At 21–22
We are three friends, and I the youngest …
George and I meet first: he is the eldest …
He was once a mid-western sheep-herder, then he did odd jobs, restaurant work, cigar-making …
And last he was “converted” and came into a passionate mystical love,
Worked his way through college, studied for the ministry …
He has the orator mouth, the public presence, the organ voice …
He must mother large multitudes …
Then, near the goal, the Higher Criticism destroys his faith …
He is no thinker, but a born lover:
He is manuscript clerk at J. J.'s …
Sleeping with him, I feel a warm magnetism breathe from his body across the bed to me,
A homely ample fragrance …
I lead him a fiend's life: I am all temperament and whimsy …
His very solidity provokes my most brilliant instabilities …
He wakes at 2 A. M. and sees me writing wild poetry on the mantel-ledge under the gaslight,
I come and go, flutter in and out, spur him and slow him,
I am rapid as a girl with him …
A newcomer enters the editorial offices …
George does not like him … “stuck up … one of these New Englanders … one of these Yale aristocrats …”
Well, he looks it: a bit of Emerson in his face …
And a fire in his eyes that Emerson never even dreamed of …
He is sensitive, yet strong, with a voice of tempered rich music …
The atmosphere of our one great tradition hovers about him …
The Emerson-Adams-Garrison-Thoreau air …
There comes a day of ice and demon's own north-wind,
The factory sucks in the cold and is bleak with wind-whistles …
My office is northermost: I sit in my heavy overcoat at my typing machine
And find my fingers too numb for work …
I ask J. J's eldest to give me a corner of his warmer office:
He hates me: he tells me, “no” …
Then the newcomer happens in upon me …
“You can't work here,” he says …
I agree, I cannot … but I tell him what J. J's son has said …
He is out like a flash seeing that Managing Editor …
He comes back and helps me to carry my desk into the other room …
“How did you do it?” I ask …
“Oh,” he smiles, “I handed in my resignation” …
And so there are three friends now …
And I shall find in friendship the one deep joy of the tragic years,
The one sustaining and enduring help …
He would resign for me, a stranger? What would he do then for me as a friend?
And what may I do for him?
George and I meet first: he is the eldest …
He was once a mid-western sheep-herder, then he did odd jobs, restaurant work, cigar-making …
And last he was “converted” and came into a passionate mystical love,
Worked his way through college, studied for the ministry …
He has the orator mouth, the public presence, the organ voice …
He must mother large multitudes …
Then, near the goal, the Higher Criticism destroys his faith …
He is no thinker, but a born lover:
He is manuscript clerk at J. J.'s …
Sleeping with him, I feel a warm magnetism breathe from his body across the bed to me,
A homely ample fragrance …
I lead him a fiend's life: I am all temperament and whimsy …
His very solidity provokes my most brilliant instabilities …
He wakes at 2 A. M. and sees me writing wild poetry on the mantel-ledge under the gaslight,
I come and go, flutter in and out, spur him and slow him,
I am rapid as a girl with him …
A newcomer enters the editorial offices …
George does not like him … “stuck up … one of these New Englanders … one of these Yale aristocrats …”
Well, he looks it: a bit of Emerson in his face …
And a fire in his eyes that Emerson never even dreamed of …
He is sensitive, yet strong, with a voice of tempered rich music …
The atmosphere of our one great tradition hovers about him …
The Emerson-Adams-Garrison-Thoreau air …
There comes a day of ice and demon's own north-wind,
The factory sucks in the cold and is bleak with wind-whistles …
My office is northermost: I sit in my heavy overcoat at my typing machine
And find my fingers too numb for work …
I ask J. J's eldest to give me a corner of his warmer office:
He hates me: he tells me, “no” …
Then the newcomer happens in upon me …
“You can't work here,” he says …
I agree, I cannot … but I tell him what J. J's son has said …
He is out like a flash seeing that Managing Editor …
He comes back and helps me to carry my desk into the other room …
“How did you do it?” I ask …
“Oh,” he smiles, “I handed in my resignation” …
And so there are three friends now …
And I shall find in friendship the one deep joy of the tragic years,
The one sustaining and enduring help …
He would resign for me, a stranger? What would he do then for me as a friend?
And what may I do for him?
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