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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Maxwell Bodenheim

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Emotional Monologue

Maxwell Bodenheim

From “Sappho Answers Aristotle”

A man is sitting within the enigmatic turmoil of a railroad station. His face is narrow and young, and his nose, lips, and eyes, carved to a Semitic sharpness, have been sundered by a bloodless catastrophe. A traveling-bag stands at his feet. Around him people are clutching farewells and shouting greetings. Within him a monologue addresses an empty theatre.

I AM strangling emotions

And casting them into the seats

Of an empty theatre.

When my lifeless audience is complete,

The ghosts of former emotions

Will entertain their dead masters.

After each short act

A humorous ghost will fly through the audience,

Striking the limp hands into applause,

And between the acts

Sepulchral indifference will mingle

With the dust upon the backs of seats.

Upon the stage a melodrama

And a travesty will romp

Against a back-drop of fugitive resignation.

Climax and anti-climax

Will jilt each other and drift

Into a cheated insincerity.

Sometimes the lights will retire

While a shriek and laugh

Make a martyr of the darkness.

When the lights reappear

An actor-ghost will assure the audience

That nothing has happened save

The efforts of a fellow ghost

To capture life again.

In his role of usher

Another ghost will arrange

The lifeless limbs of the audience

Into postures of relief.

Sometimes a comedy will trip

The feet of an assassin,

Declaring that if ghosts were forced

To undergo a second death

Their thinness might become unbearable.

At other times indignant tragedy

Will banish an intruding farce,

Claiming that life should not retain

The luxury of another laugh.

The first act of the play will show

The owner of the theatre

Conversing with the ghost of a woman.

As unresponsive as stone

Solidly repelling a spectral world,

His words will keenly betray

The bloodless control of his features.

He will say: “With slightly lowered shoulders,

Because of a knife sticking in my back,

I shall trifle with crowded highways,

Buying decorations

For an interrupted bridal-party.

This process will be unimportant

To the workshop of my mind

Where love and death are only

Colorless problems upon a chart.”

The ghost of the woman will say:

“Your mind is but the rebellious servant

Of sensitive emotions

And brings them clearer dominance.”

And what shall I mournfully answer?

I am strangling emotions

And casting them into the seats

Of an empty theatre.