Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO MY FRIEND, GROWN FAMOUS, by EUNICE TIETJENS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO MY FRIEND, GROWN FAMOUS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The mail has come from home
Last Line: Of flowers, of laughter, of the flash of wings. . . .
Alternate Author Name(s): Head, Cloyd, Mrs.
Subject(s): Postal Service; Postmen; Post Office; Mail; Mailmen


The mail has come from home,
From home that still remembers -- to Japan.
My tiny maid, as faultless as a fan,
Bows in the doorway. "Honorable letters,"
She says, "have kindly come."
And smiles, knowing the fetters
That bind me still.

And all my mail to-day is full of you.
"His name," says one, "is sounding still and sounding."
And someone else, "It is astounding,
I never knew the public chatter worse.
Eighteen editions for a book of verse!"
And all the printed pages glitter, too,
With you,
With your stark vision and cold fire,
Your singing truth, your vehement desire
To cut through lies to life.
These move behind the printed echoes here,
The paper strife,
The scurry of small pens about your name,
Measuring, praising, blaming by the same
Tight rule of thumb that makes their own
Inadequacy known.
And as I read a phrase leaps clear
From your own letter: "I am tired," you say,
"Of men who talk and talk and dare not live
But take their orgasms in speech!"
Yes, that would be your way
To take the critics. It is you who give,
Not they;
And safe beyond their reach
Huge, careless, Rabelaisian, you pass by
Watching their squirming with amused eye.

* * * *

Here as I sit
My paper house-side slid away
And all my chamber open to the rain
I feel a haunting, exquisite
Grey shadow of a pain.
Beauty has part in it, and loneliness,
And the far call of home -- and thoughts of you
In the rain of spring.
Here in this land of frozen loveliness,
Of artistry complete, where each small thing
Minutely, preciously, is perfect,
I have grown hungry for the sight of you
Who are not perfect;
Who are big and free
And largely vulgar like the peasantry,
And full of sorrows for mankind.
I cannot find
Your spirit in this land. The little tree
Tortured and dwarfed -- oh! beautiful I know
In the grey slanting rain,
But tortured even so --
The little pine tree in my garden close
Is symbol of the soul that grows
Within this patient cult of loveliness.
You would not understand
Would care far less
For the pale, silvered shadows of this land
That make it dear to me.
Yet when I see
Your clear handwriting march across the page,
And your brave spirit of a tonic age
Blow sharp across the spring
I smother here a little;
This conscious beauty is so light, so brittle,
So frail a thing!

But you are free! "Go out," your letter says,
"Go drink life to the lees.
See the round world! Watch where Lord Buddha sits
Beneath the tree; and see where Jesus walked
And talked.
See where Aspasia and Pericles
Have visited together, and where Socrates
Leaned on the wall. . . .
Go out, my friend, and see --
And then come back and tell it all to me!"

That, too, is like you, "Tell it all to me."
I feel your spirit searching hungrily
Each human being for the stuff of life,
The sharp blue flame below the smoke,
The authentic cry
That all our mouthing cannot choke.
Your hunger is for life, for life!
And you have understanding, and the power
To pierce the husk of words, to take an hour
Hot from the crisis of a soul
And live it in another, and so grow
Greater by each of us, who only know
A part -- and you the whole.

O friend, my friend, it's good to feel you there,
A solvent for all small hypocrisies,
A white and steady flare
That beacons over such confusing seas
To bring me truth.
It's good to know that youth
And eyes and lips are only half the tie;
That, though all listening peoples claim you now,
Your spirit still
Holds some small emptiness that I
And only I can fill.

So take my homage, friend, with all the rest.
It will not hurt you -- you are much too wise --
And ride the world, and battle at the crest,
As at the ebb, with lies.
Yet if you weary sometimes of the praise
And greatness palls a little in the dusk,
I shall be waiting as in other days.
Then you can strip your world-ways like a husk,
And friendship will make wide her wicket gate
On twilit gardens, sweet and intimate,
And we will talk of simple homely things,
Of flowers, of laughter, of the flash of wings. . . .





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