Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
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<p>and Bluebeard’s Tower above the coral reefs,<br />
the magic mousetrap closing on all points of the compass,<br />
capping like petrified surf the furious azure of the bay,<br />
where there is no dust, and life is like a lemon leaf,<br />
a green piece of tough translucent parchment, <br />
where the crimson, the copper, and the Chinese vermilion of the poincianas<br />
set fire to the masonry and turquoise blues refute the clock;<br />
this dungeon with odd notions of hospitality,<br />
with its “chessmen carved out of moonstones,”<br />
its mockingbirds, fringed lilies, and hibiscus,<br />
its black butterflies with blue half circles on their wings,<br />
tan goats with onyx ears, its lizards glittering and without thickness,
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<p>the highway hid by fir trees in rhododendron twenty feet deep, <br />
the peacocks, hand-forged gates, old Persian velvet,<br />
roses outlined in pale black on an ivory ground,<br />
the pierced iron shadows of the cedars,<br />
Chinese carved glass, old Waterford, lettered ladies;<br />
landscape gardening twisted into permanence;
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<p>The palace furniture, so old-fashioned, so old-fashionable;<br />
Sèvres china and the fireplace dogs—<br />
bronze dromios with pointed ears, as obsolete as pugs;<br />
one has one’s preferences in the matter of bad furniture,<br />
and this is not one’s choice,
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<p>like splashes of fire and silver on the pierced turquoise of the lattices<br />
and the acacia-like lady shivering at the touch of a hand,<br />
lost in a small collision of the orchids—<br />
dyed quicksilver let fall<br />
to disappear like an obedient chameleon in fifty shades of mauve and amethyst.<br />
Here where the mind of this establishment has come to the conclusion <br />
that it would be impossible to revolve about oneself too much,<br />
sophistication has, “like an escalator,” “cut the nerve of progress.”
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<p>The vast indestructible necropolis<br />
of composite Yawman-Erbe separable units;<br />
the steel, the oak, the glass, the Poor Richard publications<br />
containing the public secrets of efficiency<br />
on paper so thin that “one thousand four hundred and twenty pages make one inch,”<br />
exclaiming, so to speak, When you take my time, you take something I had meant to use;
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<p>They answer one’s questions, <br />
a deal table compact with the wall; <br />
in this dried bone of arrangement<br />
one’s “natural promptness” is compressed, not crowded out;<br />
one’s style is not lost in such simplicity.
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<p>straight lines over such great distances as one finds in Utah or in Texas,<br />
where people do not have to be told<br />
that a good brake is as important as a good motor; <br />
where by means of extra sense-cells in the skin<br />
they can, like trout, smell what is coming—<br />
those cool sirs with the explicit sensory apparatus of common sense,<br />
who know the exact distance between two points as the crow flies;<br />
there is something attractive about a mind that moves in a straight line—<br />
the municipal bat roost of mosquito warfare; <br />
the American string quartet;<br />
these are questions more than answers,
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<div class="poem">
<p>What nudity is beautiful as this<br />
Obedient monster purring at its toil;<br />
These naked iron muscles dripping oil<br />
And the sure-fingered rods that never miss.<br />
This long and shining flank of metal is<br />
Magic that greasy labor cannot spoil;<br />
While this vast engine that could rend the soil<br />
Conceals its fury with a gentle hiss.
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<p>It does not vent its loathing, does not turn<br />
Upon its makers with destroying hate.<br />
It bears a deeper malice; lives to earn<br />
Its master's bread and laughs to see this great<br />
Lord of the earth, who rules but cannot learn,<br />
Become the slave of what his slaves create.
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<p>It's a lean car… a long-legged dog of a car… a gray-ghost eagle car.<br />
The feet of it eat the dirt of a road… the wings of it eat the hills.<br />
Danny the driver dreams of it when he sees women in red skirts and red sox in his sleep.<br />
It is in Danny's life and runs in the blood of him… a lean gray-ghost car.
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<p>At dusk we feel our way along the wharf<br />
That juts into the harbor: anchored ships<br />
With lifting prow and slowly rocking mast<br />
Ink out their profiles; fishing dories scull<br />
With muffled lamps that glimmer through the spray;<br />
We hear the water plash among the piers<br />
Rotted with moss, long after sunset stay<br />
To watch the dim sky-changes ripple down<br />
The length of quiet ocean to our feet<br />
Till on the sea rim rising like a world<br />
Bigger than ours, and laying bare the ships<br />
In shadowy stillness, swells the yellow moon.
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<p>Blood of their blood who shaped these sloping roofs<br />
And low arched doorways, laid the cobble stones<br />
Not meant for motors,—you and I rejoice<br />
When roof and spire sink deep into the night<br />
And all the little streets reach out their arms<br />
To be received into the salt-drenched dark.<br />
Then Provincetown comes to her own again,<br />
Draws round her like a cloak that shelters her<br />
From too swift changes of the passing years<br />
The dunes, the sea, the silent hilltop grounds<br />
Where solemn groups of leaning headstones hold<br />
Perpetual reunion of her dead.
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<p>Between this blue intensity of sea<br />
And rolling dunes of white-hot sand that burn<br />
All day across a clean salt wilderness<br />
On shores grown sacred as a place of prayer,<br />
Shine bright invisible footsteps of a band<br />
Of firm-lipped men and women who endured<br />
Partings from kindred, hardship, famine, death,<br />
And won for us three hundred years ago<br />
A reverent proud freedom of the soul.
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<p>All summer in the close-locked streets the crowd<br />
Elbows its way past glittering shops to strains<br />
Of noisy rag-time, men and girls, dark skinned,—<br />
From warmer foreign waters they have come<br />
To our New England. Purring like sleek cats<br />
The cushioned motors of the rich crawl through<br />
While black-haired babies scurry to the curb:<br />
Pedro, Maria, little Gabriel<br />
Whose red bandana mothers selling fruit<br />
Have this in common with the fresh white caps<br />
Of those first immigrants—courage to leave<br />
Familiar hearths and build new memories.
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Q
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<p>From out the mesh of fate our heads we thrust.<br />
We can't do what we would, but what we must.<br />
Heredity has got us in a cinch—<br />
(Consoling thought when you've been on a "bust.")
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<p>Hark to the song where spheral voices blend:<br />
"There's no beginning, never will be end."<br />
It makes us nutty; hang the astral chimes!<br />
The table's spread; come, let us dine, my friend.
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<p>Chance! Oh, there is no chance! The scene is set.<br />
Up with the curtain! Man, the marionette,<br />
Resumes his part. The gods will work the wires.<br />
They've got it all down fine, you bet, you bet!
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<p>One said: Thy life is thine to make or mar,<br />
To flicker feebly, or to soar, a star;<br />
It lies with thee—the choice is thine, is thine,<br />
To hit the ties or drive thy auto-car.
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<p>There's no haphazard in this world of ours.<br />
Cause and effect are grim, relentless powers.<br />
They rule the world. (A king was shot last night;<br />
Last night I held the joker and both bowers.)
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