Key: Openings
terrify.
Flesh: Offstage,
he looked
too
ordinary in his strength to be so;
short
and stumpish as a pugilist, he lived
by
his fists, all ox-neck and thick root,
all
barrel-chest, battered like a kitchen chair.
A
man of collars, ties, lustrous black suits,
he'd wear his shirtcuffs rolled, lapels rumpled,
trousers
badly creased; and in altercations
in
the street he'd flare his scarred red hands
like
scarves or terrible flowers; then twitch,
spark,
frown as if surprised to finger dimes
in
pockets; or else stare off muttering
thin-lipped,
squinting, his curled hair carved
down
a vicious white line of scalp, forehead
naked
and large as a hand, and like a hand
always
opening--
Key: Only
his eyes were still.
Fixed
and fixed upon. Sleepless. Grey. Still.
And
he seemed a very embarrassable man
for
all that, wearied, haunted, as if whatever
he
did he demanded bring a goodness to
the
world, as if the opposite of good
were
not evil but indifference: being
in
the world can also become habit;
he
lived as if a knowledge not his own
lay
visited upon him.
Flesh: And
in the middle of it all
his
blue cloth cabinet billowed secrets.
Escape
became a kind of consolation
as
it always was and is: he'd slip confined
behind
his curtain and step suddenly free -
thickset,
at ease, free - dangling from a fist
the
loosed, smug, still-locked handcuffs;
or
tear aside the drapery to show
a
box or trunk still nailed ratchet-tight.
Nothing
altered, yet all somehow changed;
as
if to prove what binds men also unbinds.
He
led by example. He reassured the age.
Key:
Yet liberated nothing but himself;
and
which self? Aping the belted, frothing
man
in all men, that blunt, too-familiar
surge
of blood, he'd writhe clear of cabinets
that
all might see unleashed a madness in
the
world. Straitjackets, strap-beds, crazy-belts,
buckled
chairs: the appetites of men
horrified:
to want to see such acts, to seek
for
reassurance in rituals like that:
what
did his suffering tell him of them?
Each
night he'd work contorted, bleeding
in
full view, knees lashing a littered stage,
clothes
in shreds.
Flesh: But
methodical. Clearly sane.
Men
loved his gruff propietary love:
striding
onstage like a boxer, arms flung wide,
he'd
shout, I'm Harry Houdini and I can beat
any
man in the house. He became in time
a
hard, burnished mirror held before a world
which
failed to recognize itself.
Key: Mirrors,
too, are openings.
