Explore "Compulsory Tasks" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Words, it is apparent / That you are crucified and fondled / By the pride of each new generation. / O words, whose sportive formations / Could make the courts of intellect / Belligerent and insane, / Men have sentenced you / To scores of endless drudgeries. / Weakened by the years, / You guard the dying bonfires / Of each nation and race. / Again, like hordes of cattle, / You drag the expectations / Of social theories and remedies, / Stopping only when the blood of men / Washes away your useless labours. / I have seen your bands / Of ragged courtesans / Marching in feverish lines / To rescue the rites of sex. / I have watched you rush / To repair the cracks / In breaking cathedrals and churches.
/ With gilded, exclamatory vowels / You garnish the cowering of earth, / And with recurring darkness / You spurn the peering mind. / Again you are hands of intellect, / Disrobing the flesh of men / And carefully preserving / Each discarded garment / With a pinch of powdered emotion. / Again you are driven forth / In lying mobs of sighs and laughs / To warm the evening hours of a nation. / ("They could never restrain themselves / To wait at home for the postman. / Would Copperfield marry Dora or Agnes? ") / Sentimental breathlessness / Fleeing from the helpless decay of thought.