Song for a Listener

Leonard Feeney S.J.

New York

The Macmillan Company

1936

Daniel Sargent

This is a song of something said

For ears left hanging on the head

Weary of words that will not wed;

A song in which I trust is found

The pretty echo and rebound

Of sound off sense and sense off sound.

Our tuneless asses cannot climb

Parnassus, so perhaps it’s time

For reason to return to rhyme.

The squirrel’s scamper no one sees,

The measured arc, the branch, the breeze:

The perfect leap among the trees.

The stars, long snubbed, themselves resign,

Beginning about eight or nine,

To simply stick it out and shine.

The unmolested little mouse

Goes bric-a-brac throughout the house

Where artificial cats carouse.

One gathers wisdom coarse as this:

Two lips resisting cause a kiss,

And bondage is bereft of bliss,

And soldered selves each other slay

In incommunicable clay.

I thought it was the other way:

That out of selves new selves could come,

The hive, the hubbub and the hum,

The little dolly and the drum.

The heart is bruised below, above;

The ill-conditioned state thereof

Unfits it for the beat of love.

Much rubbish mixed with faint desire,

It seems more fuel now than fire,

And tries at all its tasks to tire.

In lacquered bosoms when it swings,

If cooled by hands aflame with rings,

Psychiatrists will tell it things.

There’s no more music in the voice.

Music is now a nightmare noise,

And rowdy instruments employs.

The breath of life from being blown

Incessant through the saxophone

Has worn the body down to bone.

Starvation is the fad in food;

There is disgrace in amplitude;

Only the skeleton is wooed.

Our lanky lads and skinny lasses

Come crowding in to college classes

To find what flunks them and what passes.

They are compelled in curious courses

To trace through manuscripts and sources

The origins of river horses, —

Which, after long didactic fusses

Conjoined with therefores and with thuses,

Are labeled: hippopotamuses.

A tattered scarecrow tends the farm,

And nothing’s kept from hurt or harm;

The cows can roam, the bees can swarm.

The gay harmonica is stuffed,

The artful lips no longer puffed,

The sweet sonata never snuffed.

And barefoot boys, who whistle well,

Have ceased to whistle, so they tell,

Since what befell us all befell.

Because the title was alluring,

Because one’s friend was reassuring

And said that it was worth enduring, —

Miss Tupper’s lecture one attended,

And Smotherhood one heard defended,

And one was grateful when it ended;

And with Miss Tupper on the brain

One walked home in the streaming rain

Till two and two made four again.

Because his lyre was newly strung,

Because the poet still was young,

One read some lines that Spoundel sung;

And found that what he thought untoward

He wallowed in, and thanked the Lord

He was not bored with being bored, —

And made elliptical allusions

To obfuscate his own confusions

And ostracize his own exclusions.

Because the curtain rose at four,

And S.R.O. was on the door,

One went to witness “Nevermore”;

And saw O’Reilly on the stage

Attempting to become of age

And read the simplest primer page.

He hoped that we would not be pained

To hear the alphabet explained;

And hoped we would be entertained.

Allow me when the dawn comes down

Over the mountain to the town

To light my candle, get my gown,

And as I climb the crimson stairs,

Unleash the bloodhounds of my prayers

On these defeats and these despairs.

For well I know how worn and thin

The simple certitude within,

Though braggartly stuck out the chin.

I must in pity cease to prod

These getaways from good and God,

And spare the child and spoil the rod.

Which if I ever dared to use

To beat and brandish as I choose,

Would flash and flare into a fuse,

Unhide the hindrance in the heart

And hold it to the light apart!

’Tis well I amble in my art.

I know their game: each self-exhorted

And solipsistically sorted,

Fancies his own support supported.

The A’s will feel they are secure

Because the B’s and C’s are sure

That what the D’s and L’s endure

Was verified by F’s and G’s

And so through X’s on to Z’s

And other unknown quantities.

I know their tricks: they sit and wait

Until some drunk goes by the gate,

Then after him perambulate.

And if it happens, as it may,

He drops his Beads along the way,

Why then the clue is clear as day!

For how can the Annunciation

Be part of Christian Revelation

In view of such intoxication?

Remember, gracious Virgin Mary,

Mother and Maiden, quite contrary,

Of this wild welter to be wary.

Preserve thy stately Vous between

Our Je Salue, and be our Queen

Aloofly more than thou hast been.

Be distant, keep atop the stairs,

Unharassed by our foul affairs,

And when thou willest, hear our prayers.

There is a Holy House of Bread

Where friends may feast and foes are fed,

And none is starved, none surfeited;

Where souls can relish the ideal

And bodies revel in the real:

Where mind and mouth can make a meal;

Where simpletons who suck their thumbs

Can share the carvings and the crumbs

With Constantines and Chrysostoms.

Within this Fortress I was brought,

A little thing without a thought,

And given all for giving nought.

I was anointed with a Sign,

And someone’s promise, made for mine,

Attached my branch unto a Vine

Of Immortality and Love,

With Intimations from above

That Wordsworth was not thinking of.

Arriving at the age of two,

I found the faith I held as true

Enhanced my infant point of view.

I could believe a rubber ball,

Although somewhat phenomenal,

Would really bounce against a wall;

A jumping-jack when squeezed would squeak,

As though unwilling, so to speak,

To wait for reason’s pure critique.

I took for granted at my side

A friendly lady kindly-eyed,

Another’s daughter, sister, bride.

Two simple sounds, each sound the same,

Easy to mumble and exclaim,

Seemed to suffice her for a name.

And numbers, numbers: one and three

She kept on whispering to me

Until I learned a Mystery.

If I grew, if I may boast a bit,

Familiar with the Infinite,

And everywhere looked round for It;

But never thought to find It small,

And stumble on It in a stall,

So simple to approach and all;

So kindred, kissable and such,

In measurements that were not much,

With little hands and feet to touch.

When toys were trunked and school begun,

I was, among a many, one

Entrusted to a wimpled nun:

A virgin vestaled with three vows

Who had the Holy Ghost for spouse,

And tried devoutly to arouse

An aptitude for long divisions

Involving cerebral collisions

With theological precisions.

This gentle girl in cape and coif,

With softest silver in her laugh,

Prepared me for my epitaph:

“Here lies a lad whose sins were sins,

“Not streptococcic orange skins;

“Nor were his virtues vitamins.

“He learned the rules and knew the game;

“If Hell or Heaven hold the same, —

Himself, not spinach, was to blame.”

This modest maid did not abhor

The monkey as the metaphor

For capers in the corridor;

But while she twitted, could but please,

Seeing but similarities

Between what had and had not fleas.

She held, as evolutionist,

That Eve and Adam led my list: —

My missing link was never missed.

This merry menial, — how came she

To lease her services to me

Without a farthing for a fee?

In what behavioristic school

Reaped she her rapture for her rule,

Found she her fashion as a fool

Willing to wilt along the aisles,

In marches mounting up to miles,

Where changing children flow in files?

This busy bird, as light as air,

Was never cumbrous in her care;

Her presence vanished everywhere!

A shadow? — none more softly strewn,

Nor — sunbeam? — from a nether noon

More mildly mirrored by the moon.

One knew not till her glow had gone

In dusk antipodal to dawn

That one had been so shone upon.

But dame and damsel disparate

And dealt in a divided state

I quit, and came to contemplate

A creature of a clearer kind,

A marvel moving in my mind

With both accomplishments combined;

A Lady whose aloof largesse

Ended in ways too choice to guess,

The Holy Ghost’s unfruitfulness.

The barn was ready and the straw;

I saw what nudging angels saw,

And shepherds open-mouthed with awe.

I found what hitherto had been

The fragments of the feminine

Welded at last, without, within.

My happy Heaven had begun:

I knew the nursery and the nun,

The convent and the crib in one.

When once the heart has been up-hurled

And glimpsed this Glory in the world,

Whatever’s ringleted or curled

Takes on a newer, nobler guise,

Usurps the function of surprise,

Asserts a symbol in the eyes,

Which one is soon intrigued to trace

In the most worn and wrinkled face,

In the most mean, improper place.

Because of Her who flowered so fair,

The poor old apple-wench will wear

A sprig of roses in her hair;

The strumpet strolling on the quay,

Who puts in pawn her purity,

Will sue for sailors’ chivalry;

The lily, garbaged in a brawl,

Out of her refuse-heap will crawl

Back to her trellis on the wall.

Because this Beacon blanched our shore,

Our daughters dazzle us once more,

Our mothers mellow as of yore.

And though this sentiment I sing

Is fraught with an old-fashioned ring,

“In case you like that sort of thing” —

In case I don’t, I hope it’s true

A good old-fashioned brimstone brew

Someday in Hell will coax me to.

The crown and crest of creaturehood

Has not been seen so great, so good

As in our race, as in our brood.

The Cherubim and Seraphim

Have been o’er-vaulted and made dim

By something slender, something slim,

Assembled on our satellite

To move as any maiden might,

Familiar to our common sight.

Truth to attraction one must tether;

Reason and rapture rolled together

Will settle whether not or whether

The philosophic proof must pass

Inspection near the looking-glass

To learn the logic of a lass

And find if in mythology

What sense there is, if sense there be,

Was not a need for such as She.

A girl did God, I do believe, —

Created, courted by, — conceive;

And would that every word I weave

Her Sire, her Spouse, her Son might please

In this frail ditty darned in threes

With threads of triple harmonies.

One riddle, and my rhyme is through:

A bull will butt at red, but you,

Beelzebub, will butt at blue!