THE REVOLUTION OF THE PAST
GEION IN THE RELIGIOUS
SCES HAS SCARCELY
PEED POPULAR
SCIOUSNESS AND HAS YET
TO SIGNIFITLY INFLUENCE
PUBLIC ATTITUDES THAT REST
UPON TOTALLY OUTMODED
CEPTIONS.
PAUL sat in his baff, w what to do . "Well, what shall I do ? What is the hing demanded of me by history?" If you know who it is they are whispering about, then you usually dont like it. If Paul wants to bee a monk, thats his affair entirely. Of course we had hoped that he would take up his sword as part of the Presidents war ory. The time is ripe for that. The root causes of poetry have been studied and studied. And now that we knoockets of poetry still exist in reat try, especially in the large urbaers, we ought to be able to wash it out totally in one geion, if we put our backs into it. But we were prepared to hide our disappoi. The decision is Pauls finally. "Are those broken veins in my left cheek, above the cheekbohere? No, thank God, they are only tiny whiskers not yet whisked away. Missed ierdays scrape, but vulnerable to the scrape of today." Besides, most people are not very well informed about the cloistered life. Certainly they have light bulbs if they want them, and their rivers and mountains are not inferior to our own. "They make iing jam," Hank said. "But its his choice, in the final analysis. Anyhow, we have his typewriter. That much of him is ours, now." People were caressing each other under Pauls window. "Why are all these people existing under my window? It is as if they were as palpable as me -- as bloody, as firm, as well-read." Monkish business will carry him to town sometimes; perhaps we will be able to see him then.
"MOTHER I go over to Hogos and play?" "No Jane Hogo is not the right type of young man for you to play with. He is thirty-five now and that is too old for i play. I am afraid he knows some kind of play that is not i, and will want you to play it with him, and then you will agree in ynorance, and the will be in the fire. That is the way I have the situation figured out anyhow. That is my reading of it. That is the way it looks from where I stand." "Mother all this false humility does not bee you any more than that mucky old poor little match-girl dress you are wearing." "This dress Ill have you know cost two hundred and forty dollars when it was new." "When was it new?" "It was new in 1918, the year your father and I were ireogether, in the Great War. That was a war all right. Oh I know there have been other wars since, better-publicized ones, more expensive ones perhaps, but our war is the one Ill always remember. Our war is the ohat means war to me." "Mother I know Hogo is thirty-five and thhly bad through and through but still there is something drawio him. To his house. To the uninnoce I know awaits me there." "Simmer down child. There is a method in my meanness. By refusing to allow you to go to Hogos house, I will draw Hogo here, to your house, where we smother him in blueberry flan and other kindnesses, and generally work on him, ahe life out of him, in one way or another." "Thats shrewd mother."
THE poem remained between us like an immense, wrecked railroad car. "Toug the poem," we said, "is it rhymed or free?" "Free," Snow White said, "free, free, free." "And the theme?" "One of the great themes," she said, "that is all I reveal at this time." "Could you tell us the first word?" "The first word," she said, "is bandaged and wounded. " "