The 40s: The Story of a Decade (104 page)

The children’s eyes, like shadows on the sea,

Were baffling with a false serenity

When they were told, and given all the cause,

“There is no Santa Claus.”

The children’s eyes did not become more bright

Or curious of sexual delight

When someone said, “Man couples like the beast.

The stork does not exist.”

The children’s eyes, like smoke or drifted snow,

White shifted over white, refused to show

They suffered loss: “At first it may seem
odd—

There isn’t any God.”

The children, not perturbed or comforted,

Heard silently the news of their last bed:

“For moral care you need not stint your breath,

There’s no life after death.”

The children’s eyes grew hot, they glowed like stoves.

Ambitious, and equipped with all our proofs,

They ran forth little women, little men,

And were not children then.

—Howard Nemerov
October 26, 1946

Although it is a cold evening,

down by one of the fishhouses

an old man sits netting,

his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,

a dark purple-brown,

and his shuttle worn and polished.

The air smells so strong of codfish

it makes one’s nose run and one’s eyes water.

The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs

and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up

to storerooms in the gables

for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.

All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,

swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,

is opaque, but the silver of the benches,

the lobster pots, and masts, scattered

among the wild jagged rocks,

is of an apparent translucence

like the small old buildings with an emerald moss

growing on their shoreward walls.

The big fish tubs are completely lined

with layers of beautiful herring scales

and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered

with creamy iridescent coats of mail,

with small iridescent flies crawling on them.

Up on the little slope behind the houses,

set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,

is an ancient wooden capstan,

cracked, with two long bleached handles

and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,

where the ironwork has rusted.

The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.

He was a friend of my grandfather.

We talk of the decline in the population

and of codfish and herring

while he waits for a herring boat to come in.

There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.

He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,

from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,

the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water’s edge, at the place

where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp

descending into the water, thin silver

tree trunks are laid horizontally

across the gray stones, down and down

at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,

element bearable to no mortal,

to fish and to seals…One seal particularly

I have seen here evening after evening.

He was curious about me. He was interested in music;

like me a believer in total immersion,

so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.

I sang him “A mighty fortress is our God.”

He stood up in the water and regarded me

steadily, moving his head a little.

Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge

almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug

as if it were against his better judgment.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,

the clear gray icy water…Back, behind us,

the dignified tall firs begin.

Bluish, associating with their shadows,

a million Christmas trees stand

waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended

above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.

I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,

slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,

icily free above the stones,

above the stones and then the world.

If you should dip your hand in,

your wrist would ache immediately,

your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn

as if the water were a transmutation of fire

that feeds on stones and burns with a dark-gray flame.

If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,

then briny, then surely burn your tongue.

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:

dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,

drawn from the cold hard mouth

of the world, derived from the rocky breasts

forever, flowing and drawn, and since

our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

—Elizabeth Bishop
August 9, 1947

Robinson at cards at the Algonquin; a thin

Blue light comes down once more outside the blinds.

Gray men in overcoats are ghosts blown past the door.

The taxis streak the avenues with yellow, orange, and red.

This is Grand Central, Mr. Robinson.

Robinson on a roof above the Heights; the boats

Mourn like the lost. Water is slate, far down.

Through sounds of ice cubes dropped in glass, an osteopath,

Dressed for the links, recounts an old Intourist tour.

—Here’s where old Gibbons jumped from, Robinson.

Robinson walking in the Park, admiring the elephant.

Robinson buying the
Tribune
, Robinson buying the
Times.
Robinson

Saying, “Hello. Yes, this is Robinson. Sunday

At five? I’d love to. Pretty well. And you?”

Robinson alone at Longchamps, staring at the wall.

Robinson afraid, drunk, sobbing. Robinson

In bed with a Mrs. Morse. Robinson at home;

Decisions: Toynbee or luminal? Where the sun

Shines, Robinson in flowered trunks, eyes toward

The breakers. Where the night ends, Robinson in East Side bars.

Robinson in Glen-plaid jacket, Scotch-grain shoes,

Black four-in-hand, and oxford button-down,

The jewelled and silent watch that winds itself, the brief-

Case, covert topcoat, clothes for spring, all covering

His sad and usual heart, dry as a winter leaf.

—Weldon Kees
April 24, 1948

After night, the waking
knowledge—

The gravel path searching the Way;

The cobweb crystal on the hedge,

The empty station of the day.

So I remember each new morning

From childhood, when pebbles amaze.

Outside my window, with each dawning,

The whiteness of those days.

The sense felt behind darkened walls

Of a sun-drenched world; a lake

Of light, through which light
falls—

It is this to which I wake.

Then the sun shifts the trees around,

And overtops the sky, and throws

House, horse, and rider to the ground,

With knock-out shadows.

The whole day opens to an O,

The cobweb dries, the petals spread,

The clocks grow long, the people go

Walking over themselves, the dead.

The world’s a circle, where all moves

Before after, after before,

And my aware awaking loves

The day—until I start to care.

—Stephen Spender
May 15, 1948