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Read Ebook: Minna and Myself by Bodenheim Maxwell Hecht Ben Contributor
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Ebook has 391 lines and 13198 words, and 8 pages
MINNA Poems
MYSELF Poems
THE MASTER POISONER A One-Act Poetic Play by Maxwell Bodenheim and Ben Hecht
POET'S HEART A Poetic Play in One Act
A FOREWORD
But it is not merely as word-juggler that Bodenheim shines. He has an imagination that he uses both as a tool and as a toy. Personally, I care more for Bodenheim when he plays with his images , than when his figures attempt to build or destroy something . It is as a decorator that his gifts serve him best. Even such an intimate picture as "Factory Girl" is saved from mawkishness by his delicate sense of design. The composition in which Death is seen as
"...a black slave with little silver birds Perched in a sleeping wreath upon his head"
has a quality that suggests the Beardsley of "Under the Hill." In the realm of the whimsical-grotesque, Bodenheim walks with a light but sure footstep.
There are doubtless other things--sharper and more important--in the following poems that will attract many. But the ones that I have found seem to have a quiet, unofficial, dignity of their own. Others may ask for more. For me, they are sufficient.
LOUIS UNTERMEYER.
MINNA
Twilight pushes down your eyes With shimmering, pregnant fingers That leave you covered with still-born touch. With little whips of dead words Silence cuts your lips to a keener red. Your heart strikes its bed of dark mirth, in death, And your hands lie over it, guarding the corpse. Night will soon whisk away this room But you are already invisible.
Your cheeks are spent diminuendos Sheering into the rose-veiled silence of your lips. Your eyes are gossamer coquettes Ringed with the sparkling breath of dead loves. Your body strays into lanterns of form Strewing the night within this room.... The light dies; you are still And spill the frolicing night of your heart Over the darkness about you, making it pale.
Your criss-crossed ringlets of hair Are tipped with faltering opalescence. At dawn a lost smile ever returns And hides in your hair because he fears The solemn marble profile of your face. His presence caresses your lips to wings of color That beat against each other and release Dulcet, feathery tinges of love descending to your heart. And thus, each morning, your rising heart Wears a new bridal robe.
Moonlight bends over black silence, Making it bloom to wild-flowers of sound That only green things can hear. A wind sprawls over an orchard, Frightening its silent litany to sound. A thread of star-light has fallen to this tree And curls among its leaves, tangling them to silence.... Standing amidst these things, Beloved, We feel the words our hearts cannot form.
Pain is a country cousin of yours. He flings buds of awakening desires Upon the stately weddings in your heart, And laughs. You must teach him better manners; Bind his mouth with pale sleep; Caress him with trailing hands That loosen the buds he has stolen, into flowers.
We met upon nearby hill-tops of our lives And shook the dust from us, revealing flame-laced clothes And eyeing each other in the same moment. You curved a longing to the wave of your arm: A longing for dark rest crossed by unbidden gifts. And my eyes deepened in answer.... Then we floated down to the valley between us: The valley ringed with smooth honey-combs of sleep.
You have a morning-glory face Whose edges are sensitive to light And curl in beneath the burden of a smile. Remembered silence returns to the morning-glory And lattices its curves With shades of golden reverberations. Then the morning-glory's heart careens to loves Whose scent beats on the sky-walls of your soul.
You draw my heart about you, as a cloak, And your words steal over it like a reluctant color: A color of pain that fears to die. My heart ripples with your slight turning But sometimes moves when you are still, Beckoning to longings that have not reached your mouth.
Sedate and archaic, a twilight-frilled haze Walks over the meadows like rolled-out centuries Quivering in sprightly welcome. Trees pushed down by silence; Trees lolling in comely abandon; Trees pungently flamboyant, Their leaves spinning in the wind's golden elusiveness. Trees probing the shrilly sensitive sunset Like little, laced nightmares leaning Upon a scarlet breast; Trees sprinkling their stifled mockery Upon the blue tomb of the air; Trees, are you silenced beings Whitening into the winding paradise Of old loves seeking a second death? And has this archaic, twilight-frilled haze Moulded me to your semblance?
The wrinkled grimaces of eastern skies Are caught on the Chinese mirrors of your eyes And lie, pallid and benign. Your mouth is a senile dragon Spitting fire-fly words from its vermillion shroud. Your cheeks are shrunken silences of Gods Paling out upon ivoried Nirvanas of silk. Your face holds fugitive bits of your heart That wandered away and returned to rest.
Your body was puzzling, like a half-made figure Till the final shaping of your voice came And riotous secrets of lines curved out And trembled upon your limbs. Then silence touched your body to motion: Your limbs released fleeing andantes of pain And your heart flung little crescents of budding caresses Into the waiting hunger of your eyes.
You are a well sprayed with cool rubies of sound In which I bathe and rise with another skin Like moon-stone passion slyly courting The light breath of a tired dream. I drop my heart into the depths Of your disheveled serenity, And stroll off empty. When my heart has merged to your shades of pearl quietness I return and once more drop within you.
The mellow anger of his hair Disputes his sleepy girl's face. His robe glows like a painted wound Upon the bent meditation of his body. His hands are so thin that silence bruises them: Thin from the pressure brought by endless prayers... When you were with me I did not know That your voice was pouring him out in molten colors To be shaped by the fingers of my memory-- This prince-made-of-many-deal-loves.
Sometimes jaded, sometimes tranquil, Your eyes invade the tumult of your face. Your lips are the remnants of a love That made a sunset-cup of your face. The movements of your body Caress the couch you sit on into sound That seems to answer your words. You are restless because upon this couch The cold touch of your lover lies And seeps into you, reaching your heart.
Your arms, in faltering crescendos, Wander through the room Tinted with expectation of night. The room seems a tottering tomb Through which you roam with hands Striving to press each form into the shape Of someone buried beneath you.... Only when night sprays the room with his breath Do you change to that which you seek.
Two walls, dizzy with rain-touch And suffused with gauzily amorous sunlight, Creep over a hill and meet. And so our foreheads touch.
Silence between our hands grows into clasped music Sprinkling our finger-tips with attenuated chords of touch. Our hearts weave low songs to this accompaniment: So low that even silence cannot hear.
Afternoon sunlight limps tenuously away, Leaving a snarled retrospect of golden foot-marks. The sea is pregnant with gracious discords That falteringly shroud the sleep-rhythmed breasts of winds. The sky is a genially vacant stare. Remaining touches of starlight Tremble the leaves when air is still.... And so my love for you strolls through this day, Picking up forgotten hints of its heart.
My heart is a slovenly russet peasant-girl Flirting with staidly immaculate swains.
And mine is summer-rain Strewing itself in mirthful swirls Over the odorous pain of flowers That long to dance.
My heart will walk through yours, Holding its crushed robe in both hands And quieting, with gentle nakedness, The mirthful rain and odorous pain in your heart.
When your heart leaves mine it will be an old woman With two of my shrunken flowers for her breasts.
Your breast is the bridal-couch of our stillness. The restless beggar of our breath Leaves the folding of stillness, reeling with gifts, With dreams in which we glimpse our own scars. We give these reflections of scars to stillness And she turns them into bitter hummingbirds Offering us the colored death of song Held out in her enticing hands.
Like prayers born dead, long shadows Strew the floor and clutch at your feet, But buoyant with paint you walk to and fro. The room is garlanded with unseen eyes That you must evade lest they touch you into sight And send you, naked, into the moonlight.
Your body is a closed fan Holding long brush-strokes of glowing repose. Your words clumsily unloosen the fan And it dips to the rustling birth of forgotten doubts. Your soul bears the fan lightly in his hand And waves to the mirror his blind eyes cannot touch.
The gown you wear is curiously like sound-- Tangles of dahlia-murmurs taking shape In shrinking, mellow sprays. The everlasting journey of your heart Gliding over a sleepy litany That winds through scattered star-flowers of regrets: The everlasting journey of your heart Is like a fragile traveler of sound-- A murmur seeking the love that gave it birth.
Whenever a love dies within you, Griefs, phosphorescent with unborn tears, Cut the glowing hush of a meadow within you: Griefs striking their pearl-voiced cymbals And shaping the silences once held by your love. Your new love blows a trumpet of sunlight Into the meadow, and your griefs Leap into the echo and return to you.
We blew a luminous confusion of thoughts Upon the silence of our souls, Staining it to little, weeping tints. Our hands pressed serpentine pain into each other And stroked it away to twilights of relief. Our lips shook before the tread of coming words, But closed again, finding no need for them.
Upon an arched sarcophagus of pain Are figures painted in arrested embraces With outlines so light that we must bend close to see: Old loves almost merging to one tone Of pale regret that holds An inner glow of dead weeping. Our lips cling and our breath winds to a hand With touch like summer rain Blending the arrested figures upon the arched sarcophagus of pain.
Make of your voice, a dawn Dropping little gestures upon my forehead, While slumber-edged thoughts rise in my head And wave back greetings droll and confused. Pain has jested with the whirling night And both vanish like an untold prayer, So, make of your voice, a dawn Dropping little gestures upon my forehead.
Your mind is a little, clandestine pastel Shaped into a posture of rigid grief. Its colors huddle together And make a stunted, aching lyric.... Ah frail-flowered moment preceding reality-- Your eyelids open; the little pastel dies.
MYSELF
POET TO HIS LOVE
An old silver church in a forest Is my love for you. The trees around it Are words that I have stolen from your heart. An old silver bell, the last smile you gave, Hangs at the top of my church. It rings only when you come through the forest And stand beside it. And then, it has no need for ringing, For your voice takes its place.
DEATH
I shall walk down the road. I shall turn and feel upon my feet The kisses of Death, like scented rain. For Death is a black slave with little silver birds Perched in a sleeping wreath upon his head. He will tell me, his voice like jewels Dropped into a satin bag, How he has tip-toed after me down the road, His heart made a dark whirlpool with longing for me. Then he will graze me with his hands And I shall be one of the sleeping, silver birds Between the cold waves of his hair, as he tip-toes on.
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