148
PARTISAN PlEYIEW
The party where the New Year popped and foamed
Opening like champagne or love's wet crush,
The while I studied long the art which in
America gains silence like a wall
-I am a student of the lies of light,
I am a poet of the sleepless night
In new and yet unknown America,
-I am a reader in love's long defeat.
I gave the boys and girls my mind and art:
May I not cite this as a little good?"
THE SILENCE IN EMPTINESS ACCUSED HIM THUS
"A PRIVILEGED CHARACTER"
Am I indeed guilty in privilege?
And am I stained in the commonweal's guilt?
What did I do? and how did I assent?
What good and gold will I gain, which they defend?
When did I lie and say this age
is
good?
I am a twice-torn critic from way back!
America! Tarawa! in the Pacific seas-
!
went to Tarawa with the seaborne boys
At the silver screen: how far I was,
Seated in the soft cjark, nervous or sick,
(0 to be in 4F, now that war is here,
Sang the ground-glass cynics with a jocose jeer).
I saw the marked Marines gaze at the Petty girl
(Nude as a peeled banana, comely as pears ),
(Lust never again will rise in some of them) ,
I saw them pray at sunset in the strength
Young manhood shows in sunburnt summer's health:
(Many of them were dead in the next dusk)
What can I say to down my privilege?
What but the roulette reason, like gold hair?
The grace, the luck, the accidents which tear
The heart and head, formless as fallen rags.
The spinning ball which stops at here, not there,
Made you serene as steeplejacks on high,
Full of the joy of life and the juice and the sleep,
