Hoxie House

The high house, unpainted timbers already

blackened, was Truth and Wisdom’s armoury,

walls thick enough to bar the arrow

of the hostile Indian, windows so high

and leaded panes so narrow so that no sin,

however faint, could penetrate

the dim, cool classroom. “In Adam’s Fall,

We Sinned All,” began the alphabet. The boys

stayed on until they could sum and call out

the hymn and credo of the Puritan Fathers;

the girls, few and tubercular, were such

as clung to knowledge for scant hope

of ever seeing a husband, spinsters

in waiting for the church pew, the rounds

of chaste charity, if they lived. The stooped

and spectacled teacher made silence,

obedience, and the occasional slap

of an ominous birch rod his syllabus.

One early autumn day, as darkness crept

with dankness into the unfired room,

he grew distracted from his lecturing

on the certainty of Hell by two distinct

aberrances: the clatter and fall

of chestnuts from a spreading tree

that had grown too close for comfort

to the schoolhouse, and the pale face

of Sarah, the oldest of his female charge.

Her agitation at his lecture, agitated him.

His hands began to tremble as he realized

she had come back from a necessity

(so long outdoors and back from the privy

he feared the wolves had taken her)

with a dark smear on her hands he realized

was woman’s blood.  She trembled, crouched

in her seat, her voice a scant whisper

as he required amens and recitations.

When dusk came, and the boys hurtled

toward the broad pond, the trails among

the great trees canopied with vines,

the waiting farms and close houses,

Sarah moved slowly, raising herself with hands

protectively below her waist as though

she feared a trail might follow her, a lure

to bear and beast, a stain upon the landscape.

He blocked her passage. “Stay,” he said.

“Thou hast the mark of sin upon thee.”

She tried to dodge him; his hands reached out

and held her by the shoulder. Her blush

was like a bonfire. She could not speak.

He led her behind the schoolhouse. Silent

she was as he found a leaf pile and pushed

her down there. “Daughter of Eve,”

he cursed her as his mouth found her lips,

“Thou art man’s perdition.” She cried out;

the black boards of Hoxie House, the long

dark shadow of Truth and Wisdom’s armoury

muffling his groans and the tumult

of the lesson he taught her.  That night,

she would close her primer forever,

and take the unbibled spinster’s vow.

No one would ever ask, and no one

would ever believe, how on the day

she bled first, she bled a second time.

On a quest with my friends David and Kleber for pre-1700 houses, we found the famous saltbox Hoxie House in Sandwich, MA. At some point in its history it had been a schoolhouse. I found its color and its stinginess of windows appalling, and this is the only house we saw that seemed to have an aura of evil about it. I instantly flashed onto the "imaginary" events in this poem, as I tried to imagine a repressed Puritan teacher locked up in this confined building with children.

On the Island of Pohnpei

A Dramatic Monologue

Been to the ruins, have you? Not yet? I can tell
you’re one of those scholarly types. Deep.
I like a firm handshake. New Englanders
come from that Innsmouth place a lot —
limp, clammy handshakes is all you get
from one of them. I know their ways and signs
and can pass when I have to. Just slouch
and tie a scarf around your neck. Feel sorry
when I see their kids, all handsome-like,
until they grow into that “ancestral look.”
Still, there are homelier types around here.

You look more Boston to me, averse
as you seem to be to sunlight. I see the way
you pick your table, one beam of light
on that book you always carry, the rest of you
in shadow. If I painted any more
that would make a fine study. So, Harvard,
is it? you on one of those expeditions?
No, never seen anyone from Arkham before.
Miska — Miskatonic, you say? Can’t say I ever
heard of it, though we’ve had scholarly types
who wouldn’t say where they’re from
and what they’re doing. Sometimes they unload
crate after crate from the cargo ship
then hole up back and above the ruins.
Good pickings for scavengers, too, since
more than half of those fellows disappeared. Sink holes,
you see — they have a way of opening up
when you least expect it. Beneath those ruins,
no one can guess how far down it can go.
Funny thing is, there are tunnels down there
that go deep below the ocean, yet dry
as a Baptist on a blue Sunday.

A lot of those other scholars go sun-mad
or catch some funny diseases from the village girls.
One old professor, philologist I think,
said he would never sleep again,
so he razored off his eyelids. He’s off
in the madhouse in Wellington. Thank you, yes,
I do know just about everybody. Used to be
you could count the white folk on two hands.

Now with the hippies and the Lovecraft tourists,
this place is getting too crowded for me.
I’ve done a museum’s worth of paintings
in those ruins, and did a lot of diving
in my younger days. There’s more of those ruins
under the water than above, you know.
Those — what do you learned folk call them —
Encylco — Yes, “Cyclopean” — that’s the word
I was searching for. Funny thing is that out there
and down below, it goes so deep you could swear
it was never above water, not for a day,
so how could these Polynesians have built it?

I sold a lot of painting to visitors — the ruins,
a little wildlife, sometimes I’d get a village girl
or some boys to pose for me, very classical.
Nowadays they come and ask for tentacles.
They want that god (I’m not going to say his
name), dragging his squid face over the landscape.
I want to spit every time I hear “R’lyeh!”
Seeing as you’re not one of the hippies,
I’d be happy to take you to the ruins. Easy
it is to lose your way, and as I said,
there are places that fall away. You might
even find the skeleton of one of your own professors,
ha! Just joking! You don’t need to look that way.
Fact is, I want to get off this island.
A chance at a gallery in Sydney, fancy
I’d finally get to see Hong Kong or Thailand.

It’s the hippies, you see, these last two years,
since the stuff they call “trans-heroin” arrived.
Nepal is practically empty and the Afghanis
are mad as hell that some unknown white powder
has pushed all other drugs aside. Now Pohnpei
is the Haight-Ashbury of the South Pacific.
They’re building hostels on the beach.
Three Lebanese, ah, shall I call them
“businessmen,” and some Russians, shall I call them
“silent partners,” have set up a dance club there —
see the smoke? — not twenty yards from the ruins.
Since you’re a scholar, and I can trust you,
I’ll let you in on the secret: the white powder
comes from here, from fabled R’lyeh, Pohnpei Island.

Take it just once, and all you want to do is sleep,
and in that sleep — my god, what they tell me!
Those so-called gentle hippies. One sat there,
right where you’re sitting, and boasted to me,
“Last night, in my dream, I killed a thousand men.
The powder wore off before I could finish eating them.”
At first, it came from divers, not bringing up pearls,
but caked-up minerals from an outcrop,
a crazy place where those ancient stones
had fallen into something and the white
stuff, over many centuries, extruded outward.
But now the Lebanese, on the ploy of laying
a cement foundation for their nightclub
jack-hammered their way down to the vein,
the mother lode of chalk-like powder.
The Russians watch everything, sit down below
in what they call “The Kitchen,” Kalashnikovs
at the ready. There goes the neighborhood.
I have to listen to the thump-thump-a-thump
of the living dead zombie dance music
some nights till three in the morning.
There’s a neon sign, oh, you’ll see it
with tacky Hawaiian lettering, that reads
LOUNGE  R’LYEH — HOOKAH  ALL  NIGHT.

Inside, the hookah pipes emerge
from the floor below, where, in the “kitchen,”
three idiot village girls tend to the charcoal
burner, the bubbling cauldron of water.
The tubes run upward and through the floor,
right to the hookah tables. And they sit,
and they sit, and they sit. The waiters
empty their pockets. Dawn comes,
and the smokers awaken outside, piled
in a heap on top of one another. They smile.
They don’t even care that they’ve been robbed.
Each night at dusk there are more of them,
pressing against the bamboo enclosure,
waiting for the neon sign to come on.

You look agitated, professor. I guess
you didn’t realize what kind of place
you’ve come to for your holiday. All right:
for your research, your serious research. It’s fine,
I guess, to spend your days afield.
The ruins, yes, the ruins are beautiful.
You just don’t want to be here at night.
Did I mention the suicides? The beach,
when the tide comes in, is not so wholesome.
Drug tourists must, of necessity, exhaust
their bank accounts, and so they hope to join
the ranks of those who never awaken.
The Russians remove the bodies by noon.
Bad for business, you see.
Sooner or later they’ll just export the stuff.
They’ll close the lounge. Instead, a kind
of factory will sit there, extracting and packaging.

Oh, you’re a wry one. What’s that you said?
“Unless what’s down below awakens.”
Don’t tell me you’re one of those Believers
in that thing whose name I won’t pronounce.
All right, all right, let go of me! I’ll say it:
Cthulhu, Cthulhu, Cthulhu, damn you!
I’ve read Lovecraft, okay? Look, I’m a realist.
My paintings look like photos. There’s nothing
here, nothing whatever. Yes, yes, I follow.
They’re what? No, don’t make me think that,
don’t make me say that. You’re hurting me!
Fine! Just calm down now. I heard you.
I wish I hadn’t heard you.
Damn you intellectuals, connecting everything.
They’re ... smoking ... the ...brains ... of ... Cthulhu.

Written for H. P. Lovecraft’s Birthday Celebration
Providence, Rhode Island, Swan Point Cemetery
August 19, 2012

Alexander Pushkin: The Demons

A new paraphrase/adaptation of a Russian poem from 1830.

The clouds whirl, the clouds scurry.
The moon, unseen, lights up
from above the flying snow.
Gloom-ridden sky, gloom-ridden night:
on my life, I can’t find the way.

I drive, I drive on the endless steppe.
The little bell’s ding-ding-ding
flies back to me, fearsome,
fearsome in spite of one’s self,
lost bells amid an unknown plain!
— “Driver, don’t stop! Keep going on!” —

“It’s impossible, sir. It’s a heavy go
for the horses against all this snow.
And my eyes are swelling shut, sir.
Who can make out where snow ends
and where the land begins?
All the roads are covered, I swear.
Kill me if you like. I’ve stopped,
for not a track is to be seen.
We are lost! What would you have me do?” —

“What have you been following, driver,
if you can see no road?” —

“Some Demon of the steppe, my lord,
is leading the horse and me. I thought
I recognized a turn or two, but no,
now we’ve been turned aside. We’re lost!

“Look, there ahead beyond that drift
he huffs, and spits at me. My God,
he’s almost led the stumbling team
into a steep ravine! Back, back!

“Did you not see him, sir? He stood
as thin as a weird mile-post before us.
(Here, take this cloth and clean
your fogged-up spectacles!)
Look there — that little spark was him,
and now he’s gone into the empty dark.”

The clouds whirl, the clouds scurry.
The moon, unseen, lights up
from above the flying snow.
Gloom-ridden sky, gloom-ridden night:
on my life, I can’t find the way.

We have no strength to go onward:
there, look, our tracks again:
we have gone in a full circle!
The little bell is suddenly silent,
in a fog so thick it cannot tremble.

The horses stop. What is that in the field?
“Who knows, sir. It’s just a tree stump.
No, Bozhe moi, I see a wolf!”
The snowstorm becomes furious,
the snowstorm howls and wails.
The snorting horses make sounds
of terror and try to break the reins.

“There – farther on — the Demon.
I saw him jump, sir. See there:
just those two eyes float deep,
red lamps inside the gray-white
nothingness of sky and snow.”

Then comes a sudden silence,
a narrow path made visible
lures on the horses; the bell
makes tentative tinkles. I see
a line of phantoms assembled
on either side of us,
in the midst of the whitening plains.

Onward we go, the driver’s
whispered litany of Bozhe moi,
Bozhe moi and the silver ding
of the blessed sledge-bell
our only prow and pilot.

Endless and formless,
the Demons watch us
in the dim play of the moonlight;
they are are legion as leaves
on the ground in November.

How many are there? Where do they go
en masse in this blizzard night?
And, oh, they are singing. Hush, driver!
Listen to that plaintive melody!
Are they off to some hobgoblins’ burial?
Is Baba Yaga at last to be married?

The clouds whirl, the clouds scurry.
The moon, unseen, lights up
from above the flying snow.
Gloom-ridden sky, gloom-ridden night:
on my life, I can’t find the way.

In faith the driver and the horses
plod on in the narrow passage,
the right-of-way the Demons grant us
as they swarm and swarm around us,
some walking on snow and treetop,
some leaping into the storm itself.

Home, if I make it there, will not be warm
enough, nor will any bright song erase
the funereal chant of the Demons,
whose mourning rends my heart.

Bozhe moi, ding-ding-ding,
Bozhe moi, ding-ding-ding
Bozhe moi, ding-ding-ding

1830, Translation and adaptation by Brett Rutherford, 2012