A wine-colored dress, turned black because of no moon,
—It would have been spangled in moon—and a broadcloth coat,
And two voices talking together, quite softly, quite calmly.
The dance. Such a lovely dance. But you dance so lightly.
Amanda dances so well. But you dance so lightly.
Louisa looks so pretty in pink, don’t you think?
Are you fond of Scott? Yes, I’m very fond of Scott.
Elegant extracts from gilt-edged volumes called Keepsakes
And Godey’s Lady’s Book words. If I were a girl,
A girl in a Godey’s Lady’s Book steel-engraving,
I would have no body or legs, no aches or delusions.
I would know what to do. I would marry a man called Mister.
We would live in a steel-engraving, in various costumes
Designed in the more respectable Paris modes,
With two little boys in little plush hats like muffins,
And two little girls with pantalettes to their chins.
I must do that, I think. But now my light feet know
That they will be tired and burning with all my dancing
Before I cool them in the exquisite coolness
Of water or the cool virginal sheets of virgins,
And a face comes swimming toward me out of black broadcloth
And my heart knocks. Who are you, why are you here?
Why should you trouble my eyes? No, Mr. Wingate,
I cannot agree with you on the beauties of Byron.
But why should something melt in the stuff of my hand,
And my voice sound thin in my ears? This face is a face
Like any other face. Did my mother once
Hear thin blood sing in her ears at a voice called Mister?
And wish for—and not wish for—and when the strange thing
Was consummate, then, and she lay in a coil of darkness,
Did she feel so much changed? What is it to be
A woman? No, I must live in a steel-engraving.
His voice said. But there was other than his voice.
Something that heard warm rain on unopened flowers
And spoke or tried to speak across swimming blackness
To the slight profile and the wine-colored dress.
Her hair was black. Her eyes might be black or grey.
He could not remember, it irked him not to remember.
But she was just Sally Dupré from Appleton
Only she was not. Only she was a shadow
And a white face—a terrible, white shut face
That looked through windows of inflexible glass
Disdainfully upon the beauties of Byron
And every puppy that ever howled for the moon
To brush warm raindrops across the unopened flower
And so quiet the heart with—what? But you speak to her aunts.
You are Wingate of Wingate Hall. You are not caught
Like a bee drunk with the smell of honey, the smell of sleep,
In a slight flower of glass whose every petal
Shows eyes one cannot remember as black or grey.
You converse easily on elegant subjects
Suitable for young ladies. You do not feel
The inexorable stairs of the flesh ascended
By an armed enemy with a naked torch.
This has been felt before, this has been quenched
With fitting casualness in flesh that has
A secret stain of the sun. It is not a subject
Suitable for the converse of young ladies.
“My God, My God, why will she not answer the aching?
My God, My God, to lie at her side through the darkness!”
And yet—is it real—do I really— The wine-colored dress
Rose. Broadcloth rose and took her back to the dance.
The nickeled lamp threw a wide yellow disk
On the red tablecloth with the tasseled fringes.
Jack Ellyat put his book down with a slight
Impatient gesture. There was mother, knitting
The same grey end of scarf while Father read
The same unaltered paper through the same
Old-fashioned spectacles with the worn bows.
Jane with one apple-cheek and one enshadowed,
Soundlessly conjugated Latin verbs,
“Amo, amas, amat,” through sober lips,
“Amamus, amatis, amant,” and still no sound.
He glanced at the clock. On top of it was Phaëton
Driving bronze, snarling horses down the sharp,
Quicksilver, void, careening gulfs of air
Until they smashed upon a black-marble sea.
The round spiked trophy of the brazen sun
Weighed down his chariot with its heavy load
Of ponderous fire. To be like Phaëton
And drive the trophy-sun! But he and his horses
Were frozen in their attitude of snarling,
Frozen forever to the tick of a clock.
Not all the broomstick witches of New England
Could break that congealed motion and cast down
The huge sun thundering on the black marble
Of the mantelpiece, streaked with white veins of foam.
If once such things could happen, all could happen,
The snug, safe world crack up like broken candy
And the young rivers, roaring, rush to the sea;
White bulls that caught the morning on their horns
And shook the secure earth until they found
Some better recompense for life than life,
The untamed ghost, the undiminished star.
But it would not happen. Nothing would ever happen.
He had been here, like this, ten thousand times,
He would be here, like this, ten thousand more,
Until at last the little ticks of the clock
Had cooled what had been hot, and changed the thin,
Blue, forking veins across the back of his hand
Into the big, soft veins on Father’s hand.
And the world would be snug. And he would sit
Reading the same newspaper, after dinner,
Through spectacles whose bows were getting worn
While a wife knitted on an endless scarf
And a child slowly formed with quiet lips
“Amo, amas, amat,” and still no sound.
And it would be over. Over without having been.
His father turned a creaking page of paper
And cleared his throat, “The Tribune calls,” he said,
“Brown’s raid the work of a madman. Well, they’re right,
But—” Mrs. Ellyat put her knitting down.
“Are they going to hang him, Will?” “It looks that way.”
“But, Father, when—” “They have the right, my son,
He broke the law.” “But, Will! You don’t believe—”
A little spark lit Mr. Ellyat’s eyes.
“I didn’t say I thought that he was wrong.
I said they had the right to hang the man,
But they’ll hang slavery with him.” A quick pulse
Beat in Jack Ellyat’s wrist. Behind his eyes
A bearded puppet creaked upon a rope
And the sky darkened because he was there.
Now it was Mother talking in a strange
Iron-bound voice he’d never heard before.
“I prayed for him in church last Sunday, Will.
I pray for him at home here every night.
I don’t know—I don’t care—what laws he broke.
I know that he was right. I pray to God
To show the world
