Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Morning

Emanuel Carnevali

From “The Day of Summer”

To Waldo Frank

HOW long ago was it

The dawn pleased Homer?

And Petrarca—was it among flowers

Dew-full, tearful for the love of the dawn,

That he sang his best song

For Laura?

Did the eyes of joy of Prince Paul Fort

See it well once,

And was it then that he

“Took pleasure in being a Frenchman?”

In New York,

These summer days,

It’s a swollen-faced hour,

Sick with a monstrous cold,

Gasping with the death of an expectance.

Houses there

In a thick row

Militarily shut out the sky;

Another fence

In the east;

Over this one a shameful blush

Strives upward.

Nevertheless I go to perform the ceremony

Of purification—to wash myself….

Oh, dear water …. dear, dear soap….

Because I am poor

No ceremony will clean me;

In this crowded room

All the things touch me,

Soil me.

To start a day

Feeling dirty

Is to go to war

Unbelievingly.

A little happy pause here

For me to think of what I shall be doing in the day.

Now has the deep hot belly of the night

Given birth to noises.

The noises pass

Over me,

I lie

Insensible,

Under.

Work, milk, bread, clothes, potatoes, potatoes…..

This is

The big

Beauty rumbling on.

Is this

The world’s

Music forevermore?

This and the irrevocable peddlers

Who will come in an hour

To hurl loose:

“Pota-a-a-a-t-o-u-s, yeh-p-l-s, waa-ry meh-l-n?”

Little apocalyptic faces,

Faces of the end of all faces—

Are these the chief musicians?

Please, listen, I have a small, dear soul, and all I want is a noiseless beauty, any little thing, I was born for a sylvan century, may I claim to be left alone?…. I will not even expect you to understand—only….

Under this, like a cold hating prostitute,

I lie

Insensible….

And my face is sad because

Once

There was….

Ah, there was a time…..

Now go look for the mail—

Go glean the thoughts they drop before your door,

You eternal gleaner.

Love thoughts, too…..?

Out in the hall

The gas jet

Doesn’t give a damn that it is day already.

Stench

Of drenched clothes

And snore

Of married men.

Who shall ask the furnished-room poets to write

A song for the dawn?

Oh, MAIL!

Ah, beggars:
“I-am-though-I-refrain-from-saying-it-better-than-you-in-the-end. I-am-perfectly-honest-evidently-nothing-up-my-sleeves….. It-is-out-of-my-bounteous-goodness-that-I-like-you-a-little-in-spite-of…..”

These scanty rights to live—

A clear day, an articulate moment, may take them from us;

So we advance

At every chance

Our stuttering claim and reference.

Dragging my soul along

I go to the window.

The sun-fingers reach slowly

Over the face of the house in front.

This is the hour they go to their work

Eastward and westward—

Two processions,

Silent.

Shapeless the hats,

Too large the jackets and shoes—

Grotesques walking,

Grotesques for no one to laugh at.

Are they happy perhaps?—

For, of course …. but do they

Really know where they’re going?

Has the first of them

Found

Down there

Something for his happiness?

And has he telephoned or telegraphed to the others

That they are going,

Without looking around,

Without knowing one another,

ALL

TOGETHER

Eastward and westward?

The world has decreed:

These men go

Acknowledged

Eastward and westward.

Sit down and take the rest of your life,

O poets!

All my days

Are in this room

Pressing close against me.

I know what I have done, misdone, mistaken, misunderstood, forgotten, overlooked,

And I have lost my youth.

Everybody knows me,

No one wonders at me;

They have placed me in their minds, made me small and tied me up

To throw me in a little dusty corner of their minds.

All my days are huddled

Close against me;

My youth is but a regret and a madness—

A madness …. Jesus Christ! I am not old yet, never mind what I have told you, what I have been!

I have not irremediably committed myself, I am not lost—

For pity’s sake

Let me go,

Let me go free!

For pity’s sake

Let me go

With my youth!

Ah, the old days are huddled

So close against my chest

That no great freeing gesture

Is possible.

…….

After the tears,

Cool, new, sensitive,

Under my body hushed and stiff,

I open the door

Quietly,

I close the door behind me

Carefully.

The street’s greeting:

I’m out of work—

Damn work—to work and come home in the evening hungry for all the things that could have been done instead!

But to go

Unemployed

Without hunger

At all!

Oh, listen, O Street,

Let your word to me be a delicate whisper:

I am young,

Nice day,

I look

Straight ahead,

Staccato steps,

Stiff and cool,

I walk.

(Sweet morning, soeur de charité!)

It is the light mood in the streets of the morning,

Bouncing on the roofs, kicked

By the rosy foot of the wind.

Ah, we—ah, we are chained to the sidewalk but we hold our eyes upward,

Lightly, lightly.

Do blow away the dust of our dead,

And save us all from them who are smouldering inside our houses!

See the fine dust from those windows, see the dust angry at the sun!

Who threw these kids here among us, them and their fun and war, “GIMME!—GIMME!”

King of the triumphing mood, the iceman cracks easy puns with a landlady of the dust!

Kaiser of the lightness of the morning, the policeman, swinging his stick, writes sacred hieroglyphs.

Furtively I steal,

From what and whom

I know,

A little youth

For myself.

I know nothing,

I forget nothing,

I’m glad enough to live

In the morning.

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