INTRODUCING
IRONY

INTRODUCING
IRONY

A BOOK OF POETIC SHORT
STORIES AND POEMS

BY
MAXWELL BODENHEIM

NEW YORK
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
1922

Copyright, 1922, by
Boni & Liveright, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America

To
FEDYA RAMSAY
WHOSE HAND NEVER LEAVES MY SHOULDER

Some of the poems and stories in this book have appeared in The Dial, Harper’s Bazaar, The Little Review, The Nation, Cartoons Magazine, Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, The New York Globe, The Bookman, Vanity Fair, The Measure and The Double Dealer

CONTENTS

INTRODUCING
IRONY

JACK ROSE

WITH crafty brooding life turned to Jack Rose

And made him heroin-peddler, and his pose

Was sullenly reflective since he feared

That life, regarding him, had merely jeered.

His vanity was small and could not call

His egoism to the dubious hall

Of fame, where average artists spend their hour.

Doubting his powers he was forced to cower

Within the shrill, damp alleys of his time,

Immersed in that brisk midnight known as crime.

He shunned the fiercely shrewd stuff that he sold

To other people, and derived a cold

Enjoyment from the writhing of their hearts.

A speechless artist, he admired the arts

Of blundering destruction, like a monk

Viewing a play that made him mildly drunk.

And so malicious and ascetic Jack

Bent to his trade with a relentless back

Until he tapped an unexpected smile—

A woman’s smile as smooth and hard as tile.

May Bulger pawned her flesh to him and gave

His heroin to her brother, with a grave

Reluctance fumbling at her painted lips.

Though angry at herself, she took the whips

Of undesired love, to quiet a boy

Who wept inanely for his favorite toy.

She hated Jack because he failed to gloss

And soften the rough surface of her loss,

His matter-of-fact frown biting at her heart.

He hated her because her smiling guess

Had robbed him of ascetic loneliness,

And when her brother died, Jack sat beside

Her grief and played a mouth-harp while she cried.

But when she raised her head and smiled at him—

A smile intensely stripped and subtly grim—

His hate felt overawed and in a trap,

And suddenly his head fell to her lap.

For some time she sat stiffly in the chair,

Then slowly raised her hand and stroked his hair.

SEAWEED FROM MARS

I

“HAVE you ever played on a violin

Larger than ten thousand stars

And warmer than what you call sin?”

Torban, a young man from Mars,

Gave me the stretch of his voice,

And my “no” fell down like a pin

On the echoed din of his words.

He said: “Then I have no choice.

I must use the barrenly involved

Words with which you have not solved

The wistful riddles of your days.

Leave the pale and ruddy herds

Of men, with their surrendering ways,

And come with me to Mars.”

II

DRUMS of Autumn beat on Mars,

Calling our minds to reunion.

The avenues of seaweed spars

Have attained a paleness

Equal to that of earthly philosophies,

And the trees have lost

The diamond violence of Spring.

Their purple leaves have turned to grey

Just as a human religion

Gradually changes to pretence.

In Mars we have only two seasons,

Spring and Autumn—their reasons

Rest in a treacherous sun

That suddenly runs away,

Creating a twilight-suspense.

When the sun reappears

Mars is once more amazed

By the blazing flatteries of Spring.

Again the heavy leaves ring

With odor and light deftly pressed

Into a stormy chorus.

Then we abandon the screaming violins

Of our minds, and each man wins

An understanding rest.

Once more we roam and jest

Upon the avenues, with voices

One shade louder than the leaves,

Or sail upon the choral seas

And trade our words with molten ease.

Throughout the Autumn we stand

Still and deserted, while our minds

Leap into sweeping tensions

Blending sound and form

Into one search across the universe.

III

WHAT do we find in this search?

All of your earthly words lurch

Feebly upon the outskirts of my mind,

And when they pass beyond them, they are blind.

Outward forms are but the graves

Of sound, and all the different waves

Of light and odor, they are sound

That floats unshaped and loosely gowned.

When sound is broken into parts

Your ears receive the smaller arts,

But when it drifts in broad release

You cannot hear its louder peace.

Your houses, hills, and flesh of red

Are shapes of sound, asleep or dead.

In Mars a stronger Spring of sound

Revives our forms and makes Profound

Music, softer than the dins

That rose from Autumn violins.

Our minds, whose tense excursions spread

In chase of noisy walls that fled,

Relent and drop within our heads,

Enjoying the timid sound of their beds.

Filled with a gracious weariness,

We place it, like a lighter dress,

Upon the sounds from other stars

Brought back to celebrate on Mars.

IV

A GIRL of Mars is burning

Notes of thought within her throat.

Her pale white lips are turning

The fire to storied chords.

The song is old but often made

By girls who sit in Spring and braid

The lanterned language of their hair.

Its spacious gaiety cannot be sold

To your narrow glow of words.

The hint that I shall give is cold

And like the sound of snowy air.

I shall journey with the men

When my curling thoughts are ten.

O the sternness of that number!

Colored sounds from breath to umber

Promising a first release.

I have dwelt too long in peace

Placing smallness on my breast.

The prisoned whisper of my skin

Longs to vanish in the din

Of Autumn when great sounds are caught.

Let the tall wildness of my thought

Stride beside the thundering grace

Of the man whose spring-time face

Brought me tiny notes of rest.

She sits within a house of stone

That lends a wise and balanced tone:

A roofless house whose walls are low

And level with her head’s grey glow.

The bright sounds of her parents fly

Around the house—we do not die

In Mars, but change to gleams of sounds

And stay within our gayer rounds

Until when tired Spring has gone

We lead the Autumn searchers on.

Before we change, our bodies curve

Like yours save that our skins are gray:

Light shades of gray that almost swerve

To white, like earthly men who pray.

V

WE do not love and hate in Mars.

These earthly cries are flashing bars

Of sound from which our minds are free.

They stand in our mythology:

Legends elusive and weird,

Acrid Gods that once were feared.

They vanished imperceptibly

And none among us can agree

Upon the tangled way in which they fled.

Starlit symbols of dread,

They slowly exhausted themselves and died

In striding heralds of a wilder bride.

We have no emotions in Mars.

They are like long-healed wounds

Whose scars are softened by the gleam of our minds.

We approach them with clearer kinds

Of sound from deeply resting thought.

Our youths and maidens have not caught

The treacherous and tightly bound

Confusion of your loving sound,

For sex to us is but the ring

Of different shades of thought in Spring

When men recline upon the breast

Of women, dissolving into thoughtful rest.

In Autumn sex is left behind.

Men and women no longer lined

By different bodies raise their dins

Above the screaming violins.

TURMOIL IN A MORGUE

NEGRO,

Chinaman,

White servant-girl,

Russian woman,

Are learning how to be dead,

Aided by the impersonal boredom

Of a morgue at evening.

The morgue divides its whole

Of dead mens’ contacts into four

Parts, and places one in each

Of these four bodies waiting for the carts.

The frankness of their decay

Breaks into contradictory symbols

And sits erect upon the wooden tables,

Thus cancelling the validity of time.

In a voice as passive as slime

The negro speaks.

“Killed a woman: ripped her skin.

Saw her heart floating in a tumbler of gin.

Had to drink her heart because it wouldn’t leave the gin.

Because I wanted to reach all of her

They ripped my flesh.

They wanted to reach all of me

And their excuse was better than mine.”

Cowed baby painted black,

The negro sits upon fundamentals

And troubles them a little with his hands.

The beautiful insanity

Of his eyes rebukes

The common void of his face.

Then the Chinaman speaks

In a voice whose tones are brass

From which emotion has been extracted.

“Loved a woman: she was white.

Her man blew my brains out into the night.

Hatred is afraid of color.

Color is the holiday

Given to moods of understanding:

Hatred does not understand.

When stillness ends the fever of ideas

Hatred will be a scarcely remembered spark.”

Manikin at peace

With the matchless deceit of a planet,

The Chinaman fashions his placid immensity.

The Chinaman chides his insignificance

With a more impressive rapture

Than that of western midgets.

His rapture provides an excellent light

For the silhouette of the negro’s curse.

Then the white servant-girl

Speaks in a voice whose syllables

Fall like dripping flower-juice and offal,

Both producing a similar sound.

“I made a neat rug for a man.

He cleaned his feet on me and I liked

The tired, scheming way in which he did it.

When he finished he decided

That he needed a smoother texture,

And found another lady.

I killed myself because I couldn’t rub out

The cunning marks that he left behind.”

Impulsive doll made of rubbish

On which a spark descended and ended,

The white servant-girl, without question or answer,

Accepts the jest of a universe.

Then the Russian woman

Speaks in a voice that is heat

Ill-at-ease upon its couch of sound.

“I married a man because

His lips tormented my melancholy

And made it long to be meek,

And because, when he walked to his office each morning,

He thought himself a kindled devil

Enduring the smaller figures around him.

He abandoned me for German intrigue

And I chased him in other men,

Never quite designing him.

Death, a better megalomaniac,

Relieved me of the pursuit.”

Symbol of earth delighted

With the vibration of its nerves,

The Russian woman sunders life

Into amusing deities of emotion