Explore "A Visitor from Mars Smiles" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ "Erudite and burnished poets seek / Pliant strength from Latin, French, and Greek / Phrases, finding English incomplete. / Or do they conceal their real defeat, / Like some juggler, faltering, who drops / Circling, rapid balls of words and stops / To relate obscure, pretentious tales, / Hiding nervous moments where he fails? " / Torban, visiting from Mars, became / Silent, and his smile, like mental fame, / Rescued the obscurity of flesh. / Then I answered with a careful, fresh / Purchase from the scorned shop of my mind. / "Men must advertise the things they find. / Erudition, tired after work, / Flirts with plotting vanities that lurk / Poutingly upon the edge of thought. / Languages and legends men have caught / Practice an irrelevant parade / With emotions morbidly arrayed. " / Torban gave the blunt wealth of his smile. / "We, in Mars, have but one tongue whose guile / Does not yield to little, vain designs.
/ Feelings are fermented thoughts whose wines / Bring an aimless fierceness to the mind. / And a row of eyes, convinced and blind, / But we sip them carefully, for we / Do not like your spontaneity. / Children babbling on the rocks in Mars, / Shrieking as they dart in tinseled cars, / Are spontaneous, but as they grow, / We remove this noisy curse and throw / Nimbleness to rule their tongues and ears -- / Juggling games that slay their shouts and fears. / Novelty to you is almost crime: / We decorate the treachery of time! "