Maxwell Bodenheim: Advice to a Hornèd Toad

Hornèd Toad of cloven brown,

Rock souls have dwindled to your eyes

And thrown a splintered end upon your blood.

Night and day have vanished

To you, who squat and watch

Years loosen one sand grain until

Its fall becomes your moment.

Tall things plunge over you,

Slashing your dreams with motion

That holds the death of all they seek,

But you, to whom fierce winds are ripples,

Do not move lest you lose the taste of stillness.

Hornèd Toad of cloven brown,

Never hop from your grey rock crevice

Mute with interwoven beginnings and ends.

The fluid lies of motion

Leave no remembrance behind.

From Advice (1920), the second of Bodenheim’s many collections. Like a Beat Generation poem decades before its time, it stumbles roaring from image to windy image, and every so often a line of real strength rises out of the punch-drunk miasma: “Rock souls have dwindled to your eyes”. Bodenheim’s life pretty much defined the saddest side of Bohemia.