Viereck, Peter

English

University of New Mexico

New Mexico Quarterly
Volume 30 | Issue 4 Article 3
1960
Songs as Actions
Peter Viereck
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Recommended Citation
Viereck, Peter. "Songs as Actions." New Mexico Quarterly 30, 4 (1960). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol30/iss4/3
SONGS AS ACTIONS'
A scene from Peter Viereck's Verse-Play
THE TREE WITCH
.
WHAT WENT BEFORE: This singing contest of Scene 5 is the fifth of a series of maneuvers
for which our three' guardian-aunts (the THEY whose secret names are Alecto, Megaera,
Tisiphone) are using the modernmachine;.age WE against our captured dryad (the SHE)
in a collision a/values: the mechanical and adjusted against the organic and spontaneous.
SCENE 5. THE COLLISION CONTEST
[Curtain remains down-we in frontal it-during our opening speech to each other.]
WE: Gloatings on death and autumn but renew her.
We've rubbed her.£ace in; she sang twice as strClng.
Let .the grand plan unwind the Fifth Maneuver,
A duel fought with her own weapon: song.
Byourown sweepstakes we are swept310ng
And cannotstop the'wheel, whose turnings prove her
Each time amoreunfathomable mover.
Now we, she, they-as gong collides with gong-
Sing out our prayers in contrapuntal throng. .
© Peter Viereck 1961. American and world copyright and all dramatic rightstetained by. the author.
The play is being published in· 1961 by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, and is being staged in Har-
varci'sLocb Drama Center by the Poets Theater of Cambridge, Mass. -
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[Curtain rises. Stage in tpree partitions, aunts in one, dryad in another, we in third. All
kneel for our respective freed-songs; aunts beside'human-size bird cage; dryad beside tree,
with Greek lyre hangi,Z-g from it; we beside tractor. Contest opens with liTHE AUNT
•CREED.'1 "
1ST AUNT: ~ Decode by force the mixed-up hint of things,
Extort this truth which every scalpel brings:
--.::.,./
ALL 3 AUNTS: Cages teach useful leSsons to daft wings.
2ND AUNT: At times we ogle a trapeze that swings "
With plagues of foolish, feathered carolings;
We rescue it with rocks that soundness flings;
ALL 3: Cages teach useful lessons to daft wings.
,"
3D AUNT:
1ST AUNT:
\
Au. 3:
348
Catch childhood young with rings
Round its imaginings; I'
Dry.up those springs.
Pull it with dazzling strings;
Pelt i~with Fact that.pings
Whatever sings.
Because rash necks invite the fist that wrings,
Cages teach useful lessons to daft wings.
And yet,
though brows are stuffed with parrotings,
Some traitor-pulse unkings
(In brows beyond our stings,
In songs beyond our slings)
Wisdom with wonderings,
Soundness with Butterings;-
In vain, in vain do cages preach to wings.
PETER VIERECK
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[Spotlight shifts to dryad, speaking tiTHE TREE PRAYER":]
SHE: You high ones, old ones, watching two by two
Wherever shrineless gods are exiled to,
. Send down your lightning. But yo~r olive too.
Cool whisper of the ages, not the age,
Expand the shallows of men's anchorage, .
Apprentice them to more than they can hear.
You.earth-deep resonance they dare not hear,
Be everywhere, like fragrance of the orange,
Yetsingle and sonorous as its root,
Till lives are sweetand IDward as an orange,
And every death a quilt of leaves on root.
[Spotlight shifts to WEj AUNTS temporarily enter ccWE" partition.)
1ST AUNT [to us, with melting voice:]
Now'yourtum; crowa credo we'll be proud of.
[to 2ND AUNT, with crisp military voice:)
You check for deviators,
[to 3RD AUNT:] you for doubters.
WE: We want life horizontal; what
Is vertical we roll down Bat.
Ourstrength is as the strength of ten
Because we are replaceable men.
Replaced from infinite supplies,
What's duplicated never dies.
Jam-packed and yet frictionless
On the oil of civic bliss,
Perpet}la1 motion standing pat,
We look like humans but we're not.
We are ball-bearings in disguise.
[Looking satisfied by our recited credo, aunts return to their own partition.]
WE Uurtive voice.. to each other:)
It never happened again, it was like this;
Just once, at snooze ofaunts, when sap kicked out,
We were backsli4ers. Thathour, pride in size
(Near dinky vines)
Seemed but a piling up of what won't grow.
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Drunkmthe grapeless reel and strut of splurge,
We sagged like puffballs belched by their own bulge.
(Now near her Viil~
Our fit'returns.)
Now wh~n, guffaWing in cahoots wi& wheels,
We boil whole countrysides in eight-lane tar,
What goat-foot smears lewd shapes on it at night?
Our smooch with mammon sulks in paradise
Because of some bleached moon we hanker after,
Some glassblower's lost algebra of.shimmer.
[AUNTS re-enter grim-faced; WE snap to attention, eager-voiced again.]
,WE: But quick rebounding, bland and pink as ever,
From that last ~obble of that backslide hour,
Let's all intone the modern litany,
The positive-edited digest of Great Books.
[Now comes liTHE MODERN liTANY"; tone of incantation; instead of eniambement,
WE-SPOKESMAN pauses solemnly after every verse-line, regardless of punctuation:]
Aunts, guardians, toilet-trainers, lend us your deafness
To prejudice and make us nonconftrmists
Like everybody else. Tell Sparta
These truths we hold to be semantic blurs.
For we are alone among mankind
In combining free individualism' (that is, personalized stationery)
With sense ofcommunity (our folk-dance classes).
Lead us not into deviation, but
Make us feel ~lty near No Trespass signs
As we make guilt-ridden those who trespass against us.
Give us this day our daily treadmill .
Of keeping up with those who keep more up, I .
But deliver us from psychosomatic heart-attack
Bygrimting free parking to customers. For thine is
The working-hypothesis that moves the sun and the other stars.
SHE: The air clogs thick with creeds; that was
[pointing to where our litany came from]
the third one.
All rise like incense: crookedly-
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WE hookingupward:] -aIid twining
Their incompatibles (ours hers, theirs hers, theirs ours)
Into collision songs, Each song two voices.
THEY: Each song notpause nor dream but song-as-action;
We all as rhythms and those rhythms wars.
[The separating stage-partitions drop and thereby re-unite actors for song..duels that follow.
each time with new backdrop. Now comes first collision song. entitled uUNE AGAINST
CIRCLE"; backdrop of big barred. windows opening onto vista of stars and clouds.]
WE SPOKESMAN:
Solidity rushes on.
We move in a moving maze.
Vertigo-praise it-alone
Stays. Cling to it tight.
Man is aflare-up of clay;
Shall he wait to be snuffed, shall he run?
(CRun!" the"windows invite;
Express, expand while we may.
Man is a skidding of light
Bogging in douds, a daze
Of longings and fruit, a stone
Thrown by thrower unknown:
Praise elation of Bight.
SHE:
Solidity rushes on-
Britde ghost at play-:"
Onto the window bars.
"Stand, waitf" they invite;
Compress to the core while you may.
Center and farthest sun,
Throw~r and throw are one;
.. Pattern s.tays.
Alternate heart-beatof light
Grooms and dishevels stars.
Rest in that heart. Praise
Repose of Bight.
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[N(}rv second collision song, called "GOLDEN BANAliTY, PRO AND CON." Back-
drop of paper sun, swinging back and forth between alternate speakers, who look up and
address it during fir,rt four quatrains. Each of the three "WE" quatrains is spoken singly
by different one of us.]
SHE:
Who here's afraid to gawk at lilacs?
Who won't stand up and praise the moon.
Who doubts that skies still ache for skylarks
And waves are lace upon the dune?
WE:
But Bowering grave-dust, Bowerlike snow.dust,
But tinkling dew, but fun of hay,
But soothing buzz and scent of sawdust
Have all been seen, been said-we say.
SHE:
BANALlTY, our saint, our silly:
The sun's your adverb, named "Again";
You wake us with it willy-nilly
And westward wait to tuck us in.
WE:
Trite &me, we try so hard to Bout you,
But even to shock you is cliche.
o catastroph.i-cal-Iy dowdy!
o tedium of gold each day!
SHE:
Who's new enough, most now, most youngest
Enough to eye you most again?
Who'll love the rose that love wore longest,
Yet say it fresher than quick rain? .
WE:
You'll see. You'll say. You'll find the word.
Even wemus~ lilt then, willy-nilly,
TRAPT by one banal triple-chord
Of woman, sun, and waterlily.
SHE: And here's the magnet
[touches lyre] to compel that trap,
Eking out essences you lost in you.
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WE: Being so compelled, our old lost self wakes up,
Lost childhood of the hour before the aunts.
THEY [to each other:]
Step in tO$ave the singing-contest'from her;
Snuff their lost self; she fires it up in them.
[Now third collision song, called tiTHE LOST SELF:' It has only two speakers, both
fussing with tea pots: young child (i.e., WE-SPOKESMAN in child costume) and AUNT
SPOKESMAN.]
CHILD:
AUNT:
CHILD:
AUNT:
CHILD:
AUNT:
CH}LD:
AUNT:
CHILD:
AUNT:
CHILD:
Underground-rivers ripple.
Ripples are sometimes heard.
Child, don't hear them.
Sit down, tea is served. '
People get used to each other.
Sometimes this leads to harm.
Elsewhere. Here's a
Potful; cover it warm.
Younger, were Yfa!s more under?
Later, less haunted by blue?
Patience; soon now
You will be deaf to them too.
Once in a lifetime, buried
Rivers fountain ahd call.
Child, child, hear the
Daily kettle boil.
Once; and who follows, touches
Sand? Or gods? Or-telll
Child, stop trembling;
Porcelain cups may spill.
Children whom tides have altered,
Live fierce and far. And drown?
Quick, move nearer.
Tea is served, sit down..
,
SONGS AS ACTIONS
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'"
[ We sit down at tea table euith air of euallowing iT) total submission to AUNTS.}
WE: Things being so, let them be with guSto so,
The lost self fevered off, the clambakes coming.
[Now fourth collision song, "QUESTION AND ANSWER," accompanied by moon,
made of green cheese, careening from ceiling just out of our reach.]
SHE: What do you see in the holy dread of the moonlight?
(Is it lire-lures dawdling on treacherous bogs?
Or a goat-leap you cannot quite glimpse through the fogs?
Or some slut of a goddess with red-eyed dogs
f Hunting her lover, the moon?)
WE: Clamb~kes, clambakes on cranberry bogs;
, Cans piI.j:d up to the moon.
SHE: What dd you.hear in the holy dread ofthe moonli~ht?
• . (Some stalker whose reverent pouncing Yes
Affirms new unicorns of delicate loveliness?
When he kills, is it true that his beautiful claws caress
A painting, a poell.l, a moon?)
WE: Clambakes, clambakes on cranberry bogs; ,
Hamburgers dimming the moon.
SHE: What do you feel in the holy dread of the moonlight?
(Are you drunk-till the hush of it chills your hair-
With the wager of man and his gay-tragic dare
To be moon of his own inner tide down here?
o pronounce me the wine of the moon!)
WE: It's clambakes, clambakes on cranberry bogs;
Gumdrops all over the moon.
[WE leave stage, re-appear wearing-for this song only-gray flannel suits, placarded
"MADISON AVENUE."}
WE: We're not successful only but refeened.
As proved by our new song, "THECULTU~HUGBLUES."
[This fifth collision song is begun by three "we" and resumed by AU~TS. Only one speaker
at a time, but chorus at refrains. Night-club backdrop and orchest~a. Actor intonation,
and accompanying night-club orchestra, alte~ate between a vulgarly sentimentalized
wail and an offensively raucous gloating, a marriage beteueen oldfa~hioned spirituals and
modern advertising jingles.] ( .
354 PETER VIERECK
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WE:
We no longer starve cul~re;we SWITCH •
And hug it to death; the new PITCH
Is to croon antiquarian love-that-librarian CULture-hug blues.
When Status Quo feels safe enough to ITCH
For scripts that let it laugh at its own TWITCH,
Whaes big bold "beat" bohemia but Babbitt's latest NICHE?
When "liberal" is but a stance and "Tory" but a pout
And "radical" a tease to get still more for sel1ing"~ut,
When suburbs shriek with tongue-in--chic,'
When ads for fads ape art-technique,
They all croon the CULture-hug blues.
If she isn't culture-snooty, there's a cooty on your cutie;
It's the duty of a beauty to be arty at a party,
Smarty with CULtural booze.
For Madison Avenue's guilt at its revenues,
What is the medicine? BLUESI
Not your ma~ulturemuse but our SENSitive muse,
Ouranti-vulgarian, NEo-vulgarian, culture-hug blues.
Ifgenius is an infinite capacity for fakingPAlNS,
Our Weltschmalz tears erase our hucksterSTAINS.
Artis an exorcism better than bell, book, and COUCH j
We're three blindSensitive Plants, see"how we wince, ouch ouch OUCH.
We've got to play with boors by day in order to stock the LARder;
We put to flight that guilt at night by hugging culture HARder;
A cultural ouch does"more than the couch to pUrge that guilty ARdor.
From cash's,clink aghast we shrink, to prove we can affORD it;
With snoot held high we pass it by, because we've already STORED it;
High sen-ti-ment plus six per cent need never hug the SORdid:-
Except in office HOURS, except in office HOURS.
Culture is like a FOReign rug; we hateits looks but need its hug
To prove we can affORD it, to prove we can affORD it.
We're crisp executives at dawn, poetes mautJi'tsat dusk,
But even a sensitive weed must feed its HUSK;
The culturewe hug is a culture for dusk, an afterthought culture, a rarefied musk
And not for office HOURS. I \
/ I ~
• Each capitalizirig of a whole syllable is stage direction for exaggerated loudness and vowel-lingel--
ingj all non-capitalized syllables of such a line,even those normallyacee,nted, get chanted inunaceented
monotone.
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That's why, no matter how soulful we wince,
Our culture-hug muse and your mass-eulture muse
Are identicalsisters under their skins:
Both whore with whocan affORD it.
[Music stops; AUNTS take over stage, addressing audience and us.)
THEY: That's local culture. True folkways now are global.
Though tiffs replaced a toast two sages drank
Inside a tecq-tech-techniculture kitchen,·
What counts is their shared faith: in gad"get-fidgets.
Forget all dreams outside thatcommon faith;
Keep parroting, "Relax all global tension."
Knife out the gray stuff in the frontal lobe;
It spreads contagious dreams and won't relax.
Take lower cultures: Greek or Britons. They
Had tension: at Thermopylae, at Dunkirk.
Relax-here come "THE GLOBAL LOBAL BLUES."
[Music resumes in night-club background for AUNT-song that now follows. 4t "plastic
bag." AUNTS play catch with plastic earth-globe; at "snip," with surgeon-scissors.}
·THEY: Now when dacha nouveau-riche and hot-cha profit itch
Merge brands,
When brain-wash sociology and sublim-ad psychology
Join hands,
When Folksi-Cola toasts unite-vulgarians of all LANDS
And "peace" means the homogenizing global churn of kitsch,
You'll be FORCED to croon the globallobal blues.
First they to~stedJ THEN they tiffed; yet-through summit OR through rift..;...
Here's a truth will never shift while any bureaucrat comMANDS:
Human heads will get short shri~ from RObot hands.
So strike up all rotarian proletarian pan-barbarian BANDS.
Progress is a PLAStic bag;
Come stick in your head and what AILS y~~ will gag.
Gasping the BLUE-in-the-face blues.
When our propaganda spasms turn your isms into wasms,
We'll bag the earth in a PLAStic globe and disconnect your frontal lobe
With our gadget-pop Agitprop air-jet-hop think-no-more blues.
• Dispatch of July 27, 1959: "Today two of the world's leading statesmen and rivals-a vice-presi-
dent, a dictator-exchanged Pepsi-Cola toasts in Moscow, at an American kitehen-exhibit dedicated to
their common aim of industrial progress:'
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In the oldfashioned day, to make citizens stay reliable palS of big BROther,
Th~re were salt mine and whip, but now we just snip the gray stuff that causes the BOther.
That snip is metaphorical, its blade a doctored word; .
For the pen of the rhetorical is mightier than the sword;
And th~ blanker the grin, the blander within,
When atranquillized planet must spin to the din
Of the world-lobotomy blues.
Let justice wobble sloppily in monolith monopoly;
Forget about Thermopylae; let Hungary bleed properly;
Cringe happily, vox populi, and dream it saves your skin- _
While your culture-hug muse, when she muses on booze,
Keeps keening these meaningl~ Mother Goose blues: • . .
"Little boy Geiger, come blow your horn;
There's b~pin the meadow, there's borsht in the corn.
Rockabye fallout, on tOp of the show; ,
When the wind blows you, the tuna will glow;
When the nerve BREAKS, Humpty Dumpty will fall;
Down will cOme baby, CULture and all."
~
357
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, [Now $cene's concluding song, ifIN· THE MONTH OF MARCH TH.E SNAILS
CUMB TENDER TREES"; rendered bY'dryad casually, slowly, undramatically; alone
on dimmed stage:-} 1
i
In the month of March the snails climb tendet trees
To be nearer the Pleiades. I 1
. I I
Grass fingers nab heat. i
The fish jump for the fun of it. 1
Later the roses are willing to fall. 1
The wasted thistle-fluff isn't sorry at all. }
A vineyard, met while walking, is a shelter .~~.
Good to hold to in that helter-skelter.
Forfun-orfood? or hooks? -life likes to twitch;
After the ice, it will not matter which.
After the ice, the feathers - once all throat-
Are shushed; the paraplegic lakes.cannot reach out.
And so, from h~ked exuberanceto numbed retreat,
The gamuts have no meaning; or, what theyhave of it
Encysts in chunky particulars, - .
Thespeci6.ctimothy-grass, the ungeneralized tears,
The vineyard met while walking, a lifebuoy of Here,
Good tohold, in wave on wave of Anywhere.
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Songs as Actions

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