Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

by Janet Kaufman

  The other living with the choice of life

  Turning each day of living to the living day.

  The strength, the grossness, spirit and gall of choice.

  They came to me and said, “If you must choose,

  Is it yourself or the child?” Laughter I learned

  In that moment, laughter and choice of life.

  I saw an immense ship trembling on the water

  Lift by a gesture of hands. I saw a child. I saw

  A red room, the eyes, the hands, the hands and eyes.

  7

  You will enter the world where death by fear and explosion

  Is waited; longed for by many; by all dreamed.

  You will enter the world where various poverty

  Makes thin the imagination and the bone.

  You will enter the world where birth is walled about,

  Where years are walled journeys, death a walled-in act.

  You will enter the world which eats itself

  Naming faith, reason, naming love, truth, fact.

  You in your dark lake moving darkly now

  Will leave a house that time makes, times to come

  Enter the present, where all the deaths and all

  The old betrayals have come home again.

  World where again Judas, the little child,

  May grow and choose. You will enter the world.

  8

  Child who within me gives me dreams and sleep,

  Your sleep, your dreams; you hold me in your flesh

  Including me where nothing has included

  Until I said : I will include, will wish

  And in my belly be a birth, will keep

  All delicacy, all delight unclouded.

  Dreams of an unborn child move through my dreams,

  The sun is not alone in making fire and wave

  Find meeting-place, for flesh and future meet,

  The seal in the green wave like you in me,

  Child. My blood at night full of your dreams,

  Sleep coming by day as strong as sun on me,

  Coming with sun-dreams where leaves and rivers meet,

  And I at last alive sunlight and wave.

  9

  Rider of dream, the body as an image

  Alone in crisis. I have seen the wind,

  Its tall cloud standing on a pillar of air,

  The toe of the whirlwind turning on the ground.

  Have known in myself hollow bodiless shade,

  The shadow falling from the tree to the ground,

  Have lost and lost and now at last am found

  For a moment of sleep and waking, striking root.

  Praise that the homeless may in their bodies be

  A house that time makes, where the future moves

  In his dark lake. Praise that the cities of men,

  The fields of men, may at all moments choose.

  Lose, use, and live. And at this daylight, praise

  To the grace of the world and time that I may hope

  To live, to write, to see my human child.

  Orpheus

  1949

  1

  The mountaintop stands in silence a minute after the murder.

  The women are furies racing down the slope; far down,

  copper and black of hair, the white heel running,

  escaped line of skirt and foot,

  among the leaves and needles of these witness trees.

  Overhead, clouds, lions and towers of the sky.

  Darkness masses among the treetops; dense shapes bulk

  among treetrunks over the murdered ground,

  stain of light glancing on the jointed branches.

  Light of water, blaze of the comet-tailed stars.

  The scene is the mountain, just after the murder,

  with a dry concentrated moon

  rocking back and forth between the crowns of trees,

  back and forth, until over this black crown,

  attacking the sharp black and the secrecy, moon comes to rest.

  And the exhausted

  women are streaming down the paths at the foot

  of the mountain, now fleeing,

  now halted by the sleep that follows murder.

  From this moment, the darkness fills the walls of rivers,

  and the walls of houses and in the villages

  the walls, the olive groves, remembrances and pillars

  of dark. Murder. Scattered and done.

  Down in his blood on a holy mountaintop.

  All the voices are done; very deep, they rest, they are alone.

  Only the breath around the earth moves, in a slow rested rhythm,

  as the moon

  comes to rest over that treepoint swaying like the breast

  of an escaping woman. Down

  from the moon one cloud falls and it passes, sails upon

  this place in the forest where the god is slain.

  These golden breasts have troubled heaven.

  But they are breasts of tears; their act is done; and down,

  here on wet ground, scattered, the flowing man.

  Scattered, there lit, in black and golden blood :

  his hand, a foot, a flat breast, phallus, a foot,

  shoulder and sloping back and lyre and murdered head.

  Hacked, stopped, he bleeds with the long dayblood's life.

  Has bled until the moon cleared range and rose, female and male,

  shining on treetops and water and on the pieces of a man.

  Very quiet, the trees awake. And find their voices. But

  the clouds are first, they have begun their song

  over these air-cut, over these river-cut mountains—

  Lost! they build the sound of Lost! the dark level clouds

  voice under voice arranged in white arpeggios

  on the high air, the statement of the sky

  rides across, very high, very clear,

  singing Lost; lost man.

  And the river falls among the plunging forests,

  the heartshaped waterfall goes down like the fall of man

  seeking, and crying one word, earth's water speaking of harvest.

  But moon says No : in finished night the great moon overrides,

  promising new moons only, saying I know no harvests—

  My harvest, declares in whiteness, are the tides to come.

  These words are called in a silence

  over the scattered man.

  The clouds move, the river moves,

  the great moon slowly moves; even more slowly now,

  the first finger of the right hand.

  The right hand stirred in the small grass and said

  “Do more; for this is how it is,” and died again.

  2

  1

  Scattered. The fool of things. For here is Orpheus,

  without his origin : the body, mother of self,

  the earliest self, the mother of permanence.

  He is sensation and matter, all forms and no form.

  He is the pieces of Orpheus and he is chaos.

  All myths are within the body when it is most whole,

  all positions being referred to flesh in unity—

  slow changes of form, the child and growing man

  as friends have seen him, altered by absences and years.

  Scatterings cannot discern changes of quality:

  This scattered on the mountain is no man

  but body as circus.

  Sideshow of parts, the freaks of Orpheus.

  2

  The wounds : Touch me! Love me! Speak to me!

  The hand risen to reap, standing upon its wrist

  and singing, “I will do,” among its dreams.

  The hunter eye in the forest, going mad.

  The waste and shed of song that ritual made,

  and the wandering, loss of forms, the darkened light,

  as the eye said:

  I looked at night, to rainbow-cres
ted moon,

  as to round-crested sun I looked at day.

  Stare that fertilizes the threshold of square Hell,

  stare pacing the forest, staring the death away.

  Give everything. Ask not beyond the daily light.

  I shine, am reflected in all that is and will be,

  names, surfaces, the void where light is born.

  There was something I saw. Something not to be seen.

  But I cannot remember; and I cannot see.

  3

  The wounds : Touch me! Speak to me! Love me!

  In darklit death, the strong pyramid heart

  knows something of the source, the maze of blood

  the deeper fountains and dance of certain colors.

  Something was founded at the base of the heart,

  it cannot find it now, but the blood's pilgrimage

  carries its relics and the sacred banners

  far from this mountaintop to the beating valves of the sea.

  It cannot clench.

  There was song, and the tomb of song,

  there was love, but it all escapes. What love? For whom?

  4

  The wounds : Speak to me!

  The arm that living held the lyre

  understands touch me, the thrill of string on hand

  saying to fingers Who am I?

  Father of songs,

  when all the doors are open,

  beyond the clasp of power,

  the mastery of undiscovered music,

  what laying on of grace?

  Healing of the valleys of sacrifice

  and five rivers finally trembling down

  to open sea.

  I almost remember another body,

  I almost, another face.

  5

  The wounds : Love me!

  Something turned back, something looked Hellward round.

  Not this hard heelbone, something that lived and ran.

  The muscles of the thigh are the rapids of a stream,

  the knee a monument stone among fast waters,

  light flowing under the skin, the current hardnesses,

  channels where, secret, the awareness streamed.

  No!

  That was not how it was!

  They will say I turned to a face.

  That was forbidden. There was a moment of turning,

  but not to a face. This leg did turn,

  there was a turn, and then there was a journey,

  and after many dances and wanderings

  Yes; but there was a face.

  6

  Who will speak to the wounds? Who will have grace,

  who will touch this broken, who will dare being whole

  to offer healing? Who broken enough to know

  that the gift is the only real, who will heal these wounds?

  Rolled like a stone in a riverbed

  The stone exposed in the dry riverbed

  This head of dreams, horizon of this murder,

  rolled on the mountaintop. The man who is all head,

  this is, in the circus. Arches of music, arches of the brain,

  furrows and harvests plowed by song. Whom song

  could never capture. This it was alive

  led Jason past the sirens, this

  in Egypt and in Hell had heard of Heaven

  and reading Moses found the breath of life,

  looked up and listening felt the breath of death

  at the left ear, finding then every life

  among the men of mud and the men of sunlight

  the women turned to light in the eyes of this head.

  The head; the song; and the way to transcend.

  The song and chance. The way beyond the wound.

  Rolled, like the music of an old ballad,

  a song of heroes, a stone, a hope, a star over head.

  The head turns into a cloud and the cloud rises

  unwounded, the cloud assumes the shape of plants,

  a giant plant. Rolls to the great anvil storm-cloud,

  creates the storm. This is the head of dream.

  7

  Only there is a wound that cries all night.

  We have not yet come through. It cries Speak, it cries Turn.

  Majesty, lifted omen. The power to make.

  The burning ship that sails to the burning sun

  a sun half sky half water wholly flame,

  the burning ship half wood half water all fire.

  There is no riddle but all is mystery.

  There is only life. To live is to create.

  Father of song, in the seed and vaults of the sea,

  the wall of light and pillars of desire,

  the dark. The dark. But I will know again,

  I will know more and again,

  woman and man.

  8

  And turn and arise and give these wounds their song.

  They have no song and no music. They are wounds.

  And the air-tree, the air-heart

  cannot propose old death-breath any song.

  Fountain of air, I see you offering,

  this air is a bird among the scenes of the body,

  a golden plover, a blackheart plover.

  Here is his body and the trees of life,

  the red tree, the ivory, the tree of nerves,

  powerless to bear another song.

  Chopped like the chopped gold of fields harvested,

  air falling through many seductive shapes,

  cascades of air.

  The shadow falling from the tree to the ground.

  9

  Let the wounds change. Let them not cry aloud.

  Blood-clothed structure, bone of body's being,

  there is no sin here, all the giant emotions

  were uncorrupted, but there is no sign.

  The bones and the skein of flowing, the many-chaining

  blood and the chain of dreams and chain of silver nerves

  cannot remember. They cannot imagine. No space

  is here, no chance nor geometry,

  any more than this mountain has its space or chance.

  The mountain looks down the road. It sees the last of the women

  escaped and alone, running away the road.

  It sees one woman in a million shapes,

  procession of women down the road of time.

  They have changed into weapons; now they need be whole.

  And the pieces of the body cannot be.

  They do not even know they need be whole.

  Only the wounds in their endless crying.

  Now they know.

  10

  Touch me! Love me! Speak to me!

  One effort and one risk.

  The hand is risen. It braces itself, it flattens,

  and the third finger touches the lyre. Wounds of hand.

  But it finds thick gold of frame, grasps the frame

  with its old fingering of bone and gold.

  Now there is blood, a train of blood on grass

  as hand swings high and with a sowing gesture

  throws the lyre upward. The lyre is going up:

  the old lyre of Orpheus, four strings of song

  of the dawn of all things, daystar, daymoon, and man,

  hurtles up, whistling through black air.

  Tingles in moon-air. Reaches the other stars.

  And these four strings now sing:

  Eurydice.

  3

  Standing in silence on the mountaintop, the trees incline

  before the breath of fire.

  Very slowly, the sounds awake. Breathing that is the

  consciousness, the lifting

  and the resting of life, and surf-sounds of many flames.

  Flame in its flowing streams about these pieces

  and under the sides of clouds and chars the branches.

  It does not touch the flesh. Now the flesh moves,

  the hacked foot and the hand and the head,

 
; buttocks and heart, phallus and breast, compose.

  Now the body is formed; and the blood of Orpheus,

  spilled, soaked, and deep under the wet ground,

  rises in fountains playing into the wounds.

  Now the body is whole; but it is covered with murder.

  A mist of blood and fire shines over the body,

  shining upon the mountain, a rose of form.

  And now the wounds losing self-pity change,

  they are mouths, they are the many mouths of music.

  And now they, disappear. He is made whole.

  The mist dissolves into the body of song.

  A lake of fire lowers, tendrils level to source,

  over the mountaintop many young streams.

  Standing newborn and naked, Orpheus.

  He has died the death of the god.

  His gifts are to be made, in a newfound voice,

  his body his voice. His truth has turned into life.

  —When I looked back in that night, I looked beyond love at hell.

  All the poets and powers will recognize.

  I thought the kings of Hell would recognize.

  I misjudged evil. —

  He has opened the door of pain.

  It is a door and a window and a lens

  opening on another land; pain standing wide

  and the world crystallized in broken rains.

  Nightmares of scatterings are past, the disc of music and day

  makes dawn and the streams make seed of towering fern.

  The green night rising in flower,

  helmet-flower, nebula-flower, lilacs in their turrets of air,

  and stain of morningside bright on the low sky under

  new constellations of anatomy.

  Ripple of grape, trembling star in the vine of water,

  the night-goer rises in color before a parade of clouds.

  Now he remembers the real; remembers love.

  His life is simpler than the sum of its parts.

  The arrangement is the life. It is the song.

  His death is the birth of the god.

  He sings the coming things, he sings arrivals,

  the blood reversing from the soaked ground, warmth

  passing over the lands where now barren resists,

  fertile and wet invite, all in their way receive.

  And all the weapons meld into his song.

  The weapons, the wounds, the women his murderers.

  He sings the leaves of the trees, the music of immense forests,

  the young arriving, the leaf of time and their selves

  their crying for their needs and their successes,

  developing through these to make their gifts. In flower.

  All who through crises of the body pass

  to the human life and the music of the source.