Of hunting
for a way
to get back home . . . .
In one of the great eastern rooms where people are sifted and slotted to the trains, he walked, carrying a suitcase.
VOICE OF THE DISPATCHER
calling,
--All aboard. All aboard.
He was afraid that he might miss
this train. After so many close calls, after so many delicate
intersections, he had this last chance to catch a train for home.
It was time to go back, before all things had changed. Wearing
his old uniform, he passed through a huge iron gate into the
clanging yards.
There was a burst of firecrackers
and handmusic from a platform hung with bunting.
CROWD
singing,
--When johnny comes marching home
again,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
PROFESSOR STILES
walking to front of platform,
--Yes, it's been a long day, folks.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm pooped. However,
if you'll just bear with us a little longer, we'll try to round
things up to the satisfaction of each and everyone of you. Now,
I'm sure everyone and each of this intelligent assembly joins
me in wishing the young man on my right a happy voyage on this
great undertaking. One hundred years ago, in the year 1892, to
be exact, they wouldn't have believed it possible. But in this
great age of cosmic rays and contraceptives, we have achieved
the impossible. The mythical ages had their prometheus; the pre-literary
ages had their cadmus, antiquity had its plato, the middle ages
had their troubles, the renaissance had its columbus, the age
of electricity had its franklin, and now, folks, the atomic age
has achieved its shawnessy. President, will you say a few words?
PRESIDENT GARWOOD JONES
cosmic jacket, diver's helmet, winged shoes,
golden pitchfork, cigar,
--Fellow americans, it gives me
great pleasure to say a word for the young man who is about to
attempt this incredible and awe-inspiring feat. It seems only
yesterday that john and I were students together in the old pedee
academy. (Laughter and applause from crowd) But the exigencies
of public life, to which I have been no stranger in recent years,
and my profound concern for the welfare of this great republic
in positions of public responsibility which I have reluctantly
accepted in the hope always that some abler man then myself might
be found to--
PROFESSOR STILES
cynically touching a button and blowing the
president up,
--Thank you, mr. president, that
was really beautiful. And now I wonder if mr. cassius carney,
that distinguished financier, affectionately known among his
friends as the old stinker, will say a few words on this occasion.
CASSIUS P. CARNEY
in rubber airsuit, inflated with natural gas,
chewing on dead cigar,
--Folks, I'm a man of few words.
All I want to say is that john shawnessy here is the best friend
I ever had--and practically the only one. I don't know whether
you folks properly understand the condition of this country.
Now I'm a man of plain speech, and all I want to say is that,
by god, if we don't good and quick get a business administration,
we'll--
PROFESSOR STILES
cynically setting off gas pump, inflating
cash's suit, and shooting him straight up, out of sight,
--Thank you very very much, mr.
carney. That was really swell of you. General, would you favor
us with a few wellchosen words?
GENERAL JACOB J. JACKSON
in asbestos bulletproof battlesuit, crashproof
helmet, and shockabsorbing battleboots,
--Friends and fellow citizens and
comrades of the old army, of whom I believe I see a few familiar
faces out there in the crowd--how about it, boys? (Thunderous
applause, shouts of halloo there, jake! hurrah, boys, hurrah!
and a few rebel yells) I'm damn glad to put the stamp of my approval
on corporal o'shaughnessy, a true citizen-soldier--
VOICES
interrupting,
--Shawnessy, general. Shawnessy.
GENERAL JACKSON
--Thank you, friend, for the correction. Yes, sir, it's always good to see any comrades from the old army. I well remember one day when I happened to be leading a modest action involving the right wing of the union army before chickamauge, we were expecting an attack from the damn traitors, when all of a sudden--
PROFESSOR STILES
setting off concealed mine, blowing general
up,
--Very exciting, general. Thank
you so much. And now, my boy, anything you care to say at this
supreme moment will be appreciated by us all.
MR. SHAWNESSY
standing under flank of a huge red, white,
and blue fourth of july rocket, as big as a locomotive, with
wooden stick in ground, nose pointed up at a forty-five degree
angle,
--No one, not in my position, can
possibly imagine the emotion I feel at this parting. (Climbing
up stick and sitting down on saddle halfway up rocket's back)
Frankly, I consider myself unworthy of the honor of being the
first human being to attempt a true interplanetary flight. No
doubt, the method envisaged is a bit clumsy and archaic--in fact,
I must say it seems so to me--but I am a firm believer in human
progress and--
PROFESSOR
touching match to fuse,
--Bright star, would I were steadfast
as thou art.
ROCKET
beginning to strain at the stick,
--Fut-fut-fut-fut-fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh,
foooooooooooooooooooooo OOOOOOOOOSH!
In an instant, the rocket had shot
to an enormous depth. The earth lay spread out below, a scarlet
plain in a purple sea of air, the ground unbelievably chewed
up as if reduced to volcanic ash, pulverized and repulverized
by senselessly repeated explosions. Some remains of cities were
visible, here and there a human hand, and now and again a wheel
or a bottle, but, as far as eye could see, no living thing.
PROFESSOR STILES
climbing up rocket's back, coat blown off,
eyebrows singed, head bald and smoking,
--Goddammit, I hung onto that fuse
too long.
MR. SHAWNESSY
--Things look pretty bad down there.
PERFESSOR
--The last war left things pretty crumbly. Well, it was fun while it lasted--being human beings. Who would have supposed that matter was such touchy stuff!
MR. SHAWNESSY
working levers,
--The power seems to be going out
of this thing. Not much fun falling through space on a dead stick.
PERFESSOR
lighting a cigar, taking drink from whiskey
bottle,
--Have some?
MR. SHAWNESSY
--No thanks. Somebody has to run this thing.
PERFESSOR
--Why? That's
the great human mistake, isn't it? Here's our chance at last
to just drift and let the universe take over. (Peering over the
edge) Frankly, I think we got off the old ball just in time.
Looks like the joint is really blowing up down there.
Mr. shawnessy looked down just
in time to see the earth expand into a sphere of flaming gas
several hundred times its original size, burning with an intense
white light.
PERFESSOR
--Boyle's law--or something. What ho! A hitchhiker.
GARWOOD JONES
crawling up side of rocket, cigar clenched
in teeth, clothes blown off,
--Move over, boys. Here, john,
let me take a spin at the controls. Remember--I'm still president.
CASH CARNEY
crawling down from nose of rocket, wearing
derby and holding a package of gilt-edge securities,
--I cleared out with a cold million.
What the hell happened anyway? Stock market crash?
GENERAL JAKE JACKSON
crawling over side, wearing smoking army boots,
holding drawn sword, yelling frantically,
--Hold the center, boys. Forward
all along the line!
MR. SHAWNESSY
--Put up the sword, general. You're among friends.
GENERAL
sitting down,
--Just the same--
PERFESSOR
in robinson cruso outfit, laying out his belongings--mcguffey
reader, a test tube, a cake of pear's soap, a colt revolver,
a railroad timetable, a contraceptive, a bible, a banknote, and
a deck of cards,
--I seem to have the prime ingredients.
I think we can reconstruct the whole works if we only had--
MRS. DESMORE J. BROWN
with handbag, sitting down beside mr. shawnessy,
--Goodness, what a trying day!
MR. SHAWNESSY
--Evelina, will you read the minutes of the last meeting, please?
THE REVEREND LLOYD G. JARVEY
in mosaic loincloth and eyeglasses, struggling
up with stone tablets,
--And the lord said, Be ye ready
at my second coming, for then will I--
PERFESSOR
rising,
--This one we can get along without.
He spun the reverend around and
kicked him in the cloth. The reverend pitched over the side of
the rocket and fell flaming head over heels.
PERFESSOR
--Milton, thou
shouldst be living at this hour. Well, that seems to have lightened
us some.
The rocket was speeding as if to
a climax.
MR. SHAWNESSY
--By the way, these things explode at the top of their arc, don't they?
PERFESSOR
--It's possible. But perhaps zeno was right and we'll never get there. (Looking over side of ship.) You know, there's one good thing about this: It's possible at last to be definitive about the human race. (Hawking and spitting over side of rocket) In a word, we stank.
JOHN BELLAMY SHAWNESSY
--Still in a
sense, looking backward, that is to say forward with that old
nineteeth century novelist of utopia, the history of mankind
acquires a certain--
The rocket had been getting smaller
and smaller, and more and more people had been crawling aboard,
until now it appeared that...
He had perhaps resumed his trip
back to the county after an interruption. He was on a road somewhere
surrounded by curious onlookers, as he climbed into a peculiar
carriage. Under the hooded front was his old horse king, head
sticking out like the figurehead of a ship.
PERFESSOR STILES
in voice of fourth of july orator,
--They said it couldn't be done!
They laughed and called it shawnessy's folly. But the history
of the human race is littered with the bones of those who didn't
believe in progress! John, give the crank a spin, and show the
folks how it goes.
MR. SHAWNESSY
--Wouldn't it
be better if we got the horse clear out of there?
The contraption sputtered, honked,
rapped out a series of hard barks, shot off plunging in convulsions.
There was a loud explosion.
PERFESSOR
hanging in a tree by one hand, rubber tire
around neck, eating a sandwich,
--Dead horse--à la cart--a
tasty dish, ladies. The horsy age is past. Old dobbin's down
at last. It brings us the dream of a once happy day. His heart
was stout and brave, but dobbin's in this grave--with old black
joe and old dog tray.
MR. SHAWNESSY
--After all, friends, what is progress? Spiritually speaking, does it make any difference whether we ride from the cradle to the grave on wheels or shank's pony? No, friends, real progress is the quest of man for self-realization. By the way, what time is it? I've got to get back to--
REPORTER STILES
reading minutes,
--Wheelmen have get-together. The
enterprising bicyclists of middletown got together today for
their annual banquet and symposium. The addicts of the rotary
pastime, jauntily attired in--
MR. SHAWNESSY
cycling knickers, sport coat with accentuated
seams, bowtie, bigbilled plaid cap, chiny knobtoed oxfords, sitting
aloft a bicycle with sixfoot front wheel and onefoot back wheel,
--I feel like a girl rolled by
a hoop.
The men and women in middletown
court house square laughed good-naturedly and applauded. They
were all people of middle stature, the ladies solidly built with
broad breasts and behinds, garish middleclass gowns, and hats
made out of birds' nests, velvet, carrots, and lacquered horsedung.
The men were solid citizens in identical suits, with round faces,
double chins, exceptionally solid chests with shoulders thrust
back, slightly staring eyes, big powerful hands, ties slopped
with gravy, incipient paunches, high blood pressure, and teeth
on their watchchains.
CITIZENS OF MIDDLETOWN
applauding,
--By gosh, if he can do it, I'm
fer him. These here newfangled idees are pretty good sometimes.
SECOND CITIZEN
--Think I'll git me one a them things, george. Understand jones has one.
GARWOOD JONES
perched on bicycle, wearing indian headdress,
kissing baby, being photographed by his personal photographer,
--Well, sir, it's always good to
get back to the old convention hall gang. If you want to find
the real grit and guts, getup and go of this here nation, I say
look for it right in these little burgs that are just bustin'
their pants with vim, vigor, and venality--uh--I mean to say--
PERFESSOR
perched on bicycle, reading minutes,
--Sports of the rotary pastime
left the g.a.r. hall at 2:11 p.m. for an all-day tour of the
county conducted by the local schoolmaster....
Mr. shawnessy was teetering along
on his bicycle, in the middle of a huge pack of bicycle, all
men in their middle thirties, dressed like traveling salesmen,
with numbers on their backs, racing down a broad white strip
of road to nowhere in particular. They were all bending over
their handlebars. Their teeth showed in set grins, and their
eyes were crosshypnotized by the spinning front wheels. Half
a mile ahead rolled a riderless front wheel, wrapped in tin foil.
The afternoon sun burnished a brilliant rush of wheels, the faces
of the contestants glistened, their chests heaved in hard quick
rhythmical bursts, their progress was accompanied by a vicious
humming sound of wheels on pavement.
PERFESSOR
bending over, pumping hard, looking crosseyed
at the front wheel,
--In the evening, a banquet diversified
with original skits and songs pertaining to the modern sport
of--
MR. SHAWNESSY
trying to stay aloft on a single great wheel,
looking backward, seeing along the road, people in all sorts
of contraptions on wheels, down a stretch of the roman campagna
adorned with ruins, aqueducts, and the tall tenuous trees of
a turner landscape,
--Who invented this great circle
on which mankind has ridden from the mists of antiquity into
the sunlight of the twentieth century? Back to raintree county
we come in a primitive conveyance consisting of a stone cart,
rolling on two stately hemispheres. For if atlas bears the earth,
so also does the earth bear atlas....
He had left the old stone cart
tied to a ring on the rim of an antique fountain and had crossed
the road, intending to visit a little temple of vulcan equipped
with an assortment of inventions new and old and many interesting
exhibits illustrating the history of mankind. But as he mounted
the steps he found that he was ascending the bricked side of
a great hill of rock standing above a city on the plain. He remembered
now that hundreds of excavators, explorers, archeologists, conquistadors,
poets, pioneers, and statesmen had been hunting through the ruins
for a statue which had, according to tradition, been erected
on this fortlike elevation. It was a vast work of gold and ivory
made to represent the goddess who had been chosen to give her
name to his republic because of her gift of a gracious tree.
He passed through the colonnaded
entrance and emerged into a geometrical enclosure. Everywhere
desolately lovely fragments of temple and statue stood in a waste
of green vines. Every fragment, though weathered and defaced,
was tonguelessly eloquent of an ancient people who had sought
to conquer the chaos of old time with the tranquil beauty of
proportioned lines.
Approaching a temple, he recalled
that he had been here in the morning of his life and had been
invited to return by a gracious young woman. Now as he ascended
the steps (strewn with shocks of the bearded grain, threshed
of seed), he carried in his hand a golden key, the tracery of
whose carven stem was almost thumbworn smooth. Putting it into
the lock, he easily thrust back the great bronze door and entered.
In the vast nave of the temple,
architects, painters, sculptors were yet in process of setting
up statues and finishing friezes.
LADY CUSTODIAN
standing in the dim entryway on pedestal in
costume and attitude of the venus found in melos, radiantly fleshed,
arms graciously extended,
--Hello, dear. Hygiene, as we greeks
say. But where are the children?
MR. SHAWNESSY
carrying a briefcase of beautifully shaded
drawings--sculptural and architectural details of periclean buildings,
pediments, friezes, capitals, columns, urns, pedestals, statues,
--I suppose they're into some mischief
or other wherever they are. Are you ready for your sitting, my
dear?
LADY CUSTODIAN
--O, yes indeed. How do you like my costume, johnny?
MR. SHAWNESSY
--The classic revival looks very fetching off you.
LADY CUSTODIAN
stepping down from her pedestal and walking
away from him, slowly allowing her robe to travel down and off
her graceful back,
--Won't you come with me, and we'll
have a look.
Eagerly he followed, carrying his
pencil and the great sheets of sketches, as the lady custodian
walked into the nave of the building. Although sun did not directly
touch the interior of this immense workshop, a white stony light
bathed equally columns, roof, and floor, every line and plane
distinct from end to end of the vast rectangular space. The urge
to create, define, impose form possessed him like fire and hunger.
Weakness of love-desire flowed through him as he watched the
lady custodian moving undraped between great blocks of parian
marble newly quarried, inviting genitive conflict between chisel
and stone. In these vast lumps slept the pale limbs of gods and
goddesses, a world of linear perfections. The unsandaled feet
of the lady custodian made no sound, but he heard the cold pure
clang of chisels and hammers striking on stone.
He remembered then that he had
been commissioned to generate from this enduring substance the
eternal verities of the republic so that what it was could never
be lost to the encroaching jungle. In these immense temples enclosed
in ordered space, in these beginnings of statues and friezes
(which he now saw halfstarting from the stone around him--heads
without bodies, arms without trunks) he saw a lifetime of phidian
endeavor, which now he must climax, before it was too late, with
a statuary group that would stand in the central angle of the
vast pediment of the parthenon and be a goddess foamborn and
beautiful of sempiternal stone, an everlasting sign to travellers
on the seaward approaches of the republic.
The walls of the workshop had dissolved.
He was walking again under a pale blue sky of whose distant horizons
white clouds were piled in melodiously convolved shapes, as if
painted on stone. He was approaching the front of a parthenon
which stood in its first splendor with all the groups complete
except for an empty space in the middle of the vast frontal pediment.
People were swarming on the steps.
MR. SHAWNESSY
accosting citizens,
--Pardon me, I wish to arrive at
the central place. We are erecting a statue there--
EUCLID
old greek walking on stone stilts like a human
compass,
--Given, two lines intersecting
at right angles, extended indefinitely to the far horizons, east,
west, north, and south, and we arrive by a simple process of
recirculation back to--
MR. SHAWNESSY
reporter's notebook and pencil,
--Your achievement in creation
space, mr. euclid, is certainly one of the great human landmarks.
Our readers would be delighted to know--
EUCLID
describing great arcs with his stilts, moving
with an endless ease distantly among the stone shapes of an acropolis,
--That a straight point is the
longest line between two curves is demonstrated over and over
by nature. Nature, which is only ourselves extended outward indefinitely,
has unconsciously evolved these relative absolutes over a space
of several hundred years, if I may mix my modes a little. It
is axiomatic that--
SOCRATES
heavyset, beautifully ugly little man, satyr
face, skyblue eyes, marble-ringleted hair,
--What is it that you seek, dear
boy?
JOHNNY
in the attitude of eternal disciple and learner,
with stone tablet and stylus,
--Justice, the good, the beautiful,
the true, the--
SOCRATES
--Seek no farther. All these things you have already in your grasp, dear friend. For behold, justice is enshrined above the marketplace. God has erected his everlasting temple in the unchanging lights of the republic. None other but you shall find them, courageous and timedestroying boy. I, an old man, will yet exert my small strength to follow him whose godlike strength is given to that everlasting game.
JOHNNY
--Is it true, mr. socrates, as I have suspected, that you are only the fiction of that daring dreamer plato, a kind of straw man as it were, in whose fictitious person the most beautiful republic of all time was builded out of--
SOCRATES
slowly being resumed into the cold substance
of a block of marble,
--Thyself created me--none other,
out of increate and stubborn stone, an old man with a tenacious
and terrible honesty, sitting on a stone in the marketplace on
a summer's day, an ancient crysalis of yourself, the father of
a--
JOHNNY
--Wait! Wait! A few more questions. What time is? For look you, you neglected to explain how this republic of ideal shapes ever came to be invested with breathing flesh and beauty in a world of time and--
VOICE
sharp and satirical, from distant rostrum,
--Homer that blind and blithe old bard |
HOMER
old man, stone pits of sightless eyes, touching
a stone harp,
--So did we beach our stout ships
on the sands of time--
JOHNNY
reporter's notebook and pencil, hastily,
--Mr. homer, a word for our readers.
Only to tell me what sort you were, whether one or many, your
beautiful poems revealing the curious vocabulary and impress
of the gifted individual rather than the simplicities of a collective--
HOMER
with rhythmical stresses,
--That city of fabled stones that
we in the pride of our--
JOHNNY
with rhythmical stresses,
--For a new republic, master, what
meter, what musical--
HOMER
wandering companionless down distant ways
through shapes of ancient cities, singing with rhythmical stresses
--And on the winedark sea, homeward
our vessels were--
JOHNNY
gazing at the face of a great stone clock
hewn into a block of marble, the hands set at nine o'clock in
the morning,
--Time, time, time! Who then discovered
time? For look you, friends, time was when time was not. Man
does not live in time but time in man, eternal conjugator of
the verb to be....
He had, it appeared, been walking
arm in arm for some time with the perfessor, who now disengaged
himself, and in a white academic robe, took his place on a stone
platform erected in the shadow of the temple.
PERFESSOR
with gestures of the trained sophist and rhetorician,
--What is the one thing, the primal
indivisible being, from which all plural forms are evolved? (Abruptly
reassuming his old air of genial and hollow eloquence) The academy
is pleased this year to grant diplomas to the finest graduating
class in its history. Leading all others, summa cum laude, is
that wellknown local boy, john wesley shawnessy, whose doctoral
dialogue will no doubt work a revolution in dialectics. This
boy has thoroughly explored the conjugation of that most active
and attractive of all verbs in a work entitled, The provenience
of face-to-face amatorial combat among the primitive primates
of raintree county or lord darwin vindicated. The older, or parmenidean,
approach to the subject was backward by comparison. This boy
is really ready to graduate. John, will you conjugate a little
for us, young agonist and beautiful contender!
JOHNNY
naked youth, yellow uncut hair hanging long
on shoulders, riding a white horse of godlike appetite up the
wide stone steps of the parthenon to receive a diploma from the
hands of the lady custodian,
--A sign above the marketplace....
Perilously along the ledge of the
great pediment, he was trying to make his way to the maternal
deity who sat on the spine of a marble book on which he saw faintly
chiseled the words PARADISE REGAINED. Looking down, he saw stone
flanks of tapering columns to wide marble stairs black with swarming
faces. Like a white wine, he drank the pure cold air. The marble
frieze through which he made his way was painted in rich colors.
Priapic fauna poured purple wine into etruscan cups. Nymphs fled
with fluttering scarlet scarves young gods along the banks of
a river choked with green great rushes.
LADY CUSTODIAN
with grecian face but warm green eyes, her
body losing the look of painted stone for the exciting imperfection
of a living woman,
--Did it ever occur to you, johnny,
that a little vulgarian posed for the goddess found on melos?
And that no doubt the sculptor who strove with the marble made
love to his model, evenings in the atelier? How else did he learn
so perfectly the lesson of those deepfleshed loins?
He put one hand around her waist,
bending his face toward hers. For a marmoreal instant, assuming
the attitude of a lost engraving in an old book of raintree county,
he felt the ecstasy of form, an unendurable and apollonian bliss.
And in the same instant the faces of the people, the blue vault
of the sky, the rectangular horizons, the distant temples, the
vinewreathed hills, the clustering roofs of the city grouped
at the base of the rock achieved a perfect clarity of being,
intolerably beautiful and pure....
Somehow he had got into the niche
above the main entrance to the raintree county courthouse. Holding
his diploma, he moved around the granite flanks of justice, a
lady with bronze scales, perceiving that the birdspattered recess
in which confusedly he hunted was ribbed and hollow like a boat.
The diploma was a piece of parchment,
yellow, immensely old, smelling of goatsmusk. From upperright
to lowerlefthand corner, a coiled line lay, the shape of a river
on the land. Archaic symbols cluttered the margins, letters chipped
in stone, dawnwords.
He heard dawnsounds, the pipe of
earliest birds. Great waterbirds plunged squawking into flight
from the rivermarge. Frogs shouted in the shallows. The papyrus
rushes made a murmurous sound. He heard the sound of oars breaking
the green skin of the river....
He was rowing down a river older
than the human race whose fetid stream had overrimmed its banks
with ooze each spring since the beginning of time.
RIVERBIRDS
winging by on condor wings,
--Awk. Awk. Shawkamawk!
FROGS
shouting from the shallows,
--Shak-a-mak-a-mak. A-wash. A-wash.
VOICES
distant, calling,
--Shawnessee-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e.
Kumbak. Kumbak.
He had a memory of the antiquity
of rivers. All rivers had been pressed together into one symbol
on the earth, and all rivers together had (if he could only remember
it) a name of life and beauty and forever, musical, rising from
the depths of time and flowing into distant and unfathomable
time. All now was peaceful by the river, though furious thousands
had died here in some old battle long ago. All things were fixed
as in a legend graven on a stone. All things were words woven
into a tranquil and mysterious substance.
So he was taking the long way,
the river way to the homeland.
Back through the antiquity of human
time which was also the time of raintree county, he was rowing
toward a source that he had sought in summers long ago. Back
there, somewhere, was the girl of indian descent, with whom he
had lived for years in a pageant of raintree county. If he found
her, perhaps he would also find the first garden of humanity,
where the wild corn was sown along the banks of rivers in pre-columbian
dawn. Yes, he would find her in thickranked corn, her voice would
come up to him--indeed he heard it now, a low sweet wail from
the tangled autumnal fields beside the river.
VOICE
--Shak-a-mak!
A-wash! A-wash Shak-a-lee-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e.
Perhaps then he would understand
the source of the names upon the land, names that were wisps
of smoke, dead leaves that danced in the wind of october, color
of bright brown cones of animalskin, odor of leaffires, chunk
of the paddles of long canoes, blurred lost syllables rising
from the oldest summers of human life.
For this was the winding way, the
river way to the homeland....
He had left the boat mudded in
a swamp that nearly choked the river's flow. Now he was lost
in a dark continent covered to the ocean rims with the remorselessly
alive and beautiful jungle. Deformed trees swayed and trembled
in the heat of tropical summer. Birds of brilliant plumage chattered
and shrieked. He had glimpses now and them of the sluggish river
filled with crocodiles and green fish. It was his problem to
find someone who was lost here, a wandering symbol of those graceful
amenities that were the adornment of society. In a clearing of
the jungle, another human being appeared to be waiting for him.
MR. SHAWNESSY
tall, darkhaired, slender gentleman, pleasant
face, explorer's outfit, african sunhelmet, shortsleeved shirt,
white duck trousers, holding out his hand,
--Mr. livingston, I presume.
MR. LIVINGSTON
tall, darkhaired, slender gentleman, pleasant
face, explorer's outfit, african sunhelmet, shortsleeved shirt,
white duck trousers, holding out his hand,
--Yes.
MR. SHAWNESSY
taking tea,
--It's a pleasure, sir, to see
you again after all these years. Have you been well?
MR. LIVINGSTON
taking tea,
--Yes, sir, thank you. quite well.
Beastly hot, isn't it?
MR. SHAWNESSY
hands behind back, teetering heels to toes,
toes to heels,
--Tropical.
MR. LIVINGSTON
hands behind back, teetering toes to heels,
heels to toes,
--Quite.
MR. SHAWNESSY
strolling with malacca cane,
--Our readers will be delighted
to know that you are still alive and well. Did you find what
you were looking for?
MR. LIVINGSTON
strolling with malacca cane,
--No, dash it all. But it's been
jolly good sport. And I still hope to find it in the heart of
darkness. Climate used to be better around here, you know. Some
traces of the ancient culture reported a few miles up the river
here. A man can jolly well get lost here, you know. Jungle takes
all. Revert to savagery, you know, in no time at all if you jolly
well don't keep your pride. By the way, you'll find some interesting
specimens here in....
The swamp in the vicinity of the
lake was filled with blinding light. Specimen box under arm,
butterfly net in hand, pushing his way alone between huge softbodied
ferns, mr. shawnessy saw prehistoric animals wallowing in the
stream and stench of carboniferous bogs. A yellow primitive pollen
lay inches deep on the heaving muck of the swamp. Enormous dragonflies
shot by or stood in air on prismatic wings. Reptilian birds beat
their naked bodies upward on vast batwings from banks of rushes
big as telephone poles. Their horrid cries clanged on the stridulous
murmur of the great swamp.
He floundered on in sucking bogs,
halfdrowned in light and life. He remembered then that this was
the swamp in which the ancestor of man, the darwinian hypothesis,
was fighting obscurely for survival, looking toward better days.
But which of the many small mammals was in the main line of descent,
he couldn't tell.
A forest of flowering trees dipped
their plumed tops at him. Flowers from the branches dangling
were vaguely human faces.
HUMAN FLOWERS
waving tremulous petals, sifting down seed,
murmuring,
--Ah-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e.
S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-sh.
He saw vaguely familiar faces--lush,
halfsized human heads, dangling on fleshy stalks.
WOMAN'S FLOWERFACE
blushing crimson, shutting eyes,
--Darling, I hope these few words--
MAN'S FLOWERFACE
fulsome and fragrant, gravely nodding to a
cluster of woman faces,
--Home of beautiful flowers, and,
madame, with your permission--
Faces, innumerable faces, swam
on the thick air. Some were the withering faces of children on
blasted stalks. The flowerfaces filled the swamp with a strange
and terrible cry, millions and millions of lush little faces
trying to find space and sunlight, heliophiles.
FLOWERFACES
sobbing, appealing,
--Help! Help! Light! Kumbak! Shawnessee-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e.
In the bottom of a great digging
strewn with fossil bones, he saw
PROFESSOR JERUSALEM WEBSTER STILES
biologist's white apron, scalpel, glue, wire,
reconstructing something,
--Today, class, we are taking up
a quaint little fellow, our eternal skeleton in the closet, our
cousin from spokane, oshkosh, and buffalo, charles dawnman.
CHARLES DAWNMAN
fourfoot lusty dwarf, long brown hair all
over face and body, inquisitive brown eyes, stooping posture,
agile hands, small vestigial tail, perfect human genitalia,
--Ug.
PERFESSOR
lifting director's baton,
--Sing, charles.
CHARLES DAWNMAN
on a sustained tone, beating breast slowly
and rhythmically,
--U-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-ug.
PERFESSOR
tossing him a putrefied fish,
--Very good, charles. Now, eat.
CHARLES
gobbling horrible,
--Gug, gug.
PERFESSOR
--Capital, charles. Now, charles, I trust you perceive the object which I hold in my hand. (Showing bottle of whiskey)
CHARLES
extending hand,
--Me want.
PERFESSOR
tendering bottle,
--And you shall have it, charles.
Now don't forget to vote for garwood b. jones, the people's choice,
in november. (Carrying suitcases through the descending night
of the great swamp, voice becoming hoarse, body shrivelling into
loathsome senility) So you thought you could come back to raintree
county, john?
MR. SHAWNESSY
in soldier's uniform, buttoned to the neck,
choking from the heat,
--Yes, yes. What time is it? It's
almost time for the train to leave. Come on, let's hurry.
PERFESSOR
stumbling into deep bogs,
--The whole thing is a fantastic
dream. Why don't you wake up and give us all a rest? (Face blotched
with plaguespots, shaking with hideous laughter) It's all a dream,
boy. You'll never find your goddam little county again.
MR. SHAWNESSY
trying to keep the perfessor on the path,
pulling him out of deep holes,
--Hurry! No time to lose! Be quiet.
Stop! Stop!
PERFESSOR
shrieking with hoarse passion,
--Because the great modern jungle
will close over it! It will be sucked down into the swamp of
life and death! And it will drag you with it, hero boy! It will--
MR. SHAWNESSY
tugging at the perfessor's drunken form, both
men struggling up to the waist in black mud,
--Stop! Stop!
PERFESSOR
coughing, squealing, mouth weakly bubbling
slime, sinking deeper and deeper,
--Help! Help! Because--gug--gug--gug--
MR. SHAWNESSY
plucking the perfessor out by the coatcollar
and beginning to shake him angrily,
--Perfessor, what you need is a
good, oldfashioned--
Trying vainly to escape, the perfessor
writhed in his hands, shrivelling, squealing, changing form.
In swift succession, he changed into a grinning skull, a hooded
snake, a wood nymph, a member of the methodist church, a member
of the baptist church, the pope of rome, a bony goat, a republican
fourth of july orator, a democratic congressman from the deep
south, all the presidents of the united states from grant to
harrison, a small gray rat, a mortuary effigy, a bottle of rotgut
whiskey, a book with BLBIB gilded on the cover, a hissing serpent,
a copy of the morning paper, a classroom pointer, a glistening
black insect, and at last into a small darkhaired boy, sobbing
and trying to pull an old oaken bucket out of a well.
SMALL BOY
tears running down cheeks,
--How dear to my heart are the
scenes of my childhood--
MR. SHAWNESSY
relenting, releasing the boy,
--Go on, dredge, lad. Perhaps you'll
find truth down there at the....
VOICE OF THE TRAINMAN
calling,
--Last stop! Last stop!
Bell ringing, the train was shrugging
to a stop. Suitcase in hand, mr. shawnessy walked down the empty
coach toward the door. He was coming home at last after years
of absence, wondering if the county had indeed changed as much
as rumor said. Would there be any of the old faces there to greet
life's somewhat tattered victor, raintree county's unsung hero
returning from the dead. What had he been doing all that time?
Was it all a dream--dreamed during a sleep of twenty years? And
could anyone go back to raintree county on trains, could any
train bring passengers from the great city to their home again,
could any young man rise on the watery grave of years and go
back to love and life again in raintree county?
VOICE OF THE TRAINMAN
calling in the distance,
--All aboard! All aboard for--
MR. SHAWNESSY
rip van wrinkle outfit, buckled shoes burst,
beard long and frowsy, motheaten huntingcap, trailing a rusty
flintlock, looking around,
--Where is everybody anyway?
VOICES
more and more distant,
--Farewell! Farewell to raintree
county! (Fading into the receding wail of a train) Ah-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e.
The place where he stood was a
clearing in a virgin forest, slightly above the surrounding country.
The sun of summer morning gilded the green earth with a new and
yet familiar beauty. He seemed to know the place; yet there were
no tokens here at all of human habitation.
Then he became aware that he was
standing in the primeval forest of raintree county, on the site
where some time in the future the town of freehaven would be
built. Indeed he had walked to the very ground where a century
later the raintree county court house would rear its majestic
tower above the square and put up a flag with eight and forty
stars into the sunlight of a new century. He was enamored of
this strange new earth. Its freshness, unfouled by man, had yet
a human quality, being alive with anticipations that were also
memories.
Indeed, what had become of the
wonderful dream? What had become of all those swarming faces
that had been on the green earth of raintree county? Father,
mother, brothers, friends, sweethearts, wives, children--where
had they all been? How beautiful after all with human love and
laughter and hot tears had been that valorous dream of faces
springing! Where were all the rushing, murmurous names and all
the days of a life lived on the land? Where were the trains that
had come and gone with gusty and tumultuous breath over this
earth in lost summers? What of all those events called history
that had passed on trampling hooves across the borders of raintree
county--wars, crusades, elections, hurrying wheels--westward
wheels of progress and destiny?
All this was gone as if it were
a dream only, and once again he saw in imagined softness a vision
of the earth of raintree county before there was any raintree
county--swelling hills covered with the virgin oak and maple,
fields of the prairie grass, and in the distance a green river
coiling between old hills toward a delphic place.
Strange love and hunger to understand this earth and
to erect upon it once again--perhaps better than before--the
marvellous dream rushed through him as he stood in the summer
morning. Had he not searched a long time for this primitive garden
where man might sow the seed of all good things and rear a wondrous
tree and give a delicious wisdom to the ages! Where else might
god be born again into an eden of the western earth, where else
conceive and carry to its consummation the dream of millions
pressing from the old habitations of the earth!
JOHNNY SHAWNESSY
ragged clothes, hair tangled, tattered bible
in hand, pockets bulging with seed,
--The predestined place. It is
here. Sacred to god. In the first centuries. A garden of all
pleasance. Beautiful, holy, maternal--earth of our fathers. And
I the namer-preserver.
A sacred excitement filled him
at this vision of the earth purified of names, yet eager to be
named, to be invaded, conquered, possessed, and build upon by
the time-creating, time-enslaving americans.
JOHNNY SHAWNESSY
beginning to walk toward a lake miles distant,
strewing sharppointed seeds, smooth seeds, white seeds, seeds
of apples, chanting,
--I plant you, earth, for names
and for people yet unborn.
Where the seeds fell sprang people,
a few at first, then more and more, walking like himself toward
a secret place at the end of a valley.
PEOPLE
vaguely muttering, faces indistinct,
--Where is the-- What did they
say was the name of the--
MR. SHAWNESSY
schoolmaster's black suit, poet's tie, plucking
leaves from an armload of mcguffey readers, poetry anthologies,
goodrich histories of america, textbooks of latin and greek,
encyclopedias, strewing them broadcast, chanting,
--I plant you with seeds of letters
cadmean, touched on the reedwoven paper, a music of many tongues.
I plant you with names divine, sprung with the earth at a single
begetting. I plant you with inalienable rights, to be constantly
renewed and reinterpreted--with life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness, with the just consent of the governed. I plant
you with young messiahs down from the hills, the divinely arrogant
heroes of humanity, makers of bread and beatitudes. I plant you
with sermons on innumerable mounts. I plant you with gentle gods
who died on innumerable crosses. I plant you for great crusades,
for endless emancipations, for exiles, quests after zion, for
chosen peoples crossing the desert--
PEOPLE
costumes of pioneers, hebrew nomads, mormons,
rappites, free harmonians, walking over windblasted sands, driving
goats, riding in covered wagons, carrying the old and the infirm,
bearing in their midst an arklike casket toward a pillar of fire,
--O lord, lift up thy countenance
upon us. Be a light to our blindness. Lead us, o god, to--
MR. SHAWNESSY
sowing sheets of newspapers freshly printed
and some sifting brittle with age,
--I plant you for free enquirers,
reporters, explorers--
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
italian immigrant costume, walking through
a swamp with wife and children, followed by immigrant thousands,
toward the statue of a lady with a bible under one arm, the other
upholding a torch,
--Passage to india! See, it is
the oriental paradise, the flowering islands! (Setting foot on
dry land) I christen thee--
MR. SHAWNESSY
--For myths and mythnomers, names and vague transformations of names. For the new adams of a new creation, prodigal spenders of words, the innocent madmen of space. I plant you for voyageurs, coureurs de bois, canoemen on wilderness rivers, for missions and forts and empires of fur. For the august solitudes of primitive america. For frontiers advancing, westward rivers, bones on the desolate prairies, the miner's shack at the foot of the mountain--
PEOPLE
in great caravans of covered wagons, singing,
| --Over the hills in legions,
boys! Fair freedom's star Shines from the-- |
MR. SHAWNESSY
--I plant you for armies of names advancing, for the geometrical imagination, for the land laid out in squares called for wilderness statesmen, defiers of kings.
PATRICK HENRY
intense nervous man, hair tied in a queue,
colonial garb, speaking from platform in a magnificent, crackling
voice,
--The battle, sir, is not to the
strong alone. It is to the vigilant, the active, the--
MR. SHAWNESSY
--I plant you for names of my youth, for simple hearts and the earth beloved. For a tree whose leaves were for the healing of nations, for all healers of souls and bodies, hardriding pulpiteers. For a certain beloved distiller of indian remedies made from the blood of the green earth. I plant you for greathearted, simple women, the mother of many men. Listen, do you hear me calling? Did you think that I failed you? I was off the main road, it is true, but I never forgot. I hear you. I accept the--
VOICES
far-off, calling,
--John-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e.
LOUISA SHAWNESSY
redheaded girl, brightblueeyed, riding with
w. b. on the front seat of a covered wagon travelling on a plank
road.
--Maybe this would be a good place
right here.
W. B. SHAWNESSY
young man in late twenties, vividly scotch,
--Yessiree. I think we're entitled
to take a very--
MR. SHAWNESSY
peering into the back of the wagon where faces
of children are dim stains in the ribbed darkness,
--I plant you for faces emerging
from covered wagons stored with seedcorn, dogeared books, bottles
of botanical medicine. I plant you for one small boy, father
of a man, who came from the nothingness that never was into the
sunlight of pluviarboreal summer. I plant you for little towns
on the breast of the land where we grew up in our innocent youth,
lost towns, ghost cities, places of no renown, for dan webster
and strawlands, intersections of republics and raintree counties.
For houses in trim yards and the trains passing and passing.
I plant you for the lost forms of a person by my name. Was he
there in summer afternoons, one of a long procession of slowly
altering masks in a pageant of raintree county?
Through the web of the everincreasing
crowd and environing scenes, he saw the faces of himself, as
if all his characteristic moments and eras had been preserved
in a succession of masks. He saw himself especially as in the
latter years of his life seated in the yard of strawland in the
old rocker with a notebook in his lap, looking out across the
backfield toward the railroad, a
SPIRIT OF ETERNAL SUMMER
mr. shawnessy in black poet's tie, shirtsleeves, feet propped on a straight chair, pencil in hand, reading from note book in a musical voice,
--My muse and I one summer morn |
VOICES
from distant woodlands,
--'Tis summer and the days are
long.
SPIRIT OF ETERNAL SUMMER
a voice receding over meadows choked with cloverbloom,
--Far east o'er pure empyreal seas |
MR. SHAWNESSY
walking in a peaceful landscape of fields
flanking the national road,
--I plant you for farms, great
farms on the breast of the land, where the angular reapers walk
all day, for the granaries of a continent, for the golden light
of the grain, whole prairies of grass and corn, inexhaustible
harvests. I plant you for the tall blonde hair in your valleys,
the tasseled corn rising in waves on the headlands, for clover
in wide fields under the ocean brilliance of summer. I dig my
bright share deeper and deeper--
'LISH SHAWNESSY
following the plow, redhaired, bony, with
fierce blue eyes,
--I plant you with seeds of words,
scattered upon a map of western rivers. For academies, country
schools, debating societies, farmboys walking for miles to find
a book. I plant you for all young bards by country waters, bearers
of sacred fire. For ranks of curious lovely words in a volume
of many pages. Are you there, old bard and genial companion,
gilder of lilies, soliloquizing to the ages! Are you there, implausible
and peerless englishman! Soft you now, brave bard, standing upon
the state of the wide world revolved and shrunken to a breathing
o!
WILL SHAKESPEARE
at the height of his powers standing upon an elizabethan stage, with flowing lyrical gesture indicative of an english landscape,
--O for a muse to ravish into rime |
MR. SHAWNESSY
watching the bard ascend into the brightest
heaven of invention,
--I plant you for all the legends
of my youth--
PEOPLE
advancing down a valley toward a great face
of stone enveloped in mists and glories of a setting sun,
--Behold! Behold! The very image
of--
MR. SHAWNESSY
--I plant you for all the masks in a pageant of america, each one a part of the republic of myself, false gods, the giants of my gilded years, empedoclean days.
GARWOOD JONES
the young senator of 1876, lionhaired, broadchested,
blue-eyed faintly amused, voice of an amorous bull, crying the
crowd forward from a platform,
--Sunset... adventure... republican...
star!
CASSIUS P. CARNEY
of the old freehaven days, trimly tailored,
brown glossy hair exactly parted in the middle, eyes burning
with soft fire of vision, watching a woodburner train chugging
off down a singletrack into the vast plain,
--Yes sir, there lies the future.
We'll just keep building all the--
MR. SHAWNESSY
--I plant you for genial skeptics, eternal rebels, defiers of outworn gods.
the young perfessor of pedee academy days,
swinging along a country road, whipping off flowerheads with
his cane, expounding with vivid gesture,
--My dear boy, what an incurable
idealist you are! You have only to see a--
MR. SHAWNESSY
walking beside the river,
--I plant you for ovidian changes
of earth and river. I plant you for prefall days and a face of
the breathing earth that is lost and gone forever on the great
river of the years.
NELL GAITHER
with academicians, coupled in boats, floating
down the wide river of summer, wide white bonnet like a great
flower blooming, hand uplifted, green eyes wary and watching,
--O say, wild thou pensively hover--
MR. SHAWNESSY
approaching the wide yellow river running
by plains of cotton and corn,
--I plant you for the ever-running
river, father of waters, bearing on its dark tide sorrowful floaters.
For a tragic legend, alas, of the darkstained earth. And for
two children, in dark woods lost, a long time ago. I had a dream
the other night--
SUSANNA DRAKE
appearing in the crowd, walking on the court
house square, the young susanna, in a white summer dress, looking
evasively from childlike eyes, bearing a red parasol, turning
in at a photographer's shop, murmuring like a sound of waters,
--When ever'thing was still, I
thought I saw--
MR. SHAWNESSY
lost in a tangle of dirt road in the middle
of southern forests and mountains,
--I plant you for soldiers marching
to battles, for armies lost on the land, hundreds of thousands.
For young men bearing guns under shadowy banners, marching, marching
unseen, through the time-exposures of a brady-photographed earth.
For a republic that never was, a bonny blue flag, and a broken
sword. Alas, for the walking sleep of the great war. For hundreds
and thousands of bearded, profane christs, who died in agony
alone and far from home.
SOLDIERS
flash perkins, corporal johnny shawnessy, general jacob j. jackson, and others of sherman's army marching between forests of pine, through a web of burntout rails and blackened cities,
|
MR. SHAWNESSY
--Halleluiah! Comrades, wait for me! Comrades, remember! We fought together for--
SOLDIERS
disappearing in the wavering corridors of the dream, down old roads marching,
--The union forever! |
MR. SHAWNESSY
marching with shouting thousands past a domed capitol toward a platform filled with dignitaries,
--For veterans back from the war, victors and vanquished alike, for the wreck of blue and gray by the flow of the inland river, for lincoln and booth, martyrs and madmen, all who labored at the gigantic dream, building the countless republics that are one republic.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
standing in a recess of a whitecolumned shrine,
in a bronze attitude of tender solicitude,
--...do all that may achieve and
cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all
nations.
MR. SHAWNESSY
--Hail and farewell! I plant you for progress, the shrill cry of a century, for arcs of highflung bridges, and rails, and the thundering trains. For the coaches passing by day and night, for the plunge of the piston rods, and the wail of anguish--old farewells at the crossings!
VOICES
rising, like the wail of a train at the crossing,
--Ah-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!
MR. SHAWNESSY
--Hail and farewell! I plant you for cities, lights on the plain, for great jewels glowing on your dark flesh in the night. For streamers of smoke and crusts of steel, for the black blood in your veins, for sweaty arms gleaming under the glare of the great fires, for pittsburgh, scranton, gary, new york, philadelphia, indianapolis, san francisco, washington, washington, washington, and parts between! For cities and dwellers in cities, a dragon seed, a harvest of fury. For pale faces huddled under the dead shells of the factories, stone and brick and the festering slums. Shall there be one man hungry, and I go fed! I plant you for gilded years and for gilded dreams, for young men walking in metropolitan jungles, for lost faces and voices and songs and dreams. I plant you for opulent women with painted faces, for--
EDITH VAUGHN
seen walking with john shawnessy in a centennial
crowd down the avenue of the republic toward machinery hall,
--For centennial thousands. For
the anniversaries of mankind, celebrations of great beginnings.
For festivals-- holidays, saturdays, barbecues, fourths of july.
PEOPLE
growing more numerous all the time, walking
through a park landscaped in the middle of a great american city,
toward distant towers,
--Where is the-- What did they
say was the name of the--
MR. SHAWNESSY
butterfly net, field explorer's outfit, specimen
box, becoming involved in deep grass and lush flowers close to
the shores of a lake,
--I plant you for science, explorers,
discoverers of new species. For the august, mysterious and beautiful
descent of man from form to form. For honest doubts and dark
misgivings. (Are you there, old truepenny, reverse of the coin,
are you there, down there?) I plant you for the underside of
raintree county, for the beautiful and remorseless swamp, which
is perhaps only a necessary hypothesis for the builders of cities.
I plant you for jungles, and for human souls hunting through
dark continents and meeting at last in a--
He was driving the surrey toward
a monument miles away in the middle of a great square of the
city, rising with an invincible thrust to an immense height.
Thousands of people swarmed antlike at the base.
MR. SHAWNESSY
--For strawland days on the breast of the land. For national roads that split the flat horizons passing to new days and westward adventures. For the sound of the carriages passing by day and night. For all the days in the schoolrooms of raintree county and all the faces of children, pressing onward from doors into sunlight at recess and the sound of the bell at evening telling them home.
CHILDREN
with schoolbooks, pouring out into the yard,
talking excitedly,
--Mr. shawnessy, show us the way
to the--
MR. SHAWNESSY
--For one who embodied the conscience of raintree county, a little believer in the old religion, a being brought from afar, risen from the source of a secret river, vessel and voyager on the dark strong bloods of the earth.
EMMA GROTON SHAWNESSY
young girl-teacher, in virginal dress of white,
walking in brilliant sunshine along a path in the spring woods
toward a stile, carrying a box for botanical specimens, calling
out in a young voice, running forward to disappear in the woods,
calling and calling,
--Mr. shawnessy! Mr. shawnessy!
MR. SHAWNESSY
--for the summer years and dreams of a little girl walking on the high meadows of summer in the land of the sentimental novels. Are you there, little heroine of stories grave and gay, for the instruction and edification of all the wellbroughtup little girls of the universe? Are you there, listening to the music of interior voices?
ELSIE LILIAN SHAWNESSY
blue-eyed girl, light brown hair, noble serious
face, walking on a high meadow, absorbed in reading a book, her
voice murmuring,
--Then she thought, (in a dream
within the dream, as it were,) how this same little alice would,
in the after-time, be herself a grown woman: and how she would
keep, through her riper years, the simple and loving heart of
her childhood: and how she would gather around her other little
children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many
a wonderful tale, perhaps even with these very adventures of
the little alice of long-ago: and how she would feel with all
their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple
joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.
VOICE
of an elder spirit, receding over fields breaking into white and yellow flowers,
--forgotten was all touch of care; |
MR. SHAWNESSY
walking across the summer earth,
--'Tis summer and the days are
long. Summer and the days are long. Summer and the days--
He was walking now entirely alone
in summer through a forest of druid oaks toward a shrine of white
pillars seen at the end of a curious and curving path. He was
dressed in his dark everyday suit. He bore a branch of golden
seed.
MR. SHAWNESSY
--I plant you for hundreds and thousands yet unborn. Listen, I passed through the dusk of your forests. I felt the flow of your undulant fields beneath me. I passed on your glistening rivers. Listen, I bring you a seed, more precious than any. I carry a podded seed for a deep and delicious burial. Hold it and hush it warm. Cradle it, darkfleshed mother of many men, in the warm wombsocket.
VOICES
in shrine, appealing, appealing,
--John-e-e-e-e-e-e. Shak-a-mak!
MR. SHAWNESSY
--I am the lover
aggressive. I will plant ranks of children within you. O, I will
scoop and fling and rain goldenly from inexhaustible granaries.
The air was filled with a hot brilliance
of noon in the summer. He saw the tranquil trunk and the limbs
of the tree a short way ahead, and the rocks beneath and the
letters upon them. The branch quivered like a thing alive in
his hands. If he could only force himself through the last ecstasy
of pursuit, he would perhaps arrive in time to seize the goddess
and take from her own lips the secret name that had been his
from the beginning. And then all at once, he would give meaning
to the vast, incoherent dream.
MR. SHAWNESSY
standing at the open door of the shrine,
--I plant you for raintree county,
which you will rediscover from time to time among old manuscripts
in a forgotten drawer of the cosmos. For the place where roads
cross on the breast of the land. I plant you for the republic
of mankind, for that serener air and brighter day that each of
us is building from darkness and a dream of darkness. I plant
you for the ramparts of the city of tomorrow. For sempiternal
summer in the world of time and space that is peopled with the
beautiful illusions. And for eternal life! Did you think that
I had lost the way! But I am here. Did you think that I was lost
in darkness and the swamp? I was here always, bearing a stem
of the summer grass. Dear wife, my mother-daughter-friend and
sweet companion, 'tis summer and the days are long. And if our
life seems passing like a dream, and if we die, remember, comrades,
workers, children of my loins, going forward under everchanging
banners into the sunlight of another age, remember one who built
a human dream and conquered space and time--perhaps death too
by being--being--being-- Born again into leaf and life and bud
and branch, growing, having, giving, yourself and myself, I and
you, we and together, for nobler republics, for greater tomorrows....
The bough in his hand had unrolled
its bark and had become a parchment covered with lines and letters,
a poem of mute but lovely meanings, a page torn from the first
book printed by man, the legend of a life upon the earth and
of a river running through the land, a signature of father and
preserver, of some young hero and endlessly courageous dreamer
