Selected Poems (Aiken)/Poverty Grass
POVERTY GRASS
First, blow the trumpets: call the people hither!Not merely in the township! Send them further.Set hornsmen at all cross roads: send out horsemenWith horns, a man's length, bound in brass,Far to the north, the west. Bid them to blowUnceasing summons, shatter the air, shake leavesFrom trees decrepit. I would have the worldSound with a bugle music from end to end.Lead then the people hither, have the roadsBlack with the mass of them at night and noon.And when you have them, see them banked about me,Row behind row—(how shine already the faces!)—Like angels in Angelico's vision of heaven.Those that were horsemen first will now be ushers—'Stand there!' they'll cry, 'no crowding!—Those behindWill hear, feel, understand, as well as thoseWho rest their chins upon him, prop their elbowsAgainst the coffin-lid! Stand still! be patient!'As for the house—that must be fit as well.Thus, as it now stands—no! it is too meagre.The stage is bare. First, the approach is bad.The hill, behind, that for a thousand yearsHas washed its loam and leaves against these walls,—The hill must go. So, let a thousand axesFlash against bark: let fall a thousand oaksWith all their crying birds, small scolding squirrels,Bees' nests and birds' nests, hornets, wasps, and snakes. A thousand carts, then, each with a quaking treeOutstretched in ignominy, chained and helpless,—These, going hence, will be our first procession:We'll bear to the sea our captives. Next, an armyWith spades and picks a thousand, have them ledTo music, up the hill, and then like antsDevour him: gash him first, and swarm in the gash,Eat inward till he's maggoty with men,—A hollow seething shell,—and lastly, nothing.As for the house, its walls must be of glass.And no partitions! one vast room that's walledAnd roofed with clearest crystal. There at nightWe'll have great light, ten thousand flames of candles,Ten thousand clear-eyed flames in a crystal casket:The folk on the utmost hill will see, and cry'Look, how the moon's caught in a crystal coffin!'And last, myself, there in that crystal coffin,Flooded with light, reclining half, half sittingPropped up amid soft silks in a little boxOf brilliant glass, yet lidless. There I'll sitLike prophet at a tomb's edge, open-mouthed,Pale, old, obscene, white-bearded—see! my beardHangs on the coffin as a snow-drift hangsOn a wall of ice . . . And there, at last, I'll speak.
So, then! You see it clearly. It is night-time.The house is bright. And I,—in an open coffinOf glass, that's in the house, a larger coffin,—(That, too, in the coffin that we call the world,Large, airy, lucent, lighted with lights of stars,—)Peer from the luminous grave's-edge into darknessThat's filled from hub to marge with staring faces.Beautiful! Is the world here? Let it gaze, then,And fill its idiot eyes to overflowingWith a sight not known before. Step closer, kings,—Emperors, use your elbows as the plebs do.Steam, if you like, with your ambitious breathThese walls that tell no lies. I'd have you hear me,You most of all; though I forget not eitherThe vast grey hungry maggot-mass of men:The little wedge-shaped darlings, in their broth Of carrion illusions! . . . How they rotThe air they breathe, turn the green earth to poison,People the sky with pestilence of sick fancies!See how the whole sky swarms with dirty wings! . . .
O Man, who so corrupt all things you feed on;Whose meditation slimes the thing it thinks;Vile borer into the core of the universe;Spoiler and destroyer; you, ambitious,Crawling upon your admirable bellyFor nothing but that at last your tube-shaped mouthShould blindly thrust and suck at the innermost heartOf the world, or god, or infinite overthrown;Foulest and most dishonest of all creatures;Sole traitorous worm of all things living, youWho crown your horrible head with a dream of gloryAnd call yourself a king! Come closer, hear me,I am the prophet who, as through these wallsOf innocent glass, see all things deep and clear,The after and before, revealed or hid:Partly among you living, partly dead,I see your hungry mouths, but also seeWith my dead eye,—(one cold eye undergroundBeneath the earth's black coffin-lid,—) the dead.Ha! You would have my secret? You would hearThe one bright shattering trumpet whose long blastBlows like a whirlwind myriad ghosts from tombs?You cry to the prophet, do you, for a vision—You'd have me, with one sombre word of magic,Cry beauty back from dust, and set to singingThis catacomb of graves you call a world?Press closer, kings! Swarm over me, you plebs!Feed your rapacious eyes on me, devourWith mouths and nerves and nostrils and raw brainsThis bloodless carcass that contains your secret:Have out my heart, hold up above it candles,Pass it among you, squeak and growl and jabber,Stamp it beneath your feet—it's an old leafWill turn to a little dust . . . For there's the wonder!I am but poverty grass; a dry grey weed;A trifling dusty moss, fine-branched as coral—; One footstep makes it powder. And my secret,—Which all my horsemen brought you here to learn,—Is nought but this: this singing world of yoursIs but a heap of bones. Sound once the trumpetAnd you shall see them, tier upon tier, profoundAs God himself! Sound twice the trumpet, then,And I shall add my bone or two. And after,At the third blast, will all these lights puff out,—And you may grope in the darkness, as you came.Sound the bright horn. Shut, coffin! I am dead.