Excerpt from “For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen”

by Hart Crane

II

Brazen hypnotics glitter here;

Glee shifts from foot to foot,

Magnetic to their tremulo.

This crashing opera bouffe,

Blest excursion! this ricochet

From roof to roof—

Know, Olympians, we are breathless

While n****** cupids scour the stars!

A thousand light shrugs balance us

Through snarling hails of melody.

White shadows slip across the floor

Splayed like cards from a loose hand;

Rhythmic ellipses lead into canters

Until somewhere a rooster banters.

Greet naively—yet intrepidly

New soothings, new amazements

That cornets introduce at every turn—

And you may fall downstairs with me

With perfect grace and equanimity.

Or, plaintively scud past shores

Where, by strange harmonic laws

All relatives, serene and cool,

Sit rocked in patent armchairs.

O,I have known metallic paradises

Where cuckoos clucked to finches

Above the deft catastrophes of drums.

While titters hailed the groans of death

Beneath gyrating awnings I have seen

The incunabula of the divine grotesque.

This music has a reassuring way.

The siren of the springs of guilty song—

Let us take her on the incandescent wax

Striated with nuances, nervosities

That we are heir to: she is still so young,

We cannot frown upon her as she smiles,

Dipping here in this cultivated storm

Among slim skaters of the gardened skies.