Collecte Works
Page 8
So this was I
in my framed
young aloofness
unsuspecting
what I filled
eager to remain
a smooth blonde cool
effect of light
an undiffused good take,
a girl
who couldn't bake
How I wish
I had someone to give
this pretty thing to
who'd keep it—
something of me
would shape
Am I real way out in space
asked Paul, then you see—
they rave to me of contests.
Compete, they say—my violin—
with tap-dance-acrobatics.
The winner plays the floor
with his feet.
On a row of cabins
next my home
Instead of shaded here
birds flying through leaves
I face this loud uncovering
of griefs.
What irony that I
with views verdant like the folk
should be the one
to go.
In moonlight lies
the river passing—
it's not quiet
and it's not laughing.
I'm not young
and I'm not free
but I've a house of my own
by a willow tree.
The cabin door flew open
the woman fell out
it is not known whether
she fell on land or sea
the man's grave
grave face
who were they
undoubtedly they knew tender moments
between sex and well-dressed courtesy—
men are tender with women
not passion-violent
when they are happy in general
and she-impossible to be grateful
without showing it
before the earth fell away
that they went out on Sunday to see.
The elegant office girl
is power-rigged.
She carries her nylon hard-pointed
breast uplift
like parachutes
half-pulled.
At night collapse occurs
among new flowered rugs
replacing last year's plain,
muskrat stole,
parakeets
and deep-freeze pie.
When brown folk lived a distance
from my cottages my hand full of lilies
went out to them
from potted progressive principles.
Now no one of my own hue will rent.
I'll lose my horticultural bent.
I'll lose more—how dark
if to fight to keep my livelihood
is to bleach brotherhood.
For Paul and Other Poems
FOR PAUL
Paul
now six years old:
this book of birds I loved
I give to you.
I thought now maybe Paul
growing taller than cattails
around Duck Pond
between the river and the Sound
will keep this book intact,
fly back to it each summer
maybe Paul
What bird would light
in a moving tree
the tree I carry
for privacy?
Down in the grass
the question's inept;
sora's eyes…
stillness steps.
Nearly landless and on the way to water
I push thru marsh.
I lost a view…I saw
(and proceed in depth in place of lateral range)
the child with bigger, stiller eyes than sora's.
Homer's wandering thru hell.
And we can't afford to hire him.
He loses ground building cabins—
outdoor knickknacks—that block a view.
He himself and his wife demand more elephants
on glass shelves than we have books.
In summer silence moves.
Fall pheasants' cry:
rifle shells-in-tin-box-rattle,
over us wax-leaf poplars shine and shudder
as my mother,
continue after the mind is blown.
Understand me, dead is nothing
whereas here we want each other,
silence, time to be alone
and Paul's growing up—
baseball, jabber, running off to neighbors
and back into the Iliad—“do you really believe
there were gods, all that hooey?”
And his violin—improvising
made a Vivaldi sequence his,
better than I could have done with poetry
at twice his age…
so writes your father, L. before P.
A start in life for Paul.
The efforts of a life
hold together as Einstein's
and lead to expectations of form.
To know, to love…if we knew nothing,
Baruch the blessed said, would we exist?
For Paul then at six and a half
a half scholarship—
turn the radio dead—
tho your teacher's gone back to Italy
stumped by American capital.
In my mind, the child said,
are rondeau-gavottes 1 to 11,
here is number 12.
How bright you'll find young people,
Diddle,
and how unkind.
When a boy appears with a book
they cry “Who's the young Einsteind?”
Einstein, you know, said space
is what it's made up of.
And as to the human race
“Why do you deeply oppose its passing”
you'll find men asking
the man with the nebular hair
and the fiddle.
If he is of constant depth
if he has the feeling—
numbers plus their good
by the time he's twelve
I want that chord, he cries,
and the sun and moon and stars
so what…
boy, are you Greek
without the Wisecrack god
The young ones go away to school
come home to moon
like Frederick the Great
what was it he ate
that had to be sown
in the dark of the moon
Isn't it funny
people run their acres without a hat
figuring rain in the next moon change
while you on a stool
at numbers in a heavenly scale
know the moon changes
night and noon
Some have chimes
three long things
as you come in.
They smile
and give you lettuce
because you've brought
your violin.
O Tannenbaum
the children sing
round and round
one child sings out:
atomic bomb
Not all
is check-writing
but as the queen, Elizabeth,
beside the barge that night
“Longing
to listen…
Muzik is a nobl art”
In the great snowfall before the bomb
colored yule tree lights
windows, the only glow for contemplation
along this road
I worked the print shop
right down among em
the folk from whom all poetry flows
and dreadfully much else.
I was Blondie
I carried my bundles of hog feeder price lists
down by Larry the Lug,
I'd never get anywh
ere
because I'd never had suction,
pull, you know, favor, drag,
well-oiled protection.
I heard their rehashed radio barbs—
more barbarous among hirelings
as higher-ups grow more corrupt.
But what vitality! The women hold jobs—
clean house, cook, raise children, bowl
and go to church.
What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?
Not all that's heard is music. We leave
an air that for awhile was good, white cottage,
spruce…What if the sky is gone and they hold
the hill armed with tin cans—they're not bad kids—
you have the world. Remember the little
lovely notes “the little O, the earth.”
This thing is old and singing's new—you
just more full. Come, we'll sit without birds
between city bricks. See! The sun hits.
Tell me a story about the war.
All right, six lines, no child should hear more.
The marshal of France made quite a clatter:
Dear people, I know you're too hungry to flatter
but eat your beef-ounce from a doll's platter,
you'll think it's a roast wrapped in a batter.
Along came the bishop his robe a tatter:
Sleep and it won't matter.
Laval, Pomeret, Pétain
all three came to an end.
Bourdet, Bonnet, Deladier
so did they.
They tried each other
they sold out their brother
the people of France.
Let's practice your dance.
Thure Kumlien
Bigwigs wrote from Boston: Thure,
we must know about the sandhill crane,
is it ever white with you
and how many eggs can you obtain?
For Thure the solitary tattler
opened a door
to learned birds with their latest books
who walked New England's shore.
One day by the old turnpike still crossing
the marsh, down in the ditch
he found a new aster—to it he gave
his name as tho he were rich.
Shut up in woods
he made knives and forks
fumbled English gently:
Now is March gone
and I have much undone
It would be good
to hear the birds
along this shore intently
without song of gun
Your father to me in your eighth summer:
“Any fool can look up a term,
it's the beat and off beat, the leg lifted
or thudded that counts.”
And “Now that I'm involved in two houses
each one a system, I realize
the less one has the richer one is
if one could sit in one spot
and write.
Paul's playing ‘Handle.’
His eyes are clear in this air,
he sees what few others can,
the lawn is mown,
we're here till we go.”
To Paul now old enough to read:
Once a farmer, Crèvecoeur
tried to save his heart
from too much hurt.
Hero of vegetables,
hero of good
he learned to know every plant
in his neighborhood.
He loved Nantucket, grazing land
held in common.
Here one lawyer only found
the means to go on.
Green, prickly humanity—
men are plants whose goodness grows
out of the soil, Mr. Stinkweed
or Mrs. Rose.
…
Read Crèvecoeur and learn fast—
the firefly, two pairs of wings
and a third to read by
disappearing.
What horror to awake at night
and in the dimness see the light.
Time is white
mosquitoes bite
I've spent my life on nothing.
The thought that stings. How are you, Nothing,
sitting around with Something's wife.
Buzz and burn
is all I learn
I've spent my life on nothing.
I'm pillowed and padded, pale and puffing
lifting household stuffing—
carpets, dishes
benches, fishes
I've spent my life in nothing.
Sorrow moves in wide waves,
it passes, lets us be.
It uses us, we use it,
it's blind while we see.
Consciousness is illimitable,
too good to forsake
tho what we feel be misery
and we know will break.
Jesse James and his brother Frank
raided, robbed and rode away.
Said Frank to the rising Teddy R:
You're my type, you're okay.
Once on his way to a Shakespeare play
Frank was almost caught.
The gunnin Jameses and the writn Jameses—
two were taught and all were sought.
No killers were Frank and Jesse James,
they was drove to it. Their folks was proud.
Let no one imagine they were bad as kids—
brought up gentle in a bushwhack crowd.
…
May you have lumps in your mashed potatoes
Henry and Wm. cried
to those who stood up to them in argument
and their words haven't died.
Don't melt too much into the universe
but be as solid and dense and fixed
as you can. This what Henry and Wm.
said in the evening after 6:00.
Old Mother turns blue and from us,
“Don't let my head drop to the earth.
I'm blind and deaf.” Death from the heart,
a thimble in her purse.
“It's a long day since last night.
Give me space. I need
floors. Wash the floors, Lorine!—
wash clothes! Weed!”
I hear the weather
through the house
or is it breathing
mother
Dead
she now lay deaf to death
She could have grown a good rutabaga
in the burial ground
and how she'd have loved these woods
One of her pallbearers said I
like a dumfool followed a deer
wanted to see her jump a fence—
never'd seen a deer jump a fence
pretty thing
the way she runs
Can knowledge be conveyed that isn't felt?
But if transport's the problem—
they tell me get a job and earn yourself
an automobile—I'd rather collect my parts
as I go: chair, desk, house
and crankshaft Shakespeare.
Generator boy, Paul, love is carried
if it's held.
Ten o'clock
and Paul's not in bed!
He's reading Twelfth Night
all Viola said.
Drink to three, the family
around the bathroom tap.
Little Paul—Corelli,
what's that?—belly!
Wash and say good night
to variants and quarto texts,
emendations, close relations.
Let me hear good night.
Adirondack Summer
If he's not peewee wafted
tiny glissando
in deep shade
or a newspaper
he'll attack exercises ever calculated
to floa
t the ear in beauty.
The slip of a girl-announcer:
Now we hear
Baxtacota in D Minor
played by a boy who's terrific.
This saxy Age.
Bach, you see, is in Dakota
but don't belittle her,
she'll take you where you want to go ta.
Now go to the party,
Master Paul Kung.
Wear your mother's ancient
imitation silk black dress,
whisk brush for beard,
your bathrobe's braid-tie
hung safety-pinned from Eton cap
turned front to back,
shoe string side burns
to hold the beard.
What you don't know,
that even yet
players come dressed with shields
and spears.
Dear Paul:
the sheets of your father's book of poetry
are bound for England.
At last, after the hardships
he can say “take back to your ship
a gift from me,
something precious, a real good thing…
such as a friend gives to a friend.”
You ask what kind of boats in my country
on my little river.
Black as those beside Troy,
but sailless tar-preserve-black fish barges
and orange and Chinese-red rowboats
in which the three virtues
knowledge, humanity, energy
Sometimes ride.
All children begin with the life of the mind—
if there were no marsh or stream
imagine it
99 children go into business
selling angleworms,
the hundredth develops free fingers in John Sebastian Brook.
“Paul's playing ‘Handle.’
His eyes are clear in this air,
he sees what few others can,
the lawn is mown,