger, the chaos, and the gong
Is far too distant to be serious.
The trumpet's imagination and eclat
Is much too large for each one striving there,
Aware of running men and puffs of smoke
And prickly sweat and nothing else but fear.
The while, to our perspective, nothing near
The moving pins lack actuality,
Until a messenger comes breathlessly,
Speaks through a megaphone the victory:

"Marcius! Marcius defeats the defensive host,
Marcius alone! While we hung back, afraid,
And angered him until he called us swine,
Timid cows, geese, not men) he walked ahead
Unto the Volscians ranks, who, being amazed,

-9-

Retreat, enter their gates, begin to run,
Marcius upon them,

while we keep safely back,
An obvious danger there, he follows them
In to the gates, which they raise up! and thus
He's trapped! alone within the gates'. himself
Alone to answer all the city.

"Slain!
"Slain doubtless", says our general,
While all knowing him, know his iron and rage,
Bow heads, and feel, though namelessly, in awe
That there, his enemies on every side,
Occurs his apotheosis before he dies,
His marrow satisfaction,
until he runs
Phenomenal! miraculous! upon epitaphs
Out from the gates, waving his glossy sword,
Having somehow beaten all men from him,
Opened the gates and issued thence

to cry

"Again! and more! renew the'attack once more"
(Although the subtle blood streams from his limbs)
And curses us as pulsillanimous,
Naming us wooden things, things dull, and clogged,
Inanimate,
and cries, obsessed, "Once more!"
Attack once more! as if, with pathic hate,
Misanthropos with sensuous emotion,
Hating all men he was fulfilled in war.

-10-

Lartius our general demurs and then permits
Marcius to 'attack once more, with volunteers,
Who, when with famous bravado he calls on them,
Painting with fustian voice the life-in-death,
Offer their wills to him, shout, cheering him,
Take him upon their shoulders, at which he cries,
Narcissus baritone in brittle armor:
"O me alone! make you a sword of me!"

Elsewhere Cominius, a normal one,
Admits retreat, calls foolish further war,
Considers true and Roman a pause *pro tem*,
Knowing not Marcius' walking dream,
who now
Leads the attack, seeks out of all men, one,
His utmost foe Aufidius, (for hate,
Love, and desire concentrate their blaze)
Their bravest man, known to him long before.

And the attack succeeds, the Volscians flee,
Aufidius is met, but in the vicious strife,
Then, striking each other with his being's whip,
Each grasping his self as individual,
Aufidius is rescued by his men,
Even as the fortress falls,
Marcius the winner,
Marcius victorious, Caius Marcius hero,
His obsessed radical spirit ruling the day."

The megaphone'd one retires. Now we see
All met to formalize the victory:

-11-

Cominius wishes to render him
The glittering glory of the circumstance
And in ovation rounds such speech for him
As must delight all sensible of fame,
Fame the huge face confronting every man
Who walks amid his fellows, finding in them
The audience of his play and satisfaction.
"--No man may live alone, but with his mother
Having lived once, he's brutally bereft
By every absence, every solitude--"
So interrupts a great ghost by my side,
Private of all for whom truth is a bride!

ARISTOTLE

But Marcius is dismayed, shy as young men,
Or prudery of those whose intense sex
Denies itself.

His secret vice thus published
Amid the torchlight scene, the dress parade,
Enormously gratified and therefore shamed
(As two tugging their love become aware
That a whole public laugh, enjoy and stare)
Blushes, feigns modesty.

And then when Lartius
Gives him ten times his proper share of all
Won on the field, he must refuse at once,
Money's not relevant unto his measure,
And the refusal may dress his nakedness,
His sheer delight, his shame to be delighted,
--His sort of heart to depend on another one!

The rank and file misunderstand him. This,
They think, is courtesy to them.

They cheer as if
Marcius bequeathed them immortality!

-12-

But their applause strikes instantly
Hemorrhage of anger from him. That he, Marcius,
Should seek their plaudits, look to them!
--Flies from his tongue the phlegm and spit of rage:
No one may touch him, none; no one reward him,
Pay him. His self must be self-fed. He is
His own, not theirs.
Cominius suggests

That this excess is sentimental,
(The rest stand by, perplexed) but chooses then
(Of subtle intuition le mot juste)
The one garland this shaven virgin will wear,
A name, a name additional and new,
(Not to exclude his own but fatten it)
New word, new syllable, new tone for his
Intense selfhood to breathe and whisper:
CATUS MARCIUS CORIOLANUS,

Marcius,
Blushing and moved, consents and turns away.
"His autograph, his signature, his own,
As in Napoleon, Percy the sissy's name,
Jacob whose name was Israel, and Saul,
Translated at Damascus, Caesar, Czar,
Kaiser and Charlemagne, George Eliot,
Stella, Vanessa, Aloysius, Delmore,
Cohen, and O'Brien, and Alcibiades,
Between the anonymous and hometractature
Both vaudeville and history resume
The continuum of fame/mockery

and
In which all wince and which is poetry!"
--Thus mocks one ghost who GARES IN HERE beside me.

-13-

Overture to Coriolanus

The curtain falls. The orchestra begins,
Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Beethoven sobs,
He too beside me in the crowded box,
And slumped in his cliché, chin to his breast:
Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! what awe and care!
Then sweetly, thinly, fluted, the melody
Of the soul in private pitying itself,
Tenderly touching every grouch and SORCIER.

--And then the music ceases. The bright lights flood
Theatre, audience, our straining gaze, and now,
Amazed as never before, myself I see
Enter between the curtain's folds, appear
As many titter and some clap hands in glee,
A sad young cartoon in gown of domino,
X-ray, cartoon, Picasso's freak in blue,
From the box-seat I see myself on show.

-14-
BETWEEN THE ACTS
PLEASURE

I come, I said, to be useful and to entertain. What else
can one do? Between the acts something must be done to occupy our
minds or we become too aware of our great emptiness. It is true,
we might
converse with one another. But then we would learn again
how little all of us have to say to each other. Love is not
American. Neither is conversation, but that is not exactly what I
mean.

One ought to be amusing, but unfortunately I know very few
few witty sayings or entertaining stories. I find that my idea of the
comical is not, one might say, objective. I have tried for some
time to invent a good story for this occasion, but the best I
could do is this new wrinkle, entitled "Turning The Tables": ABC
says to DEF: "Who was that lady I saw you with last night? Some fun,
hey buy!" DEF, offended by the lightness with which his
passion is regarded, replies: "That was no lady, that was your wife." A
good story too, at least to me, is Stendhal's remark on first
eating ice-cream: "What a pity it is not a sin!" Becoming more
serious in order to approach nearer to my true subject, I recall
the fact that Fichte drank champagne for the first time when his
infant boy said "I" for the first time. Let me continue with
two more quotations bearing on this Laokoon-like process and
presentation which we are here to see. "I can hire half the work-
ing-class to fight the other half". So said Jay Gould at about the
same time that Engels, intimate friend of a member of the audience,
was observing with the most perfect justice that the most appall-
ing evil produced by class conflict was its corruption and degrad-
ation of the ruling-class--barbarism, inexorable cynicism, con-
tempt for all values on the part of those who enjoy the greatest
benefits of society. Sophocles observes that man is the most

-15-

admirable of beings. It is true. The most disgusting also, one
ought to add. It is dialectical. The possibility of the one
means the possibility of the other.

Now take this world's champion of men, Coriolanus, whose
lifewe passively suffer to step over our faces (as we sit here,
in the prepared darkness). All things are tied together, though
sometimes loosely. Hence, more and more facts are dragged on the
stage, as this moving individual passes before the footlights. Who
knows if there will, indeed, be sufficient room. No doubt that I
am an intruder, but try to eject me. The sky cannot be excluded. It
is the greatest natural object. The state cannot be omitted. It is
the greatest artificial object. The individual requires our focussed
game. He is the greatest subject, natural and artificial. Then
there is his mother, his wife, his child, all his fathers, all his
children. What an enormous crowd it may become! and the audience
is already so complex, so full of foreigners.

Besides, there are questions of emphasis. "The individual
is the only verifiable actuality, the individual, his experience
from moment to moment." So said one in French at about the same time
as Lev Davidovitch, better known as Trotzky, justly remarked that
"The individual--isan abstraction!" He is right and yet you know
and so do I as we sit here in this theatre--the essential stare-
otorium, one might say--we both know that we cannot regard the
warm identity beneath our faces as being no more than an abstract-
ion. Man is always in the world, yes! inconceivable apart from
being surrounded by a greater whole than himself. And yet he is
at the same time himself and in and by himself and by travelling
here and there may separate himself from any/interior in which he
finds himself. There is a thought which will take a considerable
amount of chewing and then you will only have to spit it out again.

-16-

As I said, all this bears upon what is taking place here. Also on Coriolanus the individual. Food, for example, improves the spirit, coffee consoles the soul. Most men, to quote again, lead lives of quiet desperation, the victims, all of them, of innumerable intentions. Hence the enormous *spiritual* and emotional quality of food and drink. There is also tobacco and alcohol, although wine too is not American.

Why be desperate, even quietly? Thus one might ask. Because one end merely leads to another one, one activity to another in an inexhaustible *endlessness* which is exasperating, metaphysically speaking, although such speech is not the fashion. Do not, however, be disconsolate nor given over to unutterable despair. Consider the nature of pleasure. It is a maligned word, meaning merely the innocence and intrinsicality of being, each thing and each state taken as final and for of itself. A cup/coffee destroys your sadness. To be born, we are told, is the greatest of all pains,--all else a dilution and weakening which offends the masochist. Though this be but a gynecologists' truth, yet let us remember it. Pleasure is what it is as is the rose. It justifies itself. To have pleasure, to be pleased, to enjoy oneself, that is sufficient, and only the Philistine asks: What for? Although there is a question of the permanent, the intermittent, the conflicting, and the exclusive, but let us not discuss this now.

Pleasure has a hundred thousand obvious forms, plentiful variety for the most fickle spirit. Pleasure of convalescence (how voluptuous weakness aan be), pleasure of (a dry crust of bread), pleasure of the first time and the last time, pleasure of mere looking (as the sunlight delights itself upon the tumbling fountain, as the small morning makes the metropolis

-17-

unreal), pleasure of being a child (mixture of curiosity, want on-
ness, and the gradual stages), pleasure of having a child (0 my
son Absolom, graduating from high school!), pleasure of discov-
ery and pleasure of memory, freshness and nostalgic sweetness,
surprise and return. Pleasure of arising, the keenness of
breakfast, pleasure of sleeping (there one is Caesar), the
pleasure of the old, a stronger tobacco, to possess the time
that is past, the pleasure of the young, who are not yet
tired, the pleasure of marriage--the mystery of being called
Mrs. for the first time--the pleasure, do not deny it, of the
funeral (that, after all, the conclusion should have a certain
sublimity and repose), pleasure of the grandchild (a difficult
pleasure, needing so much strength to last that long and so
many refusals, year after year), the pleasure of ritual, the
gloves drawn on precisely, the pleasure of spontaneity, kissed
by the overjoyed, the wave's foaming white head, touched at
the lips.

Delight in the silver, delight in the rock, delight
in the soft silk, delight in the stubble, delight in the thimble,
delight in the mountain, happiness of the virgin, the satisfac-
tion of custom, joy in denial, (the firmness of the soldier, the
rigor of the surgeon, the formal athlete, the painstaking
scholar), and the sweetness of saying yes.

Eating too is a fine thing, though it makes difficul-
ties (do not laugh, economy and original sin may in fact be
inseparable

) and there is the pleasure at the conclusion of
effort, the best of all delights, as the swimmer returned to
the sunlight, his being glowing in the warmth responsive
to the shocking chill of the waters (surrounded by them, he
understood his body).Or the pleasure of the idle who prone

- 18 -

full-length made almost unknowingly a few exact perceptions,
especially of those who hurry. And the satisfaction of the guilty
(thus to have an identity not dissipated by their weakness), the
delight of the famous, their self-regard coming from the outside,
the joy of narration, thus to invent and inventing understand, the
sweetness of the musician, from thunder and whisper tone's moving
constellations, and also the pleasure of small pains, the
sweetness of anger, as Homer observes, the delight of the game ( from
out of the scrimmage came the tall and plunging figure and ran to
a touchdown!) the pleasure of the task, the pleasure of the opus
(the span, the parts, the detail, the conclusion), the delight, clear
as fresh water, of theory and knowing (O lucid mathematics!) To each
age and each stage a special quality of satisfaction, enough for
everyone, and enough for all time, no need to compete. States of
being suffice. Let the handsome be familiar with the looking-glass,
and let the ugly be gourmets (since so many cannot be beautiful, let
eating be socially superior to portraits), let this unwarranted
sadness come to an end, sound and fury signify a multitude of
enjoyments,

the pleasure of pain, the pleasure indeed of pleasure.
Pleasure believes in friends, pleasure creates communities, pleasure
crumbles faces into smiles, pleasure links hand in hand, pleasure
restores, pain is the most selfish thing. And yet I know, this is
nothing, nothing consoles one, and our problem and pain is still be-
fore us.

Gaze upon them.

Let us continue to gaze upon them. Let us, I say, make a few sharp
clear definite observations before we die. Let us judge all things
according to the measure of our hearts (otherwise we cannot live).
Let us require of ourselves the strength and power to view our selves
and the heart of man with disgust.

-19-

TWO
"HIS SOARING INSOLENCE, THE COMMON MUCK"

Absurd and precarious my presence there,
Looped by the spotlight in assured discourse,
Harangue, imperative, prayer and wish,
True story and confession, who knows what?
Double, absorbed, monstrous, amazed, ashamed,
With much relief myself I see retire
And as the curtain rises on ACT TWO
Regain my sense of place, sharpened anew.

Triumphal march, the formidable Arch,
Thick crowds, harassed police, the brilliant sunlight
--Bearing the truck of all his honors, wearing
The hat of his new name,

puffed by the herald,
Hailed by the populace, Marcius returns,
Aquiline profile statuesque in the car.

Some who await him stand in attitudes
Equivocal; for perspectivity
Possesses infinite degrees,
Every nuance of love and hate therein,
As if all were a metaphor of place, profound,
Elliptic, solid, flat, far and round!-
thin

The ruling class, as in Menenius,
Take simple pride in their validity
Displayed in him. The tribunes fear in him
Pure tyranny. His mother
Hopes he has many wounds, exults, exults,
Mouths of the death which he bestows as if
She would have all restored to the dark womb.

Cannons burst! sirens scream! The crowd
Enjoys its own excitement. The occasion
Engenders its own increase, applause
Engenders applause, whirling confetti,
Rudes and laurel fall,

all gaze, stare, cheer,
Murmur of him. Nurse holds up baby boy

"Death in's
nervy arm..."

-20-

As gaze may be infectious, cook is dressed
In Sunday's clothes, the old, the strange, the ill,
Who stay in private rooms the whole year long,
Press against rick and poor, packed at the curb,
Passionate to see him, hardly aware
Of the tumult, the brass, the flashing heat,
Their congregated act,

while Marcius stands
Hiding his strange emotion amid the roar,
Secretly pleased despite himself, ashamed
To take of their plaudits so much flushing pleasure,
Guilty to think he gets his joy from them,
And half-aware of their powerful entity.

"Noli me tangere! how large they shout,
Each would partake of my world's championship,
Each thinks himself myself and I am fucked
By every craven knight vicarious there
--Yet what a sweetness is that roaring kiss
Spreading in waves throughout the whorish air."

"He loves your people/ But tie him not to be their bedfellow/"

Arrived to the stationwhere his mother waits,
Also his wife, his child, his friends,
Rapt self-absorption fades or rather descends
Unto that great primordial circumstance
Which holds him yet,

"O Mother, Mother", kneeling,
Thus he descends to her, "All that I did
I did for you".

PLUTARCH: "He did all to please his mother. The only thing that made him love honor was the joy he saw his mother did take of him."

The snub-nosed Freud exclaims,
Seated beside me in the heavy box,
"This this is the place! Early historians
Call this Volumina his wife. Avon alone

-21-

Grasps the identity of mother and bride,
The infant's choice, whatever man decide!"

His wife waits silently, ungreeted by him,
Wholly unseen,

till mother remind the boy

His son's meek mother waits to be recognized,
Speaks with slight irony of his new name,
Strictly retains the womb's authority.

Quick change: the Capitol: the Senate's chamber,
The ruling class resolved to raise him up
Highest in office and complete in power,
All public hope fulfilled.

Cominius

Addresses the Senate, recites his life in toto
--He's interrupted as our squeamish virgin
Arises, tortured, will not stay, he says,
To hear his nothings monstered, he a monster
Thus to respond, monstrously delicate,
And make his exit like a puking girl
Upset by joy,

Cominius continues,

Utters the public face which all can see,
The abstract terms of all biography,

"In 1610, and in 1612,

the Prince of Wales, the King of Spain, and the Dauphin,
were interested in the match, and in 1613,
the King decided to hide his desire and shame, the personal one

Knows to himself in the bedroom all alone.
And yet the bragged données contain his soul,
His self pur sang, if but their rule be seen
--Marcius, at sixteen, a mere boy still,
The most precocious soldier! Again and again

-23-

The whole Senate consents, unhesitant,
Calls Marcius back, confirms him Consul if,
A mere formality, the poor people give
Their votes to him, when, as the custom is,
He stands before them dressed in ashen gown,
Showing his wounds to them.

Marcius, nauseous once more,
Asks the omission of this ritual,
Asks that the fight be taken from the people,
Maintains the bad smell of the people's breath,
Calls this a flaggert nakedness and shame,
--But the tribunes insist.

Outside, the people
Discuss their Marcius, laugh, admire him,
Holding themselves in humorous contempt,
Feigning each other's stupidity, till one,
Amid their serious mock-serious
discussion of their power and his virtue
And his contempt of them and yet his due,
States that this is well and good, but he
Must take a leak.

"Little the people wish",
Says one great ghost in that distinguished box,
"Little they get. Being nor good nor evil,
Except as driven, they desire merely
A bit of salt for cucumbers in May,
A movie once a week, a game to play,
A visit to the zoo, two weeks in June,
Someone with whom to speak, something
To read while eating, someone to touch
Wholly and privately, both hard and soft,

-24-

A little self-respect, a place to sleep,
Stories of immortality.

Their whole wish is
Modest and not too urgent till the strict
Inevitable mathematic come to reduce
Little to nothing, almost nothing, a crust
That some may get still more and more,

they must!

Shuddering as a young girl does.

Examined by doctors with mustachios,
Our Marcius, standing in a little box,
Appears before the people,

crouching rabbits
Regard the square-jawed lion, who is dressed
In his own nakedness and in
Humility's gray gown. He asks their votes
Precisely as he would and as he must,
The bluster voice which always hides the shy

Betraying his self-infatuated I:

"My own desert requires no less! Keep clean
Your teeth and wash your faces! Voices!
I sweated for your voices, for your voices
I tore my heart in fury!

O I never
Desired to trouble the poor by begging from them!

"You never loved the common people,"

oye

Meekly and hopefully asserts,
--"Honor me then, dear Sirs, my virtue is
Not to be common in my love. Your voices!
Your voices, Gentlemen!"

His irony
Tortures himself and merely, so it seems,
Perplexes the mild and generous poor people
Passing before him in his little box.

--Gladly they recognize his wounds, his virtues,
Freely they choose him, grant him their full voices,
Strive with his mocking words, mean well, depart
Aware of something wrong somewhat somewhere,
With him, with them, with both, who knows, who knows?
Indeed who knows?

Cupid, a nearby fountain,
Pisses his puddle on the Square, chipped boy
Piercing our hero's to-fro heart.

Beside me
Stagirus murmurs approval of the scene,

-25-

--"Avon, a mother's son, knew what men mean,
A pencil of all hearts."

The later ghost
Marvels to see one man detest the host,
Speaks of the secret and gigantic mother
Which makes each man a sister and a brother.
The orchestra tunes up: a spreading moan
--Ludwig Van Beethoven, Marcius in tone
Rumors in woodwinds all that is to come,
Massing crescendo of the poor king numb.

Meanwhile we see the tribunes huddle,
Winking, conspiratorial, malicious,
Come to the people with their facile tongues
And in contempt of them much more confirmed,
Equipped, and cynical than Marcius is,
Quickly persuade the people to reverse
The election, take away his crown, reject him,
Till with their cheap ken they transform the people
Into an ignorant passionate crowd,
Willed to the hurt of our undrowned Narcissus,
Our self-regardant lion, his raided heart.

"Who is the fifth ghost in this heavy box?
Who is the small masked one who says no word?
Tell me his name!"

But no one answers me.
"O tell me, tell me, O Immanuel Kant,"
Who diminished knowledge, inverted hope,
Divided day from night, assigned the night
The avid dreams of the practical heart.

-26-

BETWEEN THE ACTS

JUSTICE

"What!. The same voluble fellow again.-- Such is your speech with yourself, I suppose, upon seeing me again, though this time in a dress suit with a top hat (as if to appeal to the snob and fop in every man, or at least to the upper-class sentiments in all of the lower and middle class). Yes! What a button-holing mariner! What a jack-in-the-box I am, but truly with a decent motive -- to entertain, to be useful, -- and also to arrive at a point. What point? I do not actually know, except that there must be a point and when I get there I will recognize it, though I scarcely expect to get there very soon, and one who did would equal all the seven wonders of nature of the ancients, the camel, the rainbow, the echo, the cuckoo, the negro, the volcano, and the sirocco.

I have been thinking about justice. Naturally: look at what surrounds us. Justice: a fine word and immediately suggesting how beautiful a thing the fact must be, if there is such a fact, either possible or actual. Around complete self-contained datum, like an enormous globe radiating a dazzling light which illuminates every corner, subterfuge, and mystery between human beings, not creating, as the sun does (being like all natural things involved in the dialectic of nature) so many morbid shadows, and the black bloom of night at once with the bright bloom of day.

-27-

What could I think of, desiring to amuse as well as
instruct, also to be pleased and to learn myself, -- of
what but the ancient short story made known to me in child-
hood by my crippled father, a brief history which has haunted
me to this day, even with the archness in which my poor father
attempted to hide the essential viciousness and despair of the
narrative,

"Once upon a time," said my father, seated in his
wheelchair, and summoning unknowingly in that traditional
opening the continuous present necessary to the interest of
any story, "-- once upon a time," he repeated, "an old farmer
named Schrecklichkeitunendlich" (a name chosen to tickle me)
"and his young son Hans, aged ten, went to town taking with
them their brown pony named Ego". "Ego, father?" I asked, "that
is a strange name for a pony or anyone else." "No, no," said my
bitter father, "it is a well known name." "I have never heard
of anyone with that name," I said stubbornly. "Please," said my
father, angered," if you continue to interrupt me, I will never
finish the story, which you begg'd me to tell you. -- Father,
son and pony," my father continued, "stated for the marketplace,
and Hans rode the pony. It was a beautiful blue-and-gold day
in the month of June, and all three were pleased with all things,
the father because he was going to sell the pony and with the
proceeds buy a gun with which to kill deer, the son because he
had been promised a pair of boxing gloves by the father, and
the pony merely glad because he was exercising himself and the
weather was fine.

The three travelers has gone but a mile -- the town being
four miles distant -- when a man with a whip came along from

-28-

the opposite direction, and seeing them, said indignantly:
"O pitiless boy! You who are young and strong, ride the pony,
while your father, the weak old man, walks beside you and
by such exertion shortens his days. Get down from the pony,
let your father ride, honor your father, remember his weakness'.
Intimidated by this, father and son said nothing, the traveller
went on his way absentmindedly, and Hans dismounted, his father
mounted the pony."

'But they should have had two ponies,' I said to my father.
"They had only one," my father replied, "The number of ponies
is not infinite, many people have only one pony, as for us, as
you know, we have none," said my father in his embittered voice
and continued.

"They went forward another mile and another stranger ap-
proached, holding a gun in his hand, stopped them, took the
pony by the halter, standing there as if he were an official
authority: 'Evil old man,' he said, 'selfish fahher!-the young
boy must walk while the father rides, as if he were a King and
would like to live forever.'

'Aking, father?' I inquired, 'kings do not live forever.
No one does.' "By king, he meant an important person," he said,
annoyed and impatient. "Do not, please, interrupt me so often."

"The stranger stood there so threateningly the father
dismounted. Satisfied, the stranger passed on, leaving father
and son completely perplexed, not knowing at all what to do.
Suddenly, Hans was inspired: 'Father, father!' he said, 'we will
both ride the pony.' The father saw how intelligent this idea
was and said with pride: 'Hans, you are a smart boy,' and soon
both were mounted on the pony and jogging toward town. The pony's
pace slowed up a bit, but not otherwise did he show himself

-29-

troubled by the additional weight."

"But soon a third stranger came along, saw them and stopped them. This one brandished a sword and said, in a tone of the greatest moral indignation and self-righteousness: 'O heartless humans! both of you riding one weak and young pony! What ruthless cruelty toward the dumb and inoffensive beast! Dismount before you kill him, or I will report you to both the civil and sacred authorities!' Both father and son dismounted hurriedly, and clumsily(for it is difficult for two to dismount from a horse at the same time). 'Something is always wrong,' said the father aloud, as he dismounted and the stranger, satisfied, departed.

'Hans', said the farmer, we will both walk and the pony will walk beside us. Then perhaps all will be content.' No sooner had he said this, than a fourth stranger appeared. Hans drew back and wished to hide in the wood until the stranger passed, especially since the newcomer carried a whip, and a gun, and a sword. But the father decided against hiding. 'What is wrong with you,' said the stranger in a voice whose kindliness stunned them with surprise, 'Why don't you ride the pony??Why are you so stupid? What is a pony for, if not to ride?' Then the stranger passed on, before they could tell him of the difficulties involved in riding the pony.

"Desperate by this time, the farmer said: 'Son, only one choice remains. If either of us ride the pony, we will remain at the mercy of the denunciations of the first, second, and third class. We must carry the pony, then perhaps all sides will be satisfied'. 'The pony may not like it, father.' 'He is silent. If he says anything, we will whip him.' And so they lifted the pony on their backs, although it was a difficult and clumsy

-30-

thing to do."

'Father,' I said at this point, in disbelief, 'you are in-
venting this story. You ought not to tell me falsegoods. No one
carries a pony upon his back. That is ridiculous.' 'My father was
greatly angered and slapped me savagely, making me howl with pain.
"Don't ever call your father a liar," he said, "It's enough that
your mother does so."

'Finish the story, father, please,' I said, meekly, weeping.

"After a slow and painful effort, the farmer and Hans managed to reach the marketplace, carrying the pony upon their backs and looking very strange. In the marketplace, idlers here congregated, who, when they saw this sight, began to laugh and their laughter increased in intensity and volume. 'What are you good-for-nothings laughing about?' said the father, challenging them, while Hans in shame hid his head in his father's sleeve. The leader, the biggest wiseacre of all, answered: 'Why, you damned fool! Whoever heard of carrying a pony? A pony is supposed to carry you.' Their laughter increased still more at this sally, and the farmer felt completely helpless, at the end of his rope, and besides he could not stand being laughed at, being very sensitive. So he took out his revolver, which he had had in his pocket all the while, and, bang! bang! bang! shot the pony, shot his son, and, shrugging his shoulders, and brushing the hair back from his forehead, shot himself."

My mother entered at this moment and began to argue with
my father for telling the child such a story, and soon all the
hate between them made each bring up past wrongs on each other's
part, and in their heat they forget my presence and spoke
shamelessly and brutally, while I wept loudly, watching them,
weeping because of the sad end of the story, because they were

-31-

ACT THREE
"THERE IS A WORLD ELSEWHERE"

--Over the soft pudding of my face
I passed my hand to assure myself of where
My place was, where my gaze and gazing mind:
The warm bath of awareness mounts again.
His story was my story, he was I,
Myself divided in identity,
Dressed in a dress-suit, seated secretly
Where all my studied ghosts surrounded me.

Now has the hero come to get his prize
--The Senate's gift and office.

Waiting there,
(The while the well-coached crowd approaches him,
As yet unheard),

Marcius makes inquiries
About Aufidius, his perfect foe,
Necessitous to him.

The day, the joy,
The glory and circumstance of honor
Hardly concern him (all taken for granted,
Being achieved),

but with what interest
Hears how Aufidius bears him full hate,
Wishes a cause to seek him out once more,
Strive with him once for all

and kill him!
--Affirms the dogma of his being thus.

The tribunes come, pretend to warn him,
Perceives their plot, denounces them,

he

asserts

That all concessions only
Increase class conflict and unite the poor,
Raising their appetite:

"He's right", says Marx,

-32-

Absorbed beside me.

Brutus and Velutus
Provoke him more, knowing their man full well,
Mention a scandal long forgot, scratch hard
All of his paining skin,

until his choler
Indulged like a thirst, mouthed with bulging eyes,
Alienates everyone on every side.

--O apoplectic then, he speaks as if
For his own class, but they, patricians there,
Standing beside him, censure him, regret
His utterance, perceive his drunkenness,
And seek to soothe all partisans.

He howls
A theory of the state, he calls the people
Hydra a monster, he requires the Senate
To end the tribunes' power,

he insists
That they take on his spirit and his humor
--While they, not fed as he, stand coldly by,
Outside his passion, moved to pure distaste,
Trying to quiet him, take him away.

At which he blazes! All not with him
Are against him!

"Enough, enough!"

Menenius says,

"Traitor!" the tribunes cry,
"O not enough! take more!" Narcissus howls,
"That many-headed monster must be strapped,
His tongues plucked out and every loud inch whipped
Erect! O noblemen, be not debased,
They are the Senators, you are displaced!"

["-33-", "But no response. But he is quite alone,\nForeign, alien, estranged.", "Whipped on by Brutus,", "\"Arrest him now,\"", "Brutus demands, \"The city is the people\",\n(\"The city is the people\", the people echo)", "\"And he their enemy, let him be killed,\nBorne to the rock Tarpeian and cast down!\"", "Thus the deliberate tribune asks his death\n\"Tarpeian death, hurled from the naked rock\nForth from the falling sky to rising ruin.\"", "And the poor people, whipped on by the tribunes,\nEcho their voices, move to seize the hero.", "--Whereat he draws his sword, himself unsheathed,\nAnd still defies them.", "Menenius cries. "--Lay hands on him\",\nBrutus demands.", "\"Down with that sword\",", "The Senate's guard arrives,\nBriefly the crowd is beaten back,\nMarcius is hurried elsewhere by his friends.", "The orchestra resumes. Beethoven blows\nThe raw emotion through the passive air\nAs through the body's darkness. Well he knows\n(And well the violins are sworded there)", "Responsive anger savage in the head\nHammered and stammered till its fist is fed.", "\"This man\" murmurs the Stagirite to me,\n\"Breaks down the categories. Every man\nDivided by them, yet a surd remains,\nHimself and not his genus, species, class,\nAnd not his time, his place, his quantity:\nSomething remains,", "each man a quality,"]

-34-

As is the color, blue, the taste of sweet,
Indivisible, individual, alone,
But of all personal animals
Marcius is most extreme, most radical,
Discolors with his teeth each element,
Which gave him being, cooks it, pukes it up,
So by transforming all, himself to be,
Though vomiting be all activity,
Till in the vomit's fluid and smell he sees
His unique essence living as disease."

"O as disease indeed!" Marx intervenes,
"See what a fracture such uniqueness means!
He who would rend himself from his own class,
Shall feel his self as ragged as broken glass."

"His mother's breast", intrudes the Viennese,
"Delighted him too much, fixed his disease.
The child misunderstood, blind animal:
Dark Id rules all, and though impersonal,
Fixed to the womb this individual:
'O Mutter, Mutter, it is cold outside':
So speaks his wish to die, such is his pride."

"O no!" Karl Marx insists, "You do not see
His veritable mother, the genuine She
From whom he sucked his pieties, his mind,
His sword, his words, his war, his unchewed rind,
His desired, his desired. She is here
Near to him as his hands and feet are near!"

The house of Marcius now. The living room
--Nobles convened to meet their class' woe,
All members of the ruling class,
They speak as such, adjudge his character
And find him wanting too, or rather too
Abnormal, alien, foreign, strange, a freak,
Not of their kind, though they admire him
As one admires the sun, shading his eyes.

-35-

"He is too noble for the world", says one,
"He is a god or beast, he is the one
Whom Aristotle in his Politics
Refers to as apart from any city,
Not one to live in a community,
Superior or inferior to the state,
Disdains the shadow which he treads at noon,
And would not flatter God for what is ~~His~~ No, would not recognize the Deity,
--The only one perfect and all alone."

Enter Cominius with word that now
The wound can still be bandaged, the people
Pacified
(forgiving, forgetful, relative,)
The people will pardon him
if he but
Affirm the people's rights, the tribune's office
And show such courtesy as strangers get
To those who will be dogs if they are pets,
--Who merely wish to sit down and be friends.

His friends plead with him, kindly, carefully,
Call on his loyalty, ask that but once
That he but once not make his mouth his heart,
Or civil war and the class war will burn,
Or he will die.

And thus they touch him not,
Or rather butter the obelisk, his callous height,
For he invites Tarpeian death, insists
That ten times worse will never alter him,
Nor height a million times as high as is
The rock Tarpeian change his attitude
And make him politic,

O in New York
His swollen heart would find true properties,
We have such pyramids as financiers
Descend when their arithmetic's full sum
Betrays a debt the smashing pavement pays.

-36-

One puny qualm he has: "I muse my mother
Does not approve me further."

So he says
As she appears; appeals to her at once,
His only audience:

"AmI not true,
Mutter, am I not true to my own nature?"
In baby lisp requesting flattery.

But she, annoyed and firm, and not as he
Calls him too foolish, yes, a very child,
One who would eat his cake before he has it,
And show his private parts in company.

"I am as you", she says, though she is not,
As proud, contemptuous, intransigent,
But with an adult mind and not a child's,
Prudent, reasonable,

O go", she says,
"Repent to the tribunes",

"No", he says.
"You are too absolute", she cries, "Beg, kneel,
Tell them you have a soldier's violent tongue".
"No, No", he says, although already moved,
I cannot change my face"--such is his claim--
"Revise my heart, no, not for God himself,
How then for them?

the unwashed stinking horde?"

-37-

"I beg you", says Volumnia, "I do,
Sweet son!"

"O well!" thus he consents, consents
And calls himself a whore, describes consent
With such disgust that he offends himself,
Reneges again, refuses, stricken by
His grimace in the glass of his own voice.

Her anger mounts. "You are an absolute,
You recognize not mother, wife, nor child,
Nor any relative. You are alone"

--Never before so harsh!

Denies her still,
Though in the streets the crowds are packed and wait
Till she tugs wholly at the silver cord,
--First for the city and his own friends' sake,
The ground on which he stands, from which he rose;
Then, knowing, intuitive, she says she is
The senators, the city, his son, his wife,
(Freud bursts to speak beside me) she unites
All in one picture, She, enormous mother,
All stimuli, all bells, and every fine cue.

--Still he denies, though with weakening face,
Still she pursues, cries out in rage that she
Pays for the insane pride sucked from her breast,
Pays for the ego which her womb fed well,
Which now preempts all things, thinks all is his.

"Chide me no more!" Marcius, consenting, hurt,
Obedient to the womb's authority:

"I'll be a mountebank, an easy whores
Who sleeps with every sex and every lie,
Perjure myself, juggle their jogging hearts
With my sweet temper, kiss each pimpled face,
Answer their perjury with my own honor,
And come back consul perfectly forgiven!"

"O what an anima!" says Aristotle,

"How torn by contradictions!" says Karl Marx,
"O as a girl finds heavy in her self
And bigger day by day, more obvious,
That joy's commission which shall be her shame,
So does the ton of evil in this man
Move to dénouement, issue, tragedy.
As a society contains within itself
The child which shall destroy it, so does he
Nurse in his breast the striving love and hate
Which shall annul him!"

"O he yields", says Freud,
"To childhood's queen, that is, his very mother!"
"Not to Volumnia," Karl Marx replies,
"But to the mother obsessing all men's eyes!
Volumnia was refused until she pressed
His biggest mother toward his much-used breast!
Fame is her face, economy her bone,
No man departs from her and lives alone!"
"A man may go away", says Plato's son,

Send

-39-

"Travel beneath the moon until he has won
Virtue, knowledge, the good. Wherever he goes
There is one changing mother. She, he knows,
Prior to him in actuality,

--As his mind's words, his warm identity!"

--Now at the Forum. Brutus and Velutus
Coach the poor people, prompt their will, dictate
Their act, prepare to provoke their Marcius,
Knowing him well, to self-destroying anger,
Any pretext or wound.

He comes before them,
A staring audience which shows as if
The city painted its own image there.
The tribunes question him and he replies
Adequately, gravely, quietly,
Acknowledges the people's rights,

His friends
Chime in, apologize, call this enough,
The meeting verges on its happy end,

--Yet he cannot suppress a single query,
Why he's been crowned and then crudely uncrowned
Within an hour?

Seizing their chance, the tribunes
Accuse him,

call him traitor!

charge his will.

Of tyranny and kingship.

False and true,

His rage explodes immediately! He
Defies them, frenzied, his tongue hysterical,
Defies a million deaths from them.

The people,
Prompted, pulled by a string or button, roar,
"Exile or death", the tribunes quickly ask,
"Exile", the people roar,
While Marcius foams, spitting every curse:
"I exile you!" he cries, "Your breath I hate!
I banish you. There is a world elsewhere."
Thus does the king, falsely accused, enact
His empty kingship, striking his own heart,
While the poor people praise their worthy voices,
Wishing a little good and to be friends.

One mother
Shadows/ him
and shows

*

-40-

C. 3

Between The Acts

True Wit and Wit

Here I am at this time dressed in a toga to suit the occasion. I
am sure you will agree that this performance is nothing, if not engrossing.
Surely the consequences will provide that fine thing, **katharsis**, concerning
which one member of the audience has long been an expert; **katharsis** equal
and even superior to that of the sexual act, which begins everything and
ends nothing, and often, as everyone knows, produces as aftermath the most
unutterable sadness, even in those so self-delighting that they are intox-
icated by the comeliness of their own shadows.

I do not doubt that my appearance here is questionable. Why, you
may ask, does this voluble intruder come upon the stage and interrupt the
occasion with what he seems to regard as of interest to us? Let me confess,
in reply, that I am not very sure of what I am saying, but that I have a
grave need of speech which I can justify to myself. My reason, my justification
is the fact that I am here. Since I am here, it would be well for you to hear
what I have to say. If I remained silent, you might be deceived as to what
you are seeing. Let the observer be observed by all observers in the act of
observing what there is to observe. May I confess, however, that I am not
sure of this justification itself. It is very difficult to be sure of anything.
Let us, however, rather risk foolishness than permit any fact to remain obscure.

To continue with my memoirs, there was a city. That city occupied a
place near the sea. Historians disagree as to the reason for choosing this
place. Some say that an old father committed incest with his daughter and
came here, seeking a certain strangeness for his new family. Some, however,
insist that men came from across the sea seeking precious metals on this
coast and remained here because they were tibed. Thirdly, it is said that
this community was founded because the sea provided a means of commerce with
other nations from whom desirable commodities could be obtained. Lastly,

A.2

there are some who speak with certainty of their belief that an indolent pleasure-seeking man chose this place because he was pleased by views of the sea and also admired the countryside and enjoyed the climate. All agree, however, that the decision which brought the first one to this place to begin the city was his own desire; whatever that desire may have been, he was seeking its satisfaction.

The time soon came when the beginning was obscure and unconsidered, apart from the fact of desire. The owners of ships were the most important men in this community. This was because ships carried from other nations the commodities deemed to be necessary or desirable. As a result, the building of ships was very important. Such matters occupied both the educational system and the games of the children. In order to make the ships, it was necessary above all to cut down forests for wood. The neighboring countryside was abundantly forested. Equally important, was the craft of making a ship, and great honor was paid to the shipbuilder. The commodities brought from other nations were paid for, in general, either by a shipment of lumber or by completely made ships. This led to numerous conflicts. The shipowners protested against the sale of ships to other nations in too great a quantity because it deprived them of their commercial advantage. The owners of ships and the owners of the forests attempted to profit by the need of the other. After a time, a crisis arose as a result of the fact that the neighboring forests were depleted. Consequently, many became aware of the relationship of the city to Nature. Another region of forests was acquired further inland, but after a time this too was completely cut down, and it became necessary to make war upon a distant city to obtain additional forests. The result of each crisis was that first the making and the owning of ships fell or rather was seized by one group of owners, and later shipbuilding, shipping, and the ownership of forests all became the ownership of one group; the ones who at first had merely owned ships.

A.3

In this city there was a boy who lived a personal life in which at every given opportunity he judged, that is to say, evaluated the kind of being and the ways of life which surrounded him. Such judging was natural to him, made him lonely, sprang from his desire to know what he might enact, possess, and attain when he was permitted to choose, if he were permitted to do so. Such judging was as much a matter of his body's intuitive responses as of a conscious effort to decide what various objects and processes were worth to him. He strolled by the seaside, regarded the sea, the ships in the harbor, the sailors washing the decks. He walked on the great avenue where stood the big houses of the rich merchants, the owners of ships. He gazed with no little curiosity into their windows, striving to see if life had a different quality there. He looked long into the display windows of the shopkeepers, where were shown all the goods which had been obtained from many nations. He studied the diamonds in the jeweller's window, and observed that a thing of intrinsic goodness had a certain toughness. He sat in the waiting-room of a doctor and saw that many were ill for a long time and he stood where tickets were bought for journeys and knew that many wish to go away and many return. He cracked the nuts given him by a grocer, ate the meat contained in them, decided that it would be foolish to consider eating a major satisfaction. He made the acquaintance of a druggist who permitted him to try his salves and ointments. He found them delicate. When, however, the druggist used his own cosmetics and simpered toward him, he fled, astonished by the arbitrary nature of taste. From a close vantage-point, he gazed upon the sailors with their whores in the bushes near the driveway, and he knew that the body desires to penetrate and exhaust and make fat the body of another. A dentist told him that teeth were near the ego. He met metaphysicians who discussed the sea and painters who painted ships, but he was not as yet impressed. He met/theologian who told him that since al men must die, he would be foolish to concern himself with the practical arrangements of life, but wise to prepare himself with a decent charact

A.4

for the event of immortality. He spoke with an undertaker who told him that one must make a living and that in time one became used to everything. He observed children and saw how cruel they were in their games and knew that only later among a few adults who had escaped from childhood could one expect kindness, charity, an exact awareness of the torture and the tender-ness of the ego. He saw how those who had authority were corrupted by the mere formality of their offices. During this prolonged examination he was by himself, had no friends, was regarded by his family as worse than useless. So great was his interest, however, that nothing deterred him, no one offend-ed him by contempt, not even his father, who helped to build ships.

Boys who were clever or ambitious in this city were told to become the builders of ships. If one were fortunate, courteous, hard-working, and extremely intelligent, one might attain to the privilege of sleeping with the daughters of the great merchants, the owners of ships. Boys were told that life was very sweet in their great houses as their sons-in-law. Then, by natural succession, one might hope to become oneself an owner of ships and forests, and a lord among men of the city, walking in the assurance of all who possess themselves and inspire meekness, strict attention, admiring glances.

But he rejected these brilliant promises. They were not enough and they were already exemplified by young men of thinning hair and slight paunch who seemed to be endeavoring to remember what they had desired. He rejected the notion of hierarchy or stair implicit in this scheme. The rich did not seem to him to be at the top of the stair and the poor striving to climb at least one more flight. When he had reached this conclusion, however, he met an old sailor who argued that the people in the city were detained in a prison, the prison of the way in which each made his living and all secured the goods deemed necessary or desirable. The old sailor said that the objects of attention were dictated by this fact; conscious life was preoccupied and not free; the attitudes toward Nature were determined

A.5

by the operation of instruments in the fields and on the water; the relation-
ship between a man and his brother was determined by each one's function
and no man's heart. Yet, said the old sailor, this is what at the beginning
was desired, although no more. The honorable, the justifiable, the notable,
the beautiful were dictated by a center of feeling which was itself merely
a narrow response to the manifold forms to the way in which each good in
general was made, secured, kept, taken, and given.

The boy was shocked to hear this, and disturbed by the old sailor's
advice, namely, to go to sea and to seek also the rocking scenes of in-
determinacy a certain freedom of feeling, from the ways of the city. This
seemed to him merely the counsel of evasion and escape. A pause occurred
in which his decisive response prepared itself. It would be like no other
man's since no one had lived the days which he had lived. He had seen many
desires and satisfactions and been somewhat impressed by all of them. No one
of them failed to enter into the new and unique center of feeling which pre-
pared itself in his heart; just as the muscles of the runner have been
minutely

determined by his daily rounds about the track, so that even the
cinders and the airs of early morning have affected them and entered into
their very being.

This boy was at the moment of falling in love and all the love he
had seen was present in him, though differently. All men are in love, the
forms of love ale many: such was the knowledge present in him. As his first
enactment of the long fate of love, he went to sea and in this act was
contained the potentialities of the future of the city. For he discovered
a new land of forests and thus from his original longing transformed the
shipbuilding of the city and thus in the end its way of life. Or he dis-
covered a new means of moving ships and transformed the commerce of the
city. His new center of feeling, though derived from the city, made it
necessary for him to murder the captain of the ship in order that he might
proceed in the ways of his own origination. Let us depart from him, even as

-46-

FOUR, PART ONE

"LIKE TO A LONELY DRAGON"

Lifting his silly nightgown up,
My twin retires once more, I am once more
Beside myself. I feel myself
Behind my face, quiet as moonlight is,
Fale guilt within the night.

His utterance
Jejeune and lyrical, is mine, my own.
He tells my secrecy, my private mind,
My very heart in accents crude and broad
And I am gratified to have it known
(Let it be known, I think, that is my pleasure,
Let it be fully known, if it is true,
Of every mind with technique mine alone
Sleeps such a dream, endures this brutal night),
But shamed by his voluble nakedness.

The parting scene comes now. Now at the gate
Marcius commences exilg, separates
From mother, wife, and son, from friends and Rome
(A few patricians, the imitative young
Entranced by him, are also there),
Dismisses tears and their # extended arms,
Limp attitudes of farewell and of grief,
--And though Cominius would go with him
For a full month until he's once more rooted
("But what are men, says Plutarch, plants, to stay
Fixed in one place. The mind's a traveller,
The wandering mind which makes us moving souls",
So says one ghost by me, equivocal),
Marcius refuses. He would go alone
Like to a lonely dragon, so he says,
Telling them that they soon will hear of him

Send

-47-

And what they hear will be but as before,
The future like the past as one stone like
Another stone in hardness.

The city is a beast,
A many-headed beast which butts him hence,
Or so he says, wholly unmodified.
"A beast, indeed!" his mother is a beast,
Great womb, great height, great strength", says one
late ghost.

"Mother, my letters will be regular.
I am sufficient. I will be myself".
Though he to the audience seems precarious,
Sinking in quicksand or the soft of water
Or trembling on a perilous height, in fact,
("All men are sometime acrobats,
Or tight-rope walkers, teetering their strut),
He to himself is strong, the tough Narcissus
Rather takes pleasure in this exile's wound,
And thinks it shows him perfect once again,
Reaches again for that sweet solitude
When he walked home alone from school, when he
Was the whole world in his mother's womb.

"The navel-cord is cut!" The Marxian cries,
"The belly-button bleeds! The hero dies!
Thus will he pay the dialectical price,
Each virtue when too swollen is a vice!
O with what blindness he departs from home!"

Beethoven's tears accompany the poem.

B.l.

II

Choose

No introduction, no idle remarks, I am tired as you of too much discussion
and come now merely to bring the story forward.

Marcius, having departed from Rome went from place to place. He spoke to
no one, he knew no one, he had no place to go, he ate and slept alone, and
he had only his sense of hatred and of appalling injury, the savage anger
which obsessed his revery, only this passion to occupy the lucid day of
many objects and the vague night when nothing exists. No purpose, no desire,
except the vindictive appetite, nothing of which to think but his past
longing
victories and his uncontrollable/to smash certain faces, which made him
clenched his fists merely as he proceeded on his journey to no end.

At first he was gratified in his unceasing walk because he was alone
with his towering shadow, which compared itself with nothing either in the
sterile desert or the cool forest. And at first he was gratified by the
strange bedrooms in which he was alone with his own smell, the only one which
did not offend him. Soon he was less pleased and a blister on his foot made
him feel an incomparable pity for himself. Later he was annoyed because he
had no one to speak to, except the one whom he asked for something to eat
and a place to sleep. Meanwhile he still considered himself completely
independent and was under the impression that he was proving his self-suff-
iciency. One night, however, he dreamed that he had returned to Rome, re-
canted, unsaid his pride, and begged their forgiveness, asked to be killed
or permitted to remain, the least of citizens in Rome. He awaked then, wholly
disgusted and angered by his own weakness, and determined to/further and
further from Rome, travelling a greater number of miles each day in order
to deny the dream and convince himself that what occurred in the prone
passivity of sleep had nothing to do with himself awake. Stiff-necked,
hardening his heart, hating the need which sleep disclosed, he came at last,
after the worst despair, to a lake ringed by pines after a long journey in a

3.2.

barren and flat terrain. It was a perfect day in the middle of September. The lake sparkled a million times and the soft wind crossed the shuffled, shuffling waters. The night before he had dreamed the identical dream of returning and begging forgiveness. He has come to despise his sleep and to be afraid of not remaining awake. Desolate, desolate. Even his mother against him, even his sleep betraying him, even his hatred become ambiguous; Narcissus, Brutus, Judas, knowing no place to go, having no desire, attained to the emptiness for which he had striven, sick at heart more than ever before, he kneels by the water, bends over it, and then, staring at the water, kneeled above it, he sees his own face there, folded over and over, distorted under the ripple, undulating, and he coughs! amazed to hear the sound of his body in the silence, sneezes! in a sudden chill, in his body's weakness and disbelief. He sees his face, his thick lips, curly hair, flaring nostrils, broad forehead. His haunted eyes regard themselves, round lakes full of a kind of sweat, ~~but~~ still getting pleasure from their own unmoved look, and aware of the rippling water, and of the sky, the eternal gem, reflected therein, a curious hat or backdrop for his head.

It is the moment of vision and decision. Staring upon that face which is his own, he sees his own life, and the lives rejected and the choices chosen, and the immediacy of anger and pleasure, and the abstracted stare of memory, and the strangeness, to himself, of his own face, the most peculiar of flowers.

And then his mother's face replaced his own and bloomed until it has become an enormous image quivering or trembling in the water or in the sky. She looks at him as if she were waiting for him to speak to her and he gazes back, afraid and yet unable to turn away, trying to believe what he sees before, whether in the water or the sky. And then, as if decided that he will not speak to her, she says to him:

"You cannot depart from me. You are nothing apart from me, you do not exist without me. I will be with you no matter where you go. Your

B.3

lips are mine, your globe-like head and your deep body, your swinging arms,
your strength, system, and urge, habit, complexion, and dress. I fed you.
I have given you each part of your being, or you took that part from me. The word
of your tongue is mine. Your effort to depart from me is your pain, your
evil. I am your mother or Rome, which you wish to call me is not important.
I am Volumnia or Rome.

"But I am yours. You are your own; lips, hair, face, look, you own,
your property. This is your freedom. You are free, self-choosing, a king.
Your words are yours, although they are mine. Although you have taken your-
self from me, nevertheless your speech is your choice, your life is your
making, your being is your own. Nothing compels you, no imperative dictates
to you, the actuality of your choice is what it is for you, your individual-
ity grasps the uniqueness of each moment. This surpasses me and me.
This is your freedom. Chooset."

51-

FOUR, PART THREE

"A GOODLY HOUSE, THE FRAST SMELLS WELL"

Inveterate, gratitious, too much,
Ambiguous, I tire even myself

--The curtain rises on a night in which
All's indeterminate except the moon,
Marcius in white, and two enormous signs,
Painted in phosphorus at right and left
As if alternatives were parts of place
And choice a bird which whirls upon the air
And comes to rest

only to rise once more,
To ANTIUM, at left, as advertised,
To ROME, at right, and Marcius in between
Outstretched upon the ground,

Night over all
Except the rounding moon which dreams of snow,
Unnatural as both signs.

"Don't", he says
Prone there upon the ground as if in bed
In possibility. "Won't, cannot, must not,
Deny the inveterate heart."

Coercive
Friendship is green,
The hearth is glowing. Man cannot live alone,
That world is colorless, an infinite grey,
Nothing to do, nothing to wish and act,
Dance in a vacuum to no audience,
And no applause,

But they hurt me, hit me,
Whispered behind my back and shut the door,
Nobles as well as poor. And none said,
'O no, he is our friend, shall stay with us,
Sit at our table and play games with us
Till the mob stone our children and our house.'
No one in Rome said this,

bone, stone, unknown,

thrown and alone,

I'll go to Antium,
Seek out Aufidius, my worst enemy,
He and his friends be my good company,
My heart's my own!

I choose myself, I'll die
Crying to Rome its fate, that I am I!

-52-

"This is the turning-point", said Aristotle,
"This the peripety, he now has done
All that a man can do, committed his will
Once and for all, purchased his only fate.
He's helpless now, as one, who, stepping, falls,
The rest is his great chute, descent, career."

"Every act is a boomerang", says Freud,
"A ricochet, a knife which cuts the butcher."
"This man still eats his heart", Beethoven said,
"It is a pretty dish and he will starve"
Chords spread upon the air their synthesis
Of all that is involved within the kiss,
Her lips the curved soft fruit of blood, her breath
Excitement's rhythm, quite aware of death.
How many actualities pass by unnamed,
Music anonymous shall witness this,
Music essentially vague shall wholly tell
With what variety man goes to hell!"

Now Jew is silent and the Greek is still,
Bent over the fate of that sad animal.
While I, I am afraid of that fifth ghost,
Who is unknown, who has not said one word.

A scene that's quickly done. Marcius before
The house of Aufidius in Antium.
In mean apparel, muffled and disguised,
Regards the sour twilight and the city,
A handsome city to his exiled gaze,
One which has suffered many a widow from him,
Hearsed many an heir too soon.

He asks the street
Where great Aufidius stays, wholly aware
How times have changed, how dialectical
His straight heart turns the curving world.
He vows his love to Antium, his hate to Rome.

-53-

A hall in the house of great Aufidius.
Music within blooms with its order and love,
Radiant, resolving all voices in its own.
He enters hesitant and wholly muffled,
The sound of banqueting

strikes at his heart,
Music and food, mutual being, three
Baskets or contexts by which man's heart is kept
From falling through nothingness.

Where Marcius stands
An angle of the dining room is seen
And three men's faces show at the long table,
Eating and laughing, caught unknowingly
In two dual aims, to eat and yet guffaw.

"The feast smells well. But I am not a guest."
Marcius instructs himself,

He hears the clink
Of glasses met, the brittle tap of fork
Against the plate,

sudden, an active hush
While one would tell a story of their fellow,
Until at the sweet crux, all roar,

even
The silly fool whose foolishness is told
Glad to be famous there and then and thus

--Wishes himself that fool, himself unfed,
As a servant enters crying Wine! Wine!
Wine that the warm glow of company
May be sustained, renewed, increased to blaze.

-54-

The servant sees him, the servant as the snob
Sees his mean dress, asks with impudence
Just what he wants,

"Aufidius", he replies,
Telling himself that he deserves no welcome
Other than this,

a second servant joins,
Both being a little drunk and hi-de-ho,
Refuse to call Aufidius, abuse him,
"Get out before I throw you out", says one,
"Sure, you're a pretty guest", the other says,
"Where do you live", they ask;

Marcius replies,
"Under the sky, under the canopy!"
"Get out! this is no place for you!" they cry,
Pushing him roughly, -ing
bring/his choher

Until he jaws at them with old contempt,
And the row brings in Aufidius:

His name
(Not recognizing him in his mean dress)
Aufidius requires. He
with a slight pun of hesitation
Calls himself Caius Marcius, then, wholly,
Coriolanus, bursts with his history,
All pride, rancor, rage against Rome,
The cruelty and envy of the people
And how the bastard nobles all forsook him,
Offers himself unto Aufidius,
As victim, or as friend to knock down Rome

"Most absolute sir!", just as his mother did,
Aufidius welcomes him. "Come in, come in!"
He jubilates, joy overbrims, "Come in!
This is a second wedding night for me,

-55-

"Shake hands with all and eat and drink with us,
Welcome a million times! for your own sake
Will we tear Rome to pieces! Marcius, Come in!"

The servants too rejoice that war is come,
While the hubbub rises from the dining room,
For war, says one, in fact unites all men,
While peace makes cuckolds, peace makes idleness,
Boredom and quietness.

"When peace rules us
Men have no need of friendship, therefore sleep,
Quarrel, grow old, insensible and stupid".

A public place in Rome. The tribunes speak
Of Marcius' absence and the city's peace.
Rome fattens, rid of its poor absolute,
All 's well, the people sing at work,
Or so the tribunes say.

Even Menenius
Admits the happiness, regrets that Marcius
Could never temporize, reports that none,
Nor mother, wife, nor he, know where he is,
Have heard from him,

Citizens pass, profess
Their grateful ease and thank the useful tribunes
Who now judge Marcius once again, repeat
That though brave soldier, he was arrogant,
Proud, ambitious past imagination,
Self-loving, wished to be king of Rome.

And as they speak, amid their sleek content
News shakes, shocks them,

Coriolanus,
Coriolanus leads the Volscian host,
Ravishes colonies and comes toward Rome!
Terror rises. Panic
Seizes the populace. The patricians
Hurry to meet

and fear convulses all.

-56-

And now the Volscian camp. As he shakes Rome,
He gnaws Aufidius with every tooth,
Unknowingly, though vowed to show, in all,
Humility, and move with modesty,
And loyalty.

But the true surd
Is irreducible. The individual
Is uncontrollable. To him, to him
The soldiers draw, forget Aufidius,
Render him virtual kingship.

Aufidius is deathly jealous. "He is,
He is ", he says, "by nature but one thing,
Cannot be otherwise, cannot deny,
His nature more than a triangle can.
For this was he banished and for this
--So virtue lies in circumstance alone,
And every time interprets us--

becomes
The idol of all hearts, the man I kill!"

The orchestra begins. Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!
Rome and her strangest child in double harm!
Evil is complex. Though man walk alone
He steps upon the whole world

and is thrown!

"So our virtues/
Lie in the interpret-
ation of time"

IV, VII, 50.

A.1.
Between The Acts

Ladies and Gentlemen, here I am once more, dressed as a knight in
armor in order to recall the days when our fathers thought they understood
good and evil and old Nobodaddy (concerning whom I intend to remain silent).
I would venture to say that this performance was ~~midway toward~~ its conclusion
~~Concusion, however~~, which is a fiction, in fact, for we know neither beginning nor end, only
the report of them. For we are always in the middle of everything, and our
lives are, need I say, infinitely divisible; like Achilles and the tortoise,
we shall never get home, and I, a veritable Coleridge, must buttonhole you
once more, the host believed Shakespeare was, and the most related Shakespeare's were not.

Here I am finally to provide you with an abstract picture postcard of
the wounded nudity about which all things whirl, that is to say, the soul.
In the Shakespearean night, the souls of the poor fool and the brave hero
and the gentle lady shiver and huddle in a nakedness which no dress covers.
In the precise center of this oblong postcard a human being is shown,
possessing hair, eyes, hands, feet, arms, belly, genitals, and the other
parts which make possible thought, movement, and love. This human being
might be mistaken for Joseph, who had a many-colored coat; Moses, for whom
God burned; David, who threw stones so well; Ulysses, who wished to go
home; Orestes, who was hunted; Odeipus, who desired his own eyesight (perhaps
secretly desiring the vision of Tiresias); Peter, betrayed by the cock;
Dante, the greatest traveller; or the remorseless Morning Star, John Milton,
who seduced our first mother. He might be mistaken for any one of these
famous gentlemen. For look you! he undergoes that pain of all vertebrates,
the labor of standing up. He endures the loneliness of all conscious beings.
He ties his shoelaces in his own style, which merely shows that like those
famous heroes, he is betrayed by his body, his feet hurt him and he must
blow his nose. In his own style, he ties his shoelaces, and enacts the other
motions which distinguish his identity amid the infinite host. He adjusts

C-2

his hat and his tie before the oval mirror in the hallway in his own
inimitable idiom. His uniqueness is obvious, though he resembles other
members of his family. His voice has a certain intonation which has never
been heard from another man. His step on the stairs and his key in the lock
can be recognized as his. No one, not the most precise counterfeiter, can
duplicate his handwriting, for no one writes with precisely such curls.
His handwriting is, however, merely a symptom of his nervous system. He is
original.

Now, as he stands there and moves toward himself, a breathing
animal, almost divine, let us ask once more the question which we do not evade.
Who is he? Let us begin again as we always begin again in order that we may
continue. What is he? He is his father and his mother, neither of whom are
represented on the postcard. He is his childhood, which is also absent. He is
his adolescence, which is each one's *vaterland*. He is his young manhood. Let
us begin again. He is his fatherland, which is his adolescence, and he is
his mother, which is his childhood. None of this can be represented upon
the postcard, and you, when you look at any man, remember that you do not
truly see him. For he is his past and his past is unseen, although it is one of
the greatest of powers. His past holds him and he must move forward in time,
dragging every fear and every beauty of every year with him. They will never
release him! He carries his habits, which are his childhood, just as his
watch is strapped to his wrist.

And he moves, because he must, and thus he is betrayed to the
unending agony of conscious being. Thus he moves forward to what he has not
yet been. Here his pain awaits him and here he is as yet nothing. The
repetition of yesterday and the day before will never suffice, but he must
create again and again from what has been the unheard-of future. The future
of time which is nothing cannot be grasped by the repetition of what has been.
It is not enough. He must create what has never existed. The necessity of
the future intrudes and he must choose, although as most often he merely

C.3

choose what has already existed. Such is the nothingness which faces him.
He is the future. He is a person!

See him, in admiration and fear. Remark the original face which is
unrecognizable, never before having been. Regard his face and suppose the
unknown heart and the secret head, which create the nature of what is to
come. The past is transformed in him. The world begins again. All is torn in
him and altered in the richest exchanges. Passionate nonesuch, his heart
bansumes the world. His freedom breaks his heart. His freedom creates the
future. He is the mystery, irreducible. His freedom is his mystery. With his
freedom he does it, his unknown creative act. With that mystery, his own
identity, he who will never have sufficient names, invents the future! O my
beauty! See him, sharply and exactly. Coriolanus, Caius Marcius Coriolanus,
Coriolanus, the individual.

-60-

FIVE

"AS IF A MAN WERE AUTHOR OF HIMSELF"

That twin goes back: too much and not enough,
Led by the ecstasy of his tongue,
Hiding what wish and hope I do not know,
And by ideas possessed and tricked
By his imagination like an heir
Straining in mind unto a vast access
Upon a change as radical as death--
And I by now accustomed to be twice
And by their wits' / tuition tossed side to side
Hunger for what necessity has supplied.

The curtain rises on the heart of man
As always in America and Asia
But now on Rome in crisis,

fear and dread
Tighten all people. As love makes one, so fear
Makes one, all have one will, one hope,
That Marcius, spewed out like a pit or rind,
Be sucked back by some intimate appeal,
His anger turned from them.

Cominius
Has been ambassador to him, returned
And now reports the hapless interview
--That Marcius would not answer; when he did
Refused his name and called himself a nothing
Until a fire was his name, ∝

Rome burning down!
"I kneeled before him", says Cominius,
"I called on every piety of his,
But like a metal his impervious face
--Then faintly, he dismissed me, as if he spoke
Distant from me a thousand miles away!
--Only his mother might penetrate his hate".

-61-

Menenius, though demurring, is the next
Sent as ambassador,

to beg, solicit, plead,
All that auld lang syne may, in kneeling suit,
"--O" says Menenius, "I'll come to him
When he has had his dinner and fed well,"
O plum, O filet mignon, charlotte russe,
Thus we depend on our immediacies,
Og so the old boy says.

The next scene shows
The Volscian host advanced, their general's tent,
Menenius arrived upon his mission
Confronted by the soldier boy on guard:
"No visitors from Rome. He says _No one_
None of his hometgwn boys can see him. You,
You treated him like dirt".

"Listen, I was",
The old boy urges, "His best friend. We ate
And slept together!

Tell me, has my old chum
Had dinner yet? For I would speak to him
After he's had his coffee and dessert",
--As Marcius enters with Aufidius,
To cry _Away_ to O my son! my son!

And the ludicrous tears of fat Menenius:
"I have no wife, no mother and no child,
And if I knew you once, that is long past,
And now a nothingness is in between",

Gives him, however, a letter of reprieve,
To save his person,

turns away, and asks
Aufidius to mark him obdurate,
Loyal and unattached by any string,
Chain, wire, or bond to Rome.

The soldiers watch
And call him noble, call their general
A rock perturbed by nothing in the world.

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-62-

"Response! a man responds", says Sigmund Freud,
"Leaps back from that which strikes him, or falls down,
from
Departs, achieves a callous or soars up,
Or goes to Africa or goes to wine,
A bird, a beast, a boxer, or he dies,
A fugitive,

a sailor, tailor, jailor,
Barber or surgeon,

all faces for replies
To the world's repeated fist, so various
And inescapable,

questions or blows
And a man responds, inventing every choice,
Adjusts, I say, with much imagination,
Seeks salves or runs away, gets bandages
And goes to sleep, makes speeches or denies
That that which is is what it is or seems,
Seems and is not,

-struck-

so this much man now tries
A harder face each blow, a stranger answer,
A greater void, the womb, his wish to die--"

he

As mother, wife, and child in mourning clothes
Enter the tent of Coriolanus,
Muster all pathos, show very sad and meek,
Raise hands for his heart to take him down to them
And stand in silence as our Marcius cries
"Let me not be a father, husband, son!
Corrupt and rot, all warmth, affection, love!
Let nature die in me and instinct starve,
Their kneeling bodies be unmeaning blur!
O I will stand as stiff and staunch as stone,
As if a man were author of himself,
I will be author of myself alone!

"It is the moment, Love," the Marxian cries,
"This man cuts every vine and so he dies!"

-63-

"Each would be God", exclaims the Stagirite,
"Desire has no top, is infinite!"

But, saying this, Coriolanus yields,
Yields slightly, kisses wife, and kneels
Before his kneeling mother, calls her best,
Best mother, his Olympus, his great height,
And is appalled to see his mother kneel,
The/ womb to drop down so.

Success' sweets,
It is the scene of Joseph satisfied,
The exile welcomed home on his own terms,
All lives within his will and whim.

Respond,
Respond, his mother means, showing to him
His only child, who is, she says, himself,
Will be as he, a needle of the sword,
And thus she rings all gongs to call him home.

"We sue for peace", Volumnia says,
Thinking the moment ripe and soft,
--At which he freezes quite, begs them no plea,
Summons Aufidius and other Volscians
To see him still untouched.

Volumnia pleads
"Again, again, we must see this again",
So speaks the Viennese, "mother and son",
The two exhausting their relationship,
A well-known fact of all communities,
--Where's Hamlet and His Gertrude, Odeipus
That ignorant man

and Baudelaire? "

Volumnia speaks: "Rome is our nurse,
She suckles all of us. When you ruin Rome,
You tread your mother's womb, which made you real!"

-64-

"You tread my womb, which made a son for you",
So speaks his wife,

And little Marcius cries
"You will not tread on me. I'll run away
And fight when I get big!"

Amusing all
By this sheer mimicry of Marcius,
Rifting the serious a moment which
Gives Marcius difficulty with his face.

"All, all depends on him, on his sole heart,
He is contingency, it is his will,
He is a future of time, it is his choice,
Rome lives or dies by him, his heart,
His complex heart decides the day or night!"
So speaks in ecstacy the Stagirite,

"It is his freedom, there rests all to come,
It is his self-creating will which rules,
But what he chooses--look! his mother's hand
gave it him, look! look! he chooses her!"

For now the scene becomes hysterical,
--"O now", the Marxian cries, "she would profess
That she is Rome, she would prevail by painting
Rome as her own face,

and one cannot
discriminate Volumnia and Rome
In any sentence."

"Marcius, Marcius,
Reconcile communities, be famous for
Your pity and your ruth",

her foreign words
("She is convinced, she knows," Karl Marx affirms)
"But he not yet convicted,"

though she cries out,
"I am the hen that clucked you to the war,
I made you what you are, and no man, none,
Owes mother what you owe me".

Again they kneel,
Commanded by Volumnia,

he will not yield,
Although excruciated. He takes her hands,

-65-

Until she says, despairing, "Come,"
Come wife, come child, this stranger's mother
Must be a Volscian. Come, he is no Roman,
He is no son, no husband, and no father."

His knees slip under him, his weakness shows.
He cries out loudly, "Mother, Mother, Mother!
You win! God kurns his face from us, appalled!
You win Rome's victory today, for
but not your son,"
You bring all danger on him, if not death,
You succor Rome but not your only son."

Soon he dismisses them with promised peace.
He will not go with them, no, he will stay,
An immigrant at Antium.

He asks
Aufidius, if he, Aufidius,
Could answer differently a mother
Or grant her less than he.

Aufidius

Pretends content,

aside vows Marcius' death,
Grateful for this excuse, new turncoat shift.

While Marcius courteously escorts
Mother and wife and child to carriages
To bring them back to Rome with happiness,
Congratulates them on their victory,
And turns to find how he must show himself
In the fresh disorder which his heart has made.

The scene in Rome. No hope or little hope
Abides.

"Displace", Menenius cites, "displace
The capital with your little finger, then

-66-

Your hope is justified.

Displaced!
A newsboy means, the capital has been
Displaced! Volumnia's little finger did it!
She has prevailed with him and Rome is saved!

Joy is insane!

Volumnia returns
And she is named the breathing life of Rome.

"She is, she is!" announces Sigmund Freud,
"All issue from the womb and must return,
The dandled, wiped and powdered babe
Cannot forget and cannot understand."

"Nature is no machine", says Aristotle,
"But like a whole she spreads herself, and man
Can do there what he wishes, all extremes."

"Who is that silent one?" I asked in fear,
"Who is that ghost who has not said one word?
Will he speak out before this play is done,
Take off his mask and show? He gives me dread,
You are my friends, you tell me all you know
--Though my stupidity distort it all--
Tell me his name now,

free me from my fear!"
None answer, all intent, <u>katharsis</u> near!

For now the last scene shows: in Antium
Aufidius conspires. The Volscians are
Indeterminate as to the blunted war,
But hardly holding him at fault in it.
The city's lords convene. Marcius presents
All possible apology to them,
Points to the prizes won by him, Rome's shame,
The prosperous treaty made--

"Traitor! Traitor!"
Aufidius calls out. The murderers
Close in on Marcius,
who, merely amazed,
Is not yet angered,
"Marcius! Traitor!
Maudlin and pulsillanimous!"

-67-

Aufidius reiterates,

The insult lights his wrath.

Marcius explodes!

"You lie!" he answers,
"You boy!" Aufidius calls back, "You boy!"
Though some would temporize, be moderate,
Marcius by this is overwhelmed.

"A boy!
A boy!" he howls, appalled, "Marcius!
Coriolanus in Corioli,

That is the name I took with my own hands",
(All tact is overthrown)

"I cut my name
Into your soldier's hearts. I, I, I,
Alone I did it! Boy!"

Aufidius
Grasps his permission here,

though one lord calls

For mercy to the boy,

Aufidius
Summons his fellows,

Marcius draws his sword,
They leap at him. **Kill! Kill! Kill!**

His heart is pierced.

Aufidius stands on him,
And thus the exhausted hero is struck down.

"And thus the exhausted hero is struck down",
Says Aristotle as the curtain falls,

"Even in the affirmation of himself,"

"Acting the part which brought him to this pass,"

Marx chimes, with pity in his angry voice,

"True to himself amid so many truths."

"His choice, his wish, his heart, such is his fate,
All, all depends on the self-squeezing heart",

Thus Aristotle adds, "Man's will is free,

This man became the man he chose to be!"

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