He went on murmuring, “Never have I known time to fail me, time with its monotonous mumbling in the masts and stanchions, its plashing plashing measuring plashing to the bulwarks, the slinking of the sea after a storm, the crying of the birds as they ride the wind when the wind goes down.”
He lifted his head toward scrawny warning horizons and nailed up a slogan: Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed:
Yes Lief Ericson crossed the sea
to get away from a woman—
perhaps—maybe.
Bird Footprint
The footprint of a bird in sand brought your face.
I said, “What of it?”
And the next lone footprint of a bird in the sand
brought your face again.
I said, “It is written deeper than sand.”
I saw a bird wing fixed forty thousand years in a rock,
a bird wing bringing your foot, your wrist.
Cahokia
The Indian saw the butterfly
rise out of the cocoon.
That was enough for him.
The butterfly had wings, freedom.
The Indian saw flowers in spring
push up out of the ground.
He saw the rain and the thunder.
They were enough for him.
And he saw the sun.
But he didn’t worship the sun.
For him the sun was a sign, a symbol.
He bowed in prayer to what was behind the sun.
He made songs and dances to the makers and movers
of the sun.
Buyers and Sellers
What is a man worth?
What can he do?
What is his value?
On the one hand those who buy labor,
On the other hand those who have nothing
to sell but their labor.
And when the buyers of labor tell the
sellers, “Nothing doing today, not a
chance!”—then what?
City Number
The soiled city oblongs stand sprawling.
The blocks and house numbers go miles.
Trucks howl rushing the early morning editions.
Night-club dancers have done their main floor show.
Tavern trios improvise “Show me the way to go home.”
Soldiers and sailors look for street corners, house
numbers.
Night watchmen figure halfway between midnight and
breakfast.
Look out the window now late after the evening that
was.
On a south sky of pigeon-egg blue
Long clouds float in a silver moonbath.
Chromo
This old river town saw the
early steamboats.
The line of wharf and houses
is a faded chromo.
It is bleached and bitten standing
to steady sunrises.
The Evening Sunsets Witness and Pass On
Passion may call for a partner
to share the music of its bones,
to weave shadows, rain, moonshine, dreams—
Passion may hammer on hard door panels,
empty a hot vocabulary of wanting, wanting—
it is all there in the fragments of Sappho.
Passion may consider poppies cheap
with their strong stalks in the wind,
with their crying crimson sheaths—
Passion may remember tiger lilies,
keepers of a creeping evening mist,
tawny watchers of the morning stars—
Passion may cry to the moon
for miracles of flesh,
for red answers to a white riddle—
it is told in the tears on many love letters.
Passion may spend its money,
its youth; its laughter, all else,
till again passion is alone
spending its cries to the moon—
and some weep, some sing, some go to war.
Passion may be alone at a window
seeking kisses fasten lips in wild troths,
a storm of red silk scarfs in a high wind,
armfuls of redbirds let loose into bush and sky—
and some weep, some sing, some go to war.
Passion may come with baskets
throwing paths of red rain flowers,
each folded petal a sacrament—
the evening sunsets witness and pass on.
Passion may build itself bouses of air
and look from a thousand tall windows—
till the wind rides and gathers.
Passion may be a wind child
transient and made of air—
Passion may be a wild grass
where a great wind came and went.
The evening sunsets witness and pass on.
Deep Sea Wandering
deep sea was the wandering
deep brass the dripping loot
deep crimson the bloodspill
lyrics begotten on lush lips
and many a hawser they saw
rotting rope and rusting chain
and anchors many lost anchors
Call the Next Witness
there will be people left over
enough inhabitants among the Eskimos
among jungle folk
denizens of plains and plateaus
cities and towns synthetic miasma missed
enough for a census
enough to call it still a world
though definitely my friends my good friends
definitely not the same old world
the vanquished saying, “What happened?”
the victors saying, “We planned it so.”
if it should be at the end
in the smoke the mist the silence of the end
if it should be one side lost the other side won
the changes among these leftover people
the scattered ones the miasma missed
their programs of living their books and music
they will be simple and conclusive
in the ways and manners of early men and women
the children having playroom
rulers and diplomats finding affairs less complex
new types of cripples here and there
and indescribable babbling survivors
listening to plain scholars saying,
should a few plain scholars have come through,
“As after other wars the peace is something else again.”
amid the devastated areas and the untouched
the historians will take an interest
finding amid the ruins and shambles
tokens of contrast and surprise
testimonies here curious there monstrous
nuclear-fission corpses having one face
radioactivity cadavers another look
bacteriological victims not unfamiliar
scenes and outlooks nevertheless surpassing
those of the First World War
and those of the Second or Global War
—the historians will take an interest
fill their note-books pick their way
amid burned and tattered documents
and say to each other,
“What the hell! it isn’t worth writing,
posterity won’t give a damn what we write.”
Early Copper
A slim and singing copper girl,
They lived next to the earth for her sake
And the yellow corn was in their faces
And the copper curve of prairie sunset.
In her April eyes bringing
Corn tassels shining from Duluth and Itasca,
From La Crosse to Keokuk and St. Louis, to the Big
Muddy,
The yellow-hoofed Big Muddy meeting the Father of
Waters,
In her eyes cornrows running to the prairie
ends,
In her eyes copper men living next to the earth for her
sake.
Atlas, How Have You Been?
The shape of the world is either a box or a bag
and a box-shaped world has comers
and a bag-shaped world is either open or closed,
and Somebody holds the bag.
Now whether the world is oblong, square or rhomboid
or whether the world is a series of circles,
rings twisted into each other’s eternal grooves,
or whether the world keeps changing from box to bag,
from corners to circles and back to corners,
from rings to oblongs and back to rings
and repeating the twist into the groove
and practicing that twist over again
from box to bag and bag again to box—
this was what we were talking about
when the first thunder crashed
and lightning forked across a black rain.
We decided the earth itself isn’t much.
It is mapped and measured now
And we fly around it in just a few breakfasts.
And the strong man they named Atlas
Should have had that very name of Atlas
If he had stood under the earth ball
And held it on his big shoulders;
Atlas, you were made as a make-believe
And we give you a make-believe salute.
We say: Atlas, how are you doing,
how have you been?
Beyond the ball of earth are other balls,
also double balls, triple balls, series of balls,
and balloons, drums, cylinders, triangles, jugs,
some with handles identified and signed,
others with anonymous sprockets and axles—
and we decided amid the sheet lightning—
the whole works is held either in a box or a bag,
afterwards asking ourselves:
what is outside the box, what props up the bag?
these are big questions, we told each other
while sprags of lightning dropped from the sky—
clutches and magnets, clocks and wheels
made of a mud and air beyond our dreams,
ordered in verbs beyond our doorways.
We decided at last
the world might be a box when awake
and a bag when asleep
and while we slept
it changed from box to bag
and back from bag to box
and the forgetfulness of our own sleep
is strange and beautiful by itself
and sometimes in its shifting shapes
the world is a cradle dedicated to sleep
and what would you rather have than sleep?
Cheap Rent
The laws of the bronze gods
are irrevocable.
And yet—in the statue of
General Grant astride a horse
on rolling prairie, on little
hills looking from Lincoln
Park at Lake Michigan—
here the sparrows have a nest
in General Grant’s spy glass—
here the sparrows have rented
a flat in General Grant’s
right stirrup—
It is true? The laws of the
bronze gods are irrevocable?
Elm Buds
Elm buds are out.
Yesterday morning, last night,
they crept out.
They are the mice of early
spring air.
To the north is the gray sky.
Winter hung it gray for the gray
elm to stand dark against.
Now the branches all end with the
yellow and gold mice of early
spring air.
They are moving mice creeping out
with leaf and leaf.
Child Face
There are lips as strange and soft
As a rim of moon many miles off.
White on a fading purple sea.
“Was it there, far-off, real,
Or did my eyes play me a trick?”
A finger can be laid across it,
Laid on a little mouth’s white yearning,
Only as a white rim of moon
Can be picked off a blue sea
And sent in a love letter.
Once a child face lay in the moonight
Of an early spring night.
Fog Numbers
Birth is the starting point of passion.
Passion is the beginning of death.
How can you turn back from birth?
How can you say no to passion?
How can you bid death hold off?
And if thoughts come and hold you
And if dreams step in and shake your bones
What can you do but take them and make them
more your own?
Of course, a nickel is a nickel,
and a dime is a dime—sure—
we learned that—
why mention it now?
of course, steel is steel;
and a hammer is a hammer;
And a thought, a dream, is more than a name,
a number, a fixed point.
***
Walk in a midnight fog now and say to it: Tell
me your number and I’ll tell mine.
Salute one morning sun falling on a river ribbon
of mist and tell it: My number is such-and-
such—what’s yours?
Of what is fog the starting point?
Of what is the red sun the beginning?
Long ago—as now—little men and women knew in
their bones the singing and the aching of
these stumbling questions.
Evening Questions
The swath of light climbs up the skyscraper
Around the corners of white prisms and spikes.
The inside torso stands up in a plug of gun-metal.
The shadow struggles to get loose from the light.
Shall I say I’m through and it’s no use?
Or have I got another good fight in me?
Fifty-Fifty
What is there for us two
to split fifty-fifty,
to go halvers on?
A Bible, a deck of cards?
a farm, a frying pan?
a porch, front steps to sit on?
How can we be pals
when you speak English
and I speak English
and you never understand me
and I never understand you?
Evening Sea Wind
A molten gold flows away from the sun
to fall as a shingle of gold and glass
on waters holding five ships, a quintet,
five, no less, five sheathed in brass haze.
On a bronze and copper path just over
comes a maroon, comes a dusk of gun-metal.
A white horse shape of a moving cloud
meets a wind changing it to a small lamb,
meets a wind smoothing what it meets,
smoothing the lamb into six white snakes,
smoothing the snakes to a ball of wool.
The sungold shingle, ships in brass haze
fade into walls of umber, pools of ink
and there is abbadabra and abracadabra.
Two smoke rings, two nightmist bracelets
seem to be telling us and themselves:
“We blend and go, then again
blend and go.”
Forgotten Wars
Be loose. Be easy. Be ready.
Forget the last war.
Forget the one before.
Forget the one yet to come.
Be loose and easy about the wars
whether they have been fought
or whether yet to be fought—
be ready to forget them.
Who
was saying at high noon today:
“Is not each of them a forgotten war
after it is fought and over?
how and why it came forgotten?
how and what it cost forgotten?”
and was he there at Iwo Jima, Okinawa
or places named Cassino, Anzio, the Bulge?
and saying now:
“Let the next war before it comes
and before it gets under way
and five or six days sees its finish
or fifty years sees it still going strong
—let it be now a forgotten war.
Be ready now to forget it.
Be loose, be easy now.
The next war goes over in a flash—or runs long.”
God Is No Gentleman
God gets up in the morning
Honey and Salt Page 2