Hart Crane’s Voyages III & V read by Tennessee Williams
In my twenties I was lucky to find an LP of Tennessee Williams reading Hart Crane poems at a record store in Philly. I’ve converted them to Vimeos and include Voyages III and V here. Enjoy.
III
Infinite consanguinity it bears This tendered theme of you that light Retrieves from sea plains where the sky Resigns a breast that every wave enthrones; While ribboned water lanes I wind Are laved and scattered with no stroke Wide from your side, whereto this hour The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands. And so, admitted through black swollen gates That must arrest all distance otherwise, Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments, Light wrestling there incessantly with light, Star kissing star through wave on wave unto Your body rocking! …………………………and where death, if shed, Presumes no carnage, but this single change,- Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn The silken skilled transmemberment of song; Permit me voyage, love, into your hands…
V
Meticulous, past midnight in clear rime, Infrangible and lonely, smooth as though cast Together in one merciless white blade- The bay estuaries fleck the hard sky limits. -As if too brittle or too clear to touch! The cables of our sleep so swiftly filed, Already hang, shred ends from remembered stars. One frozen trackless smile . . . What words Can strangle this deaf moonlight? For we Are overtaken. Now no cry, no sword Can fasten or deflect this tidal wedge, Slow tyranny of moonlight, moonlight loved And changed . “There’s Nothing like this in the world,” you say, is Knowing I cannot touch your hand and look Too, into that godless cleft of sky Where nothing turns but dead sands flashing. “-And never to quite understand!” No, In all the argosy of your bright hair I dreamed Nothing so flagless as this piracy. But now Draw in your head, alone and too tall here. Your eyes already in the slant of drifting foam; Your breath sealed by the ghosts I do not know: Draw in your head and sleep the long way home.
On the YouTube below Tennessee Williams talks about Hart Crane and reads the poem, "Indiana." This interview has been rated not suitable for children so you have to click on the link to hear it. It is very much worth the effort. Do it.
