POEMS
Dissatisfaction with the century.
These are not answers. Add to any one
Of the above a psychopathic complement
And one might have the formula; but Crane
Supplies us with no clinical evidence
To make the diagnosis neat. Of all
The famous suicides of modem art
From Nietzsche on, this baffles more than any,
Is the most terrible of all because
Committed in cold blood, apart from love,
Apart from hate, apart from sure belief.
Let us not reckon the statistics of
Those artists who have left the pencilled note,
The unpaid debt to life, and with less grief
Than expectation fell; but only ask
What deadly distillate of the heart is this
That kills the man most dearly pledged to live?
And,
think,
is not
this
dream the same that draws
The artist into self-imposed exile,
And some to self-imagined hell, and some
To infamous hatred of the thing they write?
Crane died for modern rime, a wasted death;
I make the accusation with the right
Of one who loved his book; died without cause,
Leaped from the deck-rail of his disbelief
To senseless strangulation. When we shall damn
The artist who interprets all sensation,
All activity, all experience, all
Belief through art, then this chief suicide
May be redeemed. How many blind survivors,
Though ignorant of the logic of Crane's end,
Continue in his steps. Or can it be
That we need deep-sea divers to bring back
His book, his body, and his memory?
KARL SHAPIRO
351
