588
PARTISAN REVIEW
Imagination's violence only can lug her
out of her beauty's jungle and only home,
but the Frank evinces the Bantu: see her lugged
to a northern dinner (be violent, this
is
fiction).
Look at the barefoot stupidity; mute as a stone
she gapes in fright at so much feline grace,
at so many painful cat-eyes cold with pity
that look and not for a moment look away.
Alas, the barbaric and beautiful statue now
is a be_astIy dirty savage in dirty cotton.
But now see Mrs. Pritchard lugged to the gloom
(be violent, this is fiction) . Look, she flies
in her high heels and sheer hose in the tangle
of snakes and shadows, ready to scream and scream.
Her blond familiar beauty is ruined. She dreads
the head-hunting tree. She too
is
afraid of cats,
and coldly behind her bum their burning eyes,
they are sneaking, sneaking,
tigre
and
tigrillo.
She whimpers, peering and pausing-look, she listens
for padding feet, she hears the shock-proof jeweled
works of her heart clank-clank like a dollar watch
in the green hell or green mansion of the jungle.
