The Best of Archy and Mehitabel (7 page)

modjeska was a real

trouper she knew how to pick

her support i would like

to see any of these modern

theatre cats play the owl s eyes

to modjeska s lady macbeth

but they haven t got it nowadays

they haven t got it

here

mehitabel he says

both our professions

are being ruined

by amateurs

archy

you want to know

whether i believe in ghosts

of course i do not believe in them

if you had known

as many of them as i have

you would not

believe in them either

perhaps i have been

unfortunate in my acquaintance

but the ones i have known

have been a bad lot

no one could believe in them

after being acquainted with them

a short time

it is true that i have met

them under peculiar

circumstances

that is while they

were migrating into the

bodies of what human beings

consider a lower order

of creatures

before i became a cockroach

i was a free verse poet

one of the pioneers of the artless art

and my punishment for that

was to have my soul

enter the body of a cockroach

the ghosts i have known

were the ghosts of persons

who were waiting for a vacant

body to get into

they knew they were going

to transmigrate into the bodies of

lizards lice bats snakes

worms beetles mice alley cats

turtles snails tadpoles

etcetera

and while they were waiting

they were as cross as all get out

i remember talking to one of them

who had just worked his way

upward again he had been in the

body of a flea and he was going

into a cat fish

you would think he might be

grateful for the promotion

but not he

i do not call this much of an advance

he said why could i not

be a humming bird or something

kid i told him it will

take you a million years to work your

way up to a humming bird

when i remember he said

that i used to be a hat check boy

in a hotel i could

spend a million years weeping

to think that i should come to this

we have all seen better days i said

we have all come down in the world

you have not come down as far

as some of us

if i ever get to be a hat check boy

again he said i will sting

somebody for what i have had to suffer

that remark will probably cost you

another million years among

the lower creatures i told him

transmigration is a great thing

if you do not weaken

personally my ambition is to get

my time as a cockroach shortened for

good behavior and be promoted

to a revenue officer

it is not much of a step up but

i am humble

i never ran across any of this

ectoplasm that sir arthur

conan doyle tells of but it sounds

as if it might be wonderful

stuff to mend broken furniture with

archy

poets are always asking

where do the little roses go

underneath the snow

but no one ever thinks to say

where do the little insects stay

this is because

as a general rule

roses are more handsome

than insects

beauty gets the best of it

in this world

i have heard people

say how wicked it was

to kill our feathered

friends

in order to get

their plumage and pinions

for the hats of women

and all the while

these same people

might be eating duck

as they talked

the chances are

that it is just as discouraging

to a duck to have

her head amputated

in order to become

a stuffed roast fowl

and decorate a dining table

as it is for a bird

of gayer plumage

to be bumped

off the running board of existence

to furnish plumage

for a lady s hat

but the duck

does not get the sympathy

because the duck

is not beautiful

the only insect

that succeeds in getting

mourned is a moth

or butterfly

whereas every man s

heel is raised against

the spider

and it is getting harder

and harder for spiders

to make an honest living

at that since

human beings have invented

so many ways

of killing flies

humanity will shed poems

full of tears

over the demise of

a bounding doe

or a young gazelle

but the departure of a trusty

camel leaves the

vast majorities

stonily indifferent

perhaps the theory is

that god would not have made

the camel so ugly

if the camel were not wicked

alas exclamation point

the pathos of ugliness

is only perceived

by us cockroaches of the world

and personally

i am having to stand for a lot

i am getting it double

as you might say

before my soul

migrated into the body

of a cockroach

it inhabited the carcase

of a vers libre poet

some vers libre poets are beautiful

but i was not

i had a little blond mustache

that every one thought was a mistake

and yet since i have died

i have thought of that

with regret

it hung over a mouth

that i found it difficult to keep closed

because of adenoidal trouble

but it would have been better

if i could have kept it closed

because the teeth within

were out of alignment

and were of odd sizes

this destroyed my acoustics

as you might say

my chin was nothing much

and knew it

and timidly shrank

into itself

receding from the battle of life

my eyes were all right

but my eyebrows

were scarcely noticeable

i suppose though that if

i had had noticeable eyebrows

they would have been wrong

somehow

well well not to pursue

this painful subject

to the uttermost and ultimate

wart and freckle

i was not handsome and it hampered

me when i was a human

it militated against me

as a poet

more beautiful creatures could

write verse worse than mine

and get up and recite it

with a triumphant air

and get away with it

but my sublimest ideas

were thought to be a total

loss when people saw

where they came from

i think it would have been

only justice

if i had been sent to inhabit

a butterfly

but there is very little

justice in the universe

what is the use

of being the universe

if you have to be just

interrogation point

and i suppose the universe

has so much really important

business on hand

that it finds it impossible

to look after the details

it is rushed

perhaps it has private

knowledge to the effect

that eternity is brief

after all

and it wants to get the big

jobs finished in a hurry

i find it possible to forgive

the universe

i meet it in a give and take spirit

although i do wish

that it would consult me at times

please forgive

the profundity of these

meditations

whenever i have nothing

particular to say

i find myself always

always plunging into cosmic

philosophy

or something

archy

paris france

mehitabel the cat

has been passing her

time in the dubious

company of

a ragged eared tom cat

with one mean

eye and the other

eye missing whom

she calls francy

he has been the hero

or the victim of

many desperate encounters

for part of his tail

has been removed

and his back has been chewed

to the spine

one can see at a glance

that he is a sneak thief

and an apache

a bandit with long

curved claws

you see his likes hanging

about the outdoor markets

here in paris waiting

their chance to sneak

a fish or a bit

of unregarded meat

or whimpering

among the chair legs at the

sidewalk cafes in the

evenings or slinking

down the gutters of

alleys in the old

quarters of the town

he has a raucous voice

much damaged by the night

air and yet there is a

sentimental wheedling

note in it as well

and yet withal he carries

his visible disgrace with

a jaunty air

when i asked mehitabel

where in the name of st denis

did you pick up that

romantic criminal

in the luxembourg gardens

she replied where

we had both gone to kill

birds he has been showing me

paris he does not

understand english but speak of

him with respect

he is like myself

an example of the truth

of the pythagorean idea

you know that in my body

which is that of a cat

there is reincarnated

the soul of cleopatra

well this cat here

was not always a cat either

he has seen better days

he tells me that once he was

a bard and lived here in paris

tell archy here

something about yourself francy

thus encouraged the

murderous looking animal spoke

and i append a

rough translation of

what he said

tame cats on a web of the persian woof

may lick their coats and purr for cream

but i am a tougher kind of goof

scheming a freer kind of scheme

daily i climb where the pigeons gleam

over the gargoyles of notre dame

robbing their nests to hear them scream

for i am a cat of the devil i am

i ll tell the world i m a hard boiled oeuf

i rend the clouds when i let off steam

to the orderly life i cry pouf pouf

it is worth far less than the bourgeois deem

my life is a dance on the edge de l abime

and i am the singer you d love to slam

who murders the midnight anonyme

for i am a cat of the devil i am

when the ribald moon leers over the roof

and the mist reeks up from the chuckling stream

i pad the quais on a silent hoof

dreaming the vagabond s ancient dream

where the piebald toms of the quartier teem

and fight for a fish or a mouldy clam

my rival i rip and his guts unseam

for i am a cat of the devil i am

roach i could rattle you rhymes by the ream

in proof of the fact that i m no spring lamb

maybe the headsman will finish the theme

for i am a cat of the devil i am

mehitabel i said

your friend is nobody else

than francois villon

and he looks it too

archy