Sam said: “Wow…!” though his “Wow” was at the gilded stones, the burnished panes, the towers before him, rather than at the words that wove from behind through the woof of towers ahead. He glanced back at the man, then turned to the city again, where, in a building he couldn’t name, copper light fell from one window — “Oh…!” Sam breathed — to the window below. “Wow.
“Atlantis,” the man repeated. “And the only way to get there is the bridge: the arched nave of this loom, the temple of this stranded warp, the pick of some epiphenomenal gull among them as it shuttles tower to tower, bobbin, spool, and spindle. The bridge — that’s what brings us exhausted devils, in the still and tired evening, to Atlantis.”
“That’s… I mean — ”
“Atlantis? There, you can see it, when the sun’s like this — the city whose kings ordered this bridge be built. Better, the city grows, weaves, wavers from the bridge, boy — not the bridge from the city. For the bridge is a woob — orbly and woob are Sammy’s words: a woob’s something halfway between a womb and a web. Roebling’s bridge, Stella’s bridge, my bridge! Trust me — it wasn’t gray, girder-grinding, grim and grumpy New York that wove out from this mill. Any dull, seamy era can throw up an Atlantis — Atlantis, I say: city of mirrors, City of Dreadful Night, there a-glittering in the sun! Vor cosma saga. Look at those towers — those molte alti torri, those executors of Mars, like those ’round Montereggione. Vor shalmer raga. Look at them, listen: O Jerusalem and Nineveh — among them you can hear Nimrod’s horn bleating and Ephialtes’ chain a-rattle. Whose was the last funeral you tagged behind, when the bee drowsed with the bear? What primaveral prince, priest, pauper, Egyptian mummy was it, borne off to night, fire, and forever? What mother’s son — or daughter — was it, boxed now and buried? Per crucem ad lucem. Everything living arcs to an end. Nabat. Kalit. The hour to suffer. It’s a dangerous city, Sam. Et in Arcadia ego. Anything can be stolen from you any moment. But all you get bringing up the rear of funerals in November is shattered by the sea — for death’s as marvelous a mystery as either birth or madness. Go strolling in our city parks, Caina, Ptolomea, Judecca. (The only one I don’t have to worry about getting frozen into, I guess, is Antenora — if only thanks to the change of season.) Li jorz iert clers e sanz grant vent. Go on, ask: ‘Maestro, di, che terra è questa?’ No, not penitence, but song. I’m still not ready for repentance. See, I’m looking for Atlantis, too, Sam — sometimes I think the worst that can happen is that I’ll be stuck with the opportunists in the vestibule — maybe even allowed to loll among the pages of the virtuous Pagan. But then I’m afraid you’re more likely to find me running in circles on burning sand, under a slow fall of fire — that’s if I don’t just snap and end up in the trees, where harpies peck the bleeding bark. Mine and Amfortas’s wounds both could use us some of Achilles’ rust — if not a little general ataraxy. In Atlantis you spend every night carousing with Charlie Chaplin — and celebrate each dawn with randy icemen at your knees. In Atlantis, you can strut between Jim Harris and the emperor every day, Mike Drayton squiring Goldilocks behind. In Atlantis, all poets wake up in the morning real advertising successes — and cheese unbinds, like figs. Step right up, sit down with your own Sammy, drink a glass of malmsey, and share a long clay stem. When this Orlando is to his dark tower come — when I split my ivory horn in two, bleeding from lip and ear (you think my pop will be my Ganelon and finally pluck me from my santa gesta?) — will they hear me eight miles or thirty leagues away, the note borne by an angel? You’re sensitive, boy — sensitive to beauty. I can tell from your ‘Wow!’—it’s a sensitive ‘Wow!’ So — Wow! — I know you know what I’m talking of. As well, you’re a handsome boy — like Jean. Only handsomer than Jean; I’d say it if anyone asked me. But there — I have said it; and it’s still true! That’s the job of poets, you know — to speak the terrifying, simple truths, that, for most people, are so difficult they stick in the throat from embarrassment. I mean, what’s poetry for, anyway? To write a reply on the back of a paper somebody slips you at the baths with their address on it whom you don’t feel like fucking? To celebrate some black theft of goose, cigar, and perfume — rather than toss it out the window at Thompson’s?”
Sam had been used to people down home saying, “The Bishop has some fine looking boys!” He’d even had two or three girls at the school get moony and giggly about him, fascinated with the silliest thing he’d say. But the notion of himself as really handsome…? He pushed his fingertips over the green bench planks, beneath his thighs.
“Actually,” the man said behind him (again Sam looked at the city), “I’m probably as good a poet as I am because I’m quite brave. I’m not some Jonathan Yankee nor yet, really, a Pierrot. But I’ve trod far shadowier grounds than those Wordsworth preluded his excursion to cover — precisely because they are not in the mind of man. Sure. I mean, here a logical fellow must ask: okay, what finally keeps me from it? We have the river’s flow — instead of certainty. I could be any old priestess of Hesperus — wrecked on whatever. Am I really going to sing three times? It’s a pretty easy argument that, whether in Egypt or at the Dardanelles, with any two towns divided by water, one can always play Abydos to the other’s Sestos: for every Hero somewhere there’s a Leander, and every Hero has her Hellespont. There’s always hope as long as he remembers how to swim. I mean what are you going to do with Eve, La Gioconda, and Delilah — replace the latter two with Magdalene or Mary? Do I covet the extinction of light in dark waters? Three Marys will rise up and calm the roar: sure — Mary Garden, Merry Andrews, and Mary Baker Eddy.
“But we have the bridge.
“Oh, surely, it starts with your having a satori in the dentist chair, and the next you know you’re at work on your hieros gamos and giggling over what Dol Common said to Sir Epicure. There are some folks to whom the thunder speaks; but there are others who need poets to rend and read into it their own trap-clap. (I hope you’re not sure, either, who that their own refers to.) It ends, however, here, with me talking to you — I certainly didn’t think I would be, half an hour ago. Not when I first saw you. The ones who terrify me are always the short, muscular blonds — and the tall, dark, handsome ones. Like you. ‘Tall, dark, and handsome’? That’s trite for terror. But it’s true. I live with a short, muscular blond. We have a nice, six-dollar a week room. Only, I confess, it’s the eight dollar room I lust after. That’s Roebling’s room. My blond’s a sailor. His old man’s the building owner. Now he’s got the view — but he tells me I can come in and use it whenever I want. They’re nice, that way. You can’t imagine what it took, getting up nerve to speak to him — but I said, his name’s Emil — to talk with him; and really talking with someone is different from simply speaking. I mean, you and I are speaking. But are we talking yet? Perhaps we ought to find out if we can. Still, suddenly, Emil and I — my handsome sailor, my golden wanderer, off after his own fleece — we were talking — telling each other how we felt. About one another. About the world. We talked till the sun came up; then he kissed my eyes with a speech entirely beyond words, and I’ve been able to do nothing but babble my happiness since. We decided it really would be terrible if we ever left each other. So he asked me to move in with him. All life is a bridge, I told him. Even the whole world. He’s like an older brother — it’s like living with a brother. And once again I’m hearing things before dawn. I’m three years younger than he — and two inches taller! But sometimes, it’s true, I feel like I’m the elder. His father can’t imagine that anything could be going on that shouldn’t be — if anything is going on at all.” Sam heard him shrug… “It’s a hoot. The last person to pick him up and suckle at his schlong was Lauritz Melchior. Now, because they both speak Danish, we get to lurk backstage at the Met, about as regular as The Brooklyn Eagle. But it’s very pure. Very severe, between us — Emil and me. But he is a sailor — and he goes on voyages. He’s away, now — in South America. But in Atlantis, I live forever, in my room with my Victrola and my love. It makes my dark room light and light.” Suddenly the man leaned forward again. (Sam could hear him, not see him, closer at his back.) “Tell me, Sam: Have you ever tried to kiss the sun? I mean, deep kiss it — French kiss it as they’ve just begun to say. Maul it with your lips and tongue? Flung your arms around it, pulled it down on top of you, till it seared your chest and toasted the white wafer cheek of love, poached the orbs in your skull, even while you thrust your mouth out and into its fires till the magma at its core blackened the wet muscle of all articulation? Well, Atlantis is the town in which everybody, man and woman, can kiss the sun and still have the moon smile down on them — not this stock, market culture of the stock market. And believe me, sometimes when the sun’s away, you’ll find yourself needs reaching for the moon. All I do is sweat with imagined jealousies while he’s gone — Emil, I mean. But someday, he’s going to come home, just while I’m in the throes of it, down on the daybed, with you or some guinea fisherman’s randy brat — does it matter which? And…” The man sat back. Sam couldn’t see him for the city — though he heard his fingers snap: “That’ll be it! But that’s not for today. That’s for another time. Do you want to come back to the place with me — have a drink? We could be alone. I’m a good man to get soused with, if you like to get soused — and what self-respecting Negro doesn’t? Come on, relax. Spend a little time — come with me, boy-oh-boy, and we’ll get boozy and comfortable.”