Classic Poem

Toledo shines out like no other city.
And Poe has risen
With his variable ways, and his jaw set at an angle.
Toledo, with no name carved to it saying: here lies.
Toledo, with the face of no man at the window.

(With the old hairs of his beard rended in his fingers
The past stands in the wilderness
Lifting his staff to the heavens in wrath
And moaning for the taste of old men in their graves
Who have been forgotten, like these mountains of Monte Carlo,
Dead as old shoes, with the name mountain an affront to them.

The grass of them has drawn its sabers
The stones in the heat quiver like fists shaking upon them
Amassing a city that is taller, deeper.

It is into their shadow that I would go
With my soul quaking and my lungs made granite
To withstand the assault of them.

Not as a cloud nosing them out, nor to break the stalk of one glacial flower,
Nor to sing a word that would lure them to ripening hills
Maturing
Their lean dry paps to udders of plenty.)

Toledo shines out like no other city
For its infernal clouds and the green of its pastures
That would bring a plague on whatever cattle or stock grazed on them,
For the unshed rain that menaces it. Toledo is the last town left standing
On the frontier, on the edge,
Before going over.

(As in wartime, all ways led to Washington.
The streets of that city laid out for the eye of a bird,
A few hills, a few red chasms, and a wild park containing
The cages of coyotes, and buffalo in their matted capes of darky wool;
A few peacocks tailing the mild Southern air. The woods
In that part spring from under the stone roots of a statue
Who has hung her head and there grieves endlessly
For Mrs. Henry Adams, marking the sorrow that sent him wandering —
" Strangely unlike the prayers I prayed to you! " —
Mutely, across two generations.

There are the lawns of the White House,
A Maypole of eggs dyed primal colors, rolled by the children of Washington
While the President's Lady lifts her lorgnette and watches from the window.
The First Lady of the Land should stem from Southern soil,
Comprising all that grace and humor, that arch of neck and craft of bosom
For which Lord Washington unbuckled sword and scabbard,
Laid off his boots and waistcoat — that Southern elegance that chimed with music boxes,
Sweet corn, and indolence, that " ah, " that " sah, " that honey-suckled tongue;
Those long sweet rosy corset strings, those strings of stays lovely enough
To bind a lady's hair, carried as if a cargo of silken eiderdown transformed to glass;
And Washington, with his red jowls and fine calves highly turned
Reduced to dust that flies under the carriage wheels in the deep pool
Of Mount Vernon's shadow. And did he really place that firm behind
On this brocaded seat, and did that garter delicately clasp his limb?
And was this square of lace fashioned of orioles pressed to the veins, the pores,
The black festoons of hair that sprang in his proud nostril
From out the marrow of his British bone?)

Toledo is the challenge.
The challenge of one man flung to the heavens,
And the heavens are the black possessed fury blowing on.
(Like Poe, with his arms crossed boldly
To conceal his shabby ruffle.)

Poe should be carved in stone facing
Four ways in Washington:
With his cloak worn inside out and his cat beside him;
With his arrogance, with his eyes broken,
Facing the White House, the Treasury, the Mint, and the House of Representatives.
Poe, a ham actor — Poe, a rebuke to West Point —
Poe, a rebuke to truth, for he never spoke it —
Accosting every passer-by with his hat extended
Like a pauper; with his arms crossed on his tired bosom
With his fists shaking, with his hands covering his face and the tears on it;
With his smile twisted up like a ram's horn;
There like no other Southerner —
(Could corn meal melt in that mouth, or molasses run?
Could any Southern sun make that heart bloom?)

As in wartime, they all turned to Washington; Poe, Whitman, asking a place to keep soul and body together
In the Government offices — in the Customs — " I should be glad, " wrote Poe, " if you would take an opportunity
Of saying to Mr. Rob Tyler that if he can look over matters
And get me the inspectorship I will join the Washingtonians forthwith. "

( " Don't say a word about the cloak turned inside out
Or other peccadilloes of that nature. " )

" I think it would be a feather in Mr. Tyler's cap to save from the perils of Mint Julep. . .
A young man of whom all the world thinks so well and who thinks
remarkably well of himself! "

Poe, you have disarmed me. Your courage has taken my strength from me.
Poe, you have broken me.
There is no spirit left to me, because of you.

Don't say a word about the Mint Juleps,
Don't say a word about being sick on the floor.
Please say I'm sorry about the Don's mustaches,
The port wine, the coffee, and the barbershop's score.
Don't let them know my wife has hemorrhages —
She strained her throat at singing was what I said —
Don't say a word about the house being buggy.
Please apologize for all the silly things I said.

Washington, you would have stepped the minuet gustily with any woman;
Your head in its wig would have swooned for any mouth.
Toledo has made all other cities barren.
Toledo has made the Cross burgeon and bloom.

It is set there among all the pictures of men's faces
The Crucifixion, with the clouds like boulders
Knuckling Christ's head. Had you not spoken
These things would not have been so: not the root dug white and clear
With the smell of the earth on it,
But a slow fire in the underbrush and no shadow of respite cast
Upon the flame that has taken my timber as fuel.

(You have laid waste the pastures that stretch beyond me
And I would return to excavations exhorting you
To speak of what lies in our stones:
Toledo, from the brush of a dead man;
Forbears, from the speech of a living.)