Why the Pretty One
This was a true happening but (as you
will see shortly) not such as would ready me
for future ones. What has brisk disaster
to do with a leisurely ordeal?
Neither event, as you will notice also,
has made me an understanding man.
It was my watch one night, away then on
the sea, when leaning on a couple of crates
of something I dreamed of nothing special
into the dark, and whispered the smoke of a
sugared native product into the dark.
Then from behind a quick rush burst not six
feet over me with a sawing and then
a cracking sound, and the other watch
pointed up where a black squall ran port-side
into the distance and a six by six
crate lid veered and disappeared like a gull.
But the other time we were idle ashore
for days somewhere there are sandy foothills
and small plains with weeds that stand like birds,
and there was a steady blow on land
that left off out at sea, leaving us all
peculiar if I remember. The wind
rasped the dense whorls of sharp leaves low on the ground
and shrilled through the heads on the tall seed-stalks,
and all those days the sound rose until we,
without hope, without breath bore the conviction
that our sojourn had not begun and had
no end, like a period of dissipation.
In certain Spanish havens the beggars come
to you saying “Give me an amount. God
will make it good.” Had they been wise those ladies
would have said something of that kind and proffered
a gratifying smile to their junior
treasurer the other Tuesday and maybe
been spared a peculiar fall. For forgetting
their cards or missing dues or due to rancor
from a month of planning they were turned away
from the luncheon which might have saved them through
its regular plaudits and calls to order.
Instead they turned immediately back
after some while waiting with other members
in vying groups where the sound rose and narrowed,
and from the dim hushed hall those five ladies,
my individual patrons, came across
the park together, under a hefty sun,
under slight muffling rain, to my teashop.
I worked on a cruising vessel one season
and saw a woman being led below
about a minute after she had vaulted
the rail, and now her face cluttered with casts
of hair returned to me, and a suggestion
of the odor of moist wool. Then, after
ordering, over the tinkle of service,
the ladies called me and began the question
of a particular person none had touched,
wondering by turns in words like these:
“Maybe when he was a child he went alone
one night along the lakeside or followed streams
in the dark and mating mayflies swarmed him
or he was caught by a swirl of slippery
animals risen from rotted cresses.
It could be too a bird’s egg fell on him,
that red and yellow spattering his coat
showed him the partial form of brain and bill
and wings like candy arms.” A second lady
established the problem but in studious
and in idle terms: “He must have tried
becoming a sphere once when something hurt
and must have failed. He is a cylinder
and lacking the perfected self-containment
of the sphere he nonetheless has beauty
and though incomplete is unassailable.”
The third advanced the first with this addition:
“Maybe when he was a child and a good half
he planted a happy garden for himself
and tried to bring a boyish girl inside
to share his secrets he could not bestow.”
The fourth supposed some more years and less hope
and figured on effects of disaffection:
“Perhaps it was a time sprouting potatoes
came creeping like things of the undersea
surrounding him that gave him the first fevered
turn toward what we now call his fine beauty.”
The last lady came near to reconciling
them: “Some awareness certainly shook him
unawares once and he flinched and flinching
has made him beautiful to all of us
who admire huge eyed skittishness, the fawn
standing some steps off always awkward and
desired.”
Odd gulls often join before
a gale to bank and shrill in company,
then at the heavy time of it they hush
and float broadcast. Those ladies did the same
the other Tuesday. Hopeless and breathless,
both I and they rode like sitting birds into
a last lull, and I was not (as you have seen)
prepared by quick calamities of ocean
labor for land bound suffering at ease.
Understanding or unconcern could serve
but pain and malice won, and who may be
forgiven even his shapeless victories?
“The boy is never by himself,” I said,
“but by him stands an unseen friend whose face
came in the petal fall under a secret
tree, who meets his vague eyes with beaming gaps
and his remote grin with a long lipless smile.”
Copyright Credit: Richard Emil Braun, “Why the Pretty One” from Children Passing. Copyright © 1962 by Richard Emil Braun. Used by permission of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
Source: Children Passing (University of Texas Press, 1962)