Lindley Williams Hubbell was of the generation that erected long poems to help examine, or explain, or celebrate–the modern. Alan Swallow published the first, and better part of Hubbell’s Double Triptych before he came to Japan. The second half was finished in Japan. Both halves were published by the Ikuta Press in 1974.

From Long Island Triptych One Greenpont.

I

The Glory of God shines over Greenpoint.
The oxen of the sun
Tread out the darkness along Newel Street.
The first stenographer announces dawn.
The delicatessens open. It is day.

VI

As I turned into Newel Street
The gas house smelled as plain
As when you were a child, and there
Was the old smell again,

And people that I never knew
Came crowding on the wind
Like drunken ghosts, their faces pale
Wavering and thinned,

But there was one who stood apart
And fixed me with a stare,
More beautiful than all the rest
And more than I could bear.

VII

The light that shines at the center of the universe,
The flame that burns at the center of existence,
The fire that glows at the center of my being.

The tranquillity of Brancusi’s bird,
Of Mondrian’s great black and white diamond,
Of Debussy’s clouds,

This is my home, this is where I live,
I have stayed away too long,
I must try to go back.

The wafers of triple bromide in the medicine cabinet,
The luminol, the phenobarbitol,
The codeine hangover,

The horrible dream in which you think you wake up
and find that it is still true,
The fear of going to bed, the cup of hot milk,
The long walks at night,

The coffee in counter joints on Driggs Avenue
At four in the morning, the lousy sandwiches,
The dirty cup,

The hysteria, the clowning, the embarrassment,
the repeated pattern,
The renewed attempt, The discouragement, the shame,
The continued failure,

The humiliation of the mind, of the heart,
of the flesh, of the intention,
The taste of self hatred sour in the throat
Like vomit,

The literary men who hate Shakespeare, the scholars
who hate life,
The artists who hate each other, the bitching one’s friends,
The political row,

The religious crap, the mystic cult, the phony messiah,
The dull lecture, the frustrated and jealous women,
The fake experience,

The loud bullshitting in the pool rooms
and the bowling alleys,
The unfunny joke, the two packs of butts a day,
The bum liquor,

It is all good, I would not unlive a moment of it,
I do not disown a moment of it,
I thank God for it,

But it has taken me far from the center of my being
Where there is sound within silence and silence
within sound
And light within darkness.

I have been gone long enough. I have not forgotten
The way nor the direction. I shall go back
This time to stay,

And in that place where the air is unstirred
and untroubled
The wolves of confusion, disorder and excess
Will fall dead at your feet.

From Two Ridgewood

I

All the nine kinds of angels sing
Over Ridgewood in the spring,
The stoops are scrubbed, the steps are washed,
The pavements clean, the gutters flushed,
The boys and girls are dressed to kill,
The reservoir is on top of the hill,
The jive comes hot, the jive comes sweet
On Linden street, on Linden street,
And beauty sneaks up without warning
In Ridgewood on an April morning.

III

Play Czerny to me. It says arithmetic,
Clearness with rapidity,
The passing under of the thumb,
Play it until your thumb is numb,
On you it looks good.

Play me the School of Velocity
With dispatch and ferocity
the way a woodpecker would.
Better play safe and play Czerny,
It says nothing at all.

Stick to Czerny. Above all
Do not play what Liszt made of the scene
Of love and death at the obscene
Height of the romantic movement.
This is all I can take.

I am hanging on the ropes but I know
They won’t break
Because I twisted them myself and I know
Just how much they can take,
But it’s better not to take any chances.

So play Czerny until your fingers drop off,
I’m a tough old bastard but there are limits,
And never mind your engulphed cathedrals,
Your gardens in the rain,
Or even the white peacock: I know when I’ve had enough.

Go up the scale and down the scale,
Let your thumb pass under and your fingers pass over,
And I hope to God I’m far away
When you learn to play
Beethoven.

From Three Glendale

II

Glendale is happy because it has no history.
It lies between the cemetery and the railroad tracks
And nobody has ever written a book about it.
It first appears in the eighteen seventies
As part of Newtown.

The wind roars in the underpass entering Glendale,
All at once the houses are low and even.
The concrete cylinders of the coal company
Like the columns of Karnak stand above the tracks,
Egyptian and important.

Beyond the coal company the steel frame
Of the power station, with the sky showing through,
Delicately balanced, candid and reticent,
Resembles the Palace at 4 A.M.
By Giacometti.

In J. Wesley Drumm Park a glacial boulder,
Split in half, a bronze plaque fastened
To its wounded side, celebrates
A pioneer educator, for one apparently not
A contradiction in terms.

The necropolis stretches for miles with small pretentious
Marble huts for the useless dead, just as useless
When they were alive. The living live in rows
Of unpretentious and identical houses, who will be
Isolated in death.

The monument makers’ yards are filled with slices
Of marble waiting for names to be cut on them,
Names of men and women and children
Now walking around Glendale, not suspecting
The association.

In the window are pots of cacti and succulents,
With little imitation Japanese gardens,
regardless of current hates, so strong the inertia
Of middle class taste, indifferently
Stuck into the dirt.

In the Atlantic Tritych Hubbell gives voice to an increasing bitterness about humanity, and though his skill at versification remains, he chooses to abandon his art in favor of direct statements of contempt. The most interesting example, follows:

From Atlantic Triptych Part One

VI.

On April 13, 1660,
Major General Harrison
Was hanged, drawn, and quartered.
Mr. Pepys, who was present at the entertainment,
Wrote in his diary,
“He looked as cheerful as any man would look
in that condition.”
Pepys was an ordinary person
Which is why so many ordinary people love him.

But Mozart was not ordinary.
On November 30, 1770,
When he was in Milano
Waiting for the first performance of
Mitridate, Re di Ponto,
He wrote in a letter,
“I saw four rogues hanged today in the Piazza del Duomo.
They hang them here the same way they do at Lyon.”

Double Triptych ends with a whimper, not a bang. One gets the sense that Hubbell simply calls it quits:

From Atlantic Triptych Part Three

X.

Bedrich Hrozny deciphered
The Cretan script.

On an amphora from Cadmeion
He read:

A HOUSE WITH WINDOWS
OF THE AUGURING BIRDS.