Two Plays
- Two Plays*
I
Collision
Huge hall—disparate planes, angles—whiteness—central arc-light—blaze
Emptiness—
But for one man—
A dependent has shut the door—
MAN: “Back! Bang door! Succession—incentive—ejection—idea—space—cleared of nothings—leaves everything—material—exhaustless creation!”
Stares blankly into arc-light—presses electric button—shattering insistant noise surrounds room—intermittently arc-light extinguishes—vari-colored shafts of lightning crash through fifty-nine windows at irregular heights—the floor worked by propellers—rises and falls irrhythmically—the disymetric receding and incursive planes and angles of walls and ceiling interchange kaleidescopically to successive intricacies—occasional explosions irrupt the modes of
Disharmony
Man rushes floor—with gesture of veteran mariner in hurricane—
As the pandemonium of sound and motion increases—he calms—
MAN: “At last—vibration is intensified to the requisite ratio—for every latent conscious and sub-conscious impulse to respond to automatically—completely—virility ceases to be implicated in disintegrant autostimuli—leaving the Nucleus free for self-activity—
Expansion—Extension—Intension—
Creation—”
The vibrations accelerate to super-velocity—reach the static—the light is uniform—the planes uniplane—motion repose—din silence—
The man rigid—his mind concentrated—
Out of the attained unison—a new tremor produces itself—as it graduates to the primary celerity—in a secondary Inception—
the curtain falls—
the curtain falls— [End Page 8]
II
Cittàbapini
Scene 1
Noon
A greenish man stares blankly at the city—the city stares back at him—
Evening
He smiles at the city—the city roars with—laughter—
Morning
He makes grimaces at the city—the city puts out its tongue, a dawn-reflecting tape of river, at the greenish man—
The greenish man—battling— “You are too big—I must eat you—”
The city swallows him—
The greenish man—stifling—“I am not at home in you—”
The city spits him up—
The greenish man—execrating a passing woman— “You are not a man—”
A man passes—
The greenish man—“Horrific resemblance to myself—I am not—unless—disparate to the neighbors—I am to prove myself unique—”
The greenish man climbs to mountain’s vertex—to meditate on differentiation—prior to conclusion—
The mountain shakes him off—
The greenish man—rolls down into the city again—
The curtain falls in the mud—
Scene 2
The city is fast asleep—
The greenish man—wide-awake—
The greenish man—with a stylograph and a bouquet of manuscript—is spreading himself over the city—feverishly— “Now I shall never see anything but myself—”
He drops a tear into the river—
The river washes him away—
He smiles into the sun—
The sun receives the greenish man—
And burns the city up—
The curtain does not fall
(February 28, 1915, Firenze) [End Page 9]
The Pamperers *
Invisible Obvious
Picked People
Houseless Loony
Porcelain breath—Sèvres bow—Gilded crimson—Curved flutings—Brocade—Tailored muscles—Whipped cream—Blue spirals—Salved lips—Salon—Debussy—Azaleas—Ancestors—Armorial complacencies—Ooze
Picked people melted by a distinguished method among the upholstery.
Tag Ends of Overheard Conversation
The social fabric is a curtain . . . and that warm garnet fold-shadow there, for souls to hide and seek. . . .
Decency shudders in the bare moment, taut between vestibule and auto. . . .
. . . my crystalline lorgnette, . . . trees . . . at this season are all undressed.
The earth a poignant undertaker. . . .
I wish I had a wig darling.
. . . Observe the legs, the agony of the crucified . . . the tendons . . . delicate as Dresden china 15th century . . . ah yes! the troubles of the steam heating plant . . . man from Milan knows his business. . . .
Oh Prince how charming of you . . . and what is your opinion of the sex question?
How simple . . . still I can’t quite agree with you . . . we shall never give up wearing silk stockings.
Ossy you know has discovered a genius . . .
. . . coming from the club . . . wonderful chap, see his predatory eye . . . picking up cigar ends . . . the grand passion . . . the pockets full . . .
Picasso uses all sorts of odds and ends.
No critic dare anticipate the masterpiece this man may stack . . .
Mud larks and geniuses!
There’s a revival in THE THING being a patron . . . I’ve got a Medici Villa somewhere . . . put the fellow in...
