FIRST POEM
891
macules, and these would come together again to re-shape the groping
terminals. I relapsed into my private mist, and when I emerged
again, the support of my extended body had become a low bench
in
the park, and the live shadows, ,among which my hand dipped, now
moved on the ground, where they showed delicate violet tints instead
of aqueous black and green. So little did ordinary measures of
existence mean in that state that I would not have been surprised
to come out of its tunnel right into the park of Versailles, or the
Tiergarten, or Sequoia National Forest; and, inversely, when the old
trance occurs nowadays, I am quite prepared to find myself, when
I awaken from it, high up in a certain tree, above the dappled bench
of my boyhood, my belly pressed against a thick, comfortable branch
and one arm hanging down among the leaves upon which the shadows
of other leaves ripple.
Various sounds reached me in my various situations. It might
be the dinner gong or something less usual, such as the foul music
of a barrelorgan. Somewhere near the stables the old tramp would
grind, and on the strength of more direct impressions imbibed in
earlier years, I would see him mentally from my perch. Painted on
the front of his instrument were Balkan peasants of sorts dancing
among palmoid willows. Every now and then he shifted the crank
from one hand to the other. I saw the jersey and skirt of
his
little
bald female monkey, her collar, the raw sore on her neck, the chain
which she kept plucking at every time the man pulled it, hurting her
badly, and the several servants standing around, gaping, grinning,
simple folks terribly tickled by a monkey's "antics." Only the other
day, in the place where I am recording these matters, I came across
a farmer and his son (the kind of keen, healthy kid you see in
breakfast food ads), who were similarly diverted by the sight of a
young cat torturing a baby chipmunk- letting him run a few inches
and then pouncing upon him again. Most of his tail was gone, the
stump was bleeding.
As
he could not escape by running, the game
little fellow tried one last measure: he stopped and lay down on his
side in order to merge with a bit of light and shade on the ground,
but the too violent heaving of his flank gave him away.
The family phonograph, which the advent of the evening set
in action, was another musical machine I could hear through my
verse. On the verandah, where our relatives and friends assembled,
