The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (219 page)

You tell me this is God?
I tell you this is a printed list,
A burning candle and an ass.

On the desert
A silence from the moon’s deepest
valley.
Fire rays fall athwart the robes
Of hooded men, squat and dumb.
Before them, a woman
Moves to the blowing of shrill whistles
And distant thunder of drums,
While mystic things, sinuous, dull with
terrible color,
Sleepily fondle her body
Or move at her will, swishing stealthily over
the sand.
The snakes whisper softly;
The whispering, whispering snakes,
Dreaming and swaying and staring,
But always whispering, softly whispering.
The wind streams from the lone reaches
Of Arabia, solemn with night,
And the wild fire makes shimmer of blood
Over the robes of the hooded men
Squat and dumb.

Bands of moving bronze, emerald, yellow,
Circle the throat and arms of her,
And over the sands serpents move warily
Slow, menacing and submissive,
Swinging to the whistles and drums,
The whispering, whispering snakes,
Dreaming and swaying and staring,
But always whispering, softly whispering.
The dignity of the accursed;
The glory of slavery, despair, death,
Is in the dance of the whispering snakes.

A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices
Which, bawled by boys from mile to mile,
Spreads its curious opinion
To a million merciful and sneering men,
While families cuddle the joys of the fireside
When spurred by tale of dire lone agony.
A newspaper is a court
Where every one is kindly and unfairly tried
By a squalor of honest men.
A newspaper is a market
Where wisdom sells its freedom
And melons are crowned by the crowd.
A newspaper is a game
Where his error scores the player victory
While another’s skill wins death.
A newspaper is a symbol;
It is fetless life’s chronical,
A collection of loud tales
Concentrating eternal stupidities,
That in remote ages lived unhaltered,
Roaming through a fenceless world.

The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
“Ha,” he said,
“I see that none has passed here
“In a long time.”
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
“Well,” he mumbled at last,
“Doubtless there are other roads.”

A slant of sun on dull brown walls,
A forgotten sky of bashful blue.

Toward God a mighty hymn,
A song of collisions and cries,
Rumbling wheels, hoof-beats, bells,
Welcomes, farewells, love-calls, final moans,
Voices of joy, idiocy, warning, despair,
The unknown appeals of brutes,
The chanting of flowers,
The screams of cut trees,
The senseless babble of hens and wise men —
A cluttered incoherency that says at the
stars;
“O God, save us!”

Once a man clambering to the housetops
Appealed to the heavens.
With a strong voice he called to the deaf
spheres;
A warrior’s shout he raised to the suns.
Lo, at last, there was a dot on the clouds,
And — at last and at last —
 — God — the sky was filled with armies.

There was a man with tongue of wood
Who essayed to sing,
And in truth it was lamentable.
But there was one who heard
The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood
And knew what the man
Wished to sing,
And with that the singer was content.

The successful man has thrust himself
Through the water of the years,
Reeking wet with mistakes, —
Bloody mistakes;
Slimed with victories over the lesser,
A figure thankful on the shore of money.
Then, with the bones of fools
He buys silken banners
Limned with his triumphant face;
With the skins of wise men
He buys the trivial bows of all.
Flesh painted with marrow
Contributes a coverlet,
A coverlet for his contented slumber.
In guiltless ignorance, in ignorant guilt,
He delivered his secrets to the riven multitude.
“Thus I defended: Thus I wrought.”
Complacent, smiling,
He stands heavily on the dead.
Erect on a pillar of skulls
He declaims his trampling of babes;
Smirking, fat, dripping,
He makes speech in guiltless ignorance,
Innocence.

In the night
Grey heavy clouds muffled the valleys,
And the peaks looked toward God alone.
“O Master that movest the wind with a
   finger,
“Humble, idle, futile peaks are we.
“Grant that we may run swiftly across
   the world
“To huddle in worship at Thy feet.”

In the morning
A noise of men at work came the clear blue miles,
And the little black cities were apparent.
“O Master that knowest the meaning of raindrops,
“Humble, idle, futile peaks are we.
“Give voice to us, we pray, O Lord,
“That we may sing Thy goodness to the sun.”

In the evening
The far valleys were sprinkled with tiny lights.
“O Master,
“Thou that knowest the value of kings and birds,
“Thou hast made us humble, idle, futile peaks.
“Thous only needest eternal patience;
“We bow to Thy wisdom, O Lord —
“Humble, idle, futile peaks.”

In the night
Grey heavy clouds muffles the valleys,
And the peaks looked toward God alone.

The chatter of a death-demon from a tree-top.

Blood — blood and torn grass —
Had marked the rise of his agony —
This lone hunter.
The grey-green woods impassive
Had watched the threshing of his limbs.

A canoe with flashing paddle,
A girl with soft searching eyes,
A call: “John!”
.    .    .    .    .    .    .
Come, arise, hunter!
Can you not hear?