we're here till we go.”
Yes, comes a measure marked Autumn
the passing of the little summer people,
schools of leaves float downstream
past lonely piers
soft still-water twilight,
morning ice on the minnow bucket.
My father said “I remember
a warm Thanksgiving Day
we shipped seine
without coats
nudged 20,000 lbs. of barged buffalo fish
thru the mouth of the river
by balmy moonlight
other times
you laid out with your hands glazed
to the nets”
You know, he said, they used to make
mincemeat with meat,
it's raisins now and citron—like
a house without heat—
I'll roof my house and jump from there
to flooring costs. I'll have to buy
two doors to close two openings.
No, no more pie.
He built four houses
to keep his life.
Three got away
before he was old.
He wonders now
rocking his chair
should he have built
a boat
dipping, dipping
and sitting so.
In Europe they grow a new bean while here
we tie bundles of grass
with strands of itself—as my grandfolks did grain—
against the cold blast
around my house.
From my cousin in Maine: We've found a warm place
(did she say in the hay?)
for the winter. Charlie sleeps late, I'm glad for his sake,
it shortens the day
around my house.
Paul
when the leaves
fall
from their stems
that lie thick
on the walk
in the light
of the full note
the moon
playing
to leaves
when they leave
the little
thin things
Paul
I've been away from poetry
many months
and now I must rake leaves
with nothing blowing
between your house
and mine
I am sick with the Time's buying sickness.
The overdear oil drum now flanged to my house
serves a stove costing as much.
I need a piano.
Then I'd sing “When to the sessions
of sweet silent thought”
true value expands
it warms.
The death of my poor father
leaves debts
and two small houses.
To settle this estate
a thousand fees arise—
I enrich the law.
Before my own death is certified,
recorded, final judgement
judged
taxes taxed
I shall own a book
of old Chinese poems
and binoculars
to probe the river
trees.
To Aeneas who closed his piano
to dig a well thru hard clay
Chopin left notes like drops of water.
Aeneas could play
the Majorcan sickness, the boat on which pigs
were kept awake by whips
the woman Aurore
the narrow sand-strips.
“O Frederic, think of me digging below
the surface—we are of one pitch and flow.”
My friend the black and white collie
stood at my door in the cold days
when the wolf was expected.
She lay her brown nose inside my coat.
We two unfortunate dogs.
”Oh ivy green
oh ivy green—”
you spoke your poem
as we walked a city terrace
and said if you could hear—sneeze
sneeze on the corner—
Handel clean
Christmas would be green
Christmas would be cherished.
To the mother
ivy
does not matter
with her son's cold no better
unless a friend should hold her
warm in a green
cover
then Christmas would be cherished
Christmas would be cherished.
As I shook the dust
from my father's door
I saw young Aeneas
on the shore
mulling the past
—a large town
and a wartime island—
a pleasure now.
I'll wait, he said,
till a star shows
that's gone
when it snows.
They live a cool distance
inside today's woods.
My cutting friends' concise art
—intelligence in beauty—
exacts their violinist son
to make it come clean-sung.
Their further woods—
they live without food-heavy table,
soft bed, the whole easy lot of us,
the sick, thick leaf-tickling outersurface
lot of us.
A tough game, art,
humanity's other part.
Violin Debut
Carnegie Hall, the great musicbox—
lift: the lid on the hard-working parts
of the boy whose smooth power
is saved—
his tone and more: what he's done with his life
—those two who sent the flow thru him have done—
he's been true to himself, a knife
behaved.
OTHER POEMS
Horse, hello
I too live hot before the final flash
cavort for others' gain
We toss our shining heads
in an ever increasing standard of sweat
The mind deranged, Democritus
Who knows us, friend—
our indicator needles shot off scale—
Spinoza, Burns, Xenophanes knew us
in days when thought arose and kindly stayed—
All creatures whatsoever desire this glow
Energy glows at the lips—
a cigarette—
measure the man pending…
under him droppings
larger, whiter than owls'—
What thought burns here?
Hi, Hot-and-Humid
That June she's a lush
Marshmushing, frog bickering
moon pooling, green gripping
fool
keep cool
Woman in middle life
raises hot fears—
a few cool years after these
then who'll remember
flash to black
I gleamed?
We physicians watch the juices rise
as we tend
to bend her
toward the soft-blowing air.
Girl, personal grass,
we saved you
waved you
closer. Don't despise us
if we ask
or do not ask:
what for?
1937
In the picture soldiers
moving thru a field
of flowers,
Spanish reds.
The flowers of war
move cautiously
not to tread
the wild heads.
Here we last,
lilacs, vacant lots,
taxes, no work,
debts, the wind widens
the grass.
In the old house
the clocks are dead,
past dead.
Euro
pean Travel
(Nazi New Order)
From Croatia my home to Moelling no pay
for our work, lay down at night without hay,
three days toward Berlin, one bread for six,
saw many die of cold and the whips.
At Bergen built roads tied to a pot,
crossed to Sweden tho one in our party was shot.
Depression years
My daughters left home
I was job-certified
to rake leaves
in New Madrid.
Now they tell me my girls
should support me again
and they're not out of debt
from the last time they did.
So you're married, young man,
to a woman's rich fads—
woman and those “buy! buy!”
technicolor ads.
She needs washers and dryers
she needs bodice uplift
she needs deep-well cookers
she needs power shift.
A man works in two shops—
home at last from this grave
he finds his wife out
with another slave.
She'll sue for divorce
he'll blow his brains,
the old work-horse
free at last of his reins.
She grew where every spring
water overflows the land,
married mild Henry
and then her life was sand.
Tall, thin, took cold on her nerves,
chopped wood, kept the fire,
burned the house, helped build it again,
advance, attack, retire.
Gave birth, frail warrior—gave boat
for it was mid-spring—
to Henry's daughter who stayed
on the stream listening
to Daisy: “Hatch, patch and scratch,
that's all a woman's for
but I didn't sink, I sewed and saved
and now I'm on second floor.”
I sit in my own house
secure,
follow winter break-up
thru window glass.
Ice cakes
glide downstream
the wild swans
of our day.
On hearing
the wood pewee
This is my mew
as our days last—
be alone
Throw it over—
all fashions
feud
Go home where the green bird is—
the trees where you pass
to grass
Along the river
wild sunflowers
over my head
the dead
who gave me life
give me this
our relative the air
floods
our rich friend
silt
He moved in light
to establish
the lovely
possibility
we knew
and let it pass
Keen and lovely man moved as in a dance
to be considerate in lighted, glass-walled
almost outdoor office. Business
wasn't all he knew. He knew music, art.
Had a heart. “With eyes like yours I should think
the dictaphone” or did he say the flute?
His sensitivity—it stopped you.
And the neighbors said “She's taking lessons
on the dictaphone” as tho it were a saxophone.
He gave the job to somebody else.
He lived—childhood summers
thru bare feet
then years of money's lack
and heat
beside the river—out of flood
came his wood, dog,
woman, lost her, daughter—
prologue
to planting trees. He buried carp
beneath the rose
where grass-still
the marsh rail goes.
To bankers on high land
he opened his wine tank.
He wished his only daughter
to work in the bank
but he'd given her a source
to sustain her—
a weedy speech,
marshy retainer.
I rose from marsh mud,
algae, equisetum, willows,
sweet green, noisy
birds and frogs
to see her wed in the rich
rich silence of the church,
the little white slave-girl
in her diamond fronds.
In aisle and arch
the satin secret collects.
United for life to serve
silver. Possessed.
Dear Mona, Mary and all
you know as I grow older I think
of people when I was younger
I am lame and dizzy but eat
and hear from Ireland
where my mother was
There's a story in the paper
about the river in your country
how it's used and owned by the people
Television here but I can't use it
I'd go out of my head
old folks often can't
…
International loneliness
is homed. Dear old uncle's
porch's people, prices, peppermints
rock him. He must reach
the hallway off the living room
by night.
Don't tell me property is sacred!
Things that move, yes!—
cars out rolling thru the country
how they like to rest
on me—beer cans and cellophane
on my clean-mowed grounds.
Whereas I'm quiet…I was born
with eyes and a house.
Wartime
I left my baby in Forest A
quivering toward light:
Keep warm, dear thing, drink from the cow—
her stillness is alive
You in the leaves sweetly growing—
survive these plants upheaved
with noise and flame, learn change
in strategy.
I think of Joe who never knew
where his baby went
and Mary heavy, peace or war,
no child, no enlightenment.
February almost March bites the cold.
Take down a book, wind pours in. Frozen—
the Garden of Eden—its oil, if freed, could warm
the world for 20 years and nevermind the storm.
Winter's after me—she's out
with sheets so white it hurts the eyes. Nightgown,
pillow slip blow thru my bare catalpa trees,
no objects here.
In February almost March a snow-blanket
is good manure, a tight-bound wet
to move toward May: give me lupines and a care
for her growing air.
People, people—
ten dead ducks' feathers
on beer can litter…
Winter
will change all that
July, waxwings
on the berries
have dyed red
the dead
branch
Old man who seined
to educate his daughter
sees red Mars rise:
What lies
behind it?
Cold water business
now starred in Fishes
of dipnet shape
to ache
thru his arms.
Mother is dead
The branches' snow is like the cotton fluff
she wore in her aching ears. In this deaf huff
after storm shall we speak of love?
As my absent father's distrait wife
she worked for us—knew us by sight.
We know her now by the way the snow
&n
bsp; protects the plants before they go.
The graves
You were my mother, thorn apple bush,
armed against life's raw push.
But you my father catalpa tree
stood serene as now—he refused to see
that the other woman, the hummer he shaded
hotly cared
for his purse petals falling—
his mind in the air.
Kepler
Comets you say shoot from nothing?
In heaven's name what other
than matter can be matter's mother.
Bonpland
“Revolutionary palingenesis”—
his plants rode the Orinoco sheltered
while he sat in the rain.
He chopped, climbed, dug the jungle
for his beloved lost girl,
returned with botany
alone.
Rebellion-plotting Bogota
moved him—
nine years in Paraguay's dictator's
prison
—to graft a phrase.
Happy New Year
“Glorious and abundant
The cherry trees are in flower
In all the world there is nothing
Finer than brotherhood.”
My friend, you were right.
Two thousand years
beyond you
I hand you this:
Trees' bloom with snow-
clean sorrow
better than bitter
winter
brotherhood
Resolved: beyond
flowering cherry trees
dissolved enmity
find summer
brother
1957–1959
Linnaeus in Lapland
Nothing worth noting
except an Andromeda
Collecte Works Page 9