rushed one after another, pushed each other out of
the way, crashed into each other and never stopped,
but continued rushing onward. And one never saw
the milepost ahead, one never saw the moment that
was coming, but as in a mad darkness one dazedly
hurried on and crashed again, and sometimes one got
on, and again one had been run over, crushed, and
one was no good, discarded
j
feebly now one went
to Carmel, California,
to try to get a job as a land·
scape gardener.
Poems
The Landlord
Look how he comes, hat in hand,
The head naked, the hands asking
Forgiveness: he comes to the sacrament
Men take meeting together.
We rise, or our breaths rise,
To meet him: we will partake
i
We are men meeting together.
But the eyes, oh the eyes
Seeing as eyes from the neutral bird-world,
The eyes, beads, rosary-bead eyes
Of birds jammed to the mesh of a screen,
Flicker through the awful fingers
In our pater-nostering brains.
"I'm sorry,
boys"-Paides,
Muchachos,
"Rent's not
paid"-Knaben-
The day
Is a hot coal in cupped hands of the season:
The March winds will blow it
To wild fires of crocus, through the funnels
Daffodils shape to the flames of the Spring
Burning our three breasts, the haze and the burning
Of Spring. Coal! Spark! of a day!
The earth tinder for Spring-
The undulant gloss, creeping, of caterpillars-
"The rent isn't paid"-"How hard it is, hard."
But the rent and the mortgage, the taxes-
The blue wings that promise is raising-
"The rent isn't paid-and the taxes, the mortgage."
We all bow our heads, the sacrament taken
Of men meeting together.
Between man and man
18
The bus stopped for ten minutes at a rest statIOn.
We got out
j
stretched
j
we had a cup of coffee or a
glass of milk; in the outside darkness we looked up
at the stars, but there was still a little bit of dust,
and we couldn't see them. We walked up and down
in the road
j
then the driver said, "Everyone inside,"
and we got back inside, sat down in our seats
j
the
lights again were turned off, the bus started,
went
faster,
speeded on
j
and we lay and tried to fall
asleep.
The white wings of promising-paper
Ripped, gulled, gutted by wind
Lie, twitching, white wings, in the gutter.
Shall we answer? And hate? Hate?
How shall we hate, make the cold yelping
Hate against else but a man?
Not hate a name, nor a function.
Shall we hate, then, the air common
Among us, filling the bellow-lungs?
Or hate the wen on the back
Of his neck? Which? Which? the air or the wen?
As good, either, as to hate the man posing
As Landlord.
Between man and man
There now is no nexus
Between man and man
There now is no ne),:us
Sm.le naked self-interest.
A Jew, with a rabbi bush-beard,
Wrote,
Between man and man
There now is no nexus,
Save naked self-interest:
Marx
In the British Museum, where
The naked Greek boys and naked
Greek women are lodged, frozen forever,
In marble.
Between man and man
"The rent isn't paid. Will you ge-
Hard it is, hard, the mortgage, the taxes-
Now or tomorrow? Boys?"
Paides, Muchachos,
Knaben.
And he, man for his rent,
And we, men for our shelter, are naked
Shamed men, hating the sacrament
Of men meeting together: The Rent.
KENNETH WHITE
APRIL,
