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Collected Earlier Poems

Page 10

by Anthony Hecht


  Day peters out. Darkness wells up

  From wheelrut, culvert, vacant drain;

  But still a rooster glints with life,

  High on a church’s weather-vane;

  The sun flings Mycenaean gold

  Against a neighbor’s window-pane.

  COMING HOME

  From the journals of John Clare

  July 18, 1841

  They take away our belts so that we must hold

  Our trousers up. The truly mad don’t bother

  And thus are oddly hobbled. Also our laces

  So that our shoes do flop about our feet.

  But I’m permitted exercise abroad

  And feeling rather down and melancholy

  Went for a forest walk. There I met gypsies

  And sought their help to make good my escape

  From the mad house. I confessed I had no money

  But promised I should furnish them fifty pounds.

  We fixed on Saturday. But when I returned

  They had disappeared in their Egyptian way.

  The sun set up its starlight in the trees

  Which the breeze made to twinkle. They left behind

  An old wide awake hat on which I battened

  As it might advantage me some later time.

  July 20

  Calmly, as though I purposed to converse

  With the birds, as I am sometimes known to do,

  I walked down the lane gently and was soon

  In Enfield Town and then on the great York Road

  Where it was all plain sailing, where no enemy

  Displayed himself and I was without fear.

  I made good progress, and by the dark of night

  Skirted a marsh or pond and found a hovel

  Floored with thick bales of clover and laid me down

  As on the harvest of a summer field,

  Companion to imaginary bees.

  But I was troubled by uneasy dreams.

  I thought my first wife lay in my left arm

  And then somebody took her from my side

  Which made me wake to hear someone say, “Mary,”

  But nobody was by. I was alone.

  * * *

  I’ve made some progress, but being without food,

  It is slower now, and I must void my shoes

  Of pebbles fairly often, and rest myself.

  I lay in a ditch to be out of the wind’s way,

  Fell into sleep for half an hour or so

  And waked to find the left side of me soaked

  With a foul scum and a soft mantling green.

  * * *

  I travel much at night, and I remember

  Walking some miles under a brilliant sky

  Almost dove-grey from closely hidden moonlight

  Cast on the moisture of the atmosphere

  Against which the tall trees on either side

  Were unimaginably black and flat

  And the puddles of the road flagstones of silver.

  * * *

  On the third day, stupid with weariness

  And hunger, I assuaged my appetite

  With eating grass, which seemed to taste like bread,

  And seemed to do me good; and once, indeed,

  It satisfied a king of Babylon.

  I remember passing through the town of Buckden

  And must have passed others as in a trance

  For I recall none till I came to Stilton

  Where my poor feet gave out. I found a tussock

  Where I might rest myself, and as I lay down

  I heard the voice of a young woman say,

  “Poor creature,” and another, older voice,

  “He shams,” but when I rose the latter said,

  “O no he don’t,” as I limped quickly off.

  I never saw those women, never looked back.

  July 23

  I was overtaken by a man and woman

  Traveling by cart, and found them to be neighbors

  From Helpstone where I used to live. They saw

  My ragged state and gave me alms of fivepence

  By which at the public house beside the bridge

  I got some bread and cheese and two half-pints

  And so was much refreshed, though scarcely able

  To walk, my feet being now exceeding crippled

  And I required to halt more frequently,

  But greatly cheered at being in home’s way.

  I recognized the road to Peterborough

  And all my hopes were up when there came towards me

  A cart with a man, a woman and a boy.

  When they were close, the woman leaped to the ground,

  Seized both my hands and urged me towards the cart

  But I refused and thought her either drunk

  Or mad, but when I was told that she was Patty,

  My second wife, I suffered myself to climb

  Aboard and soon arrived at Northborough.

  But Mary was not there. Neither could I discover

  Anything of her more than the old story

  That she was six years dead, intelligence

  Of a doubtful newspaper some twelve years old;

  But I would not be taken in by blarney

  Having seen her very self with my two eyes

  About twelve months ago, alive and young

  And fresh and well and beautiful as ever.

  PRAISE FOR KOLONOS

  Come, let us praise this haven of strong horses,

  unmatched, brilliant Kolonos, white with sunlight,

  where the shy one, the nightingale, at evening

  flutes in the darkness,

  the ivy dark, so woven of fruit and vine-leaves

  no winter storms nor light of day can enter

  this sanctuary of the dancing revels

  of Dionysos.

  Here, under heaven’s dew, blooms the narcissus,

  crown of life’s mother and her buried daughter,

  of Earth and the Dark below; here, too, the sunburst

  flares of the crocus.

  The river’s ample springs, cool and unfailing,

  rove and caress this green, fair-breasted landscape.

  Here have the Muses visited with dances,

  and Aphrodite

  has reined her chariot here. And here is something

  unheard of in the fabulous land of Asia,

  unknown to Doric earth—a thing immortal;

  gift of a goddess,

  beyond the control of hands, tough, self-renewing,

  an enduring wealth, passing through generations,

  here only: the invincible grey-leafed olive.

  Agèd survivor

  of all vicissitudes, it knows protection

  of the All-Seeing Eye of Zeus, whose sunlight

  always regards it, and of Grey-Eyed Athena.

  I have another

  tribute of praise for this city, our mother:

  the greatest gift of a god, a strength of horses,

  strength of young horses, a power of the ocean,

  strength and a power.

  O Lord Poseidon, you have doubly blessed us

  with healing skills, on these roads first bestowing

  the bit that gentles horses, the controlling

  curb and the bridle,

  and the carved, feathering oar that skims and dances

  like the white nymphs of water, conferring mastery

  of ocean roads, among the spume and wind-blown

  prancing of stallions.

  From SOPHOCLES’ Oedipus at Kolonos

  SESTINA D’INVERNO

  Here in this bleak city of Rochester,

  Where there are twenty-seven words for “snow,”

  Not all of them polite, the wayward mind

  Basks in some Yucatan of its own making,

  Some coppery, sleek lagoon, or cinnamon island

  Alive with lemon tints and burnished natives,

  And O that we were th
ere. But here the natives

  Of this grey, sunless city of Rochester

  Have sown whole mines of salt about their land

  (Bare ruined Carthage that it is) while snow

  Comes down as if The Flood were in the making.

  Yet on that ocean Marvell called the mind

  An ark sets forth which is itself the mind,

  Bound for some pungent green, some shore whose natives

  Blend coriander, cayenne, mint in making

  Roasts that would gladden the Earl of Rochester

  With sinfulness, and melt a polar snow.

  It might be well to remember that an island

  Was a blessed haven once, more than an island,

  The grand, utopian dream of a noble mind.

  In that kind climate the mere thought of snow

  Was but a wedding cake; the youthful natives,

  Unable to conceive of Rochester,

  Made love, and were acrobatic in the making.

  Dream as we may, there is far more to making

  Do than some wistful reverie of an island,

  Especially now when hope lies with the Rochester

  Gas and Electric Co., which doesn’t mind

  Such profitable weather, while the natives

  Sink, like Pompeians, under a world of snow.

  The one thing indisputable here is snow,

  The single verity of heaven’s making,

  Deeply indifferent to the dreams of the natives

  And the torn hoarding-posters of some island.

  Under our igloo skies the frozen mind

  Holds to one truth: it is grey, and called Rochester.

  No island fantasy survives Rochester,

  Where to the natives destiny is snow

  That is neither to our mind nor of our making.

  ROME

  Just as foretold, it all was there.

  Bone china columns gently fluted

  Among the cypress groves, and the reputed

  Clarity of the air,

  There was the sun-bleached skeleton

  Of History with all its sins

  Withered away, the slaves and citizens

  Mercifully undone.

  With here and there an armature

  Of iron or a wall of brick,

  It lay in unhistoric peace, a trick

  Of that contrived, secure,

  Arrested pterodactyl flight

  Inside the museum’s tank of glass;

  And somehow quite unlike our Latin class

  Sepias of the site,

  Discoursed upon by Mr. Fish

  In the familiar, rumpled suit,

  Who tried to teach us the Ablative Absolute

  And got part of his wish,

  But a small part, and never traveled

  On anything but the B. M. T.

  Until the day of his death, when he would be,

  At length, utterly graveled.

  SWAN DIVE

  Over a crisp regatta of lights, or a school

  Of bobbling spoons, ovals of polished black

  Kiss, link, and part, wriggle and ride in place

  On the lilt and rippling slide of the waterback,

  And glints go skittering in a down-wind race

  On smooth librations of the swimming pool,

  While overhead on the tensile jut and spring

  Of the highest board, a saffroned diver toes

  The sisal edge, rehearsing throughout his limbs

  The flight of himself, from the arching glee to the close

  Of wet, complete acceptance, when the world dims

  To nothing at all in the ear’s uproar and ring.

  He backs away, and then, with a loping run

  And leap of released ambition, lifts to a splendid

  Realm of his own, a destined place in the air,

  Where, in a wash of light, he floats suspended

  Above the turquoise waters, the ravelled snare

  Of snaking gold, the fractured, drunken sun,

  And the squints of the foreshortened girls and boys

  Below in a world of envies and desires,

  Eying him rise on fonts of air to sheer

  And shapely grace. His dream of himself requires

  A flexed attention, emptiness, a clear

  Uncumbered space and sleek Daedalian poise,

  From which he bows his head with abrupt assent

  And sails to a perfect sacrifice below—

  To a scatter of flagstone shadows, a garbled flight

  Of quavering anthelions, a slow

  Tumult of haloes in green, cathedral light.

  Behind him trails a bright dishevelment

  Of rising carbuncles of air; he sees

  Light spill across the undulant mercury film

  Beyond which lies his breath. And now with a flutter

  Of fountaining arms and into a final calm

  He surfaces, clutching at the tiled gutter,

  Where he rides limp and smilingly at ease.

  But hoisting himself out, his weight returns

  To normal, like sudden aging or weariness.

  Tonight, full-length on a rumpled bed, alone,

  He will redream it all: bathed in success

  And sweat, he will achieve the chiselled stone

  Of catatonia, for which his body yearns.

  “AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE”

  A small, unsmiling child,

  Held upon her shoulder,

  Stares from a photograph

  Slightly out of kilter.

  It slipped from a loaded folder

  Where the income tax was filed.

  The light seems cut in half

  By a glum, October filter.

  Of course, the child is right.

  The unleafed branches knot

  Into hopeless riddles behind him

  And the air is clearly cold.

  Given the stinted light

  To which fate and film consigned him,

  Who’d smile at his own lot

  Even at one year old?

  And yet his mother smiles.

  Is it grown-up make-believe,

  As when anyone takes your picture

  Or some nobler, Roman virtue?

  Vanity? Folly? The wiles

  That some have up their sleeve?

  A proud and flinty stricture

  Against showing that things can hurt you,

  Or a dark, Medean smile?

  I’d be the last to know.

  A speechless child of one

  Could better construe the omens,

  Unriddle our gifts for guile.

  There’s no sign from my son.

  But it needs no Greeks or Romans

  To foresee the ice and snow.

  PERIPETEIA

  Of course, the familiar rustling of programs,

  My hair mussed from behind by a grand gesture

  Of mink. A little craning about to see

  If anyone I know is in the audience,

  And, as the house fills up,

  A mild relief that no one there knows me.

  A certain amount of getting up and down

  From my aisle seat to let the others in.

  Then my eyes wander briefly over the cast,

  Management, stand-ins, make-up men, designers,

  Perfume and liquor ads, and rise prayerlike

  To the false heaven of rosetted lights,

  The stucco lyres and emblems of high art

  That promise, with crude Broadway honesty,

  Something less than perfection:

  Two bulbs are missing and Apollo’s bored.

  And then the cool, drawn-out anticipation,

  Not of the play itself, but the false dusk

  And equally false night when the houselights

  Obey some planetary rheostat

  And bring a stillness on. It is that stillness

  I wait for.

  Before it comes,

  Whether we like i
t or not, we are a crowd,

  Foul-breathed, gum-chewing, fat with arrogance,

  Passion, opinion, and appetite for blood.

  But in that instant, which the mind protracts,

  From dim to dark before the curtain rises,

  Each of us is miraculously alone

  In calm, invulnerable isolation,

  Neither a neighbor nor a fellow but,

  As at the beginning and end, a single soul,

  With all the sweet and sour of loneliness.

  I, as a connoisseur of loneliness,

  Savor it richly, and set it down

  In an endless umber landscape, a stubble field

  Under a lilac, electric, storm-flushed sky,

  Where, in companionship with worthless stones,

  Mica-flecked, or at best some rusty quartz,

  I stood in childhood, waiting for things to mend.

  A useful discipline, perhaps. One that might lead

  To solitary, self-denying work

  That issues in something harmless, like a poem,

  Governed by laws that stand for other laws,

  Both of which aim, through kindred disciplines,

  At the soul’s knowledge and habiliment.

  In any case, in a self-granted freedom,

  The mind, lone regent of itself, prolongs

  The dark and silence; mirrors itself, delights

  In consciousness of consciousness, alone,

  Sufficient, nimble, touched with a small grace.

  Then, as it must at last, the curtain rises,

  The play begins. Something by Shakespeare.

  Framed in the arched proscenium, it seems

  A dream, neither better nor worse

  Than whatever I shall dream after I rise

  With hat and coat, go home to bed, and dream.

  If anything, more limited, more strict—

  No one will fly or turn into a moose.

  But acceptable, like a dream, because remote,

  And there is, after all, a pretty girl.

  Perhaps tonight she’ll figure in the cast

  I summon to my slumber and control

  In vast arenas, limitless space, and time

 

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