Along with Isaac Babel, Stephen Crane is my favorite short story writer. (I could throw Trevor, McGahern and Salter in the mix, but then I start to sound wishy-washy.) In the story, "The Open Boat," Crane wrote my favorite opening line; he wrote my favorite ending in "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky." Crane also wrote poems, strange little poems that remind me, no so much in their language or themes as in the way they get where they are going, of Emily Dickinson. Here are three. They have no titles, so I'll just number them. In #1, I like "gardens/ lying at impossible distances." Feels very precisely like life. In #2, I hear the first voice as some lying, hyperbolic evangelist in Ocean Grove, NJ, the revival town near where Crane grew up. The second voice, ironically, sounds like a truth-teller. In poem #3, I like the craving for hope and, of course, "...hence with your red sword of virtue."
1
There was set before
me a mighty hill,
And long days I
climbed
Through regions of
snow.
When I had before me
the summit-view,
It seemed that my
labor
Had been to see
gardens
Lying at impossible
distances.
2
"Truth,"
said a traveller,
"Is a rock, a
mighty fortress;
Often have I been to
it,
Even to its highest
tower,
From whence the
world looks back."
"Truth,"
said a traveller,
"Is a breath, a
wind,
A shadow, a phantom;
Long have I pursued
it,
But never have I
touched
The hem of its
garment."
And I believed the
second traveller;
For truth was to me
A breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom;
And never had I
touched
The hem of its
garment.
3
Supposing that I
should have the courage
To let a red sword
of virtue
Plunge into my
heart,
Letting to the weeds
of the ground
My sinful blood,
What can you offer
me?
A gardened castle?
A flowery kingdom?
What? A hope?
Then hence with your
red sword of virtue.
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