Selected Poems
Page 11
beautifully;
This was I,
a sparrow.
I did my best;
farewell.
Tribute to the Painters
Satyrs dance!
all the deformities take wing
centaurs
leading to the rout of the vocables
in the writings
of Gertrude
Stein—but
you cannot be
an artist
by mere ineptitude
The dream
is in pursuit!
The neat figures of
Paul Klee
fill the canvas
but that
is not the work
of a child
The cure began, perhaps,
with the abstractions
of Arabic art
Dürer
with his Melancholy
was ware of it—
the shattered masonry. Leonardo
saw it,
the obsession,
and ridiculed it
in La Gioconda.
Bosch’s
congeries of tortured souls and devils
who prey on them
fish
swallowing
their own entrails
Freud
Picasso
Juan Gris.
The letter from a friend
saying:
For the last
three nights
I have slept like a baby
without
liquor or dope of any sort!
We know
that a stasis
from a chrysalis
has stretched its wings—
like a bull
or the Minotaur
or Beethoven
in the scherzo
of his 9th Symphony
stomped
his heavy feet
I saw love
mounted naked on a horse
on a swan
the back of a fish
the bloodthirsty conger eel
and laughed
recalling the Jew
in the pit
among his fellows
when the indifferent chap
with the machine gun
was spraying the heap.
He
had not yet been hit
but smiled
comforting his companions.
Dreams possess me
and the dance
of my thoughts
involving animals
the blameless beasts
and there came to me
just now
the knowledge of
the tyranny of the image
and how
men
in their designs
have learned
to shatter it
whatever it may be,
that the trouble
in their minds
shall be quieted,
put to bed
again.
The Pink Locust
I’m persistent as the pink locust,
once admitted
to the garden,
you will not easily get rid of it.
Tear it from the ground,
if one hair-thin rootlet
remain
it will come again.
It is
flattering to think of myself
so. It is also
laughable.
A modest flower,
resembling a pink sweet-pea,
you cannot help
but admire it
until its habits
become known.
Are we not most of us
like that? It would be
too much
if the public
pried among the minutiae
of our private affairs.
Not
that we have anything to hide
but could they
stand it? Of course
the world would be gratified
to find out
what fools we have made of ourselves.
The question is,
would they
be generous with us—
as we have been
with others? It is,
as I say,
a flower
incredibly resilient
under attack!
Neglect it
and it will grow into a tree.
I wish I could so think of myself
and of what
is to become of me.
The poet himself,
what does he think of himself
facing his world?
It will not do to say,
as he is inclined to say:
Not much. The poem
would be in that betrayed.
He might as well answer—
“a rose is a rose
is a rose” and let it go at that.
A rose is a rose
and the poem equals it
if it be well made.
The poet
cannot slight himself
without slighting
his poem—
which would be
ridiculous.
Life offers
no greater reward.
And so,
like this flower,
I persist—
for what there may be in it.
I am not,
I know,
in the galaxy of poets
a rose
but who, among the rest,
will deny me
my place.
from Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
BOOK II
Approaching death,
as we think, the death of love,
no distinction
any more suffices to differentiate
the particulars
of place and condition
with which we have been long
familiar.
All appears
as if seen
wavering through water.
We start awake with a cry
of recognition
but soon the outlines
become again vague.
If we are to understand our time,
we must find the key to it,
not in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries,
but in earlier, wilder
and darker epochs . .
So to know, what I have to know
about my own death,
if it be real,
I have to take it apart.
What does your generation think
of Cézanne?
I asked a young artist.
The abstractions of Hindu painting,
he replied,
is all at the moment which interests me.
He liked my poem
about the parts
of a broken bottle,
lying green in the cinders
of a hospital courtyard.
There was also, to his mind,
the one on gay wallpaper
which he had heard about
but not read.
I was grateful to him
for his interest.
Do you remember
how at Interlaken
we were waiting, four days,
to see the Jungfrau
but rain had fallen steadily.
Then
just before train time
on a tip from one of the waitresses
we rushed
to the Gipfel Platz
and there it was!
in the distance
covered with new-fallen snow.
When I was at Granada,
I remember,
in the overpowering heat
climbing a treeless hill
overlooking the Alhambra.
At my appearance at the summit
two small boys<
br />
who had been playing
there
made themselves scarce.
Starting to come down
by a new path
I at once found myself surrounded
by gypsy women
who came up to me,
I could speak little Spanish,
and directed me,
guided by a young girl,
on my way.
These were the pinnacles.
The deaths I suffered
began in the heads
about me, my eyes
were too keen
not to see through
the world’s niggardliness.
I accepted it
as my fate.
The wealthy
I defied
or not so much they,
for they have their uses,
as they who take their cues from them.
I lived
to breathe above the stench
not knowing how I in my own person
would be overcome
finally. I was lost
failing the poem.
But if I have come from the sea
it is not to be
wholly
fascinated by the glint of waves.
The free interchange
of light over their surface
which I have compared
to a garden
should not deceive us
or prove
too difficult a figure.
The poem
if it reflects the sea
reflects only
its dance
upon that profound depth
where
it seems to triumph.
The bomb puts an end
to all that.
I am reminded
that the bomb
also
is a flower
dedicated
howbeit
to our destruction.
The mere picture
of the exploding bomb
fascinates us
so that we cannot wait
to prostrate ourselves
before it. We do not believe
that love
can so wreck our lives.
The end
will come
in its time.
Meanwhile
we are sick to death
of the bomb
and its childlike
insistence.
Death is no answer,
no answer—
to a blind old man
whose bones
have the movement
of the sea,
a sexless old man
for whom it is a sea
of which his verses
are made up.
There is no power
so great as love
which is a sea,
which is a garden—
as enduring
as the verses
of that blind old man
destined
to live forever.
Few men believe that
nor in the games of children.
They believe rather
in the bomb
and shall die by
the bomb.
Compare Darwin’s voyage of the Beagle,
a voyage of discovery if there ever was one,
to the death
incommunicado
in the electric chair
of the Rosenbergs.
It is the mark of the times
that though we condemn
what they stood for
we admire their fortitude.
But Darwin
opened our eyes
to the gardens of the world,
as they closed them.
Or take that other voyage
which promised so much
but due to the world’s avarice
breeding hatred
through fear,
ended so disastrously;
a voyage
with which I myself am so deeply concerned,
that of the Pinta,
the Niña
and the Santa María.
How the world opened its eyes!
It was a flower
upon which April
had descended from the skies!
How bitter
a disappointment!
In all,
this led mainly
to the deaths I have suffered.
For there had been kindled
more minds
than that of the discoverers
and set dancing
to a measure,
a new measure!
Soon lost.
The measure itself
has been lost
and we suffer for it.
We come to our deaths
in silence.
The bomb speaks.
All suppressions,
from the witchcraft trials at Salem
to the latest
book burnings
are confessions
that the bomb
has entered our lives
to destroy us.
Every drill
driven into the earth
for oil enters my side
also.
Waste, waste!
dominates the world.
It is the bomb’s work.
What else was the fire
at the Jockey Club in Buenos Aires
(malos aires, we should say)
when with Perón’s connivance
the hoodlums destroyed,
along with the books
the priceless Goyas
that hung there?
You know how we treasured
the few paintings
we still cling to
especially the one
by the dead
Charlie Demuth.
With your smiles
and other trivia of the sort
my secret life
has been made up,
some baby’s life
which had been lost
had I not intervened.
But the words
made solely of air
or less,
that came to me
out of the air
and insisted
on being written down,
I regret most—
that there has come an end
to them.
For in spite of it all,
all that I have brought on myself,
grew that single image
that I adore
equally with you
and so
it brought us together.
Pictures from Brueghel
(1962)
“… the form of a man’s rattle may be in
accordance with instructions received in the
dream by which he obtained his power.”
Frances Densmore
The Study of Indian Music
Pictures from Brueghel
I SELF-PORTRAIT
In a red winter hat blue
eyes smiling
just the head and shoulders
crowded on the canvas
arms folded one
big ear the right showing
the face slightly tilted
a heavy wool coat
with broad buttons
gathered at the neck reveals
a bulbous nose
but the eyes red-rimmed
from over-use he must have
driven them hard
but the delicate wrists
show him to have been a
man unused to
manual labor unshaved his
blond beard half trimmed
no time for any-
thing but his painting
II LANDSCAPE WITH THE FALL OF ICARUS
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
> it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
III THE HUNTERS IN THE SNOW
The over-all picture is winter
icy mountains
in the background the return
from the hunt it is toward evening
from the left
sturdy hunters lead in
their pack the inn-sign
hanging from a
broken hinge is a stag a crucifix
between his antlers the cold
inn yard is
deserted but for a huge bonfire
that flares wind-driven tended by
women who cluster
about it to the right beyond
the hill is a pattern of skaters
Brueghel the painter
concerned with it all has chosen
a winter-struck bush for his
foreground to
complete the picture . .
IV THE ADORATION OF THE KINGS
From the Nativity
which I have already celebrated
the Babe in its Mother’s arms
the Wise Men in their stolen
splendor
and Joseph and the soldiery
attendant
with their incredulous faces
make a scene copied we’ll say
from the Italian masters
but with a difference
the mastery
of the painting
and the mind the resourceful mind
that governed the whole
the alert mind dissatisfied with
what it is asked to
and cannot do
accepted the story and painted
it in the brilliant
colors of the chronicler
the downcast eyes of the Virgin
as a work of art
for profound worship
V PEASANT WEDDING
Pour the wine bridegroom
where before you the
bride is enthroned her hair
loose at her temples a head
of ripe wheat is on
the wall beside her the
guests seated at long tables
the bagpipers are ready
there is a hound under
the table the bearded Mayor
is present women in their
starched headgear are
gabbing all but the bride
hands folded in her
lap is awkwardly silent simple
dishes are being served
clabber and what not
from a trestle made of an
unhinged barn door by two
helpers one in a red
coat a spoon in his hatband
VI HAYMAKING
The living quality of
the man’s mind
stands out
and its covert assertions
for art, art, art!
painting
that the Renaissance
tried to absorb