In eighteen hundred and eighty nine
Conrad Aiken crossed the line
in nineteen hundred and question-mark
Aiken's windowpane was dark.
But in between o in between
the things he did the things he'd seen!
Born in beautiful Savannah
to which he lifelong sang hosanna
yet not of southern blood was he
he was in fact a damned Yan-kee:
two Mayflower buds
were in his bloods
and one of them was not so blue —
Allerton, the crook of the crew.
And six generations of Delanos
had sharpened his senses and his nose.
His pa a doctor, painter, writer,
his ma a beauty, but which the brighter?
They brought him up to read and write
then turned him loose, to his delight.
Knew every alley and stinking lane
played tricks like tappy-on-the-window-pane
cut elderberry wood to make him a pluffer
with twin chinaberries plugged in as a stuffer
but also learned from the nigger next door
names of snakes and wildflowers galore.
Then all went sour: all went mad:
the kitchen was sullen: the house was bad:
beaten he was: barebacked: crossed hands
on bedstead knobs: trunk-straps, three bands:
for something nobody yet understands.
And the morning quarrel, and shots, and then
four orphaned children taken north again.
To uncles, and cousins, great-aunts and aunts:
this, I suppose, was his second chance.
But, brothers adopted by a cousin named Taylor,
and then his sister, who became the first " failer, "
where now was left our Quinbad the Quailer?
Out in the cold, where he soon grew old,
Middlesex School became home and fold,
but o dear Jesus was it cruel and cold.
No mind: those years of school and college
baseball and tennis and dear friends and knowledge
o what a delicious delight were these:
the late nights over the piano keys:
resigned from Harvard and gone to Rome
to die in Keats' tomb and live in his home:
and thus by the hard way to wisdom come.
And the poems by god all the while outpouring
by daybreak poring by midnight soaring
gay friends his teachers gay teachers his friends
euphoria: lightning: and life never ends.
But it does and it did and with marriage began
when he found of a sudden that he had to be man:
though he never quite could. And three wives had he
and three blest children by the first of the three.
Those children! Those nuggets! Who promised us this?
And how comprehend or accept such a bliss?
But marriages fade, as has often been said,
whether by bored, or whether by bed,
and at fifty and paunchy he came to a third
and found him that " angel, half woman, half bird. "
Meanwhile he'd been sinking and rising and drinking
and THINKING , and writing, well, ad infinitum:
there were critics to bite and he had to bite 'em
novels to write and he had to write 'em
short stories too and he had to indite 'em.
Consultant in Poetry at Lib. Cong., two years,
where his war with bureaucracy drove him to tears —
tears of blood, too, for he damned near died,
for life MUST have its comical side.
And Awards and Prizes of various sizes
among them a few quite delightful surprises.
Slowing down, slowly: and old age then:
he turned him back to an earlier yen:
to Wall Street returned, became a fast bull
and brought back home his fifty bags full
wife and grandchildren and children and all
would now be secure, for he made quite a haul.
And now waits for death by heart or by head,
or dying piecemeal and daily instead,
of whom at his grave it can truly be said
he cyant do no harm now for now he is dead.
Separate we come, separate go.
And this be it known is all that we know.