Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Philosophical DialogueMaxwell Bodenheim
First Man.W
His muscles fuse into a poem
Stifled and sinister,
Censuring the happy rhetoric of morning air.
Some day he may pitch his tent
Upon the ruins of a civilization,
Playing with documents and bottles of perfume
Found in deserted corridors.
Second Man.Listen to this song
Dipped in the Negro South of America.
She brought me whiskey and tea.
She brought me everything that I could use
But the jail-house key!
Into a succession of rusty locks,
Straining until they open.
Do you hear, beneath the rattling strut
Of this city, an imperceptible groan?
Time is turning the jail-house key.
They build larger jails for Time:
He makes larger keys of blood and iron,
But often the labor is delayed
By pausing squeals of freedom.
First Man.An insignificant jest
In the wider life of Time.
He has dropped to this earth
To play a barbarous comedy.
Philosophers loudly explain the scenes;
But poets, with greater restraint,
Tender them a masquerade.
Second Man.Once I sat and watched
A scientific philosopher
Place white lines on a black-board,
Diagraming his mighty system of logic.
While he worked, the wind outside
Squandered its derision
And offered him a cup he dared not drink.
Afterwards, in the open air,
The slash of rain on my face
Mockingly baptised his words.
First Man.To him the wind and rain
Were trivialities against a brick wall.
Second Man.To me they were tormented wanderers
Quarreling above a doll’s house
Whose intricate patterns
Waited to be kicked aside.
I changed myself to a height
That made them whimpering pygmies,
And gave them grotesque costumes,
Enjoying the insolence of imagination.
First Man.The scientific philosopher
Raised his umbrella against the rain,
And communed with venerable argument.
Second Man.He was interested in improving
The lustre of a doll’s house
In which I had left my small body.
Walls are enticing black-boards to some
And neglected prisons to others.
I prefer the second
Of tenuous bravado
That turns the prison into a threshold
And jests with the wind and rain that survive it.