Poems by Stephen Crane

Along with Isaac Babel, Stephen Crane is my favorite short story writer. (I could throw Trevor, McGahern and Salter in the mix, but then I start to sound wishy-washy.) In the story, "The Open Boat," Crane wrote my favorite opening line; he wrote my favorite ending in "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky." Crane also wrote poems, strange little poems that remind me, no so much in their language or themes as in the way they get where they are going, of Emily Dickinson. Here are three. They have no titles, so I'll just number them. In #1, I like "gardens/ lying at impossible distances." Feels very precisely like life. In #2, I hear the first voice as some lying, hyperbolic evangelist in Ocean Grove, NJ, the revival town near where Crane grew up. The second voice, ironically, sounds like a truth-teller. In poem #3, I like the craving for hope and, of course, "...hence with your red sword of virtue."

1

There was set before me a mighty hill,

And long days I climbed

Through regions of snow.

When I had before me the summit-view,

It seemed that my labor

Had been to see gardens

Lying at impossible distances.

2

"Truth," said a traveller,

"Is a rock, a mighty fortress;

Often have I been to it,

Even to its highest tower,

From whence the world looks back."

"Truth," said a traveller,

"Is a breath, a wind,

A shadow, a phantom;

Long have I pursued it,

But never have I touched

The hem of its garment."

And I believed the second traveller;

For truth was to me

A breath, a wind,

A shadow, a phantom;

And never had I touched

The hem of its garment.

3

Supposing that I should have the courage

To let a red sword of virtue

Plunge into my heart,

Letting to the weeds of the ground

My sinful blood,

What can you offer me?

A gardened castle?

A flowery kingdom?

What? A hope?

Then hence with your red sword of virtue.