Another ribald tale of the good times at Madame Lipsky’s.
Giorgio Finogle bad come in with an imitation of the latest Russian poet,
The one who wrote the great “Complaint About the Peanut Farm” which I read to you last year at Mrs. Riley’s,
Do you remember? and then of course Giorgio bad written this imitation
So be came in with it… .Where was I and what was I saying ?
The big beer parlor was filled with barmaids and men named Stuart
Who were all trying to buy a big red pitcher of beer for an artiste named Alma Stuart
Whom each claimed as bis very own because of the similarity in names—
This in essence was Buddy’s parody—O Giorgio, you idiot, Marian Stuart snapped,
It all has something to do with me! But no, Giorgio replied.
Biting in a melancholy way the edge off a cigar-paper-patterned envelope
In which be bad been keeping the Poem for many days
Waiting to show it to bis friends. And actually it’s not a parody at all,
I just claimed it was, out of embarrassment. It’s a poetic present for you all.
All of whom I love! Is it capable to love more than one—I wonder! Alma cried,
And we went out onto the bicycle-shaped dock where a malicious swarm of mosquitoes
Were parlaying after Having invaded the old beer parlor.
The men named Stuart were now involved in a fight to the death
But the nearer islands lay fair in the white night light.
Shall we embark toward them? I said, placing my band upon one exceedingly gentle
And fine. A picture of hairnets is being projected. Here
Comes someone with Alma Stuart! Is it real, this night? Or have we a gentle fantasy?
The Russian poet appears. He seems to consider it real all right. He’s
Quite angry. Where’s the Capitalist fairy that put me down? he squirts
At our nomadic simplicity. “Complaint About the Peanut Farm” is a terrific poem. Yes,
In a way, yes. The Hairdresser of Night engulfs them all in foam.
“I love your work. The Pleasures of Peace,” the Professor said to me next day;
“I think it adequately encompasses the hysteria of our era
And puts certain people in their rightful place. Chapeau! Bravo!”
“You don’t get it,” I said. “I like all this. I called this poem
Pleasures of Peace because I’m not sure they will be lasting!
I wanted people to be able to see what these pleasures are
That they may come back to them.” “But they are all so hysterical, so—so transitory,”
The critic replied. “I mean. How can you what kind of pleasures are these?
They seem more like pains to me if I may say what I mean.”
“Well, I don’t know. Professor,” I said; “permanent joys
Have so far been denied this hysterical person. Though I confess
Far other joys I’ve bad and will describe in time.
And then too there’s the pleasure of writing these—perhaps to experience is not the same.”
The Professor paused, lightly, upon the temple stair.
“I will mention you among the immortals. Ken,” He said,
“Because you Have the courage of what you believe.
But there I will never mention those sniveling rats
Who only claim to like these things because they’re fashionable.”
“Professor!” I cried, “My darling! my dream!” And she stripped, and I saw there
Creamy female marble, the waist and thighs of which I Had always dreamed,
“Professor! Loved one! why the disguise?” “It was a test,” she said,
“Of which you Have now only passed the first portion. You must write More, and More—”
“And be equally persuasive?” I questioned, but She
Had vanished through the Promontory door.
So now I must devote my days to The Pleasures of Peace—
To my contemporaries I’ll leave the Horrors of War,
They can do them better than I—each poet shares only a portion
Of the vast Territory of Rhyme. Here in Peace shall I stake out
My temporal and permanent claim. But such silver as I find
I will give to the Universe—the gold I’ll put in other poems.
Thus in time there’ll be a mountain range of gold
Of considerable interest. Ob may you come back in time
And in my lifetime to see it, most perfect and most delectable reader!
We poets in our youth begin with fantasies.
But then at least we think they may be realities—
The poems we create in our age
Require your Hand upon our shoulder, your eye on our page.
Oh Norman Robinson, the airplane, the village, the batteries.
All this I remember, the Cheese-o-Drome, the phallic whips, the cucumbers,
The ginger from Australia, the tiny whorehouses no bigger than a phallus’s door.
The evenings without any cucumbers, the phallus’s people.
The old men trailing blue lassos from door to door.
Who are they all, anyway? I was supposed to be on my way to Boston
To go to college or get elected to the Legislature
And now I’m here with a lot of cowboys who talk spiritual Dutch! Let
Me out of here! The lumberyard smelled of the sweet calla lilies
The courtyard was fragrant with thyme. I released your hand
And walked into the Mexicana Valley, where my father was first a cowboy.
I take a genuine interest in the people of this country
Yes sir I think you might even call me Coleman the Dutch but now the night sky fills with fairies
It is all that modern stuff beginning to happen again, well, let it—
We robots tell the truth about old Gabby
But when the shirtfront scuffs we yell for Labby
It is a scientific stunt
Which Moonlight has brought you from Australia
Sit it down on this chair shaped like a pirate
When you have come three times I will give you a silverware hazelnut
With which you can escape from time
For this I’m calling in all the poets who take dope
To help me out, here they come
Oh is there room in the universe for such as we?
They say, but though we cannot make our Time
Stand still, yet we’ll him silver like a Dime.
Inversions yet! and not even sexual ones!
O Labrador, you are the sexual Pennsylvania of our times!
Chapter Thirty Seven.
On the Planisphere everyone was having a nut
When suddenly my Lulu appeared.
She was a big broad about six feet seven
And she had a red stone in her ear
Which was stringent in its beauty.
I demanded at once the removal of people from the lobby
So we could begin to down ABC tablets and start to feel funny
But Mordecai La Schlomp our Leader replied that we did not need any
That a person could feel good without any artificial means.
If I love you, a mother bird says to the whalebird’s father.
It’s not because I want you to be untrue to Mrs. Senior Whalebird, now you really know that don’t you?
You—treacherous bitch! shouted the enraged Whalebird leaping onto her painted nylon pyjamas
With his oriental feet until she screamed and bejibbered
And the cast-filled eye of the moon sinks into the sea
Sometimes wandering along this coast a lonely Indian boy
Would begin to cry for bis mamma, and a wandering star
Would spurt in sympathy
Some silver come into the shiny sea.
Good night, Frank Robinson
And Gypsy Rose Lee,
I am tired and I want to lie down.
All day I have walked along this deliberate coastline
Trying as bard as I could to write everything down
And now you see what has come of it, I mean one star,
I mean one star and all that is left in the cupboard
Is one violet couplet of lights.
Perhaps if you could agree
To step out of that coat…
Here are listed all the Pleasures of Peace that there could possibly be.
Among them are the pleasures of Memory (which Delmore Schwartz celebrated), the pleasures of autonomy,
The pleasures of agoraphobia and the sudden release
Of the agoraphobic person from the identified marketplace, the pleasures of roving over you
And rolling over the beach, of being in a complicated car, of sleeping.
Of drawing ropes with you, of planning a deranged comic strip, of shifting knees
At the accelerator pump, of blasphemy, of cobra settlement in a dilapidated skin country
Without clops, and therefore every pleasure is also included; which, after these—
Oh the Pleasures of Peace are infinite and they cannot be counted—
One single piece of pink mint chewing gum contains more pleasures
Than the whole rude gallery of war! And the moon passes by
In an otherwise undistinguished lesson on the geography of this age
Which has had fifty-seven good lovers and ninety-six wars. By Giorgio Finogle.
It turns out that we’re competing for the Peace Award,
Giorgio Finogle and I. We go into the hair parlor, the barber—
We get to talking about war and about peace.
The barber feels that we are really good people at heart
Even though his own views turn out to be conservative.
“I’ve read Finogle’s piece, the part of it that was in Smut,” he
Says, “and I liked it. Yours, Koch, I haven’t yet seen.
But Alyne and Francie told me that you were the better poet.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Giorgio is pretty good.” And Giorgio comes back from the bathroom
Now, with a grin on his face. “I’ve got an idea for my
Pleasures of Peace,” he says; “I’m going to make it include
Each person in the universe discussing their own bag—
Translation, their main interest, and what they want to be—”
“You’ll never finish it, Giorgio,” I said. “At least I’ll
Get started,” he replied, and he ran out of the barbershop.
In the quiet night we take turns riding horseback and falling asleep.
Your breasts are more beautiful than a gold mine.
I think I’ll become a professional man.
The reason we are up-to-date is we’re some kind of freaks.
I don’t know what to tell the old man
But he is concerned with two kinds of phenomena and I am interested in neither. What are you interested in?
Being some kind of freaks, I think. Let’s go to Transylvania.
I don’t understand your buddy all the time. Who?
The one with HANDLEBAR written across his head.
He’s a good guy, he just doesn’t see the difference between a man and a bike. If I love you
It’s because you belong to and have a sublime tolerance
For such people. Yes, but in later life, I mean—
It is Present Life we’ve got to keep up on the screen.
Isn’t it. Well yes, she said, but—
I am very happy that you are interested in it. The French poodle stopped being Irish entirely
And we are all out of the other breeds.
The society woman paused, daintily, upon the hotel stair.
No, I must have a poodle, said she; not an Irish setter
Would satisfy me in my mad passion for the poodle breeds!
As usual, returning to the bed
I find that you are inside it and sound asleep. I smile happily and look at your head.
It is regular-size and has beautiful blonde hair all around it.
Some is lying across the pillow. I touch it with my feet
Then leap out the window into the public square. And I tune my guitar.
“O Mistress Mine, where are you roving?” That’s my tune! roars Finogle, and he
Comes raging out of the Beefsteak—I was going to put that in MY Pleasures of Peace.
Oh normal comportment! even you too I shall include in the Pleasures of Peace,
And you, relative humidity five hundred and sixty-two degrees!
But what of you, poor sad glorious aqueduct
Of boorish ashes made by cigarettes smoked at the Cupcake
Award—And Sue Ellen Musgrove steps on one of my feet. “Hello!”
She says. “You’re that famous COKE, aren’t you.
That no one can drink? When are you going to give us your famous Iliad
That everyone’s been talking of, I mean your Pleasures of Peace!”
Life changes as the universe changes, but the universe changes
More slowly, as bedevilments increase.
Sunlight comes through a clot for example
Which Zoo Man has thrown on the floor. It is the Night of the Painted Pyjamas
And the Liberals are weeping for peace. The Conservatives are raging for it.
The Independents are staging a parade. And we are completely naked
Walking through the bedroom for peace. I have this friend who had myopia
So he always had to get very close to people
And girls thought he was trying to make out—
Why didn’t he get glasses?—He was a Pacifist! The Moon shall overcome!
Outside in the bar yard the Grecians are screaming for peace
And the Alsatians, the Albanians, the Alesians, the Rubans, the Aleutians,
And the slanty-eyed Iranians, all, all are screaming for peace.
They shall win it, their peace, because I am going to help them!
And he leaped out the window for peace!
Headline: GIORGIO FINOGLE,
NOTED POET, LAST NIGHT LEAPED OUT THE WINDOW FOR PEACE.
ASIDE FROM HEAD INJURIES HIS CONDITION IS REPORTED NORMAL.
But Giorgio never was normal! Oh the horrors of peace,
I mean of peace-fighting! But Giorgio is all right,
He is still completely Himself. “I am going to throw this Hospital
Bed out the window for peace,” when we see Him, He says.
And, “Well, I guess your poem will be getting way ahead of mine now,” be says
Sadly, ripping up an envelope for peace and weakly Holding out His Hand
For my girl, Ellen, to stroke it; “I will no longer be the most famous poet
For peace. You will, and you know it.” “But you jumped out the
Window, Finogle,” I said, “and your deed shall live longer
In men’s imaginations than any verse.” But He looked at the sky
Through the window’s beautiful eye and be said, “Kenneth, I have not written one word
Of my Poem for Peace for three weeks. I’ve struck a snarl
And that’s why (I believe) I jumped out the
Windowpure poetic frustration. Now tell them all that, how
They’ll despise me, oh sob sob—” “Giorgio,” I said, trying to calm him down but laughing
So bard I could barely digest the dinner of imagination
In which your breasts were featured as on a Popeye card
When winter Has lighted the lanterns and the falls are asleep
Waiting for next day’s shards, “Giorgio,” I said, “the pleasures—”
But Hysteria transported us all.
When I awoke you were in a star-shaped muffin, I was in a loaf of bread
Shaped like a camera, and Giorgio was still in His Hospital bed
But a huge baker loomed over us. One false moof and I die you! be said
In a murderous throaty voice and I believe in the yellow leaves, the
Orange, the red leaves of autumn, the tan leaves, and the promoted ones
Of green, of green and blue. Sometimes walking through an ordinary garden
You will see a bird, and the overcoat will fall from your
Shoulders, slightly, exposing one beautiful curve
On which sunbeams alighting forget to speak a single word
To their parent sun and are thus cut off
Without a heating unit, but need none being on your breast
Which I have re-christened “Loaves” for the beginning of this year
In which I hope the guns won’t fire any more, the baker sang
To his baker lady, and then he had totally disappeared.
It looks as though everyone were going to be on our side!
And the flowers came out, and they were on our side.
Even the yellow little ones that grow beside your door
And the huge orange ones were bending to one side
As we walked past them, I looked into your blue eyes
And I said, “If we come out of this door
Any more, let it be to enter only this nervous paradise
Of peaceful living conditions, and if Giorgio is roped down
Let them untie him, so he can throw his hospital bed out the door
For all we need besides peace, which is considerable, but first we need that—”
Daredevil, Julian and Maddalo, and John L. Lewis
Are running down the stairways for peace, they are gathering the ice
And throwing it in buckets, they are raising purple parasols for peace
And on top of these old sunlight sings her song, “New lights,
old lights again, blue lights for peace.
Red lights for the low, insulted parasol, and a few crutches thrown around for peace”—
Oh contentment is the key
To continuing exploration of the nations and their feet;
Therefore, andiamo—the footfall is waiting in the car
And peaceful are the markets and the sneaks;
Peaceful are the Garfinkle pingpong balls
And peaceful are the blooms beneath the sea
Peaceful are the unreserved airplane loops and the popularly guided blips
Also the Robert Herrick stone sings a peaceful song
And the banana factory is getting hip, and the pigs’ Easter
party too is beginning to join in a general celebration
And the women and men of old Peru and young Haifa and
ancient Japan and beautiful young rippling Lake Tahoe
And hairy old Boston and young Freeport and young Santo
Domingo and old father Candelabra the Chieftain of Hoboes
Are rolling around the parapets for peace, and now the matadors are throwing in
Huge blops of canvas and the postgraduates are filling in
As grocery dates at peanut dances and the sunlight is filling in
Every human world canvas with huge and luminous pleasure
gobs of peace—
And the Tintorettos are looking very purple for peace
And the oyster campus is beginning its peaceful song—
Oh let it be concluded, including the medals!
Peace will come thrusting out of the sky
Tomorrow morning, to bomb us into quietude.
For a while we can bid goodbye
To the frenesies of this poem. The Pleasures of Peace.
When there is peace we will not need anything but bread
Stars and plaster with which to begin.
Roaming from one beard to another we shall take the tin
From the mines and give it to roaring Fidel Castro.
Where Mao Tse Tung lies buried in ocean fields of sleeping cars
Our Lorcaesque decisions will clonk him out
And resurrect him to the rosebuddy sky
Of early evening.
And the whip-shaped generals of Hanoi
Shall be taken in overcoats to visit the sky
And the earth will be gasping for joy!
“A wonder!” “A rout!” “No need now for any further poems!” “A Banzai for peace!” “He can speak to us all!”
And “Great, man!” “Impressive!” “Something new for you. Ken!” “Astounding!” “A real
Epic!” “The worst poem I have ever read!” “Abominably tasteless!” “Too funny!” “Dead, man!
A cop-out! a real white man’s poem! a folderol of honky blank spitzenburger smugglerout Caucasian gyp
Of phony bourgeois peace poetry, a total shrig!” “Terrific!” “I will expect you at six!”
“A lovely starry catalogue for peace!” “Is it Shakespeare or Byron who breathes
In the lines of His poem?” “You Have given us the Pleasures of Peace,
Now where is the real thing ?” “Koch Has studied His History!” “Bold!” “Stunning!” “It touches us like leaves
Sparkling in April— but is that all there is
To His peace plea?” Well, you be the one
To conclude it, if you think it needs more— I want to end it,
I want to see real Peace again! Oh peace bams!
I need your assistance and peace drams, distilling through the world! peace lamps, be shining! and peace lambs, rumble up the shore!
O Goddess, sweet Muse, I’m stopping— now show us where you are!
And the big boats come sailing into the Harbor for peace
And the little apes are running around the jungle for peace
And the day (that is, the star of day, the sun) is shining for peace
Somewhere a moustachioed student is puzzling over the works of Raymond Roussel for peace
And the Mediterranean peach trees are fast asleep for peace
With their pink arms akimbo and the blue plums of Switzerland for peace
And the monkeys are climbing for coconuts and peace
The Hawaiian palm
And serpents are writhing for peace—those are snakes—
And the Alps, Mount Vesuvius, all the really big important mountains
Are rising for peace, and they’re filled with rockssurely it won’t be long;
And Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper is moving across the monastery wall
A few micrometres for peace, and Paolo Ucello’s red horses
Are turning a little redder for peace, and the Anglo-Saxon dining hall
Begins glowing like crazy, and Beowulf, Robert E. Lee, Sir Barbarossa, and Baron Jeep
Are sleeping on the railways for peace and darting around the harbor
And leaping into the sailboats and the sailboats will go on
And underneath the sailboats the sea will go on and we will go on
And the birds will go on and the snappy words will go on
And the tea sky and the sloped marine sky
And the hustle of beans will go on and the unserious canoe
It will all be going on in connection with you, peace, and my poem, like a Cadillac of wampum
Unredeemed and flying madly, will go exploding through
New cities sweet inflated, planispheres, ingenious hair, a camera smashing
Badinage, cerebral stands of atmospheres, unequaled, dreamed of
Empeacements, candled piers, fumisteries, emphatic moods, terrestialism’s
Crackle, love’s flat, sun’s sweets, ob peace, to you.
—The Pleasures of Peace by Kenneth Koch
