Toward the Gulf | Page 6

in the other,
Lightly clasped somewhat below the breast. ...
And
in the companion folder of this case
Of gutta percha
Is the shape of
a man.
His brow is oval too, but broader.
His nose is long, but thick
at the tip.
His eyes are blue
Wherein faith burns her signal lights,

And flashes her convictions.
His mouth is tense, almost a slit.
And
his face is a massive Calvinism
Resting on a stock tie.
They were married, you see.
The clasp on this gutta percha case

Locks them together.
They were locked together in life.
And a hasp
of brass
Keeps their shadows face to face in the case
Which has
been handed down--
(The pictures of noble ancestors,
Showing
what strains of gentle blood
Flow in the third generation)--
From
Massachusetts to Illinois. ...
Long ago it was over for them,
Massachusetts has done its part,
She
raised the seed
And a wind blew it over to Illinois
Where it has
mixed, multiplied, mutated
Until one soul comes forth:
But a soul
all striped and streaked,
And a soul self-crossed and self-opposed,

As it were a tree which on one branch
Bears northern spies,

And on
another thorn apples. ...
Come Weissmann, Von Baer and Schleiden,
And you Buffon and De
Vries,
Come with your secrets of sea shore asters
Night-shade,
henbanes, gloxinias,
Veronicas, snap-dragons, Danebrog,
And show
us how they cross and change,
And become hybrids.
And show us
what heredity is,
And how it works.
For the secret of these human
beings
Locked in this gutta percha case
Is the secret of Mephistos

and red Campions.
Let us lay out the facts as far as we can.
Her eyes were black,
His
eyes were blue.
She saw through shadows, walls and doors,
She
knew life and hungered for more.
But he lived in the mists, and
climbed to high places
To feel clouds about his face, and get the
lights
Of supernal sun-sets.
She was reason, and he was faith.
She
had an illumination, but of the intellect.
And he had an illumination
but of the soul.
And she saw God as merciless law,
And he knew
God as divine love.
And she was a man, and he in part was a woman.

He stood in a pulpit and preached the Christ,
And the remission of
sins by blood,
And the literal fall of man through Adam,
And the
mystical and actual salvation of man
Through the coming of Christ.
And she sat in a pew shading her great eyes
To hide her scorn for it
all.
She was crucified,
And raged to the last like the impenitent thief

Against the fate which wasted and trampled down
Her wisdom,
sagacity, versatile skill,
Which would have piled up gold or honors

For a mate who knew that life is growth,
And health, and the
satisfaction of wants,
And place and reputation and mansion houses,

And mahogany and silver,
And beautiful living.
She hated him,
and hence she pitied him.
She was like the gardener with great
pruners
Deciding to clip, sometimes not clipping
Just for the dread.

She had married him--but why?
Some inscrutable air
Wafted his
pollen to her across a wide garden--
Some power had crossed them.

And here is the secret I think:
(As we would say here is electricity)

It is the vibration inhering in sex
That produces devils or angels,

And it is the sex reaction in men and women
That brings forth devils
or angels,
And starts in them the germs of powers or passions,

Becoming loves, ferocities, gifts and weaknesses,
Till the stock dies
out.
So now for their hybrid children:--
She gave birth to four
daughters and one son.
But first what have we for the composition of these daughters? Reason

opposed and becoming keener therefor.
Faith mocked and drawing its
mantel closer.
Love thwarted and becoming acid.
Hatred mounting
too high and thinning into pity.
Hunger for life unappeased and
becoming a stream under-ground Where only blind things swim.
God
year by year removing himself to remoter thrones
Of inexorable law.

God coming closer even while disease
And total blindness came
between him and God
And defeated the mercy of God.
And a love
and a trust growing deeper in him
As she in great thirst, hanging on
the cross,
Mocked his crucifixion,
And talked philosophy between
the spasms of pain,
Till at last she is all satirist,
And he is all saint.
And all the children were raised
After the strictest fashion in New
England,
And made to join the church,
And attend its services.

And these were the children:
Janet was a religious fanatic and a virago,
She debated religion with
her husband for ten years,
Then he refused to talk, and for twenty
years
Scarcely spoke to her.
She died a convert to Catholicism.

They had two children:
The boy became a forgerer
Of notorious
skill.
The daughter married, but was barren.
Miranda married a rich man
And spent his money so fast that he
failed.
She lashed him with a scorpion tongue
And made him
believe at last
With her incessant reasonings
That he was a fool, and
so had failed.
In middle life he started over again,
But became
tangled in a law-suit.
Because of these things he killed himself.
Louise was a nymphomaniac.
She was married twice.
Both
husbands fled from her insatiable embraces.
At thirty-two she became
a woman on a telephone list,
Subject to be called,

And for two
years ran through a daily orgy of sex,
When blindness came on her,
as