386
PARTISAN REVIEW
is
to divide criminals into five classes. Why five and not ten? Why
use a text from the Gospels and not from the Koran? First you
ought to make people believe in the truth of the Gospels and then
you can go ahead and solve your problem with a Gospel text....
I am certainly going to send you my photograph. I am pleased
to have acquired the title of academician, since it
is
nice knowing
that Sigma envies me. But I shall be even gladder when I lose
this
title after some misunderstanding. And there will undoubtedly be
misunderstandings, because the learned academicians are very much
afraid that we shall shock them. Tolstoy was elected with a ·gnashing
of the teeth. In their opinion he
is
a nihilist. At least that was how a
lady, the wife of a very important person, entitled him, and I con–
gratulate him upon it with all my heart. . . .
Yours,
Write!
A.
CHEKHOV
Mac Hammond
STILL LIFE WITH VILLEINS AND IRIS
Once upon a time, there, lived a man all his life.
The wood, the thatch, the stones are washed away,
But underneath the iris stubs and rock, a knife
Or bowl or pot or broken cup could say
What was his daily bread. From the fields
Rafe came home, smelling like a horse or hay,
To swill his soup and want his tired wife
And laid her down, yes, every night
And went to sleep with bad dreams of the Devil
Riding the Scarlet Whore up steep and down.
Iris grow there now, their purple roots
Touch the nearest damp and, digging, clutch
At dreams of long ago and curl around the midden
Where he ate; and maybe some old bone that walked
Within the underling, chalks the flower white.
