To commemorate the death of Houdini on October 31, 1926, here's a poem written about the event contemporarily, by author Melville Cane. Enjoy.
Houdini
By Melville Cane
I
The papers said:
“Houdini Dead!”
Racing newsboys yelled:
“Houdini dead! Houdini Dead!”
People read, smiled:
“Just another front
“Page publicity stunt.”
But Houdini was dead.
How can one get away with it—
The box-trick—
How can one fool Death?
No one could fix the committee,
An undertaker, chairman.
Dead men play no tricks,
But was he “playing dead?”
How could a dead magician
Put it over a live mortician?
They clamped him with manacles,
Shackled his ankles,
Clapped him in a case,
Strapped him to his place,
Locked the Hd.
He did what he was bid.
They kept the watch by day,
They vigiled him by night
In the sputtering candle-light.
He never left their sight.
They bore him from the house,
They caged him in a hearse
(The hearse was framed in glass,
Was screwed, with screws of brass,
And only light could pass).
They took him for a ride,
Captive, chained and tied,
They set him on the ground,
Coffined, fettered, bound,—
The damp November ground.
He made no sound.
The grave was dark and deep,
The walls were high and steep;
They lifted him and lowered him,
They shoveled earth, a heavy heap—
A rising heap, a dwindling hole.
A rabbi made a prayer for his soul.
II
Years ago, a mid-summer day,
Saugatuck, Long Island Sound.
Suddenly he stepped out on the shore,
Dropped his robe,
A bather.
Smiling, bowing, in the sun.
Incredulous ones
Peered within a packing case,
Felt for secret panels,
Tapped each side.
Strangers tied him, hand and foot and torso,
Hammered fast the top with nails of steel,
Roped and double-roped and tugged the knots.
A high derrick dipped,
An iron hook slipped,
Clinched the rope,
Pulled its dangling burden clear of land,
Plunged it in the waves.
Then, as it rose again, a swinging1 minute,
A swimmer stroked his triumph toward the bank.
To do the box-trick in water,
When the July sun is shining,
Is hard;
But, harder still,
On a cold November day
To swim through clay.
III
There was no mountebank,
No spangled juggler
Of rubber-balls and billiard cues and lamps—
This was and is and ever will be spirit.
There is a legerdemain
Unsensed by mortal fingers,
A clairvoyance
The perishable brain
Is hopeless to attain
There is a heart-beat of the spirit;
No one can time it.
There is a blood, a muscle, of the soul.
Lithe is the spirit and nimble
To loose the cords of the body;
Wiry and supple the soul
To slip the strait-jacket of the flesh.
IV
Out of an unbroken grave,
Above unheeding mourners,
Before the sightless eyes of conjurors,
Houdini rose
And lightly sprinted down an aisle of air
Amid the relieved and welcoming” applause
Of those already there.