what the hell
Frail limbs are proportionately low
Buy a limb today.
And while we walk
we ride
footgear alert
to beat the sweet tenor
of their sentiment
(they keep their trees away from us)
a tour of the tines—
rise and sore
life term.
* * *
1. subconscious
2. wakeful
3. full consciousness
1. subconscious
2. toward monologue
3. social-banal
1936–1945
O let's glee glow as we go
there must be things in the world—
Jesus pay for the working soul,
fearful lives by what right hopeful
and the apse in the tiger's horn,
costume for skiing I have heard
and rings for church people
and glee glo glum
it must be fun
to have boots for snow.
Troubles to win
and battles to bin
and after
a tare in the side
of all my ties
and barn
dances.
A country's economics sick
affects its people's speech.
No bread and cheese and strawberries
I have no pay, they say.
Till in revolution rises
the strength to change
the undigestible phrase.
Lady in the Leopard Coat
Tender spotted
hoped with care
she's coming back
from going there.
Jim Poor's his name
and Poor Jay's mine,
his hair's aflame
not worth a dime
or he'd sell it.
Scuttle up the workshop,
settle down the dew,
I'll tell you what my name is
when we've made the world new.
There was a bridge once that said I'm going
and a cistern that said What Ho
and the stick said lying on the ground
how am I to grow?
When do we live again Ann,
when dirt flies high
in wheeling time
and the lights of their eyes see ours.
For if it's true
we're the dung of the earth
and they the flowers
from stock that's running out
they need to be planted over.
They'll never know
the weeping diff'rence, Ann,
when the whole world laughs again.
Missus Dorra
came to town
to buy some silkalene.
The clerk said Oh
my dear Mrs. Morra
is it in style ageen?
All these years
I saved and saved
and saved my silkalene
and yesterday
I threw it away—
how would taffeta be?
No, taffeta
cracks from hanging, besides
it's not being worn.
Mrs. Porra my dear
if you're going to be hung
won't crêpe do as weel?
No retiring summer stroke
nor the dangerous parasol
on the following sands,
no earth under fire flood lava forecast,
not the pop play of tax, borrow or inflate
but the radiant, tight energy
boring from within
communizing fear
into strike,
work.
To war they kept
us going
but when the garden
bloomed
I let them know
my death.
With time war
is splendid
and the rainbow
sword,
they do not break
my rest.
Petrou his name was sorrow
and little did he know
they called him Tomorrow
and Today let him go.
The eleventh of progressional
the make-believe of prayer,
too many dunderoos
and everybody there.
If you stay at home
loving in the light
you'll always get an answer
wrong or right.
Young girl to marry,
winds the washing harry.
I spent my money
by the ocean
and have not any
to fill a tooth.
Trees over the roof
and I was down
when the night
came in.
New Goose
Don't shoot the rail!
Let your grandfather rest!
Tho he sees your wild eyes
he's falling asleep,
his long-billed pipe
on his red-brown vest.
Bombings
You could go to the Underground's platform
for a three half-penny tube fare;
safe vaults of the Bank of England
you couldn't go there.
The sheltered slept
under eiderdown,
Lady Diana and the Lord himself
in apartments deep in the ground.
Hop press
and conveyor for a hearse,
Newall Carpenter Senior's
two patented works.
…
Kilbourne. Eighteen sixty-eight.
Twelve hundred women and boys hopped.
When the market raced down to a dime a pound
from sixty-five cents, planters who'd staked
all they had, stopped.
Ash woods, willow, close to shore,
gentle overflow each spring,
here he lived to be eighty-four
then left everything.
Heirs rush in—lay one tree bare
claiming a birdhouse, leave
wornout roof hanging there
nothing underneath.
If he could come back and see his place
fought over that he'd held apart
he'd say: all my life I saved
now twitter, my heart.
He owned these woods, every board,
till he lost his spring and fall;
if he could say: trees craved for—
overflow to all.
The music, lady,
you demand—
the brass
breaks my hand.
For sun and moon and radio
farmers pay dearly;
their natural resource: turn
the world off early.
She had tumult of the brain
and I had rats in the rain
and she and I and the furlined man
were out for gain.
My coat threadbare
over and down Capital Hill
fashions mornings after.
In this Eternal Category's
land of rigmarole
see thru the laughter.
Mr. Van Ess bought 14 washcloths?
Fourteen washrags, Ed Van Ess?
Must be going to give em
to the church, I guess.
He drinks, you know. The day we moved
he came into the kitchen stewed,
mixed things up for my sister Grace—
put the spices in the wrong place.
Not feeling well, my wood uncut.
And why?
The street's bare-legged young girls
in my eye
with their bottoms out (at home they wear
long robes).
My galoshes
chopped the cold
till cards in The Moon where I sawed my mouth
to make the bid.
And now my stove's too emp
ty
to be wife and kid.
Remember my little granite pail?
The handle of it was blue.
Think what's got away in my life—
Was enough to carry me thru.
A lawnmower's one of the babies I'd have
if they'd give me a job and I didn't get bombed
in the high grass
by the private woods. Getting so
when I look off my space I see waste
I'd like to mow.
My man says the wind blows from the south,
we go out fishing, he has no luck,
I catch a dozen, that burns him up,
I face the east and the wind's in my mouth,
but my man has to have it in the south.
Du Bay
He kept a grog shop, this fur trader killer?
Defense: Any fur trader would
to make merchandise go. Moses Strong:
Inquire if the liquor was good.
He called Chief Oshkosh's daughter his wife?
Irrelevant!—John B. Du Bay
shot a man for claiming his land, enough
the possession of real estate.
Witnesses judged him as good as the average
for humanity, honesty, peace.
The court sent him home to his children,
his dogs, his gun, and his geese.
I'm a sharecropper
down here in the south.
Housing conditions are grave.
We've a few long houses
but most folks, like me,
make a home out of barrel and stave.
Here it gives the laws for fishing thru the ice—
only one hook to a line,
stay at the hole, can't go in to warm up,
well, we never go fishing, so they can't catch us.
On Columbus Day he set out for the north
to inspect his forty acres,
brought back a plaster of Paris deer-head
and food from the grocers and bakers,
a wall-thermometer to tell if he's cold,
a new kind of paring knife,
and painted in red, a bluebottle gentian
for the queen, his wife.
Black Hawk held: In reason
land cannot be sold,
only things to be carried away,
and I am old.
Young Lincoln's general moved,
pawpaw in bloom,
and to this day, Black Hawk,
reason has small room.
We know him—Law and Order League—
fishing from our dock,
testified against the pickets
at the plant—owns stock.
There he sits and fishes
stiff as if a stork
brought him, never sprang from work—
a sport.
The clothesline post is set
yet no totem-carvings distinguish the Niedecker tribe
from the rest; every seventh day they wash:
worship sun; fear rain, their neighbors' eyes;
raise their hands from ground to sky,
and hang or fall by the whiteness of their all.
I said to my head, Write something.
It looked me dead in the face.
Look around, dear head, you've never read
of the ground that takes you away.
Speed up, speed up, the frosted windshield's
a fern spray.
Grampa's got his old age pension,
$15 a month,
his own food and place.
But here he comes,
fiddle and spitbox…
Tho't I'd stop with you a little,
Harriut,
you kin have all I got.
There's a better shine
on the pendulum
than is on my hair
and many times
.. ..
I've seen it there.
The museum man!
I wish he'd taken Pa's spitbox!
I'm going to take that spitbox out
and bury it in the ground
and put a stone on top.
Because without that stone on top
it would come back.
That woman!—eyeing houses.
She's moved in on my own poor guy.
She held his hand and told him where to sign.
He gives up costs on his tree-covered shack—
insurance against wind, fire, falling aircraft, riots—
home itself, was our break in the thick.
Because look! How can she keep it?—
to hold a house has to rent it out
and spend her life on the street.
Hand Crocheted Rug
Gather all the old, rip and sew
the skirt I've saved so long,
Sally's valance, the twins' first calico
and the rest I worked to dye.
Red, green, black, hook,
hitch, nevermind, cramped
around back not yet the turn
of the century…Grandpa forward
from the shop, “Ought to have a machine.”
They came at a pace
to go to war.
They came to more:
a leg brought back
to a face.
I doubt I'll get silk stockings out
of my asparagus
that grows too fast to stop it,
or any pair of Capital's
miracles of profit.
To see the man who took care of our stock
as we slept in the dark, the blackbirds flying
high as the market out of our pie,
I travel now at crash of day
on the el, a low rush of geese over those below,
to see the man who smiled
and gave us a first-hand country shake.
A monster owl
out on the fence
flew away. What
is it the sign
of? The sign of
an owl.
Gen. Rodimstev's story (Stalingrad)
Four of us lived off half an acre
till grandfather traded it
for a gallon of liquor.
White Guards flogged father to death,
I studied to save
man's sweet breath.
Birds' mating-fight
feathers floating down
offspring started
toward the ground.
From my bed I see
the wind willow
the grass.
From my head
in feathers comes
a gas.
I think of a tree
to make it
last.
Asa Gray wrote Increase Lapham:
pay particular attention
to my pets, the grasses.
Pioneers
Anson Dart pierced the forest,
fell upon wild strawberries.
Frosts, fires, land speculation, comet.
Corn to be planted.
How to keep the strawberries?—
Indians' sugar full of dirt.
How to keep the earth.
Winnebagoes knew nothing
of government purchase of their land,
agency men got chiefs drunk
then let them stand.
On the steamer Consolation
came Dart's wife and daughters,
already there his sons and three sides of the house.
In the Great Bitter Winter a rug closed the side
that was bare.
For mortar they bored out a white-oak log,
pounded enough corn for a breakfast Johnnie cake
by rising—all sons—at 4:00.
Could be more, could be warmer, could be more.
Sun, turn the earth once more.
Between fighting fourteen nations' invading troops
and starting the first thousand-acre farms
we hungered,
A tractor has seven hundred fifteen parts.
I studied—
I'm a Morvin from the Eraya tribe—
learned all about oil and sand
the whole inner essence of the core.
Gorky recalls Professor Hvolson
lecturing on Einstein,
clung with his hands to the pulpit,
swayed back and forth from lack of food.
Then—the first one!—red wheels
dipped, met the earth.
Red wheels gave the earth a new turn.
Well, spring overflows the land,
floods floor, pump, wash machine
of the woman moored to this low shore by deafness.
Good-bye to lilacs by the door
and all I planted for the eye.
If I could hear—too much talk in the world,
too much wind washing, washing
good black dirt away.
Her hair is high.
Big blind ears.
I've wasted my whole life in water.
My man's got nothing but leaky boats.
My daughter, writer, sits and floats.
Audubon
Tried selling my pictures. In jail
twice for debt. My companion
Collecte Works Page 6