free-verse214 lines

Victor Rafolski On Art

by Edgar Lee Masters

You dull Goliaths clothed in coats of blue,

Strained and half bursted by the swell of flesh,

Topped by Gorilla heads. You Marmoset,

Trained scoundrel, taught to question and ensnare,

I hate you, hate your laws and hate your courts.

Hands off, give me a chair, now let me be.

I'll tell you more than you can think to ask me.

I love this woman, but what is love to you?

What is it to your laws or courts? I love her.

She loves me, if you'd know. I entered her room -

She stood before me naked, shrank a little,

Cried out a little, calmed her sudden cry

When she saw amiable passion in my eyes -

She loves me, if you'd know. I saw in her eyes

More in those moments than whole hours of talk

From witness stands exculpate could make clear

My innocence.

But if I did a crime

My excuse is hunger, hunger for more life.

Oh what a world, where beauty, rapture, love

Are walled in and locked up like coal or food

And only may he had by purchasers

From whose fat fingers slip the unheeded gold.

Oh what a world where beauty lies in waste,

While power and freedom skulk with famished lips

Too tightly pressed for curses.

So do men,

Save for the thousandth man, deny themselves

And live in meagreness to make sure a life

Of meagreness by hearth stones long since stale;

And live in ways, companionships as fixed

As the geared figures of the Strassburg clock.

You wonder at war? Why war lets loose desires,

Emotions long repressed. Would you stop war?

Then let men live. The moral equivalent

Of war is freedom. Art does not suffice -

Religion is not life, but life is living.

And painted cherries to the hungry thrush

Is art to life. The artist lived his work.

You cannot live his life who love his work.

You are the thrush that pecks at painted cherries

Who hope to live through art. Beer-soaked Goliaths,

The story's coming of her nakedness

Be patient for a time.

All this I learned

While painting pictures no one ever bought,

Till hunger drove me to this servile work

As butler in her father's house, with time

On certain days to walk the galleries

And look at pictures, marbles. For I saw

I was not living while I painted pictures.

I was not living working for a crust,

I was not living walking galleries:

All this was but vicarious life which felt

Through gazing at the thing the artist made,

In memory of the life he lived himself:

As we preserve the fragrance of a flower

By drawing off its essence in a bottle,

Where color, fluttering leaves, are thrown away

To get the inner passion of the flower

Extracted to a bottle that a queen

May act the flower's part.

Say what you will,

Make laws to strangle life, shout from your pulpits,

Your desks of editors, your woolsack benches

Where judges sit, that this dull hypocrite,

You call the State, has fashioned life aright -

The secret is abroad, from eye to eye

The secret passes from poor eyes that wink

In boredom, in fatigue, in furious strength

Roped down or barred, that what the human heart

Dreams of and hopes for till the aspiring flame

Flaps in the guttered candle and goes out,

Is love for body and for spirit, love

To satisfy their hunger. Yet what is it,

This earth, this life, what is it but a meadow

Where spirits are left free a little while

Within a little space, so long as strength,

Flesh, blood increases to the day of use

As roasts or stews wherewith this witless beast,

Society may feed himself and keep

His olden shape and power?

Fools go crop

The herbs they turn you to, and starve yourself

For what you want, and count it righteousness,

No less you covet love. Poor shadows sighing,

Across the curtain racing! Mangled souls

Pecking so feebly at the painted cherries,

Inhaling from a bottle what was lived

These summers gone! You know, and scarce deny

That what we men desire are horses, dogs,

Loves, women, insurrections, travel, change,

Thrill in the wreck and rapture for the change,

And re-adjusted order.

As I turned

From painting and from art, yet found myself

Full of all lusts while bound to menial work

Where my eyes daily rested on this woman

A thought came to me like a little spark

One sees far down the darkness of a cave,

Which grows into a flame, a blinding light

As one approaches it, so did this thought

Both burn and blind me: For I loved this woman,

I wanted her, why should I lose this woman?

What was there to oppose possession? Will?

Her will, you say? I am not sure, but then

Which will is better, mine or hers? Which will

Deserves achievement? Which has rights above

The other? I desire her, her desire

Is not toward me, which of these two desires

Shall triumph? Why not mine for me and hers

For her, at least the stronger must prevail,

And wreck itself or bend all else before it.

That millionaire who wooed her, tried in vain

To overwhelm her will with gold, and I

With passion, boldness would have overwhelmed it,

And what's the difference?

But as I said

I walked the galleries. When I stood in the yard

Bare armed, bare throated at my work, she came

And gazed upon me from her window. I

Could feel the exhausting influence of her eyes.

Then in a concentration which was blindness

To all else, so bewilderment of mind,

I'd go to see Watteau's Antiope

Where he sketched Zeus in hunger, drawing back

The veil that hid her sleeping nakedness.

There was Correggio's too, on whom a satyr

Smiled for his amorous wonder. A Semele,

Done by an unknown hand, a thing of lightning

Moved through by Zeus who seized her as the flames

Consumed her ravished beauty.

So I looked,

And trembled, then returned perhaps to find

Her eyes upon me conscious, calm, elate,

And radiate with lashes of surprise,

Delight as when a star is still but shines.

And on this night somehow our natures worked

To climaxes. For first she dressed for dinner

To show more back and bosom than before.

And as I served her, her down-looking eyes

Were more than glances. Then she dropped her napkin.

Before I could begin to bend she leaned

And let me see - oh yes, she let me see

The white foam of her little breasts caressing

The scarlet flame of silk, a swooning shore

Of bright carnations. It was from such foam

That Venus rose. And as I stooped and gave

The napkin to her she pushed out a foot,

And then I coughed for breath grown short, and she

Concealed a smile - and you, you jailers laugh

Coarse-mouthed, and mock my hunger.

I go on,

Observe how courage, boldness mark my steps!

At nine o'clock she climbs to her boudoir.

I finding errands in the hallway hear

The desultory taking up of books,

And through her open door, see her at last

Cast off her dinner gown and to the bath

Step like a ray of moonlight. Then she snaps

The light on where the onyx tub and walls

Dazzle the air. I enter then her room

And stand against the closed door, do not pry

Upon her in the bath. Give her the chance

To fly me, fight me standing face to face.

I hear her flounder in the water, hear

Hands slap and slip with water breast and arms;

Hear little sighs and shudders and the roughness

Of crash towels on her back, when in a minute

She stands with back toward me in the doorway,

A sea-shell glory, pink and white to hair

Sun-lit, a lily crowned with powdered gold.

She turned toward her dresser then and shook

White dust of talcum on her arms, and looked

So lovingly upon her tense straight breasts,

Touching them under with soft tapering hands

To blue eyes deepening like a brazier flame

Turned by a sudden gust. Who gives her these,

The thought ran through me, for her joy alone

And not for mine?

So I stood there like Zeus

Coming in thunder to Semele, like

The diety of Watteau. Correggio

Had never painted me a satyr there

Drinking her beauty in, so worshipful,

My will subdued in worship of her beauty

To obey her will.

And then she turned and saw me,

And faced me in her nakedness, nor tried

To hide it from me, faced me immovable

A Mona Lisa smile upon her lips.

And let me plead my cause, make known my love,

Speak out my torture, wearing still the smile.

Let me approach her till I almost touched

The whiteness of her bosom. Then it seemed

That smile of hers not wilting me she clapped

Hands over eyes and said: "I am afraid -

Oh no, it cannot be - what would they say?"

Then rushing in the bathroom, quick she slammed

The door and shrieked: "You scoundrel, go - you beast."

My dream went up like paper charred and whirled

Above a hearth. Thrilling I stood alone

Amid her room and saw my life, our life

Embodied in this woman lately there

Lying and cowardly. And as I turned

To leave the room, her father and the gardener

Pounced on me, threw me down a flight of stairs

And turned me over, stunned, to you the law

Here with these others who have stolen coal

To keep them warm, as I have stolen beauty

To keep from freezing in this arid country

Of winter winds on which the dust of custom

Rides like a fog.

Now do your worst to me!