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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Maxwell Bodenheim

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

Impulsive Dialogue

Maxwell Bodenheim

From “Sappho Answers Aristotle”

Poet.WILL you, like other men,

Offer me indigo indignities?

Undertaker.Indigo indignities!

The words are like a mermaid and a saint

Doubting each other’s existence with a kiss.

Poet.The words of most men kiss

With satiated familiarity.

Indigo is dark and vehement,

But one word in place of two

Angers barmaids and critics.

Undertaker.Straining after originality,

You argue with its ghost!

A simple beauty, like morning

Harnessed by a wide sparkle

And plodding into the hearts of men,

Cannot reach your frantic juggling.

Poet.I can appreciate

The spontaneous redundancy of nature

Without the aid of an echo

From men who lack her impersonal size.

Undertaker.The sweeping purchase of an evening

By an army of stars;

The bold incoherence of love;

The peaceful mountain-roads of friendship—

These things evade your dexterous epigrams!

Poet.A statue, polished and large,

Dominates when it stands alone.

Placed in a huge profusion of statues,

Its outlines become humiliated.

Simplicity demands one gesture

And men give it endless thousands.

Complexity wanders through a forest,

Glimpsing details in the gloom.

Undertaker.I do not crave the dainty pleasure

Of chasing ghosts in a forest!

Nor do I care to pluck

Exaggerated mushrooms in the gloom.

I have lost myself on roads

Crossed by tossing hosts of men.

Pain and anger have scorched our slow feet:

Peace has washed our foreheads.

Poet.Futility, massive and endless,

Captures a stumbling grandeur

Embalmed in history.

In my forest you could see this

From a distance, and lose

Your limited intolerance.

Simplicity and subtlety

At different times are backgrounds for each other,

Changing with the position of our eyes….

Death will burn your eyes

With his taciturn complexity.

Undertaker.Death will strike your eyes

With his wild simplicity!

Poet.Words are soldiers of fortune

Hired by different ideas

To provide an importance for life.

But within the glens of silence

They meet in secret peace….

Undertaker, do you make of death

A puffing wretch forever pursued

By duplicates of vanquished forms?

Or do you make him a sneering king

Brushing flies from his bloodless cheeks?

Do you see him as an unappeased brooding

Walking over the dust of men?

Do you make him an eager giant

Discovering and blending into his consciousness

The tiny parts of his limitless mind?

Undertaker.Death and I do not know each other.

I am the stolid janitor

Who cleans the litter he has left

And claims a fancied payment.

Poet.Come to my fantastic forest

And you will not need to rise

From simple labors, asking death

For final wages.