Selected Poems (Aiken)/An Old Man Weeping
AN OLD MAN WEEPING
How can she say this misery? A handOf gold, with fingers of brass, pluckingAt random, murderously and harshly, amongThe stretched strings of the soul? A hand cruelYet loved? Deep in the soul it plungesTwanging and snapping; murderous graceful handOn which she fawns and weeps.
And yet not thisNor nothing like this. It is a burning treeGrotesque of shape, yet many-leaved, wherethroughThe wind makes melody.
Nor yet this,It is a music powerful and visibleShaped like an octopus, each arm a beak,Each beak a murder.
Nor yet this, but loveTaloned, with red on talons, and redder mouth,Singing and striking.
You, through whom love comes,Hideous, gaunt, large-boned, arid of face,Ravaged by sorrow—say why it is that loveFlies to you as the bat flies to its cavern!Hated woman of wormwood, body steepedIn Lethe, tasting of death!
The carven priestGilded and small, with one gilt hand upliftedAnd gilded forehead smooth, and coronetGilded, and the black eyelashes loweredTo hide the eyes, and passive suffering mouth,Woodenly murmurs: Tao, the way, the way,The region Way!
And the red crusted bowlShaped by the fleeing potter, eyes intentOn dragons, cries—Give form to formless, shapeThe flying chaos!
And last the imprisoned blood,Pouring darkly from cell to cell of the heart,Upseethes: Go near her, break her walls down, pourBlood into blood, embed your brain in hers,Root your gross thought in her no-less-gross thought!Music with music mingles, be you musicMingled, let the dissonance, clashed and dissolved,Pierce with reality the too-smooth song!
(. . . Thus looked she at me on a summer eveningWith cornflower eyes, sad brow, and aging mouth,And smiled askance, miserable, dumb, ashamed,And moved the pathetic bones toward me sadly,And locked me in her heart, as one might lockAn old man, weeping, in a rusted cage.)