174
PARTISAN REVIEW
other. Half a century later I wrote a poem on that subject, which
better explains what I just said than does my prose.
BYPASSING RUE DESCARTES
Bypassing rue Descartes
I descended toward the Seine, shy, a traveler,
A young barbarian just come to the capital of the world.
We were many, from
J
assy and Koloshvar, Wilno and
Bucharest, Saigon and Marrakesh,
Ashamed to remember the customs of our homes ,
About which nobody here should ever be told :
The clapping for servants, barefoot girls hurry in,
Dividing food with incantations,
Choral prayers recited by masters and household together.
I had left the cloudy provinces behind,
I entered the
univers~ ,
dazzled and desiring.
Soon enough, many from
J
assy and Koloshvar, or Saigon or
Marrakesh
Were killed because they wanted to abolish the customs of their
homes.
Soon enough, their peers were seizing power
In order to kill in the name of the universal beautiful ideas.
Meanwhile, the city behaved in accordance with its nature,
Rustling with throaty laughter in the dark,
Baking long breads and pouring wine into clay pitchers,
Buying fish, lemons and garlic at street markets,
Indifferent as it was to honor and shame and greatness and
glory,
Because that had been done and transformed itself
Into monuments representing nobody knows whom,
Into arias hardly audible and into turns of speech.
Again I lean on the rough granite of the embankment,
As if I had returned from travels through the underworlds
And suddenly saw in the light the reeling wheel of the seasons
Where empires have fallen and those once living are now dead.
There is no capital of the world, neither here nor anywhere else,
And the abolished customs are restored to their small fame,
And I know the time of human generations is not like the time
of the earth.
As to my heavy sins, I remember one most vividly:
