LAY THE MARBLE TEA

  twenty-four poems by

  RICHARD BRAUTIGAN

  The grave my little cottage is,

  Where, keeping house for thee,

  I make my parlor orderly,

  And lay the marble tea . . .

  —Emily Dickinson

  Cover by Kenn Davis

  A CARP PRESS PUBLICATION

  The Carp

  461 Mississippi Street

  San Francisco, California

  Copyright 1959

  By Richard Brautigan

  Introduction

  First published in 1959, Lay the Marble Tea, a collection of twenty-four poems, was Brautigan’s first published collection of poetry; his third poetry book. Where most of Brautigan’s later poetry was written in the first person, this collection offered a variety of historical and literary narrators. These poems, as did most of his subsequent work, blurred the boundaries between poetry and prose. Nine of the poems in this book were collected and reprinted in The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster.

  In early March 1959, Brautigan, realizing the difficulty of getting his poetry accepted by publishers, decided, with his first wife, Virginia Dionne Alder, to publish, on their own, a book of poetry. They chose the name Carp Press because Brautigan admired the multiple meanings associated with the fish and the word. Friend and artist Kenn Davis helped Brautigan draw the colophon. The title came from an Emily Dickinson quote. Davis also provided the artwork for the front cover, showing Brautigan and Emily Dickinson, sitting on tombstones, enjoying tea. Brautigan, with his hand around a slender tree, was a conscious phallic reference, according to Davis.

  Five hundred copies of the book were typeset and printed by Litho Art, owned by Roger Neiss, for a total cost of $94.25. Publication began in late April and the finished copies were delivered at the first of May 1959. Brautigan designed the book, arranged the poems, and oversaw the typography and other printing details. Copies of Lay the Marble Tea were sold on consignment in local bookstores, or peddled individually in the North Beach bars at seventy-five cents a copy.

  Brautigan carefully selected and arranged the twenty-four poems in this collection so as to create a cycle where the first poem, “Portrait of the Id as Billy the Kid,” is mentioned in the last poem, “The Twenty-Eight Cents for My Old Age,” as a poem once read in a San Francisco bar. Brautigan included references to Hansel and Gretel, Moby Dick, John Donne, Harpo Marx, and Franz Kafka in various poems. Nine poems, “Sonnet,” “The Chinese Checkers Players,” “Cyclops,” “In a Cafe,” “Kafka’s Hat,” “Yes, the Fish Music,” “The Castle of the Cormorants,” “A Boat” and “To England” were collected in The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster.

  In addition to thirty eight previously uncollected poems, The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster also includes The Return of the Rivers (May 1957), all nine parts of The Galilee Hitch-Hiker (1958), nine poems from the Lay The Marble Tea (1959), seventeen poems from The Octopus Frontier (1960), and all thirty two poems from All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (1967).

  Portrait of the Id As Billy The Kid

  Billy the kid

  shot his first man

  before he was born

  and the man was born.

  Billy the Kid

  made love to his first woman

  before he was born

  and the woman was born.

  Sonnet

  The sea is like

  an old nature poet

  who died of a

  heart attack in a

  public latrine.

  His ghost still

  haunts the urinals.

  At night he can

  be heard walking

  around barefooted

  in the dark.

  Somebody stole

  his shoes.

  The Chinese Checker Players

  When I was six years old

  I played Chinese checkers

  with a woman

  who was ninety-three years old.

  She lived by herself

  in an apartment down the hall

  from ours.

  We played Chinese checkers

  every Monday and Thursday nights.

  While we played she usually talked

  about her husband

  who had been dead for seventy years

  and we drank tea and ate cookies

  and cheated.

  Portrait of a Child-Bride on Her Honeymoon

  The desire

  in her eyes

  sits astride

  a rocking horse.

  Her breasts

  are like

  little teacups.

  And her vagina

  is an Easter

  bunny.

  Hansel and Gretel

  I have always wanted to write a poem about Hansel

  and Gretel going through the forest, leaving behind

  them pieces of apple pie to form sort of a bridge between

  dream and reality, and being followed by those gentle

  birds that embrace both illusions like violins eating

  pieces of apple pie.

  April Ground

  Digging the April ground with a shovel

  that looked like Harpo Marx, I cut a woman in two,

  and one half crawled toward the infinitesimal,

  and the other half crawled toward the eternal.

  The Ferris Wheel

  The world was opening

  and closing

  its insane asylums

  and churches

  like a forgetful old man

  buttoning up his pants

  instead of unbuttoning them.

  Are you going to go

  to the toilet

  in your pants,

  old man?

  The rain was a dark Ferris wheel

  bringing us closer

  to Baudelaire and General Motors.

  We were famous

  and we kicked

  walnut leaves.

  Night

  I went to the castle to see the queen.

  She was in the garden burning flowers.

  “I see you are here on time as always,”

  she said, striking a match to an orchid.

  The petals caught on fire and burned

  like the clothes of an angel.

  I took out a knife and cut off my finger.

  “These flowers,” she said smiling,

  “don’t they burn with a beautiful light?”

  Cyclops

  A glass of lemonade

  travels across this world

  like the eye of the cyclops.

  If a child doesn’t drink

  the lemonade,

  Ulysses will.

  The Escape of the Owl

  The carpenter built a prison ladder, working hard

  all night long, he built that ladder from owl-smelling

  cedar, but he made a mistake, he had an extra rung

  left over, and it flew away.

  In a Cafe

  I watched a man in a cafe fold a slice of bread

  as if he were folding a birth certificate or looking

  at the photograph of a dead lover.

  Fragment

  I am looking

  at wooden crosses

  so old

  that nothing

  is written

  un them anymore,

  there are

  huge stacks

  of crosses

  here,

  there are

  crosses leaning

  against

  fine marble

  tombs,

  there are

  crosses thrown

  into the

  trees,

  there are

  a dozen crosses

  sticking on

  the same

  grave.

  Herman Melville in Dreams,

  Moby Dick in Reality

  In reality Moby Dick

  was a Christ-like goldfish

  that swam through the aquarium

  saving the souls of snails,

  and Captain Ahab

  was a religious Siamese cat

  that helped old ladies

  start their automobiles.

  Kafka’s Hat

  With the rain falling

  surgically against the roof,

  I ate a dish of ice cream

  that looked like Kafka’s hat.

  It was a dish of ice cream

  tasting like an operating table

  with the patient staring

  up at the ceiling.

  Yes, the Fish Music

  A trout-colored wind blows

  through my eyes, through my fingers,

  and I remember how the trout

  used to hide from the dinosaurs

  when they came to drink at the river.

  The trout hid in subways, castles

  and automobiles. They waited patiently

  for the dinosaurs to go away.

  Cantos Falling

  (1)

  The snow on the cow.

  (2)

  The cow has no shadow.

  (3)

  The cow has turned

  to snow.

  The Castle of the Cormorants

  Hamlet with

  a cormorant


/>   under his arm

  married Ophelia.

  She was still

  wet from drowning.

  She looked like

  a white flower

  that had been

  left in the

  rain too long.

  I love you,

  said Ophelia,

  and I love

  that dark

  bird you

  hold in

  your arms.

  Big Sur

  February 1958

  Feel Free to Marry Emily Dickinson

  Yesterday my wife divorced me in Brazil,

  and the rain highway saw my youth have a flat tire,

  leaving me free to marry Emily Dickinson.

  O what profound love we will make together,

  our gentle hands moving like gravestones,

  and our coming will be like a funeral procession.

  Cat

  We lay in that bed one sunny evening after making love

  and decided to name our first girl Cat, we were going

  to name her Cat, but now we have departed forever from our

  love-making, and we will not have a little girl, nor any

  children at all, and I am doomed to become the poet

  in your dreams who falls continually like the evening rain.

  A Childhood Spent in Tacoma

  If a door

  were laid

  on its side,

  you could be

  the captain

  of a submarine.

  Fire one!

  Fire two!

  If a door

  were hanging

  up straight,

  you could

  open it

  and go

  into the

  kitchen.

  To England

  There are no postage stamps that send letters

  back to England three centuries ago,

  no postage stamps that make letters

  travel back until the grave hasn’t been dug yet,

  and John Donne stands looking out the window,

  it is just beginning to rain this April morning,

  and the birds are falling into the trees

  like chess pieces into an unplayed game,

  and John Donne sees the postman coming up the street,

  the postman walks very carefully because his cane

  is made of glass.

  A Boat

  O beautiful

  was the werewolf

  in his evil forest.

  We took him

  to the carnival

  and he started

  crying

  when he saw

  the Ferris wheel.

  Electric

  green and red tears

  flowed down

  his furry cheeks.

  He looked

  like a boat

  out on the dark

  water.

  Geometry

  A circle

  comes complete

  with its

  own grave.

  The Twenty-Eight Cents for My Old Age

  I gave a poetry reading at a bar in San Francisco,

  people sat around and drank beer while a read a poem

  called Portrait of the Id as Billy the Kid,

  when the reading was over I got paid twelve and a half

  dollars, but twenty-eight cents was deducted for my old age,

  and I walked home alone.

 

 

  Richard Brautigan, Lay the Marble Tea

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