Explore "Nightmare and Something Delicate" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ You mutter, with your face / Pleading for more room because / It has scanned a panorama: / You mutter, with every difference / On your face an error in size / Mesmerized by the sight of a sky-line: / "Life is a nightmare and something delicate. " / Lady, they have made a world for you, / And if you dare to leave it / They will flagellate you / With the bones of dead men's thoughts, / And five senses, five termagants / Snapping at the uneasy mind. / "No, five riotous flirts," / You say, "and each one has / A thick blandishment to master the mind. " / Yes, lady, through the bold disarrangement of words / Life acquires with great foresight / An interesting nervousness.
/ But O lady with a decadent music / Somehow silent in lines of flesh, / Finding your face too small, / Finding the earth too small, / Have they not informed you / That crowding life into seven words / Is an insincere and minor epigram? / And have they not reprimanded you / Because you fail to observe / Their vile and fervent spontaneity, / These howlers of earthly shrouds? / And have they neglected to drive / The bluster of their knuckles against your face / Because you rush from the leg and arm / Anecdotes of microscopical towns, / Bandying with a fantasy / Which they call thin and valueless? / "Life is a nightmare and something delicate," / You repeat, and then, "O yes, they have done these things / To me because I take not seriously / The interval between two steps / Made by Death, who has grown a little tired.