Daring voices in Stephen Crane's lines

Stripped bare of poetic ornaments, these skeltons of poetry require the reader to listen to  pungent dialogues and bitter soliloquies questioning the order of the universe, and to hark to reticence and silences of the quaintness of Stephen Crane's  cleverly rebellious lines. Pessimistic intellectual profanity worms its way through felicitous and biting satire (or vice versa?)... 

 

In the desert

I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

Who, squatting upon the ground,

Held his heart in his hands,

And ate of it.

I said, "Is it good, friend?"

"It is bitter -- bitter," he answered:

"But I like it

Because it is bitter,

And because it is my heart."

***

There was a man with tongue of wood

Who essayed to sing, 

And in truth it was lamentable.

But there was one who heard 

The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood

And knew what the man

Wished to sing,

And with that the singer was content.

***

I walked in a desert.

And I cried,

"Ah, God, take me from this place!"

A voice said, "It is no desert."

I cried, "Well, But --

The sand, the heat, the vacant

horizon."

A voice said, "It is no desert."

***

When the prophet, a complacent fat

man,

Arrived at the mountain-top,

He cried: "Woe to my knowledge!

I intended to see good white lands

And bad black lands,

But the scene is grey."

***

"A man said to the universe:

"Sir, I exist!"

"However," replied the universe, 

"The fact has not created in me

"A sense of obligation."

***

I heard thee laugh,

And in this merriment 

I defined the measure of my pain;

I knew that I was alone,

Alone with love,

Poor shivering love,

And he, little sprite, 

Came to watch with me,

And at midnight,

We were like two creatures by a dead

camp-

fire.

 

***