Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser
Page 9
ringing in answer to a word before
all tensity is changed to eagerness.
Translated and resolved, the anguish through,
sensitive altogether to the present :
“Now?” “Yes,” she says, “yes,” she says, “do.”
Answer motion with motion, be birds flying
be the enormous movements of the snows,
be rain, be love, remain equilibrated
unseeking death,
if you must have pilgrimages
go travelling to balance need with answer
suiting the explosion to the ensuing shock
the foil to the airstream running over it
food to the mouth, tools to the body, mind
to the bright mind that leaps in necessity
go answering answering FLY
NIGHT FLIGHT : NEW YORK
Lucid at dusk the city lies revealed
authentic purpose under masonry
emerging into emphasis. Tenuous
the bodies grim at noon lie scattered, limp
on the beach of evening, and the long sea
of night softly encroaches on reality.
Pale the primitive blue of afternoon,
morning's bravado made ambiguous,
and all the bulwarks we relied upon
relapsed to fluid concept. Now the night
opens a shady empire odorous
prodigal in sweetness, sweetly promiscuous.
Foliate evening opens in a blur
of even color on the risen stone :
in unified unbroken shoulderings
of tower past planned tower, twilight-softened;
insanest noise resolves to monotone.
The theory of the city's fact made known
in a revelatory evening stillness.
Traffic and work and riot, triad of waking
are garbled into a full chord, drowning
identity in conquering vibration
impinging on the air, loud, rising, making
the city conscious of propellers shaking
hard frames of aircraft ; night cloven by twin wings,
incisive angles ripping evening where
blueness was closing deepest to the north
beyond the Bridge, beyond the island, planes :
a burr of dissonance, a swoop of bare
fatal battalions black against the air.
Time is metric now with the regular advance : descend the skytrack
signal-red on the wingtips, defined by a glitter of bulbs ;
we lean at the windows or roofrails, attentive
under inverted amphitheatre of sky.
The river is keen under blackness, weapon-malevolent,
crossed jagged marks mirrored against its steel.
Suddenly from a trance of speed are let fall bubbles slowly
blooming in pale light, but hardening to crystal
glows, into calcium brilliance, white bombs floating imperturbable
along the planes of the air, in chains of burning, destruction in the wake
of the beautiful transition. City, shimmer in amusement,
spectators at the mocking of your bombardment.
City, cry out : the space is full of planes, you will be heard,
the thin shark-bodies are concentrated to listen,
without a sound but the clean strength of the engines, dripping death-globes
drifting down the wind
lifted by parachutes in a metaphor of death,
the symbol not the substance, merest detail of fact, going down
the wincing illuminated river, fading over the city.
Planes weave : the children laugh at the fireworks : “Oh, pretty stars!
Oh, see the white!”
Planes move in a calculated dance of war
each throwing, climax to superbest flight.
No whisper rises from the city : New York is quiet
as a doped man walking to the electric chair, fixed in memory,
suspended in an image of peace. Skeins of light
are woven above the city, gathering-in evening in a harvest of peace,
from loveliest vessels falling, the buds of annihilation.
Turn and re-turn in precise advance, engines of power
subtle terrific potency, rays of destruction emitted from black suns
shining the faces of burial, loosing magnificence
in bombs, in a sardonic joke play games of death,
cancel the city to an achievement : zero.
Pregnant zero breeding annihilation….
Futility stands clear on these horizons
marked in the zeros of a thousand clouds
pregnant above a harvested land, whose fruit
was peace infected with the germs of war.
In tragic streaks the planes' formations fly
across the black pavilions of the sky.
Failure encompassed in success, the warplanes
dropping flares, as a historic sum of knowledge,
tallying Icarus loving the sun, and plunging,
Leonardo engraved on the Florentine pale evening
scheming toward wings, as toward an alchemy
transferring life to golden circumstance.
Following him, the warplanes travelling home,
flying over the cities, over the minds
of cities rising against imminent doom.
Icarus' passion, Da Vinci's skill, corrupt,
all rotted into war :
Between murmur and murmur, birth and death,
is the earth's turning which follows the earth's turning,
a swift whisper of life, an ambiguous word spoken ;
morning travelling quiet on mutinous fields,
muscles swollen tight in giant effort ; rain ; some stars ;
a propeller's glimpsing silver whirl, intensely upward,
intensely forward, bearing the plane : flying.
Believe that we bloom upon this stalk of time ;
and in this expansion, time too grows for us
richer and richer towards infinity.
They promised us the gold and harps and seraphs.
Our rising and going to sleep is better than future pinions.
We surrender that hope, drawing our own days in,
covering space and time draped in tornadoes,
lightning invention, speed crushing the stars upon us,
stretching the accordion of our lives, sounding the same chord
longer and savoring it until the echo fails.
Believe that your presences are strong,
O be convinced without formula or rhyme
or any dogma ; use yourselves : be : fly.
Believe that we bloom upon this stalk of time.
THEORY OF FLIGHT
You dynamiting the structure of our loves
embrace your lovers solving antithesis,
open your flesh, people, to opposites
conclude the bold configuration, finish
the counterpoint : sky, include earth now.
Flying, a long vole of descent
renders us land again.
Flight is intolerable contradiction.
We bear the bursting seeds of our return
we will not retreat ; never be moved.
Stretch us onward include in us the past
sow in us history, make us remember triumph.
O golden fructifying, O the sonorous calls
to arms and embattled mottoes in one war
brain versus brain for absolutes, ring harsh!
Miners rest from blackness : reapers, lay by the sheaves
forgive us our tears we go to victory
in a commune of regenerated lives.
The birds of flight return, crucified shapes
old deaths restoring vigor through the sky
mergent with earth, no more horizons now
no more unvisioned capes, no death ; we fly.
reconcile rest to rest
motion to motion's poise,
the guns are dying the past is born again
into these future minds the incarnate past
gleaming upon the present
fliers, grave men,
lovers : do not stop to remember these,
think of them as you travel, the tall kind prophets,
the flamboyant leapers toward death,
the little painful children
how the veins were slit
into the Roman basins to fill Europe with blood
how our world has run over bloody with love and blood
and the misuses of love and blood and veins.
Now we arrive to meet ourselves at last,
we cry beginnings
the criers in the midnight streets call dawn ;
respond respond
you workers poets men of science and love.
Now we can look at our subtle jointures, study our hands,
the tools are assembled, the maps unrolled, propellers spun,
do we say all is in readiness :
the times approach, here is the signal shock : ?
Master in the plane shouts “Contact” :
master on the ground : “Contact!”
he looks up : “Now?” whispering : “Now.”
“Yes,” she says. “Do.”
Say yes, people.
Say yes.
YES
3 The Blood Is Justified
FOR MEMORY
for Ruth Lehman obit February 10, 1934
LIFE AND WORKS
Open with care the journal of those years
firm years precipitating days to death
This was my friend walking in color and flame
walking through a texture of sense
no breath
deranges her fine hair no voice changes her face.
It is hardly possible she will not come again
returned for a short while out of distances
to be re-given to distance and her loves.
It is hardly truth to say that soon
a letter will not come, postmarked Detroit,
New Orleans, Chicago, ultimate Mexico.
I think she must come, and go, and come again.
Throatfuls of life, arms crammed with brilliant days,
the colored years beat strength upon her youth,
pain-bombs exploded her body, joy rocketed in her,
the stranger forests, the books, the bitter times,
preluded college in a sheltered town.
Remembering the pale suede jacket and russet coat
swinging down avenues of trees together,
the nights of talk light cast from copper bowls,
the fugitive journey to the coal-hills : names,
Del Thomas, Tony Mancuso, Mrs. Silva
the black river curdling under a midnight wind.
Remembering how the pale wrists flickered love,
the dark eye-sockets impelled her to the poor,
ring changes
tell of the loves in her life
tell how she loved.
This was my friend of whom I knew the face
the steel-straight intellect, broidered fantastic dreams
the quarrel by the lake
and knew the hopes
She died. And must be dead.
And is not dead where memory prevails.
Cut the stone, deepen her name.
Her mother did not know her.
Her friends were not enough, we missed essentials.
Love was enough and its blossoms. Behind her life
stands a tall flower-tree, around her life
are worked her valid words into her testament
of love and writing and a ring of love.
HOLY DYING
Across the country, iron hands push up chimneys
black fingers stuck up from the blackened ground.
The rivers bend seaward urgent in blue reaches;
her pain turned seaward. Her life extended past
the sea, the cities, the individual poor,
passionate and companioned, following life.
Through the bright years reckless and proud
dimming into that last impossible pain.
We cannot think she will not come again.
The words lean on the written line, the page
is a signal fire all the letters shine.
Into this life is lowered now death's sign,
the younger days flicker up, the poems burn,
we cannot say Return.
Slowly her death is propelled into our lives
the yellow message the clipped convenient style
the cancelled stamps the telephone wires ring
confirming fear “You were right” : in a week's short while.
Her love was never handcuffed, her hates spoke up,
her life was a job of freedom.
Now the news comes, the Times prints a name
the telephone rings short music over her.
Drink your coffee, open your throat for words.
Loving, she died in passion and holiness.
They share remorse who had required less.
RITUAL FOR DEATH
Last night she died
Turn down the lamps tonight
shade the walls
let the proud voices rise
out of the midnight street, the whistle flying
up and along and flying in the street
the harsh struck stone, a brake squealing the pause
and the brave silence after a lapse of sound.
Turn out the lights
Her body does not move
is striding over no hill in all the world
there is no avenue in Illinois shall know
the eager mouth, the fine voluptuous hands
touch no more Mexicos in dream again.
There was a shadow deep along her cheek,
her eyes and hair were intricate with sun.
Now lights are out.
: Stand to me in the dark
Set your mouth on me for friends we did not know
Be strong in love
give strength to all we meet
the loving the kind the proletarian strong
convey our love to her in the grey fields
less grey for her, send her our breathing lives.
This was my friend
forget the “my,” speak out
This was my friend who eager rash and brave
has found one answer in an early grave.
This is my body : in its youth I find
strength given from the startle of her mind.
If we have strength in this evening, force life between her lips
seal it convey it post it the sheet discolored
the ink already fading
the dead words fading
the dead all dead.
Out of the South are vivid flowers sent,
African daisies, red anemone :
here are the riches of a continent,
and intellectual gifts breaking you free,
poetry sounding in the narrow skull
sealing the sutures with music, smoothing the cheek
with vocable comfort the long hands of sorrow.
The full-blown flowers are given : our hands are full
of flowers and gestures : across New England dunes
where the stiff grasses rise against the sea,
across the city the dark-red roofs, the stone,
across the Alleghanies, down the Valley
the air speaks plenty the words have all been spoken.
Upon what skies are these ambitions written?
across what field lies scattered the young wish,
beneath what seas toll all those fallen dreams—?
CITY OF MONUMENTS
Washington 1934
Be
proud you people of these graves
these chiseled words this precedent
From these blind ruins shines our monument.
Dead navies of the brain will sail
stone celebrate its final choice
when the air shakes, a single voice
a strong voice able to prevail :
Entrust no hope to stone although the stone
shelter the root : see too-great burdens placed
with nothing certain but the risk
set on the infirm column of
the high memorial obelisk
erect in accusation sprung against
a barren sky taut over Anacostia :
give over, Gettysburg ! a word will shake your glory :
blood of the starved fell thin upon this plain,
this battle is not buried with its slain.
Gravestone and battlefield retire
the whole green South is shadowed dark,
the slick white domes are cast in night.
But uneclipsed above the park
the veteran of the Civil War
sees havoc in the tended graves
the midnight bugles blown to free
still unemancipated slaves.
Blinded by chromium or transfiguration
we watch, as through a microscope, decay :
down the broad streets the limousines
advance in passions of display.
Air glints with diamonds, and these clavicles
emerge through orchids by whose trailing spoor
the sensitive cannot mistake
the implicit anguish of the poor.
The throats incline, the marble men rejoice
careless of torrents of despair.
Split by a tendril of revolt
stone cedes to blossom everywhere.
STUDY IN A LATE SUBWAY
The moon revolves outside; possibly, black air
turns so around them facing night's concave,
momentum the slogan of their hurling brains
swung into speed, crying for stillness high
suspended and rising on time's wave.
Did these tracks have a wilder life in the ground?
beaten from streams of metal in secret earth :
energy travels along the veins of steel,
their faces rush forward, missiles of discontent
thrown vaguely to the south and north.
That head is jointed loosely on his neck,
his glossy eyes turn on the walls and floor :
her face is a blank breast with sorrow
spouting at the mouth's nipple. All eyes move
heavily to the opening door,
regarding in dullness how we also enter.
An angle of track charges up to us, swings