_ BERTIE GRIGGS -- you know Ethelbert
Griggs, don't you? He does the text for
the Paris fashions for a woman's magazine,
and on the side he writes the most impassioned
verse. All about Serpents and Woman, and Lillith
and Phryne, you know.
Bertie said to me only the other day, "Fothy, you
are too Radical. It will keep you down in the
world."
"Bertie," I said, "I know I am, but can I help
it? I spurn the world! A truly virile poet must."
"Some day, Fothy," he said, "you will come into
contact with the law."
I only laughed. Bitterly, I suppose, for Bertie
looked at me quite shocked.
"Bertie," I said, "I expect persecution. I welcome
it. All great souls do. I look for it. On
one pretext or another, I will be flung into prison
when my next volume, "Clamor, Cries and Curses'
comes out."
And I will, too, if I ever find a publisher who
dares to bring it out. But they are all too cowardly!
"Fothy," he said, "you Revolutionists are always
talking -- but what do you ever do?
I arose with dignity. "Bertie," I said, "I am
ready to suffer for the Cause." I turned and left
him. I must have been pale with resolve, for he
ran after me and caught me by the wrist. But I
shook him off.
I was in a desperate mood.
"Curses upon all their Conventions!" I said, as I
turned up the street toward Central Park. "Curses
upon all organized society!"
I stopped in front of Columbus's statue, at
Columbus Circle.
"Fool," I muttered bitterly, "to discover a new
world"
I shook my fist at the statue and went on.
I wandered over to the place where they keep
the animals, and stopped in front of one of the
monkey cages.
Dear, unconventional little beasts! They always
charm my blacker moods away from me! So free,
so untrammeled, so primitive!
I smiled at a monkey. He smiled at me. I held
up a peanut. He reached out his hand for it.
I was about to fling it to him when I saw a sign
that read:
"Visitors are warned not to feed the animals
under the penalty of the law."
Always their laws! Always their restrictions!
Always their damnable shackles! Always this
denial of the rights of the individual!
For a moment I stood there with the peanut in
my hand just simply too angry for anything!
And then I cried out, quite loudly: "Curses upon
organized society! I will break its laws! I will
feed the animals!"
Always in times of great crisis I see myself quite
plainly as if I were some other person; poets often
do, you know; and I could not help thinking of the
pose of Ajax defying the lightning.
"I WILL break the law!" I cried. "So there!"
And with that I flung the peanut right into the
cage with all my might, and ran away, laughing
mockingly as I ran.
I felt that I had crossed the Rubicon, and that
night I sat down and wrote my revolutionary poem,
"The Defiance."
What the Cause needs is men with Vision to see
and Courage to perform! This is the age of Virility! _