58
PARTISAN REVIEW
-The slush and swill of the world's great pot
That foamed at the mountain-lip, and spilled
Like quicksilver across green baize, the unfulfilled
Disparate glitter, gleam, wild symptom, seed
Flung in the long wind: silent, proceed
Past meadow, salt-lick, and the lyric swale;
Enter the arbor, shadow of trees, fade, fail.)
Big Billie was sharp at sw'ap and trade
And could smell the nest where the egg was laid,
He could read and cipher and they called him squire
In the land between the rivers.
And he added up
his
money while he sat by the fire
And sat
in
the shade while folks sweated and strove,
For he was the one who fatted and throve
In the section between the rivers.
"Thank you kindly, sir," Big Billie would say
When the man in the black coat paid him at streak of day
And swung to the saddle and was ready to go .
And rode away and didn't know
That he was already as good as dead,
For at rr¥dnight the rriessage had been sent ahead:
"Man in black coat, riding bay mare with star."
(There was a beginning but you cannot see it.
There will be an end but you cannot see it.
They will not tum their faces to you though you call.
Who pace a logic merciless as light,
Whose law
is
their long shadow on the grass,
Sun at the back; pace, pass,
And passing nod in that glacial delirium
While the tight sky shudders like a drum
And speculation rasps it:S idiot nails
Across the dry slate where you did the sum.
The answer is in the back of the book but the page is gone.
And grandma told you to tell the truth but she
is
dead.
And heedless, their hairy faces fixed
Beyond your call or question now, they move
