Epitaph of an Actress (verse)
Cooke, Le Baron
158 THE COMMONWEAL June 12, 1929 Columbine looked in the eyes of the poet. Her voice was vibrant and tremulous as the strings she had the moment before been softly stroking. Said Columbine: "...
...In the soft light he held his hand before his face and peered questioningly at his finger nails...
...No soul may travel upon a bridge of words...
...158 THE COMMONWEAL June 12, 1929 Columbine looked in the eyes of the poet...
...He took the lute from Columbine and held it in the brook until its quaintly shaped body was quite filled with water...
...There is no way in which two persons may meet in this world of men: we can but exchange, from afar, friendly despairing signals in the sure knowledge they will be mis-interpreted...
...Heel" said the poet, but before the words came out of his mouth, Pierrot continued, wondering the while at the increas- ing number of stars: "There was in another time a man who busied himself in teaching people of such density they called their teacher dunce...
...When the guest had shifted the pebbles into his other hand, raising his head, Pierrot, who thought he was about to speak, said quickly to Columbine, "And the other one, my dear, which goes, 'her hands slipping.' " " 'Her hands slipped slowly off Lingard's shoulders and her arms fell by her side listless, discouraged, as if to her-- to her, the savage, violent and ignorant creatureuhad been revealed in that moment the tremendous fact of our isolation, of the loneliness impenetrable and transparent, elusive and everlasting...
...of the indestructible loneliness that surrounds, envelops, clothes every human soul from the cradle to the grave, and, perhaps beyond.'" Columbine's voice trailed softly away and mingled with the murmur of the brook as she uttered the last words, for, truth to say, Columbine was not quite certain about the beyond...
...Having looked at the stars for a brief space, he poured out the water on the ground...
...Mehercle...
...Their living thus was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives proof of their crafty judgment...
...And I would rather decline the privilege of any rustic keeper of swine to trample the flowers in the soul of Columbine...
...CpitapA of an Actress Here lies one Who gave her life to art...
...Then he said : "At another and wiser time on the earth there were men desiring to circumvent the devil of loneliness within them, but in a different wise...
...By Venus...
...Pierrot raised himself to brace his back against the tree...
...Could souls go forth, there would undoubtedly be doughty deeds in the countryside...
...Lifting his tiny hands to Him Who made also the stars, he cries the Artist to turn his figures to a dump of clay...
...And having amused himself for a while, he finds its brilliance hurtful to his shallow eyes...
...a cave, a sheltering rock on the moun- tain, a wretched hut in the valley, became for them the tiring- room of heaven...
...Said Pierrot smiling, "Ho, I would assuredly fancy the spectacle of you and your merchant of plumber's tools meet- ing upon the bridge...
...And if, as you desire, souls might journey forth, against or with their will, they must needs be made mightily poor in soul stuff...
...Only to those who have knees to bend is it given to realize the wonderment and unde- served grandeur that comes with the ability to pronounce the syllable 'I.' Your man is a child who has been given a most wondrous jewel from Him Who gave him everything "else...
...After the fashion of the one who sold his rights for a bowl of porridge, he would walk out of the ivory palace, hung with tapestries, windowed with jewels, to lay down in any swine house he might chance upon along the way...
...said Pierrot, "Your man has funny customs...
...Clearly he was a man taken with the necessity of gesture...
...But that thought also is a grief.' " "It is not to be discounted that the rhythm of prose is cer- tainly more subtle, and comes more soundingly from a woman's lips than the stricted rhymes of the poets," said Pierrot will- ing to remove the embarrassment of the eyes of Columbine from their guest...
...And bowing hastily to Pierrot and handing the lute to Columbine without smiling, the poet hurried away toward the east...
...Said Columbine: " 'But I cannot put aside the thought that I, who for the while exist in this mortgaged body, cannot ever get out to you...
...So he sets about contriving sounding epithets and curious speeches in which he commands the Author, 'if there be an Author,' to re~dit His published works...
...And it is said they spent not a small amount of their abundant leisure in contriving fitting ways of thanking God for having made them lonely...
...Then you might have seen those men in solitary places...
...You play the fool about the curtained throne of that sombre queen who rules, and metes out sadness with her right hand and with her left...
...said the poet, "It is even as you say...
...So forthwith he betakes himself to the nearest pigsty and busies himself with casting it in the slime, where by chance it may suffer allurement to the admir- ing snout of some vagrant swine...
...And, if you permit the observation, I dare say the mergement of you and me would make but a hasty pudding...
...L• BARON COOKE...
...Such was their foresight they plainly per- ceived that their success in passing into the house of another's soul could, in the end, be but a meagre exploration...
...insisting that in the proposed edition He picture the plot on the cover, evidently to obviate the need of burdensome reading...
...His figure was soon gone behind a double row of trees whose branches were dripping with the golden light of the moon, whose massive trunks were slightly curved in her horizontal beams--an effect which architects have often ob- served and used to great advantage in designing pillars...
...In the east the moon was rising like a golden bubble in a beaker of wine...
...I per-ceive that man is a fool...
...Indisputably man is a curious creature...
...Among more serious things, he taught them the thing that makes a person a person is just his incom- municability, no more, no less...
...The poet rose to his feet...
...That age was superstitious," said the poet, avoiding the glance of Columbine's eyes, "and it was but a short time then since men had left off playing with cocoanuts...
...Oh God," he said, "Who made me with such subtle wis- dom that I am tricked into complaining of my greatness, this libation of water to the earth which I have hitherto despised, upon which I will, in coming days, walk with more wary feet...
...And yet," said the poet, "you jest at this which is the essence of sorrow...
...Indeed, there is no word for my foiled huge desire to love and to be loved, just as there is no word for the big, the not quite comprehended thought which is moving in me at this moment...
...He is too much with himself in the ivory tower...
...So they made a paradox--a man is less lonely alone...
...And as for a laying on of hands, even their shallowest saw that it could accomplish but nothing...
...Her dream of heaven: A fat, congenial part...
Vol. 10 • June 1929 • No. 6
