Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

by Janet Kaufman

  clear flame in air,

  and over it the dark cloud, spinning, noisy, resolving

  to a cloud of planes, gunning. Among them, a white core,

  the single parachute. As the flier descended

  the planes circled him. Vertigo of machine-guns. And his

  dead body

  swung, receiving bullets, sinking hooded by white

  into the city.

  Into the arson of the burning plane

  fallen faster than flier in cage.

  “That's our illness,” concluded the poet, “the war our age

  must win,”

  as the ship continued into pale sea, bright sea,

  hurrying south,

  “I know its breath on my face, have noted all its symptoms,

  have heard cats shouting, seen the worn eye stare

  up from the doormat, the flowerbed, under the wave,

  learned all the disease of this progressive time.”

  “Can it be cured?” asked the sailor. “At its root,” said the

  union man,

  “by reaching it.” As the ship persevered out from land.

  “Reach it,”

  repeated the blond, “what must we take to our breast,

  what must we kiss away?”

  When the coast fell at last, the passengers' wish was apparent,

  they dreamed of some simple convenient city, peaceful, wired

  for light.

  Organization of lectures and modest entertainment.

  But the audience struggled out after the second solo.

  Log's entry:“Engines and instruments in good condition,

  barmaid in labor, supply of fresh meat running low.

  Insubordination common among the men. Fruit holding out.

  Feeling against ship's orders is met with discipline.”

  But at night

  confusion over the course, anger, lack of sleep,

  ominous quarrels over strange constellations.

  Distress of tourists; they dream of housedogs, house-animals,

  the 6 a.m. cry of lapdogs as the child is delivered,

  crying but not hungry, refusing food, mumbling.

  Dreams of distress: ape-murder, invective, the autumnal escape,

  stumbling dead in the dry leaves, hunting someone, not

  mentioning whom.

  Dying. The barmaid's little baby's dying words

  were the words with which its weekend life began:

  Mother it said, enunciating distinctly,

  refusing food.

  They slid the two-foot coffin overboard,

  a small white circle drowning in green water.

  Identical sickness; but the barmaid did not speak, the crew

  worked or looked up from work, waiting for shore,

  worked with a mutinous hope. The poet spoke to the blond

  mentioning love. She smiled when he said, “I praise the

  marvel physical flowers upon your trellis skeleton, I welcome

  from you, the discipline of every part.” He thought, Elaborate,

  I wait for the release, the explosive distorting act

  with the same fever that they wait for land;

  it fills the mind

  it is my port, lighthouse, coastal clew, token,

  suggesting harbors, a shore-image.

  The close-up in the mind, the head enlarging to fill

  the sky with its immense unique idea;

  Homer wrote Helen blind, the unfree are praising freedom,

  I know the exquisite taste of the sight of land.

  If we saw grass, it would speak, it would say ‘green,’

  I dream of a boat riding on towery waves

  overriding blond pebbles, grating on stone,

  I have a superstition about land:

  it is our wisdom,

  contact and cause, without which only grows

  abstinence, pestilence, unbalance.

  But if a sound can travel to restore

  the tight prophetic brain, but if a ringing

  can travel out over electric seas:

  Bells cannot ring from water, land must wait

  where bells invite, strong, with their Latin chiming.

  The crew looks up to the passenger rail; the poet

  stands with his face into the vocal night:

  Funera plango, fulgura frango, Sabbata pango,

  excito lentos, dissipo ventos, paco cruentos.

  “What do they ring?” shouted the sailor.

  “Calling of funerals, breaking the lightning,

  pealing the Sabbath,

  waking the lazy, dissolving wind, peace to the evil.”

  “They have power,” shouted the sailor,

  “read what they mean.”

  But the boat lost their plango

  and on the wind frango night pango,

  failing sifted over the water

  until one bell repeated singular music,

  only and loud.

  Vox ego, ringing august,

  vox ego sum vitae; voco vos.

  “That hails us,” shouted the sailor,

  “who is that?”

  “The voice of life,” he interpreted, “calling you.”

  The cheer came.

  “They can hear us!” shouted the sailor.

  “Lucky you know the language,” said the blond

  as the hurrah went down. “What are the signals,

  what do they mean?”

  “God,” he said, “revelation! closing over the world,

  breaking on the air, the wasted sounds among

  shouts and the violent bullet in the mouth,

  our age broken like stone, all grace run out of grasp,

  perfected music I could never reach.

  Listen!” he shouted, “triumph of bells, swinging! And for me,

  bells alive also under the sea,” walking

  the length of the deck, rising up tall, diving,

  the arc, the avalanche.

  “Insane!” the critic captain, “doesn't he

  know that the sea is full of teeth?”

  “Send boats out!” “You'll not reclaim that man,” said the blond,

  but the crew were dropping their small boats overside.

  The body was gone. The sailor whistled. The rest of the crew

  dropped down their lifeboats. “Who'll make the land, they

  hear us!” the sailor shouted,

  “who's with us?” “Criminal fools!” threatened the captain,

  and his pistol twitched the sea around them, “mutinous fools,

  you'll hang or drown!” “Off your law-haunted ship! Trying

  for land!”

  The union man, barmaid, radio operator, child who wanted

  the ground jumped—

  but the blond stood crying at the rail

  not daring to be saved.

  “Attempt land!” shouted the sailor, “fight for something we

  know!”

  pulling on oars toward the origin of bells,

  but the great ship was continuing, night advanced, the

  captain:

  “Fanatic clowns, with their contamination,

  laughter and mutiny!” and into severe morning,

  the crazy alcohol blue, the bloodshot afternoon.

  “I wanted to go,” the blond. “Loved that suicide?” asked

  the captain,

  “you'll love me too, you'll have your love, only believe

  their song was mad,

  ‘Free grace and dyin love, Free grace and dyin love

  Free grace and dyin love, to ring dem charmin bells.’”

  Pool money. Slaughter the polo ponies for meat. Tamper

  with radio.

  No sound from the world, and the water giving out.

  A continent of sea: they wished formal December, blue snow,

  suffering cold, but earth. And the sun came down

  bare as the condor, elegant on the sea. />
  Mist rose, a threat of mist, ranging horizons,

  the captain laughed, “Remember the landslide on Chartreuse,

  and does the sea slide down on our monastics?

  By God,” he

  swore, “they were correct, they knew, when they mutinied!”

  “Oh no,” said the blond, “oh no,” as the mist arose.

  Organization of simple banking system for passengers,

  but the closed bar, the empty shops, the lack of cigarettes.

  Dreams of distress : land passed in the night, with no one looking,

  the rising mist, the subterfuge, disaster.

  Log's entry: “Engines faltering, charts useless, meat maggotty,

  passengers grown flabby with lack of confidence,

  great trust in me while I believed in my orders.

  But lately, doubts batter me. I do not confess.

  The sea is

  full of teeth, full of music, and there is war at home.”

  His mirror said, Order's tarnished, you drift insane.

  Drift through continual waste of waters, under high heated clouds,

  closing to storm-threat, guarding the ship, closing to fog,

  and the passengers stared through shadow imagining

  twirling cool springs, low-banked familiar flowers.

  “Now,” wrote the captain, “boats of madness ferry across

  the brain,

  the blizzard sky's covered by fog and lost,

  we'll sail by dead reckoning while the sun is covered;

  saviors may rise which only can be seen

  standing in mirrors.”

  He looked at the tarnished heirloom giving him back his face,

  no word, no savior; raw forehead, open book.

  On deck they lay obscured, bodily blanketed,

  the faceless travellers, streaming fog bannering

  between them let them forget the dangling lifeboat hooks,

  the prison days, the reach of sea, the death

  around them, mutinies, wars, suicides, angers,

  the ineffective rancid idle engines.

  The captain saw the fog taint brightening to ochre,

  “Sulphur!” he cried, “that's hell, that's yellow, the color of

  madness,

  we'll travel back to blue…”

  tearing at his mirror, smashing it, smashing the radio,

  smashing the fog

  until his arms were tied.

  And deep into the galleries of fog, riding in silence, ship

  drifted dead. The cloud came wave on wave,

  the blond woman sang to the sleeping passengers, captain

  shrieked from his straitjacket : Make her go, her hair is

  yellow fog.

  Land, land, she sang, let them all attempt land.

  Land, she sang, doubtful or dangerous. Barriers came

  across her, filling up over her face.

  Disaster of music in the yellow fog,

  and she sang land

  Drifting. Disaster. Drifted the world away

  saner than angels, promise of safety, harbor.

  MEDITERRANEAN

  On the evening of July 25, 1936, five days after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Americans with the Anti-Fascist Olympic Games were evacuated from Barcelona at the order of the Catalonian Government. In a small Spanish boat, the Ciudad di Ibiza, which the Belgians had chartered, they and a group of five hundred, including the Hungarian and Belgian teams as well as the American, sailed overnight to Sète, the first port in France. The only men who remained were those who had volunteered in the Loyalist forces : the core of the future International Column.

  1

  At the end of July, exile. We watched the gangplank go

  cutting the boat away, indicating : sea.

  Barcelona, the sun, the fire-bright harbor, war.

  Five days.

  Here at the rail, foreign and refugee,

  we saw the city, remembered that zero of attack,

  alarm in the groves, snares through the olive hills,

  rebel defeat : leaders, two regiments,

  broadcasts of victory, tango, surrender.

  The truckride to the city, barricades,

  bricks pried at corners, rifle-shot in street,

  car-burning, bombs, blank warnings, fists up, guns

  busy sniping, the town walls, towers of smoke.

  And order making, committees taking charge, foreigners

  commanded out by boat.

  I saw the city, sunwhite flew on glass,

  trucewhite from window, the personal lighting found

  eyes on the dock, sunset-lit faces of singers,

  eyes, goodbye into exile. Saw where Columbus rides

  black-pillared : discovery, turn back, explore

  a new found Spain, coast-province, city-harbor.

  Saw our parades ended, the last marchers on board

  listed by nation.

  I saw first of the faces going home into war

  the brave man Otto Boch, the German exile, knowing

  he quieted tourists during machine gun battle,

  he kept his life straight as a single issue—

  left at that dock we left, his gazing Breughel face,

  square forehead and eyes, strong square breast fading,

  the narrow runner's hips diminishing dark.

  I see this man, dock, war, a latent image.

  The boat Ciudad di Ibiza, built for 200,

  loaded with 500, manned by loyal sailors,

  chartered by Belgians when consulates were helpless,

  through a garden of gunboats, margin of the port,

  entered : Mediterranean.

  2

  Frontier of Europe, the tideless sea, a field of power

  touching desirable coasts, rocking in time conquests,

  fertile, the moving water maintains its boundaries

  layer on layer, Troy—seven civilized worlds:

  Egypt, Greece, Rome, jewel Jerusalem,

  giant feudal Spain, giant England, this last war.

  The boat pulled into evening, underglaze blue

  flared instant fire, blackened towards Africa.

  Over the city alternate lights occurred;

  and pale

  in the pale sky emerging stars.

  No city now, a besieged line of lights

  masking the darkness where the country lay.

  But we knew guns

  bright through mimosa

  singe of powder

  and reconnoitering plane

  flying anonymous

  scanning the Pyrenees

  black now above the Catalonian Sea.

  Boat of escape, dark on the water, hastening, safe,

  holding non-combatants, the athlete, the child,

  the printer, the boy from Antwerp, the black boxer,

  lawyer and communist.

  The Games had not been held.

  A week of Games, theatre and festival;

  world anti-fascist week. Pistol starts race.

  Machine gun marks the war. Answered unarmed,

  charged the Embarcadero, met those guns.

  And charging through the province, joined that army.

  Boys from the hills, the unmatched guns,

  the clumsy armored cars.

  Drilled in the bullring. Radio cries:

  To Saragossa! And this boat.

  Escape, dark on the water, an overloaded ship.

  Crowded the deck. Spoke little. Down to dinner.

  Quiet on the sea: no guns.

  The printer said, In Paris there is time,

  but where's its place now; where is poetry?

  This is the sea of war; the first frontier

  blank on the maps, blank sea; Minoan boats

  maybe achieved this shore;

  mountains whose slope divides

  one race, old insurrections, Narbo, now

  moves at the colored beach

 
destroyer wardog. “Do not burn the church,

  compañeros, it is beautiful. Besides,

  it brings tourists.” They smashed only the image

  madness and persecution.

  Exterminating wish; they forced the door,

  lifted the rifle, broke the garden window,

  removed only the drawings : cross and wrath.

  Whenever we think of these, the poem is,

  that week, the beginning, exile

  remembered in continual poetry.

  Voyage and exile, a midnight cold return,

  dark to our left mountains begin the sky.

  There, pointed the Belgian, I heard a pulse of war,

  sharp guns while I ate grapes in the Pyrenees.

  Alone, walking to Spain, the five o'clock of war.

  In those cliffs run the sashed and sandalled men,

  capture the car, arrest the priest, kill captain,

  fight our war.

  The poem is the fact, memory fails

  under and seething lifts and will not pass.

  Here is home-country, who fights our war.

  Street-meeting speaker to us:

  “…came for Games,

  you stay for victory; foreign? your job is:

  go tell your countries what you saw in Spain.”

  The dark unguarded army left all night.

  M. de Paîche said, “We can learn from Spain.”

  The face on the dock that turned to find the war.

  3

  Seething, and falling back, a sea of stars,

  Black marked with virile silver. Peace all night,

  over that land, planes

  death-lists a frantic bandage

  the rubber tires burning monuments

  sandbag, overturned wagon, barricade

  girl's hand with gun food failing, water failing

  the epidemic threat

  the date in a diary a blank page opposite

  no entry—

  however, met

  the visible enemy heroes: madness, infatuation

  the cache in the crypt, the breadline shelled,

  the yachtclub arsenal, the foreign cheque.

  History racing from an assumed name, peace,

  a time used to perfect weapons.

  If we had not seen fighting,

  if we had not looked there

  the plane flew low

  the plaster ripped by shots

  the peasant's house

  if we had stayed in our world

  between the table and the desk

  between the town and the suburb

  slowly disintegration

  male and female

  If we had lived in our city

  sixty years might not prove

  the power this week

  the overthrown past

  tourist and refugee

  Emeric in the bow speaking his life

  and the night on this ship

  the night over Spain