infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering

In Chaplin's silent burlesque world there is no guilt or lasting harm; and outside his world is laughter. But what does it here mean for something to be "Chaplinesque?" Or more accurately, what does Hart Crane find in Chaplin? In this poem we have the figure of the innocent tramp, the sensitive fool, who clownishly asks love of his spectators, love in the form of laughter. What is true of the normal heart is also true of the tramp's: the instinctive demands, the absence of rational control. Absence? An empty ash can, doubly negative. What allows us to love a cold world? That it then provides us with warm elbow coverts.

CHAPLINESQUE

We make our meek adjustments,

Contented with such random consolations

As the wind deposits

In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find

A famished kitten on the step, and know

Recesses for it from the fury of the street,

Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk

Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb

That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,

Facing the dull squint with what innocence

And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies

More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;

Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.

We can evade you, and all else but the heart:

What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen

The moon in lonely alleys make

A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,

And through all sound of gaiety and quest

Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

            — Hart Crane