Youth

I

SUNDAY

Sums aside, the inevitable descent from heaven and the visit of memories and the assembly of rhythms occupy the dwelling, the head and the world of the spirit.

—A horse takes off on the suburban turf, and along farmlands and afforestations, riddled with carbonic plague. A miserable woman of drama, somewhere in the world, sighs after improbable abandons. Desperados languish after storm, drunkenness and wounds. Small children stifle maledictions along the rivers.

Let us resume study in the noise of the consuming work gathering and rising in the masses.

II

SONNET

Man of ordinary constitution, was not the flesh a fruit hanging in the orchard, o infant days! the body a treasure to lavish; o to love, peril or might of Psyche? The earth had slopes fertile in princes and artists, and lineage and race drove you to crimes and mourning: the world, your fortune and your peril. But at present, that labor fulfilled, you, your sums—you, your impatience—are nothing more than your dance and your voice, not fixed and unforced, although for a double event of invention and success a reason—in fraternal and discreet humanity through the universe without images—might and right reflect dance and voice at present only appreciated.

III

TWENTY

Instructive voices exiled... physical ingenuousness bitterly sobered... adagio—ah! the infinite egoism of adolescence, studious optimism: how the world was full of flowers that summer! Airs and forms dying... a choir, to calm impotence and absence! A choir of glasses, of nocturnal melodies... indeed, the nerves go quick to hunt.

IV

You are still at the temptation of Anthony. The frolic of curtailed zeal, the tics of puerile youth, subsidence and fright.

But you will sit down to this labor: all harmonic and architectural possibilities will stir around your chair. Beings perfect, unforeseen, will volunteer for your experiments. In your environs will flow dreamily the curiosity of ancient crowds and lazy luxuries. Your memory and your senses will be only the nourishment of your creative impulse. As for the world, when you leave, what will it have become? In any case, nothing of present appearances.

Sale

For sale, what Jews have not sold, what nobility and crime have not tasted, what is unknown to the accursed love and the fatal probity of the masses; what time nor science need recognize:

The Voices reconstituted; the fraternal awakening of all choral and orchestral energies and their instantaneous application; the occasion, unique, of releasing our senses!

For sale priceless Bodies, out of any race, any world, any sex, any descent! Riches leaping at every step! Uncontrolled sale of diamonds!

For sale anarchy to the masses; irrepressible satisfaction for superior amateurs; atrocious death for the faithful and lovers!

For sale habitations and migrations, sports, fairylike visions and perfect comforts, and the noise, the movement and the future they make!

For sale the applications of calculus and the unheard-of leaps of harmony. Discoveries and terms unsuspected—immediate possession.

Insensate and infinite élan toward invisible splendors, insensible delights—and its fearsome secrets for each vice—and its frightful gaiety for the crowd.

For sale bodies, voices, immense unquestionable opulence, what shall never be sold. The sellers are not at the end of the sale! Travelers need not render their commissions so early.

Genie

He is affection and the present since he has made the house open to scummy winter and to the rumor of summer—he who has purified drinks and foods—he who is the charm of elusive places and the superhuman delight of stations—he is affection and the future, strength and love that we, upright in rages and ennuis, see pass in the sky of tempest and the flags of ecstasy.

He is love, measure perfect and reinvented, reason marvelous and unforeseen, and eternity: loved machine of fatal qualities. We have all had the great fear of his concession and of ours: o pleasure of our health, élan of our faculties, egoistic affection and passion for him—he who loves us for his infinite life...

And we recollect him and he travels... And if the Adoration leaves, knells, his promise knells: "Get thee behind me these superstitions, these ancient bodies, these ménages and these ages. It is this epoch that has foundered!"

He will not leave, he will not redescend from heaven, he will not accomplish the redemption of women's furies and men's gaieties and all this sin: for it is done, he being, and being loved.

O his breathing, his heads, his racing, the terrible celerity of the perfection of forms and of action.

O fecundity of the mind and immensity of the universe!

His body! the release dreamed of, the breaking up of the crossed grace of new violence! his sight, his sight! all the ancient kneeling and penalties relieved in his train.

His day! the abolition of all sonorous and motile suffering in music more intense.

His treading! migrations more enormous than the ancient invasions.

O he and us! pride more benevolent than lost charities.

O world! and the clear song of new ills!

He has known all of us and loved all of us: let us know how, this winter night, from cape to cape, from tumultuous pole to castle, from crowd to beach, from expressions to expressions, strength and sentiment low, to hail him and see him, and send him back, and, below the tides and atop deserts of snow, follow his sights—his breathing—his body—his day.