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THE COLLECTED POEMS OF ESTHER CAMERON
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THE COLLECTED POEMS OF ESTHER CAMERON
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CONTENTS
Foreword Part I: Poems Part II: Sequences Chronology
FOREWORD
In every literate household, there used to be those volumes of “Complete Poems” —Shakespeare, Milton, Cowper, Burns, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Longfellow, Bryant... Hardbound, generally in small print, with the poems printed continuously. Recently the wistful thought occurred to me, “I wish my work could be printed in that format!” And then I thought: why not put such a collection together anyway, if only as a matter of housekeeping? And perhaps, who knows, someday the collection may find its way into the hands (or onto the screen) of someone who may find it a useful companion.
Here, then, are the poems that have stayed with me from over six decades of writing poetry -- including even a few "juvenilia," written by a child and adolescent who, though no prodigy, still seems to me to have sized things up pretty accurately. These poems are included partly as an encouragement to watch for serious expressions from children. Such expressions are not necessarily to be expected from "creative writing" classes; they come rather, like all real poems, from the mind's solitary confrontations with reality.
The poems are in chronological order, as far as I can reconstruct it, except that it seemed worthwhile to put the longer sequences by themselves, in Part III. I have divided them according to the phases of my own life, marked by changes in geographical location.
Collections of this kind are often preceded by a biographical sketch. In lieu of this, there is a brief chronology at the end. It gives some outward dates that may serve as individual coordinates; these are, of course, to be interspersed with the dates of the larger chronology in which we are all living. Poetry can be a form of history; thanks to these poems, very few of which have been revised since the time of writing, I am fairly sure of remembering what it was like to live through those decades. The disuse of poetry means, among other things, a loss of collective memory, and I can only commit this work to cyberspace with a prayer that this lost dimension may yet be restored. August/Ave Menachem 28, 2011/5771
PART I: MADISON< WISCONSIN, 1948-1961
DO DOLLS HAVE LIFE?
Little doll, I wonder If you each day. Have your hour of work And your hour of play What do you do, When the night is still? Do it in front of me, Do what you will! I want you to do it, you see.
1948 (?)
*
THE FORGOTTEN WORLD
I, the wind, the cold cold wind, I blow over the prairie, around dead volcanos, I sing of a world, A forgotten world, A world long strayed beyond the sight of men.
I, the prairie, The cold, stone prairie Dotted with dead volcanos, Earthquakes have carved crators, Great, rocky crators, Out of my surface I that remain of a forgotten world, A world long strayed beyond the sight of men.
We, the volcanos, The old, dead volcanos, We that remain of a forgotten world, A world long strayed beyond the sight of men.
We are that world, That forgotten world, That world long strayed beyond the sight of men.
1952(?)
*
VENUS
The stars are little campfires In the evening sky Many of these there are, but you Are first to burn, and first to die.
I sit by my own campfire And watch you from afar -- O Venus, lovely Venus, O silver Evening Star!
1952
*
THE DEDICATION
There hangs my star of hope, still bright Against the twilight sky. A year ago I saw that light -- How fast the days went by!
I see the child that I have been And am less every day Brush past me in the evening wind To join the faraway,
Dead past that slips from memory, Do what I will to hold it; The formless future calls to me, And I must go and mold it.
1956
*
I shall cast my heart to the sea, I shall fling my heart to the wind, I shall hurl my heart to the fire, Rather than to my kind.
For my kind have knowing looks, And keen, divining minds, And they learn too quick to despise -- But the rages of Earth are blind.
1957 *
Despair, apathy, Hope, despair -- Is it a circle Leading nowhere,
Stamped in the mind By thoughts without ruth, Or the long, long spiral Down to truth?
1957
*
SUSPENDED MOMENT
I care not what may come; it is enough That day is done, and I am going home. Though birds are whirled by Autumn to the south, Though evening reddens hill and roof and dome, Though time's thin roof, as the next day impends, Shuts out the future now but cannot last, I shall believe this moment will not end; The future seems as distant as the past. The wind is cool with night; a red sun sets, Carrying in its fall another day In my life, and though Earth does not regret, One minute of her span has ticked away. But in this brief peace Earth and I alike Stand still, nor strain to hear the hour strike.
1957
*
LAST RADIANCE
No longer will the sun need all this light, She pours it here between the autumn hills. See, at our feet dark water flashes bright As the great, brilliant tide its basin fills. Light almost dims the brown and gold and red, Even by profusion veiling from our eyes The thick, stiff brush, its leaves already shed, The valley floor, the pale and dazzled skies.
The world lies in a tired sun's dusty beam, Whose light deceives not those who know the fall. This glory is the last; the sun, it seems, Renouncing now light's brilliance, sheds it all. The day almost estranges soul and breath. We wander by these banks and talk of death.
1958
A TREE
Gnarled he will stay until the last, Strong now but warped when he was young; To stagger under snow and blast Was he at Nature's order wrung.
Thick is his bent trunk now, and black; Now it is spring and he must bear On that inflexible, tired back The weight of blossoms far too fair.
Stoic beneath the mad caress Of her who bent him long ago, He can but shoulder loveliness And bear it as he bore the snow.
1958
*
A spring storm rising in the west Takes to lean upon hits breast A tree with last year's leaves, still bright. A woman runs to grasp and fight Clothes flapping in the storm-fresh air That takes her breath and sweeps her hair Into the sun. Some strands are white.
1961
*
He and the moon looked coldly at each other, and he said, "Put the shade down." And they did. Now just beneath the frayed edge of his lid, casting a glare between him and the others,
burned the night-lamp. Into its flame he poured, like some rare oil, the hoarded power of sight; and the light used it all, and there was no more light. And then his eyes closed of their own accord.
1961
*
HIPPODAMEIA
In presence of the bestial race Apart from passions all, her face Has no expression but its own Beauty, inviolate as stone, And Time, to all indifference friend, Justified her in the end: The Centaur and his lust are gone.
Whole, restored, she stands alone. Upon her breast -- would she then deign To see -- two bestial hands remain.
1961
*
JUMP ROPE RHYME
In the curve of the cove bluebells cockleshells Little shells seaweed thing little waves come running in now and then a bigger one eevy ivy over
One by one all in line bluebells cockleshells swinging rope took them in swung and swung and made one turn over each your turn your turn eevy ivy over
Hesitate now no wait bluebells cockleshells the empty line swings endlessly run in run in the children cry but gulls are watching from the sky but there is no one here but I
1961
*
LINES WRITTEN IN A GERMAN DICTIONARY
Listen, guest: the hours are dumb, the cuckoo's flown away from his black house. Here seconds pulse with none to take their sum. Listen, guest: the sluice is raised for unreturning waves.
1961
*
THE EXPECTED GUEST
All morning long she walked about the town, pausing awhile in shop doors, entering consciously, with lashes half cast down, hand upon shoulder-bag; or lingering seconds where panes to sideward glance divulged her image, half reflected, half surmised -- upon her cheek the air was heavy with spring and with vague thoughts a moment long indulged.
She bought a bunch of daffodils, sniffed a flask of perfume, with some hesitation chose a candle (yellow), searched her mind to ask what she'd forgotten; but the air opposed a March-drowsed weight to any clarity: on the crowds hurrying through the vernal gloom the vision of her room was superimposed with someone there, too near for eyes to see.
1966
*
WITH BITTER WORDS
Why did you leave with bitter words? Come back, though love be gone, And speak to me one gentle thing Before you travel on.
Oh, in this town are many roads For to wander to and fro, And one road leads to my true love's door, And that way I may not go.
And through this town the people pass, I pass them night and day, And any of them would speak to me, But you would turn away.
Love is like the falcon That flies away at night, And love is like the darkened sky That cradles him in flight.
Why did you leave with bitter words? Come back, though love be gone, And speak to me one gentle thing Before you travel on.
1966
*
I thought that I had got a harvest in: So rich my store with fruits of air and earth I feared not even your going, feared no dearth, And wake to find all empty, barn and bin, And wander forth to pluck the acrid Now, Harsh fruit, unripened on the wayside bough.
1966
*
Yet I have heard the sea sing in your ear with the voice of a singer of other times: then the sea on the other side was grayer and colder and the last of those that were taking ship stood in the mist on the foreshore and dreamed himself alone.
1966
*
WATERCOLOR
Concealed by archways, awnings, eaves, we watch the unsuspected space revealed in silver faint striations of the air above the square. Later on a pigeon will descend and mate with his reflection in the wet and the mottling of pavements shine like pebbles by the sea. And we shall be able to watch our muddy footprints melt on the new-washed gray. Later they will stay.
1966
*
DEAD SISTERS
Last night they came to me, six of them, in a delegation. A gleam had divided the darkness into black skirts, dark eyes, submissive partings of dark hair over the dead- white foreheads of the dead. They stood in a hesitant wedge at my bedside. The foremost bent her eyes on me --hands wrapped in apron -- and behind her a ghost of gossip stirred. So young, they said.
1966
*
THE GIFT
I would enter your door like a ray of light falling on something already in your possession.
late 1966 (from memory)
*
THE COMPLAINT
Without love there is only time.
Love, the pale saxifrage prizing past and future apart.
Without love, a sky crushes the flowers like a huge gray rock.
Without love the words come out thin like flowers pressed between stone.
1967
*
Angel, on the neutral asteroid of our meeting we touch and our long journeys tremble behind us like wings.
1967
*
when angels shall reseam these rags warp of truth and weft of lies then not until i will confess that earth was less than motley skies
if god will swear the dog of time shall not dig up the bones of love then will i from vigil turn move where crowds and rivers move
where perjury keeps its promise not to pawn old kindness out to whores there i will bid love abdicate and for his consort take divorce
and i will kiss the stone stairs of this consequent universe
1967
*
THE BERKELEY LANDLORD
for Sylvia Plath, whom I first read in that house
Behind his back I call him, my landlord, Herr Tod. His eyes have a blear keenness, his skin looks musty. He wears a broadbrimmed hat. He lives in the rear of the house with back issues of magazines, a plaster Venus, a bed of soiled quilts. You should have seen my room when I moved in.
Once, to startle me, he winked and addressed me in German.
His voice is harsh because he's a bit deaf. Sometimes he gets friendly, telling me about his grandchildren -- my age. I changed the subject. Then he offered me a pot of honey, which I accepted but did not eat, being no fool. I know he keeps bees in the back yard, black bees I've never seen and don't want to see.
The time I came asking could I see the room, he corrected: The question is not whether you can, but whether you may.
1967
*
TALISMAN
for Don Cameron, 14
You were born in winter before Advent, in gray quiet November days. Stars of the archer moved over the fine dryness of woods, frost cracked crystals in the veins of the branches. You were the youngest in the year.
That is why you were always so grayly pale-brown, your eyes the color of winter bark, that is why you can walk through the woods and not look over your shoulder. A shy patience is yours.
You were born at night in November. I and your brother huddled apart in the dark house listening. For your birth among patient stars.
1967
*
The house of the head settles: a crack between mind and evidence.
Cliffs without footbridge, banks without water, the ghost-boat ferries projections,
the railroad tracks rear up, in a landscape Euclidean, without perspective. 1967
*
APHELION
Ein Wort: du weisst: eine Leiche.
Paul Celan
1. Then shut her eyes, batten them down and make for her earrings out of these dead sun-stones.
Her hands are rigid. Here are two seashells: clasps for abandoned shoulders.
Channel like stone the flutings of draped whiteness over the limbs you arrange as you will,
but turn her head sideways, and her mouth: leave it ajar for the stone birds to build in.
2. They found on the threshold that day a mouth opened dumb and on the tongue was laid the flat stone of a voiceless word.
Voices in hollow sky-corridors, noiseless changing of empty hinges, wind --
3. -- dry winds, sanding a time into unsighted eyes:
what suns still turn in the stone, what seas still summon the winds?
(The lips crack opening; now fall fragile, like snakeshells from the dust- uttering mouth: words
moons, waters move in the stone
4. a time when creations's furrow lies still unsealed: strange, mineral grasses sprout there. The planets go dark in a forest of dense and lightless crystals.
You must have been inside the stone the dark moon and all we thought had no entrances.
We are walking now in the zone of broken glass. Underfoot it is lenses, figurines, mirrors, drinking-vessels. We did not know they were broken, we drink from them still. One shadow, one eyeless signpost: over there, the words fuse in black-cold, space-curve, night-obsidian.
1967-8
*
THE MAIDEN
The hours are swept, dust and sounds settle, the world enters a dark still crystal. Now, shade of my sign, you approach, your feet do not disturb the even dust. There is cold as if I had drunk, o virgo, your form's ether.
In my fingertips freezes a polar wind. You had me neither the crown nor the ears of grain. Once I drank the eternal guilt; now it empties my veins. I am dark and transparent: through me shine, I cannot see them, a few single stars.
1967-8
*
A woman, sitting at her window, writes. No longer to her lover; that is lost; now that November counts the garden plants she stares at panes opaque with growths of frost.
Before her, on the paper, the words stand like stubborn messengers: they have turned back at that same wall she cannot see beyond. They stare to say no man can make them talk.
She thinks: a long, thin sounds, like tearing paper. Words that fall, shuffled, a random snow. A silence starts to grow, echoing itself forever. Another leaf gets etched on the window.
1967-8
*
ARTIFACT
Silence. The moving facets of the stream contemplated for irony.
I would not have it said I spun this, gray on silver, out of mere self. Rather
a hemisphere, open, a bowl or cup, with twig and leaf, twine and tendril -- some fraction of the dissolving forest.
1968
*
BALLAD OF A FISHERMAN'S WIFE
Paths meet in the distance, rocks bow down in the spray, and as we sat speaking our thoughts went walking away, Like leaves from under the tree, Like rain we passed to the sea --
Two griefs, and a single cure!
The sky was gray, a dimmed pearl, And our boat seaweed-brown, Midships the sun was couched And gave pale shine, And hard under our keel The flounder sang --
Two griefs, and a single cure!
Wind is cold and soft, Soft and cold the rain, Sea-kine rise and drift Over a gray plain, And the pale sisters drive them down To the sea again --
Two griefs, and never a cure!
1968
*
GARDEN
She called him a beast and, when he protested, said she might not like him so well if he weren't one. He was the beast. His arms went round her like a sturdy fence, but it was himself he enclosed.
Within that wide stockade she was water, forage, was the stake he was tethered to, and the slender, floral figure of the maiden in the background. But what most impressed her
was the troubled widening of his eyes, what they saw -- not her, certainly, it was beyond that fence but there was nothing out there. Until one morning he did not come when she called -- or at all.
It struck her then he must have found the white chiaroscuro form sleeping narrowly and tried to think about her then. Painfully she wondered why he had not wakened her; if they could ever have left that magical unhappy garden together.
1968
*
THE INVADED
They've got those suits now (Oh darling I'm so frightened) that fit you from neck to toenails thick asbestos-filled and very tight. A blow through one of those doesn't leave marks; they take you out, dead and perfect as a bad girl in the gangster movies.
Last night a car passed the border. They took the lids off the suitcases the sides off the car they scraped the passengers down to the tendons and sent them on still with suspicious side-looks for the red on their bones
In a dream I came and sat next to you you did not look at me I took your hand it closed on mine then died was it one of them
the people we cut out of magazines
They walk around there are more than I remembered they are lifesize flat and very brightly colored You must try to tell me if you see one of them I will try to tell you if I see one of them
the last movie was thirty hours long
ARE YOU ALL RIGHT CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW I WANT YOU TO LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY THIS IS IMPORTANT
1968
*
A battle, always repeated because fought on the wrong battlefield
Each night the victorious hero retires to his tent to weep while the opponent slinks back to his black furnace under the horizon
Next morning the hero rises and goes forth to the field which is green and untrampled while the sun a flame-colored circle rises
and the words come stealing to the scene disguising themselves as trees fences ponds so as to watch the combat and appear uninvolved
Pretty soon the sun is standing at the top of the sky shedding down yellow on the ground green trees with their brown stems on the sky-blue ponds with their silver ripples on the backs of birds and on the two fighting in a vermilion mirage
1968
*
black cannon in the field over the hill
In the first winter I found the minute cathedrals under the leaves I touched their spiny spires, wondering, and used them for the mystery plays with small figures
The next year mushrooms appeared in clumps where the little churches had melted I had no idea which ones were not poisonous you could hardly have advised me
without remembering, open your hands where you stand in the shuttered house over the garden
the soil yields rusted metals I want a fragment of your glass heart like a clear lens to look through
there were no leaves this year
1968
*
A HYMN TO THE ANCESTORS
I. Isolde held the falcon's fire
mother grandmother great-grandmother golden-haired paysanne blonde de Touraine lacemaker whitehand weaving the lace trying I am trying to finish this birdclaws tangled breaking greatgrandmother grandmother mother fading rosary chain of images break you I am trying to break you fire opal cold in my opalescent fire mother childhood o cunning green fairytale in the arbor interstice of eternal burning O ladies who wore the Rose of the Fire on your cool green breasts O vanished heirloom rose whose sharp thorn pin sticks me now O igneous demons you whom the green stem of life at last set free -
LET ME FLAME AND FLY AWAY let me go back to a green stem a single place under der linden
II. Green trellis of the Fire I arraign my witchtrials lifted high on a hot draft over San Francisco. Evidence! Evidence! Forty demons press lava faces against my body!
I am not like you. I am the family damnation. Love made conscious, its limbs lashed naked fast with its own twisted deceit --
what say you innocent Isolde?
I will not worship the Fire not chant the words that are sweet in the Jaws I will not give my pain in the lightning of the knife I will burn the flame of hatred in the flame of words Burn the flame of words in the flame of desire BURN DESIRE IN HATRED AND WORDS AND DESIRE AND HATRED
o lords o ladies fair dance now in this fair fire a courtly dance
III. and once more I am home beside the white garage long sold steps crunch on the misty glitter of white gravel the black tracery of the past goes up a tangle of burning brush wires in orange flames 118 Linden Street Ridgewood grandmother fixed in the faded stuffed chair played solitaire played Crazy Eights with us -- vast, rapacious --
I ran away fearing the folding white arms like floured bread dough
the fire the fire
it breaks out everywhere slow between the roses of curling wallpaper faster the cancer smoldering in my grandmother's uterus
she died painfully
my mother who choked as she told me walking the trees red over the white ghost water of autumn
this day almost estranges soul and breath we wander by these banks and talk of death
what was it choked you mother was it tears pity love grief Or burning ashes?!
burn burn I too will burn If fifteen year old fettered fury know it O FLASH FURY O BURST METAPHORS OF WHITE HELLFIRE HIDING
This
that we shall burn the fat dripping off our nerve-ends and pain ravish every brain-center, all love concept faith word all self
cry shame shame
IV. then said that lady standing there go and find my jester's skull and tell in youth I did love did love
1968
*
POET, 23, IS BACK FROM VIETNAM
for Michael
You had been half in love with easeful death for some time
Brown ghosts hovered singing over clipped lawns
You used to speak almost fondly of the face that was a gray spot in the crowd of the ashlight from invisible t.v. live on stoned faces
Well I suppose it was a surgical revelation those jungle viridians the shell-torn clay the different reds soaking the retina Now you are back behind your dark glasses looking at us fitted with the ultimate X ray vision can you see anything
. . .
Where O death is your waxed moustache your umber fantasies of dead fish talking in an undersea room your anger your gray dracula cloak
ripped away like a billboard and i projected into the landscape's green violent NOW
red flowers of love and hate devour one another and spleen heart entrails thrive nakedly --
the cloak the t.v. screen the mirror Time and your face
. . .
What does the woman standing in robes of dark-green patina at the mouth of the western harbor hold
(A jug mouth round and softly darkened)
What does she hold in it for the soldier
(Midwestern street midsummer night the elm leaves' electric shadows down the street a dark snow to walk through
forgetfulness unto red sands keep on spreading across a green desert
no they're singing again 1968
*
MENDOCINO
for John and Maria
Miles following the coastroad gray staves ran, the music of fences
A swallowtail weightless over the yellow weed A hawk pinned to the sun
The blue table down there, the rocks, the white spume-statute standing pointing outward
1968
*
ANGEL
(on a painting by Lucas van Leyden)
"New-lighted"
Not that he has to rise, slowly, pulling himself upright on remembered ladders of muscles,
only the feet are heavy and drag the ground like a puppet's, the puppeteer unpracticed,
and some flesh, stretching under the eyes, learns gravity. Observe
the wings: two great evenings of darkening azure surmount him limned with feathers: so many as a man, all his sleep, can count of dreams.
1968
*
FOEHN
Why is the wind ransacking the bay of trees, torturing them with his senseless questions? They turn up their leaves to him, dead fishbellies, little shimmerless mirrors backed by a sullen summer.
The sky wants no part of this. Its underside is whitish, like leaves, the sun, caught in albumin, coated, like the tongues that begin uttering and uttering
that speechlessness where a thought walks, turning and turning the images not here, not this one, not that one, as a wind, changed in the night, drives other clouds over the bowed forests.
Munich, 1968
*
AUTUMN WALK ALONG THE ILLINOIS CENTRAL TRACKS
for Jim
Stalks shrink and rattle as the sky expands, emptied by birds, scoured by cirrus. Darkness adulterates the potions of the sun, in the field the breathing of the seasons has stopped.
Double blade welded of rust and black azure curving itself round the horizon's shoulder, the railroad tracks, each autumn, draw us out. The family shoulders winter coats, gets going.
I and my brother run ahead. Our parents' faces, at wind's level, erase in memory: I am ten, he seven. We climb the embankments, looking for milkweed to stuff in paper bags.
There the burst pods, lined with brown satin, like inside rooms in ravaged French chateaux, there the green pods' unfledged stickiness -- but these just ripe, a crack
and the stuff swells out. Sap's whiteness returned ready for flight, it cannot be woven. We will find a use for it. We will make milkweed pillows, I sill spin it somehow -- already we know it is to be wasted.
The sunlight mixed with darkness is draining away, they turn, and we, like balloons on a string, must follow them to a room where lamps beat back the nightfall, the winter sky sucking emptiness like a lung.
1968 *
SCENE FROM FAUST
A space -- heart-contracted. Guilt comes true. A stone rolls from forever. You watch it roll right to your feet. It's for you. The tone is the pain which is not real.
It is a minute remembered -- transistorized, its voice still on, quite soft. There's a flash. Your head hopes for a judgment, the whole world's power off,
light to be restored, if at all, on a sugar-=frosted plain, the people, pegs, impossibly white, small, equivalent, clean --
You give it up. You begin bending toward the stone which is hard matter for you alone, the faint unstanchable whimpering -- at your back a broken window. The sun.
1968 *
PFAUENINSEL
Peacocks, mounted on cedar branches, sometimes launched themselves like blue ungainly meteors down to the grass.
You and I -- a faun dreaming of tundras and lumberjack boots, a nymph swinging a camera -- populated the perspectives
(when no one was looking yours the grin dodging from beard to eye-corners). Koenigin Luise, the dairymaid,
did not come out, but behind the Gothic stonefront closing a flight of dust- and mauve-colored willows a door stood wide,
the farmwife gave us news. The English were practicing -- at the water air filled with shell-poppings -- shoreward
over our path, an oak, Beethovenian, maintained its massive cloud- counterpoint.
1969
something vast and imperceptible
out of the space between sill and lintel of the horizon
that is where you came from
1969
*
HOUSE OF SOLSTICE
i.
Whether alone or far from water, stick your key in the masonry put your question.
ii.
Noises of demolition subside: move in to a space structured by absence
there where the shelf was take down some book, read
outside the roses still tangle, the creepers' silencing hands, shadows move upward
then sleep or wake, in the suspended solitudes
warmed by that hearth's scattered ashes
or the fires deep in the earth
iii.
under the leaning weeds at the yard's end, they said, your birthflower
aster
shorn rays, the colors solitudes of descending sun on old planets
iv.
sitting-room red sun under frost crystals
colors come out of things darkness draws into them
the window a wound's edge
v.
No fathers of mine came from your country none of yours dwelt on my land it's said we look alike
if you should ask me I would arrive one morning carrying only the few, mythical flowers of a native valley I have not seen
the rest already in your keeping
vi.
Over all mirrors let fall the third eyelid
now is what moves in there glaciers saurian thickness a forest petrifies leaving bones down in the hole of an open eye
vii.
so things shiver in themselves as in mirrors and i a space between dissatisfactions
a statement to be multiplied infinitely
viii.
i it is one and falls apart
ix.
bituminous illuminations i arrive subterranean stone swept dustless, the scattered rags, clockworks and what make i here i artificer of afternoons
o light slow to travel across a green dial a dream of surface
x.
A star, which I twisted of plantain bark, now figures in your name.
xi.
wachst auch du zu dieser stunde auf denkst wie wir uns auf der treppe dort begegneten wie du fluechtig mir den arm beruehrt hast wie kalt sind diese laken
xii.
each day the light's retraction makes of us islands the days like ice-floes driven
beside us the others eyes gaped open in readiness for the resumption of sight
in a cup at the hearth the final elixir extinguished o breathing bent survival of an enclosed wing
xiii.
A young man with a smooth forehead beneath which the eyes hide like small animals under rocks out in the country.
xiv.
Facade: where the wind stood stone-encurled, like soft gray buds in stone the pigeon bodies stirred.
The pigeon voices' winter chisels chipped a gradual light, the abandoned quiet shone.
xv.
eilth', eilthe chelidon:
it will come again that spring with the swallow flying in and out of the mirrors
and outside the children singing "the swallow, the swallow is here"
xvi.
an ache words cannot raise
sky and the earth its template joined steeled with still violence then
those frail levers of weightless horizons
xvii.
on the thruway alone
road line of sight draws to the horizon silicate mists with brown dendritic inclusions distances dead fields under yonder
half granular wall vague gape yesterdays concrete choked footpressure stone flung to past alive in regression forward inside the shock of speed silent
xviii.
love incline your ear
impose the infinite untouched texture of your listening between utterance and silence
1969
*
CARMINA BUFFALONIANA
Do our words mean when we do not mean them?
Your silence, frames you, feminine, like your grandmother's photograph. Your hands are still, your lips poised above speech like the lifted shaft of a machine stopped in midgesture. Your eyes move like the eyes of my third doll, Annabel, who is queen of the past now. What is that dead glow around your chest? Has someone torn out the heart that said, "Mama"?
No, the half-raised arm which can hold nothing commands me to dream again. Very well. I dreamed of a space that had no such place as here. There was war in all three dimensions but no battlefields. And so on all sides the soldiers ticked to death.
The dreams come out on the teletype of the night and are written down. Or they are found like dead birds in the gutters, they fill the air like invisible billboards. The cars gasp their way along paretic Main Street, scant shadows hurry along under them. Other shadows move behind milk glass doors. A dull red streak in gray linoleum -- blood on crisscross horizons.
Everywhere the inaudible lullaby. Now and then a joint. Something approaches glaring like a speeding car through the wind-tunnel in front of the eyes. No, it's McKinley's hearse. Slow, now. A painting -- "The Triumph of Entropy" -- hangs in the town hall . . .
1969
*
THE CAGE OUTSIDE MARRIAGE
Tonight your picture wanted someone to be in it so I swam against the drifting junk of the streets and played "which bone which beast" in the old shale corridors. At kerbstones, at kitchen windows I calibrated your changes, from the cage outside marriage: Here's looking at you. The contact sticks like wax to the skin of burnt fingers. Miscellaneous recall discs still spin and now and then strobe to recognition. Sometimes it's you I'm running backwards to hold, sometimes a nymph of myself, sightless and shy of knowledge. I knew you halfway, at some amputated distance -- a better catcher would have admitted being drunk.
1969
*
GIVE ME YOUR WORD
Give me your word it will be so: Your birds will find the crumbs I fling them. Their wings are on the wind, like snow -- Give me your word it will be so. Tell me their markings, let me know Which way to greet the winds that bring them. Give me your word. It will be so. Your birds will find the crumbs I fling them.
1970
*
LINES WRITTEN IN THE BASEMENT OF CROSBY HALL
Stormwinds, insatiate, insinuated with sirens, among the sheetmetal carapaces of instruction. Dark knots, congregations of penguin voices, talk of striking.
Against winter? Too cold to stand here. The snow, white as helmets, brings up its reinforcements, wind keeps shoving us along. Let's have coffee.
This white office cubicle . . . Strife of voices and the silent agreements: there will be metal twisted, glass broken, a car turned to a smudgepot, maybe a few broken heads repossessed by the cold:
The leafless trees are skeptics.
1970
*
NIGHT FLIGHT
Voice in the wings of the thorax, voice in the wings of the clenched cerebrum, prisoner within the wings, voice of my voice --
Tendon of pain, limbs scattering out of that one direction --
It overturns all synonyms like a wind among walls that have died standing up I give it your name to play with it flings the name away and goes loudly searching for it in the trees made from its calling
my name it has taken and denies this
yet it has promised me battle and I live by this:
All the ungiven glances like darts in a box all the points of silence sharpened towards the day when I fall vanishing and they fall past me flaring at equinox over the dark sowing-time of an alien earth.
1970
*
at evening shadows link arms, dance away from the sun:
goodbye my straight treetrunks my broad housefronts my polished windows glinting in answer
goodbye my children I have never seen 1970
*
O and to answer one absence I would have dragged all things down by the long hair of their shadows at sunset.
1970
*
RAINIER PARK. RUTHIE
Dogtooth violets, spitting saffron out of a whiteness thumbed back by a concupiscent sun.
We danced on the spreading page of the snowslope like blinded letters. Then spots with sight, and a brown earth glistening, and the pasqueflowers in fisted shoots like tiny towheaded children butting upwards.
In your green shift, old shoes, you ran toward me beside the glacier: sun-poppet, infant priestess, your limbs turned in a dazzle of spruce.
1970
*
Mother, where did you bury the cat? You wouldn't take her to a pet cemetery, you've too much class for that.
Nor would you plant on the grave catnip and morning-glory; I hear you say, "They're only animals -- we mustn't grieve --"
You take a shovel down to the yard's end, pat it level, careful not to stare in.
1970
*
CURSE
A darkness, the most silent of waters, in the jug whose mouth is open expressionless.
The eyes in this head: black holes where the world went through.
Why I am sad, daylight, is none of your business.
Cruelly that bird sharpens his song before dawn, in November.
Now over its own autumns the blood crouches.
Black hands of the east, hold back the sun's head behind the mountains.
Hollow I come, from the hole in the hollow wind.
Buffalo, 1971
I strove with my steps towards one who overtook me. My child was in the world before me.
1971
*
THE ISLAND CASTLE
Prologue.
Wake and dream at evening's dawn! Calm is the bright nocturnal day, Sleeping Fates no more can frown, Weariness is worn away.
The wave is weary of the shore, And of the eye the mortal tear. Weep among the stones no more, Dreaming rise to that pure sphere
Where none are slain, and none destroy, Where none are deaf, and none are mute, Fierce Mockery dares not follow Joy, Nor set his heel on heart and lute.
You have heard the story of how Perseus won the Gorgon's head and saved Andromeda from being devoured by the monster Cepheus; these things are told and done many times. Perhaps you know too that among other names Andromeda is sometimes called Form; the monster, Free Verse; and Perseus, Music. As for the Medusa, one name for her is quite enough.
You recall that it is Perseus' custom to evade her petrifying stare by looking in a mirror when he strikes at her, for the reflected glance has no power to harm. But on the occasion I will tell of the trick could not be used, for to behold this particular Medusa in a mirror was exactly the same as seeing her face to face. Nevertheless, Perseus was brave or desperate enough to attempt the combat. He took the seven most courageous from among his followers and concealed them about the field of battle. They were to watch the Medusa's movements, avoiding her gaze; thus while he himself, blindfolded, attacked her with the sword, their signal-cries directed him.
What dance was danced upon that field, Not the ancient runes can tell; Yet to blind Light did darkness yield, At Perseus' hand the monster fell.
Three of Perseus' faithful companions perished in this fight, for the monster had spied them out and turned her gaze on them deliberately. Perseus himself, grieving, exhausted, and no longer even certain where his opponent was, flung the sword from him with all his might, and it was this cast that killed her.
The consequence of all this was that Perseus returned from his quest too late. When he arrived at the promontory no one stood in Andromeda's place on the rock. He saw only themonster closing its hideous jaws and beginning to sink beneath the waves. Overcome with rage and sorrow, Perseus turned the Medusa's head on the monster, as he had done before, and, as before, the monster was transformed into a huge rock off the coast. But whether because of some peculiar virtue in the gaze of this Medusa, or because Andromeda was transforming the monster from within: this time no desolate stone, but a radiant island castle grew before Perseus' eyes.
This he beheld, although in his despair he had already looked into the Medusa's eyes and was himself becoming stone. Three of his companions had followed his example and shared his fate, and the four stood in a circle at the head of the promontory. Perseus alone gazed past the uplifted head of the Medusa and out toward the island castle, whose new splendor had, at the last moment, drawn his eyes away. So the power of sight was left him, and a dim, slow flicker of thought; but his body was stone.
He had looked upon the countenance of the Medusa, which was like the plains of the moon seen too close, and an air none could breathe. His soul had rushed out of him through the twin dark tunnels of her gaze; then it had gone out, like a candle in an airless chamber. Yet presently he dreamed. He stood with open eyes in utter darkness, and time passed for which there was no measure. Then somewhere a door opened. Into the room stepped the figure of a girl, clothed in a light veil that shone brightly, so that he could scarcely divine her form or features. She led him out into the day, pointed to the castle, and vanished. He woke and found himself staring out through the glass of his eyes. He could not move, but the arm that held the Medusa could feel pain, and the chill emanating from that head was like knives in the flesh. Instead of the castle he saw before him only a pile of weathered stones, so ruinous it seemed doubtful if design had placed them. Yet the memory of the shining castle persisted.
So he stood. After these dreadful events the last of Perseus' companions, his old tutor, went grieving from the scene. In a town near the promontory he had three rings made, one of iron, one of copper, and one of silver. He put spells on the cooper and silver rings and cast them into the well in the town square. Then he died, and the iron ring was buried with him.
When one hundred years had passed, a swan alighted on the head of the Medusa. The hair of snakes changed to a plumage of purest white, and the swan carried it away. And that is why the feathers of the swan have such whiteness. After another hundred years there came a raven. Seeing that the Medusa's eyes had changed to black diamonds, he picked them out and carried them off. And that is why crows have such bright black eyes and seem to know when death is near.
Now the people of the coast town regarded the place with horror. No one could have dared to think of going and removing those figures of ill omen; the spot was shunned, but the statues could be seen from afar, and a chill fell on the heart of every man that passed the promontory. Each feared lest a stray glance from the still living head of Medusa might fall on him. For a long time the people were oppressed by fears which seemed to hide in every shadow. At length they took counsel and built a wall round the promontory, so that the thing could not be seen from the town, nor approached by land. Then they had some peace. At the same time they could see the castle in all its radiance, separate from them apparently by a narrow strait; but this was scarcely less an object of terror.
One hundred years had passed to the day, when one noontide a traveler, a noble youth, stopped in the town square. All was deserted under the hot sun; but presently a maiden came with her pitcher and began to lower the bucket into the well. Moved by a sudden impulse, the youth seized the bucket as she drew it up and began to drink, and as he did so he saw in the bottom a copper ring. This he put on his finger, and straightway he heard a voice singing:
Alas! my lover is not here, Yet sing I will, and call I must; The ring has lain a hundred-year, And yet two hundred years shall rust.
The youth looked up, and saw the castle, and was possessed by a longing to go there. Others had arrived on the scene; he questioned them eagerly as to the name and origin of the castle, but received only evasive replies. He then asked if any would ferry him across, and there was silence. Finally he begged them to sell him a boat, however small and worthless, that he might try his luck alone. One or two seemed to be considering his offer, but an old man spoke: "Who knows what may yet live in the castle, or what would come upon the town, were we to lend this stranger a boat for his purpose? Let us have nothing to do with it!" There was a murmur of agreement, and the crowd quickly dispersed, leaving the youth and the old man alone.
"Be not wroth, stranger," said the old man. "What I have done is for thy good. My house lies outside the town; come, and sup with me, and stay the night; tomorrow thou shalt go thy ways."
The youth's only thought now was to reach the castle, and for this he saw no means at hand. Will-less in all else, he let the old man lead him out of the town, nor saw aught of what they passed, though the way was steep and difficult, and it was twilight before they reached the old man's dwelling. It was but an earthen hovel, halfway down the cliff; within an old woman was stirring porridge at a rude hearth. No word was spoken when they entered. After a time she gave them porridge in wooden bowls, but the youth, though he took the spoon in his hand, did not eat. At this the old woman's curiosity was aroused, and she asked what ailed the stranger.
"Some enchantment has fallen on him, I fear," replied the old man. And he told her what had passed at the market place. When she heard how he had advised the townspeople, she said: "That was ill done and well done. Why do you and the townspeople not know that a princess sleeps within the castle these hundred years, and the copper ring is the sign of her deliverer? Yet it is well for him, for we can lend him our boat which always returns to shore, and in which no ill came come to him who rows, if he take not his hand from the oars."
"Woman, all this I knew," the old man answered. "But we shall not lend him the boat, for the time is not yet." The old woman disputed, but to no avail.
The youth gave no sign, but he had heard what the old woman said. When they had done eating, the old couple lay down on the bare earth floor to rest, and the youth did the same. But he did not sleep. From the finger which wore the copper ring a strange sensation invaded him: a wakefulness sweeter than sleep, yet tormenting; he felt that it was wearing him away, and that he could now perceive the castle's radiance through the very walls. Presently the breathing of the old couple gave sign that they had fallen asleep. The youth rose up and stole out of the door. In the radiant night he could see a little path that led farther down the cliff, to a cove where a small wooded boat was moored. He stepped into the coracle and pushed from shore. As he seized the oars he felt a sharp pain from the ring finger; but it passed, and he began to row toward the castle.
The unearthly radiance was no longer evident; indeed it might have been only the rays of the moon on the delicately chiseled stones that shimmered toward him. But it seemed very close over the water, and for some hours he rowed with a will.
Yet he could not approach his goal; for though the shore dropped away and disappeared under the horizon, the castle seemed no larger. The night wore on, the stars rose and set, and morning began to glimmer up behind him. The sun rose, and as its rays grew stronger the copper ring began burning. At first the youth overcame the pain and rowed as ever, but at midmorning he could bear it no more. Letting go the oars, he seized the burning ring in his left hand, drew it from his right, and flung it over the side; and a swan came swimming by and seized it. Immediately he saw the castle, as though not a stone's throw away. On its highest tower a beautiful lady appeared and raised three cries of grief so prolonged that a wave woke in the sea and cast the lad from his boat and drowned him. But the boat returned whence it had come and so his death became known.
From that day on the townspeople noticed that the castle no longer shone as before, though in sunlight and moonlight it was still far fairer than any mortal dwelling. They became accustomed to it as it was, and ascribed its former splendor to the exaggeration of legend. The body of the youth they never found, for it was washed to the base of the forbidden promontory; there the swan buried him, and wept over the grave. And another hundred years went by.
Once more a noble stranger appeared in the town. He had heard the story of the copper ring, and as he asked the girl at the well to draw water for him, he felt a strange thrill as of remembrance or anticipation. What was his wonder when raising the bucket to his lips he saw the silver ring gleaming through the water! For a long moment he held it in his hand, gazing at it with a delight in which some ancient fear and sadness mingled. Suddenly through the uplifted ring he saw the castle and heard a voice singing:
The ring has lain two hundred years And yet a hundred-year shall rust, And my deliverer is not here -- Yet wake I will, and sing I must.
And he put the ring on.
Now all happened as before. The others came; he asked about the castle and was given confused and conflicting legends. He asked if any would take him there, and all refused. He tried to purchase a boat, and might have succeeded, but one old man, after remaining a long time in silence, said, "The copper ring brought no good to the wearer, and this silver ring will bring no good to us if we help or harbor this man. It is best that he depart from this place without delay." And all concurred. The youth, seeing that the people opposed him, left by the road they pointed. When he had gone some distance and the town was no longer in sight, he flung himself down on a stone at the side of the road, and wept.
Immediately he heard someone calling, and when he lifted his eyes he saw the old man who had turned the townspeople against him, and he stood up in anger and shame.
"My son, I am sorry," said the old man, "but it was for your good that I did it. You may think us fools or cowards, yet we have acted rightly. Come, for it is near evening;you will be welcome in my house tonight."
The youth was silent. At length: "I do not have good reason for trusting you, but something tells me that I must. At any rate it is of little importance what happens to me, if I am not to reach the castle."
"That you may think, my friend, that you may think," his companion replied. "But your life may be worth something to you later, after all. Who knows where the silver ring comes from? It is not good to listen too much to old stories." Here the old man, seeing that his words only gave pain and offense to his guest, fell silent and conducted the young man to his house on the cliffside. It was a poor cottage, but clean-swept and orderly, with a bright fire blazing upon the hearth. The old woman received the youth with kind words. Supper was put on the table; the old people began to eat and to talk of their affairs; but seeing the young man distracted and downcast the woman asked him what the matter was. The young man burst out, "I must reach the castle, or never leave this place alive!"
"My son," then said the old man, "you may leave this place alive, but reaching the castle would be another matter. I myself believe it to be a mirage; our fishermen are superstitious and tell all sorts of stories about it, but never go there. At best you would be venturing into uncharted waters, and you, I think, are no mariner."
"I wonder," suddenly spoke the old woman. "Do you know that not far from our house, in the bushes, a path begins which no one can have used for many years? It leads to a cove where no fishing boats are moored, only a small craft seemingly of ancient make, yet sound and new. When I saw it I thought of the boat in which he who wore the copper ring is said to have set out for the castle!"
When he heard this the youth begged the old woman to show him the path and told her of the silver ring. But at the old man's bidding she refused. The youth disputed them vainly, then fell silent for a moment. "I must go," he said. And he rose like a drunken man and stumbled outside.
"Wait!" cried the old woman. "If you go that way, you'll fall over the cliff! Come back, I will show you the path." So he returned into the cottage. The old woman made him sit down, and the old man said: "My son, your journey will end badly, for all this is folly. It would be better for you to remove the silver ring now and cast it into the sea. But if you are resolved to begin the quest, resolve to finish it also, and do not remove the ring in the course of it, come what may. For some say that when the body of the wearer of the copper ring was washed to shore, he no longer had it on his finger; perhaps, if you guard your ring well, it will in some way preserve you."
The young man replied, "I thank you, old man. Not to add a hundred years to my life would I take the ring from my finger now. But thanks to your counsel I shall watch the ring jealously, for it may be some enemy power will try to wrest it from me."
Since he was resolved, the old man sighed deeply, embraced him, and took leave of him as a son; then the woman took him outside and showed him the rocky path which led down to the cove. He did not hear her farewell, but climbed straight down to the water's edge, seated himself in the boat, and began to row just as the moon was rising.
Once again the shore receded, and the castle grew now nearer, though he could see it more plainly under the moon. He saw for the first time how ancient and deserted it was, though only the first marks of ruin were upon it. He rowed and rowed through the night, and a great fear began to oppress his heart. He fought against it, but towards dawn he began to feel the hand with the ring growing cold. None the less determinedly he clenched the oars, though the rays of the rising sun did not warm him, and at noon he had almost reached the landing place of the castle; but his heart had scarcely rejoiced when a black crow, with a cawing and flapping of wings, settled on the bow. In his fright the youth's numb hand let go the oar, and the silver ring fell into the bottom of the boat and the raven snatched it away. Immediately on the topmost tower a beautiful lady appeared and lifted three long wails of anguish; and a wave woke in the sea and snatched the boat from the shore and drowned the youth; but the raven found him on the shore of the island, and buried him there. The boat returned to the cove, and the old woman found it; but as she decided to keep this secret, the wearer of the silver ring was soon forgotten.
From that time on the townspeople began to perceive the decay of the castle, and as the next hundred years wore to a close it seemed utterly ruinous.
But the wall that hid the promontory was also beginning to crumble. This was scarcely noticed; for a long time people had avoided the place merely out of habit. When through the broken wall three statues were revealed -- for the fourth man had crumbled where he stood -- no one was much surprised or frightened. At last someone took the stones of the wall and built his house with them.
On a cloudy night three drunken men were walking on the road past the promontory, and one of them caught sight of the statues. "Say," he exclaimed, "if we hadn't been drinking, we'd be cold tonight; but who knows how long it's been since those fellows have tasted meat or drink?" And they walked tipsily out onto the promontory. They went up to the statues, looked them in the face and poked at them; tiring of this, they left off and looked over the edge of the promontory toward the island. "Twenty years ago," said the first drunken man, "I could throw a stone halfway to that castle."
"Ten years ago," rejoined the second, "I could throw a stone that would fall into the water not a yard from the landing."
"Friends," cried the third, "I am surely as drunk as you are, but this very night I shall strike the castle with a stone I shall pluck from the air!" And before the others could speak or laugh, he had stepped up to the stone Perseus and snatched from his hand the head of Medusa. It shrank and became a common stone; he flung it over the cliff, and it turned to a vulture which vanished immediately into the clouds.
Then all was softly illuminated with a golden radiance, and the drunkards, so terrified they forgot to stumble, fled back to the town.
The light came from a golden ring which had appeared on Perseus' finger when the head of Medusa was snatched away. He and his companions stood all night in the light of the ring; in the hour before dawn the clouds dispersed and out of the western sky flew a raven and placed the copper ring on the hand of the one companion; when the morning star appeared a swan flew out of the east and gave the silver ring to the other. At sunrise the first ray touched the ring on Perseus' finger. Without a word they left the promontory and started for town.
Perseus remembered nothing except the radiant image of the castle, which had brightened through the years of his enchantment until he saw nothing else. Now he looked across the water and saw there an island surmounted by a pile of weathering stone, and he wondered what place it was that appeared so desolate and so strange.
Before he reached the town an old man came out to meet him. "The time has come," he said. Then the light from the ring was bright as sunlight, yet soft to the eye, and a voice was heard in the air:
Spent are thrice one hundred years, Now all sorrowless I sing: Rusted is the iron ring, My deliverer, he is here.
"Wisest of men," said Perseus, "how may I reach the castle?"
"That I can tell you," the old man replied, "for we saw it in a dream this morning, both my good woman and I. There is a path that leads from here across the cliff below the town; take it, and do not turn aside until it ends in a small cove under the rocks. There you will find a boat, but do not loose it from the mooring until the evening star appears. Then step with your companions into the boat, and wait until the waves take you from the shore. Only two things matter: put no hand to the oars, and whatever tolls are demanded of you, pay them. My good woman sends you this." And he gave them a loaf of bread and a flask of sweet wine and turned back toward the city.
The three took the path and arrived at the cove. There in the shade they ate and drank and waited until the evening star appeared. Then they stepped into their boat and the waves carried them out to sea.
The shore receded and the castle came no nearer; Perseus gazed up at the stars and saw them move in their circle round the pole, and it seemed to him that they completed the circle, not once, but countless times, and still the night lasted. Bread and wine remained, but they ate and drank no more. At last they saw that they were approaching the harbor. The waves carried the boat until gently it touched the landing.
Just then with a rush of wings a huge vulture alighted on the shore ahead of them and barred their way. Perseus called out:
Bird of carrion, give way! What thou askest I will pay.
The bird answered:
A copper ring, Or all, and everything.
Then one of Perseus' companions took from his finger the copper ring and flung it to the bird, and it shrieked and fluttered upward until it stood before the door of the castle. And again the hero called out:
Bird of carrion, give way! What thou askest I will pay.
Then the bird flapped its great wings, craned its neck, and answered,
A silver ring, Or all, and everything.
And the other companion flung her the silver ring, and she screamed and flew away over the castle.
Then they entered the castle and walked through mouldering corridors until they came to a tower with a staircase which could still be climbed. On crumbling stairs they mounted to the top. Perseus felt that never would he descend the staircase; but he remembered everything, and felt no pain.
So they reached the end of the staircase and stood on the platform. In the east the sky had begun to turn grey, while overhead the stars were still bright; below them the sea was tranquil. Then Perseus looked down and beheld the vulture rising toward him like a hideous shadow until it circled just opposite them, cawing,
Despoiler of the night, give way! Else thou a golden ring must pay.
"It is the ring of my beloved!" cried Perseus, and despite his companions' fearful pleadings he would not surrender the golden ring. So that battle was joined. Perseus' two companions fell; then Perseus and the vulture fought for about an hour. The vulture struck with beak and claw, and seemed not to tire in the fighting; but Perseus, though he received no wounds, felt his strength beginning to fail. Seeing this, he gathered what force he had left and rushed forward once more, calling on the name of Andromeda.
Just then the sun rose above the horizon, and the vulture disappeared into thin air. The copper and silver rings fell to the ground, and the swan and the raven came down and swallowed them. Then Perseus heard someone call his name, and when he turned around Andromeda stood before him. What words they spoke then I cannot tell you, for I do not know.
With great difficulty the two descended the broken stairway. They wandered together through the deserted corridors until they came to a small chamber in the very center of the castle; there was a bed made, and a table set with food and drink.
While they ate they told each other all that had occurred during the time of their separation. Andromeda said, "When I saw the monster approaching and knew that you had not come in time to save me, I fainted away with terror, and dreamed I ran through dark corridors, calling your name until I fell, and lay in a black swoon which lasted I know not how long. After this a little thought returned; I slept, yet knew I slept. I dreamed that a ship, all of copper, came toward me over the sea; but midway between the shore and the castle a storm came up and the ship foundered, and I was overcome with sorrow. But after this dream I awoke for one instant, and a swan flew into the room and placed on my lips an oaten wafer and three drops of water, and I slept again. But now in my sleep I saw the castle wherein I lay; in my dreams I could wander among the halls of precious stone and the flowers and fountains of the gardens; until at last the splendors wearied my solitude, and I dreamed no more. But then I saw a silver ship, and it seemed to me that it came straight to the landing of the castle, when a storm came up and dashed it on the rocks. This grieved me so that I woke again, and a raven flew in through the window, placed three drops of honey and a wheaten cake on my lips, and departed. And again I slept; but now my dreams were of the shore. I saw the doings of the people in the town, generation after generation; I saw the promontory where three statues had stood since time out of mind; and I saw my own dwelling, black and ruinous, from across the water. After a while I knew all that had passed: why you had come too late to deliver me, how my other deliverers had perished, and how you would be tried when you awakened. A voice said, "A wise man will advise him; but woe unto you all, if he follow that counsel to the end!" For know, beloved, had you given the golden ring to the vulture Medusa, she would have had us both in her power forever.
"Last night I dreamed that a golden ship came sailing from the town. It came into the harbor and reached the landing safely; then one stepped out, and I awoke. At first I heard only an indefinite tumult and was filled with fear; but then I heard the sound of battle coming from the tower. I heard the cries of the swan and the raven, and your voice called my name; and I climbed the tower, and found you."
So they talked until they were weary, and then they lay down to rest. When they woke all was transformed. The floor and walls of the room were of precious stone; the curtains of the bed were of some faery texture, and shone with an unearthly light. They rose and walked through the palace, wondering at each new splendor that met their eyes; they went out into the gardens, where fountains played again among beds of immortal flowers. So they wandered together, and talked, and sang, for the space of three days.
On the evening of the third day Andromeda spoke to Perseus: "Beloved, our time in this place is spent; tomorrow we must be gone. Before dawn we must go out into the garden which overlooks the western sea. The sun will rise in the west, and he will take us with him."
Next morning the song of the swan and the harsh cawing of the raven penetrated into the inner chamber where the lovers slept. They rose and found at the bedside two pairs of winged sandals; they put them on and went out to the garden overlooking the western sea. There they stroked the heads of the swan and the raven and bade them farewell, and when the sun rose they set their feet on the first rays, which bore them like a golden highway.
Of all this the townspeople were ignorant. None had seen the stranger pass to the cove, nor the boat put out from shore. The drunkards' tale at first provoked mere incredulity and laughter, but when it was reported that the men of stone were indeed gone from the promontory, the people began to fear. All day the rumors flew; no one slept that night, and on the following morning the sun did not rise. Now arose a weeping and lamentation which lasted until the town bells rang for evening. The people were somewhat comforted by this familiar sound; they retired into their houses, and the night passed in deep silence. When again the morning bells rang out but no light appeared, they continued to sit in stony despair.
But after some hours -- no one knew how long -- a man began going about from house to house, waking the people with new hopes. He was a man of some learning, though of not quite spotless reputation, and it was said he knew more about what had happened in the past than any man alive. When the people were gathered at the marketplace he addressed them, saying that there was a way to lift the darkness; at the time when the stone men were formed certain rings had been thrown into the well, and the copper and silver rings had already been drawn out; now the stone men were gone, but the golden ring had not been found and was doubtless still lying at the bottom of the well; this was the cause of all the trouble, and if the townspeople would but retrieve the golden ring from the well, they would not only dispel the darkness, but the ring would bring them great good fortune.
The people grasped eagerly at this good news. All crowded around the well while the mayor of the town let down the bucket; but it came up, and there was only water in it. They let down the bucket again, and the same thing happened. They poured the water on the ground and emptied out the well until it was dry; they sent men down with flaring torches to look for the ring; they scraped in the mud of the bottom until they reached the bare rock; but they found only water, mud, and rock. The last man was drawn up from the well; no one spoke; in the crowd a few began to weep. Then the bells rang -- whether for evening or morning, none knew. The people wandered aimlessly in the marketplace; none thought of returning to their houses; slowly a murmur rose among them: "The sun will not
rise again; why should we cling to miserable life, like worms in the dark earth? Let us bring out our stores of meat and drink, and feast until they are gone, and then let us set fire to the town, that we may at least have light by which to die!"
These voices grew louder, and finally a meeting was called to decide the matter. When all were assembled a child stood forth and said, "In matters of life and death the children too should have a voice." Then several said this was but just, and the rest being indifferent agreed. When all had been heard on both sides, there was silence for a moment; then the old man spoke: "Townsmen, this matter has been laid before you, and you will do as you like; but tomorrow the sun will rise in the west."
No one believed the old man, except the children; but they outnumbered the adults by one. However, the adults did not accept the verdict of the children. They brought out their stores and took to feasting, and soon they and their town were ashes.
But the children slipped away unnoticed. They hid themselves in the forest and wept until they fell asleep. On the following morning the sun rose in the west, and they saw a beautiful golden ship come over the water and sail into the cove under the cliff. They all forgot to weep for the great wonder of it and ran down to the cove.
The old couple were there to meet them. They led them into the ship, which floated out again and sailed to the castle. All the time the sun shone upon them, but its rays were never burning, and they could not have said whether the time of the journey was long or short. They landed, and there was no one at the landing; they entered the gate, and none met them; they walked through all the gardens and the shining halls, they heard the plash of fountains and the singing of birds, but saw no human face until they came to the innermost room. It was empty, for bed and table had vanished; but on opposite walls hung two mirrors, and in them were fixed the images of two human forms; and the children were struck dumb with wonder, for they had never seen beings so fair; and no one spoke for about an hour.
Finally the old man said, "Your time in this place is short, my children; come, and may each remember what you have seen here." Then he led them to a hall near the gardens, where a long table was set with dishes of gold and knives and spoons of silver; and the food was such that, if any were very hungry in times afterward, they had only to think of it in order to be satisfied. And each found by his plate a precious stone, carved in the likeness of a bird, or an animal, or a fish, or a plow, or a spinning-wheel, or a musical instrument, or some other shape. Each amulet conferred some particular kind of good luck, and all had this special virtue, that everyone was pleased with what he had gotten. So they feasted and sang and talked until the stars came out and their eyes began to be heavy. Then they heard the voice of the old woman: "Children, now you must depart; the golden ship will carry you back to the shore. My husband and I will remain here to keep the castle. On the longest day of every year the golden ship will come to your harbor, and you may visit us again. Yet if you wish you may come from time to time in your own wooden boats; for the spell of distance between the castle and the shore is lifted."
So they sailed away, and slept, and when they reached the land it was morning. Then they took counsel on the shore and decided not to rebuild the town. Instead they made themselves shelters in the woods and fields, just near enough so that they could comfortably visit each other.
Since then not so very much has happened, though doubtless many a century has come and gone. The castle stands, beautiful as of yore; the old couple still live there, attended by the swan and the raven, and I think they may be immortal. It is good to look over the water and see the castle shining; it is good to row there alone on a starry night, or to sail there in the golden ship on the longest day of the year. Yet it is also sweet to return to the shore, to set foot on the beach, and greet the simple flowers that grow in the rocks, and the creatures of wood and field. Each year some are born, and some die. The amulets are passed from hand to hand, and the old songs wander from mouth to mouth. In the fields the wheat rises and falls; and the sun sets in the east and rises in the west.
1971
*
IMPRIMATUR
"If all may buy, then some may read, sighed the Fly.
Spider smirked, "Indeed, no reason why the flies shouldn't read.
1971
*
EARTHWAKE
in memory of Paul Celan
1.
All winter the scholars kept their houses, went out rarely, discussed "the death of literature." Ash of predictions kept sifting into the bread; trees, turned to stone, stood in a stone-eating sky.
No yeasty poems poured through the open doors of libraries that cancelled equinox, though midnights babbled of a tongue torn out like a telephone cord before all metronomes ended.
Then there was July: along streets with their new constructions, glass and concrete -- matter itself gone grey and blank with pain like the face of a clubbed peasant telephotoed from Asia.
2. (Shore Rocks at Corea)
Pegmatites. Over this edge: ice-cataracts, then as now unheard.
Under our feet, exposed, the granules, the quartzes, the feldspars, grown to eye-size, stopped against sight. Sea urchins' bequeathed fragilities, gull-strewn, blanched from their patterns. The tide-pools: green algae glares to the cloud.
Tidings, O tiny far-traveled tsunami, here curl to simile, die in the unrecorded surf-gardens: a mind, stranded and stemmed against absence, beats in itself.
Cross-currents, there, the times race through each other, kanntet ihr mich --
3. VAE V--
I rock a grief far older than my heart, like a pale relic in the mortal shrine: many are they who pause here, kneel and depart, to view this pride, which I cannot call mine. I would not have suspected how your name fits every grief, rings in each evening note, this reach of dusk is quiet with your fame, the clocks of autumn have your runes by rote --
What poultice now, of plaster or concrete, could ever stanch that singing wound of song? Ah, on all stages where poor slaves repeat the lying, barbarous words, the ancient wrongs, over the scene your cyphers now appear: in these signs the cries shall be made clear.
4.
"Beyond humankind --" Have you a smooth sheet of white paper wide as the galaxy, a pen of stars to write with? Can you see this miniature earth, like the paperweight on Montale's desk, with its distant dark-red flicker of inferno? No need now to hear the cries: we are burning -- even the tears you gave could not quench our greed.
5.
This be thy journey's lore, after all, whom praise cannot restore nor grief recall: we mourn one, when we mourn for all. Mourning one, we mourn for all, in mourning we recall and in recalling, praise, and praise shall all restore after all: these be our works and days.
6.
Friends, if you wander among stones again, cast not the dice, lift not your hands for rain, carve clearer runes upon the gates of hell: Earth, hold this kindly, for one loved you well.
1970-71
*
NOUVELLES CHIMERES (I)
1. Dulcinea
Falcon, fly where you will! I know the way: A feather, a drop of blood each thousand-year, And I'll find out your track in oceans drear, And steer through all the dolphin-crowded bays. Though but a leaf, a snake, a bird betray Which way you turned, surmising no one near, Yet I will climb to where your eagles veer And sing your star at morning and noonday --
Dawn breaks. I feel the movement of the wind, I stand on peak or on wave-cleaving prow, Foam-, cloud-white garments flutter out behind. Image of victory, en route from one Show to the next -- the waves like barkers run -- But if I live or not, I do not know.
2. Giovanni
Look on the mirror which I hold for you, Not on my face, which is not fair to see: It is the dark waste where no man may be, The wandering tomb, the sprig of withered rue. Don’t look behind you, as the poets do, Else my reflection never shall you see, But this time, please, refrain from killing me: If is my false reflection that is true.
Yes, that mirage along the ashen curve of hill, called by my name: it is the light That now is faded from a poor man's face Coming to meet you where the highway swerves, The road, the crumpled wreckage sinks from sight, And you are rising into light's blind space.
3. Legend
Yes, there dwells a monster in this stone, But you shall slay him. Enter without fear. The inward path you shall find out alone, After the deed the outward way lies clear. Above the door there hangs a spiderweb, But brush it not aside as you go by; See in your hollow hand the ball of thread: Arachne, Ariadne -- it is I.
It is the castle of enchambered Grief. Enchanted songs in jeweled silence stand Along the walls, and stare with strangers’ eyes, But in the vaults there grows the herb Belief. Descend, and pluck it with a reverent hand, And in the joy of manly stature rise.
4. Proserpina
I am the bee that plies the fallow rose, Yet nonetheless my mother’s name bear I: Call it not harsh though many summers die, Though many times the hollow petals close Before the nightingale bleeds to the thorn A sigh of embers wasted in the night Because the watchful votaress was not born: All hovers in this humming of the light.
I sing the pain of her who bore me, and lay long in darkness, dreamed me lost for good, Of him who long ago, with trusting hand Laid on the world, touched stone and missed the wood: The shining letters on the Darkened Light - I kiss them, as he kissed the words, good night.
5.
BE DAVID, not Actaeon; for the hounds That kenneled near Diana's spring have fled, They howl around Goliath's feet instead; It is the iron, and not the wood, resounds. Artemis' magic fails. Her orb still rounds And shrinks, but moonlight in the streets lies dead. Scarred is the sacred face with impious tread: Therefore the tides of hell have burst hell's bounds,
And fiercely bright and ominous dawns this day. See there a forest shrine: the votaress Comes out to greet the traveler on his way Toward meetings darkened to a woman's guess -- Desiring but to hear a tale, and bless Some hero's arms against the oncoming fray.
6.
IS IT THEN TRUE: that he must wander hell And I in rainless heavens count the rains That fall on earth's dark furrows, and still in vain Bind the dark land with many a healing-spell? What echoes will I hear from that deep well? To hold the star that lights that ear of grain My hand grows cold; and will that crust of pain Wash to the sky-shore as a perfect shell?
No; I am exiled to a puppet-show, Mocked with a name, gloved to a mad ghost-hand, Imputed to a voice I do not know And gesturing what men will not understand: Yet I will sing, though I see never again The eternal smile between the poles of pain.
7. Chiaroscura
I ask for sleep, that I may wake again, Not stare a madness into gentle eyes, Not as a torrent shall this sorrow rise, But clear the wine of night be poured for men. They don’t know what they’re doing, don't see how The threads as tangling between lip and tongue, They have not thought of how the night was wrung To free the trembling orb that rises now.
This thread will hold, wound upon spools of stone, Those hands will read the patterns which we weave, This night shall last until the work be done, These words shall be the grain, shall be the sieve. We shall not treat with Time. We shall not die. Blind to the end, we pass the Ancient Eye.
1971
*
POST- PENTECOST depression: on the beast- forehead the black fingermark of inferno, bitter was the taste in my mouth, bitter the tongue. 1971
*
LA MAISON DE LA POETESSE
for Janine
1.
Windchimes converse above the lintel, she is not home. In the yard fallen plums small moons eclipse into the soil under pale weeds. Within are seashells, cool stones and a round clock paying off the silence. On the porch two cats will preside over their shadows until sundown.
2.
This night police sirens lash round the block. We're cut off. Inundated -- the brambles of your harpsichord like a birdcage caught in the ocean.
This lantern, this bunker, this stone sticks in the throat of that wind. The light on the chair-arm says all tunnels end here.
3.
Morning opens one eye. The cottage hauled up like a fishtrap
darkness draining
4.
Cats, sleeping deserts,
stretching
to motion, the sand-dunes, feeding themselves to, receiving themselves from
a wind these eyes inhabit.
Berkeley 1971
*
IN IRONS
I sailed once, in a dream, off distant coves: Fair was the day, bright emerald was the sea And glittered; yet whichever way we drove It seemed the wind came round and thwarted me. After a time I saw upon the plain Sails scattered, which did beat and run and reach To every compass-point, yet none did gain: That wind, false in itself, played false to each. Then I beheld -- what terrified me more -- We could not move; but the green scudding floor Was moving with us, dragging toward some ledge, And vast jaws rose to snatch from the sea's edge The frail ships, while a great voice without sound Beat on the sky: "Fools! Fools! The world is round!"
1971
*
SONGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME
I recall the time your mother got for her birthday a doll, dressed in the prettiest clothes, which a friend of her mother had taken weeks to make, with finished seams, delicate embroideries, bonnet and sash, collar all trimmed with lace, and the first thing your mother did was to take the clothes off the doll, and put them on the cat, who leaped to the windowsill, dived, and was never heard from again.
I remember also how a friend of your father's family arrived as a guest, after a day's riding, and before he had even dismounted somebody asked him "When are you going to go home?" "Right now!" he answered, and gave the spurs to his horse, and that was the last they ever saw of him. That was how I learned to ask always "How long can you stay?"
"But what of the doll?" "Oh, the doll by itself was nothing special . . ." Forever, sphered in your recollected voice, Great-grandmother leans, horrified, out of the window, wondering what on earth she will tell Mrs. Himady, while Grandmother cries in fright and because an action in the logic of play has had such consequences, and the friends stand with arms and mouths agape, staring at the retreating dustcloud, hearing the hoofbeats fall over the edge of dismay, and Uncle Al, who saved his money for fireworks and on the dawn of the Fourth sneaked out to light just one, and the whole bag caught fire, remains transfixed in the rockets' day-bleached glare, the sputter of snakes, backfiring roman candles, while the family windows, blooming with sleep and astonishment, behold him, not magnifico, but fool.
What is it clamps on laughter like felted hammers, a glove from behind, Mother? What is it neither pity nor time repairs?
1971
*
CASCADE PASS
Late. The mountain wall already dams huge shadows. Along the roads bright autumn poised like a diver.
Step off the trail: frostfire clings to weedstalks. A small transparent fly grips, rigid as a yogi, the whitehaired nub, the tiny late composite. Flick the resinous stalk, he'll scarcely stir.
Something is barking on the opposite slope, where the white soiled glacial tongues loll down. You eye tastes their cold. At your feet one woolybear has haste.
The trail is marked but you'll not follow it to the end. That repeated, toneless whistle: a signal to winter, not meant to be overheard.
1971
*
HE HAS GONE to live in a continent of his own making: the past.
All those years he held up his eye, that obsidian lens by which the dark was focused.
In the sky-split tunnels he walked, in the Ile de la Cite, in the blackened rose. On the dark walls Israeli slogans flashed their survival.
He picked up broken glass in No-Man's-Land, where the voices still came seeping.
And the words formed: a sandstone with the ripplemarks of his brain.
Now you may tease the earth with roses -- she will not speak of him.
1971
*
BALLAD
Strange word, strange word was spoken About my christening: She will marry the Kingfisher, The Fisher-king.
My mother wrapped me closely In pain and fear, She kept from me the story I must not hear,
Her eyes whispered the meanings I dared not think, And ever she would draw me From the well's brink!
When I was grown they sent me To a starless plain Where never ran the river Nor fell the rain,
No joy was there in waking, No rest in sleep, All night beneath my eyelids Cold tears would seep.
One day where I was walking The earth cracked apart, And water gushed, as the blood springs From a struck heart.
Pure and clear was that water As the light of day! I knelt down in the desert, To drink, or pray --
I know not; but beneath me There in the spring Was the face of the Kingfisher, The Fisher-king.
Now Mother, put by your laces, Your silver veils, And tell you beads no longer, For their magic fails.
Sisters, sisters, make bright your spinning, For the time has come For the moon to stand shining Before the sun:
Aye, with a crown of water, With a river-ring, I have married the Kingfisher, The Fisher-king.
1971-2
*
DEVIL'S TRAIN
My father was an honest man, He rode the devil’s train. At the window high I saw him stand, Saying, "When will we meet again, dear man, When will we meet again?"
He said, "Dear girl, I do not know, You way is long and hard. Remember that I loved you so -- Remember who you are, my child, Remember who you are."
And in a year there came a man, He drove up to my door. He said "I've news going to make you sad, Your father won't come no more, my child, Your father won't come no more."
He said, "Climb in and drive with me To a land that's green and fair." I said, "Before I go with thee, Tell me is my father there, good man, Tell me is my father there?"
He looked at me and shook his head As if to answer, "No." "Then you must leave me now," I said, "To my father I must go, good man, To my father I must go.
"My father is an honest man, He rides the devil's train. I intend to follow through this land Until we meet again, dear man, Until we meet again."
1972
*
NOUVELLES CHIMERES (II)
1.
Aye, stuff your pipe and lean back in your chair, Tell me once more that it is sweet to live, Although the bees starve in the stifling hive, Although the angels shudder in their sphere, Although my ancient name is made a jeer, Although the buzz-saws shriek in all my groves, That eye is pierced that sought my eyes with love, That voice is choked that called me more than fair --
No, not my tender eyes nor my fair face I weep, whom love's name lured here to the knife: I weep the spilt seed and the tangled wit. I brought the silver of my lord's sweet life That they might gladly take, who gave him praise, And this they said to me: Look thou to it.
2.
Thou who didst whisper through my earliest night, Who held'st me fast when all else cast me out, Mad'st soft for me a bed in thine own blight, Gav'st the rose refuge in the shrine of Doubt: The silence of my prayers shall never cease To plead thy love, and to beweep thy dearth: Cassocks may speak of victory and release, I cannot but beweep thee, being earth. O I have dreamed that we might meet again, Though but to lay my hand against thy breast And take my share of the unending pain To know not all I was could bring thee rest -- And thou art not! I cannot say: Thou'rt free -- Thou wert my soul; O hadst thou peace in me...
3.
"Rest, rest, perturbed spirit --" I might betray, But this my sorrow speaks, and she is just: There's not an item in this world's display To check one tear from falling on thy dust. The wide world wears that heart, those eyes no more -- Before what vacant mirrors should I pace? Call me no better than the frightened whore; At the dull eyes whose blindness quenched thy light I stand unknown and by the years defaced.
And yet -- if words have voice to make this known, If tears have virtue yet to cleanse men's sight, Then -- the world young once more, and I a crone, The passing stranger in the street might see Whose friend I was -- and thus remember me.
4.
No, I am not Cassandra, though I gave not to Apollo that which women give; A hand outstretching held me from the grave, And at the forked road's side a voice cried: Live. Further I heard him cawing from the sky, "Tell them a fair beast's carrion lies and reeks Upon their plains; this let them quickly seek, For he who will not eat of it must die!" That is my news. I am the Death of Time, A dryad whom the dead tree took to wife; This world's account, forged in your fortunes' chime, Lies as a sword between me and my life -- Blessed is he who calls my rightful name! He shall undo those paths by which I came.
5. Ismene
Sister, upon whose lips, as upon mine, Drifted the coldest kiss, the saddest name, Put from thee with strong hand the anodyne, Take on thy tongue the wafer of my pain. Shall all the loveliest pass, nor we regret, Nor call Lament to mend the rent i' the air? Sweeter is this than all we are like to get From this dulled world, that will not say: Thou art fair. Teach man to weep again, and call the dead! For there be gods among them; shall these wait Till we have nibbled the last moldy bread And the last empty doorframe cry "Too late"? Know: he who lay beside me, in the tomb, Took from my neck a chain of tongueless doom.
PART III: 1972-1979
MONODY
What shall I tell you, child of my childlessness, little fish swimming downstream in my tears: I don't know the riverbanks, I don't know the rapids. I don't know the tangles of the bottom-weeds or the hours when the rivergulls hover. I do know this: such rivers meet no other rivers, find no sea. They circle back, they flow down to their source in the highlands. In the next season the dart of your death will pierce my eye from behind.
1972
*
A MON SEUL DESIR
I praise not love: a god like all the others, As all the others treacherous, and to blame For unendurable and lasting shames That lie upon us, and the deaths of brothers;
I call not man my god, whose envious will Was ever foe to his own loveliness, Nor lady Nature, by whose leave much ill Must argue; but one being let me bless Whose name (herein concealed) is fragrant still...
1972
*
RECRUDESCENCE
My mother sighed, telling me of the blight That fell upon the eastern woods to seize Only the loveliest, the great chestnut trees, That martial summer before she saw the light. She knew them as those great trunks, weathered white, Fresh saplings danced around; but even these Sickened in few years of the old disease: Lately we heard: some lived, in its despite.
Lives then the single Soul of man's great race? -- A rain-bleached trunk, and yet a stubborn root That keeps on sending up shoot after shoot That we forget not quite the primal grace But hope, and weep, and hope again, till one Shall live, and strengthen, and attain the Sun...?
1972
*
Listless I mourn, for my love was hound and hare, And I the empty, the fern-hung, the unrevisited lair, Cold, cold and forgotten, hollow to the notes of the horn And the baying of hounds and the shouts of huntsmen deaf to prayer.
Listless I mourn; for my love was hare and hound, What though the air is still now, what though the hunt is down? Hound came under the hooves, as hare by the hound was torn, And I am earthed in the silent lair and the sanguined ground.
1972
*
As the wan priestess on the Taurian shore Counted the waves and waited for those friends To bear her home, as long-deserved amends For priestly lies, that laid such trails of gore, Then saw how truth and safety stood at odds, How hate drew breath to sweep her from her goal, And flung herself between, crying, "save me, gods, Save me, and save your image in my soul -- " So I, who pace within these chains of rhyme, Shamed as a prisoner in a market-throng, Cry out for trust against a truthless time: Though the wrung soul speak through an empty mask, Call me not false, do not yourselves that wrong, Give me your hands, my journey, and my task!
1972
*
AUGUST MOONRISE
for Don
Whippoorwill calls from the corn. In the twilight my brother stepped in amongst the cornstalks; the shadows clasped him, made him one with them.
Larger than last month, the gold round moon is something removed from behind a saint's head; it stains faint clouds with liquefied dust.
My brother moves behind me along the rise; the moon moves behind his head, in my right eye. He says the burrows of darkness in green alfalfa are deer-trails, says the air on the hills is warmer, still, from day, asks if I can focus the moon. I cannot.
This thought beats at my head like owl's wings: that, blinded, my sense feel through his the cloth into which they are woven. When I pull, things come loose.
How can I tell him what number the angel jabbed in green ink under the furrows of my backbrain? How can I get the moon on my side?
1972
*
PRAYER
from the German of Else Lasker-Schueler
I wander all lands, seeking long and late A town that has an angel at its gate, And often at my shoulder-bone I've felt his broken wing's great weight And from my brow his star, his seal has shone.
And always and again my steps are turned Towards night . . . I have brought love into the world, That every heart might blossom a blue flower, Have as a watchman worn my lifetime's hour, In Deity my breath's dark impact veiled . . .
O Lord, enfold me warmly in Thy cloak. I know I am the lees in this glass globe, And when the last of men pours the world out, Far from Thy might suffer me not to grope, But let a new earth compass me about.
translated 1972
*
AN OLD TIBETAN CARPET
from the German of Else Lasker-Schueler
Thy soul is worked in, with mine, To this tapestry's Tibet design.
Ray in ray, enamored colors, Star and star, that heavenlong were lovers --
See how precious where our four feet rest and ride, Meshes meshing thousandthousandwide!
Sweetest Lama's son upon a muskplant throne, How long has thy mouth kissed my mouth do you suppose, And thy cheek my cheek, brightly-knitted times agone?
translated 1972
*
Take this pain, I said to the words, carry it away.
And when I looked up they stood again at my shoulder. I saw then that they had come to conduct me through unaltering twilights:
past where a man stood singing alone in a field of grass, past the dead crouched like urns, like beggars without hands, along the raw-ripped road down to the blue underground passage -- There was a woman guarding your chamber, I gave her a letter for you,
did you hear, O did you hear.
1972
*
QUASI UNA FANTASIA
It seems as if someone set me here as a reminder and then forgot everything. Was it you, you? Does my hair grow from undiminishing thought? I seem to consist of glimpses and discomforts.
I am still turned toward that spot on mind's horizon where you went out, shutting behind you the door that cast the one beam of light. Something else has got to come back through, soon.
Is it true, prince, what I thought just now: that time is just like a mud covering flaking off a wall of pure gold?
Then eternity -- must be that fresco in Novgorod, a patch of saint, the rest so clearly palpable behind the veil of having been eaten away.
1972 *
I held my love in the cold morning hour, In the cold morning hour I held him and spoke his name. His hands were soft, limp as the frost-bitten flower, And his breath cold as the winter windowpane.
There was none but me to hear him, and he spoke so low, And I sang so softly, for only him to hear, And he told me all that I ever wanted to know Of the shape of my lips and breasts and the fall of my hair.
Then I laid my head to his breast, and I heard a sound, Heavy and dark, like sobbing that started again, And I heard a piteous cry, and jeers and laughter around, And then I saw bent figures walking mute in the rain.
O my dark shell! tell me where in this withered land Shall I find a sorrow that flows as deep and wide -- Answer me, rains. Gleam, ring on my hand. My love he came from the dead, he lay by my side.
1973 *
REHEARSAL, WITH ECHOES
On the stage before the scattered cast, Santuzza is singing. Black as ebony, white as snow, red as blood. It is not enough to say she believes her emotions. It is as though she had never been consulted. Perhaps she isn't in pain. What a fuss she makes! Shall we forget she was the farmer's daughter? Aren't there enough worse things to cry about? Is this the way she moved, behind Verga's story of a sharp-tongued girl, a quick laconic revenge? Watching her, one might say: here is man's folly avenging itself through the madness it releases. One could also say: she took him for this occasion. She needs his coldness, to forget him as she sings. Or: the split rock reveals unweathered minerals. Her voice, her meaning pour from the gash in her existence, how, without hammers, without wedges, would we have known this color? But her cry flings itself beyond comment and the orchestra gives full nineteenth-century support like a cabinet that cannot tell its extravagant ruler the treasury is empty, and out in the back country they are hanging the tax collectors.
And in the audience sits Credulity, that spectre Brecht threw how many inkwells at, a worn girl sits there with tears in her throat, no irony can kill her, watching her apparition. (That time in the corridor, that voice, not hers, and calling beyond him to something whose approach frightened her as she felt it in the tremor of her own vocal chords -- if he'd only opened that door in his back! His shoulders, heavy and stopping, could have borne the wings; but he shook himself, the winged one turned back, the man fell from her sight like pieces of mosaic off a wall. It was not the time, it was not the meeting-place.)
Evening after evening . . . Turiddu's throat is sore, he isn't here. Santuzza sings alone. Should we, having read the Duino Elegies, act surprised at the improvement? The other way it didn't look right when she broke from him on the high note, hands spread apart, eyes lifted, but this makes it all clear, and credible, even to you, Credulity -- may we hope? Grief seeks not wholeness but a mate for Grief, that is to say, Absence. Search without an object, shall we not call you Vanity, and be done with it? Smile at this dream. Nobody feels any pain, and elsewhere everything is completely different. Look, there's a break. In speech with the director Santuzza is laughing. (I hear you. And you too, my Angel, will even you deny your words chartered me as figurehead of all sorrow? You filled my arms with ashes, and half smiled. But the eyes, those eyes of the men in the photographs, were not gay. Is it that the joy of this my willingness betrays them, or that my tearful insistence wrongs you? What do I hold? A slip of paper, and the script is fading. Now I stand still, they surround me and fasten their streamers, they dance, my eyes are covered over, my mouth, only the hands are still free, for me to gesture with.)
Mask, chill and rapt, receptor of astral cries, interpret me.
1973
*
ORDEAL
As one whose soul is absent, so am I: They ask me questions, and I answer slow, They'd ask my name -- I'd say I do not know, And recollect it with a doubtful sigh. For on the scales of strangers' thoughts must lie Today the words I wrote two days ago, And I am absent where the arrows show Whether in them my being I deny.
If these, once friends of him to whom I have sworn Honor and life, receive me in his name, Then from a hateful bondage I am freed; But if they quit my words with silent scorn, Deaf to my tears, averse to my high claim, Judge me -- O love! this world is dark indeed.
1973
*
THE PROMISED WEB
Time stands, accomplished, in a face insistent twinges challenge me to mend. Last night I dreamed we were in jail, with bars between us; now, with you across the city, thoughts toil along the nerve-ways, bringing yarn, under the supervision of the dead.
I had not thought there were so many dead as I saw yesterday, along your face, twisted into each other, like fine yarn How did your mother and grandmother mend their lace together, in that time-bound city, draw threads across the rents, in soft white bars?
-- Sunday morning. Across the street, in bars, huddle our secret kindred, the long-dead- to promises, marginal notes of every city. One tunneled face leans to another face and, into crevices no one thinks to mend, dribbles bits of landlocked sailor's yarn.
Fat, dull-eyed, too dull to wind the yarn, in my dream, behind the iron bars, I cannot think what I came to mend. Am I to pick the runner-trails of the dead up off the snow, follow them to a face where mistrust of me has built a strong city?
It's true I dreamed of trying to cheat the city: forged a set of documents, concocted some yarn. There was a look in the librarian's face which said I deserved to be put behind bars for taking out a book that belonged to the dead and lying, when it got too torn to mend.
But it was the book that kept crying, "Mend, with what you can tear out of me, this city!" In my cell I frantically plucked the sleeve of the dead man who unravelled, as though made of yarn. Now I lay down my steps, crisscrossing bars -- how will the patch show up, and on what face?
Mother, signal me the face I must mend beyond these gates that bar me from the city, and help the bringers of yarn, help the dead.
1973 ANTHEM
Sister, sister, can you hear me, Are you sure that we're alone? Am I talking to your husband Or the job you have outgrown? You can go back to them later, Be alone just now and hear -- All my words are shadows groping In the hope that you are near.
Sister, sister, you are marching On the road to God knows where, There are chains upon your ankles, And your head is shaved of hair. I who run along beside you Singing like someone who's free -- You are free and I am captive, For they've hung your chains on me.
Sister, sister, if you're married You must still know right from wrong; You are married to a chained man And he's got to move along. Will he put his mind to planning Against the man behind the line Who still holds the whip and swings it And drives us on like swine.
Sister, sister, do you know me? Does this ring some kind of bell? I was told one man once saw us Outside man's self-created hell. When they lift their arms to heaven It's to us they really pray. Bow your heads and say the words now -- If we remember, so might they.
Sisters, sisters, speak together, Tell each other all you know. We can build the town of Wisdom That shall have no earthly foe. Speak the word just to your neighbor Till one thought in every brain Builds the city we inhabit At the breaking of the chain.
1974
*
SUNG AT UNCERTAIN HOUR
The screen of vision, wet with inward tears And fogged with weariness, does not allow Clear seeing; but among the hidden spheres I think the Wedded Saints are rising now As once on Escher's page, where brow to brow, Each is the other, and the bond between. Their eyes are fixed upon some nether scene -- Surely united wisdom sees our grief, And twice-paired eyes, with vision doubly keen, Track beneath clouds the pathways of relief.
When to the canopy the minds are brought To make for hopes and fears a common name, Each moves, the echo of the other's thought, And in their various fields intend the same, And hand in hand, unarmed, go gentleness and fame, That love no more may blunder in the dark Which loveless ingenuity diffused, Nor intellect's devising miss the mark For love's one counsel in the aim unused -- I keen the long delay: that love must still Make bulwarks, chiefly, against those without In the dark wasted landscape round about. -- Did no gleam fall on me, across that sill Before which I remain in blindness and in doubt?
1974
*
I walked through this world as one of the dead. Your eyes were mirrors in which I was not reflected.
1974
AUTUMN OFFERING
I feel the sinking year, and hear that voice That will not sound again for mortal ear; To a cold mouth I speak this: do not fear I ever could regret my ancient choice. I only grieve that in your praise my voice Is faint and soundless, finds not living ear, And I am still the captive of their fear And the condemned of their most ancient choice.
The day is dark; and now all floral crowns are sere Except that one of asters, which you wove And placed upon my hair, while I knelt low. You dreamed that lifted up one would appear Dream-crowned, amid the battling frightened droves, and they would drop their weapons and be lulled; was it not so?
1974
*
A CAROL WITHOUT SONG, FOR WINTER TURNING
Another year -- we'll fix a star with one more point atop a small pine, but leave it in the woods.
Another year -- we'll search our minds for stories, for new truths not yet told, and give them to each other, in a corner where nine or seven candles burn.
Another year -- we'll take the boards away from the opening to the highest attic. The dead will descend, something in their hands: We'll trade them smiles jeweled with tears for their dreams of quiet crystal.
The unborn, tall, will turn like angels above candle-flames. We'll clasp hands with the holly and with the ivy. Between brows a pure mirror will be unveiled, and the doors behind foreheads swing inward --
My love is wandering still.
1974
HEXAGRAM
The world alone is the mother. Visible in the shattering of a mosaic. Her hands -- empty of hands! Her eyes -- empty of eyes!
Lift this stone, sister, brother. Light -- the effort is in bending. Fasten it here -- the bit of darkness, so she can see.
Don't care for me -- care for the world and help me find my place in it. I love you as I love the ring on my finger, the menorah in my front window, the pattern of which you're a part.
Keep what I give you, later you'll find what it matches, what you lost before. We appear congruent to one another, we gaze through each other at strange polarized light.
On all ways you can still hear the humming of light from a center outside the air. There is still, on a bookshelf, the shell -- sign of the inner ear in the outer air.
The ring, the shell, the moment when the eyes flared up in answer, the sound that unrolls like a clew when you walk from this door: You will return, the door out of space, we will find it, look you, the inner ear is the way.
1974
*
BEACON
You invent strange returns. On landings where only your footfall stacks tread on riser through the spiralling dark your hands shuffle receipts for how many worlds. Deal. Elsewhere, hands at the dial, tilting you into focus, turn transparent to the elbow, the room, burst into by a congruent solid, staggers and gets its footing in a crouch, -- they freeze into sleep in a box on the shoulders of a troll striding.
O morning bright and calm. All that, confined to a package delivered on the doorstep, the ground is printed in sunlight with bracts of locust. Flats of maple leaves stir for the last time, camps of the dying. But blindsight primes the eye with storm, stomps the mind in rhyme, and the stories will whirl up, to inscribe the missing lighthouse.
1974
*
DAL SEGNO
Everything is explainable, like the sun. Time has stopped, but things keep on turning. Unnoticed something has slipped behind your will which whirls round, but the holsters are empty.
At the threshold of your heart did you pause aghast? Did you not remember it as an empty classroom? A blind friable with sun, a tapping of flies -- where are the drapes, the dark paraphernalia?
The first snow, and a memory of music lessons and acorns on the playground, perhaps suffice to explain this; but more important is the fact
that the contracts are written into the palms of our hands, we see each other all the time without looking, and I know you well, without being introduced.
1974
*
"C'EST LA CONSIGNE"
Orders. On this small planet My light blinks on and off.
The orders do not change, My arm does not get tired, The oil does not run out.
They don't tell whether To the vast planetarium I see in the night-times
This says, "Can you hear me?"
1975
*
IN MEMORIAM
Flowing past this white stone, which I place on the brink, it is still the same river.
1975
*
THE HATE STORM
They were swept away from me in the hate storm. I held onto them, I called to them, "Hang on," but they were swept away.
The high wind came, the dark water my calling could not quell, my singing could not calm,
or was my calling the wind? or was my singing the water?
A darkness came bigger than my arms and full of snakes that squirmed.
"Hang on," I cried. I held onto them, but they were swept away.
1975
*
BIRTHDAY OF A COURIER
The high-relief of something in the mind almost forgotten, remembered not by name but rising, shedding water from bright flanks:
Follow the trails of water to their source, enter the source, and speak. Let your eyes protrude from tree-trunks, your hands appear over intersections, in the air.
You companion is a thought that keeps pace with you, dodging among the mirrors of the air, surfacing in eyes, in eyes, ringing voice after voice like a set of untried chimes.
Your credentials are: the constellation and the leaf, the tokens under the tongues of the unborn, and you are shod in thankfulness of the earth.
1975
*
INVITATION
We gather here to see faces from which we need not hide our face, to hear the sound of honest speech, to share what dreams have etched upon the sleeping brain, what the still voice has said, when heavy hours plunged us to regions of the mind and life not mentioned in the marketplace: to find and match the threads of common destinies, designs grimed over by our thoughtless life -- A sanctuary for the common mind we seek. Not to compete, but to compare what we have seen and learned, and to look back from here upon that world where tangled minds create the problems they attempt to solve by doubting one another, doubting love, the wise imagination, and the word. For, looking back from here upon that world, perhaps ways will appear to us, which when we only struggled in it, did not take counsel of kindred minds, lay undiscovered; perhaps, reflecting on the Babeled speech of various disciplines that make careers, we shall find out some speech by which to address each sector of the world's fragmented truth and bring news of the whole to every part. We say the mind, once whole, can mend the world. To mend the mind, that is the task we set. How many years? How many lives? We do not know; but each shall bring a thread.
1975
*
NICE LITTLE POEM
A nice little poem and a sad little fact at opposite sides of a table sat
One hid a tear the other a smile and the sun looked down at them all the while
One thought abandon the other thought hope though neither reached a hand or spoke
Neither hid a smile nor a tear they sat reflecting as mirror and mirror
What came of that is still unknown to the sad little fact and the nice little poem
1975
HOW YOU KNOW
(please memorize)
If the horse's leg is really healed If the prisoners are really freed If the woman gets her man and he doesn't hate her If the sisters look at each other and smile
If your best friend says I can't deal with this If acquaintances give you strange quick looks If a stranger comes up to you six weeks later and says he's started bleeding If you find yourself turning to stone after you've spoken
If the king really relents If the people are really saved If the bureaucrat tells you a secret passageway If a statistician starts dream in words
If you noticed the gorgon was crying If a man made of water advised you If they found the buried treasure by your map
If you've started thinking of things for people to do If you can make out the city in the distance If presence and absence no longer confuse you If the whole thing begins to make sense
Your poem is good.
Keep going
1976
*
EXPOSURE
Supine in the rough grass, above you gray-white emptiness. Around you the smoke-trails climb the sky; some optic makes them seem to converge before vanishing.
Somewhere, not far off, there is shouting, they are sorting the others, some to the right, some to the left, some to gradual, some to immediate death.
How is it they overlooked you, lying here like old iron, like a piece of slag from their ovens, unidentified object with fused glass eyes?
Those whose faces in the archived photographs will show grainy, neither horrified nor stigmatized but like any crowd in transit, and who will be bent, broken, injected with foreign substances, taken apart -- they are the extras, the properties. It's those others who are the persons of this drama, they are acting out the lives of the gods like battered children who break their toys, like children who act with their dolls what they see done around them, in all loud parliaments were mute life is disposed of.
Will you rise, throw yourself between? You know when you walked among them you had neither hands nor voice. Lie here for dead. Stare upwards. If your mind can bear the emptiness no longer let your madness rioting in the clouds create gods to slaughter, instead of human beings. This lying here pinned by knowledge, this staring upward into gray-white emptiness where the smoke-trails seem by some strange optic to converge before vanishing: this is your destiny, your vigil, your service. 1976
*
THE PEOPLE WHO SOLD THEIR EYES; OR, THE NECESSITY OF NEGATIVE THINKING
Have you heard about the town where the people sold their eyes?
It was not a backward town nor a town of extraordinarily foolish people. It was simply that one day in the market square there appeared a man in a handsome blue wagon in which there were trans and trays of eyes, all the same deep, bright blue. A display of these wares very soon attracted a crowd, and the man began to praise the virtues of his product. Not only, he said, were these eyes of such an attractive color, but one could see twice as well with them as with one's own natural optics. Indeed, if one looked through these eyes one would never see anything bad.
The people listened, tempted, but a little uneasy. All day they hung back, discussing the matter among themselves; from time to time someone would wander over to the wagon where the merchant of eyes stood, genial, to pressing anyone to buy, but on the other hand not looking as if he intended to stay for a very long time. Toward evening a man in late middle age, who was mayor of the town, walked over to the merchant's cart, and made his purchase.
This broke the tension, and one by one the other townspeople followed his example, finally standing in line beside the wagon of the merchant of eyes. The price asked was very reasonable: one's own eyes, and a small payment in addition which, the merchant made clear, scarcely more than covered the cost of the fitting. And they color of the eyes was so beautiful: just the color blue that everyone had always wanted to have, only even a little bit finer. And then, never to see anything bad would certainly be a considerable gain.
By the end of the day everyone in town had the new eyes, except for one little girl who refused to be fitted. Everyone spoke to her angrily: did she think her own eyes were so remarkable, that she wanted to hang onto them while all the rest of the people were exchanging theirs? But she was afraid of the new eyes and raised such a fuss that they finally gave up. The next day the merchant of eyes had left town.
For a while things went on quite well in the town, really much better than before. Because they could not see anything bad, the people were contented and did not quarrel with one another. If a man had been hired to paint a house, and he left a few spots, the owner of the house did not see them, but cheerfully gave him his wages. Similarly if the hem of a dress someone had ordered did not hang quite straight, or the horse someone bought was not quite as young as the seller had said. In fact the whole town looked brighter and neater, the people healthier and happier, because only the good things were visible.
Of course, the little girl who had wanted to keep her own eyes remained to them as a constant source of irritation. They could not see anything bad; but they could see her face, and they could tell when she was seeing something bad -- which happened oftener and oftener. Pretty soon they started throwing stones at her whenever they saw her coming. It got so that she could no longer live in the town; she had to go and hide in the forest. Every now and then she would come back to town under cover of night and make her way to her parents' house, and her mother would give her some food. Her mother, of course, had bought the new eyes, because she did not wish to be different from the others; but she could not refuse to feed her. So she survived.
With the little girl driven out of town, the townspeople thought they would finally be completely happy and content. It is true that shortly after that someone came and cut down the fine grove of trees that stood just outside the town, near the main road, and carted away the lumber and built something hideous there in its place. But the people did not see that, because they could not see anything bad. Where the grove had been there was simply a blank spot in their vision, but they could not even see the blank spot; it was just as though the grove had never existed and nothing was there now at all. So it worked out quite well. It also happened that someone came and asked the mayor if he could buy the handsome statutes that adorned the front of the town hall, and the mayor, after visualizing all the good things he could do with the money, saw nothing wrong with it. The removal of the statues left quite an ugly hole in the facade of the town hall; but again, this was not noticed.
After that there was quite a parade of strangers -- afterward no one could remember what they looked like -- passing through town and getting things. They got the remaining trees in town, the decorations on the front of people's houses, the things they had inherited from their ancestors, sometimes for money and sometimes because no one saw what they were doing. I don't know what had happened to the people of the town. Perhaps the new eyes had some property of which the merchant had not informed them: perhaps along with the ability to see bad things the people had lost the ability to see really good things, or to see them for what they were.
At any rate things went along in this way, until one afternoon somebody got a ladder and climbed up and took down the sun. Stole the sun right out of the sky and put in its place another sun, a sun of inferior quality that showed everything in a very bad light. Then no one in town could see anything at all.
By calling to each other they managed to assemble to talk about what should be done. But no one could think of a way to get the sun back, if they could not see to search for it. Finally the little girl's mother spoke up: perhaps her daughter, who could still see bad things, could be persuaded to undertake something, if she returned to town soon.
At that moment the little girl herself arrived. She had seen the man steal the sun and put a bad sun in its place, and she had come back to town because she was worried about her mother. The person who had stolen the sun, she said, looked very much like the merchant of eyes, and she thought she knew which way he had gone. She offered to go and look for him and try to persuade him to give back the sun, and also to give the townspeople back their own eyes.
The townspeople agreed that they had to have their own eyes back they perceived what a trick had been played on them. But how, they asked each other, could they persuade the merchant to return the eyes? They had little left to offer him. So they told the little girl to tell the merchant that if he would give them back their eyes they would work for him for a number of years. And with this the little girl set out.
The merchant of eyes had left a fairly easy trail, and it did not take her long to find him; and after a certain amount of bargaining he agreed to take back the new eyes, and give the people back their old ones, and return the sun, on condition that the people pay him a certain sum of money over the next twenty years. The eyes he would return immediately, he said, but the sun only after the sum of money had been paid. Meanwhile they would have to live with the sun he had given them, by which, after all, one could see to do one's work.
The people had no choice but to agree, little though they liked the bargain, and over the next twenty years the sum of money was paid. Those were hard years, for they now had to see all the bad things that had happened during the time they could not see anything bad, and there were few good things, because everything had to go toward paying back the merchant of eyes. And when the twenty years were over and the sun was finally restored to the sky, they were still poor and the town was still a mess; it was a long time before things were the way they had once been.
As for the little girl, she lived for a long time, and she worked with the townspeople to help put things back together again. It's safe to say that with the exception of her mother no one ever really liked her; she was a constant reminder to them of how foolish they had been, and sometimes they muttered that she really could have driven a better bargain for them with the merchant of eyes. But when it came to important matters they always asked her advice; and it was generally right.
1976
*
Not wide the chasm was Though none could leap it, Richly the harvest grew With none to reap it, Not false the promise was, Though you did not keep it.
1976
*
MANUMISSION
Now, my sister, you are free, Free to be the same as me.
Free to conquer, free to tread On the victim's bloody head.
Free to ravish all the earth Till you come to your own hearth.
Free to coin your words for lies, To compete and advertise.
Free to turn aside and sneer When a sister sheds a tear
For such foolish things as love, Childhood shelter, roof above.
Free to tear yourself a piece, Banqueting on other's grief.
Free to grow a pseudopenis Like the female hyenas:
Thus shall you assert yourself. Buy this freedom, lady -- OR ELSE!
1976
*
ELEUSINIAN
1. (Persephone to Demeter)
Where are you, Mother? The grounds are dark here. I walk on cinder paths through ashen gardens. Trees of charcoal twist riven branches, holding red globes, their fruit, the only color. Pale knights, pale ladies walk the labyrinth, turn aside from meeting. In the house the death-king circles me with his arms, not clasping. It has been longer than two seasons.
Can you not hear me, Mother? I see you entertaining Jupiter, he praises the beverage, you laugh at his stories, not mentioning me. Pluto, you agree, is a good enough fellow, only divine, like the rest of us.
Here tears of the earth fall on me, salt and sterile. There was the spring -- Love was more -- Will you come, Mother?
Dark in my mouth these seeds.
2. (Initiation)
after C. Kerenyi's Eleusis
Eleusis o elusive
blackens under the chimneys beside the highway to Athens elusive
"these mysteries hold the human race together"
the host of gods came to fulfill the rites the day men fought at Salamis
"a cloud of dust, shining, as from a mighty army" (the dust, dust lightless now on the ruins)
man or woman they veiled you made you the goddess seeking her daughter
these mysteries hold the human race together
seated you, veiled at the poor man's hearth
in the courtyard, under the sun, of sunlight, she built herself
once in the year Persephone, Kore, the Maiden rose from the dead and from the living
one was hierophant who had no right here who was not of the Eumolpidai the sweet singing ones next year the men in dark garments came
-- condensed to black sign on papyrus the drumbeat, the chant, the voice, still imploring
Lead Persephone back beneath the stars
1976
*
You speak of sisters marching strong.
In the dim light on an unbounded surface I see
shapes, isolate, hunch, slow moving,
the women with battered bodies, battered minds,
each struggling to drag herself to a quiet place.
1976
*
YIGDAL ELOKIM CHAI
that’s you, Mona – you’re the only living God I can see – that’s going to upset them, like the joke, you know – “She’s Black.” I heard the door clang shut and the key splash in the moat, Then in the dark I heard your laughter starting up like a motor. VRROOM! Did we get the hell out of there! […]
No, I can’t believe it, just can’t believe it Even that I would dance again – But you put on your music And drew my soul out through my fingertips – I saw you coming down through the hole in the gallery ceiling Along those spiral glass stairs With a black cat by your side, You perched up there instructing the dancers, The only person I know who can talk of love Without a speck of falsehood showing. Amazing Grace.
And in the gallery there’s this shelter Crammed with holy images – Masks, ithyphallic crucifixes, A picture of someone meditating by a lake That lights up,
Bearskin on the floor, Whoever comes here has to tell the truth. Outside – portraits on the wall, Souls scrawled in black lines and primary colors, Faces. If my face were half that rea. And idols, idols, Saints and Buddhas, totem figures, monsters out of nameless rivers, Beasts like continents – You burn incense before Buddhas,
You will put one in the front window to bless the world You are Jewish, African, Buddhist, Catholic, American Indian –
Come one, come all – Here these are all given up for safekeeping, Live again, like dolls in their own houses; When we borrow and think to buy them, they play dead
It’s the inside of the memory of the world, Stocked with images dense as jungle fronds. Oh Mona, how could they go out of here Build those gray halls Made of forgetting and ruling everything out…[…]
Things talk to you – You touch one and know who has touched it. You read our minds like an eye_chart. You command the angels of coincidence, We arrange ourselves around you In a pattern of meetings, You are the web and the rock.
And you too have seen, seen the worst, Couldn’t eat in the vicinity of Dachau, Saw – saw – the past could not hide from you, Screamed your head off getting out Of materialist university barbwire round the braing, Known liars, seen people cross the street to avoid you, Been to cities where they don’t believe in ghosts Though they’re so thick you can hardly see anything else, Got people out of crazyhouses, helped psychiatrists, Stood by helpless while beautiful humans killed themselves –
Helpless. You too. And yet – even so – the stronger. You climbed the stairs after telling us the news, Step by step with your pain like an adagio partner: “Sing. There is no sorrow.”
If you leave us, Mona, You’ll have a fiery chariot. We’ll beg for a portion of your spirit. No one will touch your home. Instead it will hunch down, bunch together In the dark of some night, tugging at the city From within, like a moon it has swallowed, And long before morning Presto! Changeo! We shall all be inside of you.
*
THROUGH A GLASS, CLEARLY
I'm on the outside, You're on the in. You're with the people Who think they can win.
I'm on the inside, You're on the out. I'm in the truth here, You ramble and doubt.
1977
*
If I could become dead enough, true enough,
the centrifugal mechanism
would break, and the distant
heart-galaxies
come in, come in.
*
TO A NEWBORN DAUGHTER OF ISRAEL
May you grow free. May superstitious slanders never darken the clear light of your inheritance.
May the world be pretty for you, extend to you warm winds and flowers. May you see its flowers and its sorrows as a pattern woven by the Divine Presence. May you know what sorrow is without tasting it.
Even in the city where the buildings tower over you with the might of ingenious ignorance, even in the shadow of war, even if human faces should show you fear or ignorance or coldness, may you not be afraid.
May you remain serene in the knowledge of your nature, steadily shining until eyes can gaze steadily upon you. May you never bend your mind for favor nor darken truth by speaking it in anger, but be the truth before them as the blossoming branch, as a tranquil blue-veiled sea.
May the wise of all generations address you, and forgive their ignorance, child, if they knew you not. May the old stories teach you the name of every pain, and where the herb grows that cures it. May the dream instruct you. May the word flower soon on your tongue.
O may you find friends who speak and listen gladly, answering song with song, wise words with wisdom. May those who do not understand you trust in you, may you heed and be heeded in counsel, may the one you love behold you unchangingly in the mirror of his soul.
And may you bear yourself to yourself again, planted in the world like a tree that cannot be uprooted.
And may you not forget what was before you, this the ones who dwell in darkness have spoken: even the ones who still lie bound in sorrow, even the ones whose silence warns the living from deeper night:
and the light shined in the darkness, shamor ve-zachor. 1977
*
They live in houses shuttered blank and gray. They study nights on how to never give. They do not let the children out to play.
You can't get through. Whatever you may say Lies like a stone against an iron sieve. They live in houses shuttered blank and gray.
From house to house computer wires relay Reports on every passing fugitive. They do not let the children out to play.
Their window-blinds admit the light of day The way a coat of mail admits a shiv. They live in houses shuttered blank and gray.
Despite their armor's cumbersome display, It's rumored that their young are born alive. They do not let the children out to play.
Friends, let us deeply swear that, come what may We will resist their chill imperative. They live in houses shuttered blank and gray. They do not let the children out to play.
1977
*
FEVER SEQUENCE
condensed to one outcry that escapes leaving something floating in space
___
(from the Russian of O. Mandelstamm)
In the mists ahead my eye could not quite seize your wavering, tormenting shape. When I said "My God" I did not mean to say it -- said it by mistake.
But the name of God, like some huge bird, struggled from my lungs and flapped away. Ahead, once more, the mists thicken and swirl. Behind -- a cage, its door agape.
___
There are two who return and are always returning, as if they stood on a wave when it breaks. They are teachers who come at the end of our learning, they are gamblers who come with impossible stakes.
I try to recall: do they speak to each other or are they just spoken, like shapes in the wind? I call them my sisters, they call me their brother -- a mistake which no one remembers to mind.
What it's actually like when they come for a visit? Everyone's with you and no one is there. They divided a cake with a care so exquisite Each child at the ends of the earth got a share.
It is all somewhere else -- they have told me to tell you -- The wave broke, the word was lost; but there's a change in the look of gray billows when you know that the sea has been crossed.
They do not come. This is only a groping in fable. Neither by night nor by day.
Then why am I constantly flinging doors open -- "Osip and Paul! Can you stay?"
1978
*
CONVERSION
Eternal People, my life is yours. You princes, whose crowns the Torah wears, I stand before the holy Ark, the testimony of G-d's speech to me, and, laying all rebellious will aside, subject myself to His will, and to yours. O may it be your will, and His, to look, not to disdain the gifts of one who comes from Lebanon... Well I know these gifts must seem a toy of peace proffered in hour of war, this hour when crowding hates possess the earth, man's soulless creatures fill the skies, the folk disperse, its elders have no counsel but day by day to bargain, at a loss, with what reveres no right, can hear not word, and none would know, to contemplate this world, that the word Wisdom ever pierced the night. Now it behooves us all to pray for might, not listen to a song that seems a dream of lonely hearts in separate nights, an unarmed man's delusion as he falls; who heeds it takes a moth's wing as his shield and makes a blade of grass his spear. O friends, so it may be; it is not mine to say; I go where you go, share even to the end this people's doubt, its fate. To Israel's G-d I offer up a voice that came -- from whence I do not know -- to say those towers of hate, those arms of doom are not more invincible than the slighting smile with which men heard me; and what seems to frail --Beauty -- is G-d's mercy and power combined, the mother of Discernment, Judgment, Skill: the gift without which prayer and righteousness are as a scepter in a sinking hand --
and with this thought shall Israel's strength renew.
1978
*
A SONG OF SONGS
You would touch me, but I am silent, like an instrument whose strings are broken. The strings are the souls of the faithful, that should be tautly strung and tuned together, each giving forth its own true note to your fingers and causing the others to sound in sympathy. Brutal hands have raked across your instrument, it has lain outside in the rain, and the faithful have broken away, those that remain are slacked from their pitch, loosened so that they give no sound. O love, you are the player, and you are the master craftsman; in your hands are skill and wisdom. Mend, I pray you, the strings that are broken, make them as new, re-join them to me, re-tune them. Then your hands will move upon me and I shall respond, and your voice too will be heard singing -- the voice of mirth and gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the bride.
1978
*
VITAL RECORDS
The sound of papers being counted and women's voices, subdued laughter, our comments like computer messages, always the same: the names people choose, the carelessness of doctors, slips of strange pens, the prices of things and the reasons of decisions somewhere higher that sift down on us. We order the numbers of the nameless, the names of the soulless; we keep track of what is not understood. In the hot afternoons time swells, eternity knocks between the typewriter rattle, and the high fans turning this way and that, like heads, have within their soft whirring a ringing sound like bells chiming no hour, far off in the wind. The doors here open and close each day at the same hour; we are here; we leave to give birth, we return to tend the vast memory that forgets us and await the coming of the Messiah.
1978
*
TO A FRIEND, BEFORE HER MARRIAGE
I struggle to remember you -- not now but as you will be, in a future that will not be; for I must take the full flower and the spreading bough from this first faint green that's scarcely there to see. I saw you among women -- O no toy of vain desire, but wise and making wise; I saw you in the shadow of a boy, softened and wary, shrinking from my eyes. Man sees but part of woman; but he takes that part for all, and will not hear of more; she shrinks herself to fit his grasp, and makes small timebound wiles of her eternal lore. So Wisdom's forests vanish from the earth and the fair world's destroyed before each birth.
1978
*
CASSANDRA
What ails you, Cassandra? You're young and beautiful, a child of the royal house, loved and protected, your sleep is curtained with gold, your tunic is purple, your hand never touches a needles except in pastime, when you've tired of your women's tales, or the song of the handsome young men. Isn't all this enough? Must you court notoriety by such outrageous conduct at public sacrifices, tearing your hair and ranting about Apollo, who certainly never mentions your name to his priests? Ridiculous! As for this band of Achaean marauders, who've been with us now so long they're almost like neighbors, their taking this city is just about as probable as that pretty story you tell about being sought by a god. It would be foolish to think they're the cause of your trouble -- no, there's some other reason, deep in your troubled soul; perhaps the diviners could tell you, or some wise physician; I cannot. But this a simple person like me can say, and I know it would help you if you could only hear it: Stop thinking so much of yourself. Look around you each day. You live in a wonderful city, where thousands of people, far less well off than you, tend to their business, morning and night, and make the best of it. Look at the blind man, his hand outstretched for an alms, consider the women who stoop at the mill and the loom all day, and come home to ragged children at night, the men whose backs are bent from the buckets of water they carry, even the prisoners, who do their labor against their will. Not one of them all wears that hunted, tragic expression or ends every conversation with dreadful foretellings. No wonder you feel alone; and of course that makes everything worse. Cassandra, I'm not saying this to hurt your feelings; you know I'm your friend and would like very much to help you; but friendship has limits. You're not going to get me thinking you're really a prophetess, sought and inspired by Apollo, and those stragglers from Aulis out there will soon be killing and plundering within these walls, unless we all go as crazy as you! Be calm, Cassandra, and smile. See how the children are racing, excited and solemn at once, to take their positions, while to the music of flutes the priests come solemnly pacing, all dressed in purest white, followed by dancing maidens, leading a heifer in garlands to far-designing Apollo.
1978
*
DE PROFUNDIS
They are more bound than I, that tread me down; they that would not be valor's slave are fortune's clown.
They that would stop the ear to golden words must fill it with the listless din of news and numbers, hollow tunes that pall while nightmares cage them in.
What they have made of Your great world I must, with eyes the sight wounds, see; and yet this pain is memory of the good, is liberty.
O G-d, amid their worse than futile work, their faithless talk, their homes that have become as market-squares where sellers hawk,
grant them one hour to know Your wisdom is, for all they do, a source of counsels, flowing from Before, which perils but renew,
and though for many years they still must toil in falsehood's pay,show them even now Truth's sanctuary in time, Your Sabbath Day!
Aye, they would know, could they but cross that sill and leave all lies without: Your Presence fills the world from end to end and leaves no room for doubt.
And from that insight is endurance born, and joy, and awe, and constancy, and truth from mind to mind, and acts which speak Your Law.
1979
*
O LOVE RETURN
O love return, love return and comfort those who await thee, O love return, love return to faithful hearts that wait thy coming.
Dark is the night, without a star, without a moon, the sun forgotten. This night is long, is morning near, O send a ray to those who dwell in darkness.
Shall we forget and be as those who never knew thy shining vision But walk in fear and live for gain and never feel thy springtime breath upon us?
Shall earth be bathed in blood and tears once more and drown all hope of better? Is there no light on some far shore to guide us home across these waters?
Show us one thing we can believe, one rule to guide, one path to follow, Show us the pearl of such rare gleam we'd gladly give for it our mortal burdens.
O make us glad to do thy will, not rebels stand where the ground is burning, O help us trust in thy sure hand that gropes for ours amid our blindness.
O let us see thy face at last, and in thy light let us see each other, O let us dream and let us wake to make this earth the temple of thy dwelling.
O love return, love return and comfort those who await thee. O love return, love return to faithful hearts that wait thy coming.
*
YAHRTZEIT
for Pesach ben Freide
The promise that brings you through sleep and remoulds your hands each time, out of nothing, is the breathing of the dead, which our own covers, is a candle burning down in the airless chambers. Absent guest, amid feasting and singing the day of your going opens a dark eye. Into your name you have gone. Let death, then, divide like the sea! Let us, dryshod, walk the way of remembrance toward your vigil that beckons in the radiant, knowing Beyond, while that voice, which is yours still, proclaims: zman herutenu.
1979
*
YOM HASHOAH
for Sam Gordon
The old man's voice was like an ancient scream wrought into words by years of brooding rage. As if from beneath blows the words still came and still might issue, age on lightless age.
What they had done to him in that far land he told; then, prophet-like, he turned and roared against those here who lent no helping hand, who saw his need, but coldly it ignored.
The audience said nothing. As of old when prophets chided them, their silence said: "The human heart is frail, it cannot hold the massive sorrow of the living dead.
"Where is the G-d of might, that promised aid? It was not we that made, nor we that broke that covenant. Our dues of guilt are paid -- why are we more rebuked than other folk?"
But from the service, still, a young girl's prayer "A better world -- to work, and not to die--" though she herself had vanished into air, perhaps returned, a listener, and stood by.
Grown now through years of death to angel's height and Wisdom's form, it pleaded with the throng: "Sisters, brothers, hold fast in man's despite To hope; abandon not the world to wrong!
"Know: Love still speaks, and still gives laws to men; These heed, and save what yet remains of worth -- O Israel, lift your arms and gather in The suffering multitudes of all the earth!
"Wherever flower struggles against stone, Wherever song through brutal shouts is heard, There seek us, Israel, and find again Your hidden G-d, Who mends His broken word!"
But in that hall to every mind discoursed Another shape: "You fools, why gather here? The master of this world -- his name is Force, To him you bow, and him alone you fear.
"And have you come to weep what he decrees? Weep not too much! beware! Or have you come to plead that what he is He ought to change (and also what you are?
"What will you offer to this King of Kings? Your hearts in prayer? He seeks but to destroy Whatever hopes, or prays, or blooms or sings, Till all the earth is like him: bare of joy.
"Shall tears deter him, who delights in pain? -- Go to your homes, avoid each other's eyes, Shut out the world, forget as best you can Those upon whom the sun no more can rise!"
Dark was the April night, when they went out, No star discernible, if any shone -- A night that shrouded Heaven's gates in doubt And veiled with tears the glory of the Throne.
1979
THE EYES WITHIN
Along the bramble-path, past the wolf's eye, a moon-tear: others have seen. Your shadow irradiates the world, those who silenced you, the faithful, have heard your song in the twilight, Lilith rides the Red Heifer into their dreams, round her shaven head flames the corona.
The tears, again, each one a world, for the song whose gentle note ignites holocausts, for the burnings in the midst of which the soul, if G-d is just, must distill; for the rose that costs more than riches: these have my sisters seen in the candleshine.
Their muteness, later, the seventh day, and afterward, while the children pour from the Song of Glory and fill the world, groping along bramble-paths, by the light of those eyes within the corona, behind day, behind night, always.
1979
*
PERSIAN CYCLAMEN
Surely you too have seen rakkefet, flowering in crevices between stones, in Yerushalayim, in late winter, early spring, the petals pale, then seeming to deepen their tinge of purple as days lengthen though leaves, heart-shaped, tatter and rain spatters them with dust: the stalks stand together, small figures with heads down, their dawn- colored hair streaming upwards as in a mighty wind from beneath the earth.
O you who have shown me such things, and whose names I here enumerate, in fives, like these corollas, and scatter on silence: may this word, your word take root, and may some spring flower us together, that we stand under mild suns, turning still around each other, like this rakkefet's earthbound ascent. 1980
*
[a fragment]
Has then the night no messengers for me? Is there no voice to go to her and say what my too trembling hand perhaps obscured, no angel to appear behind locked doors, saying "fear not"? Is the hand closed that strewed my path with signs, to warn and reassure, and cannot set before her one small thing to speak of me? Has this holy city no stones to cry out as she passes by? And you, whom I felt move behind this world, the echoes of whose footsteps I have followed beyond the mortal gate, who spoke to me when I despaired, to say you were still there? Can you not go and gently touch her life, tell her that you are more than a remembrance, speak to her of me, as of some comfort? ... I grieve that hates so easily conjoin, and evil wills soon reach an understanding, while love is fenced from love by its own will, and hands that yearn can seldom join to save. I, an unheard lament, dwell in the world
1980
*
JONAH
Now Jonah writes from Nineveh that he's having a good time. There is quite a lot to see and do; the climate's warm, but fine. There were certain things he saw at first that kind of freaked him out, But you can't go around down all the time; that's not what life is all about.
Yes, when he got here, just out of the fish, he tried to spread the word, He tried to tell the people how they were living was absurd. He prophesied destruction, but he found nobody cared, And he came to see their point of view, though sometimes at night he's still kind of scared.
One day someone heard him preaching and said, "Come work for me. You have got something that we all need, it's called integrity. But you've got to know how to sell it, or it won't do any good." And Jonah thought it over, and he said he guessed he would.
From that time on he did all right, just living day by day. He found you can be effective, if you just don't try to have things your way; And Jonah's writing a book now, it soon will be on sale, And everybody wants to read what it's like being inside of a whale.
Now this story has no moral, so don't even look for one. In the end it really all depends on what you consider fun. The wicked city it still stands, as I'm sure you’re all aware, And if you want to go and live there, well -- I guess that's your affair.
1980
*
HERE
I would not want to grow rich here nothing could be poorer than these hills balding to limestone nor to decorate a house rather this room's gray walls like a hamsin sky
the people too grow plain as the stones I shall become like them
and the words remain external something you put on each morning and take off again at night or if inward a fading of images from elsewhere
almost I do not want to learn here only to merge with the sorrow of her darkest streets
1981
*
AMONG THE ROCKS
from the Hebrew of Simon Halkin
How dear you are to me, O outcast soul of man, how lovely in my sight, here in this exile, where none can spy out your deformities nor follow, alien and arrogant, the stunning tortuosities of your chasm. How well I know them, soul, how well I know them, those prying eyes, so open and so sealed!
They saw you shaken -- their gleam exuded cold. Your maimedness, still a riddle, even to you, glittered, a frost that stupefied their greyness. Cruel to your nakedness, you stood before them, exposed to the salvation of their gaze, and they, like to a mist that madly roils and melts away, looked on your nakedness! Alas, you begged at dead men's doors, and waited with mummies for the dew of resurrection, when you aspired to snare a passing glance, that it might linger and behold one moment what was laid bare in you, a joy accursed: pain, mingled with the splendor of the silenced! Despised and sweet, my miserable darling, a little girl among the barren harlots, vainly you cried your beauty, stuttering, like to a pedlar-woman in the market, heavy of speech and burdened with disgrace. Who heard your stutterings, felt your disgrace? The play of pallor and of crimson flush in your complexion who discerned, poor thing? Were there not times when even I stored hate against your muteness, never comprehended? Did not even I at times, in cruel tempest against what lay so obdurately concealed, long to tear your veil from you, as if thus to expose to view that nakedness, itself a lie, veiled, as it were, in you.
Yet now I'll show you mercy, outcast one: in your disgrace, your silence, you are mine. In exile, with no stranger by us now to rule us with the fear of his cold gaze, you shall confide in me, we shall unite. I shall behold the heaps of your dark ore, its gold no longer dimmed for me by dross. I shall give ear to your primordial sadness, your formless sorrow I will not deny. These grey and ancient rocks my soul, are strewn, like princes of the spirit, on this mountain and valley floor. Let us go out to them and in their dark clefts utter our lament; to their still heart-voice let us lend our ear, that we may learn from them a moveless life; for they have taken everything around them into their fullness which cannot be known. Magnanimous are these rocks to you, O soul! The silence of their life, an eye that sees and is not seen, an ear alert to listen from deep concealment, and a hidden heart -- deaf and exalted, it will surely answer the wingbeat of an autumn butterfly, the shadow of an alien bird flung northward, the seeping from a bent and wind-stripped bush, the muteness of the outcast soul of man.
These rocks, my sister and my bride, my soul, will hide us, we shall sink into their night. Their wrinkled folds are marks of birth, their beauty lives sealed as in their childhood, and they know and live it in their rigidness, the splendor of their oblivion is unceasing song.
2.
O my grey rocks! It is not man I flee, for who would flee the sorrow of a thing so downcast and forlorn? Nor do I make complaint of man, that he has turned from me; how should the pine-tree on the northern slope complain of futile longing for the palm that faints among the deserts of the south? It is a stern decree of God for man that pain should weight on brothers all alike, yet brother not know brother in his pain; that every soul should long for its companion, yet longing fall forever short of grasp; and even though one soul should kiss another for one brief moment, never in that moment may it be kissed by the other in return. And if I stand here in accusing prayer before you, rocks so mutely rich, it is the prayer of one bewildered beyond prayer I pour into your ears that understand such murmurings: the prayer of all men, struggling in muteness, orphaned generation following on orphaned generation, I entrust to the deep understanding of your crannies. Each heart has its own mute and separate grief, and yet the mother of all griefs is one: the prison of silence that confines the soul.
O my grey rocks, my grey, my graceful ones! You will not thrust me from you. I will ponder with you by day upon the undefined, confide, like you, my being to the night. I will lie down in your moist echoing clefts, call soft your bosom's sharp cold edges, breathe the coolness of your tender scentless moss, and learn from you to slake my thirst in secret from the autumn azure, open as eye, from the gloom of the sky as it goes blind. I'll lose myself with you in wastes of twilight, playing a twilight game of consolation, stumbling upon the outcast soul of man; the interpretation of the darkening silence I'll drink with you to still a thirsting soul which the creating kiss of God ensnared.
The creating kiss of God ensnared my soul, implanted in my soul its own deep thirst, that it should long for all that it beholds, and yet yearn, for the holiness of beauty, to change all it beholds. The green of spring, the whitening gaze of dying eyes, the smile of wondering love that curves a young girl's lip, a raven's croak in dusk somewhere unseen -- All these beseeched my soul: swallow us up, tell of our beauty! And my soul swallowed up all that surrounded it, till the oppression of life's immured mystery entered into her, was buried in her. A dear and speechless burden, a foetus in its mother's womb, that richness shuddered within the soul that, filled to choking, travailed and could not bring her burden forth. For with his kiss God caused her to inherit the hunger that was his; but he withheld from her the strength to satisfy that hunger. O soul -- rich, yet the poorest of the poor! O human soul, drenched like a field with blessings of dew and light from heaven, yet vainly waiting for that one drop of miracle to fall upon the treasures of its seed, that they might sprout, be lifted towards the gazing sun. A magic spark the heart of man entreated, a spark that might ignite the smoldering heart till it became a singing conflagration whose flashings turn the very night to splendor -- And spark there is none. The heart is sealed, daubed shut, and cannot leap beyond its mute confines; it cannot bend the knee, nor force the cry of "Holy" from man's throat. In fields of spring filled with the rustlings of all intuition, in time of melting snow, the spark is sought, and in the longing after woman's love, and in the dream of striving generations that climb and pass from sight -- yet what is sought is never found, and song itself is helpless to break the fetters of the mystery.
Grey rocks of mine! What do you know of this, the grief of song that cannot save from darkness? I have known the blessing of the tender azure, veiled in a muslin of transparent clouds, a feathery birch. To all ends of the sky the azure reached, was woven, flock by flock, into the heart of heaven, and showed down its alms, spring's blessing. And the land around, an earth of trusting and believing fields, laid bare its thawing furrows, black with fatness beneath the melting snow: our mother Earth joyfully giving suck from age to age. O ragged mother offering your full breast, how my soul pines for your secure embrace, how my soul craves the eternal faith you hold! break forth, song of the universe, that knits in me! Hymn of annunciation that throbs, that shakes the heart of me, break forth! Silence. My soul within me melts away, is lost, The universal song is mute.
And I have hearkened to the song of ascents that streams from man's heart through all generations while he strives to ascend the mountain peak, stumbling upon the obstacle-strewn road, rising and going on. And high above them the peak, a radiance that cannot dim, beams and beckons to the few that go before the throng that crawls along, dismayed, confused, like frightened sheep that have grown weary amid the sandy plains: the herds of men are led along, up to the mountain's foot, but cannot lift up their bewildered eyes to where the mountain's summit beams and beckons; they turn their weary heads around and gaze in the disconsolate sorrow of farewell back toward the desert plains through which they passed. Of little faith, they plod along like mourners behind their leaders, and their eyes are full of treacherous murmurings against the few who with sure step and with straightforward gaze have set their feet upon the mountain slopes and between crags go skirting the abyss, like sons of giants among the human sheep, to blaze a pathway for the stumbling throng. The distance widens now between the climbers and those of erring heart who in their thousands go groping on the path of their confusion and, hesitant, ascend against their will. The distance widens, stretches out between them, until I see the herds of men all tottering, stumbling and falling in a straggling line on slopes, in valleys, in the plains of sand -- until I see the few that climb ahead halting their climb and turning back a moment. O song of man's ascent past the abyss! One moment stand those strong ones, gazing back on those who stumble there, by cliff and crag, and fall, each man's hand raised against his neighbor -- and all at once those who ascend tear forth their hearts from out their breast, for burning torches, a signal fire upraised before the eyes of the stumblers down there, shedding forth a splendor unquenchable as the dawn, that beams and beckons: Near is the mountain summit, within reach! O song of man's ascent past the abyss, grant me to be a mouth to you, O song! Your might has filled me till I burst in flames, your fire I have drunk in until I choke. Silence. My soul within me melts away, is lost. The song of man has ceased, is mute. And what, my grey rocks, what is woman, that my soul should tune its strings to her, as if it were a harp which unknown fingers play? And what the living God in me, whose goodness I praise both day and night to win His mercy, and day and night, as one whose strength fails, fling words toward him: O my God, my unknown God! Take from me, I pray, these frozen riches, take from me this desire to turn to beauty all that I feel in me, and feel in you, this storm that rage is in my blood and finds no peace save in an outcry? And God's wonder, silent and wakeful, comes to me again to quench my soul's thirst with more thirst, and muteness; and woman's eye, where love and sadness dwell, still longs to comprehend, and never can. The prison of silence, where each soul's confined -- who knows that prison, my God, as I have known it? Rocks great in lovingkindness, to your clefts I have brought this day my weary soul. May she learn at your knees to take delight in silence, learn at your knees that frozenness is joy. Wrap her in shadows, princes of the spirit, refresh her with your hues, that bloom in cold! Though she is but a child that does not know how to grow up, accept her as your child, so that her sobs may slowly die away in the desertion of your clefts, at nightfall, the wing of the Shekhinah bring her sleep within your bosom, deep sleep fall on her in your dream-strewn captivity; may she find in you the interpretation of her dream. Soft be your teats to her! In prophecy and in sweet revelation my she clasp you, whispering, My mountains, O my lovely mountains . . .
3.
A single seed, winnowed from mouldering heap that it at least may live, carrying with it the future harvest in a distant land, I have fled from man, who wallows in man's blood, who kills, whose soul is faint with love of killing! Blood, blood, blood. And only I am undefiled, I and these disconsolate rocks around me. Why do I vainly weep for man's shed blood? What moves my soul with longing to return to her uncleanness? How shall I return while yet love's law is mute in me? descend, while yet my hand is powerless to lift up my falling brothers? Woe is me, their lewdness has grown so dark that no song can redeem therm -- woe is me, for there is in me no song that could redeem them. Would I had God's strength to purify my brothers and redeem them, or else that my own purity would perish so that I could defile myself with blood, become as one of those unknowing mourners, and holiness in me no more bewail the victims! Woe is me, that I love man, woe is me, that I long for holiness!
Leaves blanched by frost and blasted by the wind and seized as if by thought, come to me now, trembling as if with understanding, come! The bitter torrents of the rains have torn you, the tameless whirlwind ferried you to me, the wanderer, bewildered, hid in cleft of rock: I bid you welcome, rest with me! The living dead are you, that gaze on death, and I am blind: I know not my own soul. The hard rains struck you, tore you from the tree, and ere you settled here among the rocks, how far you saw, to what heights you ascended in grey-veiled space! How far and wide you saw, you visionary dead, that mutely, mutely you have returned to earth here, seized by thought, embracing mystery, at last consenting, forbidding not the wind to set you down, refusing not to fall discarded here! As for my soul, it is yet linked with life, bound up with all the souls of all my brothers: I fear -- O how I fear -- my future fall; I fear the future autumn-time of man. Rest here beside me, leaves that gaze on death! Your thin backs shivering in the chill, your rustlings -- for these my heart has some interpretation:
"Who we are we do not know, know not what our lives may be; only this we know: our days lengthen to eternity.
Tremors of a hidden life wandered, wander, and once more will be plucked up, take on new form, and be stripped to bare life's core.
Tremors of a hidden life wandered, wander and again, till they have found a new disguise, wander, seeing and unseen.
And when they've put their new clothes on, they are seen, but no more seeing: they with their disguise are one, as in fixed and stable being.
And in disguise the souls congeal: fixed and rigid, blind and cold, each makes its littleness its all, hides itself within its folds.
And thus wrapped up in littleness, enfolded, hidden and secure, each yearns for liberty -- yet less than it holds its fetters dear . . . "
Who are you, soul of man that yearns -- who are you? What is your thirst for holiness, for man?
"Tremors of a hidden life, strayed and straying, evermore to be plucked up, and find new dress, and be stripped to bare life's core.
And see: a timorous cricket hid in the wood, a cloud, a leaf, a foaming wave, a flowing spring, a soul of man consumed by grief.
And all, all of them are naught but these tremors deep-entombed, sparks of life that found new dress and are now immured, embalmed.
Even as it strays, the soul congeals, still living, and goes blind, condemned to long for liberty even while it seeks to be confined.
Yes, it will grieve lost liberty, yet love its garment wondrous well, until its garment comes to seem, although a jail, the choicest cell.
And from their prison none break out: the atom of life, the secret spark weeps without voice, with none to hear, like a convict in the dark.
And suddenly the door's flung wide, and, all reluctant, forth they go -- plucked up once more, against their will, they stray and wander to and fro.
Tremors of life they are, no more, condemned to long eternally: first they long for prison cell, then they struggle to break free. . . "
4.
Open your gates, my soul, and let the glory of your spring enter in! O drenched in mourning, open your gates and let the spring descend upon your plains with all their generous seed, the sun embrace you: O appointed spouse!
Open your gates, my soul, and let the glory of your spring enter in! The living God -- Listen! -- knocks softly at your door and whispers: Let me in, let me in to your recesses to dwell there in eternal love, and spread my wings within your refuge, soul of man! The living God, the mighty one, seeks shelter in you, seeks shelter in a merciful soul: Open your gates, my soul, and let him in!
Bow down, my soul, bow low and bend the knee, master your trembling, open-eyed, and say: God of wonders, Lord of life, here am I! You called me -- weak and trembling, now I stand before you, God. Who am I, how have I deserved to come before you? Who am I that you should seek a sanctuary in me? And the merciful living God, who thirsts for mercy, will slowly enter into your recesses, my soul, without your knowing -- as the image of the beloved steals into the heart of the unknowing lover, till he wakes and deep within him feels the silence quivering with mute and pining melodies, that die away and, fainting, wake unending waves.
And as he enters your recesses, soul, whisper to him: My God, I pray, forgive me for that I love my life, my prison-dwelling, and fear the day when I must leave my prison and shed the outworn garment of my life. I and my littleness -- what are we but sounds, notes in your wakeful playing, floating isles bathed in the ocean of your life, adrift upon the ever-swelling tide of dreams? Forgive, I pray, this isle, this merest islet which loves the small circumference of its shores so much that it forgets its father ocean. forgive the soul that loves its prison walls and fears the day its prison will be opened. And then the living God will gently laugh: I did not know that you had sinned against me by loving the dark beauty of your prison. You and your prison, both, are dreams of mine, I am the dreamer and I am the dream, and all my dreams are precious in my sight: you, and your prison's pain, are dear to me. And while you pray for my forgiveness, I within you likewise pray for your forgiveness, and I am the forgiver, even I. Sing, soul of man, for you are purified, you shall descend to man, and I with you, your being shall be radiant with God's beams; and know: if man bows down to you, he bows only to the divinity within you; but if he turns away from you, it is that he has not yet beheld your God. And do not mourn, nor feel yourself as orphaned: the pain of man is God's pain, but as yet the pain of God has not become man's pain. Sing, soul of man, for you are purified, you shall descend to man, with God in you.
Great with love and compassion, you shall stand where he has set you, and shall keep your vigil: a day will come when every single soul will heart to God's soft knocking at her gates: Let me in, let me in to your recesses to dwell there in eternal love, and spread my wings within your refuge, soul of man. And every single soul will yet throw open her gates, and be a refuge for her God, a basin for the ocean of his dream whose tide's forever at the full. Yet silent now, not pressing for the end of wonders, you stand where he has set you, keeping vigil, sustained by hope till your relief arrives: another human soul will take your post, your sister, future's child, will come, although you will not know her coming, nor she you. And after her still other souls will come to keep the vigil for their generations, hoping, like you, to see the end of wonders, the eternal spring when every single soul will open to become a tabernacle for the living God, will widen to contain the waters of the ocean of his dream, full to the vast horizon's edge for ever.
translated 1982
*
BEATRICE IN JERUSALEM
I am a memory come to life. -- Franz Kafka
Among these stones, both ancient and new-quarried, one substance underneath the dark and light of varying time, bespeaking the one source to which I have returned (I say returned, 5 though I know none whose blood is in my veins that walked here, yet here certain words were written from which, though mingled and transformed, descended this more-than-life) I, Beatrice, pass, living and yet a shade, a dream undreamt, 10 like her whom Faust waked from unfathomed sleep to hear her own life told, a stranger's tale, yet unlike her, much praised and not desired, not maddening men to burn each other's cities, but shunned by them, as weeping at mid-day. 15 And not for a magician's brief delight was I awakened, if the murmuring voice that pierced my sleep of formless dreams spoke true, but . . . I know not. To grope, to wander here, to stand beneath the closed skies which they say 20 were once Your face, to sit at Your sealed gates, to lift up Wisdom's voice, and be called Fool, to see You, or to be forever blind among a blind race groping toward its doom.
How long, how long, O Father of all wisdom, 25 sole guardian of the knowledge stored for men, how long have I been wandering in this world? When did my feet first leave upon its dust their traces, soon effaced? when did my voice first echo and die out among its stone, 30 when were my eyes first lifted to its stars to ask if they remembered my high parentage and knew me still? outside whose fast-shut door did knowledge of Your ban first come to me? Was I that Helen Simon Magus found 35 (as evil tongues told) in a stew in Tyre, whom he, who called himself as You, proclaimed his own First Thought, that ere time was leaped out and in the nether realms gave birth to those who, being ignorant of the Father, still 40 hold her captive in their jealousy so she cannot return, but ever again is held a prisoner in a female body suffering humiliation? Methinks I see myself stand in the market, a wordless show, 45 while he, half barker and half preacher, speaks a tale some priest preserved to rail against. And had he who first penned the praise of Wisdom once glimpsed me here, in street or palace hall? Was it even to my footsteps Orpheus tuned 50 the lyre that beasts and trees and stones obeyed? Was I indeed the form that Dante glimpsed in the dark streets of a barbarian town, did I return his glance, and know he knew, did I receive him in the World of Truth, 55 my rightful home, with those companions gathered from all time beneath Your primal light, in the great Rose where now my place is vacant, I being banished, though for what fault there, where no trees can grow, 60 or for what task here, where no hope can spring, no thought divines . . . ? I have no memory; all these are strangers' tales. Only the voice that murmuring woke me, gave me the name again, and when I read, methought I knew 65 the gestures and the keen, delighted speech woven of swift thought, the gaze upturned in gladness or downward in indignant sorrow bent, the joy in that creation which I was, reflection of the Creator's greater joy -- 70 Riguarda qual son io! -- these things were mine, this was myself, before the woeful change and for the first brief moment of recall. This was the form that hatred has bowed down, this was the joy that envy brought to dust, 75 and this, ah this, the spirit that was seen in the dark forest like a distant light, for which spoke reason, among the woeful people who have lost the good of the intelligence. O poets! vain and unbelieving race, 80 so puffed up with the pride of mere invention that none can see what his companion sees, nor hear when his companion speaks the truth, nor love with a whole heart what was before him: therefore the Word is as a window painted 85 with opaque semblance of what lies beyond, and therefore none since Dante entered Paradise except the last, who cast a look and died.
Think not, O builder of the visible and the invisible worlds, I think to break 90 by speaking here, the bars, not forged by man, that fenced me even from the one who called me while yet he lived, and now that he is hidden are more the barrier than death itself. It was a mortal hope, although the best: 95 that grief for all he was might blaze a path through the blind hearts of men, for me to pass; that in the world lived scattered souls like mine, of his love's will co-hearers and co-heirs, known with me, and to each other known, 100 who, meeting in his setting sun's last rays, might for our life on earth devise a form that should become our oneness, and prepare for those who spring from us, a world not dark with war and ignorance, a little space 105 for wise play under the eternal eye. O reverie of an over-learned child! Not the dark might of armies, nor the snarl of the human beast, dispelled thy golden gleam, but the withdrawal of extended hands 110 in hope's last stronghold, here. The wisest and the best, and among those the wisest and the best, counselled me to renounce my word's high aim and play the fool to those who sell the word, to make my peace with falsehood, act a part 115 in the weary play which surely none believes but all keep up, as if 'twere life itself. And against this avail, I know, no tears, no reasonings, and no melodious song, no warnings, no impassioned stern rebuke, 120 neither his name, nor any one of Yours. Even their kindness is but mockery: they see me, then they see me not; they see in me that part which they themselves have chosen and minister to that. And I, alas, 125 from human need beg and betray myself till I seem a worse fool than all the rest and take at last from their contemptuous hands the portion I could not accept from Yours: the solitude, the obscure and lowly path. 130 So be it. Only let me learn at last the wisdom I myself pronounced on high and not, more foolish than a fledgling bird, mist by the first arrow, await the second. Since the most just among the living could 135 not judge my cause, let me not then appeal to lesser hearts; and if indeed You hear, then hear it not as prayer, but as the song of one in prison, as the words of one who seeks not to appeal, only to be. 140 These make me present to myself, these bring the dark chaotic world into my ken, these make illumined spaces in the dark and gird the world I sought to fashion here in the vast spaces of nonentity.
145 Yet even now my mind entreats to know why I was sent here in this midnight hour, drawn forth with words and driven forth with violence, to the sore-troubled remnant of Your people who in their need of Wisdom's grace yet find 150 my consolation harsher than their ills. Your very Law forbids them hear my song; custom would have me serve, and speak no word; and how should I, a stranger still, rebuke them over the blood of their kin, shed by mine? 155 Had you but left me in my mother's house and in my mother's mother's house, continuing in word and deed the song that gave me birth: had You but left me hands, to do some kindness, and hearts to echo what you placed upon my tongue, 160 surely my will was peace, and would have reached to these, even here. But You have cast me out: my people know the song, the name no more, what mercy was in them -- it was but little, but scattered islands in a cruel sea -- 165 they have cast forth. Violence rules utterly, the truthful word is voiceless now among them. The peace of home, the mother's sheltering arms are mocked; the hounds of envy, cruelty and lust are set on beauty, love and wisdom; then 170 oblivion swallows up their memory lest any should, remembering, feel remorse; the blood of innocence is sold for gain. I have no name and no memorial there. In grief for sisters vilely slain I call 175 to those who mourn here what my people did to strangers, ere they turned against their own -- They do not hear. Being gathered from destruction they mourn their own dead, guard what life remains, they build against the hate that builds without, 180 by guilt unchecked, by sorrow unappeased -- O God, they speak of miracles, yet none believes: the seas divided not for those most innocent; dreadful are Your designings, if design they are. I know that there are tribes of men 185 in hate begotten, without a spark of faith, who live by killing, for the joy of causing pain; these shall inherit earth. Woe to the last seed of the just, that shall be born among them!
O chains of fate! I see their entanglements, 190 I see their twistings, back through generations, I see how that has come to pass which is, and what must be, if these same laws prevail. I see the one point where the whole is fettered, but do not hold the key, nor have the strength, 195 to break those chains, even at their weakest point. I see, far back, the naked seed of life, scarcely escaped from the inanimate or in it still, like a candle in the wind, already binding to its preservation 200 the missiles launched against it; building shells, forms that have left their impress even in stone, organs, limbs, till the first form's blind will became a flame of cunning, fed and shielded by ever ampler provender, higher domes, 205 until at last it built itself a shelter even beneath the heart of its own kind, enlarged itself to shelter more than self, and love and grief with the first young were born. And ever wider compass sought the mind 210 in which to play and keep itself from harm, houses and camps and circles of the wise, and all the arts by which man's world is framed, until was cast the mirror of the spirit in which life saw itself, and knew itself 215 as image of a larger will and purpose. And last the dream: that from the mirror stepped the image into the arms of that which cast it -- so life returned, and its long journey was a tale to while away eternity -- 220 But all that light cast shadows long and dark, and every peace was bought with greater pain; the smiles of child and mother brought the hand grown cruel with feeding and protecting them, possessing that in which it had no share; 225 the hand that fought against itself and grew more cruel with every victory, proclaimed itself its only purpose, forced mind and love into its service, bred itself a world in which inanimate force once more was aimed 230 at all life had created, and struck true, guided by life's own knowledge of itself -- a world as dark and merciless as the void from which life sprang, to which it must return -- So it must end. The spirit was -- was not. 235 A signal-fire from a world consumed in strife, signs that meant briefly love and peace and honor, whose meanings melt like the tender mist of flesh while the letters, and the bones of law, remain, and even my barren course must bear it out. 240 Law without justice! mock me, if you can! Say that in every generation some knew of the hand, and covered up the breast, only to leave the world to fiercer broods of those conceived by violence and deceit; 245 their words none heeded in the rut and bloodlust, their sacrificed inheritance none grieved, so that the light they saw by did but thicken the dark in which the others struggled on. Accuse me thus, and mock us all together, 250 O serpent Time! for if the spirit's nothing, who then can mourn which way the flesh is driven?
Had You but led me to Your covenant with gentle hand, I might have learned to live in silent peace with those whose fathers saw 255 Your glory tear the curtain of the world and heard their King's voice overthrowing all man's power, yet granting him a little space in which to live, and exercise his sway -- saying, "Thus far, no farther" to the tides 260 of violence which would destroy the world: with these, that lived to witness against kings, I might have lived and given life, transmitting the memory of Eternity through time. -- You did not will it. From the sheltering home 265 I stepped into a world that knew no law but that of might, no code except betrayal, a prison-world whose reasons chained my mind and made me doubt my soul, and long for madness. Before me vainly human love was praised: 270 shunned and despised I lingered among men, and only strange dreams visited my cell, bringing the air of lands beyond despair, and vanished, leaving words half-understood, images unexplained. Till he appeared 275 whose tokens they had been: the prince of song, the orphan child of Israel's greatest woe. He too had grieved in exile, and had seen in dreams the one prepared to comprehend him; had called me by a name none spoke in earnest 280 these seven hundred years, to rise and shine for men. Not earthly love, he offered, nor I gave; cold was our meeting-place, beyond this world; only when he had set could I arise and sing the song of praise and grief in one.
285 Then, only then, did I acknowledge You, believe that You are King, and men are fools pursuing Time's decoys, while from the door they shun to enter, beckons eternal joy. Then did I laugh at Time, and men's designs, 290 at Death itself, whose power they uphold -- were not the laws of Might a crumbled tower? Surely now all would wake at last, and hear their names, and issue from their hiding-places in the mechanic thicket of man's world; 295 now they would call to each other, and make plain the paths through Your creation, once so fair, and gather in Your presence and each other's to speak the spell of reconciliation as I once heard: "We gather here to see 300 faces from which we need not hide our face, to hear the sound of honest speech, to share what dreams have etched upon the sleeping brain, what the still voice has said, when heavy hours plunged us to regions of the mind and life 305 not mentioned in the marketplace: to find and match the threads of common destinies, designs grimed over by our thoughtless life -- A sanctuary for the common mind we seek. Not to compete, but to compare 310 what we have seen and learned, and to look back from here upon that world where tangled minds create the problems they attempt to solve by doubting one another, doubting love, the wise imagination, and the word. 315 For, looking back from here upon that world, perhaps ways will appear to us, which when we only struggled in it, did not take counsel of kindred minds, lay undiscovered; perhaps, reflecting on the Babeled speech 320 of various disciplines that make careers, we shall find out some speech by which to address each sector of the world's fragmented truth and bring news of the whole to every part. We say the mind, once whole, can mend the world. 325 To mend the mind, that is the task we set. How many years? How many lives? We do not know; but each shall bring a thread." Still I can see them meeting there, a circle in the night, crowned by the listening stars of a great hour, 330 among them many I have known, whose words, whose deepening gaze, whose silent dignity confirmed the voice that spoke our greater being, and at their shoulders stand the dead, not feared, but welcome guests, that entered with your Presence. 335 O would that hour, by Your will, but strike, here, among those that vainly wait for signs they cannot see, and know not to interpret! Then they would learn new laws, renew the old' then they would understand Your ways, though dark, 340 perhaps be reconciled even with the spark that fled their midst, when in half-learned tongue one stammered of the soul's supremacy, of love transcending law and domination, of one soul reconciling all, forever. 345 What though that word was cast into the night of those who scorned the discipline of peace, who took love for their scepter and their sword and built an empire that seemed made to mock the one whose word had given it foundation? 350 Even that darkness labored with the light: for this might he who traveled hell and heaven and saw at last the light beyond this world, for this might he who traveled earthly hell and called me from the other world, bear witness. 355 O could that dark's one offering be accepted by those who stood so long against its sway, then, with the souls of all this world has lost, I might return in truth, and purify the house wherein all nations shall bow down.
360 O God, what is this world, that it can stand so firm against Your power that shakes the soul? Not as my people's offering do I come bearing the tokens of Your messenger: a cast-off thing, despised more than before, 365 driven forth by violence denying all that gave me birth, I reached Your people's shore. Where are those creatures, fair beyond belief, from which Your image shone, that tutored me, who made sing in my soul the words of greeting, 370 for whom Creation's garden seemed to wait that they might tend and dwell in it again? Their faces; light went out when called upon, for greetings rude denial, weak excuse, and back they turned to man's destructive work, 375 to mutual pleasures bought with bribery, invoking their souls' freedom to resist not the world's power, but Yours. Can I believe in my own soul, when their they so disprove in whom I saw myself? And these Your people? 380 is it their righteousness and their obedience that makes them turn away? Have they not taken of unrighteous gain, my sisters' spoils, to build their refuge with? Have they not made Your law a spade to dig with, do they not turn its eyes from present truth 385 and take their pay for silence? Can I judge them, burdened so with grief and fear, must I not even for compassion's sake admit that Force is king? So I may well have grieved, unheard, in every generation. 390 O Lord, I fear this world's not Paradise, nor yet the spot on which it might be built; thought fails me to believe that I once played beside Your throne, joying in Your all-knowledge, so freely given; nor was it I that shone 395 where difference is but the sweet reflection of light upon itself, and shadows come only to give light form and rest; where each lives by the ceaseless effortless imparting of all all know to all. A mortal mind, 400 circumscribed, and not with widest bounds; a mortal soul, that surely seems to others a darkened thing, even as they are to me -- I am but this. I think I see now that to take shape each thing must cease to be 405 what there it is; that Heaven reflects itself upon our Hell; and what is willed up there is this our fall, and that which cannot be. O let them live at peace with this who can, Father! and keep the laws which You once gave; 410 me You have torn beyond that hope of peace!
Yet this is new beneath the bitter stars: that he was here who called me by my name. Never in all the generations past did man's tongue hold his language, did man's eye 415 so seeingly admit the world men made and what they did not make, and had not seen, nor was the secret dream so truly spoken amid the praises of assembled men, although they still dissembled what they praised; 420 and though I came and went in flickering dreams for many, none before turned to me living to pray for the fulfillment of the dream. So it may be that I too, after all, stand for the first time here upon this earth, 425 knowing myself, the beginning, and the end; that while I was for men an apparition remembered yet not sought except in dreams, I but half knew myself, as in those years when anguish of half-knowing seared my brain 430 and images of him I knew not yet, strange figures from an unknown ancient tale of Silkie, unicorn or Fisher-king, a torn god worshipped even amid the hunt, came through the night, invaded even the day, 435 severing me speechless from the common life, until we saw each other face to face and learned each other's names. What though all others forsake the mystery, and earth prolong its fall beyond my arms to utter dark? 440 Were we two not the halves of Primal Man that struggled from the wreck of First Creation through tales and histories, through lives that were like fragments of distorting mirrors case upon the earth, till in its final hour 445 we met beneath the shadow of destruction, burdened with flesh, with guilt and shame and wounds and with the manners of a lying race, that once the secret message might be written, the title given to this world's spectacle: 450 Bozhestvennaya tragedia. Then let the curtain fall, the characters disperse, the audience emerge into those streets illumined by the nearer, kinder stars, speaking in whispers, and with quiet tears 455 for Heaven's shame. The end is surely hear. Yet I am I, and he is he, and knowing was perhaps, after all, the goal -- attained.
O unseen Presences! O heavenly Father! Forgive these words! Prophets were ever tempted 460 to wish the doom of those they came to save; and those with whom Despair has come to live have not the strength that can forbear to paint its ghastly face with colors of delight. Shall I be true to love, yet false to hope? 465 Still will I hope. your sages' words I heed: "Believe not in thyself until the day thou diest." Since faithfulness until the grave I promised, let me not claim the reward of faithfulness -- belief -- until the grave 470 is sealed above me, and all know that I, changed by eternity into myself, no longer can betray. Till then, let this body in which I am confined, that knows fear, weariness, and anger, be my tutor. 475 Let me not give offense to any creature, nor lift my voice in arrogance, nor put forth my hand to take what is not rightly mine, nor draw it back from giving what it should, lest it be said my dreams were wickedness; 480 but grant me sustenance in patient toil that I may learn the laws of Your Creation -- as much as may one human intellect too limited, alas, for its soul's vision -- and leave behind, perhaps, some better gift 485 than those I made before. I cannot cease to pray for miracles: that through Your grace I might even now, while in the turbid flesh, be changed in all men's sight to what I am, or better, that the word you gave, Your word, 490 might wake in all, and Wisdom's spirit shared might comfort, gather, lead us in this time. Then might so many tears that yet must flow be stanched, and many a lovely thing be shielded upon which now the hateful storms bear down; 495 yet all is in Your hand; I can but trust. I will believe that, though my voice be silent to reach its heart, Jerusalem still is; that mortal, weak, corruptible though we are, flawed with this world, and burdened with its hate, 500 yet there is here some stronghold of the spirit the deluge of this time shall not submerge. Let those who plot against us foil each other until the nations see Your hand sustains, and not the merits or designs of men! 505 Then even envy might seek peace with us, and in Your people's heart the knot of fear be loosened, and their eyes and ears admit forgotten things, of which I shall be one. Freed from the weight of doom, they might then see 510 the world before them, and once more light in plans of tending and of restoration: so might the dawn come slowly over earth, and the receding cloud of violence show Your sky whose sun and stars are moved by love, 515 as men have sung, and You at last must prove. 1981
NOTES
Line 1. The opening phrase, and the immediate impetus for the poem, I owe to Simon Halkin's "Beyn Sela'im (Among the Rocks)." The opening also recalls the first lines of Part II, Act 3 of Goethe's Faust, spoken by Helen of Troy, whom Faust has conjured from the dead: Bewundert viel und viel gescholten, Helena, Vom Strande komm ich, wo wir erst gelandet sind (Greatly admired and much berated, Helena, From shore I come, where even now we landet) In Goethe's version of this legend, Helena is unaware that she has been summoned from the dead, and is thrown into confusion by Mephisto-Phorkyas' narration of her saga. 21. "Doth not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her voice?" (Prov. 8:1) The figure of Beatrice in the Divine Comedy is often interpreted as an allegory of either the true Church or Divine Wisdom. 24ff. The complaint "How long have I been wandering in this world" comes from a Gnostic text; I do not remember which. In Gnosticism Wisdom, or Sophia, is often portrayed as the exiled "daughter" of God. This portrayal harks back to the depiction of Wisdom in Proverbs 8 and 9 to Athena, sprung from the head of Zeus; the Kabbalistic Schechina and Dante's Beatrice are further avatars of this figure. 34ff. In the first century C.E. one Simon of Samaria, traditionally identified with Simon Magus, claimed to be the incarnation of God the Father and introduced a woman named Helen, said to be a former prostitute, as his own First Thought. Lines 37-43 are taken almost verbatim from the Simonite Hymn to Helen, preserved by Irenaeus in his polemic against the Gnostics. 43-45. The image of the barker is taken from Paul Celan's "Meridian" speech. 47. The author of Proverbs, identified by tradition with King Solomon. 51. Cf. the opening chapters of Dante's Vita Nova. 56f. Cf. Paradiso, Cantos XXX-XXXII. 69. Cf. Par. XXX, 19-21: La bellezza ch'io vidi si trasmoda non pur di la di noi, ma certo io credo che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda. ("The beauty I saw not only surpasses our measure, but I surely believe that only its Maker has all the joy of it.") 70. "Look, and see me as I am." Par. XXIII. 75-76. Cf. the well-known beginning of the Divina Commedia: Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura che la via diritta era smarrita (Inf. I, 1-3) ("In the middle of the road of our life I found myself in a dark wood where the true way was lost.") And see also Virgil's address to Beatrice, Inf. II, 76-78: O donna di virtu, sola per cui l'humana spezie eccede ogni contento di quel ciel c'ha minor li cerchi sui ("O lady of virtue, through whom alone the human kind surpasses everything within the smallest circle of the heavens") and also Purg. VI, 45: "Che lume fia tra'l vero e lo'intelletto" (Who will be a light between truth and the mind). 77-78. Virgil, who at Beatrice's request guides Dante through Hell and Purgatory, is identified by commentators with human reason. (Though since Virgil is after all a poet rather than a philosopher, it would seem that the "intelletto" for Dante, whatever it might have been for his sources, is inseparable from poetic vision.) The damned are characterized by him as "le genti dolorose c'hanno perduto il ben dell'intelletto" (Inf. III, 17-18). 79ff. The critic Harold Bloom has diagnosed the "anxiety of influence" which leads poets deliberately or semi-deliberately to distort the vision of their predecessors in order to appear "original" to themselves and to others. "E tu che sol per cancellare scrivi" (and you who write only to cancel out) (Par. XVIII, 130). 87. "The last": Paul Celan (see also lines 16-17, 62-63, 91-93, 274-6, 353-5, 412, 445-50). The line also alludes to the Talmudic story of the four who entered Pardes (i.e. the realm of mystical speculation). One, Ben Azzai, "looked and died" one went mad, one became a heretic; and only Rabbi Akiva "came out in peace." I first heard this story in 1970, after Celan's suicide, from a friend of Orthodox Jewish background to whom I had ventured the surmise that Celan had attained some insight that was too much for him to bear. Several years later I heard a Reform rabbi, Marc Gelman, read his original variant on the "four who entered Pardes," substituting four contemporary Jewish thinkers marked by the Holocaust for the four Talmudic rabbis. In this version, Celan was substituted for Ben Azzai. 122. Cf. Purg. XXXIII, 10-12, which in turn plays on John 16:16: Modicum, et non videbitis me; et iterum, sorelle mie dilette, modicum, et vos videbitis me. ("A little while, and you will not see me; and again, my beloved sisters, a little while, and you shall see me.) 130ff. Cf. Purg. XXXI, 61 Novo augelletto due o tre aspetta; ma dinanzi dalli occhi di pennuti rete si spiega indarno o si saetta. ("A young chick waits for two or three [shots], but in vain is the net spread or arrow shot in the sight of the full-fledged bird.") 151. Rabbinic law forbids a man to listen to the song of a woman other than his wife (some authorities permit it if the woman is on stage and personally unknown to the hearer, if she cannot be seen, or if the voice is recorded). 173. "Unto them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name." Isaiah 56:5. The name of the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, Yad va-Shem, is taken from this verse. 259. "Thus far, no farther" is the rabbinic interpretation of the Divine name Shaddai. 280. "Arise, shine" (kumi, ori) -- Isaiah 60:1. A poem addressed by Celan to the community and the representative reader closes with the Hebrew words. 274-284. In an essay entitled Folie a deux I attempted to trace this otherworldly encounter through a number of poems, in most of which the motif of cold is present. 383. "Do not make of Torah a crown to aggrandize yourself, nor a spade with which to dig." Pirkei Avot 4:7. 406-7. See Inf. III, 95-6: vuolsi cosi cola dove si puote cio che si vuole ("It is so willed where will and power are one.") However, in the words of Deborah Gorden Friedrich, "Everyone knows that love is pain,/ That which is cannot be." 411. Cf. Ecclesiastes 1:9; "...and there is nothing new under the sun." 412. In the Scottish ballad "Silkie" (which I heard in the version sung by Joan Baez), a being who is a man on land and a silkie (seal) on the sea fathers a child on a mortal woman and leaves her with the prophecy: And ye shall marry a gunner good, And a right fine gunner I'm sure he'll be, And the very first shot that e'er he shoots Will kill both my young sun and me. For the unicorn (sometimes understood as a symbol of Christ), see Rilke's treatment in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. The figure of the Fisher King is studied by Jessie Weston in From Ritual to Romance, cited by T.S. Eliot in his notes to The Wasteland. The "torn god" refers to the ancient Near Eastern cults of Adonis, Attis, and Tammuz, predecessors of a certain aspect of Christianity. 440. Cf. Genesis 1:27: "And God created man in his own image . . . male and female created He them." Primal man: the Kabbalistic Adam Kadmon. 441. This refers to the Lurianic myth of the "breaking of the vessels." 450. Bozhestvennaya tragedia: Celan's words to me on August 4, 1969. 456-7 is the final formulation of the Gnostic position which alternates in the poem with the Jewish hope of an earthly redemption. 459-60. As in the story of Jonah, who is angry with God in the end for not destroying Nineveh. 466. "Do not believe in yourself until the day of your death." Pirkei Avot 2:5. 467. The hero of Wagner's Flying Dutchman can be redeemed from his eternal wanderings only by a woman "faithful unto death." Apparently Wagner got this idea from Heine -- who, however, suggested it with characteristic irony. 471. This is a translation of the first line of Mallarme's sonnet, "Le tombeau d'Edgar Allen Poe": "Tel qu'en lui-meme enfin l'eternite le change..." 510. Cf. the close of Milton's Paradise Lost: "The world was all before them.." 511. Cf. Genesis 2:15: "And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it." 515. Cf. the last line of the Divina Commedia: "l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle."
*
[untitled]
An unidentified remorse like a lost needle somewhere, seeking the heart.
1981 *
THE LADY OF THE DARK CHAMBER
There was a wizard in Paris town, And a cunning man was he: He called the Lady of the Dark Chamber To come from beyond the sea.
He has seen her in a midnight glass And written her name in sand, He has summoned her up by candlelight And whispered her his command.
The lady tosses on her bed, She has not peace nor rest. She dreams all night of a falcon dark Lighting upon her breast.
And all she did to banish this, It was of no avail Till she went down to the cold sea–side And for Paris town set sail.
And when she came to Paris town She heard a man was there Who could summon spirits to do his will And walk upon the air.
She went unto the wizard's house, She would not say her name, But the wizard bade him let her in, For well he knew who came.
"Thou cunning wizard of Paris town, Know'st thou who I may be?" "Thou art the Lady of the Dark Chamber, Whom I called from beyond the sea.
"I have seen thee in a midnight glass And called thee by night and day, I have bound thee with the Threefold Spell, And thou canst not get away.
"But fear thou not, thou Lady dark, For I mean no harm to thee –– I mean to be king in Paris town, And thou the queen shalt be.
"Thou shalt sit upon a golden throne And wear a golden crown, And even I shall do thy will, And thy words shall be written down.
"Thou shalt be mother to all men, But thy children shall be seven; They shall be fair as the sun and moon And wise as the stars of heaven.
"And all the people in all the realm Shall to each other say, 'Well to the Lady of the Dark Chamber And to those beneath her sway.'"
He has taken her up to a window high And shown her to all the town, And his face was like the moon at the full, And hers was like the sun.
And when those two lay down to rest The bells of the town did chime, And when he kissed her rose–red lips, The clocks stopped at that time.
And never a clock has struck since then, All is as he did say. Well to the Lady of the Dark Chamber, And to those beneath her sway!
1982
*
SONG
If you must indeed return there, pray speak of me to the cyclamen, To the lavender flowers on the chinaberry trees, To the evening star as it gleams in the sky at twilight, And to the asphodel; for I found none faithful save these.
And it will be when you lift your eyes to the twilight Sky with the evening star, that you will remember again, And I will be the evening star to you, and the scent of the chinaberry trees, And you will not lose your soul amid the sons of men.
1982
*
In a dark night I lay in prayer, while cruel armies gathered round, for God's arm flashing in the clouds, for splitting seas; but even more that one small star of selfless love might pierce the murk of sordid strife, that one white flower of mercy pure might blossom from earth's stony ground.
1982 *
THE ROUTINE OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
It is no secret. You may feel relieved of any weight of confidence incurred by the hearing of a total stranger's life, its deepest moments and its gravest sins; no do I hold out an importunate hand for friendship. You may see in me no more than the seatmate whose chance garrulity doubles the journey's length; and I, too, know no more of you than that you must hear this. If one could tell it, and be done with it! Such things occur. And one is not absolved until the words have picked one's bones and those bones are hung up somewhere, as a warning. So, Wedding Guest. I hope this does some good. I take a deep breath, fix my glittering eye, and lift this weight once more, in front of you. 1982
*
STARLINGS, KIRYAT YOVEL
Bird cries arise, in a crowd. It is yet light. They are waiting for darkness to arrive, like a train, while I lie here waiting for an evening that will not arrive this evening when the bird cries will arise, in a cloud, and take me with them into darkness.
*
A MEMO TO THE MESSIAH
Heal the sick and raise the dead And levitate in air; Break for crowds twelve loaves of bread, Fell walls with trumpets' blare; See yourself ten lives ago, What is done at ten leagues know, Never shall you overthrow The iron reign of circumstance.
Check but one man's flight from love, Give one cold heart regret. What the stricken would forgive, Make one who struck forget; Of dear-bought folly wean one mind, One broken faith by all arts mend, Cure one whom envy has made blind -- Then you may shake the centuries' trance.
AMULET
This will protect you though all betray you: the word keeps faith though it be broken. Though friends fall silent the unseen tokens will lead you home to the House of Song.
1983
DROUGHT
I wake and cannot sing, my throat dry as this land. O G-d, what curse has clenched Your hand thus to withhold rain and the spirit's power? -- Over my head the clock that struck the hour is striking with uncertain, random chime, as if, in a daze, it sought to ring the end of time.
Was that an answer, G-d? Did the prayer born of my spirit's fear despite numb heart and tearless eye reach to the harpstrings of causality and wring from them a chord of prophecy? ... What need of sings? Whoso has not the wit to see around this world Your tightening net, for him in vain the very stones would cry.
Silence again. O G-d, You are my witness: I have tried to strike the word like a great holy gong to fill the air with humming song calling the spirits to one place. In vain. Shall I then say the tokens lied? No; it is humans who betray Your voice that calls within them every day: "Gather and hear, gather and hear my will!" You speak; but it is we who must fulfill. Are not our hearts, too, in Your hand? Then for the sake of this beloved land let them understand .. That I do not weep now, is very ill. Yet what can I do, Lord? I trust, and call out still...
1984
*
THE CUTOFF
Fallen basswood, rotting bridge over the oxbow: ripple-stroked sandstone slab where the gradient, freshly steepened, makes the stream murmur: this too will wear away, wear away, in the water's lapse, till the endlessly- downdrawn current passes silent here too.
Madison, 1984
*
AU SEJOUR DE LA MORT
Wide are the grounds of death here, high the stern symmetric gates, gray the late heaven over this deserted ground, bronze-dark its edge of maples standing at a distance, and black this stone, which fourteen winters now have worn.
Death, be hence forth this stone that covers one whom life's own strictest logic hounded to such end, and I the ever-shattered slowly-scouring wave which those same laws now hurl against your base again, again, again.
Orly-Tel Aviv, 1984
INTERCHANGE
for Ruth Blumert
The block of events comes towards us rarefies to let us through as everything is atoms, spaces, flocks of birds, galaxies of nothing stochastically swirled and swung by shaping–reshaping will. So, when we talk, our word–swarms wing through each other. Say it: even the spring is autumn here and our thoughts gather for flight over the world's edge far into dizzying depths but not alone.
1984
*
THE SIGN-BEARER
While passing through the Ben Yehuda Mall during the Ten Days, I was struck by one who leaned upon a signboard's pole,
two further signs covered his chest and back: inscriptions from the Talmud and the Bible proclaimed it right to love hard work
rather than alms and idle speech and quarrels. The man stood silent, upright as his staff save that his neck was bent at a right angle;
he was thin, not young, shabbily clad. Facing him in a semicircle stood some ten or twenty people. Did they laugh,
question, or ponder? As for me, I strode too quickly past, stung by some arrogance or pity, to have studied their expressions, or to have read
all the sayings. Yet now it seems fitting, seeing he had the majesty of the absurd, to draw from him an image of the poet's velleity of standing humbly beside his word.
*
JAMMED into the breach of faith peg your way up the word-wall
muscle-prayers, breath-prayers, gut-prayers,
where you were evaporates behind you,
there's no going back.
*
I-AM
Concerning I-Am, do not say "You are this." "You are that."
!O road, hedged in with mirrors!
I-am is an ocean and an eye looking at the ocean.
*
THE UNWRITTEN POEM
The poem I have not yet written whose first line would be the doorsill to another space
The poem I have not written yet whose form would be that space domed for meeting filled with its own darklight like the shine from invisible candles
The poem I have not written whose words would be humans met in understanding
The poem not yet written whose voice would be the inner voice of all
that poem I would send you
*
THE BOUNDARY
Two separate countries, these, distanced by a body of water whose width is disputed: a vast gulf, say some, a narrow rivulet, say others, and crossed by odd emissaries, chance couriers: leaf from unknown tree, random phone call, figure of waking dream lured to candle–flame, revealing, deceiving, concealing: a rift, in the end no other, perhaps, than that which sunders our two minds, here.
ECHO
For your the quietest song: ripple rarely lapping the lakeshore, breath barely stirring the pine-boughs, a call, caught at the verge of hearing, saying (or was it the water, the wind?) "I am here."
1985
ON FINISHING AN ACCOUNT OF HER LIFE
Farewell, thou richly-furnished room, My workshop, dwelling-place, and tomb: All that I was and am is here. I close the door and go: not free But as a shade, by some decree Still banished to the earthly sphere.
1985
*
TO THE UNSATISFIED
for Paul Celan
Report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied Hamlet, Act V
"You live here, in the impossible, surrounded by fires. The hate of the world is focused here; its hope also
"Yet you live, as far as possible, the life of the world: love and the raising of children, friendship and quarrels, making a living, maintaining status. Sometimes against the world you bristle together; sometimes the name of the city is felt as a hostile presence, asking too much. "To live in language is another impossible: is to belong to the names, unconditionally. To speak from their dream and then walk the path your words have pointed. The dream said the life of the world might have to end. I came here and saw no contradiction, so I went back to my post and walked the path of the dream to an end which was my own.
"And if I had stayed here? I would have been one more who took refuge in human company, when I had heard we must go beyond the human for human life to be renewed. My name would have been a boast to you, now it is a grief and a challenge -- and is it not better this way, Jerusalem?
"Yours was the last name I spoke. I come with the light from beyond. Let me speak to you now, in your doubt, let my word come home."
1985
*
THE EDITOR
(a morality play)
Persons: The good angel Misery Genius Vanity Cleverness The Editor The bad angel
In the middle of the stage is a large, empty desk.
Enter the Good Angel. White robe, wings, epicene appearance, businesslike manner.
Good Angel: Ladies and gentlemen, and poets true, We come to bring to you a judgment scene -- Not the last judgment, true, when it is said The heavens will be rolled up like a scroll -- We merely show the judgment which decides What word, of all that flow from hopeful pens, Will be dispersed and honored in its time And reach the ears of coming generations -- A minor matter, as most men agree. Therefore be of good cheer, and watch our play Which aims at tendencies, and not a persons, For each of you owns stock in all the others, And all of you I think are well acquainted With me, as well as with my colleague here.
(Bad Angel steps onto the stage from the opposite side, makes a mocking bow, and quickly steps back. He is dressed like an old-time gambler or confidence man, in a flashy suit; his face is smoother than the usual devil's mask, but a sneer is never entirely absent.)
Enter Misery, a shuffling, vaguely female form dressed in rags, holding (as will Genius, Vanity and Cleverness) a large white scroll.
Misery: I come to bring the editor a work Which I have written out of pain and sorrow In which my spirit found no consolation Except the thought: Someday this might be known. And I have done the best I can, although My pen does stutter, and my brain finds not The metaphors to wing my personal grief And lift it from my heart into another's -- But this I do not know. Because these words, Poor though they are, have soothed my spirit, how Can I not think that they will speak to others? Here, then, upon the altar of the future I lay the testimony of my woe.
(She approaches the desk, lays her scroll upon it, bowing nervously although no one is there, and goes out. In so doing she brushes past Genius, who has been standing near the wings -- both of them came out from the same side as the Good Angel -- and overheard most of her speech. Genius is an adolescent figure, who could be either male or female; in a pinch she/he could be played by the same actor who plays the Good Angel.
Genius (looking after Misery): Poor brother, sister! I have heard your groans, And often your despair has dragged me down To depths where I believed that I was lost; But always in the darkest depth a ray Gleamed from a jewel which on the miry floor I found, and gasping to the surface brought, Where it still shines, and still delights my eyes, As if I'd snatched a star from farthest heaven. Not from my own distress alone I write; How could my hope be for myself alone? Just heavens! how many foundered in the night To weep that bitter sea in which I plunged; And if I can return to you one star Will its light fall into afflicted hearts?
(Looks down at the scroll in his/her hands; then slowly turns his/her eyes toward the desk, walks slowly, solemnly, as if fearfully toward the desk, places the scroll carefully upon it, next to that of Misery, turns swiftly and goes out.)
Enter Vanity, wearing a frilly pink dress with puffed sleeps and a wig with flaxen corkscrew curls, around her wrist a bracelet with jingling bells. Curtsies elaborately, to the right, to the center, and to the left.
Feeling a lack of other occupations And wishing for more praise from those around me, I've taken to making verses; and indeed, I think that I may say I have succeeded. Such pretty images and rhymes! Not all apt or exact, of course; but that's no matter. And, to be sure, I've left out everything That might disturb the readers, make them think Too much -- for I don't want to think, myself, Only to make a little noise to fill The emptiness -- Oh! (Jingles the bells) I didn't mean to say that. Jingle, bells, jingle -- doesn't that sound nice? Now everything's fine. And won't my friends be jealous!
She prances up to the desk, places the scroll on it next to that of Genius, prances out. On the way out she almost bumps into Cleverness, who shrinks back with an air of disgust; noticing this, she flounces out with her nose in the air. Cleverness brushes off his suit where she brushed him, straightens up and walks to the center with a dignified yet studiedly casual air. He is tastefully dressed in Ivy League style, but could be played by the actor who plays the Bad Angel.
Cleverness: It wouldn't do to have it known, of course, That Vanity and I are close relations -- She's so unsubtle! Snatches odds and ends And doesn't care whether it fits together, Has no idea, really, of what goes. Whereas I've made a systematic study Of where each images comes from, and what tone Is countenanced by the fashion of the decade Under a given set of circumstances, Which thoughts and feelings are to be confessed And which are better left to lie in darkness, And like the story of a witness -- oh, Not necessarily true, but well rehearsed With coaching by a competent attorney, My work's consistent, without gap or flaw. Of course there's something missing: I am not a genius; or perhaps I'm just a bit too cautious. No one really gets inspired from reading what I write. But that's the price one pays for being safe and well-received, which, when all's said and done, is what I'm after.
(Strolls up to the desk, casts a pityingly contemptuous glance at the three scrolls already lying there, puts his own as far away from them as possible, jog-trots out, whistling.)
Enter the Editor, wearing a judge's robe and wig.
(Sitting down at his desk) I see the writers have again been busy. It's quite amazing, when you think about it, on what proportion of the population the dream of publishing has taken hold, As if appearance of their words in print could guarantee survival of the soul. When I consider this, my desk-top seems a life-raft crowded with too many souls, and I decide which ones are to be rescued and which must be pushed off! -- A grisly thought. (Reaches for the scroll of Misery, unrolls, reads) Now here's a case in point! A tale of woe In childish scrawl, with words misspelled, misused, Grammar and syntax badly out of joint -- Pathetic! Well, we'll write her a nice note: "Found your work deeply moving, but not quite Polished enough to warrant publication." (Writes, then rolls up Misery's scroll, places it to one side. Picks up Vanity's scroll.) What's this now? (Reads) Pah! Tasteless and overdone. (Writes) "Regret that this material is not suited For publication in our magazine." Discouraging! (Leans back a little; his eye falls on the scroll of Cleverness.) Let's have a look at this one. Hm . . . not bad . . . competent . . . quite clever. Now this is something we could publish; though I must admit it's just like what we published Last issue, and the issue before that. I wonder if our readers feel the same? But then I guess it's turned into a game, Assuming it was ever more than that . . .
(A pause. His eye falls on the scroll of Genius, which has remained alone in the middle of the desk. He reaches for it, slowly. As he does so the Good Angel and the Bad Angel enter from opposite sides. He reads, then, after a long silence) Well, this is something different, anyway. I don't know if it's good or bad -- the voice Speaks to me, draws me down and lifts me up, And something shines before my eyes: a form Radiant and whole, as from within, And my flesh feels a chill, my heart a fear. Is this, perhaps, the thing that I should publish?
Evil Angel (at his right shoulder) Yes, go ahead! It's certainly much better Than anything you've published recently, Or even than the things you used to write Yourself, before you learned what's in and out. Of course, you realize that if you do this whatever else you publish in this issue beside it will look colorless and timid or else a bit inhuman. The whole aesthetic By which you've operated now for years will be called into question.
Good Angel: As it should be. Good man, here is a chance that won't return To justify your calling, and transmit The word of truth and beauty to a world That needs it. Do not hesitate: accept!
Evil Angel: By all means -- if that is indeed the purpose Of this position you have gained by means More foul than fair, if truth be told, the way One gets things in this world. You wanted power: The power of life and death over the word! And where's your power, if you merely bow Before the evidence of excellence, Like to a footman, opening a door For royalty to pass! Ah, no, my friend, The art of editing is not to acknowledge, But to make reputations out of nothing And favor those you know you can control. Take up the scroll of Cleverness; he's your man. And don't make such a face. You know the world; If men were angels, they would not be here, And as for truth, integrity and beauty, They're luxuries not many can afford, If indeed they are not simply illusions Which modern culture rightly has dismissed.
Good Angel: How curious that my colleague here should talk About illusions, when his whole profession Is just the fabrication of illusions: I quote: to make reputations out of nothing. As for the power which he so desires You to desire, is that not sheer illusion? Where is your power, if you only do What is expected, tediously repeating, Time after time, the identical betrayal, Playing a role which everyone sees through, Forever reckoned with, never respected? I tell you cast out envy. Let its sting But tell you something's there to be acknowledged, For in acknowledgment is dignity And freedom from the bondage of this world. Those who attain that dignity and freedom, Their names are etched in letters of pure light Upon the gold ground of eternity.
Evil Angel: A pretty faith indeed -- for those who have it. But I suggest you think about this world And let the next one take care of itself, As you've been doing now for twenty years -- Would you regret it? Come. In any case, I'm not sure what this argument's about. You are the editor of a magazine, You have an issue to get out, which means Selecting works which go together, fit The image of the publication; work May be quite excellent, and yet not suited For your particular purpose. This perhaps Is such a case, although I must confess I don't see what you see in this at all. Isn't the rhetoric somewhat high-flown? Hasn't this trope been used somewhere before? Come, take another look.
Editor: Perhaps you're right. I don't see what I saw in it before. I feel depressed. Of course, it wouldn't suit us. (Writes) "Thank you for showing us your manuscript. Regret to say that it does not fit in With the aims of our journal at this time." (Puts the scroll of Genius aside, along with those of Vanity and Misery. Good Angel hides his face, exits.) Now for this. "With pleasure we acknowledge Your contribution, and are glad to inform you It will appear in our forthcoming issue." (Evil Angel smiles, pats him on the back, tiptoes off.) That's done. -- My God! I was supposed to meet The controversial Crimp at the cafe A quarter-hour ago! I hope he's waited. (Exit. Evil Angel comes back in, clears the desk top. Re-enter Misery, Genius, Vanity, Cleverness, separately, opening their letters. Misery reads, resignedly pockets the letter and goes off, shoulders hunched a little lower. Vanity is furious, shakes her fist. Genius lets the letter fall, gazes up to heaven in anguish. Cleverness kisses the letter, goes off whistling at the opposite exit from Misery. Genius and Vanity remain frozen in their respective poses of sorrow and indignation as the curtain falls.)
1985
*
THE SOCIAL SPELL
The Social Spell was on them all Who sat enchanted in the hall To hear the high-prized poet speak, Though pith and sense were far to seek In any word that he let fall.
In vain do Truth and Genius call As from behind a prison wall: Their choicest pleadings cannot break The Social Spell.
But sometimes when the funeral pall Has wrapped them, and men half recall, Or quite forget, what was at stake, Their scattered words may go to make The Social Spell.
1985
TRANCE
Light-years away you listen to the voice traveling outward forgetting me and the pain that will be ancient news by the time you hear it.
You are so far away I climb and climb and can never reach you. And yet you are all close within me here.
AFTER THE DAHLIA SHOW
At the end of the exhibition the hall was full of afternoon light and the dahlias stood up, each in its separate carafe, and their shapes and colors seemed a language invented to speak of water and light. And they gave the dahlias away.
There was the Snow Queen, whiteness curling away from a golden center to the circumference of a man's two hands placed thumb to thumb. There were great manes of saffron and orange and the miniatures, so exactly calibrated they seemed honeycombed by an infinite patience out of small spheres of amethyst. There was one with white-capped petals the color of dilute blood, that fitted into a palm-sized invisible dome, and the same thing in purple and white, and a huge hyacinthine mass that vibrated vaguely between pale russet and lavender, and one whose petals had curled into tubes of translucent rose, dawn-fingers, forked at the tips, with the yellow-white of daylight at their roots; and the same shape in dark red, a crimson mace. And a white waterlily atop a dahlia stalk, and the one with the veined cupped petals of faded carnelian that came open and open. And the threedimensional yellow sunbursts and the sunbursts of rosequartz with the violet hearts and the smaller ones whose every petal was watermarked with violet and white. And every flower seemed a world whose inner space were harbors where anything might be sheltering, like a hermit crab in a seashell: Rebellious thoughts. Secrets. Old messages of love. All the angels that could not fit on the point of the needle. My dears, I'm almost afraid that in some forgotten dream we've signed away our share in the coming world to behold the praises of the dahlias!
*
A WISH
For the seventh child of Helen and Shabtai
From Sabbath to Sabbath you have waited nameless in the shadow of the knife. Only the number of the day of covenant inscribed amid your stars.
Can you see to the end of creation?
The name will come, and the pain.
May the pain be swift and slight, the name true, the fire unveiled in you burn clear
as a pillar of light in this darkness
or as a pillar of heaven in the light of the seventh day.
*
THE FLOOD
My thought flies out like Noah's dove and hangs the swirling flood above. Upon the waves that rage and race her foot can find no resting-place.
First o'er the West she leans to brood, Where Liberty once kept the good, but now no mercy she finds there, 'tis changed into a wild beast's lair.
Then to the North her pinions wheel, till she descries the men of steel: to rule the world with tyrant sway is all their dream by night and day.
Then southward fast she takes her flight and there finds those whose god is fight: The grim fanatic sword they raise against all just and gentle ways.
And last she veers toward that fair town where prophets old held high renown, but now they hear the word no more -- pride and despair have sealed the door.
My thought returns like Noah's dove to seek the storm-tossed ark of love -- Stretch forth thy hand and take me in! There's no dry land where I have been.
1986
*
SUNSET FROM THE HIGH FIELD
for Ruth Blumert
Beyond the next ridge, the next valley, the dissected plain recedes in blue unmoving waves, ridge beyond ridge beyond ridge. Six. Seven. The earth seems to hold still, the sun seems to be falling
very slowly toward a slot in the horizon until another day is in the bank. Another day. The Messiah did not come, the word was not spoken, nor the riddle solved,
nor any denouement arrived at. Soon daylight tugged away will reveal above us the unchanged scoreboard of night. What time is it now in our home?
AS THEN SO EVER
The stars come shyly late, as long ago In childhood days. The plane-tree tops in sunset's afterglow So purely blaze As if to take no stain, as then not ever. The sea, a green bronze on the shore ashiver As then gives praise: How full of grace the flowering moments flow.
My soul, you have not sinned! As full and strong In childhood days Your moments' naked wonder pulsed along, That pulse now says That it can take no stain, as then so ever. See that black bird at the horizon hover: At dawn she'll raise Your muted wonders in revealing song.
Simon Halkin translated from the Hebrew by Esther Cameron
A PROBLEM IN REWRITING
That sentence which, you said, was not clear
writhed in the space between our minds, gasping for air, swallowing its predicates, turning itself inside out
till I wondered if indeed there was a way to say it.
1987
*
SONNETS TO ORPHEUS PART TWO, IV
from the German of Rainer Maria Rilke
This is the beast of which there is none such. But this they didn't know; and anyway they loved it, with its gait of prancing play and the light in its eyes, soft as a touch.
Of course it wasn't. Yet because they loved it took pure shape. They always left a space, and in the clear distinctness of that place it lifted up its head and lightly moved
careless of nonexistence. Wheat nor corn it took not; just their thought that it might be; and such great vigor did that thought confer
that from its brow there grew the unique horn. Until one day a virgin knew that he was in the silver mirror and in her.
translated 1988
*
POET IN TIME OF DROUGHT
The trees have on their final green, Likewise such weeds whose roots are deep. I walk where waters moved, and crows Share their new-found land with me, Above the cracks cawing aloud.
A current in the sea, they say, Has dragged the global winds off course: That makes the grass to crackle so And yon chokecherry's leaves to curl And farmers to bewail their loss.
The birds are singing still, although For all we know the current may Decide it likes its present bed And no rain fall here ever again Until the mountains shift their weight. What do you say to that, Redwing?
Even so the current of men's will Has set against my deep desire, And since the bottom of the heart Is clearer known than ocean floor, I do not hope to see it turn.
That I was born to make lament For this, seems merely accident. Yet I give thanks for that in me That will not know of what I know And, ignorant as a bird, sings on.
Madison, 1988
*
A POETIC AFTERWORD
(on completing a commentary to Celan's "Meridian" speech)
We lived on a dead end street, at the city limit, and I walked alone in the field where the overturned tree upreared its root.
This you saw and did not see and I was and was not the one you saw seeing it,
but the road I walked from the dead end led me to where I saw it again as if through your eyes
(or as if you saw through mine).
Come back then from wherever you are from nowhere if that's where you are,
and walk with me and whoever will follow this way I have gone through the landscape of your words
(can you see it again, is it strange to you, are these bearings on points you sighted?) so as to remain at the place of the meeting,
so as to retrace my steps,
to walk with others who have walked here,
to arrive where we might be all in free.
Madison, 1988
AURORA
Sister Morningtwilight, is it time?
Shall the nerve of an oath connect our nights, shall they be illumined?
The house our hands built: is it habitable, here, will it shine, from afar --
the house of all roads?
And will you stay, go on, when the ambiguous crab straddles the path,
when the serpent calls "Come here, I have found the Tree of Life,"
when the scorpion waits for the poem?
Will the names, will the signs hold, will the bird not cease to sing for us two, can we begin the world?
Name-sister, sister of the rainbow and the dove, is it time?
1989
A BIRTHDAY CARD FOR MY MOTHER
An irised gleam by unknown arts is cast Across this image of leaf, flower and sky; Like to it, but far fairer, is the gleam Your love casts on my life.
1989
*
YERIDAH
Another friend's friend gone back.
Another clod washed away from our main.
A center, trying to hold, cries out.
[untitled]
I am writing to you from the betrayed city writing to you but the pen goes on writing and writing on the same spot as if the words that I think approached a certain threshold, then were pulled back in as at the border of a black hole nothing can escape, no light, no signal, no message. Unless it is that all outside are fleeing from us, faster than light can overtake, and within also everything is fleeing outward, shunning the center. Only the words, as I write, are pulling me inward, as if the center were the mouth of a tunnel that comes out somewhere, as if I could tell you I am writing to you from the betrayed city --
1989
*
FROM THE TOMB OF ELIZABETH
(after reading Donne's "The Anniversaries")
Donne! let the half-souls of this age dislaud Whom you praised sight unseen, and, little awed By what you in her (not the world) discerned, Put down the book, the lesson still unlearned. The world is busy now digging its grave For want of that which I, poor steward, have By Heaven's last grace, yet can nowise bestow, For deafness which upon the world does grow: Poetry's banished, which alone could draw Dispersion back to harmony of Law; So human speech, so human thought declines, That Apes out-reason those who taught them Signs. The name of Virtue men have made a sneer. By faithlessness all bonds will discohere -- 'Tis tautological; yet serves them not To know why Character and State do rot, Far less to learn the lonesome She to prize Who offers them again what they despise. But as the contents of a vial cast forth On a foul stream, if sealed will keep their worth, So that balm Wisdom did in me distill From all ill and (it seemed) against all ill, Is still preserved in me, though cast away And powerless Earth's fever to allay (If it could truly cure, for the world's sake This vessel gladly would consent to break!), So in my thoughts is no corruption shown, Though I be mortal, and my end unknown. If (Donne) you dwell now where all is designed, In th'all-begetting, -comprehending Mind, You know now for what purpose there may be These few pure drops in a vast tainted sea. Was it for this that Israel saw divide The Sea of Reeds; that your Redeemer died And rose again; that by a midnight flame So many a poet strove for earthly fame And for the vision of a higher good Half shown, half hid by his wit's hardihood? And when the end to my account is writ Shall there be any left to ponder it And for my soul a funeral dirge intone? But this kind office you, my friend, have done, Who ere I was conceived did ring my knell, And advent heralded with passing-bell. Henceforth where I in solitude lie hid I'll think your words are written on my lid And more intently strive, beneath that seal, To be that which, outspeaking, they conceal; I'll hope your further word may prove as true, That the true soul shall in its death renew, And though degeneracy submerge the land, I'll not confess that such end was the end, Nor give, with Time, our better hopes the lie. Graved on th'eternal Rock the victory We gained by what we were, and what we wrought, O'er Nothingness; and all the rest is naught.
1989
*
CONVERSATION IN AUTUMN
Love passed through us and left us empty. We turn the pages of years gone by: summers of thought after springs of plenty -- love passed through us and left us empty. A look, a kiss were sweet at twenty -- the leaves they rustle and they sigh. Love passed through us and left us empty; we turn the pages of years gone by.
1989
*
THE COLUMN
I am weary -- not with this day's work alone: A column I have hewn of purest air And on that column chiseled up and down The generations of all those that fare So queasily upon our circling stone; What can I utter more, now this is done?
The lemming-track lies beaten to the sea; you follow in your fathers' steps along; with a side-glance as toward some distant tree, at most, you mark the signpost of my song, then turn eyes front and plod on steadily -- To gain your ear must I be in the throng, marching upon the road I know is wrong?
Far liefer would I mutely take my ease beneath the lofty column I have reared, yea, close my senses one by one, and cease the painful breath I drew but for the word, so lie from consciousness at last released while the years bring to pass what I had feared far from that monument to thoughts unheard.
*
A FURTHER SEASON
Weary and self-dissatisfied, I walked, between one visit and another visit, some hundred paces on the unbuilt domain beside the Monastery of the Cross. The autumn crocuses were gone; instead, I found one winter crocus, then another, each snow-white cup, no bigger than my thumbnail, filled up with yellow pollen. As I counted six petals to one flower, and noted how each tapered to a point, I heard the stillness and in that, the faint cheeping of a bird, and just for a fraction of a second was outside myself. And later on at twilight over the roofs in deepening sky the crescent moon with her pendant of a single star -- almost one could forget what one had learned about our satellite and sister-planet -- ]the burning whirlwind and the airless waste -- and see only irrefutable beauty. I saw it, and I strained to see the sight through veils of weariness, of memory and fear, against that in my breast which knows my errand, and the path I must pursue, and which had urged my inner sight away before I passed again beneath the trees. -- So, that world is still there: no nearer now, nor farther, than when struggling youth obscured that shining-forth, as ebbing years do now. Youth, with its high hopes and its mighty words, has passed; its wine is spilt, and tears will not refill that cup; there is at best one spring in which we figure as participants. Yet stepping to the borders of their lives, I've heard, the wisest find a further season, not numbered in the cycles of the Four, where, wandering in a world that is not theirs, they are the guests of everything that is. They being motionless within themselves receive and transmit motions from the stars and with sage courtesy, whenever met, through one another greet that world again.
1989
*
-$49,000,000.00
Van Gogh is back, wandering among the homeless through the streets of New York,
nothing in his hands, nothing in his pockets save for an earlobe no one will accept, least of all at the art auction – he can’t prove it’s authentic.
He has forgotten the night sky at Arles, the cypress, the apple trees in blossom, even that last storm of crows over the cornfield. All he can see now are faces, they are dumped into him like rubbish onto the landfill and lie there in heaps, wasted.
He does not dream about painting them. At most with an edge of stone from a crumbling façade on a wall covered with the names of Nobody he signs his name Vincent
ON LOOKING INTO A BOOK OF CONTEMPORARY VERSE
This book of verse is like a ruined grove Whose trees were mowed by profiteers with chains, On which now vainly fall the tropic rains, Hardening the red soil where the tractors drove.
What name is written on the leaf? Oh, none. Manifold are the forms and names of love, But where love's bonds break, all comes down to one.
*
I stood among the sleepers, yet apart, upon a little pier. A boat came gliding by. Near me it paused, inviting to depart. None stirred to say goodbye.
*
A BAD CASE
Spirit -- whatever name You may prefer -- of song and blessed sight, inhabitant of the sole eternity I can desire, from whom the ones I call upon as fathers and mothers, drew the breath that winged their words, if ever I have heard and truly spoken from You one word that does not shame their dust, if I have listened also to each voice that claimed to be of Yours; if I have striven to hail each light, and spurn dark envy's sting; then hearken to my fear and my petition. It was at a poets' meeting that a man, no longer young, detained me in the hall, on hand upon my arm, the other hand held a journal open to the page on which his poem was printed; this he thrust into my face, and bade me read. The words were words of love, yet the words spoke of love less than of impotent conceit that sought to clutch someone's attention, as if that could save it from the obscure pit that waits for mortal things, and in which groundless pride perhaps sinks deepest. In dismay I gazed upon that page, and from it to the face whose avid desperate look is etched upon the photographic plate of memory and doubtless will remain there until Lethe's solutions mildly soothe its lines away. Spirit, of all the prayers which I have framed, let this be granted, and if only this, so be it: may that image not be mine! Sooner than that one look of mine resemble that thing I saw, let every line I writ be clean deleted, and I nameless go to whatsoever lot awaits the soul released from self.
*
MANIFESTO IN BLACK ON BLACK
for Harold Bloom
Where no law apprehends, far from the scene of the suicide, One Thought beheld song's archons betray a world, the links of mind and mind by which insect and dolphin were secured.
There fell an Amazon in the abeyance circumgaped by the politician's laugh; lungs now unfold in vacuum, a tongue is nailed to the empty air's flagstaff
saying we're to turn. We're to unteach the torsions by which hands ramify out of eyes' sight. Words are to unionize, march on jargon and plant on landfills the deed of truth.
Then shall intertextual certitudes be founded on the rock of the air, held in the net of the unravelled hands. Then shall the transparent laws coded in the ozone layer come down.
WAVESON
Hugging nothing in this bed where all tides hurl and sway, a city on the tide from far away invokes me, and I am, wreckage-pinned, a voice beneath the world.
Where the three Marys of the sea went down in wavewash, phosphorescence marks the spot, a spreading marker, an oil-spill of remembrance, where albatrosses plunge and founder.
Amid blown carrion on the beach may I befriend them with my bones, in whom the human constellation rejoices to unravel:
To that unknown Whowhich ever mixes sea-salt, alleles and atmospheres I pray no longer save us, but salvage what It can.
*
SABBATH LIGHT
I did not know on which page* was the passage about the light of creation by which you could see from one end of the world to the other and which reappears each week to gleam in the light of the Sabbath tapers.
But my heart, or the unconscious mind that is not mine alone and can still see by that light, told my fingers and the book opened at once to the page I sought.
And this interpretation was whispered to my mind long ago: the light of the Sabbath is the light that appears when we draw aside the curtain of our strife and see through each other's eyes and each other's hearts till there would be one eye one heart one mind did not Havdalah come again.
Queen Sabbath, let me each week give all into your hands and give me back the soul of the Primal Human -- the soul not mine alone, the soul of peace. 1990
*Of Abraham Joshua Heschel's book The Sabbath.
*
Rivki drives a red-and-gold sun over a green-and-red field, and the sun has Rivki's face.
Her mother's friend says, "She will be an artist someday." "I am an artist now," says Rivki.
Her mother Devorah writes to me, "Our beautiful city of peace is a city of peace no more."
Ribbono shel olam, I know you're busy, there are lots of issues, it's hard to sort it all out, I'll give you a hint. Just keep an eye on Rivki, concentrate on keeping Rivki safe. OK?
1990
*
ON THE EVE OF WAR
White snow, you fly To meet me as I drive from friend to home, From warm to warm, Upon a night when many wait to die.
A self, enclosed In temporary comfort, contemplates The diverse fates Of other selves to the uttermost exposed.
There is no prayer To bind this snugness to that misery Nor keep from me The evils which I soon or late must share.
White snow, you fly And vanish in the beam of my headlight As on this night The thoughts, the hopes of all who wait to die.
* PAGING ISAIAH
If I could slow-talk you into hearing the fibrillation of an incorporeal heart, then the language you hold would peel off and you would walk, naked-tongued, through the city.
And if you could be brought to see, through your blindspot, the reticulation of an incorporeal brain, you'd fight your way through invisible brambles till you came to the clearing where the Authentic Voice commands.
And this communication is sealed with the seal of the Prime Minister of Utopia; also with a kiss from the eternal Old Maid of the Universe,
who approaches, drawn by quaggas and passenger-pigeons, who waits amid the ruins of her bridal feast, whose voluminous locket holds your lost face too.
*
PROPERTY
High in the economy the naked dice in the dead hand roll our fortunes, constellate our wills. Or so you say, and legislate thereby against my call to the One Choice,
or so it seems. And yet there is no price on that which no one covets: the estate of talismans and tokens, cast by fates obscure beyond the workings of the bourse.
Like, there's this old house in Jerusalem a friend once dreamed she'd given me. I went to the neighborhood. Friends there had dreamed I'd come. Before you'd write an equation for these lines I could return, with all the world's consent, and claim that house by eminent domain.
*
FORGIVE
Forgive me every wrong I've done to you, Each unintended slight, each oversight; And if in anything I have been right, Forgive that too.
*
OMEN IN LATE MARCH
Today is the autumn of the oak trees. The unfinished business of winter, The old leaves, like unrelinquished resentments, Bunched rustily on the branches, six months long, To mar the snow's ascetic harmonies -- Now they are being unceremoniously booted By the new buds; and today is a dry day. They ought, we feel, to be decently damped down To earth, to make mud, which is all they're good for, But no. They roll down the slopes, riot in the valley, Whooshing like a football crowd's energetic ghost, Making it hard to concentrate on the naive Bridal hepatica tendering her bouquets In token (we'd like to think) of a fresh start.
*
LILITH TRIES TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT
1. First of all, my words were misreported.* If I rebelled against Adam, it was not because he and I were made from the same dust -- compulsion is the dust's inheritance -- but because we two were formed, male and female, in the image of God, Whose ultimate freedom only God's truth can in a sense compel, yet not compel, seeing the two are one. But in fact, I did not actively rebel, I just couldn't help conveying what I thought and felt. Too near the original creation, I was his truth, his conscience. He preferred the falsehood fashioned from his sleeping flesh -- and I have been in exile ever since.
2. Of course, I do not exist in the same mode as the characters in the text. I sprang into being from a silence, a lapse in consistency, a need for explanation: why was man created twice? I have no lines, no part to play, but for that very reason, perhaps, I move along behind the text, between the lines, keeping pace with the narration, picking up the dropped hints, the unsolved riddles, mustering to my cause all the unnamed and all the almost audibly untold, refuting the claim of completeness, working in darkness to make whole. Grimm-like, you changed me into the bird of night. In Greece the owl was attribute of wisdom.
*According to legend, Lilith rebelled at being subordinate to Adam on the grounds that they were taken from the same dust. Her name (“nocturnal one”) is also the name of a kind of owl.
*
SOME DEFINITIONS
1. "Poem"
Words that stick together.
2. "To write"
To send the current of your life through the word- field,
to note what sticks together
and set it down while the current holds. 3. "To read"
To perceive what sticks together,
to allow the prehensile associations,
to seehear with all your nerves the Gestalt,
to go in and come out with the necessary changes made.
4. "To Select"
To acknowledge what sticks in the mind.
(To catch the mind before it pulls off what wants to stick.)
5. "To Interpret"
To track the words to the hand and grasp the hand.
To keep their/ your/ the word. To "give the word." To be with the words that stick together and with whoever else is there,
to make it stick.
*
[untitled]
The will to be united some words.
The will not to see scattered them again.
*
ON WAKING IN A COUNTRY HOUSE AND HEARING FEW BIRDS
The robin does not know his chorus dwindles -- The last bird's song is like the first; But I, as song around me sinks to hush, Recall too well the good from which I nursed.
I make comparisons of then and now And sound too often the diminished chord. But knowing's not the fault: when through me flowed That current of abundance none can hoard,
Then thoughts were hopes, and knowing was delight. The songbird has the song-spring in himself; Poets, however, are electrified -- When community shuts down, their power's off.
The images that let in worlds, the tunes That fell so unexpected, yet so right, Were ours, not mine alone; and this poor verse Is but a tablet set to mark their flight. 1991
*
JOHN ZOOK
I never saw the man whose name -- John Zook -- Graced the last mailbox in the farthest lane; The house was small and set far back, and looked Like a lonely face, though none showed at the pane.
Nor did I think to find a trace of him Four decades afterward, when I went back, But there was the long lawn, a jungle-gym In the middle, and "Zook Park" upon a plaque.
I often drive that way now, for the city Has grown and made the lane a thoroughfare, And give the park a glance; though it's a pity Not to see more children playing there.
The lawn's kept mowed; the maple trees renew And shed their leaves; the days turn cold and warm; And I remember, though I never knew, The man John Zook. I think he did no harm.
1991
* ON THE PUBLICATION OF CELAN'S "EINGEDUNKELT," 1991
Out of thy tomb as from the drying fountain of human mercy, roll a few more tears, toward the test-tubes of those alchemists whose boilings will not find thy wisdom's salt.
"Learn to live" didst thou command thyself or me, thine answering pronoun, who have learned little thou didst not know from years that had little to teach to those who would not study
treachery: the wiring of that world whose beginning is No-word, whose inorganic tree is rooted in love's mind's decay.
This didst thou teach: to strike no root in that death of deaths, but live-die in the phased- out word that still remains to speak of thee.
1991 *
METAMORPHOSIS
Fifty years! And I still feel young. Young and fresh as a wound given in the war-year when I was born. Fresh as the moment of failure remained for Lord Jim. And yet I am old. Only my mother remembers the color my hair had before it turned gray. Like last spring's berries on the chinaberry tree I cling to the heedlessly greening branch of her love. Fifty years is longer than any human being should have to live alone. They say that the fiftieth gate of understanding is beyond human power to pass through. Perhaps that is why at fifty I again understand nothing. Have nothing. Am starting again with nothing.
Mazal toff, a woman-child is born! Have you ever seen an infant with such a long body, with gray hair and scars on the belly? Like the navel of Eve, like the fossils waiting in earth on creation morning, to snare clever unbelievers into thinking eons had passed. No time has passed. The world was created today and I an old woman am born today with memories of being young. And with me were created my photographs with the beauty of the world before creation and the secret tapes: angelic debates on whether or not to make this old woman. The angels of truth were in favor. Of love, against. They said: let her remain a dream with that light in her eyes as of creatures who do not have to exist. The angels of truth said: The young prince's story needs scarecrows to stand by the road shrieking: "To this all flesh must come!" So I am born at fifty, not on that mythical birthday but now, on a bitter cold night at 11:00 pm under Capricorn: an unbeautiful sign beaming no illusions that life can be fair, but an earth sign, again. And my face is driftwood, it is sandstone, and my hair is January clouds and my hands are hands and my eyes are eyes. I am born because it is written: "Choose life." Why is that written? Who'd choose this wedding with a fate that looks like a toothless scholar studying menstrual taboos? But we are born against our will despite our longing for the one who looks through the lattice, who will surely come, although none has ever photographed the handsome prince carrying in his arms the crone.
January, 1992
*
FUTURES
The trading goes on: A computer chip For the heart of a sparrow.
*
[untitled]
In the library entrance, a lying-down sculpture: homeless man sleeping.
*
A PROLOGUE TO SOME CIVIC SONNETS
Before this mirror, mysteriously curved, That seems to hold the faint reflexive smile Of passion and conviction self-observed, Many have paused and eyed themselves awhile; Realities have lingered self-beguiled Before the plunge to undescribed abysses. The form is rumored to be out of style But still keeps its attraction for Narcissus. Then here's another face, another scene. Your sonneteer's an educated lady Against the background of a modern city, A seat of learning and of government. She feels herself stare from a pediment Upon a world that wills itself unseen.
The restaurant was airy and well-lit, With a display of woodcuts on the walls. The menu was exotic, the portions small. She had often found it a pleasant place to sit. But today she was not there with her usual friend Who must be back from abroad, but had not called. A duo played some jazz that made her skin crawl, And as with vague impatient gaze she scanned Her fellow-patrons' faces, she could not find Anything to her liking. All appeared Too well-dressed, too hard-edged, too self-assured Ever to pause a moment in their talk And, gazing round the restaurant, give back Her glance, and wonder what was on her mind.
There was something wrong with her, there must have been, Or she could never have lived for fifty years Getting nothing by fair means or foul, by laughter or tears. Long she sought her neurosis, her flaw or her sin. But she found only inconsequential things That bore no proportion either to the vastness Of what she had wanted to give, or to the disaster Of her performance. She began to think That it was maybe the gifts they didn't want -- Too large for the vestibule, the coffee-table, Unless she really was the classical fable Of the tragedienne whose tragedy is to trip. Her nose was a bit too long, her temper a trifle short, And that may have been the long and the short of it.
The people have been well and truly had. Their children are abused, their values smashed, Their culture and environment are trashed, While robbers legislate in statesmen's stead. But let us reason (lest we should go mad) And analyze exactly how they crashed. One thing is certain: when the media flashed They paid for their admission, head for head.
Aye, for the jiggling of some colored lights, For tunes and tattlings hammered out to tempt A mind and heart held spellbound by contempt, They opened up their homes to all that blights While casting out their neighbor's song and wit, Which now they lack and, lacking, cannot look for it.
WARNING:
You are now living in a city Whose officials no longer feel any duty To give you valid reasons for their acts. They issue statements like a duck that quacks.
They count upon your apathy, your fear, Your cynicism, mistrust of those most near, Your craven hope that they won't pick on you But on somebody else: woman, black or Jew,
Anyone fool enough to lift their head. They count on your self-hate to make you hate Those who still hold what you perforce betrayed And do the thing you guess you ought to do. They count on inertia that always says Too late. They count on everything, friend, except me and you.
BUSINESS PORTRAIT
Her picture stands on the table top, And everyone says it is very fine. The made-up face doesn't show a line, The tinted hair is well fluffed up, The tilt of the head seems meant to say, "Look at me, I'm as shrewd and sharp as any, Be sure my looks cost a pretty penny, I'm poised and launched for success -- make way!" Only the eyes give her away. They whisper, "This isn't where I belong. This hairdo, this suit, are wrong, all wrong. I never was good at overreaching, And I'm much too tired and sad for the teaching. Let me walk in the woods, by the shore of the sea, Like the dreaming girl they once let me be."
THE ANONYMOUS POET
I saw the Anonymous Poet the other day. Her small, stooped, stocky form was somewhat stiffened With ten more years, but otherwise no different, The thrift-store clothes still clean if slightly frayed. The ash-blond hair, I saw, was mixed with gray, The focus of the whole face somewhat sharpened. She took my turning up as though nothing had happened, Said "Oh, hello" as if I'd never been away.
Nor did she seem to want to be less alone, Said it was years since she had written a line. It made me wonder if I had done right To break in on her word-hoard, let the light Of conversation in upon a spark That might have thriven longer in the dark.
THE SECRET POLICE
No one has ever seen the secret police, You will not read about them in the papers. Their existence must be inferred from the behavior Of a citizenry terrified at the least Display of magnanimity or release Of truth. A very sudden See you later Shuts like a steel door behind the faces And you're under arrest. They'll let you walk the streets
But no one is going to speak to you again, You're out for life. Before applying for friends You should have gotten a clearance from the bureau That has no address, but everybody knows Where it is. The stamp's invisible, but it shows.
This may be worse than prison camps in Siberia.
CORPORATE TAXATION
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. -- Noam Chomsky
The corporation's colorless green idea sleeps furiously through the sections of the code, as on the futures market mitochondria logistify a hubbub into outcomes.
While hands of flesh let go their grip, the wires grope toward each other, programs copulate in the usurious space, and calculations mesh to convolute a brain nowhere.
We're the card section. Keep your cards in order, don't shuffle them, don't show another color or you might garble our message to the stars.
In plain terms, brother, I do not like what's taking shape from us; would flash a laser mirror in anyone's eyes, so as not to be that sight.
TO MAIA
If you could put off beauty like a gown And walk among us in such peasant guise As we wear all the time, having no choice, Would then some common truth make itself known To you, at last undazzled by the glare Of our, your subjects', adulatory stare?
Don't bet on it. We come to you in hunger From customary deserts of pretense; Weary of lies that lack the seal of wonder, Of haps that string together without sense, We're looking for a queen to start the show And typify the hidden truth we know.
Then, waiting in the wings, our jealousy . . . Only your heart cries "Coward!" when you flee.
Poets in Law School
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. --Shelley
We take to law because our love has failed. We study how to sue instead of sing. We still plead; but our pleadings have a sting: They're meant not to reach out, but to be hurled. Farewell, the uncorrupted word that held In visionary light each common thing, That fitted symbolism like a ring Upon the hand of the abandoned world.
Here we avoid each other's eyes in shame, Learning our lawyer tricks, earning the blame For half the evils of this addled time. Wish our congeners could have valued us When we spoke to them in truth and trust. They cast out reason, when they turned from rhyme.
's muss asoj sajn
Friend of my friends, let none think to disjoin By telling tales, my thoughts from them or you; Whatever wrong you did, or they may do, I grieve for it, as for a fault of mine. All faults are but the fractures of one being Beneath the hammer of an angry foe, Or else the echoes of one voice decreeing, "In the world where you live, it must be so." I will believe that all are as they seemed In the holy mirror of the One Desire, Even such as the martyrs might have dreamed The living, from their sleep beyond the fire: However Time those images betray, I will believe these dead shall rise someday.
EPITAPH ON A LANDFILL
Here lies the matter of the universe, Murdered by mind amuck, which has so made These lightless forms that they can never fade And bloom again in the cycle of the years: The atoms have outwornness like a curse Indelibly affixed, and now must bide, Impervious as an evildoer's pride, Itching and suppurating in the earth.
Here unrots our presumption's mutant fruit, Death beyond death! Corpses and dung are sweet As apple blossom in comparison. You who drive by here, pray we amend Our works that they return to Earth as friend And we to the Great Round, the All-in-One.
HERE, AS AT NINEVEH
Some read a poem as if it were a peach For them to eat and spit away the stone, A joint of which they leave the moral-bone. Scarcely admitting that the poem speaks, They get indignant if it tries to preach. I do not write for the taste-buds alone; I write to grasp and firmly to set down Some truth that had been dancing out of reach.
And what is wrong with preaching, may I ask? It says that there is something you can do; It says you're big enough to see it too. Upon those who will not be taken to task Hype and manipulation pipe and play, Here as at Nineveh, now as yesterday. MARITAL AGREEMENTS
When two decide to bind their lives together, Having no thought except for love alone, They cannot fear that clouds could ever gather Between them, or their love to strife be prone. Love, absolute, commands that voice be dumb Which cautions that enchantment can take flight And then estrangement, and then anger come Which blinds the angered to the other's right. O Love! be humble in your proudest hour, Consider that you work in mortal clay; Secure yourself against the darker power By contracts that will bind you to fair play If worst should come to worst. Then many a storm May lightly blow, knowing it cannot harm.
THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY
All in the dewy morning On the fourteenth of July I went to walk beneath the trees That grow so green and high.
And there I met Tom Jefferson, He was pacing up and down, His head was sunk upon his chest, His face it wore a frown.
"What is the matter, sir," I said, "Or what is it you seek?" "I'm looking for the people With whom I wish to speak."
"What do you mean," I cried in fear, "I see them all around." "I see their bodies just like you, But their spirits are not found.
"They do not hear, they do not see, They walk with empty eyes." "I guess you mean the media That have got them hypnotized.
"Their ears are filled with crashing sound, Their eyes with flashing lights, Their minds too full of greed and gore To sort out truth from lies.
"They have no time to meet and talk And hear the liberty bell -- It is as if some evil king Had bound them in a spell."
"Climb up, climb up into that tower, "And ring that bell once more." "That bell has got a crack," I replied, The sound would not go o'er."
"Then you must forge it new," he said, "In the flame of your desire, Until they come together To hear what freedom requires.
"Tell them to keep the Sabbath, A day when all are free: That day they must not buy nor sell Nor sit and watch TV.
"It is a day to meet and talk And find the ones they trust To keep their hands from bribery And on wisdom to insist.
"And these in turn together Will meet in council high To write a Constitution For the coming century.
"For everything wears out at last And needs to be renewed Out of the ancient spirit Of truth and rectitude.
"That spirit has a mighty power, Although the odds be high; Will you go and tell the people?" I said that I would try.
JOB INTERVIEW
The judge, debating whether he should hire This poet as his clerk, stirred in his seat And questioned if one ever could be sure Of truth, since differences of view are great. The words went through the poet like a gong Changing the scene. A cold mosaic floor Underfoot. Shoulders that freshly stung. Before her, leaning in a curule chair, Was someone in authority, toga-clad And sandalled, but the uneasy glance the same. "What is truth?" he was asking, and she had No answer. Trying foolishly to frame One now, she knew where they had met and when, Though doubtless there were many times between.
The Chief Injustice and a Full House at the Union Theater
I went to see the Grand Inquisitor -- It isn't every day one gets the chance, Tickets were free, and Evidence was cancelled, Besides, I thought that I might get a satire Out of it. But he just got up there And talked about the overloaded courts. The colorless, odorless and tasteless words, With our polite applause, replaced the air.
Behind the wall behind him, thin, unclear, Like ghosts confined to another time and space, A few score demonstrators shrilled and jeered. He reached for pathos with a Tennyson quote Before concluding on an upbeat note; Then we filed out, complicit and disgraced.
FUSION
That visible as violence might burn In the air the fusion of concerted minds By insight ineluctably confined In a magnetic circle of concern; That thus a power might generate to turn A counter-movement to entropic time And lend attraction to the whole and prime To which all fleeing fractions must return -- This I have seen, not in prophetic trance But in the reasoning of a mind compelled By the sheer daylight force of evidence That this must and can be. I have not erred: I swear by earth and stars, by me and you That though the world be false, yet this is true.
RESPITE
Now then begone, dull discontent, And likewise, fretting gloom! This morning I have learned the scent Of blackberry vines in bloom.
This morning I have seen a plant I never saw before. It was a single thin-leaved stalk, One yellow flower it bore.
Bright swallowtail came floating by, A song-sparrow did whistle, And I saw -- what made my courage high -- Worms feeding on the thistle.
1992
THE BLACKBERRY PICKER
Where blackberries with brighter dark Articulate the leaf-layered shade, Hand reaching in among the sharp Thorns, relearns its ancient trade: Surely for this the swivelling wrist, The supple finger-joints were made.
And as they pluck, the smooth palm's cup Makes and unmakes itself to hold The loosened berries as they drop, The prudent seconding the bold. From such cabal of skill and skill The rest might well have been foretold.
Who would have heard what no one said? Here no one thinks aloud but I. The birds are gone; amid the dead Leaves of the floor, a cricket's cry; An airplane, somewhere overhead, Furrows the wind's unending sigh.
This hand, once having gashed the ground To feed when Earth could nurse no more, Found itself quick to many an end And learnt to learn, and write its lore; Yet never found a work that wore So smoothly as this first, uncursed.
It wishes, Earth, that it could close The wound it struck so heedlessly And at your dole, with all that grows, Take dearth and bounty, live and die, Since the fulfillment of its will Proved sharper than necessity.
VISITATION IN AUTUMN
Through you things unforeseen and unregarded are touched with speech. Of a sudden it is not the dark rainwater shuddering in the roadbed between the rusting rails, but you who say I was here. You have become a patron of embankments, of older ways still slanting through the grid we travel on. Of momentary freedoms, glimpses not possessory but of that which still can wrest itself out of our grip and free us, for that instant, from ourselves – never more. What remains cannot name itself except in the recollection of an image, say, of rainwater riffling between rails, that is, again, no more than what it was.
9/9/92 A SKEIN FOR GREAT-GRANDMOTHER
There is nothing left -- Sylvia Plath
Crooked was the way I went, crooked, aye, for, aye, it was straight. -- Paul Celan
Great-grandmother, I've tried to write to you, sagest and most exacting of relations, in prose and formless verse, but it won't do.
From you the thought that limits are foundations came down to me; so it is right to choose the form that most severely tries my patience.
Why terza rima should be so hard to use when sonnets flow as easily as water is more than I know; but I can't refuse
if I'm to live up to the name your daughter most inconsiderately wished on me with a pretentiousness you never taught her,
not pausing to divine the misery attached to that prestigious hoodoo-name; but that, again, was her temerity,
unless you hold that parents can bring blame upon their children, as your Bible says (Freud, come to think of it, says much the same).
If we had just been Jews in the first place, they would have named me simply after you, which would have saved me many winding ways;
but as it was, I didn't know I knew your name, till I had chosen it to bear upon resolving to become a Jew.
Then all at once my mother was aware of an old Bible entry that recorded your death (the family archives were her care), and then my father's memory afforded glimpses of early influence forgot in a world where skepticism is rewarded.
He said that you were very strict, though not with others, but above all with yourself; it was by your example that you taught.
He said that you were careful of your health, avoided certain foods and ate alone and often took your Bible from the shelf.
Pain was the enemy. You struggled on until my father reached his seventh year, and when you died, the doctor said you'd gone
for some years without kidneys. It is clear that such a story must awaken doubt, but also that some thread of truth is here,
for other tales of you were then brought out: how as a doctor's wife in a small town when the poor needed clothing you would scout
the attic for the cast-off shirt or gown which you and your three daughters could remake, and always on the Sunday afternoon
buggy-ride in the country, you would take trowel and pail, and when you saw an old rotten stump, then you'd get out and scrape
some earth there, to increase your garden's yield. When my great-grandfather, a town-bred tease who stayed at home on Sunday mornings, told
his skeptic jokes, you seem to have kept the peace, but while your widowed mother, who was blind, lived in your house, each object had its place
and had to be put back for her to find. You made things serve. You knew when to relax and when the strictest order was most kind.
And then my mother, sorting through a box of family photographs, found one of you in your last years. The face is hard as rocks, and yet there is a light upon it too of humor and benevolence. Thus at last the hidden (which our name means) came to view.
Did we retrieve your image from the past, or did your stubborn will outstep the grave to get a kaddish said, to set a task,
or was it maybe me you came to save? For the two poets who'd pronounced your name so that it shone like something I should have
both wrote wild words till, maddened by the same, they made their deaths and never called it sin. I had no safer guides until you came.
But can you guide me through the maze I'm in? The customs under which you lived are gone, the Bible which you read cannot sustain
one to whom it spoke with double tongue: I know too much of history and science. No stone remains upon another stone
in all that fabric that had your reliance, just as the reasoning now seems unsure in those celestial monologues of my aunt's
that lend salvation such a faint allure. Pardon these modern and irreverent tones, for by our standards, what did you endure?
You never heard of the Fuehrer and his clones, the fallout from their violence did not steep your days and nights; as for the Indian bones,
there is no record that they cost you sleep; the Satanic mills lay southward, past the border. It isn't that we had a right to keep
the homestead of your certainty and order whose fragments now, cyclonically twirled about my head, are whistling bloody murder.
Nothing remains, nothing, of all your world. And yet upon my vision you persist, worldless, wordless. Though every flag be furled
that sheltered you, what you made manifest still claims allegiance: the bare will to good which now upon itself alone insists.
This Will, if I have rightly understood a Jewish teaching, is the primal Source of all that is, the rock on which they build,
to which the first and every subsequent course must remain true, or else be broken back by the doing of wry deeds that bring remorse,
and many starts have taken the wrong track because, that Will appearing powerless, folk sought by other power to fill the lack.
Thus movements undermine what they profess, forsaking proximate good to seek the far, and find themselves confounded in success,
while innocents who find themselves at war with wrong, may fail to recognize a friend, contract their world into an angry scar.
Yet valid is the imperative you send: to see, receive and use all that is given, first from one's own forgetfulness defend
whatever good remains despite the uneven hand of privilege that deals the ration, and by discerning act knit earth and heaven.
If the concerned would lay on this foundation such bricks as they can bring, a building might arise out of a common meditation
on truth and consequence, on need and right: this thought might be unfolded to a Law true to Earth's wholeness and the common plight.
Though it is late, and ill forebodings gnaw my confidence, yet your still-smiling eyes encourage me, Great-grandmother, to draw
such plans. May all the thoughts my mind supplies be true to your original intent; may my acts give no reason to despise
your legacy, but may I represent you faithfully, whether or not the way that I must walk can lead toward covenant,
for which in your name and in theirs I pray.
1992
LAWYERS NEVER CRY
Well, I was a starving poet not so very long ago, And I came to law school hoping it would help me make some dough, But I also hoped that it would help me work for liberty, But the very day I got here, this is what they said to me: “Lawyers never cry, they don’t dream at night, Spend their long days working under fluorescent lights. If the principles we’re teaching you do not seem very high, First thing you must learn here is, Lawyers Never Cry.”
There were some who came here thinking they were going to save thetrees, While others spoke of helping women and minorities, But I saw their dreams grow dimmer as they learned about the game, And their faces with each passing week looked more and more the same. They’d found out Lawyers never cry, they don’t dream at night, Spend their long days working under fluorescent lights. If your interviewer says to you, “Why did you even try?” Just keep saying to yourself, Lawyers Never Cry.
When the fall came round we all began to go for interviews, And they told us very frankly, “This is what we mean to do: We will pay the winner sixty grand to run a treadmill race, And if they burn out there’ll be plenty more to take their place. But you know Lawyers never cry, they don’t dream at night, Spend their long days working under fluorescent lights. If your supervising attorney comes on like Captain Bligh, Grit your teeth and tell yourself, Lawyers Never Cry.”
Well, I used to think the purpose of the law was to define The rights and wrongs we live by, and to keep the bad in line, But the view that now prevails is that it’s just a power-tool, And if you mention right and wrong you’re made to seem a fool. They’ll tell you Lawyers never cry, they don’t dream at night, Spend their long days working under fluorescent light. If you get the blues for justice and your heart is asking why, Close your eyes and yell out loud, Lawyers Never Cry.
Now come all you lawyers who have time, or who did not get hired, Or who burnt out or who expressed convictions and got fired: Grass-roots organization is the job that must be done Until we have a law again that’s fair to everyone. Till then let the lawyers cry, let them dream at night, Let them take long walks and get some fresh air and sunlight, Let them help the people find out what is going on and why And how to build a government that won’t make people cry. I said let the lawyers cry, let them dream at night, Let them take long walks and get some fresh air and sunlight, Let them help the people find out what is going on and why Until we have a government that won’t make people cry.
THE POET TO HER COLLEAGUE
Come sit with me and be my friend And we'll tell stories without end From far and near, from books and life, Interweaving without strife.
The dreams I've dreamed, the lands I've known, Why should you not call your own? The friends you've had, both false and true, Shall I not know them all through you?
Let the unenlightened talk of spite And envy among those who write! The faster shall our friendship grow, The livelier shall our verses go.
Two's company, three's company, Six constitute a poets' bee, Ten, a council of the wise -- No end to what we might devise!
And whether all eggs or few may hatch, This present good at least we'll catch, If (as our favoring signs portend) You'll sit with me and be my friend.
ARS ANTIPOETICA
Don't show you care for anything. Resist the strongest urge to sing, Or if you sing, sing out of tune, Like everybody else is doing. Your foremost task is to appease Envy, not to instruct or please; Therefore avoid all tones that sound As though the great dead were gathered round, Keep it colloquial, in the flat Patter of cocktail-party chat. To take the wind from the sails of those Who cannot tell your verse from prose, Pursue the mechanic metaphor. No one will ask you what it's for: A mask of mere analogy Lets peep the dear vacuity. The Poetry Administration Has put a ban on Inspiration, So any unexpected grace Must be immediately effaced. In short, you must write badly, though Never spontaneously so, But thumb Roget and pull your hair, Wrestling like Genius with Despair, To purge all trace of self-respect And win the plaudits of the abject. Thus you'll be published, thus promoted, Though never learnt by heart nor quoted In speech of friends or at lone midnight, Never rising to lips at the sight Of lovely face or blossoming tree Or act that sets the spirit free, Never sung by walkers on the shore To mingle your words with the sea's roar. These are for poets to whom the game Meant something more than place and fame, Who sang for the sweet singing's sake, Whose words may reach us by mistake, A slip of the Establishment. The best, for all we know, is blent With long-forgotten dust. But they Had, at least, their singing-day, Praised what was to be praised, and blamed That by which humankind is shamed, Knew, and were known by, eternal Mind, Still heard by those that hear the wind.
1992
THE HEXAGON
In the middle of the city Stands the house of song and story Built of stone, its rooms are many, And the rooms are all six-sided, Large the lower, small the upper, Ranged around a central courtyard Where a single fountain plashes; And the fountain has ten basins: From the highest flow the waters, Now divided, now uniting, To the lowest and the largest On whose brim the poets often Sit and scan, their eyes half marking How the ripples in their motion Touch the brim and seek the center, Then spread outward once again. Underneath the ground is hollowed To one room, a mighty kiva, Where, amid those pillars chiseled In the likeness of great tree-trunks, All the poets of the city Stand at equinox and solstice To hear read the formulation Of each season's task and tidings And give counsel where they can. From the front the house is entered Through a porch with seven columns Carved with leaf and vine defining Panels where you see depicted Figures from the ancient legends On the origins of song And the lives of bards and prophets, Seers, shamans of all nations, With their own works interwoven: Shakespeare holds the Globe, and Dante Works his way through Hell and Heaven, Black Elk makes his solemn offering Of the pipe with four bright feathers, While White Buffalo Woman watches. But upon the central column There appear no human faces, Only living things and textures Of the planets: jungle, tundra, Wood and honeycomb and crystal, And an oval-shaped medallion, Framed by rosemary and poppy, Blank, except for the inscription For the nameless. Overhead, On the architrave is written Vita est legenda -- that is, "Life is legend," or, more deeply, "Life is to be read." You enter, And a spacious room receives you, Lined with many books; at tables Several persons are discovered, Men and women, dressed in garments Long and flowing, of one fashion But of varying hues, matched subtly To each person's type and aura, Almost plain on younger persons, Richly figured on the eldest, With most various sign and symbol Beaded, feathered and embroidered. In the walls beside the entry There are windows; in the facing Wall, a door with one glass panel Through which you can see the courtyard As the porter, who sits reading By the doorway, asks your errand, You observe a staircase leading To a gallery, book-lined also, And more galleries receding With diminishing six-sided Figures ring the central cavern Toward the crystal-pointed skylight And the changing sky above. As the porter will inform you, On the ground floor are the oldest Works of literature, the newest Occupy the highest level. Having mentioned this, the porter At a glance surveys the readers, Then with quiet steps approaches One of middle years, and asks them If their studies leave them leisure To conduct an honored traveller From the Time of Near Extinction On a short tour of the building. And this bard, gladly agreeing, Opens first the right-hand doorway To a hall with chairs and tables, Like a coffeehouse. Large windows On three sides there let the light in; On the walls between them, cithar, Harp and lyre, guitar and dulcimer And whatever bards may play on To accompany their recitals, Are hung up for the convenience Of the poets there conversing. On the fourth, a serving-counter Has been cut through to the kitchen, And a bard with robe embroidered Only just around the collar Rises from their book behind it As your guide requests two coffees. Sipping yours, you note the frescoes On the back wall and the side wall Where you entered, showing gatherings In all different times and places Among such as share the word: On the moors within stone circles, Under trees, in hall and wigwam, Round the council-fire of men And the council-fire of women. Here you see the harp or peace-pipe Or the speaking-stick being handed By one speaker to another; Here, intent upon their Talmud, Two yeshiva students argue; There are scenes of women talking As they sit and weave together Or beside the well, their pitchers Resting while they speak their minds. But the panel round which all these Are arranged, depicts a woman And a man, dressed in the costume Of the century you have quitted, Sitting at a sidewalk-table With the city in the background; From the faces' concentration It appears as though a silence Momentarily has fallen. Should you ask your guide, "Who are they?", You will hear, in brief, the legend Of the poet and the poetess Who took counsel with each other In the Time of Near Extinction To renew the Way of Bardcraft, And begin the Great Reweaving. When you've drunk your cup of coffee (Or perhaps some other liquid Better suited to this system) At a sign from your conductor You go back the way you entered, Through the library and into The next room, left of the entry, Lined with shelves filled up with volumes Similar in size and binding. Here and there, as in the first room, Several bards sit reading, writing, And the one who seems in charge here, After fitting introduction, Tells you that this is the Archive Of Life-Stories. Every bard here, When they reach the age of fifty, Has a customary duty To record their life's experience, Observations, and new learnings, And each person in the city Who desires to leave a record May do likewise: for a twelvemonth They are freed of obligations Save the task of this recording. As the archivist will tell you, In this time there are no graveyards: "It is fitting that the ashes Of the body should be scattered To the air and earth and water From whose substance they were taken, But the life-tale should be treasured." Thence you pass into the adjoining Room, whose shelves are filled with binders; These the bard in charge will tell you, Are the journals and the poems Which the living of the city Write and bring here for safekeeping, And here several bards are busy Poring over the latest pages To discern the signs and portents Which through dream and inspiration Bring the message of the Spheres. Hence the Highest Bards consult them When they weave the equinoctial Songs that speak to all the city. In the last room on this level All the walls are lined with portraits From the wainscoting and upward, While below, large horizontal Files are filled, as the curator Of this room will gladly show you, With more portraits, in the order Of the years when they were painted: Men and women, youths and children, Cast of feature and complexion Varying, yet every likeness Vivid and profound. Displaying Leaf by leaf, the proud curator Says, "These are the illustrations To the great Book of the City"; And you feel that you could stand there All your life just gazing into Every pair of eyes depicted. Seeing this, the wise curator Calls attention to a curtain That conceals what you had taken For the opening of a doorway: "Underneath," they say, "waits hidden, Unexpressed, the single likeness Every citizen must see here After solemn preparation. Hence I will not move the curtain For you now; your intuition Must divine what would appear." From this room your guide conducts you Through a door which you had noticed On your right hand as you entered Out into the central courtyard. "Sit a moment by the fountain," Says your guide, "and I will tell you, Now that you have seen the archives, Something of the general layout. As you see, the upper levels Are made smaller than the lower, So the central space diminishes And each floor is cantilevered Slightly over that beneath it; In addition, all the chambers Of each level are connected By a gallery that encroaches Further on the empty center. As the first floor is devoted To the city's past and present, So the second is dedicated To its coming generation. When a child is born, the parents Bring it to the Room of Naming, Where before two bards, a woman And a man, they tell their stories And the stories of their parents, And the bards observe the movements Of the child, draw up a star-chart, Lay the cards and sort the yarrow, Till a name is found befitting This new being and its heritage And the hour of its birth. After seven days the parents Bring the child back for the naming If the name still seems the right one: Often later inspiration Brings another name, whose rightness All the parties recognize. As the child grows up, the parents Bring its drawings and its sayings And its poems to the keepers Of the Rooms of Children's Wisdom. Every child born in the city Has a box there, and the poets Sift its contents to discover What particular gifts and questions This new person brings among us As a message from the Spheres. On the third floor are the classrooms Where all children in the city Who show promise of good bardcraft Come to learn what every poet Needs to know: the tales and poems Which describe the world we live in With its elements and creatures, And the nature of our species, And the Law it needs to follow Lest the sheltering sky should crumble As it almost did in your time; Next, the rules of rhyme and meter, Every form, and its best uses: Melodies that lull and strengthen And awaken intuition; Then the ways of divination, Dream- and text-interpretation, And above all" -- they say, pointing To the inscription round the basin Of the pool, one word: "Attention" -- "In which word the sacred science Of our bardcraft is contained." Your attention caught by one thing That now tugs it for the third time, You inquire, "Do you believe, then, That you can divine the future?" "Not entirely," says your mentor, "But the casts of divination, Like the images in poems, Are projections of a knowledge Deeper than our understanding Can descend, which only orders What the diver Intuition Fishes up; but at the same time Intuition has no meaning Save what Understanding gives it In the context of connections Which comprise our general knowledge. If you grasp this, you are ready To receive the signs that Heaven And Earth send you, for your guidance. In this spirit, too, the omens, With all other ways of knowledge, Are consulted on the fourth floor, In the Rooms of Healing. Likewise In the Rooms of Mediation On the fifth floor, where the people Come when quarrels fall among them, Or when anyone is troubled By the action of a neighbor Tales are heard, and yarrow counted, And two bards, a man and woman, Meditate on the occurrence Till in common constellation They perceive the shape of justice. Not by written laws we go here, For no rule contains the future. Know: the Law as we perceive it Is more like the rules that govern Terza rima and sestina Than your statutes; 'tis a pattern For the flow of love and knowledge, Like the basins of this fountain. It prescribes workday and Sabbath And the seasonal assemblies That attune us, through observance, To the ways of earth and Heaven, And the various other customs Of which I have briefly told you. But when wrong befalls, we meet it As we can, and all our striving Is to keep it from engraving Its bad mark on our tradition. So we do not speak of precedent, But the ancient stories help us To discern what may be fitting, And the tale of every quarrel With the judgment that was rendered And the later consequences For the parties and the city Is recorded, for the most part In the form of pithy fable, Up there, in a special archive. Of these tales the mediators Read as much as they can stomach. When a quarrel is presented They consult their recollections From such readings, as they ponder What the best course here may be. And the topmost ring, whose jutting Over that beneath, you see here, Is the Tier of Highest Council. There the Highest Bards foregather On the night of every Sabbath, Eighteen men and eighteen women In six groups of six divided, To exchange their observations And divine what new directions Are intended by the Spheres."* Having given these explanations, Your conductor now arises From the fountain-side. Together You ascend the staircase leading To the building's upper stories. But to tell of all the inscriptions, All the carvings, all the frescoes Suited to each chamber's purpose, All the curious collections Of bright stone and shell and feather (To accompany the teaching Of the Names, the teachers tell you), All the methods of instruction, Ceremonies and discussions Which you witness on each level, Would require a lens of higher Resolution than the vision Of this poet now possesses. And you also may be thinking That an elevator's needed, And may wonder how to fit it To the plan, without disturbing Either symmetry or function -- To such questions I've no answer. Someone else would have to draw it With more skill in architecture. So the House of Song and Story Must remain, for now, unfinished, But may many hands complete it, May the people find the way there Very soon; and say Amen.
1992-1993
*Here, at the urging of a poet who was also a parent, a passage was omitted which I would like nevertheless to preserve. It should re read in the light of Jonathan Schell’s concept of “universal parenthood” and the reflection that social order is impossible without some form of sacrifice – recognized or not: Then by lot they choose one member From each group. The following morning These assemble in one chamber And the King and Queen, descending From their rooftop towers, join them To recite what they have woven From their dreaming since last Sabbath, And they pass the day in council, Varied by a frugal feasting, With new song and jest enlivened. When night falls, the royal couple Solemnly take leave, retreating To their towers on the rooftops -- You just see them there, the Queen's tower On the left side of the skylight And the King's tower on the right side, And the central one, the farthest, Opposite the building's entrance, Where the Sabbath evening only Brings the royal pair together. In between, each has a rooftop Garden which they tend for pastime; Otherwise, they read and study Or go anywhere they wish to In the building or the city Or the countryside around it, But in plain robes, and the people Are forbidden to address them Otherwise than with the greetings They would give to any stranger From a far-off sister-city." "Are you not afraid," you wonder, "That some malcontent might harm them?" "May the Spheres forfend!" they answer. "If our mutual love and knowledge And the warnings of the Spirit Cannot shield the best that's in us From the worst, what would protect us? We must trust the Spell of Wholeness That has bound the earth together Since the Time of the Reweaving." "May I see it!" you may answer, "But now tell me in what manner, By what cast or ceremonial, Your two monarchs are selected." "Each solunar year," they answer, "When the nineteenth sun-course finally Brings a reconciliation Of the sun and moon, whose cycles For the most part seem discordant, So that no day's anniversary Keeps the same moon as companion, When full moon and summer solstice On one eve are joined together, Then the Highest Bards in council Sift the coming generation Of young bards, try combinations Till they find the youth and maiden Whose harmonious stars are suited To the city and each other, And they wed and dedicate them To the attunement of the city With the Spirit of the Wholeness In the next solunar year. And they live as I have told you: All the children of their union Must be given into fosterage, And they may not see the children, May not even know who rears them If a dream does not reveal it, Till their nineteen years are done, For their child is all the city, And no partial thought must guide them. When their cycle ends, another Couple comes to take their places, And the bards then reunite them With their children, in a dwelling On the outskirts of the city, Where the foster-parents help them To resume the common pattern Of our lives; and they return here As apprentices and servants, Later teachers, mediators, As their talents may incline them, And at last to highest council May be summoned once again."
VILLANELLE BEGINNING WITH A SENTENCE BY WITTGENSTEIN
The world is everything that is the case. The dead were never more than what they were. Alternate futures do not leave a trace.
Nature has no objection to the pace Of progress threatening fin and fern and fur: The world is everything that is the case.
No backfile keeps the losers in the race. The Albigensian ashes do not stir. Alternate futures do not leave a trace.
However you thread the analytic maze Of cause and consequence, you wind up here: The world is everything that is the case.
That memory and regret may be effaced, Officials of the new regime aver Alternative futures do not leave a trace.
Dreams and reflections, in a sense, take place; Acts of will, it is rumored, do occur. The world being everything that is the case, Alternate futures thus can leave a trace. EVEN NOW BE UNDISMAYED
from the German of Paul Fleming
Even now be undismayed, even now call loss a liar, Yield not to fortune's blows, leave envy far beneath, Take joy in thine own being, and count it not as grief Though time and space and fate against thee should conspire.
The sweet and bitter both accept as thine own choice, As thine own destined lot it boots thee not to rue; Before the order comes, do that which thou must do; Each day shall have new birth, whereat thou may'st rejoice.
What use to praise and blame? His greatest woe and weal Is each to his own self. Whatever thou may'st behold Is all in thee. From vain illusions disenthralled,
Look inward first, before thou goest thine outward way. If o'er thy soul thou hold'st an undisputed sway, The world and all therein shall do thee service leal.
ISHTAR'S JOURNEY TO THE UNDERWORLD
for C.E.Y.
Proud stood Ishtar, stood Inanna In the World of Light. On her head the circlet of crystal, In her ears the earrings of amethyst, Round her neck the necklace of lapis lazuli, On her breast the brooch of malachite, On her arms the bracelets of amber, At her waist the buckle of cornelian, Round her ankles the anklets of jasper.
Bright stood Ishtar, stood Inanna In the Garden of Life, On her right the white-flowering almond, On her left the purple bougainvillea, Behind her the blue jacaranda, Before her the golden broom, At her feet the red anemone.
But in Ishtar's heart was darkness And a longing for darkness. She said, "I will descend And visit my sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld." She set out, she walked. She came to the First Gate of the Underworld. At that gate a ghost-serpent asked her, "Where are you going, Lady?" "To see my sister Ereshkigal," Answered Ishtar, Answered Inanna. And the ghost-serpent took as toll the circlet of crystal.
Downward went Ishtar, Went Inanna. She came to the second gate of the underworld. At that gate a ghost-monkey asked her, "Where are you going, Lady?" "To see my sister Ereshkigal," Answered Ishtar, Answered Inanna. And the ghost-monkey took as toll the earrings of amethyst.
Downward went Ishtar, Went Inanna. She came to the third gate of the underworld. At that gate a ghost-crow asked her, "Where are you going, Lady?" "To see my sister Ereshkigal," Answered Ishtar, Answered Inanna. And the ghost-crow took as toll the necklace of lapis lazuli.
Downward went Ishtar, Went Inanna. She came to the fourth gate of the underworld. At that gate a ghost-dog asked her, "Where are you going, Lady?" "To see my sister Ereshkigal," Answered Ishtar, Answered Inanna. And the ghost-dog took as toll the brooch of malachite.
Downward went Ishtar, Went Inanna. She came to the fifth gate of the underworld. At that gate a ghost-leopard asked her, "Where are you going, Lady?" "To see my sister Ereshkigal," Answered Ishtar, Answered Inanna. And the ghost-leopard took as toll the bracelets of amber.
Downward went Ishtar, Went Inanna. She came to the sixth gate of the underworld. At that gate a ghost-wolf asked her, "Where are you going, Lady?" "To see my sister Ereshkigal," Answered Ishtar, Answered Inanna. And the ghost-wolf took as toll the buckle of cornelian.
Downard went Ishtar, Went Inanna. She came to the seventh gate of the underworld. At that gate a maggot asked her, "Where are you going, Lady?" "To see my sister Ereshkigal," Answered Ishtar, Answered Inanna. And the maggot took as toll the anklets of jasper.
Into the palace of Ereshkigal Went Ishtar, Went Inanna. On a high throne sat Ereshkigal, Queen of Darkness, Saying, "Why have you come here?" "To see you, sister," said Ishtar, Said Inanna. "Then see me as I am," said Ereshkigal, And she killed Inanna, She killed Ishtar, She commanded the corpse to be hung In the doorway of the palace So that all who came in Had to give the corpse a shove.
And the World of Light was dimmed, Was darkened. There came an evening without the evening star, There came a morning without the morning star. There came a winter without the renewing rain. The springs of life turned salt With weeping for Ishtar, With weeping for Inanna. And the plants died, And the animals, And the humans, And the gods, that live by human prayers, Began to die also.
Then the gods called a council. All the humans came, all the animals, All that were left. They asked one another, "Where is Ishtar, Where is Inanna?" No one knew. Till at last the Moon answered, "I saw Ishtar, I saw Inanna. She was walking along the way That leads to the Gates of the Underworld. I saw her go in."
Then Mother Sky, who gave birth to them all, Broke a branch from the Tree of Vision, And gave that branch to the Moon, And the Moon descended. Past the ghost-serpent And the ghost-monkey And the ghost-crow And the ghost-dog And the ghost-leopard And the ghost-wolf And the maggot And they all fled from the light of the Branch And asked no questions. And the Moon stood before the gate Where swung the body of Ishtar, The body of Inanna.
Then Ereshkigal got off her throne. On all eight legs she scuttled to the doorway. She said, "What toll will you pay For robbing the Underworld, Moon?" And Moon broke off a twig from the Branch of Vision For Ereshkigal to plant in the Underworld. Then Moon touched with the branch the body of Inanna. And Ishtar lived.
Back went the Moon, Back went Inanna, went Ishtar, Up through the seven levels. But first the Moon said to the Maggot: "Restore the anklets of jasper!" And the maggot did so. And next the Moon said to the ghost-wolf, "Restore the buckle of cornelian!" And the maggot did so. And next the Moon said to the ghost-leopard, "Restore the bracelets of amber!" And the ghost-leopard did so. And next the Moon said to the ghost-dog, "Restore the brooch of malachite!" And the ghost-dog did so. And next the Moon said to the ghost-crow, "Restore the necklace of lapis lazuli!" And the ghost-crow did so. And next the Moon said to the ghost-monkey, "Restore the earrings of amethyst!" And the ghost-monkey did so. And last the Moon said to the ghost-serpent "Restore the circlet of crystal!" And the ghost-serpent did so. And Inanna put on the gems, Holy Ishtar resumed her adornments.
Forth from the underworld Came the Moon, leading Inanna, Came the Moon and Ishtar together. And evening was soft with the moon and the evening star, And the rain came in the night, And the springs of life grew sweet again, And the plants revived And the animals and humans also, And the gods grew strong again with prayers of thanksgiving, And Mother Sky, who gave birth to them all Saw it was good And planted the branch from the Tree of Vision In the midst of the Garden of Life.
Now in the Underworld grows a twig from the Tree of Vision And the storytellers explain That that is why All this had to happen.
THE BARD'S FOURFOLD TASK
To learn the tradition and hear how the voices converse together; To find your own vision and voice, assume your part in the play; Attentive to all around you, to gather and order knowledge; Then, on the ground thus gained, to teach and organize others.
INSTRUCTIONAL VERSES (THE PATH OF SONG)
Those who aspire to the skill of singing And wish to know how to acquire it Should bear in mind with joy and reverence Four things chiefly: the word, the self, The human other, the cosmic Whole. First the word: how each word we use Contains a wealth, a world of meaning. At every hour watch words in action, To names above all accord attention, For the act of naming is half of art. Read, too, the books of the bards before you, Watch what they do and how they do it, At tradition's table listen and learn. Next, attend to yourself, your soul, Storehouse of memories, well of dreams, Wearer of wounds, seeker of healing, Unending teller of its own tale, Source of melody beyond experience: Those who can hear both tale and tune, To them all things bring signs of guidance. Then, the others who are to themselves Storehouses of memories, wells of dreams, Wearers of wounds, seekers of healing, Unending tellers of their own tales, Source of melody beyond experience, Messengers to you as you to them. Above all, abhor envy like poison, For envy blinds the I in the other, Blots creation with hatred of good. If envy stings, let its sting alert you To what you must praise lest your soul perish, Then draw its fang with magnanimous deed And all you acknowledge shall be your own. Last and first: the cosmic Whole, The household of Earth and all its inhabitants, The infinite fugue of human fates, The hope of vision, of one awareness Embracing all earth, surmounting strife, In each true word the poet utters Calls to attention, advances toward peace. Vast is the Way, complex beyond knowing, Yet free, unforced as a child's chanting; At every step the goal is present And most when we manage the step of silence. May all who read this find friends in wisdom And inspiration for sacred song!
1993
TOWARD THE RAINBOW
They cry "Peace, peace" when there is no peace. I have not known peace since I left the circle Of my mother's care and walked toward the other children Who had already heard the call to arms. Their orders were: stone beauty, punish trust, And weave no bonds, except to further war.
It's true their fathers had to go to war. Those memories heaved beneath the surface of peace. The silence of the guns was not to trust. The dogs of war sat round them in a circle, With long tongues prophesying, "You'll take up arms, For that is the destiny of human children."
Ah, it could make one glad not to have children, To have delivered no captive to this war. It must be sweet to hold within one's arms A small creature seeking and finding peace, But still you'd know: the wheel must come full circle And break your child's, as it once broke your trust.
And then they say a nation ought to trust, Write songs of peace to be sung by crowds of children. The child looks round its immediate circle And sees a thousand shuttles weaving war. It sees what happens to those who love peace Too much, and do not learn how to bear arms.
Suppose one came to stand with empty arms Before them, saying: "Though you slay, I trust. If ever you hope to see the light of peace, Strike not one who comes in the name of your children But hold my hands, against all winds of war, And grasp your neighbor's hand to form a circle --"
Could such acts ever break the vicious circle Of every generation's grief that arms Its orphans for another round of war? Are any desperate enough to trust The tokens found by solitary children To shield them as they walk toward the rainbow Peace?
O PEACE, speak to us from the Great Circle, Guide each one of your children toward the arms Of trust, that we may turn away from war.
1993
READING POETRY AT THE STATE CAPITOL ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON
The hive of government is empty now, stone wedding-cake of power and hired art, stately it stands upon the narrow brow that keeps two lakes apart; only the overtaxed or overzealous still burrow, plot and plan the people's and Earth's bane of which a headline some months hence will tell us.
Upon a corner of the Capitol Square given to the people for a weekly fair, a knot of poets try to raise their voices above the waning noises of morning's market; shoppers going home have little time to spend upon the word no friend to the football cheer, the television's drone.
The various causes, too, already fold their tables, and the meager dollars doled by citizens whom various wrongs incense, though few seek out the sense of the vast web that implicates them all, which solely through the word of poets, when it's heard, relates the part to the comprehended whole.
So thinly now in end-of-summer air amid the sounds of life's retreat, yet clear, our voices sing the mating-dance of thought, the rain-dance that has brought the lightning down on many a throne in ages past, and still, could we reforge the will, might lift a wave of earth beneath this dome.
So hear us, powers of water, earth and air, all civic spirits that may linger here to grieve the ruin of your good intent: teach us the government of the eternal and unchanging Way and show the paths that lead through minds of those that heed, that here true counsel's house may stand someday.
1993
GRIEF
Since you are gone, my world is shrunk and darkened. I stumble in it, grasp at missing stair-rails, surprised by downward steps I did not see. A part of me is gone. I find myself falling into the space you left behind till I become invisible to the living, I watch them from behind a one-way mirror, and cannot find you either. You are lost, and I whom you beheld am lost with you.
Sometimes I come into the congregation. We stand there, each alone yet all caught up in the words of the prayer: "G-d full of compassion"; then for a moment I can see the wings of the Shekhinah folded over all that humans ever lost; I see a hand pick up the scattered straws of human lives, replace them in the bundle that they fell from into this world. "Nothing," whispers a voice, "nothing is lost." Then I weep, and hear weeping. The voice of prayer moves on. The tears are dried. The service ends. I bow my head and hurry out of the shul, knowing I cannot meet the strangers' faces which I know the others will have put on again. Life must go on, the unbonded life, where grief must not be shown. "It is decreed the dead shall be forgotten -- " And even I find that I cannot see your face in memory as I once did. I gather it. It falls apart again. I gaze upon your photograph, and something seems to slide between my eyes and it. I am forgetting you; and yet remains this crater in my life: the lack of all you were and gave, which never can be filled.
Well then, farewell, I say at every moment (Who am I speaking to? To you? To G-d?): Grant me both to forget and to remember. Release my soul from straining after yours. Open my eyes to all that in the world pleads for attention, pleads to be allowed to be and to be seen, to give, to grow. Let not one spark of truth, fallen from your world into this, complain I passed it by. Henceforth all this is you to me; and grant me patience with the estrangement in the world, the face of exile. Make me one who gathers, though many times be stricken from my hand, or clumsily dropped, the rare and precious gleanings. And may it be Your will so to inspire others, and so to gather all the scattered. Thus resolved, I step forth into the spring with thanks for all that was, and may yet be.
1994
PASSOVER 5754
Set is the table in the ancient way: With the triumphal wine, the humble-bread, The platters that to hungry eyes display The story-food whose meanings we shall read. And all around the world, we know, is spread This board, occurs this scene Where scattered Jews convene, Descendants of the host that Moses led.
We were all there. Each of us can recall The brutal voice, the lash, the heat and thirst, The lean of laboring crews that strain and fall, The pangs that ripped the heart (that was the worst) For children snatched away by hands accursed; The look of man on wife Fearful of giving life In a world where good and evil seemed reversed.
Oppression is. Morning and night the news Is brought to us by print and flickering screen In hard insouciant voices that refuse To deepen to the mourner's keen. The soul in us cowers unheard, unseen Amid a world that bids Us live by heartless wits While all our senses suffer the obscene.
And when for sanctuary we have turned To friend or mate, or to the company Of those we thought a common faith had bound With us in mutual surety, Sometimes they spurned our offerings and our plea; In the familiar eyes We saw the stranger rise And flee us, as if scattering made them free.
We are hemmed in by too much latitude, By knowing not to what we must be true. Too many times the holy scrolls dripped blood When madmen started up to do What voices in the text had urged them to. And how shall we now press That scroll against our breasts And from its fount our covenant renew?
Yet to refuse this cup would be to sever The chain, the vein of generations' bond That links us to our ancestors forever And to the Rock on which they made their stand, To countersign with our own hand The work of those whose rage Pursued us age on age: They now could say that they had seen our end.
And Israel, in Israel's promised land Still wrestles with the angel of the choice Whether to fight or welcome as a friend Those who with weapons massed and dove-like voice Ask land in trade for words of peace. It is a choice that grieves Our mind until it cleaves, And Jew sees fellow-Jew in the foe's place.
The law of nations gives us tenuous hold Upon a land where others dwelt before: A surer charter seems the voice enscrolled, Ordering us to play the conqueror -- That, and necessity, which from Europe's shore Expelled us to this strait: All seems determinate, Fruit of the dark compulsion known as war.
Yet still we are commanded to recall Not only Egypt but the going out: Those messengers, still shaken by their call, The signs they showed us, that dispelled our doubt, The plagues that put our enemies to rout, The seas that stood, aghast, Aside while Israel passed To where we praised our God with song and shout.
When have we known this, save in songs and tales That sound so faintly to our distant ear? Yet even in this world some miracles Must have occurred, though few appear: In every generation doubt and fear Dispute which one shall slay Our people on the way, And yet, somehow or other, we are here.
And each of us, perhaps, can call to mind Some moment when before the straining eye The seas of fate were parted, and a sign Was given, that dispelled causality: Moments of love, or of discovery, When what we thought we knew Opened to something new, And in that new dimension we were free. Together on this night we gaze ahead As from the foreshore of our history, The way a speaker stands before the unsaid, Waiting the word. O G-d our destiny, Reveal us to ourselves! Cause us to see The signs that You will send Our spirits to befriend And lead us out to Possibility.
Help us to find a language to the world To plead our cause, our being and our place, That all, no more chaotically hurled, In all events Your ultimate Law may trace, And meanwhile, keep and guard us by Your grace. By ways hidden and clear O may the time draw near When all the world in Israel's name shall bless.
1994
OFF ZOLOFT AT 2:00 A.M.
Akathisiac, the road cannot rest. The cars go coursing along with a whirr of tires like the seething of blood in my ears, through my brain, hopefully washing out the smart solution in which I've been pickling it. This time I must choose them, the army of little black ants with mandibles dragging at muscle fibers, the impress of a boot in the gut, the tears squeezed through the lids like oil from under the great stone of the olive press. O cheshire grin of mental honeymoon with the mind of a mad scientist, farewell! I'm gliding out and down, cold feet first, into despair, my element.
TO M.K., A MAGNIFICO OF METAPHOR
(part of a letter)
M., as you know, I lack the social graces; I only have one face, and not two faces; I find it easier to compose an epic than to assume the manners of this epoch. My message would sound gauche in a prose letter; I found speaking my mind in verse went better. Accept therefore the following verse epistle -- I hope you'll find in it more meat than gristle.
Before the labyrinth you stand, And Ariadne's thread is in your hand. You hesitate. The crowd is at your back. You pull the thread, take up the slack, but it is turning into something else, a rainbow scarf! You don't believe, yourself, how full it has become, how many-hued! Now from the billowing folds you see protrude a rabbit's head, an eagle's beak, the snout of an agile grinning dwarf who tumbles out, followed by Spanish dancers in a troop and a small airplane flying loop-the-loop -- You've let out a whole circus, and the crowd is cheering, oo-ing, ah-ing. You feel proud and at the same time just a little scared: this revelry, that started at your word, is it still under your control? You see a witch peep out, a troll, behind them other faces that appal. Your hand drops, you stop pulling, and a pause ensues, though soon filled up by wild applause and cries of "More! More!" Then you espy one who stands aside, casts a cold eye, looks like the Queen of Spades. She's saying, "Nu, go in there, man; you've got a deed to do!" You look where she is pointing, and the shapes which you have conjured fade. Before you gapes the original aperture: black, still, and cold. The Old Maid's voice is whispering, "Be bold; you can do it, and it's there you'll win the wand to make you master without sin, like Gandalf, Merlin, Schmendrick at the last: we need a white wizard, and we need him fast."
So far the play I've seen; I leave the sequel to your imagination and decision; if the shoe doesn't fit, by all means fling it at my head. Only, say something --
1995(?)
ABSOLUTION
"Wisdom," she wept, "may wisdom come of this" -- Seeing heaven's hawk, whom she had sought to tame, Food for time's crows, whose cawing gave her blame For that she had not loosed the final jess Of longing (nay! of soul's identity) And left him wholly free.
O lady, those who overpardon treason, They do but strive to lengthen out the chain Lest, tautening, it tear the heart. In vain: That cord must twist, and strangle in due season. Set was the trap; you had your part to play. Ego absolvo te.
A STRANGE THING
In a season when my heart seemed dry I thought about that moment, years ago, when someone called me by my name, and I
could make no acknowledgment, although I knew it came from one impelled to die: pinned was I by whatever makes us slow
to answer, though we feel, the needy cry. Things went with him as they were bound to go, and ever afterward that muted cry
came back, accusing me. Only just now the thought occurs: did he perhaps descry my silent grief; and did he mean to try
to say: I know? A PHOTOGRAPH
Emerging from the office building out onto the top floor of a parking ramp, I looked into an illumined page of sky framed by two dark vertical walls of buildings and by a sill of roof, upon which stood a dark antenna with two arms bent upward, like an attenuated five-fingered extinct menorah by Giacometti, reaching as if to pull down a dark-gray shade of cloud over a space of light gold-green, an inexhaustible draught for the eye, beneath which yet another swathe of cloud lay like a shoreline with a line of rosy breakers folding silently, far off, in the light from a sun already sunk. And the light caught upon the upper cloud whose lower edge, sharp to first sight, then showed mottled, stippled, crumbled to a fretting of gold and rose-gold over turquoise-green. And this reflected light upon the cloud was gathered to a pillar in the middle, just behind that grasping black antenna -- it shifted, while I stood there, to one side. From time to time a pigeon flew, displaying its wings against the all-dissolving light, then perched or strutted on the roof again. And from the beginning of the world this sight was never seen until that very moment, that space-time gem my sole eye apprehended, nor shall creation's book again lie open to this same page, until all time be closed.
HEALING CIRCLE
In the half-light of Jackie's living-room we crowd into a circle, leaving open the space where each of us will lie at length. Yael unwraps a skein of scarlet yarn, telling of how the women walk and wind threads around Rachel's tomb in Bethlehem where she lies waiting for her children's succor. The yarn begins to travel round the circle as one by one we grasp and pass it on, an umbilical cord (says someone, and we laugh), an artery, from which the new bright blood flows from a heart, now beating, to each one; invisible it flows beneath the words of prayer and telling, as each one relates their version of the story of our exile in flesh that feels but its own wound alone, in mind bound to the flesh, divided with it, until the space within the circle fills with the dark matter of our pain and fear. Now, in the middle, one lies down full length, becomes the body of our pain and fear, becomes the body of our exiled wholeness, on which the rest lay hands and cry to God to heal him, her, us, all; and then arises, another one becomes the one we pray for, and when the central space again is empty, we say the Kaddish, and at last let go. Shall we divide the thread, give each a piece? We keep it whole, and roll it in a box, but from the same skein Yael cuts a length for each of us to wear around our arm, sensing each other sensing, as we move along the separate pathways of our weeks, that we stay roped together like mountaineers, each of us made more fearless yet more careful by this connecting thread, by this new life.
FREEDOM
in memory of John Clare
Oh what is human freedom in this world? We are the creatures of our heritage, The pattern from the genes at first unfurled, Then worked on by the currents of the age. Take from us air or water, heat or food, And we return to dust from which we came; Afflict a single nerve, and all the good Life holds for us goes up in howling flame. Our very reason hangs upon a thread Within the brain, so easily unstrung; And where the bards must labor for their bread To Muzak's whine, their song remains unsung. No cure there is, except to use the time That still is given for reason and sweet rhyme.
AVIVA'S POEM
Like sand through the hourglass Between parent and child Love and insight pass.
SABBATICAL
This is the sabbath of our husbandry: unrented pasture gone to rosy plumes, moving toward us in soft turbulence, wind-herded; matted here and there to deer-beds, but pathless; angelica's green nimbus rising from the creek-beds; fast-moving patterns of fritillary clapping where the thistle crowns itself king. Warbler and finch motets, the stream's more lengthy discourse. Not for long will the earth get away with it; the bulldozers rev themselves in the distance. But meanwhile "So be it" sings from the tree. The land has rest.
LIGHT GOING FROM THE HIGH FIELD
Amid the deepening blue, flawless from rim to rim of the circling horizon, the radiance that was day contracts into a golden apse. In this Church of the Divine Absence the evening star is not there,
up there
FORGETTING HISTORY
They appear in the green shadows like stars coming out: at first I see only the red unripe fruit, then the black ones were there all along. As I move among the canes, picking, something scuffles close by. My coming has interfered. And here the vines are flattened, as if a deer had lain down perhaps? I am one of the owners, the masters, no longer in the secret. Yet tonight when I close my eyes, the black raspberries will appear once more, on stems fragile as the lines connecting the stars that guided the tribes before they named the Great Bear and scattered. Like stars, these clusters have led me forth from the cities into which time drove us: I can imagine the grandmothers move beside me, picking and gossiping, or singing, in their language of which no word remains, unless a place-name -- "origin unknown." It is summer, the days have just begun to shorten, the cool bright sunlight that comes after a berrymaking rain falls through the leaves, the hand reverts to a movement reflexive as sucking.
I have all that I need.
THE GOOD TEACHER
for F.G., 35 years later
Fall in love with me, and never let me know it, So that I fall in love with you, and dare not show it, Then let us speak of song until we sing. O rose without thorn! honeycomb without sting!
SALUTE
That heavy woman I saw -- she made you respect her for carrying so much of the earth with her.
AFTER THE WILD GEESE: A PHILOSOPHY
Alpha. They are leaving us, the companions of our soul. One small flock of wild geese this year, soon over. The whippoorwill now haunts the evening woods in a meaning not intended: as the mute memory of a voice. The meadowlark -- shameful to confess, I took their song so much for granted that I can't remember how it sounded, nor recall the feeling it gave; I only know its name was joy. Shelley's left us his "Skylark." But that poem is so hard to get into, nowadays, so easily picked apart, just as we've picked the world apart, less beautiful this year, in an autumn more than autumn that will last through spring, when once again I'll count the missing. It isn't that first robin that I dread with dread like sirens tearing through all song. Feeling can kill you. Better stuff your ears with wax, turn on the answering-machine of irony, palter with form, talk tough, think yourself cleverer than the elder bards who had earth's unspoilt music in their ears; easier still to cut the meaning-nerve, block out the voice of poets altogether, beget on speech obtuse monstrosities, on intellect confusions with brass knuckles, merge mind with meganetwork, and be done.
Beta. And if it happens, so what? Isn't earth's whole ecosystem just one great big network, each gene as selfish as a CEO? Isn't blind war the father of all things, including consciousness and visioned peace? The dice-throw has no chance of cancelling Chance, the back-thrown ripple won't reverse the stream; the snake will get its tail into its mouth and what will be will be what was before -- less beautiful in the eyes of the beholder, but then there's no beholder anymore, to make short what undoubtedly will be a drawn-out painful tale. Gamma. Shall we curse God, or make a god to curse, kicking the void as if it were a chair that did us wrong, kicking the earth, on which we stand to kick? Someone once handed me a little black box, with a lever sticking from the side; you pressed the lever, and there came a whirring, the lid came up, a hand came out and pressed the lever, and the lid clapped shut again. And so, with us, a mystery came out and was, perhaps, meant to go back again -- why should we be ungrateful to the world? Think of the primate's brain, the songbird's throat, evolving through unnumbered ages toward that apogee where mind and matter mate freely, in recognition that's unquestioned, unforced, and from their union springs Delight? Perhaps that's all eternity intended with the making of the world; and though the moment passes, yet somewhere the joy remains. Beta. Meanwhile, god knows, there's work enough to do to summarize an agonizing world, although the summary must go unheard what time the world-tree falls, amid the silence of those vast gulfs. Alpha. But till and during that end, how live? There's always Mallarmé's written, and Celan's enacted end, the freezing of oneself into a statue like Vonnegut's protagonist. Then you're out. Gamma. The game goes on, and your elimination has consequences in the game. Nobody's really out, though some have given signs -- from love, from furious irreverence -- and while we count them up, I guess they count, and while our voices call to one another, the universe is not quite dark and mute. Alpha. The earth still breathes, and we are breathing with it, our hand upon the testaments of joy, reciting still, like an asthmatic prayer: If winter comes, can spring be far behind?
1994
DIRGE
So much of what made life good In my lifetime has gone: The whippoorwill from the wood, The meadowlark from the rise, The stars from the glare-blind skies, Love's song from the lips of man.
[untitled]
Two birds were sitting on the wires. The first one sang his little tune, The other one then spoke his piece, And this went on for quite some time.
Each one stuck to his tune, nor changed A quaver for his friend's reply. I've known some human dialogues To which the aforesaid might apply.
A REPENTANCE
Two things have shown me where I went wrong, And one was good Ruth Pitter’s song, Ruth Pitter, gardener, stout and hale, Not above a pint of ale Or robust laughter at rude jest, Yet careful of the tiniest Nuance of summer, spring and fall, Attentive to the mutest call, Generous as the earth itself And quite as innocent of pelf, Aware of what the worst can do And of our lesser foibles too, A realist, yet visionary, Refreshed with hope that cannot weary, Cannot fail, because it springs From love, not hate, of present things. If I when young had learned her ways, I might have shunned the cheeseless maze Of intellectual pretention And saved myself much strain and tension And made the most of what was mine -- But she would not have me repine.
The other thing I have to tell Occurred across from a hotel Upon a sand bar that enclosed Still water where the heron dozed, Where ibises and egrets waded And stately pelicans paraded. I had come, upon my morning stroll To where, across a glittering shoal, Lagoon and gulf communicate, And sea-birds like to congregate: Skimmers with heavy lower bills Went racing over watery hills, Sandpipers skittered in and out, Grey willets stood, as if in doubt, With long curved beaks; I noticed three Oystercatchers earnestly Conferring at a rivulet; In stately dance two herons met. So many different kinds to see Together, was a joy to me, Nor did I have the wit of stone To think the gladness mine alone. Oh no! all knew in their own way The wonderfulness of the play; By air and water, sun and sand, I felt their beings with mine expand In freedom, their right element, To me but for a moment lent, Who must return to servitude C This truth for the first time I viewed. Only a glimpse, but it has lasted. Bred to vain mastery, I tasted For once the fruit of Paradise -- May I remember and grow wise.
PRIMAVERA
Can you recall, or have you divined, my sister, The times when we brought in the spring together On an earth that did not change from year to year, Or when we paced, you walking a little ahead, Into the magnetized space of a poet's dream To herald the return of the human spring?
It was in the dead of last winter, when the spring Seemed far away, that you wept because of your sister In that childhood in a bad postwar dream Of a family that was never really together, And you couldn't see much intimacy ahead After her answer to your letter last year.
Estrangements widening from year to year; In the middle, resentments always set to spring; The need to cut your losses and move ahead; The pain of having and not having a sister: All made you want to cut the nerve altogether, Seal off the room of an unproductive dream.
And then I come to you from a different dream (Though no less the product of a bad year) Of trying to put the people back together: Does it feel as though someone is trying to spring A joke, a trap on you? I'm not your sister From that past. Our kinship lies ahead
Or farther behind. I come to you with a head Unbowed, still holding the unshattered dream Of when friends honored friends with the name of sister, With ceremonies measuring out the year, Drawing up from the unpolluted spring Waters of joy for all to drink together.
Just now, when you have so much to hold together, There are all kinds of pressures to get ahead, And there is always that touchy hidden spring Of jealousy -- no one should ever dream It won't spring up like the thistle, year after year In the fields between brother and brother, sister and sister.
Still I think you're my long-sought sister. We'll get it together, I hope, this coming year. I see good times ahead This winter, as we refashion the dream of spring. CONFIGURATION IN BLACK AND WHITE AGATE
for Don
Man in the moon That was hidden in stone, By random hand Unthinkingly drawn Before the name Of man was known, Then the stone egg cracked And the image shown To my brother, who came To fetch it down.
"Yin and Yang," My brother said. But I: "There's an eye That serves for a head, And the legs are strangely Elongated, Twisted around, Serpentine, Like the walls in a laby- rinth design The Bushmen trace On cliffs oversea With sense arcane Yet no mystery: Emblem of matrix, Emblem of man, Who is both room And denizen, Who is the wall, The key, the door, Time out of mind And forevermore."
1994
SESTINA OF THE OCTOBER RAIN
There is that sound in the sound of rain outside That bids me to speak, what time I wake in sorrow Before dawn, for thinking of that lady Whose servant I would be, though she is poor And for many days I have had of her no sign That she remembers me in her distant tower.
Long have I known she is prisoned in the tower And those who would serve her must roam outside To receive on their brows, as the sign Of her favor, the tracings of stubborn sorrow, Sole livery of those who love the poor And keep faith with them and their constant lady.
In this time she has few who call her lady: The powers and principalities do so tower Over all, systematically making poor All who by will or hap remain outside Their dominion; their minions sneer at sorrow And count it folly to believe a sign.
The scored serpent, that is their only sign. They strenuously boast there is no lady It cannot charm, no tort or sorrow It cannot compensate, no lofty tower Of troth it cannot throw down. They sweep outside, Mechanically, the refuse of the poor.
They have drawn from her even the hearts of the poor, Who watch the strutting potentate's every sign, Hypnotized by a glittering outside Into spurning the counsel of the lady And flocking round the foot of the dark tower, As those whom fear and hunger rule more than sorrow.
For these in the early morning hours I sorrow, And for many a one who dared be poor Until a beam from the searchlight in the tower Fell on them; then they fled, forgetting the sign They had received, alleging fear that the lady Would draw them, with arms of remorse, inside.
The rain outside is still. I have spoken my sorrow. Lady, remember me among your poor And make my name a sign against the tower. 1994
SABBATH SONG
From my cell on the infinite spreadsheet, My address on the infinite grid, I declare that a circle is ready To welcome the banished and hid.
The circle exists if you draw it And go in and stand in there too, Proclaiming that if there's a law, it Must shelter the I and the You.
Though Time keeps on scrolling, the Sabbath Will come if we turn off the screen, And Capital has to stop grabbing In the hour when we welcome the Queen.
O tell me the name that will find you In the matrix that is not a square, The tokens and signs that remind you To look up, to awaken and care.
From my cell on the infinite spreadsheet, My address on the infinite grid, I declare that a circle is ready To welcome the banished and hid.
ON THE ROAD, DECEMBER 21
The light like some huge unfelt hand Remolds a world from dark and glare, A world with woods and snowy land And fogs suspended in the air Like boas of a sorceress With woodsmoke’s grey outfloated tress.
Now, after signs for food and fuel, An empty main street stretches wide: A cemetery, then a school With children standing round outside; Snow and white clapboard wall absorb Rose tinct from the low-lingering orb.
And now with the advancing day We're swept into the freeway stream, The rushing lanes, billboards' display Still seem to grapple in a dream With lowland fogs that creep abroad And lay white arms across our road.
At last between dimmed paper mills We glide, and down a mansioned street Whose air a sulphurous vapor fills. Perhaps -- who knows -- the scent is sweet To those it tells of their own wealth, Although not good for others' health. We find the address, we do our stint Before a group that does not warm To hear of want's predicament, Nor mind the pains we took to come. It is the time, it is the place, Or so we say as we retrace
Our road through darkness once again Past signs that could be anywhere: "Insty-Print," "Menards," "Jo-Ann Fabrics." Exhaustion, as we fare, Loosens our tongues to thoughts unplaced On the agenda of our days:
Strange dreams, and visits of the dead, Our childhood's taste of heaven and hell, Connections sought, connections fled, Old books that bound us in a spell, The fortunes of the state, in which Are bound the fates of all and each.
How will it end, the enormous plot That wraps the ball on which we roll, Where each is but a pixel-dot In the vast portrait of the whole? Perhaps even with the threads we spin In dark-bound speech, new turns begin.
1994
NO PLACE TO STAND
For a woman alone the world is cold, You've started thinking about getting old, You work long hours for minimal pay, And the prices keep rising day by day. And there's no place to stand, No one to lend a helping hand, Just winds and shifting sand.
Ten years ago you had no fear, You thought you were headed for a great career. Love and inspiration set the world aglow, So much to do, so much to know. Now there's no place to stand . . .
You have seen the women who sleep in the street, These are the women no one wants or needs. You hear from the Third World that millions are dying, When you think about it you feel like crying. And there's no place to stand . . .
And now there's a man you think you might fit, You keep hoping and hoping that he'll commit, He says, "You're too serious, it's all a play,” And when a sister calls he pulls you away. And there's no place to stand . . .
Sister, I've been thinking again About the holy women and the holy men Who made poverty their sacred vow, Knowing the spirit would help somehow. They said G-d's our place to stand And our G-d is a helping hand Amid the winds and the shifting sand.
And brother, if you want the world to get better You've got to learn to love a woman and let her Be true to the spirit and true to the need Of a world the spirit wants to house and feed, For we've got to make a stand, Got to join our helping hands, We can't build on shifting sands.
THE TREE (a Tu Bishvat prayer for 10 voices)
Keter/Ratzon (Crown/Will). Within the Ein-Sof, the Infinite unknown, quickens the Will that there should be a world, purpose that is the Crown of all creation.
Chokhmah/Abba (Wisdom/Father). Out of the Will burgeons the seed of Wisdom, infinitesimal point, holding a vast potential still unconscious of itself, First-Father, whom we summon with the thought of the Name too high and hidden for our breathing.
Binah/Imma/Teshuvah (Understanding/Mother/Return). From Wisdom's arcane point unfolds the matrix Understanding, Mother of all things, shape of all shapes united in one being, Palace of the universe inscribed with the name of the maker, Elohim; soul's birthplace and the goal of all Returning, from her emerge the seven lower spheres:
Hesed (Lovingkindness) Lovingkindness, Generosity, spring of Compassion that is always flowing, impulse of abundance pouring forth beyond all bounds.
Din/Gevurah (Judgment/Power). Judgment, shadow of the Mother's structure, Power that begins in self-restraint.
Tiferet (Beauty). Beauty, synthesis of love and judgment, balance of freedom and necessity, Splendor of truth.
Netzach (Victory/Eternity). Steadfastness rooted in Eternity.
Hod (Glory; Acknowledgment) Glory springing from Acknowledgment, vesture of recognition and acclaim. Tzaddik/Yesod (Righteous One; Foundation) The Righteous Individual, Foundation of the world, lover and partner of --
Malkhut/Shekhinah (Kingdom/Indwelling Presence). Shekhinah, holiness of the Creation with highest purpose crowned, Presence among us in the Community, upon the Earth.
All. Ten primal Numbers of the universe, ten Spheres of energy, ten waves of thought, ten fiery blossoms on one holy tree, ten limbs of the mystic form of human being. G-d who are One in all Your varying shapes, plant this tree in our midst and in our hearts, and make us fruitful in the coming year.
Note: Tu Bishvat, the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat (January-February), is the Jewish “New Year of the Trees.” The Kabbalistic rabbis connected this with the “Tree” of the Sefirot.
ON A LENGTH OF RAYON CLOTH FROM INDONESIA
I see fire-filled crevasses that divide Between the firmaments of unknown worlds. I see despairing faces on the tide.
I see rayed suns, ringed planets, moons that ride Horizons inexhaustibly unfurled. I see fire-filled crevasses that divide
While rickrack bridges seek the other side, Would grapple what the centrifuge has whirled. I see despairing faces on the tide,
Mute protoplasmic entities that glide Rapidly toward the edge where they are hurled Into fire-filled crevasses that divide
This cloth, this aqua-umber-puce landslide Of forms No-thought impetuously has willed. I see despairing faces on the tide, Mouths gaped open showing no inside, Eyes that are bubbles bursting in the swirl -- I see! Fire-filled crevasses yawn, divide Despairing faces racing with the tide.
1995
*
RECONSTRUCTION
In times when violence and corruption threaten To dissolve the world back to when it was not, The poet still keeps faith with G-d's creation -- It is a mournful, yet a blessed lot.
The souls of all the multitudes that perished, Of all who live coerced and compromised, The shapes of lovely things no longer cherished, The calls of birds missed from the emptying skies --
All in the listening mind convene, assemble, Seeking themselves, seeking the world they lost, Groping for kinship, striving to re-member A wholeness where each thing once had its post,
Seeking a design -- perhaps of action, even. The poet molds the vessel they command, And fills it with their wine, and toward the living Bears it with resolute though trembling hand.
Drink and behold: a sign, a flag that flutters Over the stronghold of the heart, still free, A new stone brought to the rebuilding structure, A greening leaf on a renewing tree.
ELISHEVA TO MIRIAM
I knew you, my kinswoman, by your step on the threshold and because I had known you must come; and I knew for whom you'd be weeping because my attendants had heard something and I had made them tell me. The senses of age are faint, but the heart of age, knowing much, needs only faint cues. So there is nothing wonderful in my knowing. Not like that other time.
That day, when I looked from my window down the wadi and saw the grey donkey jerking slowly upward with the cloaked form bent forward, its face hidden, I knew who came -- you and the one who came with you -- by the leaping of the one who dwelt in me already quick with divination. I was astonished then at the joy that opened my mouth to sing -- the joy that was in me, yet not mine.
But I was almost used to astonishment. It had begun that day when Zecharyah came back from Jerusalem not speaking, dumbstruck, and bore me down, and thrust into me as if the seed were the word he could no longer speak. It had been years since we'd felt much desire; our barrenness had planted disappointment between us, and we no longer talked much either -- the sages say a man shouldn't, and he was very religious. So was I. He was a priest in Jerusalem, had that pride, and I too was of priestly kin. There was no one who wouldn't eat at my house, there were always young brides to be settled, children to be helped into the world, the poor to be fed and clothed, the dead to be washed. And he was a good husband in many ways: never reproached me, could have taken another wife, but did not. It was a full life, except just that hollowness at the core; I filled it with resignation, but for him, I guess, some sap of prayer must have risen there still, though he was too worn out to believe in the answer, at first, when it came.
And I, at first, did not want others to know. I was ashamed -- not of pregnancy in middle age but because the first thing I thought of when I knew what was what was the look I'd see on the faces of the neighbors who had so enjoyed pitying me, all these years, and I knew, all of a sudden, how much I'd hated it and how much I would enjoy seeing that look, and I thought, I am not worthy.
Only you knew, who had no way of knowing, you with the greater miracle, the greater gift. And the babe leapt in my womb, and I sang, and I felt the joy within me becoming mine, and blessing you, I too became blessed. And then you spoke: "My soul magnifies the Lord" -- And it seems to me still that the joy of that moment will last forever, although it is no longer mine, nor yours perhaps.
Well, all has turned out as it must, no doubt. We gave him the name "God-is-gracious," Zecharya and I, without speaking together. And then he spoke. From what he said, I saw that he believed that through Yochanan our God would help his people against their oppressors.
I had almost forgotten the oppressors, living within a globe of light I saw like dim shapes the thoughts of my silent husband and now and then a shadow that seemed like an intention of God, but till he broke the silence, these things had no names. It was then the first misgiving stole back into my heart, the first sliver of fear, though I said nothing.
Who knows for what our gifts are given us? Yochanan was a beautiful child, a beautiful boy and man, tall, with flashing eyes and a passionate heart, who could not believe God made the world to lie beneath the boot-heel of the Romans, their corrupt and lustful collaborators. What could they have done, being what they were. And what else could have happened to them, given the world as it is. When what happened, happened three years ago, I was glad that Zecharyah had died still clutching his fierce hope, believing. I do not know if he could have learned to live, like me, without belief. I have learned it, Miriam, as will you. Your eyes will get used to absence, as to darkness. Then you'll see that something of the light remains in little things: a look not quite like his, a saying that he would have laughed to hear with the triumphant laugh of one who finds a truth, or a fine blade that he can hone. Things that aren't for us, and yet they are, and that we see them, is the best in us. And beyond that even, a tree, a weed, even a stone by the road, they speak to you, once you've known fruitfulness; that stays. What God meant by it, is another question. Who knows what God means. I see things ahead that I don't like to speak of. Miriam, our sons -- I think they won't be forgotten. What they were cannot be killed so easily. But it can be distorted. People will go on reshaping what comes to them by grace into what they want or think they need. That is their way, Miriam. What they were to us, perhaps a few will guess. Perhaps a few will even grasp, as much as we did, the joy that moved us, then, at that meeting, different from this one: moved us and moved on and never stays long enough for anyone to tell what it is.
SUPERFLUOUS PEOPLE
We are the superfluous people. We are the unionized workers replaced by robots or slaves, the secretaries ousted by computers. We are the people of color, the over-50, the people with disabilities, the ones who don't belong on the team. We are the displaced homemakers, the parentless children, the partnerless parents, the poets without readers, the teachers without students, the students who can't afford college, the graduates who didn't get hired, the scientists without grants, the executives who got downsized.
Why is this? Isn't there enough work to do in the world? Aren't there enough stomachs to be filled, enough limbs to be clothed, enough babes to be rocked, enough children and youth to be taught, enough neighborhoods to be beautified, enough trees to be planted, enough fields to be tilled, enough songs to be sung, enough stories to be told, enough riddles to be solved, enough wounds to be healed, enough houses and cities to be built right?
But the market does not ask these questions. The market cannot ask what people need. It can only ask what those who have the money want. Only community can ask what people need.
And time may be short. As slave labor replaces free, as machines replace people, as large corporations swallow up small ones and cut their staffs and buy up the press and the government, I tell you Spaceship Earth is flying with a shrinking crew, a skeleton crew with skeleton motives, and the rest of us are not passengers. We are ballast. And we feel the moment edging closer when we could be pushed off.
But let's keep our heads, my friends. Let us put them together. Together let us learn to ask the question what we, the people, need.
We are the superfluous people. Nobody needs us except ourselves. But if you'll say you need me I'll say I need you. And we can start.
1995
MUTABILITY
All that seems constant in the affairs of men Is but a sandbar in the stream of time: Custom and place, and what was wisdom then, Arts, now ridiculous, that were sublime, Truths that appear self-evident no more, Gifts hardly recognized until found missing, Diseases grown to mock their ancient cure, A crop of curses up from last year's blessing - We lived and throve upon a flowery isle, And lo! its bank is shelving day by day; The little goods, the little faiths we pile Against the cutting wave, are swept away; Nothing we have that will bear clinging to Save God, who constantly creates the world anew.
FORGIVENESS BEFORE SPRING
A white-winged hawk is wheeling in the sky over stark branches, fields left bare and brown by melting snow. The sun, halfway to noon, throws the winged shadow on the sandstone scarp. The stream is free and has resumed its long refrain heard through the season of the living and afterward a while, as now. How briefly the grip of death is loosened from the land age teaches us to know, time's lesson driven home, again, again. But let the crow be still, the oriole once more alight and sing, and I am ready to forget, remember, and be again where light and life are all.
THE BREAD OF OUR EARLY YEARS (a ceremony)
Here, in the space we have built with our words, where my story is a stone and your story is a stone, in the temple of a common listening ear, where your voice has echoed and my voice has echoed, we sit down now and prepare to break bread.
This is the bread of my early years, the dark rye, the roti, the tortilla, the pizza, This is the bread from my mother's kitchen, the pita, the matso, the corncake, the slice of Gardner's. This is the bread I ate with my laughter among kin, this is the bread I ate with my tears among strangers. I break it for you. Eat. And yours too I will taste. I will taste the tears you shed among strangers. I will taste your laughter among kin. I will smell the smells of your mother's kitchen. I will feel the hunger of your early years.
In a vision I saw a great tree with wide-spreading branches And beneath the tree were many circles of humans arranged in one great circle. At the center of every circle there was a fire on which they cooked their food, a fire that warmed them and cheered them at night, a fire to which they sang songs. And every now and then, someone would go out from one circle and walk around the other circles, with gifts of song and story and food, listening to their songs and stories and eating of their food. And all they ate was fruits of one tree. And all knew this.
Therefore we bless, we ask a blessing on all who share this food, on the earth that brought it forth, on all who labored that it might come to our mouths. May what is sacred to you be honored by me, may what is sacred to me be honored by you, and may this be sacred.
FLUTE SONG
I have been a king upon the river Nile, gliding in stately funeral barge downstream, my limbs all linen-wound, and in my veins an ichor that precluded pulse and breath; and yet I was aware that in the prow the spirit that had guided me, my ka, stood and steered, and sang from time to time with a voice like that which vessels make when wind blows over them and they cannot but sigh. And other barges moved upon the stream, each with its passenger silent and supine, its upright singing steersman, all whose voices made up one instrument of many pipes played on by one in desultory dream. And thus through many a change of day and night we glided on, till near the river mouth we came to port. I do not know what helpers descended to the waterside, took up each bier, conveyed it past the fertile land to its predestined tomb and laid it down, then sealed the entry-stone and went away. Now each reposed amid the pictured walls which to the unbreathed air rehearsed forever the tale of all that each had been and done -- Yet not confined, for wakefulness had gone into a talisman worn round the neck of each one’s ka. And now the kas assembled in silent conference, and took the way back to the city which our death had emptied. From shrine to shrine they moved, performing rites to cleanse it of the plague. Somehow there were new people in the city, and they lived, yet they could see the kas and heed the signs they gave. So all was well within the city for many ages yet, as from the breastplates of our undying kas, we woke and watched.
A CANTO FOR MISS N.
We used to have our laughs about Miss N.: With jutting chest, cream skin, long legs, she was so obviously designed to capture men
and didn't care what ripples she might cause by crossing those same long fantastic legs while sitting on her desk. Yet there were laws
she recognized. Called "Wuthering Heights" the dregs, its value system "skewed," which made no sense to Beth and me in crinolined glad-rags,
garb of our snobbish 'fifties innocence in love with the idea of such a passion and loath to put a price upon romance.
By then I think she was already flashing the diamond that declared her safe in port (whereas our dreams of love were to come crashing).
How much she grasped of literary art we used to doubt; yet when she taught we were inspired; and it's to her I owe my start.
For one day I was moved to show to her certain cramped lyrics based on nature scenes, and she in turn was prompted to confer
with Miss N. of the senior English team, an intellectual heavy. Then to me Miss N. brought down their verdict: "In your teens
you should bring out a volume. Meanwhile, see Dickinson and Millay, and also learn from Untermeyer's great anthology."
You may imagine that I did not spurn this good advice, but swallowed it as swift as folk can seize on that for which they yearn.
Thus I became apprentice to the craft of truth the Anchoress practiced all alone, while with Millay I felt the gravestone lift
from off my throat, caught the ascending tone of one who joins, at last, the audible choir, who gives the greeting and is welcomed home
into that company which Untermeyer assembles there, the lesser and the great, Santayana with Yeats, and kind Ruth Pitter
with Hopkins and with Pound, whom well I hate for that he was the enemy of all ruth, and the power he served prevailed, so that too late
I came to join that party. The mean-mouthed detractors of Millay held the positions; and where you can't tell your emotional truth
the way it wants to sound, the consolations of feminism are cold. Often to me it's felt like part of the same inquisition.
Yes, curious things occur in “herstory,” but enough; we all know this is hell. Hypocrite reader! you, with power to be
witness or censor! Stop a moment, fill a cup with kindness. Drink with me a toast to Dickinson and Millay, aye, and Teasdale,
to all the nameless whose sweet song is lost, to those most truly tortured -- Plath, Celan --, to Pushkin's and Akiba's holy ghosts,
to Shelley's hope for the race of wo-and-man in the poetic word, that pits its strength against the wheel, to the last; and to Miss N.
For, despite all the "doctors and the saints" of high-toned evil, the belief she knew something, has given me wind to go this length;
I've thought of her in bad and good times too. May these years have afforded her the best. I hope her skin stayed smooth, her man stayed true,
and many children rise and call her blest.
ON ATTENDING A PERFORMANCE OF BEETHOVEN'S 'EROICA'
Enchanted in thine air benign and shrewd -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
If only I could hear it like Millay -- Is it because I cannot close my eyes Or, shutting them, cannot quite exorcise The spectre of that murdering popinjay Who made a mess of Europe, paved the way For worse and worst? I see a galvanized Puppet on the podium organize The dying; and it is too late to say That some mirage of magnanimity Betrayed him into celebrating might. More musical, no doubt, I could take flight And find the dustless sphere of harmony, But being myself, in this place, now, I hear Only the strains of triumph, too close, too clear.
SELF-APPROBATION
At the last judgment’s bar I will cheerfully say: “I have always admitted to liking Millay.”
A HUMBLE COIN OF PRAISE
Who ever could be bitter while they can read Ruth Pitter?
FORWARD
Citizen, as you make your way along the square that holds your Capitol, I pray you pause at that corner where, within the frame of a descending street, Mendota shines, its waters glinting free to the far shore under the summer sun. Look outward, then look up at me, who stand beside you there in the image of a tall, majestic-robed woman fixed forever in mid-stride, one hand extended, raised, as if to give a blessing even as it points the way, the other holding to my side a banner -- almost superfluous, as I myself am here the standard, yet by me protected. For I have many names. I am the form by which men have depicted Liberty, Justice, Wisdom, the Spirit of the Whole; but here a woman sculpted me, to stand for women's right and voice in government. Yet, standing for myself, I stand no less for all. For where our voice is heard, there too the poor are heard, the outcast, and the song of truth may rise above the clash of power; and where our form is reverenced, respect keeps order in good will and fellowship. Stand, Citizen, a little while, and gaze into this stern aspiring countenance, and seek for its reflection in your soul, before I am hidden from the light of day and in my place an emblem sit that would be honorable were it in my presence, but if it should displace me, would become a badge of shame on government affixed. Think on this, and relight the fire that would have cast me in enduring bronze, to stand here, not foe, but friend, to the guardians of the State while me they honor, and my right defend.
HOME TOWN FUNERAL
They read it in the paper, They heard it on the phone: In the hospital on Tuesday An elder has gone home. Her kinfolk and her neighbors And friends from years gone by Came crowding to the funeral home To say a last goodbye.
She never went to college, She did not travel far, She had her share of sorrows, But they did not make her hard. Her door was always open For a neighbor or a friend -- With a coffee cup and a comfy joke Pleasant hours with her they'd spend.
There were people at the service Who had known her from the start And travelled with her to the place Where all good friends must part. Now they sit around the living-room Of her home for fifty years Talking of old times and the rain outside, Eating food they'd brought to share.
And we who have been wanderers Upon the face of earth, Who do not know a single soul In the cities of our birth, We have seen the world, we have made our play For fortune and for fame, To learn that what is cast away Cannot be bought again. ON A GIFT OF FLOWERS, FOLLOWED BY TWO BOOKS OF QUOTATIONS
for Don, Tammye, Jeremiah and Sarah
Among the things bards can desire To keep up their internal fire, A book with wisdom of the ages Stored upon closely-printed pages, Is excellent; to find two such, Is like the manna, twice as much Of which was given on Sabbath eve, That on the Seventh all might leave Their daily toil of gathering To hear what higher spheres might sing. Yet no less fair a gift were those Flowers, purple, white and rose, Which as the books’ mere herald came: Like joys that do not ask for fame They gladdened eyes and made their room The vessel of their rare perfume. Thus all that’s worth remembering May from some heedless present spring; Of moments lived for their own sake Their choicest songs the poets make. Thus, of what makes a poet’s heaven The sign and substance you have given, And shown me, too, the knowing heart That chooses gifts with such rare art. Therefore may all of you be blessed With what to you is loveliest, With happy days that leave behind Memories that feed the mind On honeydew through winter days And win the soul to lasting praise.
AFTER EQUINOX
The summer clothes are put away down in the basement and the dark. Fall clothes make soberer display -- the summer clothes are put away. The geese have risen. Yesterday you heard their disappearing bark. The summer clothes are put away down in the basement and the dark. MANDALA, MADISON
One Shabbat when I was clamped in mental unrest from relating to those with whom my karma had bound me a generation after the great destruction, I went into the museum to watch the Tibetan monks construct a mandala from grains of colored sand. In the atrium a cordoned square, inside it a square gray table where three or four monks were working -- it was almost finished, they were just doing the border. With a conical silver tube, about the size of the yad with which you point to the place in the Torah but having a scoop on the large end, they'd scoop the sand from plastic cups on a table outside the cordon, then tilt it point down and with a small silver rod rub a corrugated patch on the side of the tube, making a slight rasping sound, setting up a vibration so that the grains came out of the tube one by one and they could fill in the intricate details of the design. They used bright primary colors, I found the effect at first almost a bit garish, the pictorial code of course was unfamiliar. The monks were not chanting, you could ask them questions, they were working matter-of-factly like any workmen, but they didn't know much English, though one did say the design was called "The Palace of the Five Deities." A center, circular, with a lotus flower, this, the monk said, represented the Buddha (there was a long Sanskrit name I did not catch), and around this, four wings in a similar arrangement to the four wings round our Capitol rotunda. Only that is gray stone whereas these were in strong bright colors, one red, one green, one yellow, one white, they stood, as the monk explained to me, for the four directions, and probably for many things besides. And the whole (this explanation was in the paper) was intended as an exercise promoting the enlightenment of all beings, to which this Buddha, whose quality is compassion, is dedicated. I stood there among a crowd of twenty or thirty Madisonians, familiar types if not faces, who formed a "rose of gazing" (that Rilke phrase came to my mind) around the cordoned square, and I thought of Dante's white celestial rose, of the rose among thorns, the Shekhinah, of Black Elk's four-rayed herb of Understanding, and then of our coming Messiah, the son of David -- as the colors began to speak of light I greatly desired "the enlightenment of all beings" and would have liked to forget the sword of David. But I saw that the monks (they seemed young) each wore a pin, gold with dark red enamel, like their robes, and the pins said: "Students for a Free Tibet" and history rushed back in like the dark of Mitsraim and then I was Arjuna, poised at the edge of battle, with the charioteer explaining why he must fight, though I heard, as well, the dismal echo of history to all such words, and to this no answer. And yet for a few hours the next day my heart was fortified, I could meet the others with more compassion, less fear, and heard the words, "I shall dwell in the house of the Lord" as a sympathetic chord from the harp of David. By then the monks had swept the mandala up (that the intricate work may not create more attachments like our scriptures, our scripts, our past-patterns, my art?) and thrown the sand, with chanting, into the lake -- I was not there to see it. But now I pray to the Jewel in the Lotus, to That which dwells in the Rose, to the supernal Point whence the Rose is projected: Hoka-hey! Shalom! Om! Wherever You are: gather us and establish us in compassion and teach your seekers the just measure of struggle for heart's fortress, the enlightenment of all beings, the homelands of freedom, and the circle of the Earth.
1996
AE FITE SONG
Times are getting hard And the world is getting harder; Machines are getting smart, So the people must get smarter. If I can’t keep pace What am I to do? Will there be a place For someone like you?
Living is a gift, And each one is a giver; Love can make no rift In the flowing of its river. Somehow we must find The task for every hand, The question for each mind, A place for all to stand.
Look around you now – Doesn’t everybody know it? Only question’s how Do we find the time to show it? Let distraction cease, Listen, think and speak – Each one has a piece Of the answer that we seek.
All of us are real, And the rest is just illusion. We can stop the wheel If we wake up from confusion. Be our labor blest, Wise our song and play, Calm our hours of rest, Hope rise with each day.
THE FLOWERS OF EVIL
The flowers of evil burgeon bushily everywhere. To find them you need not be clever. The trick these days is to discover A sprig of innocence here and there.
CLONE
From an adult, whom we suppose consenting, yea, eager for an issue all its own -- not darkly mingled from unknown components of self and other -- we extract a cell and from that cell a core, which we implant in someone's emptied egg, likewise supposed consenting, from pure self-negating love or need of cash. The single-parent egg is then ensconced within a womb (consenting -- see above). In nine months (with controlled nutrition and external stimuli) out pops your man-made man. Still immature, and there are still some challenges ahead. Historically, as you know, the infant's development has been facilitated by someone in the role of nurse or mammy; such nurses carry various superstitions; But what with television and computers, with the experience of the primate lab and, indeed, the modern day-care center, we may with cautious optimism say a virtual mammy is on the horizon. We think the idea has unlimited market potential. Think of all the women who'd swoon at the idea they could carry a lifelike reproduction of their idol! Think of the sports world betting on the futures of stars reborn! Think of the perfect work-force -- team players all! Think of how many heirs, exactly like himself, each robber-baron would like to make! Think of the wars those heirs would generate -- a sonic boom in weapons! And here the sky is literally the limit. We'll make men fit to live in space, to breathe canned air, and eat their own recycled dung -- nothing will be withheld from us that we propose to do. Someone there have a problem? Whose image? What's that -- poetry or something?
*
IN MEMORIAM MENACHEM FITTERMAN
He never told the same tale twice, although He'd tell them by the dozen and the score, On Sabbath noons nothing could stop the flow, And he would still be talking at the door Of things he'd had to witness and endure From the moment when Abaddon's engine Sucked him up in Poland, till the hour It spat him forth from China; and between. An Odyssey that never found a form His talk was. I am left with just this sense Of one vast story, moving, wider than the steppes, And his eyes' gleam, like a candle in the storm. That stream of speech has found the sea at last -- O Rabbi! we have heard you; may you rest.
TILL THE LAST
The flowers that her distant children send her my mother always saves until the last bud has opened palely and then faded among dark greens and baby’s breath. I might prefer to toss them while I can remember the flash of the original display without the bleached-out puce of ghostly lilies interposing. But she cannot bear not to give such late and lesser things their chance. I look at these decayed arrangements and see my life, from which the prides and joys one by one have shriveled and been plucked, but she would have me live it. Till the last.
CENSORSHIP THEN AND NOW
The Victorians were not very free. They were censored, unlike you and me. Their lines had to rhyme, Or at least to keep time, And they could not use profanity.
Yet they were, with respect to a thing Or two, on a much longer string: Could be noble, judgmental, Abstract, sentimental, Archaic; could preach, teach and sing.
THE INTERNET
The Internet is very draining, So many voices far and near Arguing, coming on, complaining! The Internet is very draining. You don’t know if it’s clear or raining, You live outside the atmosphere. The Internet is very draining. So many voices, far and near.
THE MISSING LETTER
I tried to write the Hebrew alphabet The other day, and counted twenty-one. What was the letter that I could not get? At last it came to me: the missing one Was Tzaddik! That this sign of all could shun My swift recall, consumes me with regret. I could no more forget it than the sun; Only, for now, it is too deeply set.
BEAR STATION
Up there where the sea before occluding heaves a queasy blanket of white breccia, the pine-trees hunch with seaward sides denuded, the human populace hold out in wretched prefab huts and trailers, and the bears like glaciers that have picked up speed and purpose come lumping over the tundra at the end of that division of inclemency which is, for want of warmer, given summer’s name; and it is not good luck to stand, even behind barred doors, where they may be coming through. All which should not unnerve us who generally have noted that life will take what it can get. Any terms at all.
PAINTED FEATHER
Thanks to a painted feather, I can hear the song of the quetzal beside the waterfall.
JOHN CLARE
John Clare! How did they let you get so far, Or what harsh dice assigned you to this star?
Beside the hedge, through field and moor you strayed, Catching the tunes your quiet voice replayed.
To you the world was not man’s stage alone: The life of every creature was its own.
The wren that sheltered from the thunderstorm, The sheep in winter huddling to keep warm,
The hissing badger’s brave but losing war, The skulking dog unfed at gypsies’ fire,
To you were fellow-earthlings, and not game: You had the hunter’s eye, but not his aim.
On morning’s dewy light and sunset’s wonders You seemed to feed, oblivious of hunger,
Loving the earth that fed you ill, condemned To cruel toil, and madness in the end.
“This threshing-floor that makes our kind so fierce”, As Dante says, drew from you only tears.
John Clare, John Clare, how did you come so far, Or what mischance assigned you to this star?
LOCKED PROBLEM
In the desk drawer I found but these: Keys without locks And locks without keys.
What is it makes The heart to freeze About keys without locks And locks without keys?
Never a night Without a morn, Seldom a rose Without a thorn,
Never a peach Without a stone, Seldom a lecture Without a yawn,
But plenty of rocks Without any trees, And lots of locks Without any keys,
And many a foxhole Without a fox, And scads of keys Without any locks.
Now go ask the prince And go ask the page, Go ask the fool And go ask the sage,
Go ask the wicked, Go ask the good, The scholar, the preacher, The witch in the wood,
The Man in the Moon And the wind in the trees: What is the reason And purpose of these Keys without locks And locks without keys?
I always have been on the Internet. Before they had the chips, the ISP’s, I’ve always, always had you in my head.
Once for two hours I sat in jail, and read the walls and bench, and scratched there, “Thoughts are free.” I always have been on the Internet,
When I got up and when I went to bed, Sitting at home or walking down the street, I’ve always, always had you in my head,
I’ve heard your words and answered what you said, known you were there although I could not see. I always have been on the Internet.
That server can’t go down, though war and dread sever our ties and slice the world in three. I’ve always, always had you in my head
and you (unknowing?) stood me in good stead. You’ve fought it, but we’re branches of one tree. I always have been on the Internet. I’ve always, always had you in my head.
TO THE MAN I SHOULD HAVE MARRIED
I'll always wonder, you know, what happened to you.
Did you miss the flight to the city where we were to meet, maybe at the baggage claim when the bags didn't come? Or maybe you were to see me standing beside the rent-a-car desk and be struck by my pensive manner. Was the flight canceled?
Did you have this dream of a dark woman trying to speak to you in an unknown language, did you remember her face for a while anyway?
Did you run through three wives of identical designer appearance, did you fall in love with a man, a guru, a computer, did you marry someone cute, submissive, efficient, realize after 10 years you were bored and start having affairs with your students, retreat into work, concentrate on the kids?
Could our paths have crossed at some point C say at a party where you were the star of the evening and I was stuck in a corner and afterwards you realized you'd meant to come over and talk and you thought another time?
I recall no such incident. My minds still keeps projecting scenarios where we meet. Say I'm a volunteer at Hospice, like Evangeline, and you're brought in and our eyes meet and for one moment we both know we existed,
if it still matters.
SPRING SONG
How sweet to the ear is the robin’s first song In late March when the days just begin to be long, When the air is still cold but the sun’s rays feel strong, Then how sweet to the ear is the robin’s first song.
All the folk whom sad winter left weary and wan And who thought that the dark days would never be done Now rejoice to observe that the last snow is gone And listen with pleasure to the robin’s first song.
As yet no green grassblade has shown in the lawn, The fields and the waysides are barren and brown, But hope springs in the heart when you wake in the dawn To the clear gliding notes of the robin’s first song.
Oh soon the bright blossoms these bare boughs will throng And summer will come, for which we all long, But of all joys of nature the sweetest belong, I sometimes believe, to the robin’s first song.
END OF THE TIGER LILIES
The tiger lilies' firefall is ended, That for three-quarters of a moon or more, Till finally doused by yesterday's downpour, Had made the back edge of the garden splendid. All but the topmost trumpets have surrendered. Untidy blossoms, not one in a score Symmetrical, made such a fine uproar That summer’s doom appeared so long suspended.
We're moving now toward a foregone conclusion. Dahlia centers try to cache the sun, Marigolds' bitter scent foretells the close, Zinnias carry on without illusion. In synagogue the warning note is blown. The catalogues come out with winter clothes.
SONNET IN SHAKY HANDWRITING
Things change shape in motion, Einstein says. I, late a solid citizen of Here, Am becoming goods in transit, the dear Departed of the ones who stayed in place, A visitation to those toward whom the race Carries me, and to myself a mere Hint of reflection in the window-mirror, Successive landscapes’ thin if constant glaze.
But wasn’t this in fact always the case, When one came to think of it, as no believer In any thing that claimed a stable base, Too conscious of the truth of road and river? The moment of transition C a release, A coming home to Nowhere and to Never. WINTER GARDEN
My mother raises paperwhites within- doors, now that snow has claimed the ground outside. The bronze-clad bulbs on beds of pebbles ride, each one sending up a single thin finger, white-sheathed, then the blades’ twin green clinging together while the sheath grows wide, pregnant with the bud rising to divide into six-seven stars. Paper-white. Pristine.
Meanwhile the gray clouds make the snow appear like newsprint. Car tracks mark up its expanse as headlines mar the peace of morningtide. The scent is like a music that can hear itself, only itself. Narcotic. Incense. Pervading, intimating: these abide.
OLD MOON IN WINTER
Early one winter morning I looked to the eastern sky Where the dawn was seeping upward through green and steely blue, And beyond the leafless branches, on the hem of receding dark, Hung the shape the old moon has when it returns to the new.
Worn to a sliver, it shone with a stronger clearer light Than even the full moon gave. And within, by a sheen Like a globe of crystal held against a black velvet drape, The obscured form of the moon was still to be seen.
The whole disc, lit with the fainter farther light Of the unknowable stars, not the sun that makes up our days. And I thought of you, diminished, diminishing, yet all You ever were. Shall I find you still in your darkest phase?
THE BARD LIADAN, OR PERHAPS ONE OF THE RISHIS, CONSIDERS THE INFORMATION OF A TIME-TRAVELER
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars But in ourselves, that we are underlings. -- Shakespeare.
Let me be certain I have understood you. You tell me that you have no guilds of bards pledged to convene and sing to one another in sacred measures of what has transpired between the full and dark, the dark and full, each offering the fragments of their vision until an image of the hour take shape, which the most skilled then set before the people to put them on their guard against the guileful and rectify the laws and names of things? That poets vie in speaking idle words, promising nothing, making nothing happen? That for their labors most have no reward save to be printed on a page perused by none, except their rivals studious of the judge’s mind, that they too may be printed? Ochone, the harp of concord thus untuned and bardcraft made into a trade for fools! It is the dark age you must live in surely, the age our eldest bards foretold last solstice in such a cold as no one could recall.
But, traveler, if you hear me, as I you, And if your well of wit is not quite dry, will you not now return and tell your comrades the time has come to win word’s honor back, reforge the canon and the sacred forms, reconvene the counsels of the wise, send forth your strongest voices to beseech the people to return to reason’s measure? The words of all who say so will be deeds, worthy of space in the memory of the gods; the rest is vanity, the trash of time which time will sweep away.
STAR OF WONDER, STAR OF BLIGHT
Look to the eastern sky. No need to point ‑‑ That point of light sheds radiance across the moon and other stars. That is no mere material sun, made small by aeons' distance. Out of some world of radiance and grace this light is shed into our world to make it the spouse of one who never will forsake it.
Look to the western sky. What is that black Speck? Nothing that flies. It is not moving. Yet all our sky seems to be moving toward it, light rushing toward, into, that spaceless hole. Light earthly candles, or we shall not see. What is this dream from which we cannot waken? O G‑d, our G‑d, are we utterly forsaken?
*
IT’S NOT FAIR!
Erblinde schon heut -- Paul Celan
Sometimes it seems as if I’m going blind, there is so little left that I can see. The ads and most all programs on TV are Trojan horses sent to trash the mind. I don’t watch the damned thing, but try and find a conversation anywhere that’s free of fallout. To the countryside you flee along a gauntlet, sign- and billboard-lined.
Sometimes it seems the only place to go is back in time. But, going back, you know how it came out, and why. The roots were there. It’s like what Dante said: after the end there will be nothing left for the condemned to think about. I’m innocent! It’s not fair!
A MISGIVING
I do not trust a grief that will not speak in simple words, that can't forget itself and revert, like the woman in childbed finally screaming in Yiddish, to those formulas we laugh at, old hat, till the day the old hats land on us, and fit. What's grief for if not to break us down to what we share with the red-eyed man whose chair is the angle between sidewalk and wall, the crimp-haired woman leafing her book of inspirational verses in the crackerbox house, the abandoned child crooning to itself a dirge that will not interest the vultures that will shortly strip its bones; and what is poetry for if not to make a sanctuary in the mind for these, which if they could enter (and isn't it our business to get them in?), they'd recognize their grief laid out fine, in the right words they couldn't reach, but that were there all along.
TRANSIT
Frozen in headlong plunge toward our pine-tree, the green-white lentil in its trailing shroud stands, as four thousand years ago it stood above the wondering Sumerian crowd. (And when you next look down, what will you see?)
My father edges out onto the drive and gazes, leaning on four-legged cane, but blindness at the center of his sight swallows the portent; he goes back inside. (And how long till his like are seen again?)
SUBTEXT
what I sing no one must hear where I dwell no one must see what I am no one must know
echo to my whisper, low answer to my murmured “Dear”, shadow, HENCE! I know not thee!
COMMENCEMENT
Four years of drudgery allayed with drink Have brought you, on this morning, to the brink Of adult life, armed with the wisdom we, The many-cuts-surviving faculty, Have shown and taught, to wit: cover your rear; See that your true designs do not appear; Stick at nothing lest you lose your place; If white stags cross your path, do not give chase. But now medieval gowns and mortarboards Move our deans to open their word-hoards, And shining thoughts like ceremonial swords Flash in their unused splendor, never aging, To take the awkwardness off the occasion. Yours is the world! It’s come a bit unstuck, But see what you can do with it. Good luck!
MY MOTHER’S WAR
The spring after my parents wed, They were still groom and bride, Together they drove up to view The New England countryside, And all their brothers, two and two, Came along for the ride.
My mother’s brothers, Rick and Hal, And my father’s, Mike and Ron, Gazed at the blossoming apple trees Under the vernal sun, And my mother gazed at them and thought: All these beautiful young men!
Soon after that the war broke out. My father stayed at home C He was working for the government C But the draft board’s notice came To Hal and Rick and Mike and Ron, And none came back the same, she said, None came back the same.
FOR HADASSAH
About the summer solstice rite where at the climax of the drum full moon unclouded and came out just when one struck a golden gong
you told me on the phone; and I the black octagonal lacquered box whose inlaid circle interlocks two nacreous birds C one earth one sky C
one hovering, one stretching up, reversible, the self-same shape, described for you. We shall not save,
as it now appears, the world, although each gave it her own whirl,
but still these gifts to see and give
MEDUSA
Medusa, whom the gods had put a curse on, had a lot of people petrified. She must have been a pretty awful person -- We’re told it was a punishment for pride.
But does it follow that she was from hell Because she had a dire effect on the viewer? Perhaps she was a nice girl and meant well; It was just the way people reacted to her.
AFTER A DISCUSSION ON COMMUNITY THAT TURNED OUT TO BE ABOUT POETRY
for Iris M.
Iris, when we discussed that poem by Amichai about standing before an Arab's shop on Yom Kippur, you were the one who noticed that all those items -- the threads and the buttons and the snaps and the zippers and the buckles -- were things meant to connect, though the needed connection, it seemed, could not be made.
Afterwards it occurred to me that the poet's wares -- the metaphors and the similes and the allusions and the alliterations and the rhythms and the rhymes -- are also things that are meant to help connect, though it often happens that the connection is cut off and the poet ends up the most isolated of all.
But already at the meeting I thought of a poem I could send you, a poem written long ago as a present for my mother in place of an afghan I hadn't finished crocheting. The mind goes on connecting, like the "noiseless patient spider" of Whitman and Robert the Bruce, and of course on the Shekhinah's loom the patterns are clear, as the rainbow exists, whether or not it appears in the sky.
A WARM, NEW AGE HUG, OR THE QUINTESSENCE OF QUALITY TIME
What cheeks my cheeks have pressed, what beards have brushed, What streaks of alien lipstick graced my chin, I have forgotten; it was all too rushed For memorable exchanges to begin. I think they’re trying to convey the sense That, though their schedule’s full, they care for me, So into greeting’s instant they condense The stations of long-pleasuring amity. Just think, my soul, what such a hug may hold: What reels of talk, mundane and recondite, Outdoors in summer, indoors when it’s cold, Letters at noon, and phone calls in the night, How much shared bread and wine and joy and pain -- All this you have at once, and you complain?
THE PICNIC OF THE QUIET FOLK
My kind brother, who sort of believes in God and tries to find at least one thing each day that he can praise, would have me write this poem about the picnic of the quiet folk.
The livelier ones played volleyball, the others sat beneath the tent with those who brought them, glad of the sun outside, the breeze that came in, uttering in sundry ways their satisfaction.
It wasn’t a conversation, since no one felt bound to give an answer; yet it seemed the contentment of one fell into the dream of the other,
expanded there, and surfaced after a while. Across and around the lake, the stillness of trees -- There, too, exchange and growth, happening slowly.
THE MONARCH
While dancing on the grass I saw a monarch pass, Arrayed in robes of black and golden red. I raised my net up high Between him and the sky And brought it down, and caught him in my net.
I closed the net and eyed The captive wings with pride That I had caught so beautiful a prey, But it was grander yet To open up the net And see him flutter gladly on his way.
“RAGE, RAGE”
About old age, as I begin to guess: It is not just the steepening of the stair, it is not just the thickening of one’s glasses, it is not just the thinning of one’s hair, one’s friends, the changing of familiar scenes, it is not just the receding of one’s era into lang syne’s medley of hackneyed themes. It rather is the tedium of knowing too thoroughly one’s own inherent scheme. One’s said one’s piece and might as well be going, one has explored one’s bounds, paced off one’s cage, one has perused, but cannot turn, the page. That this must end, does not seem cause for rage.
CASE CLOSED
She always swore she would put up a fight. She had for Death only the harshest names. She lit the lamps while it was still daylight So as not to forget when twilight came. What happened then? The usual: she lived To see one dead she had not loved enough, To hear good faith and gentleness reviled And the tone set by those who could talk tough. One night when she had worked almost till dawn She met a stranger halfway up the stair, And though the door was shut and the bolt drawn She did not act surprised to see him there. “Edna Millay,” he said, “I’ve come for you.” And she went with him without much ado.
Winter crows winter sun How long have I yet to run
Frozen ground pallid sky Is it marked where I shall lie
Snow-clad yew can you see How the cup shall come to me
Withered weed winter grain Shall my seed live again
TO THE SHEKHINAH AT WINTER SOLSTICE
Upon this day of darkness, Mother, may Your image rise and shine in many minds As the one metaphor of all our caring, Sign of the being in which we must live.
Your image rises, shines in many minds. Your light shines forth from one face to another. Sign of the being in which we must live, In your presence things fall into place.
Your light shines forth from one face to another. Under your glance the ways of help appear. In your presence things fall into place. You organize our issues and concerns.
Under your glance the ways of help appear. In your hands the things we do add up. You organize our issues and concerns. You are the map, the blueprint of our temple.
In your hands the things we do add up. You are memory, storehouse of our good. You are the map, the blueprint of our temple. You are the meeting-place, the standing-ground.
You are memory, storehouse of our good. You are mind’s integrity and purpose. You are the meeting-place, the standing-ground, Talisman of the freedom of the upright.
You are mind’s integrity and purpose. You show us how to sift the laws and customs. Talisman of the freedom of the upright, Through you we know what we must hold inviolate.
You show us how to sift the laws and customs. As the one metaphor of all our caring, Soul of creation, our inviolate House, Upon this day of darkness, Mother, rise.
SMALL CHANUKAH PRAYER
Keeper of the Eternal Light, Show us what we have to fight
In our time and in our place. Help us fight it with good grace
So that we may not destroy The spring of peace, the root of joy.
These will flow and grow again In summer sun, in vernal rain.
Strength and patience grant tonight, Kindler of the Chanukah light.
PANTOUM ON A LINE GIVEN BY MY MOTHER
The earth revolves and spins through space. Nothing remains the same for long. There was a garden in your face. I felt a love I thought was strong.
Nothing remains the same for long. Form suffers the attack of air. I felt a love I thought was strong, A tie I thought could never tear.
Form suffers the attack of air, The eater is transformed to bread. A tie I thought could never tear In my hands is a phone gone dead.
The eater is transformed to bread, The eager flesh breeds not its own. In my hands is a phone gone dead. Before me stands a face unknown.
The eager flesh breeds not its own, The true word echoes out in lies. Before me stands a face unknown, I look into unseeing eyes.
The true word echoes out in lies, Might bids the loyal friend forget. I look into unseeing eyes, Alone I bury my regret.
Might bids the loyal friend forget There was a garden in your face. Alone I bury my regret. The earth revolves and spins through space.
THIS TIME OF YEAR AROUND JERUSALEM
This time of year around Jerusalem the almond flowers, leaning into the hills, each tree like a fragment of waterfall dawn-suffused. Anemones start to gem the spaces between rocks hollowed like skulls whose small accommodations are soon filled by that rare guest, the Persian cyclamen.
And asphodel, that flower which the dead have claimed, musters its tribes in the waste places, its hexagrams rust-striped as if from traces of old blood-feud or long-since-rusted blade. But through the months of sullen winter days dark with the pouring rain for which one prays the almond flowers. Keep watch for me, shaked.
Shaked is the Hebrew word for “almond.” Its root is also the root of the verb meaning to wake, to be watchful (cf. Jeremiah 1:11-12).
*
BREUGHEL’S TOWER ....they were never wrong... Auden, “Musee des Beaux Arts”
And they were also right about this tower mounting up at man’s command -- at man’s command, but not under man’s control.
Someone, foreground left, acts in control: in the corner there you can see the laborers grovel before one crowned, accompanied, giving commands. The sweep of his cloak from shoulder to ground makes a shape that is almost the shape of the tower.
But in the middle ground bulks the tower, its tiers backed by receding planes of countryside, river, harbor and far-off sea-horizon. A cloud hangs a familiar arm around the top. Though the darker cloud at the left may be an immense
turned down thumb, the tower is so immense that for a while you saw nothing else. With earthen ramps still clinging to its sides and timbered archways black as adits, it surfaces out of the ground, Leviathan rising, earth, water cascading off its sides, or like a tumor gathering itself out of the flesh, drawing the nourishment to itself through new vasculation: here, to the left, beyond the dwarfed and darkening town snakes an aqueduct; there, to the right, under the tower’s shoulder the ships dock and a raft of logs comes rowing, and men work on the wharf unloading, and carts toil upwards from wharf to ramp, and everywhere you look, on the tower’s surface, are ant-like configurations of labor, men lifting, digging, pointing, hauling, walking from one place to another, or maybe sitting forgotten for a moment in a corner with legs outstretched, staring into -- what?
And before this creature of his will, what is the king? Has this tower risen out of the earth at the king’s command, or has the king risen at the command of the tower? Or did the earth dream the king and the tower and the eye that saw and the hand that showed and the tongue still trying to gather words to speak of this
CANZONE
Love said to me, “What trials shall we devise For one who claims to love you faithfully? For we have learned that trials in love must be, Since love untried is like one who all day Lies abed and takes no exercise. What shall become of him, when suddenly He hears the summons of necessity: ‘Arise, your love has need of deeds today’? What shall he do, alas, what shall he say, Rubbing eyes unaccustomed to the dawn, While Pride (its sting by humble strains undrawn) Prompts, as he feels his faint legs giving way Like the weak wings of birdling far from fledged: ‘I never knew Love, nor aught ever pledged’?”
Then I to Love: “Lord of this life, shall I Measure the strength of any other wight, Meshed as he is in I know not what plight? My own love’s strength and worth can I assay? Can I, indeed, with certitude descry Even my own necessity and right? For that I would have need of heaven’s sight And heaven’s balances, wherewith to weigh Credit and debt. How should I dare to lay The course for any other, when I go In my own course with stumbling steps and slow, And often find that I have gone astray? So I am blindfold in this nether sphere; And shall I then be guide to others here?”
At this methought Love smiled (invisibly). And as it were Love’s voice within me said, “Not without reason do you fear to tread Where all things change their names, and signs their sense, In the no-man’s-land between the Me and Thee. But as the Sabbath surges in to wed Domains the weekday strife has limited, So I may not abide in nonfeasance, Seeing my labor is my recompense: I keep not, save I hazard, all my stake. The vision of the world that I would make Gazes beyond the pale to pitch its tents In just those reaches of uncertainty On which I call you to walk forth with me.
“And therefore though you fear to give commands Lest they be heard as love-of-rule’s caprice, I bid you dread as much that cowardice Which silently accepts false coin for true. For he who rightly wills and understands Must seek what will augment the loved one’s bliss, Which if his own unaided thought should miss, He will not make reminder cause for rue, But hear his Higher Power’s voice through you As through himself. For such are holy friends That each the other’s reach of sight extends, And their concord appears in all they do. The lover who from love’s behests cries free Know not love; his love is vanity.
“And although much is hidden from your sight Because another’s world you cannot see Unless that other show it willingly, Yet certain true and certain things you know: That love in self-disclosure takes delight, That rhyme and meter speak of constancy And fortify the soul that would be free, That one of upright mind will not be slow By unfrequented paths of good to go, To set his foot on My ascending stair And gaze where truth and beauty shine most fair, Though foul and false rage round him and below, Nor shrink from scorn, but faithful witness bring Wherever he may. -- Thus shall you say and sing.”
Shaked is the Hebrew word for “almond.” Its root is also the root of the verb meaning to wake, to be watchful (cf. Jeremiah 1:11-12).
GRAIL CASTLE
Helen, I have forgotten her last name, lived on Meridian Street in Seattle. She had a face that looked like it was carved with an axe, hefty frame, dyed black hair, Cockney accent, a husband Andy somewhere, house full of gewgaws, lots of red: I remember a huge Spanish fan splayed on the wall, an innocently obscene pastel plastic mushroom. I was brought there by Stephanie, who had answered my ad for a room which I'd placed not wanting to stay in a room where I had gone crazy. Twenty or so, Montessori student, soft and pretty, played the flute, she thought I could benefit by taking a "spiritual journey" under Helen's guidance. They had a circle of people who did this, guided each other on these drugless trips, after a vision given to one of their number on one of the islands some years before. Helen had all this spiritual literature lying round the house -- to read it, you would think there was nothing but love in the universe. Allegedly channeled, it was written not in prose but in word-floods -- naturally I couldn't buy either the philosophy or the style and yet did not wholly trust the voice in me that said "Preposterous!", having recently O.D.’d badly on the fruits of the well-known tree. So I lay down in a darkened room in a tract house in Seattle and she commenced to guide me on a journey, but I did not get far. Ugly things came to meet me, and we did not know how to defeat them. So I sat up and told her my dream of Anfortas glaring at me in a vast kind of unlit space where there seemed to be no up or down. Helen nodded her head wisely: "You was astral-traveling with him." She told me further that when a person commits suicide they fall down to a very low level and cannot get up unless they drag someone else down in their stead. Anfortas, she thought, was trying this with me. He was very strong, I was not so strong, and if I let him I would not be able to pull anyone else down; I'd just be stuck, but if I resisted then I could help him, send him the light-bringers. I thought this unfair to Anfortas; I thought he wanted me to live; I remembered having read the word "light-bearers" in one of his poems. Years later I heard that he wrote it under the influence of one whom he ended up rejecting, as I did Helen. Soon I moved out and stayed out of touch until the next spring when, once more overmastered, I returned to lie on the couch listening to the susurration of the aquarium; it soothed, while Helen read me part of a letter from Stephanie in England, who had seen me on one of her journeys and seemed to know right where I was. She and Helen were greatly concerned. But I got up again, left. Went home, to Madison, to Jerusalem and back, still looking for a house that is not on Meridian Street but was perhaps tangent there, as it has been elsewhere. I seem to hear from behind Anfortas a soft voice: "We don't know, do we, what's valid" -- where it is, the castle of all our failures, the heart's fortified place.
AFTER A PEACE VIGIL
1.
I don't really believe in those things, but someone asked me and I went.
A sanctuary in the round, circle of light above, circle of chairs below, in the middle, a raised platform, an altar, nine candles.
Someone sang an anti-war song, someone lit the candles: for the nine religions.
A Tibetan refugee with a kind face chanted and translated words from the Dalai Lama: "Establish the noble generosity of divine friendship among these objects of compassion..."
I looked round the circle at the tired baffled faces and a vision of the peace we are missing rose between my shoulderblades:
a glacial valley whose immemorial quiet the shouts of hunters the trumpeting of mammoths could only briefly stir.
Union? We do not even like each other. A kind hand would rescatter us among places with no name and set over us the merciful tooth of the tiger instead of our own. On the path to the parking lot, again, what Dante said about the giants that jut up out of the deepest hell: "for where cunning is joined to malice and great force there is nothing humans can do."
2.
Nevertheless I would like to believe in peace, In peace, the sacred stage for revelations, The state of mind where things fall into place, Where, like the stones in primitive calculation, Thoughts let themselves be picked up and set down By an unhurried and unerring hand, And the result grows quietly as the dawn Or as the pattern which the weaver planned.
Mathematicians doubtless know this best, For nameless quantities are freed from strife, Though war and commerce pounce upon the fruits. Poets who rise above self-interest Witness the play of names -- and their own life Is often hostage for these absolutes.
JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA REPORTS TO HIS TEACHER, RABBAN GAMLIEL, AFTER PASSOVER 3793
Report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied. Hamlet, Act V To my master and teacher Gamliel, may he live long and peacefully, Yosef, his student and his servant, writes at starshine after the set of Passover’s last sun to say G-d granted us once more to keep the festival according to its laws, even, at times, with the joy befitting those who serve the Eternal in the realm of time. Moreover Heaven heard our prayers, and kept revolt and bloodshed from the holy city. The people have returned each to his place, the soldiers’ hands hang slacker by their swords, and we are spared till Shavuot at least; but yet I cannot say that all is well. That preacher from the Galilean hills has gotten what he craved, apparently: a martyr’s death, may Heaven avenge his blood. The tale perhaps has come to you already how five days previous to the feast he entered the city, mounted on an ass’s back, with its foal following, lest any miss the allusion. -- Such a prophecy might well have moved our teachers’ teachers to decree that the prophetic voice had fallen silent save for babblings given to fools and women. -- As if the word of G-d could be compelled by acting of it out, like histrions posturing on some stage the Hellenes build, as children play at general and prince! The ignorant carried palms before him, cried “Save us!” as cry the Roman mobs to Caesar, spread their thin cloaks for the donkey’s hooves to beat. A century of troops, or so, were watching, and watched, too, when outside the Temple walls he overturned the tables of the changers. The Zadokites, who as my teacher knows profit by this trade, were not best pleased, and doubtless the High Priest discussed the matter with Pontius Pilate over wine that night. Within the Temple, some few of your students tried once more to bring the man to reason. One thrust a coin into his face: “Whose image is on the coin?” He, never hesitating, replied, “Give Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give God that which is God’s.” My master sees his skill at speech. No one could rival him at turning logic with a glittering phrase. He was a man who would not say: “I must.” Such men are futureless. Without surprise we heard they came for him at midnight, after the feast, while heavy sleep lay on the city.
Your servant cannot fathom what impelled him to climb Golgotha, that dark afternoon threatening with unseasonable rain. They had him nailed up there, on that same tree that’s borne so many teachers of our line, and even then and there he made your servant strive with anger. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” How did he know that? What righteous man can plumb the wicked’s soul? Nothing we know of them except their will to power, which subdues us, and which God, Whose ways are not our ways, has let prevail in punishment for our revolt against His everlasting law and blindness to His truth. Yet He has not abandoned us, as many steadfast martyrs testify. -- But none is held to account for words he said in pain. He at the last gave up his spirit to God, as befits a Jew, and he is dead. Your servant gave him burial, as a deed of kindness, also in some hope of soothing his followers, and healing the division which love and hate of this strange man have made in Israel. But our purposes, alas, are brought to other ends than we designed; vain is our wisdom! Though the Romans set a guard before the tomb, no doubt advised by the High Priest -- he knows the ways of sects -- the body of the Nazarene was stolen on the first night. The guards were drugged, or bribed -- who knows. Your servant scarcely credited that band of seeming moonstruck hangers-on with so much cunning. Some of them indeed had it not: that poor wretch from Kriyot, who hanged himself, after his master showed he was but flesh. The others . . . God alone fathoms the depths where self-deception twines itself around the wish to take in others! These last few days, the streets have coursed with rumors as the desert runs with freshets after rain. Two women first cried out that they had seen him, and afterward the remnant of the band that followed him from Galilee. They say that he is risen and prepares his coming in strength, with all his Father’s heavenly host. When this comes not to pass, what will they dream? My master knows that folly is the serpent which that Greek fable tells of: cut off one head, two others burgeon in its place. Nor is there peace among us. Of the people many are stirred, while of our brethren some unwisely mock; his followers already begin to say that we informed on him -- as if our information had been needed! -- My master, pardon that your servant’s heart feels not the joy of service well performed to the Most High, but sorrow and foreboding and too much grief perhaps for this one man who, though he was a trouble to the wise, out-Absaloming Absalom in high presumption, yet there was a brightness round him in which there seemed to be no room for Caesars and all the sons of worthlessness they sway, -- nor for our temporizing regulations, the hedges and the fences that we build to shelter in the shadow of that might. ‘Tis like those cities which my master too has seen upon the clouds above the desert, undispelled by the knowledge they are not. O let your servant tell you that the sages spoke truly, when they said that with one soul destroyed, the whole world crumbles. In the instant when that man’s soul exhaled, there came a clap of thunder -- rainless. As they say -- a sign. Your servant knows we are bidden not to heed such signs, but to obey the Law as given then, when we and G-d stood face to face, and as interpreted by righteous sages, each in his time, from his care that the people should live and should not die. May my dear master forgive these aimless thoughts, set down without fear they could trouble that long-proven calm more than the wind sends ripples over rock -- that calm which, sorrow told, your servant’s heart now feels returning. Long is exile, dark, and many monsters yet must plague time’s womb before the apparition of the day when G-d will shine His justice over all; but the spring flowers are out, the young are courting, the new lambs bleat, and prayer is in the heart. Your servant hopes that the Tiberian waters have done my master good, and that before the Omer has been counted many days our master’s face again will shine among us as we retell the sayings of the fathers and purify our hearts toward Shavuot, feast of our first espousals with our G-d and foretaste of the second, everlasting, may it come speedily and in our day.
Notes: The Gospel accounts depict Joseph of Arimathea as, if anything, a Sadducee. In this “pseudepigraphic” work I have taken the liberty of making him a Pharisee and placing in his mouth what a Pharisee might have said about the episode, given their values which were already those of rabbinic Judaism (including the belief that burial of the dead is an important form of charity). Zadokites – “Sadducees”, the priestly aristocracy. They controlled the Sanhedrin, and are generally thought to have collaborated with the Roman rulers, whereas the Pharisees tried for the most part to steer a middle course between collaboration and armed, and futile, revolt. The word “Hosanna (hoshi-ana)”, which the crowds called out to Jesus, means literally, “Save us.” The “omer” -- literally, a sheaf of wheat -- is “counted” in the forty-nine days from Passover to Shavuot (a feast commemorating the giving of the Law on Sinai, and transformed in Christianity as “Pentecost”). During the time between Passover and Shavuot it is today customary to read the “Sayings of the Fathers”, a collection of ethical maxims that was codified around 200 CE, but goes back as far as the early Second Temple period.
THE CRITIAD
Thou art just, critic, if I contend With you; my very protest proves you right; A barb must be well aimed if it offend, And the most faults are shown to keenest sight. Without your offices, well-meaning friend, Who ever found his muse’s mouthings trite, Or, balked by rhyme, withstood the urge to spirit A clunker in, hoping no one would hear it?
But still, dear sir or madam, let me tell you That criticism too has its temptations. To price an item you should know its value; When making your particular observations A vision of the whole thing should impel you. (Who would expect a sculptor to have patience With any studio visitor who shows off By saying, AStatue’s nice -- just knock that nose off@?)
There is the critic who seems hypnotized By words, and will not even look for meaning; All may be fair if it is well disguised, Metaphor-gingerbread conceals all sinning, A non-esthetic standard is despised, Although the poem must submit to screening Lest it conceal a moral anywhere -- For morals are the one thing he can’t bear. And there’s the one -- or are these two the same -- Who cannot stand to hear another’s voice, To see the world through someone else’s frame. Each handshake is for him a pinching vice: He shakes it off, then wields the sneer to shame His fellow-readers out of kinder choice. Touched, he hits back to hurt, and others fear -- Nothing more quickly spoils an atmosphere.
Then mark the wight -- though once again we may Be dealing in degrees and in nuances -- Who fears her judgment may be led astray, So to be on the safe side, quickly pounces Once she has found a target in your say At which to launch one of her stock responses, Such as: “archaic”, “summary”, “didactic”, And, to be sure, “cliché” -- a curious tactic.
Innumerable the little weeds that flower Around the critic’s golden opportunity: The flatterer, the envious, the coward Here have leave to practice with impunity. To own another’s worth is to yield power, To know their pain is to cast off immunity: These truths require some fortitude to face, But fortitude’s not taught to MFA’s,
As far as I’ve been told or ever knew. Hypocrite critique! my semblable, My sibling (for you are a poet too)! Our words ring hollow in an empty hall, The world notes little what we say or do, We are quite unter uns. Why should we kill Each other off? Unless you hope to get A university position yet.
If so, just say so, and I will not mind Your comments anymore. I’ll know you must, To pass the sieve, render yourself soul-blind And concentrate on seeing shapes in dust; Must cram your mouth with meal, must tightly bind Your muse’s feet and keep her pinions trussed; And doing thus, it follows naturally That you will then expect the same of me.
But otherwise, I think we could relax. I’ll let your oddities of diction go If you’ll be gracious unto my syntax And concentrate on seeing what I show, And let me see you following my tracks Of thought, or, if I’ve lost you, let me know. “As if we were God’s spies” let us convene, Debrief each other, and survey the scene.
Of course, if you discern where I could mend A line or two (after you’ve understood it), By all means tell me so; you won’t offend; I hope none ever told me truth and rued it. I wish we may converse as friend and friend, Not giving way to subterfuge or rudeness -- This, though perhaps not fashionable, is art Enough to occupy the mind and heart.
That last rhyme sounded -- horrors! sentimental, And not by chance. I know that many feel A poet should be torn from the parental Bosom of sympathy -- that the ordeal Of loveless criticism is essential; But love’s the source of all that’s fresh and real, And its denial helps, begging your pardon, Like herbicide upon a growing garden.
No doubt love must encounter intellect, But ought to find it helpmeet, and not foe: The creator’s urge to chisel and perfect, Which parents, friends and lovers also know, Is not the stranger’s impulse to reject. Those ancient forms which at least clearly show The workmanship, afforded some protection Against the hostile frivolous objection.
Now I have done; I find I cannot spin it Any further -- my first modest whack At the Don Juan stanza. In a minute, Critic, you shall have it, and no lack Of faults I’m sure you’ll spot. I’ve left some in it On purpose, so you’ll have at what to hack. Even to those who will not dig for treasure The generous bard provides a bit of pleasure.
NOBILITY
A man called Noble told me how he came To wear the ornament of that fair name. The original form, it seems, was Knoblauch, or “Garlic”. He explained that in days of yore, When gentiles handed out surnames to Jews, For a small gift the clerk would let them choose A pleasant name, like Blumenthal -- or else Be named for grotesque objects and strong smells. “Knoblauch,” as proof an ancestor defied Unrightful power, was worn with bitter pride, Until the Ellis Island scribe had trouble With such a mouthful. Scratched his head, wrote “Noble.” So there you have a case of justice done. It doesn’t happen, though, to everyone.
SOCIAL SECURITY
Each one has a name --Zelda
Just as you need a Social Security number, each person needs a poetic identity.
A name that is nothing like a number, that ties us to the uncountable. A constellation of syllables that recall whatever spoke to us when we were alone.
A name by which we are called up when courage is needed, A name by which we can be held to the promises of love.
A name like the pouch of charms round the neck of the shaman, like the box of small treasures each child should have the right to bring to school.
A name that weaves us into the text of a common life, a life among kin.
And the poet should be the one who goes 'round giving names.
PAS DE DEUX
A formal poem is a pas de deux Where the one partner, with all he requires Is form; the other is the poet, you, With your perceptions, memories, and desires; Where each learns her capacity, and fires The other on and on to ever-varied Displays; but all is spoiled if either tires Or lets himself be overwhelmed or carried.
And yet there are those lovely leans and lifts Where mate on mate all will-lessly reclines Or the balance of their strength more subtly shifts, Those pauses eye to eye, where each divines The other not as something in the way But deepest self, and what she wanted most to say.
from A FEW GRAINS OF SALT
A sage one day set up a school To make a wise man of a fool, Who from that self-same day began To make a fool of that wise man.
*
Blessed are the poets who steer clear of theory And read their Keats and Shakespeare every day. Poets, like children, learn by overhearing The conversations of those who are greater than they.
*
You say you have matured. But, oh my dear, How much I’d rather have you “whine” than sneer.
*
There’s verse that spurs my Pegasus to war Like the trumpet of a kindred animal, And verse that makes me ask, “Am I, at all, A poet? and what did I want to be one for?”
*
Those whom the inner ear does not advise Are seldom helped when others criticize.
*
Does “Love your enemies” seem like a lot to ask? To love those who love you may prove the harder task.
Love the evildoers, as the Gospel says you should, But first be absolutely sure you love the good.
*
The righteous like to contemplate the sins that they abhor. It would not please them if you really went and sinned no more.
The sinner’s pleasure in his act would forfeit half its savor Without the thought of someone looking on it in disfavor.
*
[Retort to D.H.]
What’s wrong with those words I really can’t tell, But those who employ them don’t often mean well.
*
[On the Editors of Poetry Magazines]
The ones who don’t know good from bad are best; At least they print some good works with the rest.
*
ON FIRST READING “AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM” IN ITS ENTIRETY
Pope, in my youth I scorned your tutelage, But now approach you with approaching age To gaze (in verse as smooth as finest jade) On my own best with better thoughts displayed.
MEDUSA REVISITED
For God’s sake have some pity on the woman. She did the best she could, though only human.
She wed a man she meant to love and tend. She would, if possible, have stayed his end.
She brought her children up the best she could. The daughter ran off into the dark wood,
Hoping perhaps to find her father there. She didn’t come back. Perhaps she met a bear,
Perhaps she threw away her mother’s thread Or trod upon her mother’s home-baked bread,
As everyone encouraged her to do, Teachers, peers, that lady therapist too.
Whose fault was it? We were all pretty dumb. Spare a few roses for the mother’s tomb.
ECCENTRIC
What ARE we if not eccentric? Crazy as a loon we’re not; we know a hawk from a handsaw on the whole; parading a lobster down the boulevard at high noon may not be where it’s at. But it’s an individual pulse that drives us, the lub-dub of this one fist-shaped lump of muscle, on which other patterns may be superimposed -- poetry, I would say, emerges from the tussle between them. It is not like a store-bought suit of clothes cut to a standard measure and if it doesn’t fit you, tough. Nor is it like a room fitted out by a decorator, rather it is like a room where objects have accumulated, some earlier, some later, all held together by being some one person’s stuff. It follows that the first rule of criticism is: love (with everything about them that you could not possibly have invented) your neighbor.
IMITATIO RETROGRADA
Love’s canon in reverse: he rears in fright, Powerless not to fight the will he sees Fluttering at the corners of his sight.
He hears the tread of men who come to seize And bind him, in the thudding of his heart. Girl, now is not the time for gifts that please:
Now everything that pleases forms a part Of what he flees, in search of his own will. Truth, reason fare no better here than art,
If these were ever separate. If he still Recalled what his will was, before you came... But that to him is your most dreadful skill,
The fact that you’re so very much the same. He found his own mind’s likeness in your mind; But he must tear himself from your fate’s frame,
Though, since you have his eyes, he goes out blind.
A MAGNANIMOUS AND VISIONARY COMPANY
A magnanimous and visionary company were moving along in the sunlight of Imagination, spreading wings visible to the inner eye, rich in pattern and involved in a richer pattern that developed as they moved round one another in gestures of acknowledgment and praise, a Whole, ceaselessly evolving and each evolving within it.
But one there was among that company who fell to wondering if his wings were the brightest. For him it was not enough to be one among them, he wanted to be First. At that thought his wings darkened and he shed his wings altogether and appeared among them in the shape of a Boy who pulls wings off butterflies.
At this these all-colored peaceable omnisexual Beings became murderers and murderees flashing to one another scenes of mutilation and self-mutilation, and the colors of their wings became blood-red, ash-white, char-black and the Design of their movements fell into disarray and the Wings fell off and strewed the ground with ashes and the Boy who specialized in pulling wings off butterflies (though not the all-colored Being he had been) was wickedly satisfied that the state of that Company now resembled the state of the world.
I tell the story as it has turned out so far; but perhaps there was hope at some point, if for instance when the villain’s wings changed color that magnanimous and visionary Company had summoned the Courage to recognize the signs and send him off till his wings recovered their proper and healthful Hue.
ONE POET’S SMALL PRAYER
Oh Muse, how will I do it? You have given me such a soft voice against all the brass bands of pretention.
But I will not despair. On the busy road the other day how loud one robin sounded above the traffic’s roar.
THE KAKISTOCRATS One sinner will destroy much good. – Proverbs
Poets whose Skill avails them naught to make, Or not enough, that they could rightly take Preeminence among peers, and get a Name (Though in these days most dubious is Fame, When every unhung Villain boasts his deed And a besotted Public buys his screed) -- Such bards, who cannot make themselves content Fitly to praise such good as Heaven hath sent And blame like honest folk the wrong they see, Do in their poems practice Villainy. Whenever they find no Rime, or Metaphor, They catch the reader’s eye with glimpse of Gore, Then foul Pollutions in his ear they pour Until his thought conceives the good no more. To make good Verse, and show a better way, The skilled may strain and labor many a day, But to make mischief and lead folk astray One Fool can do, in the time it takes to say. But for this not one, but all are to blame Who do not hiss at ill, and cry For Shame.
THE SIGH OF THE SPHINX
Oedipus always has to kill the Sphinx on his way toward power he will rue. The murmur of “You know not what you do” he will not hear till later. Now he thinks he’s rid the countryside of a foul jinx -- On to the rest! From ancient plays no clue (the costumes and the set are always new) till from plague-mouths again the riddle stinks.
All history is this recurring dream. The world’s designed that way, though it may seem painful and uninstructive. In the end it all comes down to chemistry. But still the roads are laid, Oedipus crests the hill, the Sphinx comes forth, hoping to find a friend.
BUILDING
Imagining a luminous order of voices While around you the whole shebang is falling to pieces,
Joining word unto word till they make a line While dodging the various projectiles that come flying,
Laying line upon line till they make a poem While the wrecking ball crashes into the wall of your home,
Placing poem beside poem till they seem To mount up and mean, as in that dream
Where rainbow pastel butterflies bore aloft And carried through the air an enormous wooden raft,
Or like those cells that converge and build to fruition, A choirs’ choir, polypolyphonic, yet not without resolution:
For building is the only fortress still secure; Building, you move toward an own-made future,
Though on the deck of a boat that is drifting down Toward the drop. Your eyes are to the Should-Have-Been, The Precedent of Past. To the Midnight Sun.
THE BEAUTIFUL TENNESSEE WALTZ
The duo-chinned dame in, it seemed, a wig And silver muumuu stitched with leaves of gold Swathing a form grown comfortably big, Carefully nursed a cracked voice through the old Song that no one else has ever sung With voice like hers, nor yet in such a way That, hearing, you’d forget how she when young Could sigh herself into its air, convey The loss of love, the loveliness of loss, The leaning of desire, that lightly veers So that with any motion we may toss Away that after which our later years Are labor lost ... Yet she could proudly show Seven of eleven grandchildren in a row.
from the Russian of Osip Mandel’shtam
Telephone is crying in the flat, Five rings, ten rings, fifteen – stops at that. Now it sits there black and gloering – Ach! nobody picked up on the ring.
That means: no one loves me anymore, I’m offended, sniffle, I’m a bore. Old men phones, to your receivers clinging, You will understand why I am ringing!
NORWEGIAN STAVE CHURCH
Here is no temple rooted in the earth, No columns chiseled from the living stone To stand like trees of venerable girth Around the sacred hearth, the augur’s drone. No, this is like some raven that once landed Bearing behests from a great southern king. The northern folk have done as he commanded And as they understood: have built this thing To house the far-brought word, the far-brought light. It is like a black ship readied for the sea, As they knew how: logs pitched and fitted tight; And those who in its belly bend the knee Are oarsmen in an ark that has floated long Without a sight of land, save in their song.
WITCHES’ KITCHEN
Cornice and counter, loft and curving wall Are clad in textured plastic like the hide Of some tough copper-colored animal. An unclothed puce plush dummy sits astride One of the half-walls that divide the stations, Displaying leggy legs, pointing her toes Amid a flock of crimson-bottled lotions. The mirrored space through facing mirrors grows And human figures too reduplicate Ad infinitum, till one scarcely knows The flesh from figment. Here we sit in state And priestesses in solemn headdress wield (Softly while country singers ululate) The spells that keep us pleasing to this world.
edickinson@elysium.com
She would have loved the Internet. I sense her leaning here With chin upon my shoulder. Her Eyes deep-seeing peer
Beyond the screen into a room Where she has never been, Yet to the chambers of her Brain A Phrase conveys the scene.
At "Virtual Experience" She looks exceeding Sly -- And wonders softly -- what they had Supposed, of Poetry --
If you are in Antarctica Or India, she regrets She cannot send her Verse to you With bread -- or Violets --
But such a Transport she must know -- With Minds all over Earth Like Empyrean Seraphs -- In Lightnings -- to converse --
CORPSES CLOG THE LITMAGS
The soul is naked among enemies, And nowhere does it take more grievous wounds Than where "well-meaning" poets hack away At one another's poems. Merciless
As angels of the IRS, they pounce On any word that each deems not OK, Seldom standing still for long to guess At the moving shape on the poem's horizon
Or hear the word the poem cannot quite say. The poet, on his knees, starts to confess His errors as they're fingered one by one. Soon from his comrades' hands he takes the knife
And cuts the poem's tie to his own breath And does the rest of what the pack wants done. Its maker's eyes lit with thirst for its life- Blood are the last thing the poem sees.
The corpses clog the litmags by the ton.
HALF OF A CORRESPONDENCE, IN SONNET FORM, ON THE SONNET “THE FIRST LINE IS THE HARDEST”
The First Line Is the Hardest
What's new? I work a day-job, and compose a sonnet every weekday. It is not that difficult. There is a kind of spot your have to let the mind find, a pause where the gravities can come to equipoise, a wide white silence, a minute black dot which any number of elephants of thought can balance on. From there on in it flows,
or at least the problem has been framed: mind's journeymen then make the pieces fit. And what's the good of all that? you may say. Call it something like a balance-sheet for soul's accounts. A pastime for the condemned. It keeps the little men in white away.
1. Dear Peter, thanks for taking in good part all that I said. Though when it comes to youth, I owned to seven hundred at the start, and if you want the unembellished truth, I have completed four-fifths of the span the Bible grants to common humankind, and it does not appear to backward scan that I was ever really young in mind. And can you not remember how we spelled, huddled around a fire of mammoth-bones, the other bards in epic tales that held the folk entranced through winter? Ancient ones, do not, I think, need other ceremony than these reciprocal gifts of wax and honey.
2. My small screen showed me only your first sonnet, and I in haste assumed that that was all, and jingled out the above reflection on it. Now I must prop my courage lest it fall: Ten sonnets to my fifty blank-verse lines! For fluency you’ve got me beat hands down. More power to you! and above all, what fun! I see, though, that with you I must take pains to be exact, which probably is good for me. We didn’t agree to disagree, it’s true, on the sestet. I thought I would just state a case this case recalled to me and leave the merits of those lines in doubt; but you came back to give another clout.
3. For the record, then, the poem’s as it should be. You want the sestet’s strategy the same as the octave’s. I don’t see how it could be; we’re dealing with two stages of the game. The octave’s leading up to the conception -- in the elephants you see it culminate; the rest is just mechanics and reception, a working-out of what’s determinate. Didn’t you catch the linkage (rather neat) between “mind’s journeymen” and “the little men in white”? Or how the sonnet as “balance sheet for soul’s accounts” adds one more dimension to the prior “balancing” of elephants? -- After the intuitive leap, the making-sense.
4. But if you still don’t like it, that’s all right. Poems -- I’m well acquainted with the fact -- are often fairest in their maker’s sight. And likewise I would readily retract as rash, any suggestion I could draw conclusions on your work from that small sample; my remarks were limited to what I saw. The vision of that as-yet-unread ample folder of yours, is what I’m angling for. “Safe”, too, may be a word we understand differently. It’s evident that to score off something powerful, can get you canned; but words of love are often met with sneers, and sometimes this awakens deeper fears.
5. And that, to my mind, is the heart of the matter. I hope that when my work is weighed at last they’ll say I wrote neither to flout nor flatter but to commend the things that I love best, in the wild hope humankind might be persuaded to spare them more. The planetary fate has chafed me since before the phrase grew jaded, since I was ten or so, not just of late. I have one work, The Consciousness of Earth, some seven thousand blank-verse lines, self-published; I’ve clever friends who think it of some worth, although for market purposes it’s rubbish. Earth was first seen from space in Dante’s dream -- [Par. XXII] How could a poet today escape the theme?
6. By the way, have you read Luigi Valli, Il Linguaggio Segreto di Dante e dei “Fedeli D’amore”? He makes tally various facts to argue that what haunted the poet was no lady’s face but rather the doctrine of a sect which, to elude detection, coded in romantic blather the reportage of mystic interludes. The interesting thing about it, though, was Valli’s quite convincing demonstration that the sonnets of the Vita Nuova, so puzzling, formed part of a conversation in sonnet form among these poet friends -- that’s what I’d like to see us try again,
7. not necessarily in sonnet form, just so poets understand they’re talking, so dialogue again becomes the norm and we give up the foolish way of blocking (see Harold Bloom) each other’s messages. By “negative capability” I didn’t mean you should be more “critical” but less! -- should try to understand all that is hidden before you say it should be otherwise. If the poem speaks, after all, it doesn’t want [Paul Celan, “Der Meridian”] you to consider it for a speaking prize or take the time to pick apart its accent; but to be understood and understand, as friend on life’s deep subjects speaks with friend.
8. You ask for explanation of one passage. Not knowing which link failed, I’m puzzled here, but think that I meant something like the message of Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence: fear of losing some autonomy prevents us from making common cause with fellow-bards against the cultural pattern of word-deafness that makes a poet’s life so bloody hard.
Listen: it’s hard to state one’s point of view without the effect of scoring off the other; please know that isn’t what I meant to do. I do suspect the poems I’d like best of yours, would be those you consider trite, kitschy, academic and the rest; but then, why grudge a sweet tooth its delight? But anything that you may choose to share will meet with kindly interest from Esther.
"BRACH DODI"
Return, beloved, kindler Of love in divided hearts, Of fire on scattered altars, Giver of hope, restorer of courage, Reviver of compassion, regatherer Of all that lies scattered in cold darkness.
Rebuild the temples Of understanding where the faces Of the faceless blossom again. Bring back the time of singing, Let song fly back to the throat And wonder-working word to the tongue.
Unsealer of eyes, unstopper of ears, dilater of hearts, Expander of minds, opener of doors -- Return, beloved, refocus The human image, reorder our lives in a life faithful To You, our only One.
SESTINA IN MIRROR WRITING for D. A.
I have lived my life in your word’s encircling shadow Rising on all sides like a range of hills Wherein my hopes must pasture on sparse grass, For seldom do those hills grow truly green Beneath the sky that like a blank gray stone Seals the destiny of mortal woman.
I am not sure you were a friend to woman; All your life you pursued a luminous shadow You hoped to capture on tablets of stone. Toward her you climbed imaginary hills Clad above with a lucent profound green Never found in earthly trees and grass.
I too, perhaps by virtue of a strange grass, Beheld once a shape that seemed more than woman Pacing toward me over a carpet of green Through gentling mists that served instead of shadow. The place was level, there were no hills, Though reached by climbing up a stair of stone.
For the telling of which, folk tend to stone Me. I am trodden underfoot like grass, And though I climb a thousand glass hills, At the top I am still the extra woman: I am the one who looks on from the shadow At all the tournaments of gold and green. I must be grateful to have had one green Age, likewise for the ring with the false stone Betrothing me to your descendant shadow, And for those earlier picnics on the grass Broken up by the thunder that on woman Seems always trained from somewhere in the hills.
But after all, this tale is old as the hills. My own writ tells me, “Your eye is green With the envy proverbial in woman, For whom no stone will stay on another stone, Or like any poet whose wit, common as grass, Perceives a tree it cannot overshadow.”
Our hearts cast the shadow as we climb your hills Toward the sun urging every grass to grow green And the stone to give birth to living man and woman.
HACKER: A REVIEW
(Marilyn Hacker, Selected Poems 1965-1990, New York and London: Norton, 1994)
“The Rune of the Finland Woman” is worth the price. Taken in conjunction with the rest – domestic and political exercises,
mostly – it left me with a sense of waste. Amid so many stanzas full of chatter affecting, for no reason, rhyme, I missed
“An Alexandrite Pendant for My Mother”, one poem where the images do mesh into an Image that transcends the clutter,
a Form in mental space, and where the plash and clash of sounds amounts to music too. Lightnings as potent as those of the flesh
play in that faceted abyss, renew an ancient pattern, as if the sestina had been thought up to give this theme its due,
causing at least one reader to begin a sestina of her own, taking her emblem not from the gem-cutter but from the spinner. No higher praise has poet for a semblable than to have caught the spirit from her line. And much I wish, Hacker, that you’d found tenable
the place from which that sprang, instead of trying to get the reader high on second-hand sex and pouring more of Joplin’s rot-gut wine.
There also is a silence that protects the spirit, out of which the true word grows and which to override produces wrecks –
this, I believe, the Finland woman knows. She also knows that though the banners of good causes lie in rags, the book’s not closed:
She has not yet begun to speak, to move, she has not yet begun to call her dead, she has not yet begun to spin, to weave, to form her vast blue crystal of our heads.
CONFESSSIONAL POET
This is the kind of poem that may do The poet’s psyche good, in cleaning out Some ancient muck; what benefits accrue
To the reader’s soul, however, is in doubt. The poet tells how badly kith and kin Treated him when just a little sprout,
How airless was the corner he grew in, How sunless -- hence the poem’s lack of spark. Who could ask more from the victim of such sin,
How cruel seems for instance this remark. Good grief! If that’s what poetry is for, A huddling of lepers in the semi-dark,
Each commenting on his particular sore, I’d rather be, in my next incarnation, Maybe a telephone solicitor.
To write and read such stuff is like damnation. K. 545 as played by Mitsuko Uchida
(allegro ) a lost silk scarf, thin, carried along by the wind over the mountains
(andante) i heard the falling of snow the falling of petals the weeping of honeydew from night-blooming flowers the weaving of the spiders that weave the snow (allegretto) grass- hoppers played leap- frog, played hop- scotch on key- board, arcs cnss- crossed and cart- wheeled ( en- gaging, up- ending) and capered till time
DICHTERLIEBE (take it from one who knows)
There is no love like that of words for one another.
Woe to the poets, they're caught in the middle. The words never really mean them. They have to accept that.
To stand still and allow the words to pass through. +
LOCUST SONG
Listen, the locusts have begun to sing From tree to tree, swelling ring over fading ring Of simmering sound. Summer’s diminishing, And long long will you long for spring.
THE MEASURE
When I consider all the time that passed before a single word was written down, before from earth an earthen pot was pressed or the enclosure laid for any town, before a thread of wool or flax was spun, before an ear of grain was ground for bread, before folk found a measuring-rod or coin or clock but just the heavens overhead and the heart’s pulse, though hand and brain and tongue were all they are, and measured speech had use -- O then I strain to hear what then was sung and hum such measures as are left to us and count as death-drawn dream our history, our projects, gods, and claims to immortality.
BEAUTY, TRUTH AND...
Fair, kind and true have often lived alone -- Shakespeare
Beauty, Truth and Goodness took a house, Promising to live as sisters close, To share the cleaning, gardening and dishes And change off cooking chitlins, steaks and knishes.
They vowed that any boyfriends they might pick up Would have to understand that they would stick up For one another; but each hoped to wait Until she saw her true prince at the gate.
Truth had seen Courage in a dream once night, Beauty had seen Appreciative Delight, While Goodness kept expecting Gratitude, But every day the awakening was rude.
Weeks lengthened into months and into years, And none of the dream-promised Three appears, Hope waned, the bonds of constancy were loosed. Truth, oddly, was the first to be seduced --
By Brutal Honesty, who sneered at Goodness Till Truth and Beauty treated her with rudeness. Then Goodness, devastated, fell a prey To Exploitation, and was dragged away.
The two left fought, till Beauty heard the plea Of her long-time admirer, Vanity. The property was sold soon after that. The owner has it divided into flats.
And since the names were changed, you'll never find Those sisters who were once Fair, True, and Kind.
RIP VAN WINKLE
Rip Van Winkle wakes and does not see the hut where he lay down to sleep at evening, the dog who at his heels yesterday morning went frisking, nor the thin climbing of smoke from his house downslope. The landscape seems familiar in some ways, but in other ways has changed.
The contours of the mountains have not changed. He knows them deeper than the eye can see. But still his eye gropes after the familiar layout of farms and woods. Well, after an evening of good sport, strong drink, rare tobacco smoke, you’re apt to feel peculiar in the morning,
he tells himself. But is it indeed morning? The shadows point west all right. What has changed is the trees. In last night’s glare and smoke they weren’t so tall. He doesn’t see how that could have happened. Usually at evening things are big and strange, by day small and familiar. He curses the man who lured him -- a familiar of the Devil surely -- to those revels. Such a morning is too high a price to pay for such an evening. Where is that dog? He’d never have exchanged him, if he hadn’t been too drunk to see straight, for a drink and another game and a smoke!
Something is in his head that feels like smoke as he heads downhill, back toward the familiar, although the trail, overgrown, is hard to see, and he wonders why the birds aren’t singing this morning. He loses track of how many things have changed. When he reaches the village it is getting toward evening.
He gazes round, standing there in the slant of the evening sun slightly dimmed by the cooking smoke he doesn’t smell. He sees one face, much changed, he thinks he knows. The rest are unfamiliar. As for the house he left on that long-ago morning, where was it? The strangers gather. Does he see
they see a stranger, one who mixes evening and morning, his memories swirling like smoke, that among the unfamiliar he too is changed?
RETIREMENT
A man whose work is done must learn to pray, To let the motions of his mind and hand Content him in the compass of each day.
A man whose work is done must learn to stand And hail, where once he marched, the passing band. A man whose work is done must learn to say,
“My work is done.” To watch the sea from land, As steady on the land as on the sea. A man whose work is done must learn to see
A moment’s iridescence in the sun, The layering in the sand-clock’s nether cone, And where he is in time’s immensity,
And who he was, and who he is today In the world’s play: A man whose work is done, Yet still part of and witness to the array,
Still bound by kinship with humanity. A man whose work is done must learn to pray: “It is no-load that deepest bends the knee,
But I am in Thy service now as then. The other burdens are returned to Thee, May others bear them faithfully. Amen.”
A RESURRECTION
after a performance of Dr. David DiChiera’s “Four Sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay”
The audience took their places in the hall, And into the instruments, red-gold and brown, Had entered, as it later turned out, all The speech of earth, the night- and morning-sounds, Bird-calls and lap of waves and rush of rain, Thaw-waters tinkling through the clear spring air, Locusts' late-summer trill, the fall wind's keen Honing itself on branches sharp and bare. Then she appeared, your delegate, and sang, Scattered your words like leaves to forest floor, And winds and strings responded with a pang As if all earth knew what you sorrowed for, Or as if you, so knowing, had not known Division between earth's heart and your own.
"RECUERDO" RECALLED
We were very young, we were very merry Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Recuerdo”
They were very old, they were very weary, They knew that their parting day was nearing, He could hardly hear, and but dimly see, And with help could hobble two steps or three; He often grumbled at her faithful care, And seemed half the time only half aware. But one night some lines a young girl had read Went jingling through the old woman's head, And she read them aloud in a voice still clear, And he nodded and sighed. So they had some cheer From that ride on the ferry and that night on the hill, And they said to each other, "It's a good song still."
PATAGONIA
Patagonia has become the latest playground of the wealthy. The President visited there in 1997 and reportedly inquired about land prices. -- News item Knowst thou the land... -- Goethe
Know’st thou the region of this hemisphere Where still the air is fresh, the water clear, Where yet the affluent spirit can breathe free, Unchecked by too much human company? Knowst thou that land? -- Then, darling, come away: Here is the place where such as we might play.
No freeway mars the land with ugly curves, Nor jet-plane, booming overhead, unnerves; No fast-food billboards cheapen the roadside, No sleuth observes us, nor Reporter snide. Knows thou that land? Then come, my love, away: There is the place for Presidents at bay.
In deep-notched vale amid the desert plains, No neighbor’s voice disturbs us, nor complains; No speedboat tears the shining lake, save ours; No sight of urban poor the prospect sours. To Patagonia, dear one, come away; There’s no free land left in the U.S.A.
THE STATE GIRLS’ BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP
The basketball maidens came trooping onto the court. With hair in pony-tails (none wore it short), With fluttering tunics, limbs slender and strong, They seemed like members of Diana’s throng.
Like a sculptor sketching hastily for Graces, The camera zoomed on purposeful young faces, On flashing forms. They dodged, they leaped, they threw, And even from far off their aim was true.
A foul is called, late in the game. They’re tied. On the line stands a maiden tragic-eyed. She bounces it -- grips, tosses it -- it’s in! Her teammates leap, their cries lost in the din.
O fellow-bard and hearer of my verse, Just then I would have changed my lot for hers, But block for me and I will block for you, And cheer each other whenever we speak true.
L’ART POUR L’ART
You will softly and suddenly vanish away And never be met with again. -- Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark
Let’s face it, Publius: if yesterday the tribe of bards had without notice gone missing from Homo sapiens’ array,
if in this continental tract not one poetic soul were scribbling anywhere, the loss would scarcely be remarked upon.
-- True, the New Yorker would no longer wear a verbal nosegay every sevennnight, the Atlantic breathe a sigh for us, but they’re
moribund anyway. Space being tight, most forums axed that frill some time ago: College English, that ought to do us right,
two posh alumni magazines I know that used to print a good word now and then stopped that within the last two years or so.
-- True, when Inauguration comes again no streamers of Free Verse would decorate the new display of marketable men;
but in our union’s disillusioned state we’re scarcely slated there for further use. For the rest, we’d quietly evaporate.
Yes, all of our Creative Writing crews, our contests, workshops, magazines, small presses whose output bards exclusively peruse
to find what style an Editor caresses that they may trim their words accordingly and dot their vitae with suchlike successes --
no one would ask “Where are they?” For, you see, all these were for our benefit alone, our little self-consuming industry,
and will be otiose when we are gone. They merely served to tame that element which might have been the slowest to condone
misuse of words; that might have made ferment some genuine love of freedom in the crowd that has been satisfied, in the event,
with discount houses, big athletics, loud music, and the permission to do worse, while poets stand by mumbling with heads bowed
words that will not disturb the universe, being not rhetorical and not didactical nor sentimental, but prolixly terse,
anxious to show that they intend no practical consequence, for that would be below ‘em, since they have found that aimlessness is tactical,
and the pursuit of purposes would slow ‘em on pure Parnassus’ slope, toward the acclaim of judges who can’t quote a single poem,
stanza, or line of theirs. Such now is fame; for when the “implied reader”’s but the censor, then everything begins to sound the same,
although, deodorized, that famous sensor Hemingway spoke of seems not to detect it. Such is the trick they’ve run upon us. When, sir, d’you think they hatched and managed to perfect it? --Ask when vanity was not a lure that without fail could lead us to be shechted!
And then we have to live somehow, somewhere. We are not happy off the reservation. O Publius! I doubt that there’s a cure,
what purpose serves this tedious recitation of what all have contracted not to know? ‘Tis but the fume of black bile’s fermentation.
And yet I can’t help wishing we would show some fight, some “all for one and one for all,” some statements as “We hold these to be so,”
some new convention and resolve to call things by their names and fashion consequence, some interruption of the funeral
of wisdom and of simple common sense. -- Well, Publius, let me not lose a friend by importuning you across the fence
that makes good neighbors, each of whom must tend to their own business. In that, I’m the same as anyone. But if you should perpend
and think “why not?” -- I’ll have you know I’m game.
March 1999
ON THE RATIONING OF ROBINS
Notice to our consumers: Recently we have received a certain number of complaints from those of you who tend to wake and lie awake before dawn, in the months of March and April, listening for the song of robins. It appears the frequency and volume of such song has been reduced this year, as last year, too, it was diminished from the previous year which did not meet the standard of the year before, and so back for some years now, and this year it has come to our attention that certain rumors of a "silent spring" are being circulated, and we wish to contradict such rumors and assure you that everything is being done to assure you that each of you will hear at least one robin per week, if not per morning. We have taken, to meet your needs, the difficult decision to institute a rationing of robins. We are dispatching them to your respective yards and streets so as to effect an even, if thinner, distribution. Thus the fainter sound, which some of you have pointed out, means that your robin may be situated, on this particular morning, three doors distant instead of on the tree outside your window. We note that some whose preference is sleep, not robins’ song, are benefited by this change. Additionally, we note that this adjustment in the quality of service must be set off against your need for freeways, for homes outside the city, weedless lawns inside it, and more food for human mouths. In view of this, we trust that by resetting your expectations, you will find this spring far from silent. Looking forward to serving you in the future, wishing you a happy spring, and welcoming your further feedback, we are, regretfully and most sincerely yours, The Management.
CLOSING THE ACCOUNT
Cancel all reckonings, accounts unpayable, debts uncollectible on both sides now.
What was not understood will not be explained. Forgiveness unasked will remain unclaimed. A secret half yours has gone beyond reach, sunk farther down than you can dive.
Your line is paid out. Cut it now, cut your loss, right your craft, sail on till you too descend
to where all things sink until all things rise.
EULOGY FOR MY FATHER
He was never wrong, according to his students, Who made a farewell song with that refrain. With almost a fanatic rectitude
He visualized the rock-layers that had lain Rigid in earth’s foundations; he thought back Until their ancient movements were made plain.
It was not in him to let thought go slack Nor say the thing which is not, nor to claim More than his due, or deviate from the track
Of obligations, valid with the same Force as the laws that gave the crystal habit, Implicit in the universe’s frame.
That sense of structure, of the way things fit, Was also his in the domain of words. He taught his students writing, kept them at it,
And when, a child, I took to writing verse, He taught me how to scan. I used to see In him a shade of distant ancestors,
Chief Druids, masters of a poetry That ordered what the people knew and did. “Farewell” I say to him now newly free,
And: “Stand us now and ever in good stead.” GETTING BACK INTO WORDSWORTH
Dear Wordsworth, Yestereve (why did we drop that sweet and economical locution for our inept “yesterday evening”?), in the kitchen of a house that seems to wait unknowing for my father to return, I read aloud the lines that came to you beside the “sylvan Wye,” where you went roaming with your “dear sister.” Not with ease I read them: I am a Modern Poet after all, and such expressions as “wild eyes” awaken the scoffer who, whether or not we like him, is well ensconced in all of us these days, and with him the regretful skeptic, versed in all we have been told concerning Nature -- “red in tooth and claw,” Tennyson wrote soon after you. And in me also lives a disappointed mystic, who when young desired likewise to be at one with Nature but always felt a barrier: could never shake off a tedious self-consciousness. Moreover, just that day I had perused some verses of the kind the wise admire these days, well guarded against any charge of mush or gush: so much so that at times they seem devoid of love for any thing in all the manifest universe, and only proud of the shrewdness of their unbelief. Surely their lines and yours cannot be called by the same name. If one is Poetry, the other must be something else. Yours have the prior birthright, theirs the present field. But theirs I never could have read aloud to make an evening less desolate. So on I soldiered, through “sensations sweet,” through “influence” and “aspect more sublime,” through a syntactic underbrush that now and then would open for a blessed moment upon the clearing of an end-stopped line. And as I read, yes, I was visited by “many recollections dim and faint” shimmering through your scene and your reflections: I saw again the hill farm which my father purchased for recreation (which for him meant a new form of work in which to pour his endlessly constructing energy): I saw the house upon the spur, the high pastures, the paths down through the sandstone bluffs to the valley where a little nameless stream meanders, softly purling, overlooked till recently only by oaks and birches and by those bluffs. Their faces, scored by strata, were pages of Earth’s immemorial volume which he had deeply studied, and sometimes had opened to the wondering ignorant gaze of a child apt at neither work nor knowledge, yet capable of awe, that looked back through his vision at the silent wastes of time with something of a “natural piety” -- that could not help but trace in rocks and skies a semblance of his will, sternly exacting because profoundly kind. For this child only he also, at rare intervals, took down one of the small red volumes he had kept from college days, and pointed in it to your words. As though he’d had them in his mind, but like a place seldom revisited. They would come back to me in that still valley, where every chance-met flower seemed aware of some abiding friendship in all things. In that half-wilderness I came to feel not “wild ecstasies,” but nonetheless a peace that never came in city limits, far less upon the outskirts of the city where speed and greed transform the very substance of everything we are compelled to see. But since the failing of my father’s strength that land reproaches us, as a possession held onto out of weakness and regret. I have not walked the valley’s length this spring, and with those memories comes the thought how few can still afford to see their Mother’s face! -- Thus, Wordsworth, while conversing in my mind with you, I read, and stumbled now and then, and from my mother’s face could not be certain whether she heard or drowsed. But when I finished she opened up her eyes and, smiling, said, “How lovely -- and you read it well,” nor could I doubt her praise sincere. How blest I am in one such parent still, in whose white age more innocence and joy survive than in most infant fosterlings of this dark time, besieged even in their cribs by strangers’ greed! Fortunate, too, in that I still can hear, Wordsworth, your voice, though distant, and in that I still can guess at what you meant, and answer you as I could never answer those who doubt.
1999
AN ASSEMBLY OF WHAT IS ABSENT
Where is the courage of parents, that mythical fury of the she-bear defending her threatened cubs, fabulous quantum capable of pushing an automobile weighing two tons off a pinned child? Or wrath of the aroused father in Bergman’s Virgin Spring, that sweeps to its revenge, justified even against the innocent who get in its way, lest it be said this was accepted, this was condoned, this remained unwreaked? Or that protective surge that can be induced, like breastmilk, with appropriate stimulation even in those who have not borne, even, according to rabbinic tradition, in the male, like Brecht’s Dumb Katrin, drumming on the roof to warn the city?
And where is the discernment of philosophers who, holding reason and benevolence to be the mark of the human, and the clinging thereto the criterion of freedom, do not confuse the latter with leave to behave as a slave to brutal impulse nor license to set out poisoned baits to enslave others to the common tyrant? -- Nor their own intellectual freedom as a charter for a life spent in dissection of cobwebs and dereliction of duty to instruct the people?
Where, likewise, the awe of the lovers who see the universe wheel around one face, tremulous with comprehension of the message they are called to transmit, not blindly, for they are human, whose eyes are opened to the two lines of ancestral faces behind the one face and the other face, back to the stars; who are zealous to keep at a distance the little foxes, the gnawing impulses of degradation that lurk round the scenes of birth; who like Tamino and Pamina, passing through fire and water, have need of a music that all may be done in seemliness? Where is he most perilously invoked, yet most needed, the hero willing to lift a sword against the monster rising with slime and smoke to confuse his manhood: who dares do all and only what may become a man? Similarly the veriloquence of the poet, the true one, who walks beside the lovers, friend of the parents, patron of the city, the one to whose art the din of the hucksters of sensation is as the screams the Thracian women raised to keep the singing of Orpheus from keeping them from tearing him limb from limb, whose note cannot be heard where the amplified shout of incitement is permitted -- why is not a chorus of the true voices arising?
And the sharp sight of the revolutionaries, where is it? The quick fingers of analysis picking apart the knots of exploitation and falsehood, pointing to where reason and law, raped by economics, turn their eyes in shame from their deformed litters of rationalization, the monstrous decisions of henchmen on the bench? Why does not Marx return to tell us with tongue of flame there are other mind-opiates than religion? For that matter what happened to the intellectual honesty, an attribute of Science, the alleged god of this age, otherwise so keen to point out cause and consequence?
And what about the compassion of the mourners for the oppression of the Other abroad and among us: the same, that stood with the fruit pickers in California, the Native Americans on reservations, for the interned, the unamnestied? that voice which cries out against those wrongs in the same papers that are darts of poisoned words against their own kin, against their neighbor’s child in the schools of their cities and the woman weeping next door?
And lastly, where is the deliberation of the lawgiver who is not bought nor sold but inalienably of the people, chosen by them not in their drunken stupors but in those moments when they think of their children: the one who hears and balances all claims, the right of the peaceful to life and liberty against the pursuit of pleasures that are not happiness in Pope’s sense: “There’s not a blessing Individuals find But some way leans and hearkens to the kind,” as the founders knew; who acknowledges the need of security against much searching and seizing, but also the need of a common space swept clean of incitements to crime --
Oh and one more thing: where is the place of assembly for the courage of parents, the discernment of philosophers, the awe of lovers, the hero’s sure decision, the poet’s veriloquence, the sharp sight of the revolutionary, the intellectual honesty of the scientist, the compassion of the mourners, the deliberation of the lawgiver to meet
-- to meet, secure from the menace of the bully in its innumerable transformations: the prejudice of the fanatic, the vested intellectual interest of the professional (every profession being, as Shaw saw, “a conspiracy against the laity”), the capricious judgment of the snob, the cynic’s cleaver for dialogue,-- to meet amid some “custom and ceremony” in which perhaps “innocence and beauty” might be reborn, from which a voice might issue
pronouncing a unanimous and reverberating No to the business of blood, and a hand reach forth to draw, yes, even for freedom of speech those boundaries which every freedom must have to be meaningful at all.
Esther Cameron
OUR SECOND COMING OF AGE
You were the roof over our heads.
Now, looking up into vast night
at distant stars that do not spell your names,
we feel the sky settling deliberately on our shoulders.
CHOPSTICKS
On the old upright piano in the gym Short fingers jangle out the clanking Hymn To Anarchy the children always know. Where do they learn it? Players come and go, But it survives, jumping from span to span Of their short generations. Peter Pan Must have composed the thing. Though surely he Would have put into it more revelry, More reverie or more rhodomontade -- Something, anyway, other than this odd- Angled insouciance. Here you hear no dream Of clocks and crocks and pirates. Aimless meme, It asks only to cause a small annoyance Before relapsing into dumb compliance. Nothing will change, tink tink. Anyone care? Clank clank. Indifference, older than despair.
ARCHAEOPHOBIA (or, Write as you speak)
The Time Police won’t let you say A word that smacks of yesterday, A word that rings as if you read it, Let alone gives your readers credit For reading. No, it’s got to sound Just like the language that is found In conversation... Where? Well, not, Of course, in the speech of those who blot Their sentences with “Like” and “Wow” Or expletives from “Holy cow” To “[blank],” nor those whose grammar’s poor, (For this, you see, is Lit’rachoor), Or who prevaricate or bargain In New Age or professional jargon, Or who (intending to amuse Themselves and friends) will sometimes choose Quaint idioms: “forsooth,” “alas,” Such wags will say, but that won’t pass The Time Police. Then who shall teach The standard of Colloquial Speech? Look: buy our magazine and see How people talk -- in Poetry.
PAWN’S PAEAN, 800 B.C.
D’you think that Homer cared for muscle-blocks more than we do? Don’t let his martial phrases mislead you. Underneath his paid-up praises skulks a bard who necessarily mocks Thersites, but through him declares a pox o’ those bad-tempered brats who, on the basis of bully-power, fill up the high places and toward the slaughter lead their human flocks.
Picture the poet coming home at night, hanging up his harp with a kind of sigh: A theme’s a theme, and mutton’s in the pot. The verse was good; lost on that sodden lot. And then -- here comes the still-perennial lie -- Never mind the matter, if the words take flight.
ILIAD I, 130ff.
Achilles should have humored Agamemnon. He should have seen the leader had lost face And had to show a muscle, threaten someone. The king’s first fury had soon given place To acquiescence; he’d already tried To let the subject of the prizes drop: “More of that afterward; let us now slide A black ship down to the brine.” It could have stopped Right there. Maybe Achilles wasn’t swift Of anything but foot. And then again Perhaps some goddess put into his brain A vision of the host that backs and fills, Buys Boss Day cards, keeps up its people skills, And never claims the privilege to be miffed.
AUDEN AT THE HOLIDAY INN
I tried teaching English once at the Holiday Inn from an anthology concocted by professors with dark imaginations, a required course in the afternoon. In the morning the grim knot of nurses, one of whom was right out of Ken Kesey, had been having statistics. I fought back with Auden’s “Unknown Citizen” but the air around me had turned to solid ice. This is what is known as being an adjunct (misprint for abject) professor. The worst was that we weren’t alone. In that selfsame room with the selfsame tables, chairs, carpet, and that accursed chandelier, in Timbuktu and in Podunk, sales presentations and pep talks were going boom-boom.
TOWARD A CENTER
It was at Dr. Chalfen’s house that I saw it, a small apartment in the back of a house on Keren Kayemet where we used to meet, he and I and Manfred Winkler and some others, generally about half a minyan, to discuss the cryptic poems of Paul Celan, usually one or two poems at a session, each one contributing their own associations till at the end of the meeting we all came away, usually, with some sense of understanding a little better what he might have been driving at. In this room along with some of Manfred’s clay figurines (melancholy-devilish creatures, often in groups) there was a small picture by Gisele Celan-Lestrange -- in pencil or an engraving? Black and white anyway (or rather darker grey on lighter grey), like most of her things it was if anything abstract yet full of forms on the verge of definition (sometimes you get recognizable though not realistic landscapes) -- like, come to think of it, his poems. This one was called “Vers un centre” -- Toward a Center. It was sort of pointillistic, in tiny dots, as if to suggest the “Whirlwinds. Par- ticle-flurries” in a poem he was once so indiscreet as to tell a researcher concerned her as well. (It was in those last years when everything seems to have been coming apart for him.) But amid these “particle-flurries,” if that is what it was meant to suggest, you could see a kind of shape -- dissolving or coalescing? The title, pencilled below decides for the viewer. She had given it to Dr. Chalfen on a visit to Jerusalem, after or during his work on the “Jugendbiographie” of her husband which Chalfen had put together out of reminiscences by mutual acquaintances, survivors of scattered Czernowitz, living mostly in Israel, about the one world-class poet who had emerged from all that life of rituals in process of dissolution, enlightenment, all kinds of Utopian projects, modern culture, artists and poets everywhere you looked in a rich medium of family history and gossip. What they remembered was by turns incomplete, embarrassing, partially or wholly unconsciously or consciously fictional no doubt, but all the same you do get a picture of a community I for one would have liked to live in, like Berkeley, where I did get to live, only on a higher level, and of a very strange and beautiful human being whose genius -- did it need the firestorm to unclose as happens with the great sequoias? What would the world have been like that could have contained him? Everything was still in question when the final brutal answer came down on all those possibilities, all that life, but through the book’s mass of detail, its old-fashioned gestures, a shape does loom, of some possibility unrealized, inherently unrealizable perhaps, for them, the dead and the scattered, and for him, together. Was the drawing (it is a drawing, I just found the catalogue of her work) about Chalfen’s book? But it’s dated 1974, five years earlier than the book. Most likely then it is about something she sensed in her husband’s work, as a counter- movement to the scattering it embodies, a strangled summons to recollect, to regather, and the book, or its project, made her think of this, and the gift of the picture was a confirmation.
And just lately it came to me what else the picture reminds me of. It was in the rabbi’s office here in Madison. We had met to prepare a discussion on the implications of the Littleton massacre the news of which had arrived on the day of my father’s death which incidentally occurred on the day following the solar anniversary of the night when, according to a friend of his, who felt it at a distance during the seder meal, Celan called it quits. All three events were expected, or expectable; Celan’s poetry had been for some years an elaborate suicide note; my father’s life had been long, though for the world the life of a good man who has lived for work and service and the enjoyment of what is permitted can never have been long enough, and his last few years had been dimmed by various infirmities; in the final weeks I had remembered the Greek myth of the fates, the sense of a thread measured and held out to be cut; and as for the massacre, this sort of thing had happened before, and, with the nation assiduously cultivating the flowers of evil, it was just a question of where, when, again. Thinking about who was responsible, it was like that ballad about Cock Robin. Everyone had done it but no one owned the deed. The doers, barely old enough to be considered responsible and dead, in any case. The ones through whom the guns came to their hands. The educators who hadn’t taught them respect for others and self-control. The parents who hadn’t, ditto. The bosses who did not leave them time to do so. The media, the industry of viciousness, and the lawyers and the judges whose bought-off reasonings had denied the community protection from it. And of course everyone who ever paid to watch a violent film. And even, or maybe even particularly, the highbrow artists, with their “luciferian” self-image -- no surprise when entertainers turn “satanic.” It was not one thing but everything at once, as with my father at the last. All systems shutting down, and nothing to be done.
Because I am a believer in coincidence (sometimes it is really the only comfort, when scattered, even destructive, events seem mysteriously connected, that something is still trying to bring things back together) I felt personally addressed by the event (over and had written a long analysis. But the rabbi said, “Connect it with Torah.” And at first I was angry. The Torah says don’t murder, don’t stand and watch while murder is done. It says choose life, it claims to be a tree of life. Is any further light needed to view anything that happens? But the rabbi wanted a story. And as we talked I thought of a story. It was one I had thought of before, after the death of Celan, when I was trying to collect the meanings of what I had heard him to say.
I said to the rabbi, “I can think of two passages this reminds me of. The first is the story of Babel. Where the people have begun to build, in a spirit of presumption it seems, and G-d comes down and scatters the people, and they stop building the tower. But there’s a counter-passage to that, in Proverbs, where Wisdom builds her house, with the seven pillars -- we’re told they’re the seven sciences, anyway diverse learnings coming back to make one knowledge. Where she ‘sends forth her maidens’ -- those must be the specific messages Wisdom has for different actors, (like ‘don’t make violent movies’ if you’re a producer and ‘stay with your family’ if you’re a father), but she also ‘cries on the high places of the city,’ they all share a civic vision, like the image of Liberty that used to be on the coins. It is this that we’ve lost.” And I also tried to explain to the rabbi, probably not quite coherently, how in the course of my reading after Celan’s death of various modern novels and other, “non-Torah,” texts, I had kept on seeing the adumbration of a figure more or less distantly resembling Wisdom, or Community, that last emanation of G-d who or which is “the life of all our lives,” as Black Elk put it, being pulled apart by the seemingly- independent action and inaction of various figures, variously motivated, but all unaware of her being. Of course, this was the same story again, how could I have missed it.
And then I also became aware (if memory is working right) what that figure in the middle of Gisele Celan-Lestrange’s drawing had resembled: it was like the shadow, dimly seen through a fog, of Brueghel’s Tower of Babel. In reverse, according to the title. I had come to Jerusalem following a trail of those signs that had appeared everywhere, after Celan’s death, in the light of his work, and I hopethought they heralded a great reversal, the start of the Return, the gathering-in. Of course it was crazy, but when you see it’s the end, why not grasp at any thread that brushes your hand? And of course what I found there, again, was myriad divisions and no place for anyone who did not fit into one of them, as here. I tried to find a bridge to those who still live by Torah, still cling to the Tree of Life. At one point I asked a rabbi what I should do in case Celan was still paying for committing suicide and he said to give a scroll of Lamentations to some synagogue, which I did. Perhaps it helped, do I know anything? So here I guess is another scroll of Lamentations, about the destruction of the life of our lives, for which the Temple was after all the dwelling, “for the uplifting of the soul,” not of Paul Celan, who may well have served life as well as many a one alive, and not of my father, who though a scientist knew and knows through me that the Tree of Knowledge is not the Tree of Life, that we wither without the right stories and a place to tell them, but of our souls, the life of whose life is lost: Life of the Worlds, throw Time’s engine into reverse -- turn us that we may return toward a center.
LABOR DAY: A LETTER
Dear L.B., the poem that you sent voices a complaint that is familiar, and makes me want to send you a few thoughts long mulled, and apposite to Labor Day. The Muse’s bread, as you and I have seen, today won’t feed the body. Yet our spirit craves it, and therefore we poets mostly end up, like mothers, with two full-time jobs and not much honor for our constant labor. This has long troubled me, and for the last thirty years I’ve also tried to think about the larger pattern we involve ourselves in, when we, having put together the pattern called a poem, try to share it and, in exchange, elicit what we need to feed our habit and to make a life. This pattern does not fit, it galls us sorely. Must we put up with it? or could we find some way of changing it? Let’s take a look.
First let us try to reconstruct the former pattern made us what we are, such that we are not comfortable in the present. The poet Richard Moore and I, before communicating, each threw off a casual estimate that perhaps one in a hundred has this itch to fashion things of words we call poetic talent. That’s a lot of people. Relatively few today express this quirk that seems superfluous, useless. But it was not always so. The ascent of humankind from speechless apes began perhaps a million years ago; the larynx and the brain evolved together, replacing mere instinctual behavior with culture that was fashioned and transmitted to a considerable extent in words. For this the word had to be memorable and memorized, and that’s where we came in, our gift for setting words and thoughts in order answering, anticipating need. In nature what is useful generally is pleasurable as well -- the misery of going constantly against one’s grain is Adam’s curse alone -- and so the poets drank from the nectar of the gods and gave a pleasure honey-sweet to those who heard them. Moreover, in the hearers Nature planted a reverence for the poet as a source of knowledge and a tree of life; we still observe some vestiges of this today, though mostly in connection with dead poets.
History has almost blotted out the pattern that fitted us, that we were made to fit. We don’t know what the bardic schools, that used no writing, taught for twelve or twenty years. From conquered tribes -- the aborigines, the Sioux -- we glean some customs; in our reading we pick up, here and there, a trodden shard of the vessel our vocation used to be. As in that novel Kafka used to like, “The Grandmother,” one peasant woman sings a little song that she has just made up, and the other says that in her youth she’d walk for half a day to hear a new-made song. Or like those few lines out of the Rig-Veda: “He who deserts a companion in knowledge Has no way left of sharing the word. Indeed, whatever he hears he hears in vain, He is not disposed to be magnaminous.” -- There is our occupation that is gone.
No doubt the pattern wasn’t frictionless. Since to compose, to put together, means to set things in relation to each other and show them in proportion to the whole, it also is a way of forming judgments. This often must have brought the bard to clash with those who like to have their way regardless -- I have just read that bit, a hundred lines into the Iliad, where Agamemnon roars at Kalchas, the “diviner,” who had only said (it seemed to be his job) what even the swift-footed though not too swift-brained Achilles had already guessed; and I suspect that if the poet’s role overlapped with the shaman’s, then at least half the mystery and mumbo-jumbo, the trances, spirit-journeys, vision-quests, served to secure the poet diplomatic immunity, as messenger from some fictive foreign power, for the speaking of home truths plainly pictured on the word- jigsaw-puzzle the poet put together. But though the Nimrods and the Agamemnons were necessary to the group, it also needed the poets, who, besides, could bend their skill to praise of power. So the balance held, till some clever chap invented writing. At this point I’m reminded of a midrash or aggadah, about a king who purchased some Torah scrolls, then slaughtered all the scholars, seeing he didn’t need them any more, and that’s the last four thousand years in nuce. Writing permits a record to be kept of trade goods, cannon-fodder, even laws, without the aid of conscious memory that integrates and comprehends and judges. And now the poets were superfluous, and Plato could exclude them from the state, and various orthodoxies could impose scriptures upon the people, regulate their spiritual life. Like the computer, the invention of the alphabet contained a spark of good for those who could extract it. For those who used it thus, writing became a mirror of the mind, an aid to conscience, checking the self-deception which the best memory is subject to, compelling us to see the past for what it was, instead of fashioning self-serving myths about it. Tablet and scroll, moreover, seize those flashes we have of truth and beauty at their brightest and hold them fast, render them “everlasting”. But this last gift, I fear, may also serve to camouflage a trap: we make an idol of the “great poem,” and forget the matrix of human interchange in which it grew. This idol seems immortal, promises the poet immortality, whereas (unless the spirit truly is immortal) the soul can only find continuance in the community that carries on. For loving memory alone preserves, not brass nor stone, paper nor compact disk.
So, what’s one more extinction? From the standpoint of history, writing rendered obsolete -- for the most basic purposes at least -- a segment of the human population. But if utility was gone, there still remained the pleasure which our words imparted to those with time to hear them. So our craft became an entertainment, more or less refined, and justified with more or less of spiritual purpose. Till the invention of electronics placed on the market the refined cane sugar of mass entertainment, junk food for thoughtlessness, that stimulates the appetite for needless purchases to fill the void left by the shattering of kinship, custom and environment -- a substance sweeter than the muse’s honey because not mixed with any of those truths poetry used to help folks to digest. And voilà vanished is our audience; the Nimrods now can dust their hands of us. Our words, hacked out from hunger for our own survival, or a substitute therefore, production from compulsion sans demand, cumber the desks of editors, are mostly rejected, come back empty, do no good, and even if they’re published, are they read? Less and less, except by other poets who want to see how they themselves must write in order to be published -- to the void.
This latest stage (I skipped the printing press) happened so fast, we’ve scarcely had a chance to catch our breath or to regroup our forces. Our first reactions haven’t been constructive. “Art for art’s sake” -- if by that we meant that our production has intrinsic value not cancelled by the falling of our stock, well and good. But if art is a matter of finding forms, and if form follows function, and if moreover poetry has no function on earth, then naturally it has no form, and if no form, no criteria of form. Hence “free verse” and all the de-inventions that have confounded poetry with pose. Perhaps these days it best can be regarded as therapy for those who still are burdened with this unwanted gift. The otiose vanishes in time -- and so shall we, unless we can recapture some lost functions.
Till my last breath I’ll say that we could do it, if we can only look Time in the face, take a deep breath, regroup, and strategize. It would take an effort of imagination -- not hard for us perhaps; harder might be the gestures and the acts that would be needed to bring the imagined out into the world.
Let us imagine first that, one fine morning, we woke to find the devil had flown away with all the itsy bitsy magazines, the contests with their reading fees, the workshops – that promise help in gaining empty prizes. finita la commedia! Now we have to reinvent the calling of the poet, with nothing to begin on but the knowledge that there are others like us, that the world, to hold together, needs us after all, and a few memories of what we were, gestures of the role we used to play.
And why not play it now? Imagine us as actors in a company signed on to play a different comedy entitled, let’s say, The Bards’ Return. The theater is all the world, where each one pleads our cause with everyone in sight who feels some wish or need for truth or love, justice or beauty; and there are also scenes where we assemble, in any venues that we can contrive, to sing of what we’ve done and what we’ve seen upon our various quests. Of these proceedings we keep a record, as a sacred trust for future generations. By this simple resolve, a new tradition could be founded, a pattern that could fit us once again. Then, over time, I think the world would notice who we are, and what our pattern’s for, and think us laborers worthy of our hire. The Muse’s bread shall feed our bodies too, her weavings once again a garb of honor.
September 6, 1999
TRANSITIONAL
Blackberries: at the borders between determined things a mist of blossom and perfume appears for a few springs, for a few summers brambles bear a harvest never sown. With deepening shade they vanish. It is like the moving zone
of dawn- and evening-rose wherewith the mother-star has girdled earth: these pass away, yet somewhere still they are.
REVISING THE ESSAY
Carving, carving, trying to get it clear, deeper and deeper, followed by a fear lest, drawn from thought to farther thought’s allure, I may be making this much more obscure.
TEKIAH
Again you call me in the shofar’s blast, Summoned by a word I once heard plead With strangers for the future of the past, A word, closed then, yet carried like a seed Into my mind, to open up at last In these prayers’ rain. Yet tell me, still outcast, How to address the faces that recede.
For poets do not hear the shofar’s blast, Nor do these praying hear the poet’s voice, And I am that which always goes to waste, My speech to others’ ears the vaguest noise. Word, rivet time and make my heart steadfast. O shofar blast, O Roland’s horn, my voice.
POOR GERTRUDE (poem in a form invented by Richard Moore)
The truth is, Hamlet’s father never existed.
His dad was Claudius, always had been. It was his schizophrenia that persisted
in making up that Other who appeared in various ghost-scenes, calling on his son
to chide his erring spouse, avenge his blood. The prince’s mood-swings were rightly feared;
his love, his friends were baffled and withdrew. Poor Gertrude didn’t know where she had failed.
Herself no Nancy Drew, she never guessed that it was in her brain the ghost first grew,
deep-denied dream of all Claudius wasn’t. Claudius’ patience didn’t stand the test:
at madness’ core he scented the critique. He kept a watch on him while seeming pleasant,
exiled him, laid plans to have him killed. Hamlet, at bay, was roused at last to wreak
some vengeance for his own life anyway. The poet sided with him. From his skilled
quill the ghost took shape again, resisted (So excellent a king) being wiped away.
THE MAGNIFICO AS THE LETTER M
with apologies to Wallace Stevens
This crossing of four-lane roads with a Taco Bell, a McDonald’s, a Dairy Queen, and a Country Kitchen on the outskirts of a city in Wisconsin is this crossing of four-lane roads with a Taco Bell, a McDonald’s, a Dairy Queen, and a Country Kitchen on the outskirts of a city in Michigan or Minnesota or Illinois.
This is stale Muzak which via many-times-processed voices over many-times-processed entrees declares itself not shyly.
Where have I come from? What am I? (This entree being served in Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Illinois.) Where am I going?
This crossing of four-lane roads... This Taco Bell... This McDonald’s...
THE RESIDUE AT BOCA RATON
Singable residue -- Paul Celan
Two tides meet here. The line of condos, villas, hotels, resorts, that no one from Key West to probably Nova Scotia can outwalk,
comes toe to toe with the Atlantic Ocean as the edge between is borne away: a six- foot sand-step bites the beach down
to the waterline, since the storm last winter sent waves to knock on the terrace wall beneath the pale-pink tower. Upstairs in my aunt’s
seashell apartment: high ceilings, white walls, pink pillows. Paintings, prints, not conversation pieces: “They came with the place,
I never look at them.” Must have seemed the right sort of thing, unlike un- productive me. “Poetry? That’s nothing
for this time.” Ninety years old, twenty years widowed, still slim and smart. “You can’t live in the past.” The present is long distance phone calls, bridge, bingo, TV.
She knows about salt in the aquifers around Miami. “It’s the end of the world. Let’s enjoy what we have.” Refers stoically to her daughter, dead of cancer at fifty,
shows my mother her collection of photos. She’s at her best when talking of their childhood, and my mother also brightens then. I go down
to walk on the foreshore, trying to block out the buildings but of course one can’t. With me there tag along faint outlines of presences: Hölderlin, Stevens, Yeats,
summoned by the surf’s gong, they come unwillingly to the sea that gives and takes remembrance and grovels beneath our rage for [“violent”] [“Dis’”] order
growing sterile beside the diseased venereal soil. But Homer has no problem with all this, adaptable, like those pelicans that when the dawn
wind is stiff commute up from behind the condos, strap-hanging on extended wings -- the Morse code of his verse tapping in my head
like the old-time tunes my aunt hears on the radio in her sleepless nights. His scenes reenact themselves like hauntings, the two chiefs scrapping over captive women
no different from a gangster movie really but immortal in rhythm. And the ocean rolls its hexameters impassively casting
the shells of her dwindling children. Perhaps since the loss of the ammonoids -- great spiral wheels, rainbow-colored for all we know, ten feet in diameter,
chased with increasingly arcane runes of sutures, housing those plasms that sent forth their great roiling tentacles, for all we know, with the cunning of the giant squid
-- but no cunning availed in those years of winter when the sky was darkened and all the plankton died -- perhaps since then it does not matter to her
what she goes on giving and taking: strewn scarves of coquina, excised brains of coral, what has formed itself in her eons and seasons
with her hands’ finishing touches: the internal precision screw of the conch laid bare, a shard of whelk smoothed for the bowl of a spoon;
even returns our absentminded offerings -- styrofoam float, polyurethane container -- reshaped into a semblance of her tokens,
like a poet throwing in a scientific term. I walk along, churning words and disgruntlements. He went away by the shore of the many-thundering sea.
Hals atygretos. The restless sea. Alternative reading: the barren sea. Either works. Host to a dysfunctional prehistoric compulsion,
peak experiences are not for me, noting coldly that sunset or dawn turns sky and ocean to one pink shell (rosy-fingered). Nor can I meditate, turn off
the word-machine. But I ask for a perfect shell and, a minute later, find a fighting conch, its opening glistens brown-black, color of old gore,
intact enough to give back the seething in the veins of my listening flesh as an echo of the many-thundering sea. Leaving the shore
I turn: “Thank you.” After all you can never be sure.
TWO SONNETS FROM THE TEXAS COAST
1.
Earth, when it bore the restless soul of Man And nursed its growth, was beauty-full with forms Intricate as plankton and enormous As whales, ornately and austerely grand As dune and jungle; air and sea were fanned By multifarious fin and wing, by storms Stirred yet not defiled. And were we born Merely to meddle with destructive hand?
Not so; for in the soul of man lives on The memory of all that we have marred. Our thoughts can from a shinbone, from a shard, Rebuilt body and city. Could we learn The nature that is in us to discern, We are the template of creation.
2.
Poet who thirsts for fame, and that your word May die, fears more than for the son the sire, For one thought's space wrest free of this desire, Look back upon the things that have occurred. Given that one in every thousand souls, Perhaps, is driven by the Muse's sting, That from the past a few score names still ring, While over all the rest oblivion rolls: How many bards have spun their threads and died, Do you think, since humankind first found its tongue? How many fossils do those white cliffs hide That rise above the beach where Arnold sung? Then, ripple, rejoice this day to live and sing. Fear not your death; fear but the silent spring.
A PAPER OF PINS
On a bench in front of Mammoth Cave one day (history does not record whether bright or gray)
sat Jessie, from Jarvis, a small town near Toronto, who was touring the South alone. She had studied piano
in Leipzig, only to conclude that a concert career with all that it demanded, was not quite for her,
so back to Jarvis where her British father, defeated by ill health, had many years ago retreated,
resigned himself to being a provincial doctor. There he had married a farmer’s energetic daughter, descendant of Tories who had found the States, after the Revolution, not a friendly place.
Jessie had blue eyes, brown hair, chiselled features to compensate for a somewhat austere figure;
she was at the time in her late twenties -- “Prettiest girl I ever saw -- and she still is,”
Nathan used to say, who saw her there. At the cave-mouth. He came from a Southern family, heir
to past glory (now shame). He traced his descent to one Hector, who, upon a voyage, bent
for Malta (that surely cannot be right?) was wrecked on the Carolina coast. Nathan’s intellect
cast him for a scholar, but he lost an eye in a childhood accident, so had to try
making it in business. (Don’t ask about that.) Anyway, Jessie and Nathan bore and begat
my father. And similarly, it is told that beside a race track near New York there strolled
a French immigrant couple with their only child, Leonie. She was twenty-five but not lonely,
she had had seven suitors but would not leave her parents for someone she didn’t really love.
Leonie wore a black silk dress that afternoon -- “Nini,” the seamstress had said, “in this you’ll meet your fortune!”
And as they were walking Leonie trod on the hem and a ruffle came loose and they had no pins with them,
And as they conferred in French, they caught the attention of Cheble, Lebanese with a French education.
He had pins in his pocket, for he was in the garment trade, so he courteously approached them and offered his aid,
and the family liked him and one thing led to another, and one of seven eventual results was my mother.
So it seems I am one of the People of the Air, whose origins are everywhere and nowhere.
A moment’s rest on a bench, a paper of pins -- You see? One might so easily not have been.
THE JOURNEY TO JEBEL MUSA
It was not that I thought there would be anything up there, but I had to climb up Mount Sinai once anyway. Ten years before, on a winter walk in the country, some weeds on the snow had looked like the words on a certain page in the work of a certain poet who’d gone off in my ear like an alarm clock -- and suddenly this idea had sprouted in my mind that the ecological crisis would be like another kind of Sinai experience for the human race. You know, we would be confronted by the Earth, by the Universe and its Creator, and receive the Law. So one thing led to another and I landed in Jerusalem in the fall of 1979 and started studying in a women’s Orthodox yeshiva, and during the few months I was there the school organized this trip to the Sinai Peninsula which was still in Israeli hands at the time. We set out, thirty or forty long-skirted women in a bus. When we started we said the prayer for the journey and when we stopped to eat we always said the blessings and washed our hands if we were having bread. I was pretty much into all of that at the time despite my reservations which you can imagine; you’d be surprised how natural it comes to seem. I don’t remember much about the trip -- took a roll of film but never got it developed. One night we slept out under the stars. One day we saw a man hunkered down on the hard desert ground, baking bread over a fire of dried dung. The bread was thin, soft and white. We handed the man a few coins, washed our hands, said the blessing and ate. Then we were at the foot of this mountain. Its name was Jebel Musa -- the mountain of Moses. It was black, jagged but more or less cone-shaped, I’ve seen higher but it was easily the highest thing around. There were stairs cut in the mountain. It was customary to start before dawn and arrive at the top before sunrise, to escape the desert heat. I remember the crescent moon suspended in predawn grey beside the mountain shoulder, and how steep the steps were, and the rust-black rock formations on both sides. We got to the top a few minutes late for sunrise, and another group were opening their tins of sardines on the highest rock. There was a small Christian chapel, which was closed, and an abandoned mosque, open. We looked inside and quickly drew back. Someone was sitting there, apparently in meditation. But a woman from the other group banged on the door and the lady inside emerged. She was tall, dressed entirely in white. Blond hair, parted and drawn back beneath the white shawl. She was smiling in a way that made me think of this goddess-like figure I’d seen in a dream, twelve years before, at the start of events that had started me moving on what I hoped was the way to a different future. She put her finger to her lips and handed us a sheet of paper, enclosed in plastic, that said she came there once every year to pray for all the world’s religions, not that they should merge but that they should respect one another. A schedule of prayers was given: one day for Christianity, one day for Judaism, and so on; finally a departure date. The one young man in the group, who had come along with his wife, pointed to the word “Departure” and then, inquiringly, at the sky. She smiled, a little wryly, and pointed downward. Then she went back inside and we climbed back down. I didn’t last long at the women’s yeshiva and after ten years, had to leave Jerusalem too, that meeting-point of so many journeys that even if you didn’t believe in the Messiah it was hard not to believe that something amazing -- miracle or enlightenment -- might happen there. Well, we’re not always sure when and how things are happening. The road doubles back and nothing comes forth in its own form.* But even in moments of skeptical despair, since then, I have been glad there was someone on top of Mount Sinai. There are such memories that stop your slide. That hold.
WATER MUSIC
I have been asked to speak the praise of water, Which at this interface of ice and fire Ripples through the hollows of the earth And falls and rises through the rushing air And shapes itself to various forms of life, And flows through them oblivious of death.
And therefore of all the modes of death There is something chosen about a death by water, Life begging to be recast into a life Less thunder-stunned, less scorched by fire, To unlearn the intaking of this too-sharp air And grow gills that might breathe at last in earth.
And therefore when springs well up from earth We deem it is in sorrow for some death. That shadowed clarity has the air Of wanting once again to be more than water, To become an eye that could hold the fire, Or as if, in that quickness, the lost had life.
And so we come together and drink “To life,” And eat to fill ourselves with earth, And dance balancing a torch of fire To restake our homestead in death, Calling on the storms of love to water The ground again, fill up the empty air
We came to know when our arms returned through air To our own chests. We bring the dead to life, Only their faces are changed, as in water, And our approximations fill the earth Until, looking on life, we see death And know that somehow we have missed the fire.
And then we begin to send down fire Instead of rain through the shrieking air, Devising more dead things that deal death Or enforcing an unendeared life, Causing the heart of wisdom to tremble lest earth Escheat to fire, forfeiting grace of water.
Yet may these sorrows water the rose of that fire By which we see, on this earth embraced with its air, Life mirroring and mirrored upon death. WEEDS
Where the barn-field funnels down toward the ravine, we descend, . our jeans brushed by dry stalks, thistle and chicory, those owners . of masterless land. While my father’s strength lasted, the enemies of pasture, . seedlings of cedar, prickly ash, and apple, were held off. He had . no need, might have conceded to the blue epiphany of chicory, . the thistle’s purple offering, pleasing to fritillary and finch; but though . for his holiday he came to the beauty of this field, this ravine, this wood-fringed valley, he could not pass . among them without purpose. The weeds, whose life means disorder, say . he is gone. We pick our way down the ravine. I find . in the outwash, loosed by the winter rains, new concretions, concentric sculptures of iron . bonded, he once explained, in the sandstone. I will keep them in the glass corner cabinet,
.where the old farmer’s wife, whose narcissus still come up in the phlox-choked garden,
.kept her china. She came back one year to tell my mother of the dances in the kitchen,
.to say, "We were happy here." Few farm now in these hills, nor will my father . return to laugh at my decadent display. But I would not know, after all, what new shape the strength had taken, in what world it might now be making . for order and beauty, luxury, calm and pleasure. 2000
TWO SONNETS’ WORTH ABOUT MONEY
1. Money Magic
Do you recall when we were poor together? We’d sit and talk like councillors of kings Of art and soul and world and why and whether, Drinking cheap Chianti among curious things Gleaned from Good Will, from beaches where we went. But everything was cheaper in those days; We didn’t have to scrape for food or rent, These met, we could feel wealthy in a phrase. It is the old story: you have grown rich And never visit now and seldom call, Leaving us to mull those spells that leach Life’s substance, and to patch affection’s hole As best we can with what we still can buy, The cost of your replacement being too high.
2. Upon Looking Into “The Wealth of Nations”
The tendency to barter, truck, exchange, Said Adam Smith, distinguishes the human From all the other animals that range In social groups, and find their food in common. The strong may rob the weaker, or the weak Beg from the strong, but neither thinks to pay The other for the benefit they seek: This is, as much as speech, the human way.
Then why do poets castigate the coin, And coin so seldom visit poet's purse? Are we the baby chimp, the big-eyed whine, Still striving to appoint the world its nurse? Unless we speak for earth, from whom all wares Are taken, and for all of trucking’s heirs.
BALLADE OF THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT
I know how to crochet and weave And write a sonnet that will scan; I know how similes deceive And how alliterations span A verse; through the sestina’s plan My muse victoriously wends; I know all that less thoroughly than I know how to make foes of friends.
I know for what the willows grieve, I know who won, who also ran; I know what tales were told by Eve Before her bite brought down the ban; I know where are the snows d’antan And what tomorrow’s dream portends; I know where fools fool’s gold may pan; I know how to make foes of friends.
Who made the mandrake-root conceive, How one may get a moonbeam-tan, How carry water in a sieve, How most efficiently to fan Fox-fires, just where time’s thread began, I know, and where the rainbow ends; I know what makes my own hope wan: I know how to make foes of friends.
Prince, Rabbi, Magus, Fellow-man, On whom all that I sing depends, One skill take from me, if you can: I know how to make foes of friends.
SHEHECHIYANU
I can tell you where though not exactly what year I learned the blessing Shehechiyanu -- “Who has kept us alive and enabled us to reach this time.” I was getting off the bus where Herzl Boulevard meets with HaPisgah Street, the main drag of Bayit Vegan, an “ultraorthodox” neighborhood, changes its name if it isn’t changed already, I forget, it’s been ten years since I left there, and goes on. The bus stopped by the Alexander Calder stabile (red-painted legs like the octopus from outer space in a horror comic I read in summer camp) on a rainy winter afternoon, maybe it was the last bus before Shabbat, which I was invited to spend with a survivor of Bergen-Belsen and her family. I had also gotten there by way of Death and Destruction, although if I told you what happened you would say it was nothing. But nothing is sometimes not nothing. My friend who had come by way of Bergen Belsen, a few years into her second marriage, became subject to fits of uncontrollable laughter. She went to a psychiatrist who naturally assumed it was an aftereffect, probed, but couldn’t find the connection. At last they noticed that the fits only occurred when her mother-in-law, a perfectly nice old lady, was around. Her husband spoke tactfully to his mother, the visits became less frequent, the fits stopped. But a portrait of the late mother-in-law hung on the wall, showed her sitting beside the lit Sabbath candles, their glow by the way was very well rendered, in pencil, facing you. She looked like an iron-willed sheep. Anyway on that rainy Friday afternoon there I was with my overnight bag and my problems with Orthodoxy and my bad conscience and life grazed casually but irreparably by the Great Wheel, and a future murky as the sky that boiled with clouds and bone-chilling winds, and suddenly an understanding of this blessing came to me, how can I explain, I grew up with so much sadness, the music I liked always had a dying fall, yes, even the music that had brought me to that place and time, and I had no reason to expect anything, but perhaps it was because the mountainside stepped off from the stabile whose lines mimic the mountains, into the wadi where fog churned upward like an answer, that it came to me, not an optimism exactly, but a sense of Time as an energy welling up from somewhere. Not a fall.
PEONIES AND CEDAR
So bend above the garden once again And clear the spurge from round the peonies That have not bloomed this year, because their sun Is taken by the growing cedar trees. Come August we’ll transplant them to a place Where they will have more light, and maybe then The enfeebled roots will strengthen and produce Until we can cut peonies again.
But shall we ever see them and not say, “He would have loved their fragrance and their hue”, Nor feel the shadow of his being gone Between us and the sunlight of that day? I know the meaning now of cypress and of yew: Grief’s shadow lengthens out as time goes on.
BESIDE THE HUNTERS
(from the Proto-Nostratic)
Mammoth bones, heaped beside this swirl of river. I stand watching the others tug and strain And heave the huge bones up onto their shoulders For the new roof to lengthen out our longhouse. I should go down and help them as I can; Find a few smaller pieces I can carry The way I see the children doing now. A moment more and I will join them, though They are accustomed to my being useless Except in the one thing: lacking in strength For heavy work, in quickness for the hunt, In steadiness of hand for knapping flints. “Put-Together-Keep-In-Head” they call me, Although my ancestor made the name “bard” You’d think they would find handier. But they Find laughter in the older, longer names Which I would keep for song. They know it galls me -- One of their ways of keeping me aware That although needed, I am not much liked. It would be wise now to forsake these thoughts -- No matter for a song they’d care to hear -- And go among them, try to bear a hand With the alertness they must have; it might Lesson me, and lessen their dislike. Which way would you, old fool? Not eagerness But weariness both drives and holds you back: Weariness of others’ loads and rhythms, Weariness of the friction generated By rubbing up against these lifelong strangers. Without me, they and all their thoughts would scatter Like wind-blown sand. Without them, I would starve. But I and they are like a man and woman Who need each other, yet each to the other Is like the stinging plant. Only at times, As when a man and woman lie together, Or when a winter storm walls the lodge in And they must have a song, or start to quarrel -- They sit down looking at me, let me cast My unseen thong of words around their circle And draw it tighter, tighter, till at last They’re right inside my skull, not seeing me But seeing everything the way I see it. And then I can forget that they are there. The Unseen Mother holds me on her lap, Rocks me, sings to me. Until I am The Mother, feel within my womb of words This newness knitting, yes, on the old patterns, The ones I’ve learned, but never quite the same; I feel it taking shape, coming to term, Until it shatters into mere applause. Then I am ringed by strangers once again, And Go-Do’s look is like a sharpened stick Held against my throat, about to take Revenge for holding him against his will And for the attention I have drawn away, That sweetness I’ve just tasted -- well I know The praise I give is no again-gift for it. He’s never happy unless giving orders, His in-shape craves that. Look at him down there, Commanding those who lift the mammoth bones, Although I think they would know how to do it Without his say-so. By the way the heads Turn toward each other, I’d say they exchange Glances of weary patience. Well they know That when time comes to plan the hunt, to stalk The living beast, to lay the trap, to plant The spear -- he’s there, casting a rope of men, Wielding them all, the way each wields his spear, Or himself like the spear-point thrusting in. I’ve seen it, when there was a place to watch And not be in the way. Watching, I learned The Mother guides him, in a different way. Acts come to him, as likenings to me. He sees beyond the next step, just as I do -- Sees the whole hunt, the way I see the song. No doubt the Mother knows what she is doing; Why do I wish that he could like me better? I’ve never had close friends, never been easy With anyone, nor felt anyone want Me for a friend. Just that unlucky Aspen. How many summers since the spirits took her? She had, herself, the gift of putting-together. Why the Mother gave that to a woman I do not know. She made some lullabies, Love-songs, healing-spells, the sort of thing Women like and men sometimes resort to. She was always watching me. She wasn’t Ugly, either, but she had too many Thoughts for a woman. Where she was I wanted Not to be. She would have understood me, No doubt did; but I chased Mint, who only Laughed at me. Then it was my turn to make A love-song; I saw Aspen when she heard it. Now of course I know Mint would have bored me Before the moon had come around. I have Willow; she keeps the fire and fetches water, Cooks the portions that the hunters give me And brings me brats. That third boy has the Gift. I’ve given him the name of River Talks, Of him who was bard of this clan before me, Taught me the measures and the ancient staves; And if the sun comes back to where it stands Four or five more times before the spirits Call me, the people will still have a bard When I am gone. So one hand lays the thong And needle down, and another picks it up. Our lives are only stanzas in the song The Mother sings, and no one but the Mother Sings or hears it all. And if we jostle One another, as words sometimes jostle Each other in a line, perhaps that keeps Her Awake. I wonder, now, are all the staves Alike, except for things that make no change After a few suns: one hunt more or less, A winter of much snow, a summer flood? Or is each different from the last, because They are the steps of something that is coming To be, of some big story that is happening If people only had the wit to see? But we are gone before the shadow moves A hand’s breath, and the ones who take our place Cannot be certain it has moved at all. If every generation were one finger, And I’d as many hands as I have fingers, And if I could remember all that time, Not just the knotted cord of fathers’ names, What story would I hear? The tales I learned From River Talks, and teach to River Talks, Speak of the time when things were made, and then Of ancestors who were far greater hunters Than Go-Do, or his best friend Spear-Strikes-Home, Of bigger mammoths, fiercer wolves and bears, Even of man-bears and man-wolves, with men’s Cunning and beast’s strength, terrible to face, Of men who talked with spirits -- ay, the way River Talks taught me to pretend I do. Was there a time when such tales were not told But done? Where do they come from anyway?
Something comes back to me I had not thought of For many years. I must have seen five summers; River Talks had just begun to teach me. It was on the way down summer range, Where the path bends around a bluff, we came Face to face with a small band of -- what Shall I call them? Beasts or men? They walked On two legs, but their faces and their bodies Were hairy. They were short of stature, bow- Legged, heavy-boned, low-browed and chinless. Their eyes had whites, like human eyes. The males Held pointed sticks, and round their waists were tied Pouches that bulged, I think with throwing-stones; The women bent, like ours, beneath tall packs. Seeing us they stopped short, drew together, Talked among themselves with grunts and hand-signs. At last one male walked toward us, made a gesture Of grovelling, and signed as if to ask us To let them pass. The man who led us then, Gets-Done, he that was Go-Do’s mother’s brother, Spoke a few words with other tall men round them And we drew in to let them pass: a hand Of males, perhaps, one or two fewer women, And even fewer young. We watched them out of sight And then walked on ourselves. But Gets-Done softly Called the hunters of the band together, And half of them, with Sneak-Up in the lead Set out to track the strangers at a distance. Toward morning they came back, bloody and silent. They’d tracked them to their camp I guess, surprised them Asleep, and made short work of them, before The males could get their sticks and throwing-stones. No one found fault with what Gets-Done had ordered -- The man-beasts might have hunted off our game. But no one bragged of what he’d done that night And no one sang that day along the track. Men quarreled with each other and their women, The women traded taunts. As for us children, We made ourselves unseen as best we could. An evil spirit seemed to dwell among us Right up until the time of making ready For the Great Gathering of early autumn. Then thoughts turned to packing, to the kin We’d see for the first time since early spring. Then River Talks had little time for me. Beside us on the trail to Council Bluff I saw him walk around with lips that move And eyes that seemed to stare through everything. I felt shut out, scared and even angry -- Perhaps that’s how I make the others feel. The big night came. Around the council fire Sat the chieftains of the bands, their bards Beside them, and their warriors round about, Women and children huddled in the shadows With a few smaller fires around the fringe And lookouts posted. I could barely see Who was talking, but when River Talks Began, of course I knew his voice. He sang About the mammoth hunt we’d had before We left the summer range. He praised each hunter, Mentioning their fathers and forefathers, Braiding in their tutelary spirits, The sun and moon and stars! Old River Talk Was making it a greater kill of words Than it had been been of beasts. But all the time I wondered: would he tell about that other Hunt, the one that no one yet had bragged of? Then he began to tell the ancient story About the Man-bears who had roamed the world, Carrying off men’s children, driving off The game. Fierce were these Man-bears, very strong, With claws as sharp as flint and eyes of fire. But Burning Spear, first father of our band, Gathered a few brave friends and drove them back To the spirit world. But sometimes they return -- And so he told the story of that hunt, Inventing mighty deeds for all concerned. Of course it was a lie from start to finish, But all were glad to have the boil of silence Cut, and the memory that caused the boil Taken out, and the poultice of a story Bound over it. Months later, River-Talk Had me learn his song about the Man-bears Along with all the rest. It has become One of my winter songs. No one but me, Perhaps, remembers how it really was; Those hunters are all dead now, and the living -- I sometimes think that if it weren’t for me They’d hardly know this summer from the last. Each time I’ve sung this song, I’ve wondered when I’ll see the Man-bears next. But I have never Seen them since. A hand of summers past, Along the north end of our summer range, We found the entrance to a cave. Make Seem Was thrilled: another place of winding tunnels That he could cover with his colored shadows Of bison, mammoth, aurochs. But what I And others saw, was that inside the cave-mouth There was a pit where many fires had burned, There were scattered bones, a few flints crudely knapped, A sharpened stick, like those the Man-bear males Had carried. There was no trail to the place, It must have been a long time since the fires Went out. I stooped down and picked up a flint, -- A large piece, yet it had a kind of balance, Must have made a handy throwing-stone -- And for a moment then I was the man Who held it last, and everything he knew, His ancestors, his family, his hunting And being hunted -- all that was in me And then gone, like a dream that slips the trap Of memory, or a flash of lightning even Make-Seem could not retrace upon the clouds. I did not speak of this. Whom could I tell? Name-Cord perhaps, or others whom I see At the Great Gatherings. But each of us Is bound by what he knows his clan can hear. We trade songs, yes, but do not trade the thoughts Behind the songs. I have not spoken of it.
But now I think: there must have been a time When there were more Man-bears than there are now. I think we must have hunted them before, And that was where the ancient story came from That River Talks made use of at the gathering. I wonder if there still are any left. So that has been a change, not like the changes Of fall and spring, not even like the changes I Feel in my old bones, while my son grows up. My son brings back my strength, although it is No longer mine. But nothing brings the Bear-men Back into the world. It seems there are Stories too long for us to tell or hear, And all we guess of them is like a glimpse Of the river through the trees. Have I had other Such glimpses, or such feelings, where I seem To put my hand upon the fell of some Beast, far larger than the wooly mammoth, Not knowing if I touch its haunch or flank?
Those mammoth bones, down there -- they are very old. They lie heaped at the river-bend, as though The first to snag there in the raging flood Had made a dam for others. What a herd That must have been. I have not seen such herds. Three hands of them we saw, on our last hunt. Is that, too, such a story? Even while The hunters urge Make-Seem to cover more Cave-walls with his colored shadows, so The Mother will conceive more herds of mammoth, Bison and aurochs, and drive them on our spears, Is something taking them away, not bringing Them back? I do not like these thoughts. I feel Them building toward a moment of the Sight -- Mother, spare me! I don’t want to see Men living among things You never bore, Hunting each other. Take this Sight away! What use to give me this, a lame old man, Who can do nothing, only sing to make The current of Your days run a bit smoother, Build story-shelters round the life of men. What if I spoke to Make-Seem and to Name-Cord, Ask if they have seen this, and what else They’ve seen? We could do nothing, just offend Go-Do, and make life harder for our sons. If this Sight was a true one, they will always Have work to make up stories to disguise What’s done. I should have gone and carried bones. They’re finished now, I think; the last are leaving. Tomorrow they will build... We are now many. I shall be called on when they’ve stretched the hides Over the arches. There will be a feast, With songs to praise the doings of Go-Do. It is the bard’s work, Mother, which you gave As you gave the hunters, too, their work. There’s only so much even the best bard Can put together. Even if all the bards Would put their thoughts together, we could never See more than a short length of your long story. It’s just as well we do not see the end.
VILLANELLE OF THE POLITICAL CONVENTIONS
We watch the politicians on parade Through the balloon- and promise-crowded air. We do not know what bargains have been made.
Their lines are smoothed of all that might abrade A voter’s sensibilities anywhere. We watch the politicians on parade
For decent (but free) speech, free (but fair) trade, Fire that will not burn. Buyer beware: We do not know what bargains have been made,
We do not know what interests have paid For all those videos that show they care. We watch the politicians on parade
With family feelings prominently displayed, Spreading arms wide or lifting them in prayer. We do not know what bargains have been made.
We are not in this game that’s being played For somewhat higher stakes than we can spare. We watch the politicians on parade. We do not know what bargains have been made.
FOR ART’S SAKE
Art for art’s sake alone? Consider this: Critters survive by following their bliss. The genes of those who groom and mate and fight Often, are handed on; those who delight In such activities most often do ‘em, So with delight the genetic fates imbue ‘em. And not just with delight, but urgency: The critter feels that it will cease to be Unless it gets its fix of love or war -- It feels that’s what it was created for. Likewise with poets. Those who indite today Don’t do it for utility or pay. We do it ‘cause we’ve got to, feel we’ll die unless we do. What drives us won’t ask why. Nevertheless, to the extent we use Our wee gray cells, the reasons why the muse So goads us, aren’t exactly rocket science. The bard’s ingenium was an appliance That served our relatives in days of eld. A kinship-group that had a good one, held A picture of the world that fit the head And hung together, stood them in good stead. It mapped their wanderings, adjudged their quarrels, It stored for times of need their lore and morals; It entertained them through cold foodless days When “bored to death” was more than just a phrase. Hence the delight in singing and in hearing, Till writing, then the media, interfering, Captured our functions and supplied enjoyment Cheaper than ours. Therefore our unemployment. Gadgets and widgets, artificial sweets, Content our former listeners. The treats We offer, need a certain concentration To take them in. The media’s dissipation Goes down much smoother than our mindful fun: True, it may make them sick in the long run, But foresight’s not our kin’s proclivity -- It’s rather a poetic specialty, Like memory. The bard’s prophetic soul -- That always was the aspect of our role That made us somewhat spooky to the rest. The Muse’s honey helped them to ingest Many a bitter medicine, until They could get sugar-coating with no pill Inside. And so, the listeners are gone, But still the late-born singer lingers on, Must still compose, though the world decomposes And makes coherency look like psychosis.
We have to do it ‘cause we’re built that way; If that’s what”Art for art’s sake” means, OK. Only, I do not think we’ll really find Much bliss, while in some corner of our mind Hunkers the consciousness of our futility -- The bards of eld found bliss in their utility, In others’ need of them, which they could fill, In the results their exercise of skill Produced, the healing and the harmony, The shining eyes of a great company Fixed on them, or a chief’s approving nod, When he acknowledged that through us the god Had spoken. But to sit and cobble verse Knowing that no one in the universe Is waiting for it, that it has no power To make things happen -- well, it turns one sour. Must we resign ourselves to this? I say Nuts! though things look bad for us, the day Is not yet over. Poets, let us take Counsel in verse, to see how we might break The spell that holds our hearers in its thrall. We’ve got the smarts, if we can just let fall The pride that plays us off ‘gainst one another. Like kids that play off father against mother, Our former listeners have learned to tangle Us up in rivalries until we wrangle To see who most deserves the goods which (if You’ll look around) were stolen during our tiff. Wise parents learn to put a stop to that: They see what’s happening, resolve their spat, And tell the children how it’s going to be. There is a lesson here for you and me. If some of us in concert could appeal To the many in our polity who feel That things aren’t going just the way they should, Then we might do ourselves and Earth some good, Rebuild -- or build -- the dwelling-place of Mind, And render human fates a mite less blind. Sound “too good to be true”? I can agree, Yet find this dream an aid to minstrelsy. It mobilizes thought, it gives more scope Than strictures that are safe, but cut off hope. “Seek and ye shall find,” says the Good Book; Science observes, “To find, you have to look.” Satire’s unfelt where expectation’s dead, Nature looks pale these days, and we have said What needed saying of relationships Where no birds sing -- of paintings -- and of trips. There’s not much left to fuel a strong-winged steed Unless this cause... Art for art’s sake, indeed.
POET PRIDE
Long before those paintings in the cave, The poet and the people grew entwined From the deep taproot of the human mind Which mainly through our makings came together: The names of things were born upon our tongue, Our stories were the people’s living tree.
Before the clan had climbed out of the tree, Before the fire was made to serve, the cave Inhabited, even before the tongue Was freed to wag, before signs were entwined To sentences, when all were wrapped together In the dimness before the dawn of mind,
There was our pulse and breath. Then, as mind Laid its circuits, learned to build the tree Of the sentence, breath and pulse together Pulled these learnings back into the cave Of concerning, so that knowledge was entwined With living, heart remained the twin of tongue.
As tellings collected on the tongue, A bundle of skills became a mind: Hand, eye and ear brought news that were entwined To a language growing like a tree, Enlarging backward like a treasure-cave Filled with all we had been through together.
In those times all the people worked together And knew that those who had a poet’s tongue Communed with the common spirit of the cave; Without our sayings and our laws, the mind Of the clan would wither like a girdled tree, Without the tales in which all fortunes were entwined.
And the people’s and the poet’s fate are still entwined, Though this has been forgotten altogether, Though the tree of knowledge and the tree Of life have been severed, as word from tongue, As breathless calculations make a mind Without the pulse of heart, and community must cave
In to entwined cunnings that twist the tongue -- Unless poets can come together and make one mind To replant the tree of mind at the mouth of heart’s cave.
HOSHANA RABBA 5761
This house of cards that we are living in, This air-balloon that oil-fires keep aloft, This palace built on piles of sufferance That at a moment’s notice may go soft,
This country driven, hypnotized, where no one Knows their neighbor’s face, their leader’s mind, But set their courses from instructions given Out at a window few will look behind;
And Israel, like an external soul Of that great nerveless body, hard beset -- What vital threads run through that distant pole This country does not guess -- as yet --
Outpost of conscience far from any base, Hammered to factions, and most grievously Compelled to acts it weeps for, then accused By those who fashion the necessity;
And we who find ourselves both here and there, From whose hopes in intractable furrows sown We are -- when did we dream this? -- made aware What hateful harvest once again has grown:
This morning in the shul some walked around Seven times and chanted “Hosha-na!” While some appeal to heads of state and press To whom the market seems the only law.
And we, in whom the pain of what we know Wells up in words that cannot be denied By us, though by the masses entertained With facile falsehoods, lightly brushed aside, We poets here convene to hear each other, To unroll in verse the maps of our perceiving, To pool and sort our knowledge, though the ill Appear far past prescribing and relieving:
Still toward a common center we press in Hoping for synergy, that each one’s word May gather strength and resonance from the rest, And so increase our chance of being heard.
We have all read the legend of the breaking Of vessels and the scattering of the light To sparks, around which grew obscuring hulls, Until the righteous find, release, and reunite
Those sparks. Perhaps, if anyone, we poets, who sense both the particular and the whole, could give the legend meaning, and thereby make, too, a case for the outmoded soul,
rebuild and reconnect a center of awareness, nerve unto nerve, heart unto heart, until the body could again be moved to fairness -- not by shouts, no, but by breath-held skill:
-- A dream to warm us as we gather round, However much or little may come true. O let us pray it may not be too late For such a hope -- and do what we can do.
October, 2000
THE NEW PERSONIFICATION
They tried to give the thing a human face, Arrange its features into an expression, Write speeches for it, though the void's confession Leaks poisonously out through every space. It is an image of a marketplace Where every interest has its concession, A store-front office for big-league aggression, A poster saying we lost the human race.
The alternative was not quite – though a man Of blunders, who had handled too much pitch – A fit logo for our bipartisan Inanity. And now, stand back: the rich Plunder the commonwealth. The rest of us can Look forward to being left without a stitch.
December 2000
from the Russian of Osip Mandel’shtam
Let me tell you with the ultimate honesty: All’s just blather, brandy-lather, Chickadee.
Where once beauty gleamed to gladden The Hellene, There for me disgrace from black holes Gapes obscene.
Where Achaeans smuggled Helen In their ships, Salty foam is all I’m feeling On my lips.
Yes, across my lips a beggar- Grease will glide, I shall get the strictest fig-sign From the void.
Oy veh, why veh, why me, ay me -- What the hell -- Angel Mary, guzzle whiskey, Cocktails swill!
Let me tell you with the ultimate honesty: All’s just blather, brandy-lather, Chickadee.
December 2000
TO A POET PRESENT AT THE DEMONSTRATIONS
for Reva Sharon
Say that Jerusalem is Paul Celan
I hear that you were in Jerusalem Among three hundred thousand gathered there To say that we must stand, that we must stem A rushing of concessions that could tear The ground from underneath our people’s prayer And bare its heart to blows which those incite Who have built a den of war and cursing where Once stood our Father’s house, the nations’ light. The press here speaks of “protests on the right.” Remind us that the heart is on the left, And let its pulse be felt in what you write, Its cry be heard, that we be not bereft Of pulse and breath and light and hope and will. Say to us that Jerusalem is still.
[untitled]
Your name, twice. Your answer: “Hineni.” In three words the whole Bible, old testaments and new.
ENGINEERS for Frederick Turner
It is true the engineers have built us round With edifices mightier than fair. Their calculations guide them without error: Set in concrete their soulless forms are sound, Whilst we, poor poets, flutter in their spaces Like the last butterfly in Terezín, Or camp in some diminishing oasis Encroached on every day by their demesne.
And yet we too could build, if we could find Again the ancient compass of our trade, Access the plan, imprinted on our mind, That makes one form of all that we have made, A temple, whence the Word might gradually Transform the kingdoms of utility.
THE MAY
based on an incident recounted by Flora Thompson in Lark Rise to Candleford
“All my life,” she’d say, “I have supped sorrow.” And no one understood. Her kin were poor, But the whole village had to scrape and borrow,
Hard work, small gain. She had no less nor more. Her melancholy lasted till she lost Her husband, then her sons in the Great War,
And then she grew serene. (Can griefs exhaust Grief?) In springtime she would cull white may And place it in her house, although she crossed
Her neighbors’ superstition, for they say The may means death. “But all I loved are dead; Let me look on beauty.” So the spray Gleamed in her front room, lovely beyond dread.
CORPORATE ART (from a catalog)
Something’s missing here, I’m not sure what. Certainly these works do not lack skill: Artist’s prints, mostly landscape and still- life, bright colors, more and less abstract. Maybe it’s shadows, depth. They all look flat, even when the subject is three-dimensional. There’s Goethe’s portrait, colored by Warhol, the face subordinate to the scallop hat.
Many are quite complex, on the surface, offering to those who wait in line the pleasure of an intricate design to follow, even if it leads nowhere. The prints are leased, they change them every year. Your doctor probably subscribes to this service.
PREPARATIONS FOR A JOURNEY
A long time we have lived here, Long enough indeed that we should have seemed At home here, were it not for the stories Still tugging at us like a wind from the desert. The stories kept us strangers here; And of course, there were the others.
They were here when we came, we came to them, Drawn by some need of theirs, and ours, Yet without meeting. The set of their shoulders, their long eyes, The sidelong smiles they had for one another, The smoothness of their motions, as if they moved In time to some dreaming dance we could not learn: All was of one line, continuous With the riverbank and the motion of the river; Whereas our steps moved in ragged directions, Pulled by the wind from the desert.
I think we seemed to ourselves, All those years, like people awake Who walk among dreamers.
Yet ours too was a strange dream, the dream of waking In a place you know is not home, though knowing no other. There were those who forgot, building houses Of sandstone, like theirs, imposing and horizontal, Taking wives from among them, begetting Children who merged into the dance of this land, Looking back at them with the eyes of strangers, Only betrayed by the occasional misstep Which their children will know how to avoid. To watch this happen was like watching someone sinking Into sleep. But soon there would have been no one left To regard it so.
And why not, after all? The stories say we are children of one man Who left a green land, a land between rivers For the desert, for the unreliable hill pastures, Led by a voice he heard, a voice without face. We had ceased to understand this, As we do not understand, now, Why the face of this land has changed toward us. One decree, then another, then another, One burden piled on top of another Until we groaned aloud, And there was no appeal, We were strangers, as before, only their plans For us had changed. And then that man, that homicide who fled, In our midst again, stirring up trouble, And the plagues that fell on the land, on the others, Ourselves so unaccountably spared, And now, the new instructions, from the voice, We are told, that woke our forefather In a far land between rivers, That voice, like a wind from the desert.
All around is haste and confusion. A baking is being rolled out That will not have time to rise. A smoke of sacrifice wafts among our houses As we sort our possessions, taking what we can carry, With the ruins of this land around us And the wailing for their firstborn in our ears. Well, we go to serve this God in the desert, This God, our God, mightier than the king of this land, Whom may we always please. Through what lands, I wonder, shall we pass, In what unseeing eyes mirror ourselves, In what tongues barter without meeting, Beneath what decrees Bend? I foresee It will be a long journey.
RENNEBOHM PARK
Summer’s nunc stans. The peonies, that flaunted last in the floral hubbub that greeted the sun’s annual comeback, have completed their act. Now comes the green we’ll take for granted soon. The dead, that in raw April mounted to Avernus’ very mouth, whom we entreated to come out, to speak, to stay, have retreated, their moon-pull slack, at last. We are unhaunted.
It is the good time. Air cool and clear, warm sun – the perfect balance. Gardens give still, but in measure. The long evenings make room for walks, and games. Tennis balls thump, frisbees veer above the park. We could begin to live, if only we knew how, and where, and with whom.
ILIAD, BOOK XVIII
The Iliad stands on the shelf beside The breakfast table, a bookmark slowly making Its way through, as those ancient revenants glide Across yet one more screen, their gestures vacant Of so much we have known. No arch or column For them, no schools that labored to explain, No Phidias has poised the body=s volume Nor vase-painter contained it in a line. Their bodies are the only forms there are, Their gods that come and go like flaws of wind The only spirit. Conscience and eye are clear, Unshadowed by a thought of having sinned. Their poet, though, had guessed invention=s force B Had seen robots, and automatic doors.
CURTAIN CALL
Grouped round the dying thespian’s bedside, His friends asked how it felt. The man replied (With fit expression though with faulty breath), “Easier than playing comedy” — and died.
ICON
No one has ever photographed the soul except those icon-painters – anyway the first ones. Afterward maybe the style takes over, and the later ones convey something the painters didn’t feel themselves. The trick is all too obvious: that large eye, around which all the facial curves, drawn with compasses, diverge, converge, in constant motion swung around the still darkness. Eye of angel, virgin, saint and holy child are ports through which you fall into God-mind. The eyebrow’s arch: a faint salute from mortal sadness. Then you are gone, vacuumed up into the All, the One.
TO ISRAEL UPON THE ALTAR OF THE WORLD
1. Jebusite voices from under the Holy of Holies,
Conscience assails conscience,
Rachel, immured, pleads against the adversary-akedas,
visitations of the Unreturned –a Then-word speaks itself into the Now –
the gold, dimmed, fends off its alloys,
Jerusalem still is.
2. Saw-screams of unearthed Temple stones:
Plague-harvestmen cut the seed from the groin of the past
lest these bones live
lest from Judaea's sifted dust the Exodus people, the Sinai people, the Sabbath people arise, lest the ashes again become Ariel
and roar from the rock of all hearts the prayer for all nations, against the Dark Lord.
3. I have asked for a word to place on the graves of those who have died
although crows replace the songbirds in our suburbs and I no longer hear the voice of the mourning dove
although it seems there is an anti-god who makes many in its image
an anti-life that only desires to shatter itself into spores of destruction
although from where stood the house of prayer for all nations a flood of cursing is poured on the world
although threat displays result in deference and billiard balls vector off from the one that's hit
and the machine ties the hands in complicity and cruelty opens the gates of the heart
and even the muse can yield to a murderous tremor and crime commandeer the vocabulary of conscience
and blasts disfigure beauty in the mind I will say temples still stand1
In the middle of the crater stands the memory of love lifting her hand lighting the candles
Summer 2001
TIRESIAS VISITS THE BOMBSITE
For Jerry Mander, and for the street musician who played a blues version of “America the Beautiful” near the wrecked wing of the Pentagon
It was not unexpected, after all. We had been told about a malice growing Within the social tissue, cell by cell, Of guns and fuel and information flowing To men who rage had made mechanical, Bereft of human conscience, yet well knowing How to seem human, with an actor’s art, Until the moment came to blow apart
The illusion that our lives seem to have been -- We knew that too. We had seen towers crumble In miniature upon the movie screen Made huge, and human simulacra tumble From burning windows; greed had found us keen For more of this; and if we heard the rumble Of the real cyclone, heard real sirens blare Through faked alarms, perhaps we did not care
Enough. For we had witnessed year by year The building of a tower that confined The freedom of the earth to few and fewer, Had, right by right and grace by grace, resigned Our share of the inheritance of the poor, Of justice; one by one the ties that bind Gave. In the flux of strangers without end Distinction wavered between foe and friend.
Yet all our topless towers were built on faith. Our airplanes were suspended in mid_air On reckonings to the microfiber’s breadth That presupposed that human beings fear For sweet life, do not meditate the death Of others, or their own. A patent error, And many times exposed; its recrudescence Only reveals that it is of the essence
Of any common world. On this we build And build again, as on the lava_flow The grass re_greens. Life destined to be spilled Mounts in the latest vessels, even though In retrospect it looks as if a skilled Hand had piled up kindling, row on row, Tier upon tier, for flames to catch and climb Most readily, consume in shortest time.
This prodigy of corporate intellect Assisted by computers and obeyed By all the power_tools wealth could collect, Where Mind and Might were stunningly displayed Against the sky, was in one hour wrecked By half a dozen men with simple blades, A few months’ flying_lessons, and the will, Forged in fanatic fire, to die and kill.
O weep, weep for the dead whose monument Excelling modern art in harsh profile Is this stark grid of steel, blackened and bent, That juts above the settling rubble_pile: The expert with his earnings still unspent, The secretary parted from her child, The fireman who heroically rushed In to the workers, and with them was crushed!
Yet weep the more, if loss should make more dear An edifice which when it glittered whole Spelled slow disaster to the biosphere. An outgrowth of the greed that rots the bole Of government and public weal stood here, A prison for the bought and managed soul, A torture for the eye that loved to see Earth-given forms in sweet complexity.
Yes, those who have for decades felt the march Of corporate power on all that made life fair, Have seen their land bestrid by golden arch, By logos replicating without care, The culture swept by media_storms that parch The springs of mercy, while bulldozers tear The earth for mansion-tracts that keep no range For the working homeless, orphans of this change;
Those who had heard of farmers overseas Bought out and herded into urban slums Where prostitution, slavery, disease May choose them, where fanaticism drums, While their old fields are sown for luxuries – Of half a thousand men whose fortune sums What half of the inhabitants of earth Could reckon as their aggregate net worth –
Of corporate economies that swell To nation-size, yet are not ruled like nations By laws within; where the command to sell Trumps every claim of justice; where no patience Holds those who cannot keep the pace, pell-mell; Where humans are cast off as automation’s Accomplishments decree them obsolete, Where the least-paid are lodged upon the street:
To those who can’t forget, even at this moment, Such things, that heaven-bound simplistic shape Through which so many bodies fell in torment From floors whose very height foreclosed escape, Becomes a kind of allegoric comment, A dual coffin of the human race, Of lives summed up in logo, and confined To the prism of a careless alien mind.
America! your patriotism wakens, In rightful anger against those who planned And grief for all those broken in that breaking – Will you remember not to this land Was the allegiance of the power that reckoned Inside that shape, but to a web that spanned The globe in an embrace of greed. That steeple Was not erected to safeguard your people,
Rather to bring them down until they share The bed of universal poverty. And though the doers seek not to repair, And though their madness works toward tyranny, And though their leaders manage their despair And wield it from pure hatred of the free – May we be free enough to hear what truth Is brought us by these couriers without ruth. Or else the fire is not yet out, nor closed The wound that burns and bleeds us. From the slain Among us now are vengeful spirits roused Which if they find the trail, if they attain Their rightful quarry, may then rest appeased; But if it should, like a virus in the vein, Stay hidden, we may find our infed ire A foe, than many outward foes more dire.
The White Knight, the defender, sleeps and dreams A challenger approaches, clad in mail Of midnight. Through the lowered visor gleams An adversary’s glance with fire of bale. He charges, thrusts – and the opponent seems To topple back. He sees the visor fall Back from an empty helm. Then he hears Around him – Where? Here? No, there! – taunts and jeers.
May that in us which holds to freedom still Hold still a moment, while the voices tell us What is the precious thing they must not kill In us, no matter how what gods are jealous, And what are our own fetters, which with skill We must unbind. If we rebuild our palace, Let it be open to the air again And open to the pleadings of the sane.
I, a poor poet, made this song – among America’s deaf ears a doubtful bother – Just for a croon to calm the pain that stung These guts – to place one word upon another, And on the harp of civic song, restrung As best I could, invoke the common mother Of song, of earth, and of community – One of Her names, perhaps, is Liberty.
O Lady, may your torch have light to shine On us even now, and show things as they are, That we may rescue Ours from Mine and Thine And bind to peace the god or gods of war, Silence the curses that befoul the shrine Of prayer, and turn again the peoples’ ear Toward the true word, the honest song, the Law, That having known, we may repair the flaw.
September 12-13, 2008
A PRAYER FOR THE TEN DAYS, 5762
Teach me Your ways Psalm 27 O God, in all our shatterings We turn to You, though it is plain You move not to prevent these things; Those they befall cry out in vain. When the wicked call their evil “God” You lift no grim chastising rod.
Throughout the universe we see The workings of mechanic fate, In atom and in galaxy, In life-forms that configurate To their environment’s demand, Their habits, as their forms, unplanned.
The human constitution seems A mere contraption patched together; The human brain, its fears and dreams, Desires that urge, restraints that tether, And customs whether cruel or kind, Which among human tribes we find,
Each strand, each trait through time evolved, From some advantage it conferred, With contradictions unresolved While self-deception veils the Absurd: No star cries out, if circumstance Should favor fraud and violence.
And yet in us – by chance, maybe – An eye was opened that could gaze Beyond its own necessity, Could lift itself above the maze Of reflex, and with plural view Could see the sight of others too.
And with this eye our language grew That names and sets things in relation, The ear that sounds for what is true, The will toward higher integration, Justice, and beauty, to make whole Both world and individual soul.
And in all this Your shape appears, O You whom we have named the King, In Whose light, when our vision clears, We see each person and each thing And almost, almost can divine A world made one beneath Your sign.
We know that not by wrongful might Could Your dominion come to be, But by shared truth and shared insight In covenanted minds made free From fear of one another’s hand, Where only force by force is banned.
Now therefore since accusers rise, Command our hearts be steadfast still To seek Your face; O make us wise To walk Your ways, with strength and skill, Through whatsoever war and peace You bid us make, till war shall cease.
GEORGE BUSH, SEPTEMBER 20, 2001
I never liked the man before, Thought him a cypher elevated To tasks he was not fitted for, But now I think I underrated His fight and basic decency. Though heaven knows I don’t agree
With much that he has said and done, We would do well to keep in mind Those parables where the Third Son Comes out ahead. What need will find In anyone, can’t be forecast, And they are wisest who speak last.
Many an evil ails this nation, That’s true today as yesterday, But in the enemy we’re facing Evil has undivided sway. We need to draw a line in sand And take an unambiguous stand.
This he has done. And now we have To hope that he can make it stick, Not be too clever by one-half And superciliously dissect Words that ring true, but heed their call, For with this truth we stand or fall.
Those who acknowledge truth when spoken By other folks, ungrudgingly, May also hope by the same token That other folks will likewise see Our truth in time. All truth is one; Let it be heard, and justice done.
AFTER THE BENEFIT CONCERT
Our speech inaudible at ten paces. -- Ossip Mandel'shtam
Last night I watched part of a concert Meant to commemorate the brave. United Way seems to have sponsored The effort. Listeners called and gave
For the relief of the disaster. But how such moanings could inspire The qualities we need to master In order to put out this fire
Escapes me. There was not one phrase To stick in mind, no bar you'd hum To get you through the draining days, Only the same impoverished, dumb
Stuff that has sapped the mind of youth For decades now. No grace whatever, No ringing lines to carry truth, Nothing for folks to sing together.
So here I sit and grumble out This verse no one is going to read Save fellow-bards. The lines are cut, The common people can't be reached.
But I have said, and say, that we Need to revise our own convention And figure out some strategy For to regain our kin's attention.
Yoo-hoo! Is anybody there? Speak up and answer, if you hear, In verse, if for your Muse you care – The summons of the hour is clear.
Civilization's final test Is now in progress. Everyone Is drafted. We too have our quest. Our mustering has just begun.
I hereby thrust a stake in sand And found the Civic Poets' Guild. Bard, may this be your heart's command – We have a culture to rebuild.
PRESIDENTIAL SUITE September 27, 2001-May 2002
“I never liked the man before, Thought him a cypher elevated To tasks he had no fitness for, But now I think I underrated His fight and basic decency. Though Heaven knows I disagree
With much that he has said and done, We would do well to keep in mind Those parables where the third son Comes out ahead. What need will find In anyone can’t be forecast.” – I wrote those words, a few days past,
After a speech in which he seemed To take an unambiguous stand. Methought determination gleamed From words that drew a line in sand. The hope we were not leaderless Had many charms, I do confess.
Poor sinner. Now he tries to keep His upper lip stiff. Utters threats And tells us to go back to sleep, Courts treacherous alliance, lets Israel know they must give in – The “war on terror” thus begins.
America! Do you exist Today as more than an address For corporations that could list Riyad or Singapore with less Convenience, maybe, for the nonce, But things move quickly. We were once
Rich in all natural resources And in our home-forged industry, We had (unsapped by media-forces) Some culture of integrity, And (consequently) we could choose Leaders who’d act upon our views.
My father! Late in dreams I saw him. He noted certain of these things In At the Crossroads. It would gnaw him To know our state. He knew the stings Of slighted foresight – tried to shake The leaders of this land awake
While I, his daughter, tried to tell him That not on mineral wealth alone A nation stands, but on truth’s spelling In minds no profit-power can own – That counsel in community, Perhaps, might keep the nation free;
I urged him help me to convene People of foresight and good will Who might assess the current scene And with coordinated skill Might then prescribe and recommend In serious speech from friend to friend
A plan of action. I relied Upon the words of Jewish sages Whose thought, through long experienced tried Had kept a people through dark ages.
Unless some teaching hedge it round, Democracy’s an empty sound.
Perhaps I could not say it well, Or else my quirks confused the case – Wisdom is always slow to jell While history keeps a quickening pace, Nor seemed my thoughts proportional To institutions that built tall.
America! A name, no more. Mocked by her children, Liberty Stands – for how long – beside the port, Awaiting a foul shivaree. Is anywhere that name still dear Enough to rouse some Paul Revere
To ride through sleeping streets and summon Defenders to some mustering-hill? That would be too much more than human. The dream showed me a funeral. Well may our enemies rejoice – We are defeated half by choice.
I find no cheerful note to end on, But may these verses tell a few That here is one they can depend on To make a note of what is true, Who knows the odds, but still is game If anybody feels the same.
[untitled]
We say it’s not too late because we say it’s not too late. We carry on in words, ignoring that whatever undergirds our overconfidence was knocked away some time ago. We’re like a character in a cartoon. We’ve run out on thin air and haven’t yet looked down, though we will soon. Then maybe we will reconvene ourselves from smithereens, as in a Loony Tune. As in a dream we watch the enormous structure in which we live. It slowly-swiftly shelves into the dust. And yet no sudden rupture. A social body inwardly dissolved prepared this first great haemorrhage. And who’s awake? To whom shall I report this, Muse?
GLASS SPLINTERS
1. Go back to sleep. Don’t wonder what the pain meant. We’ll sell you your demise as entertainment.
2. It is a common doctrine, though unsound, That falling objects will not hit the ground.
THE TRUE MCINTOSH
We ate them in the days when we were kings. Those crimson orbs that took so high a sheen, That deep clear red with just the spot of green: Bite them, and you would break the sweet-tart springs Of juice that had a kind of cidery tang, Or think of dry white wine: a taste that sang Of autumn sun, of earth’s low summonings. The flesh was crisp – and yet not hard. It gave Like snow fresh-fallen, glazed with slightest crust, And glistened just as white. With wholesome lust We’d chomp them till November dug sun’s grave. They’d soften by Thanksgiving, sunset glory Gone. That took them from the category Of foods designed to store and sell, not eat. Computer memories won’t retrieve the treat.
RACHEL’S STORY for Sylvia Grunes
When listening to parents’ memories We fathom how they struggled to survive Our present life appears a fabulous ease In which, no matter how the stocks may dive, We still remain suspended by a spell Above the dark abyss of want and pain The flow of food and heat can never fail Nor the destroying hordes break in again. And yet we know that at this very hour Dark hordes are gathering and twisted minds Devise our doom. G-d grant our mothers’ power May summon us, beyond this ease that blinds, To fight for what we love with every nerve, And as they heard and served, to hear and serve.
A LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT
Out in far Afghanistan our men are fighting To preserve the world from terror’s evil sway, And to you, our country’s President, I’m writing In the hope that this will reach you in some way.
You must know, far more than I do, how enormous Are the powers that this evil has in tow, What percentage of the energies that warm us Rise from springs in the dominion of a foe –
In a region ruled by tyrants whose clear purpose Is to bring the world beneath a cruel law, And who scarcely try to wear a sheepskin surface To conceal their deep desire to eat us raw.
We, who’ve drifted, cannot get back what it’s lost us All at once, nor strike at every hostile state, But if standing by our friends is going to cost us, We had better know it sooner than too late.
I’m no military expert, but I’ve noted Here and there what martial artists have to say. “Take a centered stance” (that statement’s often quoted) “In yourself – and let blows come from where they may.”
Now our friends are us, and all those who love freedom. We must back them, whether odds be short or long. For the others will not be there when we need ‘em, And a nation must be faithful to be strong.
And to Israel our nation owes a vision That has guarded us. On history’s stormy course We were steadied by the voice of our tradition: “Cling to fairness, and you need not bow to force.”
Mr. President, God has not changed those orders. You are chosen now to lead us in this fight. Softly speak – but firmly stand at Israel’s borders, And America will back you in the right.
For in liberty our nation was created, And it has a strength that’s always seen it through. Till the terror we are facing has abated You may count on us – as we will count on you.
AT THIS LATE DATE: LOUIS UNTERMEYER REPLIES TO ROBERT FROST
The scene is somewhere in the afterworld, in the region (undescribed by Dante) of souls whose fate is yet to be decided.
Dear Robert: It is over fifty years since our exchange about the poet’s duty, if any, to respond to what’s afoot on the historic plane. The Second World War, in that case. A war with certain nations who were engaged in killing off my cousins and anybody else they had no use for. Our countrymen at first had been reluctant to join the fight. The First World War had been so horrible, so pointless, we’d concluded that any war was something to stay out of, and we stayed out, until bombed into it. The country then responded, as it had to. Men were called up and factories were converted to making weapons. Journalists and actors picked up the drum. And even serious artists – the term I guess means those who take themselves seriously -- felt drafted to compose something that would contribute to the struggle. But you -- the greatest poet of our time -- you stayed above the battle. When I begged you, to leave, for once, your vigil of detachment, you answered me with a long blank-verse letter, justifying yourself. I saw that I had overstepped one of those fences friends seem to need to keep up, as well as neighbors, and I accepted your position, as a part of what you were, and we stayed friends. I let your word of silence be the last word. I couldn’t, of course, have forced you into speech, and I felt awe before the greater poet – it feels presumptuous even to apply the term “poet” to both of us. I was just an anthologist. Although I couldn’t resist the chance to sneak myself and Jean into the great anthologies I gathered, I knew my place, at bottom -- and knew yours. You won your point; and on their front, the Allies won the war. The fascists were defeated. And I can’t even say it was no thanks to you, whose sturdy verses may have served as shelter from the blasts of cosmic madness to many souls; helped men rained round by bullets to keep in mind New England’s quiet hills under the sane, remote, noncombatant stars. Whereas Millay -- what did she give by writing shrill propaganda, tearing up her art as primitive women tear their clothes and cheeks? Nothing that lasted, certainly. And likely even the gesture, at the time, appeared like mere hysterics. Folks stop listening when song becomes a screech. At any rate, things seemed to have worked out, in ‘45. We had our peace, then, for awhile, although the mechanism of combat, in our souls as well as in the economy, proceeded to throw the image of another foe upon the screen for bravery to tilt at, even if it did turn out to be a windmill. Our poets thought themselves well out of that. We had protestors, bards who like Millay thought earnestness excused them for bad art and lack of intellectual clarity. And we had those who went on making verses, good verses maybe, calling on your spirit, whereby it was increasingly assumed, as beyond question, that a poem has no civic mission, and is draft-exempt. Around us we saw equity eroding, the culture that had made us what we were being gradually leached away, replaced by predatory lures that learned to play on, and magnify, the worst traits of the worst. But still we made this none of our affair. And at the same time, on the edge of vision a new and ancient enemy of freedom was gathering strength. We did not give the warning. We had disclaimed the poet’s ancient claim to the prophetic soul. Could we have seen more clearly than the rest? If we had felt a people’s destiny laid on our shoulders, would it have weighted us to sink down deep enough to see the roots of things to come?
I hear your reasons -- oh, I hear them still. You didn’t want “to sing and cheer young men into dangers you could not get hurt in.” You didn’t want to praise the likes of Stalin, to bless the necessary compromises by which a nation gets things done in war. But was that, Robert, what was asked of you? Is it not the commission of the poet -- a standing order, not from government -- just to be open to what’s going on, to take the shock into one’s constitution, and, facing one’s own danger as a poet, work out some form to hold it? Yeats once said it takes a greater courage to descend into one’s own depths, than to die in battle. That goes too far, but there is something in it. “Aw, come on off your cosmic politics,” you wrote. That kind of joke cannot be answered by someone like myself, with little wit, but it’s what Dante called il gran refiuto.
Well, and since I seem to be assuming, despite myself, the stance of wrathful prophet, I’ll mention one more thing. You wrote to me: “I know what’s wrong: the war is more or less About the Jews and as such you believe I ought to want to take some part in it.” And later on you came back to the subject: “The best part of my friendship for your race Is that I thought of it as lost in ours, And the long time its taken me to see It was in part at least a race apart. And even the part that is a race apart I sympathize with. Give them back I say All Palestine. No race without a country Can be a nation. I take sides with all Who want a platform they can call their own To speak their language from -- a platform country.” But still you felt it wasn’t your department to speak on our behalf. I should have quoted Donne to you. I should have said: the war is not about the Jews as persons only, not about us as a nation only. It is about the honor of the nations, it is about the hope of right, not might, ruling the world, it is about the future of human consciousness and human conscience, the good I always thought we meant by God. It is about a promise never kept so far; but, so far, not quite thrown away. You could have said that better, Robert Frost. You could have helped us see what we were doing, you could have warned us, then, of peacetime dangers that undermined what we had fought to save. And now the world must play that play again, with good and evil still more intermingled, more intricately, lovingly entwined. What subtle skill of soul could thread this maze perhaps you could have shown us, if you’d wished to.
I let the matter drop. The war had taken enough from me, without your friendship too. And then I feared to stir you into anger, make matters worse. I wrote no poems either, those years. I was too personally involved, afraid that it would sound like special pleading. Perhaps I should have tried it anyway. Although I had no more than middling talent perhaps I would have found a certain greatness in grappling with the impossible. The prophets B were they such geniuses? God gave them words to tell the truth. They told it without quibbling, and probably (one hopes) did not engage in contests as to who’s the greater prophet.
I answer you at this late date because these questions, these regrets have haunted me into the afterworld, have given me no peace in death. And how now, Robert Frost? You must sense that the fire of burning books would scorch our souls. In the name of all that’s human my ghost commands you, ghost, to walk and speak, appear to all you’ve influenced and tell them that you were wrong.
fall 2001
ROSA MULTIFLORA
It seemed a grace when first In May it appeared As if a white wave-crest Unexpectedly reared
On the sparse pasture slope, Sprays crowded close With dainty flowers whose shape Proclaimed the rose.
Each spring we saw it gain More ground. Then we were warned And noticed that each cane Was razor-thorned.
Round it the tiny hips Ripen, a crimson cloud Birds eat, excrete the pips, And these, once strewed
In soil, for twenty years Will bide, then sprout. It is a foreign curse, Hard to root out.
With time the field becomes An impassable wall, Like the dark hedge that hems, In the old grim tale,
An ill-wished beauty's sleep. Ah well, I say, Then let these briars creep, Let them have their way! They came by our own doing. Then let them hide Our works, not worth the ruing, Till far and wide
In May above Our ultimate repose Shall wave the lovely Multiflora Rose.
[untitled]
So many different things to do, And time for only one or two! So vast the world, and finite man – Let me give thanks for what I can.
“AN DIE MUSIK”
“Du holde Kunst...” That song brings back a friend Who sang it, sitting on a tattered couch, Salvation Army salvage, in a house On Berkeley’s Derby Street where I could spend A student’s afternoon. The living-room Was paneled in dark wood, and held a shadow (Anchored doubtless in the square piano) Of some ancestral mansion’s pleasant gloom. Marion too, maiden yet matronly, Bending beside the fireplace in her dark- Blue velvet robe (another junk-store find), Appeared a Tyrian prophetess to me And still appears, though friendship pulled apart, An envoy of art’s grave and gracious mind.
THE BARRACUDA
dedicated to the memory of Naomi Shemer
Near a great school of many fish A barracuda’s head Suddenly loomed. At his first gulp Thousands of them were dead.
The barracuda tracked the school. He came now every day. The fishes realized he was Not going to go away.
Then certain fish began to say, “He’s really rather nice, And in his gut those he engulfs Enjoy fish-paradise.
The barracuda smoothly said, “Of course, it is not right To eat a fish. If this occurred, It was an oversight.”
The barracuda and the fish Could coexist, as long As there were fish. But they ran out, And with them ends the song.
[Note: this poem was written before I became aware of Naomi Shemer’s “The Shark.”]
[untitled]
The words of two young lovers I have read, Now long estranged, and separately dead, But they have given me to understand By primal paradise for two was planned. “You give the world a new dimension,” he writes. And she writes, “How unstintingly you give your best!” In such and such a phrase we (distant) are made witness to a grace almost beyond desire. The rest will tell (the end is known) how even that Eden fell, how bitter memories, drink, and despair with prior loyalties conspired to tear that house of confidence, and thus refute what rang so true, appeared so absolute. Love’s pavement that they danced on was revealed as cloud, and strewed them on Earth’s stony field. He was a poet of most high degree, a sensitive and subtle artist, she; their works are left, and his at least will stay while poets still have anything to say. But somewhere in the archieves of the years, or in the eternal present of the spheres, for children born upon this crowded stone amid a silent spring, a voiceless dawn, to grasp at, not to know, the interplay of all their kindnesses is stored away – a lovelier show than any we’ll attend, we, for whom things are over when they end.
RING
Of gold,
of words,
of gold,
in other substance same,
teleported by meta- phor,
the wearers multiply, unify,
the earmouth, the heartmind
opens, encloses.
PEACE
Peace: wrap that word in velvet of the heart, wrap it three times around, then reverently place it within a golden box within a silver casket in a copper case within a chest of iron with a lock of adamant, and five steel bands around it. Carefully dig a hole between the roots of the Tree of Life, the World-tree. Put the chest inside that hole, and fill the hole again, carry away the earth the chest displaces, fit the sod back above the dug-out place, water the sod. Then write in cryptic code upon a slip of parchment, the exact location of that hole, and fold it up, place it in a locket on a chain and put that chain around your neck and vow to wear it till you may again return. Then to the place where you may find the sword meant for you, go, with the blessing of the Earth. Pray for the strength to pull it from the stone.
My heart speaks an archaic dialect Whose accent is a mark of scorn these days, Where “Thee” and “Thou” are not yet incorrect, Where “not” suffices in a verbal phrase Without the offices of “did” or “do,” “Alas” may be pronounced sans irony, Object and verb need not inversion rue, And I have leave to state that woe is me. Aye (from what gut-strings twangs that sillable, While “Yes” is of the superficial tongue), Time and newfangleness eexceed the pull Of kind rememberance, true love fades unsung, Good faith is jeered to hush by thoughtless spite, And hope is blotted in the spirit’s blight.
PURIM SONG
(to a Broadway tune)
How can I ever do it? How can I go through it? He doesn’t care About the Jews, And he’s got within his palace walls So many other girls That he could choose.
He doesn’t really know me. One false move and he’sll throw me To the guards Who stand and wait. Vashti found that out before my time – I don’t have pleasant dreams About her fate.
You used to be my best friend. Now you send me to this end. Though I tried To run and hide You tell me I’m the one G-d wants to use. I guess that is my fate – I can’t refuse.
I’ll go now and get ready. You’d better hope my nerves are steady. Go tell all Outside the wall That this is not a joke. This time they need To take it seriously And fast for me. We cannot flee. Please fast for me.
TO A PESSIMIST
Do not suppose me less aware than you Of the dark wave now cresting overhead, Nor think the drone of ever-nearing dread Does not sound constantly and loudly through My days and hours. Almost before I grew I knew that we are twinned to monsters bred In the same womb of time; that our bright thread Is on the shears; that our large bill is due.
But no tear falls for towers tenantless Chiseled in sandstone by the desert gale That cracks them as it carved. We could not mourn Had we not seen honor and loveliness. I hope to see and show them yet, nor fail To witness that for which our kind was born.
ON LOOKING INTO THE MUCH-DECRIED “EXCURSION”
Defend not Wordsworth! Where his strains divine Fail to persuade, what could thou hope for thine?
IN RESISTANCE TO THE INWARD ACCUSER
Voice of our teaching, counsellor of old, Source of the claim by which we have held this land Though but in heart, while scattered far abroad For our sins, or beneath the stronger hand, Bearing its memory on many a road Till our return at history’s command: The face is hidden, and the heart is flawed, And how shall Jacob stand?
You tell us that the world was made for good By higher will, and that our place is planned; And yet from every quarter force and fraud Are launched against us. Evildoers brand Us evil as we flail amid the flood Of accusations which within us find Echoes that cause our conscience to explode – How, then, shall Jacob stand?
If true we have committed what must cloud Our faith in self, obscure the trace we scanned Of better destiny than Might has clawed Out of creation’s clay: shall we disband, Surrender, while demented mobs applaud And everywhere the people understand They dare no longer doubt that Force is God – How then shall the world stand?
No! lest the source of law should be outlawed, Beneficence in its own name be banned, Bid us to live; bid us to mend each road Of wrong we can, yet, as we must, defend, Even as we dig to find Your well that flowed With wisdom once, beneath our desert’s sand, That Humankind, to whom our works are showed, May yet with Jacob stand.
A VOICE THROUGH SLEEP
More than we wish to understand, there are today these others who understand each other, who understand us well enough for their purposes. They know that we would rather assume all will be well than assume the bother of living, as we must, on the alert; they guess we lack the energy to gather as we are gathered by the will to hurt into a target, our selves that range apart, our thoughts unwilling to be organized. We’re stalled on the tracks, our engine will not start, when it hits we shall be again surprised though we dream screams. I cannot sleep, and so would wake you. Take my hand, tell me you know.
THE CAFÉ AT AZA AND BEN MAIMON
In memory of Simon Halkin, 1898-1987; and of Danit Dagan (24), Uri Felix (23), Orit Ozarov (28), Nir Borochov (22), Limor Ben-Shoham (27), Livnat Dvash (28), Natanel Kochavi, (31), Tali Eliahu (26), Dan Emunei (23), and Baruch Lerner (29)
If we live like mice in a hole, the enemy will have won. – Baruch Lerner 1) I used to meet a friend at that café, an ancient poet who loved Whitman and Shelley. He’d walk there from his home until one day, he found the road too long. But what a spell he still knew how to cast, that traveller through mental space! Nor did he spare to tell me harsh truths about our present when and where. Some rage at what the years had done to him helped to stoke a vision that burned clear, discussing now the poets, now the grim outlines of a people’s fate he saw, like his decay, through no self-pleasing scrim, the cracks that kept on spreading from the flaw that always had been there, beneath the stress there was no way to end. And I, a raw newcomer to this grief, what could I guess? I don’t remember any music’s jangle behind our talk. It was a quiet place, though it was situated at the angle of two main streets. It was there, the other night, that hate again blew up, leaving a tangle of mangled bodies. Nothing that I write will piece that quiet where he said to me – from the ancient noble skull what angry light blazed when he said it – “Someday, humanity will grow up!” I do not suppose it will now. What chance has talk and amity, the growth of thought, with those who die to kill, pushed by a mass indifferent to pain? All that remains will be the inexorable, the automatic progeny of Cain.
2) Of course, I still say we should meet and talk – some place, of course, where we can watch the door. To keep from being scattered by the shock Is still the inmost battle of this war. G-d wagered us, it seems, on consciousness, and we do what we were created for when we take thought together. Then, no less than when we pray, we serve the G-d that made the world of which the wicked make a mess. Let us consider all that still may aid our cause, to whom and how we may appeal, and how our various strengths may be arrayed to amplify each other. As we feel so let us think, Jews, menschen. It is late; but still our G-d of life is true and real, and there is no inevitable fate.
ON TIME
How doth importuned April now proceed To clothe (as mercy wakens to their need) The naked trees! At first diaphanously, Soon in full majesty and modesty; Just to my shredded hope she pays no heed.
See how the new grass glitters in her light! Even on dry old blades she finds a bright Surface. How she does it, I can’t say; Perhaps as easy as folks find a way To show the right as wrong, the wrong as right.
April, I’m winter-poor; you’re rich and brash. There are some things won’t come out in the wash Of all your showers. Yet I too am primed. Your moon grows full, and I go off on time: See, I sing, although my notes be harsh.
SHELACH (II)
for Tsipporah bat-Avraham ve-Sarah
Upon the threshold of great enterprise To which the Torah calls us every day, Our heart incessantly sends forth its spies To see what waits for us along the way. And some of these are folk of high degree, Sure of themselves. To them the new appears A danger, not a possibility – Its very richness only rouses fears. But there are also those who know not just What they know, but that G-d’s help is great, Whose eyes are not the heaven-blue thread of trust G-d bade us wear, to follow it past fate Along the trail that gleams in G-d’s own light With vision keen, decision swift as flight.
A WEDDING IN THE TEXAS FLOOD
The waters had been rising for a
week,
Musicians, church, and preacher,
while the bride
A CHEERFUL VILLANELLE
Come, let us sing a cheerful villanelle, Obsess about some sweet and pleasant thought. All may be well, all may be very well.
The towers glittered brightly ere they fell. The food was great before the joint was bought. Come let us sing a cheerful villanelle,
Leave sorrow to the ones for whom the bell Has tolled. We’ve time to schmooze while plotters plot. All may be well, all may be very well
When the New Age tooth fairy waves her spell Over the ones who murder as they’re taught. Come, let us sing a cheerful villanelle,
Drown sense in floods of champagne and Chanel. We’ll conquer death and keep what we have got. All may be well, all may be very well.
From graveyard roses wafts a heady smell, An alabaster gleam conceals the rot. Come, let us sing a cheerful villanelle. All may be well. All may be very well. A RONDEAU FOR ROSH HASHANAH
"Break, shatter, blast." Too many days This year have known the sullen blaze And blast disfigure our design. Our hard hearts, G-d? They're shivered fine -- What's left, then, for these sounds to craze?
But still by old-convergent ways We come to speak the word that says We're what no force can undermine, Break, shatter, blast.
Then may, this year, the shofar's phrase Speak to us with gentlest praise Of steadfast love that shall combine Us still, while truth may disentwine Our foes, and all their plotting's maze Break, shatter, blast!
“Never Say That There Is Nothing You Can Do” tune: “Zog Nit Keynmol”
Never say that there is nothing you can do When the whole world was created just for you, And in a relay that extends from end to end Of earth we all may be connected, friend to friend.
All the questions of the world are intertwined, And a clue is dangling somewhere in your mind, And if we hear each other we will understand The steps we need to take today at G-d's command.
Though the sky is shaken with our engines' noise, In our hearts we still can hear the still small voice, And if we say that we will do and we will hear, We'll look around and find a thousand comrades near.
When each person brings their special sacrifice, >From our offerings a temple shall arise, Where the prayers of all the nations shall be said, And on that sacred ground no foe shall ever tread.
Never say that there is nothing you can do When the whole world was created just for you, And in a relay that extends from end to end Of earth we all may be connected, friend to friend.
Liaison
LEGAL PERSONS
A corporation doesn’t have a soul, Whatever be the case with you and me. Although it steps into a person’s role, A corporation doesn’t have a soul. Unlimited expansion is its goal, Pursued per automatic strategy. A corporation doesn’t have a soul, Whatever be the case with you and me. FIDELIO
"Fidelio" is battering in my brain, Though I could not sing back a single strain Of all those that stormed in, one evening after Christmas, with echoes of demonic laughter Giving the music its Titanic battle, Spirit singing to drown its own death-rattle. "Preposterous plot!" the demon-voices say. "Those sets, costumes, and faces, khaki-grey, They tell the truth. The music is a lie To which the modern soul resounds: Nice try. In wedded love he puts his faith, to boot -- A cause long since divorced from the pursuit Of social justice. The jailer's daughter knows How well that little tuft of basil grows In prison pots. It takes a man unwed, Proclivities unknown, to crown his head With the mad garland of a hope like that, Fit rival to the horned and bell-tipped hat." -- I hear these voices, yet I also see How love descends into absurdity As music into deafness; and although The arias did not thaw my tears to flow (Whether from my own dullness to the art Or from the century's chill about my heart), Somehow the hope imprisoned in me knew That something was attempting to get through To it; and I can recognize the dream That here is manifest in its supreme Effort to change our lives, as Samson clasped The pillars, and brought down the house at last. Too wise to dream it now, we still are fed On crumbs of this two-centuries-old bread, The memory of something generous To which I pray: Great Love, deliver us Out of the prison of our cold disdain. Make us the fools we'd have to be to try again.
PROPHECY a corona of sonnets
in memory of Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) and Paul Celan (1920-1970)
1. No, I have heard no voice, have seen no vision. I saw the world in love and reason’s light, Not mystic, but intolerably bright. To bear the pain of sight was the decision; That taken, there could not be much misprision About the constitution of our plight. The only comfort was thought’s own delight In consequence, completeness, and precision.
And though not uncompanioned in perception – For often when I reached into my hoard Of language that might give it some conception, A formula some predecessor stored Assured me that my thought was no exception – I was not told to say: Thus saith the Lord.
2. I was not told to say: Thus saith the Lord, Nor can I say I ever felt Him near Or could suppose myself especially dear To Him. The opposite: I could not ward Myself from feeling, once, that He abhorred My being – which, as promptly as a mirror, Flashed back resentment. But it was a mere Moment, and long ago; best, then, ignored.
No, I am on my own here; human love And human fear were all my instruments, And source of all the light by which I pored Over life’s text until I sensed what drove The plot, divined among things and events An immanent and intricate accord.
3. An immanent and intricate accord, A weft of symbol and foreshadowing – It started with my mother’s cherishing Of small things kindred memories record, Symmetric birth-dates, omened names. These bored My scientific sib, betokening To him mere hazard, but configuring A kind of circuit, on the motherboard
Or inmost retina of my inner eye, Which outward sights would sometimes activate; And though I was unconscious of prevision, It gave me lines where hindsight can descry A pattern – immanent and intricate – Of tokens centered on the grim Parisian.
4. Of tokens centered on the grim Parisian Before the senses gave me leave to know I knew that he existed, I could show A long account; of mental worlds’ collision Could speak at length; could trace the cold incision Space made on one small earth, and have done so, Because he charged me with such speech, although The positive world might well return derision.
I had divined that this was the Waste Land And so must have a Fisher King; and he, In Hell, could not but think there ought to be Some ladylike salvific apparition, Nor would-be nurse refuse to understand One who desired to be the world’s physician.
5. One who desired to be the world’s physician Thus cast me in a role where any breath Must falter: bade me, in the grip of death, Decipher and deliver his prescription; Though written in a hand defied decryption Save to the eye of desperate good faith, I came to feel that I might say, “Thus saith Paul Celan” without great self-suspicion.
“Readers and scholars of his word!” I cried, “Acknowledge what that word has said to you, Coming together, letting down your guard. His last appeal should bind us far and wide In council. Cast off – it is overdue – A caution we no longer can afford!”
6. A caution we no longer can afford Or jealous pride of each in their own making Or else commitment to some group’s mistaken Set of assumptions, firmly set once poured, Or deep-set cruelty, made hearing hard, And though the pillars of the house were shaken They slept as those whom no alarm could waken, Kept playing into patterns they deplored.
That all of this occurred beneath the tent Of economic contest, where the race is To self-seeking strong, does not reward The simple Yes, the step into covenant, That might give solidarity a basis, Blocked secular scholars from a poet’s word.
7. “Blocked, secular scholars! From a poet’s word Could you not furnish your imagination With some conception of what fragmentation Of discipline and theory has scored With butcher-lines? – The human image, gored, Is no one’s ox. Could you not draw some ration Of love, wisdom, without which agitation Is vain? For you, has not the lion roared?”
– I sputtered. But my words were as the wind Keening at midnight in the corporate park, Or like the hum traced to a faint “illision Of inward spirit” in bees. Therefore I turned To where a Voice once poured across the Ark, Calling us toward a point beyond division.
8. Calling us toward a point beyond division, That voice had spoken to a wandering crowd Living on marginal land between two proud Empires that ever menaced with elision That small irrelevant bunch that could envision A state where no oppression was allowed And where the human being walked unbowed, Conscious of rights not subject to recision.
They heard that voice, they took the consequent laws It spelled to them, and so assumed a shape That carried them through various kinds of hell, A people still, dancing between the jaws of Abaddon, which I now saw agape – So I was drawn, and came to Israel.
9. So I was drawn, and came to Israel Like a mad echo bouncing off the wall Of stony memories that still corral Those upon whom I, like a snowflake, fell. No talisman lay in me to dispel Despair, who came in answer to no call Of theirs, but of one chip malheur made spall From battered block. As one who came to sell
And stayed to buy, I brought my poet’s lore And poet’s tears down to a sounding ocean Of information on heaven’s will, time’s ways. The tipplers of that vast and salty potion Assured me that I stood just on the shore And at the entrance to the Torah’s maze.
10. And at the entrance to the Torah’s maze, Armed with a clue that would not lead me far Inside, I knew, I hollered: “If you are In there, G-d, and if you want my praise, Then send us laws to counteract this craze Of Capitalism – laws that set some bar To endless greed and waste and lies which mar Creation, cloud Your image in a haze
Of false desires. Can learned men devise No rules of play, no economic plan To balance drive and thirst of enterprise With human justice and the thrift of earth?” Thus, though advised my song was under ban, I sang to call the word of power forth.
11. I sang. To call the word of power forth Would have been more than sage or saint achieved. Over the sill, instead, a voice that grieved Seeped, telling of the Temple’s scattered hearth That covered Zion’s face with exile’s swarth, Of prophecy withdrawn from the bereaved, Then of Charisma, that rough beast conceived In desperation’s womb, to tell of troth
Broken between the spirit and the script; Of how in the hands of barbarous upstart The Name became a banner to conscript Against those who proclaimed it at the start – How soul was pinned beneath powers that compel Was all I heard. The wind through a ruined cell.
12. Was all I heard the wind through a ruined cell? No, in a bass-line deeper than all doubt, Even beneath those impacts from without That shrink Divine Concern to the four-ell Cistern of custom, will not let it well Outward to slake the world’s unwitting drought, There came, though in a murmur, not a shout, Some teachings that might be arranged to spell
A word of hope. If Precepts of the Fathers Could bind a company of minds at grips With the world’s need, and if the Sabbath Day’s Haven of peace could be the space that gathers Such thought, then beneath havens of eclipse, Still, on the inward sky a sign could blaze.
13. Still on the inward sky a sign could blaze, Even that Star which Israel has put on, Coerced and choosing: Star so often wan With horrors! That a new and radiant phase May show it to the universal gaze, Geometer, expound THE HEXAGON: That day for seeing all in light of One, Amid and equal to six outward rays.
Let custom and let ceremony bound A space where the prophetic soul can sound And true minds concentrate within this garth Of time, thought’s offerings, whose light expanding, The world shall hail the Star of Understanding – Those who have seen it will not lose the North.
14. Those who have seen it will not lose the North. They will stay oriented to the Mind Of Minds, that will instruct them where to find Connection, till they fashion or unearth An architecture that will give new birth To freedom, will enable truth to bind The monster Force, and foster humankind Toward peace and a sustainable Henceforth.
I must break off – the form commands concision – And hope, dear reader, this has served to win you For further proofs I’ll show when we continue; Though if the mural writing be not plain, If all Earth’s stones do not cry loudly, then No, I have seen no voice, have heard no vision.
15. No, I have seen no voice, have heard no vision. I was not told to say, “Thus saith the Lord.” An immanent and intricate accord Of tokens centered on the grim Parisian, One who desired to be the world’s physician. A caution we no longer can afford Blocked secular scholars from a poet’s word Calling us toward a point beyond division.
So I was drawn, and came to Israel, And at the entrance to the Torah’s maze I sang to call the word of power forth. Was all I heard the wind through a ruined cell? Still on the inward sky a sign could blaze; Those who have seen it will not lose the North.
January 1-13, 2003
NOTES A poem should stand alone; and yet it also must stand against some background the reader as well as the poet can both see. Hence, something about the different sources of this poem and about its form. I owe its immediate inspiration to a friend’s gift of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book The Prophets, a work I had not known till then, although Heschel’s The Sabbath had arrived, some years before, to interpret Paul Celan’s last poem (which ends on the word “Sabbath”). On New Year’s Day, 2003, I wrote down a prose synopsis of The Prophets, and the thought of writing a corona occurred to me. I cleaned out a bookshelf, looking for the back issue of Edge City Review where I’d seen a corona (“Helen, Old,” by Robert Darling, in no. 13), and also found a copy of a translation and essay by Robert Alter: “Saul Tchernikovsky: To the Sun: A Corona of Sonnets” (Literary Imagination 3:2 [2001], pp. 159-78) which another poet had sent to me some months earlier. As the reader will have seen, the corona consists of fifteen sonnets, each of which must begin with the last line of the preceding. The fourteenth must end with the first line of the sequence, and the first lines must then form a fifteenth sonnet. The reader may well ask why, as a response to Amos and Isaiah, to Heschel and, as always, to Celan, would one entangle oneself with such external intricacies? The Hebrew prophets used a simple antiphonic verse without rhyme or definite meter, and most of Celan’s work at least looks like free verse. Though he translated Shakespeare sonnets, though he has a few metrical poems of his own, though much of his verse can be scanned as amphibrachs, though in his early work the sonnet form can sometimes be felt, as it were, just under the horizon – this sort of exercise seems the polar opposite of his poetic praxis. Indeed, he once said that “a predetermined pattern makes the poem opaque, closed.” Yet my own experience is different; of the poems I have written that afterwards struck me as premonitory (i.e. proceeding at least from my own depths, if not from that Intelligence beyond our own in which I am very much inclined to believe), a majority employed rhyme and meter. I believe there is merit in the view Richard Moore expounds in his essay “On Rhyme” (available at www.thehypertexts.com): Moore, one of today’s leading formal poets, says that distracting the conscious mind with the meaningless puzzle of rhyme actually frees the subconscious to reveal itself. I cannot but feel that Celan’s views on form were partly dictated by the imperatives of a literary world from which traditional form was positively banned. Working, as a poet must, within the constraints that were given him, he succeeded in giving a new form to poetry; but after his death the sonnet form floated back to me as a spar in the sea of mental chaos, and I have clung to it ever since with a kind of mystical feeling, connecting it with the human form, the “tselem elokim” or Divine image in which, according to Genesis 1:27, humans were created. A rabbinic tradition based on this verse holds that the Torah consists of 613 commandments, 248 positive ones corresponding to the organs of the human body and 365 negative ones for the sinews (or the days of the year); it has occurred to me that the numbers 248 and 365 each add to 14, the number of lines in a sonnet! (I hope that Kabbalists will pardon me this nontraditional “gematria.”) And the corona, which might be called the square of the sonnet, was perhaps forced on me by a sense of the multifarious and seemingly-incompatible demands which today confront those who would like to have a plausible vision of a better world. The corona also makes demands for coherency that seem likely to conflict. Yet if these demands, “with the help of heaven,” can be met in the poem... I think of the first poem of Celan’s that was ever shown to me, a poem of rebeginning despite so much: I heard tell, there be in the water a stone and a circle, and over the water a word that lays the circle round the stone. If “Prophecy” can be viewed as an expanding ripple of that circle, perhaps a further expansion is conceivable. Besides the sources already named, sonnet 6 refers to Harold Bloom’s strictures in The Anxiety of Influence and A Map of Misreading (“poetry is property”). I also had in mind a book by Erich Kahler, The Tower and the Abyss, which is said to have moved Paul Celan to initiate a correspondence with the author. Kahler fears for the integrity of the human image, and names the fragmentation of knowledge as one of the sources of danger. Sonnet 12 refers to a Talmudic saying that was quoted to me: “Since the destruction of the Temple, the Lord has nothing in this world but the four ells of the halakhah” – four ells being the rabbinic measure of “personal space.” “The wind through a ruined cell” is from Shelley’s “Lines: When the Lamp Is Shattered.” Precepts of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot), the sixth tractate of the Mishnah, contains a number of rules for intellectual community. The Star of Understanding is meant to recall Franz Rosenzweig’s apologia for Judaism, The Star of Redemption (where the hexagram or Magen David is analyzed as two intersecting triangles symbolizing respectively the relations between God, man and world and among the three monotheistic religions); but the phrase “the star of understanding” actually comes from John Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks. It refers there to the morning star, which seems to stand for the maternal consciousness of the people. In Kabbala the emanation known as Binah (Understanding, also with a connotation of “structure”) is also called Mother. In sonnet 14, the term "unearth" is meant to recall a recent book called The Bible Unearthed, which employed archaeological techniques to portray the history recounted in the Bible as mostly fiction. This disturbed many who rely on the Bible as an authoritative text, particularly considering the recent attempts to deny that a Temple ever stood on the Temple Mount (although the authors of The Bible Unearthed do not question the existence of the First Temple, but only purport to show that most of Biblical history must date to late First Temple times). The present poem is intended to suggest that the authority of the Jewish tradition is based not on the factuality of the Exodus/Sinai narrative, but rather on the human centrality of the struggle which that narrative reflects. In the end, the authority for the tradition lies not in the past but in the future -- in the responses to the human condition which it can still inspire. The name of G-d is a future verb (Ex. 3:14). In the scope of the poem I could do no more than name the Hexagon, and refer obliquely to the ‘Olam Katan (Small World) – two suggestions I have made separately, and would like someday to be able to combine. But are not these things posted, along with the beginning of my epic, The Consciousness of Earth, on Point and Circumference (www.pointandcircumference.com). –EC
DR.SEUSS 2003
(Note: In 2003 a piece by an unknown author, an antiwar statement in “Dr. Seuss” style, was forwarded to m via the Internet)
When the question came up about war with Iraq, The Whos held a council, to think and to talk About how to avoid such a sin, waste and shame, And one urged allegiance to “Not In Our Name” In the name of sweet reason and good will and peace And the hard work that’s needed to make such wars cease. The Whos cheered. But a lone woman managed to seize (Don’t ask how) their attention. She said to them, “Please! Almost all that the last speaker told you is right, But in one or two places it’s not water-tight, And the sea-floor is littered with wrecks one small leak Has sent to the bottom. So mark what I speak!
“If the world were now fixed so that kind words could win All the time, making war in all cases a sin – If, wherever two sides in contention are seen, The truth must lie always exactly between – If slogans and cheers constituted solutions And vague good intentions could make revolutions -- Then “Not In Our Name” would be on the right track. I don’t know, when it comes to the war on Iraq, If it’s right or it’s wrong, if it’s smart or it’s dumb. I’ve had varying reports and opinions, that come From far-distant sources I cannot check out. Of our current regime I have more of a doubt – I don’t trust them as far as a toddler could throw ‘em And have voiced that perception in many a poem. But that doesn’t mean that whatever they do Or they say, the contrary must always be true! Take Israel, there at the heart of the storm. On the left as in Europe, it now is the norm To blame her and say that she must not insist On the needed conditions to let her exist – That’s called the “peace process,” and covers the name Of peace, sacred once, with indelible shame. Our current regime is less guilty of that Than are most – for the sake of avoiding a spat With those Christians who back it, I tend to assume – An example of how, on our politics’ loom, The threads are so twisted and so intertwined That it needs a precise and distinguishing mind To sort them and plot, for the ones who still care, A course from this Here to some preferable There. Is that what the ‘peace’ folks are showing us? Na! They’re like sheep that go plodding, with bleat and with baa, To the slaughter. Some group rents an office, composes An antiwar statement that strikes righteous poses, Slips in a few phrases that slander the Jews (‘Scuse me, the Israelis, since all can agree The Israelis are ‘them,’ they are not you and me), Gets ‘John Hancocks’ from prominent fools, makes the news, And voila! your leadership. No one inquires Just who, behind scenes, may be pulling the wires. I don’t know. But I know the things money can say, And I know where a lot of it comes from today. Through various channels it oozes and seeps, But the ultimate spigots are manned by some creeps Who don’t care for justice and freedom at all, Who hide human rights ‘neath a black stifling pall. (Our business and pols helped to put them in place – Again, how entangled the roots of disgrace!) We may owe them our present regime, if black gold Paid for ads, at the time our election was sold – With them in one room, and the Christians in the other To placate, our Pres must be all in a pother. But their gifts to our Right wouldn’t keep them from spying Around, for more weak links that might be worth trying. There’s our leftists, our poor intellectual class, Their magazines chronically looking for brass, Their radio stations, defunded of late, All those whom the corporate powers relegate To marginal limbo. How easy to dangle – On condition of slighting the Zionist angle, It’s such a small thing – the munificent grant Before eyes wide with hunger. Of course they would want To wrap the bait up in a moral disguise – Hence the long Palestinian grievance they prize Far too well just to help and to welcome as brothers Those whose want is so useful a tool against others. Those people the world may well pity, indeed: Suppressed and exploited, on both sides they bleed; The Jews dare not free them, the Muslims incite them, And while thus incited, no power can right them. It is a sore knot that cannot be untied By humanitarians blind on one side. Fellow-Whos! Share my fear lest her foes should achieve Their desires upon Israel! Then you’d soon grieve More September 11ths. They’ll hold off till then, While the highbrows talk peace and plain women and men With just sense enough to be scared, back the Right, Which has pledged to protect them, however one might Harbor doubts as to whether that pledge will be kept By those who stole pensions while everyone slept.”
The speaker drew breath. On her brow the sweat stood. She looked round to see whether they’d understood. A few eyes held hers. Most were fixed on the ground Or else toward the exits were looking around. But still she addressed them: “Good people, I pray, All you who love freedom and justice today, Hold still, and think back to the start of the way. Once a people were freed from the powers that oppressed By miracles – splitting of seas, and the rest. Fact or fable, that tale has cheered many a soul And stirred many a people to seek freedom’s goal. But not everyone notes how the story goes on – How, the moment their song of thanksgiving was done, They were told, ‘Keep the Sabbath. Don’t work on that day For a living, but gather in solemn array.’ For freedom lives only in community. They were given more laws, to preserve dignity And respect for each other, for freedom can’t ring Where folks think it means you can do anything. Moreover a wise man, who came from outside, Said, ‘The people aren’t sheep for one sheep-dog to guide. Let each ten have a leader, those leaders confer By tens in their turn, forming tier after tier, Where each leader knows and is known by the friends Who trust him or her to pursue wisdom’s ends, Till it comes down to one, who makes his/her decisions As the sum of constituents’ knowledge and visions.’
“Friends, that is a word that is relevant now. If you want to construct a good movement, here’s how. Clear a space, where you can, from the pressure that bends Your perceptions, and in that free space, meet in tens. Pool your knowledge, and talk to your friends till they too Are meeting this way. Soon your net will spread through The whole population, both wealthy and poor, Everyone who can grasp that we need something more Than the market to make our decisions for us, Or we’ll all soon be crammed in the back of the bus. But each group of ten has to choose, and choose well, The person who’d be the most gifted to tell The sum of their thoughts to the wider alliance – And this, O my comrades, this IS rocket science! Beware of your own crooked hearts, all too prone To resent admonition, perhaps feel outshone By those who have given their best, and ask yours. If you yield to such feelings you’ll soon be off course, And then you can talk till you’re blue in the face About love overarching religion and race And uniting the globe – and it will not be worth The littlest pinch of the dust of the earth. For a peace that’s to stand must be made with great skill, And not to want that is to not have good will. But if you can rise to this test – recognize The ones who you know are both honest and wise – You’ll discover the joy of a people who build, And little by little all needs will be filled.”
She ceased – and a silence was heard in the hall. And no one said anything. No one at all. Then, one after the other, they turned and filed out. They went home and thought. And they thought. And they thought. Then someone called someone. And someone called others, Their cousins, their school friends, their sisters and brothers. They found the address of a website that showed More detailed instructions for walking this road. They learned and they taught. They reached out and they grew. When it came to elections, they knew who was Who. The pols, seeing ads didn’t work anymore, Showed the boys with the blood-money bags to the door And then buckled down to pursuing the good Of the Whos, who would not accept nickels of wood. Did they stop that particular war? I don’t know: They’d made a late start, had a long way to go. But at last they were moving... and History will mention The day when this plan first obtained their attention.
YOU ALMOST REMEMBER
Think: your own hand has held this pain- reclaimed, pain requickened portion of habitable earth fast. Paul Celan, 1967
You have half forgotten, you almost remember the dream Of a native country whose language was joy Despite the numerous crosses, the wide denial Of an abundance flowing from the infinite Founding the city upon the reformed heart And sustaining the world through one small land.
It always was about this piece of land Where a people held together by a dream (Or compressed by surrounding pressures into a heart) Found, between towering walls, the way to joy Just for a moment that seemed infinite Before the jaws of empire closed in denial.
But they could meet denial with denial. They could pay out, while fleeing from the land, A long, strong cord of story. The lost is infinite Possession. In possession of a dream They did not unlearn how to sing for joy. Wandering, they carried with them their country's heart.
For their singers had built the temple of the heart. It stood unshakeably footed on denial. Swaying with eyes closed they could enter its joy Though many kin remained behind in the land At the mercy of those who had stolen the dream And changed its vision of the Infinite
Into a conqueror's program of infinite Empire, feeding the victor's insatiable heart, Merging spirit with the flesh-hued dream Of the ravisher who heeds no denial But goes trampling over land after land To crush the rose of Sharon, all flowers of joy.
As it nears, humans abandon all hope of joy Unless they are rooted in the infinite Enough to hold on to this piece of land With desperate strength, the last strength of the heart, Even against kin, the captives of denial, Who would turn possession into our worst dream.
There are those in this world who do not dream of joy. The capacity for denial is infinite. Abandonments lay waste the world's heart-land.
AFTER THE SACKING OF THE MESOPOTAMIAN ARCHIVES
I. Who cares for ancient writs, monuments of Unaging intellect? All's obsolescent. Those we pretend to guard we do not love. The bottom line, pitted against the crescent, Collides with it, colludes with it, to shove Ditchward what’s functionless. An adolescent Passion for smashing things is in control, Heedless of any flappings of the soul.
II. God's holy fire -- for there are those who call It such -- is not for standing in, O sages! And any gold mosaic on a wall Will be clawed off and sold, for such the rage is; Though distant from the auctioneers that bawl Our futures, still it seems that one contagious Furor possesses them; invention turns Destruction, other face of the sword that burns.
III Whatever is begotten now, and born, Must live until it dies without the shade Of custom, save such custom as is worn Like a black shroud whereby the heat is made Hotter. Old Glittering-Eyes, can you not mourn? Splintered the flute whereon your servant played Those mournful tunes. The slope you're climbing, too -- The Yangtze dam has somewhat marred that view.
IV. Only through mourning is the shade of good Perceived now, by those left with sense enough To mourn. To them appears the grieving crowd Of those who lit the lamp this storm would snuff. O workers of some fabric that withstood -- Washington, Paul, Hillel, whose moulds we slough -- Return, breathe on our minds, draw civic shape From gleamless palette, feckless fiddle-scrape.
TO YEATS, TO WHOM I OWE SO MUCH, ON A LAPSE OF HIS THAT WAS PRAISED BY ONE WHO SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER
A poem that twice uses “great” To stuff a line, I would not rate So highly as to give it home On the first page of a tome, And “great gazebo”! For my money That’s unintentionally funny; A slower joke’s that parallel Between “gazebo” and “gazelle.” Now Heaven be praised I have no friend Who when I’m gone will condescend So clumsily to my vain thrashing: The putdown is so much in fashion It scarcely takes the pains to prink With wit, for those who will not think. You, Yeats, when you cooked up that spell Were not so old you could not smell What’s burning, and it is not Time. On your gazebo, too, the flames climb, And those who feel no common wrong Have small matter for a song. Great Dread had almost made you wise. But folk will take the worst advice Of poets dead, and leave the best. Under Ben Bulben, can you rest?
PEACECRAFT
We’ve got this hot new spacecraft (Also called a map). The latest thing in peacecraft – In other words, a trap. Materials and instruments Have failed every test, But won’t you please step into it And hope for the best.
ON SEEING A PERFORMANCE OF HAMLET BY THE YOUNG SHAKESPEARE PLAYERS
Children play Shakespeare on a summer’s eve, Their theater a house they’ve hollowed out. On a black-painted stage they move about Among black crates and pallets, props that leave Much to the imagination. We receive, Likewise, a maid-child of eight years for stout Fortinbras. Why, ‘tis brave, and conquers doubt! But isn’t that the way of make-believe:
Less to resemble than to represent, To posit, more than simulate. To say, “Let this be that.” And in the mind’s eye rises All of the splendor that the poet meant. Cynic, behold, be changed! The human play Is not yet done, and still may hold surprises.
The voice of mother Rachel I heard moan For Israel’s children, once again besieged By those who have no pity on their own, Who seek not their own happiness or peace But our undoing and the misery Of all on earth; whose love of war has turned The praise of G-d into a murderer’s cry. She weeps for nations, too, that have not learned What fruits appeasement brings, but who malign The attacked, to buy themselves some thoughtless ease And not to know that they are next in line; But most of all she weeps, she weeps for these Children of hers, who turn on her, convert Even her compassion to her people’s hurt.
BALLAD OF JACK-BY-THE-HEDGE
"My ship is at the harbor bar, And I'll be six months gone. What shall I bring from old England, The land that once was home?" "O bring me a pot of Jack-by-the-Hedge, Which some call Sauce-Alone.
"It adds a tang to salads green, It bears white flowers in spring. I'll feel, among the alien plants, More joy in gardening.
And when you've sailed away again, And have been gone awhile, I'll look upon the Jack-by-the-Hedge And think of you, and smile."
"How may I know this Jack-by-the-Hedge, And what may be its mark?" "When not in bloom its leaves are low And like a deep-notched heart."
The traveler walks on England's shore, He walks in a country lane, And there he sees some Jack-by-the-Hedge, Which some call Sauce-alone.
He's dug it up with its long white root, And in a pot of clay He keeps it with him the voyage through, He waters it every day.
His wife is glad to have him back And glad he's kept his pledge And not forgot her Sauce-Alone, Her pot of Jack-by-the-Hedge.
She's taken it out of the earthen pot And in her garden gay She's planted it to bloom; but there, Alas, it does not stay.
Its many seeds are borne by wind, By the foot of beast and man,
And the farmer does not smile to see That leaf upon his land.
It carpets all the woods, its root Puts a bane into the ground, Our native flowers melt away And are no longer found.
We do not call it Jack-by-the-Hedge, Nor is Sauce-Alone its name, And we do not know who brought it here, But we hold them much to blame.
We are glad of garlic in the stew And mustard on the meat, But when garlic mustard perfumes a field It is not declared a treat.
But man sets nature's will at naught, And nature mocks his pain, And if we got back through Eden’s gate, We’d only wreck it again.
THE MAIL FROM VORONEZH
In Voronezh, where Mandelstam would stay A few months more before they took him away, The voice of Marian Anderson came over The airwaves, and acquired a distant lover.
He listened, and the walls that he had seen Closing around him, opened to let in A tidal rush of awe that swallowed fright, A gentle breath from islands of delight,
And from behind the stars a mother's voice Calling her children home: Repent. Rejoice. Dust is the throat that sang, the ear that heard. Still rings the echo in the poet's word.
Zimmerman made it audible, back here. Grant us grace, Mother. Space in which to hear.
I had thick dark hair with a reddish glint And brows that almost met above my nose. I’d take the stairs two at a time; I’d sprint To catch a bus; sometimes I’d skip! Flash clothes And ethnic beads were my delight. From time To time I’d dream a myth, or write a poem Whose deep-caught imagery dispensed with rhyme. Such are the gifts of youth. The gods bestow ‘em, And the wise do not grieve at growing older If they can see the gorgeous garb of youth Draped gracefully across another shoulder. But Earth has suddenly grown old, and drouth Seals up the souls. The young no longer dream, And desolate age alone recalls the gleam.
TA'ANIT ESTER (THE FAST OF ESTHER)
Can anyone still hear my people's cry, Even they themselves? Can anybody stand In the blown-apart heart of the Holy Land, Can anybody see with shattered eye All that is done? Can anyone think why, Marshal a shredded brain to understand? Can anybody grasp a severed hand, Can a cut-out tongue still stammer of Sinai?
O GOD, restore the image of Your Law, Restore the sacredness of human form, If not for Israel's, for your sweet earth's sake. Send us a sign, send forth a ray to draw Love's faithful in against the hateful storm To uphold the norm, and face down Amalek!
WE BEAR THE MARK
We bear the mark, and do not know Why or wherefore it should be so. We cannot read the difference It means – what merit or offence Awarded us this weal and woe.
Whether burnt in by Sinai’s glow, Or whether carved by exile’s throe, Or borne from soul’s mysterious Whence, We bear the mark.
Sometimes, immersing in the flow Of time, we hope it does not show, Until the unfolding of events Or waking of an inner sense Advise us that wherever we go We bear the mark.
TO ONE WHO OBJECTED TO “CENSORSHIP”
That speech should be entirely free Requires no great audacity To state these days. The world of letters Has long since shuffled off the fetters Of what was known, some years ago, As common decency. Your low- Browed Baptist still may fulminate, But otherwise, it’s getting late To hunt for Puritans. They’re gone, And only I still linger on, Nursing a few last reservations – I’ll state them, if you’ll hear with patience. Would it beseem your views to opinion The wing of an adverse opinion?
First, as an axiom, I’ll mention The ageold, often-noted tension Between necessity and freedom: Both G-d, it’s said, and artists need ‘em Both. Whatever’s all one way – No set of rules, no room for play – Is lifeless from the start, or short-lived, Or on the average, abortive. Folk find that life with rules is sweeter (I see you write in rhyme and meter).
A survey of the arts today You’ll find will bear out what I say. It’s true that seventy years ago You could not say, you could not show Some things – except between brown covers Or in blue movies, which the lovers Of stolen waters slyly traded – It made sin more fun to be raided Now and then. But the public space At least was clear of great disgrace To the human image. There, respect Reigned, and allowed the intellect To unfold, and art to contemplate The human being in depth, to state The issues in a way not quite Oblivious of our complex plight. But now that sort of things is banned, Though none admits that this was planned! Few publishers will even look At a G-rated story-book Without profanity or violence – “Give us the dirt! The rest is silence!” Amid the mayhem, character And motivation tend to blur, Sensation has expelled both Sense And sensibility from hence. In the political arena The tone of the debate is meaner, Posturing and knee-jerk reactions Replace debate, by either faction. All to the lowest level sinks And, decomposing, loudly stinks. Where have Truth and Beauty gone? Shamed, despised, and spat upon, They’ve fled the public marketplace with the hounds of “candor” on their trace. The media, of course, must shoulder Much of the blame, as bold and bolder They stun the mind with stimuli To make folk buy, and buy, and buy More and more stupid junk. But why Cannot, at least, a poet see This is not good for poetry?!
[untitled]
O what have you lost today, dear heart, That you look so wan and pale? O I have lost a golden chain With a diamond stone and my truelove’s name. There are gold and gems in the mines of earth To make you a token of greater worth As long as love remains.
O what have you lost today, good soul, That you hang your head so low? O I have lost a friend of youth Who has proved no friend in truth. There are many whom you would love not in vain, And prayer can warm cold hearts again As long as faith remains.
O what have you lost today, my child, The your turn your face away? Sixteen precious souls of Israel Were swept away by the minions of hell. O then I cannot comfort you Till this world is ended and made new, For naught can replace these slain. Alas for those who are lost and cannot be found!
BEFORE THE ELECTION
After the present contest is decided The world will go on rolling down time’s slope By one path or another. Those who’ve sided One way or the other may return (O Hope!) To the task of making whole, with what remains. Though after months of mutual accusations It may take time before the battered brains Can switch into the mode of watchful patience Which is the only road the good can ever Come to the world. It is the sacred space, The channel for the Power to Make Over, The court of judgment and the seat of grace, The helm of strategy we must protect, For all is rooted in the Intellect.
fall 2004
WHERE ALL THE LADDERS START (toward a neighborly post-election conversation)
I must lie down where all the ladders start – W.B. Yeats
1.
Friend, you have voted for the wrong, I think; Now pray we may avert catastrophe, Of which this man has brought us to the brink, This corporate servant whose morality Gives the widow and the orphan little quarter – Who having shown us the Iraqis’ plight As pretext, now keeps no count of the slaughter He’s brought upon them, with no end in sight. A war to which our enemies may well Have counseled him! Defend this country, he? Save us from our defenders, who pave hell With profiteering and Tartufferie. – But had the man for whom I voted won, I would be asking myself what I had done.
2.
For I am one who cares for Israel And does not want to “reach out” to our foes. I was not sure the candidate would not sell Us out, whom I with trepidation chose. Also, amid your “family values” talk, I hear a fear the Left has failed to hear: Of predatory media that stalk The country, making children hard to rear. Maybe you cast your ballot for a staid Domestic image of lost innocence; And if you have resisted being swayed By Hollywood and rock stars, you showed sense. Our ridicule and negativity Failed to persuade, as lacking dignity.
3.
But negativity and ridicule Your side, as well as ours, has often used. Conservative writers aim foul speech and cruel Taunts at the deprived and the abused And those who care for our environment. The democratic purpose of debate They do subvert, evincing the intent Less to persuade than to intimidate: Not by the free choice of the free and brave, The immortal soul that only bows to G-d, But by the instinctive cringing of the slave Whom a sharp tone of voice can cliffward prod Your side sought victory, and won. And you, As well as we, this victory may rue.
4.
“When going to the people, take your whip,” Nietzsche, that breeder of bad thoughts, once said; And as I read the winning side, his quip Won’t quit reverberating in my head. That politicians steal and shade the truth Is old; one bears it with philosophy; But the attack upon the source of ruth, The call to servile fear and cruelty, Bespeaks a tyrant spirit that by stealth Has for some time been working to suborn The soul of citizen and commonwealth. Against this may good people wake and warn, Lest liberty and justice should depart, Leaving this land without a soul or heart.
5.
How is civility by all betrayed, Even by those that on it most depend, Although without it hopes of reason fade, And no one can foretell a happy end: Perhaps it is the waning of our trust In an eternal Might that stands behind The humble, and brings arrogance to dust, And brings to term what Providence designed. Trust failing, even those who advocate For the downtrodden, felt that they must posture And threaten like the haughty, and berate Their enemies like generals who could muster The force to make it stick. Unfortunately, This prompted power to cast off courtesy.
6. “We who believe that a wrong road was taken And yet must now go down it with the rest, What shall we do, Mother?” “Refrain from slaking Your grief with mere vituperation, lest You mar your human image, and descend To levels where there is no remedy. Be wise enough to make defeat your friend And, being humbled, learn humility. Humility: it is the only gate By which new things can come into the world, The matrix where true minds communicate, The seed where possibility lies furled. It is the ground from which all ladders rise That may yet lift us to redemption’s skies.”
7. Still to rebuild the center is the task, Where thought is shielded from contention, Where there’s no question that we may not ask, And no misgiving that we needs must shun; Where inspiration can be heard, undrowned By thoughtless bluster and self-seeking lies, And where investigation may be crowned By a result that all can recognize. A still more perfect union we must form In the spirit both of science and of prayer, To fortify this land against the storm That threatens hope and freedom everywhere. May all we love arise in us and plead For this. It is the hour of deepest need.
November 2004
ON THE LATE EARTHQUAKE AND FLOOD IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
1.
By which so many lives were swept away, Recall that such are but the pangs of birth Of mountains, rivers, flood-plains where life may Unfold itself. Should these upheavals cease, As in Australia, the continents, Desert, would offer life the scantest lease: Out of disaster comes our providence. O humans, go out from your tiny frame Of time, climb past the compass of these years And view the agelong path by which we came! Such contemplation cannot cancel tears, Yet with a grander wisdom may we live The life Creation’s motions take and give.
2.
The night retreated, and the people rose And did as they had planned the day before: Launched fishing boats, fed children, mended clothes Or sunned themselves along the quiet shore. If anyone had dreamed, none had foretold That their next day, their every future year, Would be undestined by a wave that rolled Across their land like a huge hand to smear Their lives’ design to blankness, to replace Structure with wreckage, conscious life with rot, Mourners and mourned engulfed without a trace, Their lives in one swift stroke summed up to Naught. Through sea, through air, the bubble of the WHY Mounted and burst beneath the stark impassive sky.
3.
Scarcely had that great cloud of souls escaped To wrap the earth in a vast soundless wail, When hastily across the void that gaped First threads were cast. The shock that on the scale Of Earth had topped the numbers, sent a surge Of sea across the hapless haunts of men, Woke in the sympathetic sphere an urge That rushed to the breach, to build them back again. Ministers pondered meaning. Doctors flew. Ships, aircraft brought supplies. Aid-workers fanned Out over ruined plains. Charities drew The coin of many a realm from many a hand. The widow’s mite, the corporation’s dole, The state’s, flowed to the spot, to make the great wound whole.
4.
Wounds fester still, and still survivors comb Lists for a sign of their mass-buried dead. From loss of occupation and of home Through years to come the aftershocks will spread Their menace. Yet through all this, we are shown The face of human mercy, and the will To succor, to befriend, uplift the prone, Toward reparation bending every skill. A world made void, without a place to lay Our head, nor field to till, nor face of kin – This is not our desire, however we may Give cause to fear it through mistake or sin. O no! We want a world where seed may grow To fruit, and age may bask in children’s faces’ glow.
5.
O you who perished for no other cause Than that your track of life had placed you where The great deep lashed its blind tremendous paws, To your attendant spirits be this prayer, To your attendant spirits, to the One Who breathed you, Who breathed order to the void And breathes it even now, through everyone Who lifts a hand to right what was destroyed: O may the angels these good deeds have borne Be with us still, hold steadily to our mind Our Godly image which such works adorn And strengthen, that we may be wisely kind, Staying the yearlong course of this repair, Keeping faith with Earth’s orphans everywhere.
6.
29,000 children die each day from hunger or avoidable disease. – U.N. report
One good deed brings another. – The Talmud
That lifting and rebound of the great sea Which sprang back like a trap on isle and shore, Smoothed nature’s and man’s work to nullity And children from their clutching parents tore, Built in the realm of Lost only a small City beside the far-flung conurbation Of lives and goods that daily, yearly fall Through human rage or thoughtless machination, Tending toward ends that we cannot desire. Yet if we here make remedy, then may The thought of that accomplishment inspire Us to address our own-made disarray; And there where conscience points “Thou art the man” Give heart to say, “I will repair, and can.”
January 2005
PURIM KATAN
IMPERFECT THINGS
Imperfect things! What else have we To lean on, in reality, Seeing our actions cannot draw A virtue’s portrait without flaw Or type its orders accurately?
In all that is not cruelty, Self-seeking, error, laxity Appears. We cannot hold in awe Imperfect things.
Yet not in those who cannot see The aim, or who deny or flee The task set by some higher Law Or brighter Image one once saw Resides the power to heal and free Imperfect things.
Poet, be not a critic overmuch, For why should you aspire to a degree Beneath your birthright, and with cavils smutch The shining scutcheon of your minstrelsy? It ne’er was vision’s bravest feat to see The fault, or plant a fault in its own field, Rather to view from all obstruction free The beauty that desired to be revealed. If means by which some blemish may be healed Are shown to you, propose them! Yet the Muse Loves those who to her sweet persuadings yield Most readily, whether at first she choose Their voice, or sound upon another’s string To rouse them to a song of glad acknowledging.
EPITAPH FOR AN UNWRITTEN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I have lived my life -- and found that it was not Like anything they’d told me in advance. Books of religion, reason and romance All lied, and science too left out a lot. It almost seemed as if there was a plot Afoot, to keep my youth in ignorance So fate could whip me through a stumbling dance Of steps I might have graced, had I been taught.
“Someone must write to warn the young!” I cried, “Lest they, as well as we, should miss the gate!” So I began. But all the words I tried Appeared reluctant to collaborate, They turned and twisted so. I gave it up. Truth can’t be told, and youth must take its luck.
TIKKUN HA-'OLAM (WORLD REPAIR)
Somewhere far away a gigantic crystal leans upon a mountaintop. * From it emanate instructions, pulsing outward in wave upon wave. * Those who receive them come together, synchronize watches, pick their leaders. * They pool their info, receive their assignments, then scatter to do them. * At regular times they reconvene, compare notes, reassess, reassign. * All this to the pulse of that distant crystal becoming their breath, their song.
2005
CONVERSIVE
Vav conversive, where are you now? Come back, turn back the arrow of time.
PRAYER IN A DRY SPRING
Send the rain, dear G-d, please send the rain, let the pasture grassblades drink and spread their roots, so that, when the cattle are brought in again, they have enough of densely crowded shoots not to lay bare the ground. O send the rain! Well is it known to You how dryness mutes the songbird’s throat, the insect’s trill, makes vain the fling of seed. But sweeter far than lutes is the sweet music when You’ve sent the rain that sings to earth of leaves and flowers and fruits, to grief of tears that loose the grip of pain, and many an anxious wakefulness commutes to heart-slaked slumber. Then, please, send the rain. And be Your mercies everywhere made plain.
MORDECHAI
Is none to raise the loud and bitter cry That all along our shuttered streets could roll And through the palace walls that hide the soul Could penetrate and rouse it lest it die, Could overtake the fragment-souls that fly In all directions, heedless of the whole? Does not one circle pass through pole and pole? O where are you, where are you, Mordechai?
Shall no one give us eyes to see the fight Is now in every street and house and heart And calls for every knowledge, every art, To speak of Israel's truth and Zion's right, Source of the Law by which the world might live, Not die? O where, where are you, Mordechai?!!
APRIL SNAPSHOTS
Grape hyacinth,
replacing squill –
THE SPIRAL LOAF
Note: This poem meditates on Rashi's first comment on Genesis. Rashi asks why, instead of just giving the laws, the Torah begins with the creation of the world, and reasons that this is in order to justify Israel's claim to the land: "All the earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it and gave it to whom he pleased." The poem relates this to a Talmudic saying that is quoted by Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers in Order Out of Chaos, to the effect that G-d created the world a number of times but each time it crumbled, until He added the attribute of teshuva (repentance, return), "and then it stood."
The birthday of the year again comes round, The days when we remember the Creation And the world’s provenance, on which we found, As Rashi says, the title of our nation To the small, much-contested piece of ground From which we draw our life. A slender fable, Some say; but is life’s thread a stouter cable?
Creation! Who, they ask, was there to plan When out of nothing burst the formless mass That mushroomed out, occasioning as it ran Physical laws, and very time and space And the ascending forms that led to man – Haphazards that became a tale of woe When matter sorted into minds that know.
That sorting too, only a coalescence Within the dissipation of the All, An accidental being without essence, An upward flutter in a downward fall, Where matter, settling after effervescence, Thins into nothingness through unmarked ages – Effaced the letters, and dissolved the pages!
So must the universe indeed appear To one who measures meaning with extent, Who seeks for cause in what came earlier And takes the later thing as consequent, Who, bent upon externals, cannot hear His own soul’s voice, nor, schooled by it, perceive In outer things themselves the Maker’s weave.
But once to have seen time’s procession checked By premonition, synchronicity – Whatever name you think may best reflect The glint of these small haps that hold a plea For something beyond time that may project What seems to flow in sequence down time’s slope – Is to have glimpsed both origin and hope.
Scattered and small appears such evidence Against the background of determined fact; Small, too, is planet Earth amid the immense Desert of space, our span amid the tract Of time whose emptiness astounds the sense – A point in all; yet if that point were missed, To what purpose would all the rest exist?
Our cause is found not in that plasmal state Where even physical laws did not yet hold; No did the laws of physics contemplate The laws of chemistry which then unrolled, Nor inorganic chemistry spell the fate Of organisms, nor biology Predict their actions in society;
Nor do the rules of human give-and-take Contain the Torah that to us is given, That shook the conscience of the world awake And strengthened those who like the leaf were driven To stand in dignity and, pacted, make A further level of coherency, Though this, as yet, not all can or will see.
There’s that in humankind which would go back To sleep again, and silence the alarm, Those who prefer a world of strife and lack Where they can spread themselves and work their harm, Till it could seem as if the world’s off track Permanently, committed to decay, Where entropy, as in cold space, holds sway. Last century saw destruction, clothed in lies, Swell and advance as if to efface the mark Of covenant, put out compassion’s eyes, And plunge the world in final utter dark; And yet the morrow saw fair Zion rise, Sign of our destination beyond time, And of the world’s repentance for great crime.
So we must pray that still that sign may stand And with it, conscience and the very frame Of human consciousness, that what G-d planned Man may yet build, with once-more-steadied aim, Not crumble back into time’s sterile sand In which no secret of creation lay, Which brings not forth, but only wears away.
But the direction of the true return Is to the One who willed and wills Creation Which to Moshe shone forth in flames that burn And not consume, round which he formed this nation – Source of the light whereby each can discern Their share in what may have been wrought awry, And of the strength to fashion equity.
Time’s arrow – let it fly then! We have seen Our borders are inscribed into the world, Whose course is thereby, like the loaves we mean To eat these days, into a circle curled, Or no, a spiral! May the nations glean This truth, from deeds, words, thoughts that without sound Roll out, as once again Creation’s day comes round.
3-8 Tishri 5766
BETWEEN THE STRAITS
when I am gone make no verse about me -- Lea Tanzman Appelman, 1926-2006
Each one with his secret And the grave’s open door And the trackless white silence Of the vast Evermore.
The black fire of your writing — Will it go out, blaze up there? And will love win forgiveness For staves that would step there?
It is we, we the living, Still hungry, still breathing, Who cloud the cold mirror, Who trespass on Nothing.
Each one with his secret And the grave’s open door And the trackless white silence of the vast Evermore.
November 2006
SQUIRRELS IN BERRY TREE
Four fat squirrels had found a berry tree, and fed till all the berries they could reach were gone.
That last squirrel was bold! He hung by his hind legs from bending twigs, then sized it up and left.
The next day I saw two stretching for the last red berries at branch-ends; but they soon gave up.
MOURNING AND RESOLUTION
for the dead of Virginia Tech
Why art thou angry? And why art thou crestfallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? Genesis 4:6
"One sinner will destroy much good." Those words from Proverbs kept on hammering in my brain as I surveyed the pictures of the lost and read the information on each one: the Jew with a kippah who blocked the door, the language teacher's lean and humorous look, the radiant young actress, "Residenthippy" who had his own songs posted on his website. A multi-cultural, multi-ethnic gathering of faces that projected love of life. Honors student. Only child. Distinguished To think of all the caring, all the labor that went into the making of those lives, of all they'd been preparing to give back, exchanged for what? The sinner who did this is dead, has done what justice he could do upon himself. And yet we feel the case is not yet closed. He was not solely guilty. The headline in the paper shouted WHY?, making one want to savagely grab hold of whosoever set that headline, shake him or her till teeth should rattle, yelling loudly: Look into the mirror, journalista! There has been more than enough screaming. But the point was driven home when it transpired that in between two murders and the rest, the one who shall be nameless here had sent a video to the networks, which of course played it. So he got what he wanted, set a record and a mark for other sinners to aim at, G-d forbid. The killer, then, is still at large. Could we ever apprehend him? The least that we can do is think about it. If there is anything that could console those who have lost the ones they loved the best, it might be the assurance that from what the world can feel of grief, some resolution will rise. That they will not have died in vain. Of course, we cannot wholly overlook the little perpetrator's private motives. His face was not a handsome one. He was a foreigner. (But so were some of those he killed.) In the video he spoke of "rich kids and their debaucheries." I think of Loki, who made a spear of mistletoe to murder Baldur the beautiful; of the villagers who brought the bird-girl down (oh Reema, Reema ); of Alberich in Der Ring, who spoils the world because, being ugly, he was barred from love. Did others really mock him? Did they fail to reach him? Could he have been reached? No one could give him what he did not have the gracious gifts of nature nor the kind of love that beauty and achievement can awaken. Life, which we love so much, is never fair. Each one must make the best of what they're given, and only in that struggle are we equal. Envy's the deepest failure of our kind, envy or else ingratitude, its twin, that cannot prize what G-d has given to others nor feel the privilege of being part of G-d's brave world that has such people in it. He failed to find that joy. If others failed him, perhaps the failure lay in not conveying to him that nothing is more glorious than the soul's struggle with its bosom foe. Driven to reach for love and for distinctions, we give, perhaps, not enough sanctuary to the dignity that's common to us all. No, we cannot disown him altogether. And least of all can poets pass him by as alien. For he was one of us. He was an English major. In his classes he frightened people with his gruesome works. Some of us may have met him, in a workshop or at a poetry reading: the one lacking in talent, or at any rate unable to write the work that widens heart and mind, the work built up from loving observation by ingenuity, that makes us feel the grandeur of creation. There's a core of truth in each of us, we must assume, that could bring forth at least some little thing worthy attention, if we always paid attention, if our teaching inculcated awareness of the one eternal Reader who always pays attention. Failing this, there is an easy shortcut. At a loud noise, at the intimation of a threat, the head swings toward the source of noise, the nerves go on alert. Attention is obtained. This tactic takes both crude and subtle forms. Read many a poetry magazine these days, notice how many poems recommend themselves through imagery that's meant to startle, sometimes to offend, cause pain whatever works to arrest the eye, the hand that has to shuffle heaps of submissions, that cannot take time to notice the good qualities that once made songs that helped folks live. These last few days a song by Stephen Foster "Gentle Annie" kept running through my head. People once sang such songs. They were best-sellers. In the evening I started reading Thackeray's "Henry Esmond" and could not stop. How vividly his figures stood out, in this production of a time when life as it is lived was found of interest, and not just its ingenious demolition. (True that time also had its grievous wrongs, but yet for these some remedy was found, because the public had not yet been rendered incapable of thought and resolution by television's crash and flash, designed to stun the sense and sabotage reflection.) I thought of concerts that are meant to deafen, where melody and harmony are stomped on by rhythm, which itself is simplified. And then I thought about the "war on terror." Which also, this week, was not going well. Suicide bombers. People who convert themselves, their own lives, into murder weapons, and who, unlike the wretch we just have heard from (although he wrote "Ismail" on his arm), hold a belief that this is what G-d wants, a belief that is spreading. I keep thinking of Robinson Jeffers' lines before the last great war. In "May-June, 1940" he wrote: "Foreseen, for so many years: these evils, this monstrous violence, this massive agonies: no easier to bear. We saw them with slow stone strides approach, everyone saw them; we closed our eyes against them, we looked And they had come nearer. We ate and drank and slept, they came nearer. Sometimes we laughed, they were nearer Now They are here. And now a blind man foresees what follows them " Yes. They are here indeed. They are in our hearts. Last summer, on a trip to Israel which coincided with the war they had there, I sat one afternoon in an apartment overlooking a wadi in Jerusalem the shells weren't falling there, just north and south. A friend and I spoke about present things and things to come. She said, "The terrorists get half of their ideas from action movies." Against all this, my thought clings to the one good bit of news heard recently: a truck full of explosives that got to Tel Aviv returned undetonated, possibly because the driver had thought better of it. We have to hope that we may all think better of blowing up the world. That we may yet consider that the One who made the world cannot desire such end. But we can't hope to make this point to other cultures while our own nation is reveling every hour in images of ruin and destruction. Each one of us has some small power to stop it. To each of us some good has been entrusted, there's something each of us can keep from blowing away, or letting slide to the abyss. Here is one chance: there'd be no point in sending these words to NBC. But you can spread them. Please do so; and please think about rebuilding a culture that could once again reflect reflection, pull us back from the verge of nothing. Your friend and fellow-citizen, Esther Cameron
CHANUKAH, AFTER ANNAPOLIS
In winter darkness we are called to light. These candles of remembrance and of cheer.
In our safe homes beyond the western seas In winter darkness we are called to light While in Jerusalem our friends seek ease
In sleep from false peace and impending fear. Shall we then give hope’s name to fraud’s black blight, Ignore their peril for our comfort here? In winter darkness we are called to light,
To the fierce light of mind that shows things clear, Of soul that will stand up in time’s despite For truth, and make the face of G-d appear In winter darkness. We are called to light The spark of courage that calls freedom dear
In one another. And we dare not ask If we have any chance to win this fight. We must believe, in hour however grave, In winter darkness, we are called to light, We are committed to One who will save If we have will to undertake the task.
For this one hour draw near, O soul, and bask In the radiance of these flames, fed by an oil That knows no earthen springs, and cannot fail. In winter darkness we are called to light That sure must show some way out of this coil Where we seem caught, some stroke that will avail To cut from substance’ trunk the evil mask.
In winter darkness we are called to light: To Intuition, drawing from the source, To Understanding, that can plot a course, To Love for all who stand with us tonight, To Judgment, that won’t have what isn’t right, To Balance, which Compassion also hight, To Steadfastness, that gets us through all pains, To Acknowledgment, which consolidates the gains,
To Righteousness, which keeps connections tight, Upholds that greatest good, Community – Community, that wears the eternal Crown And one day must embrace the ends of earth Unless this world’s distortions drag us down – O our Preserver! Grant we keep in sight Your good ends. Give our truthful deeds renown, That we may feel our struggles as a birth. In winter darkness we are called to light.
TOWARD SHABBAT
Even this is, this must be for the best: We, pledged to G-d for better or for worse, Have no choice but to welcome as a test Whatever comes to meet us, though adverse. We may not cease from gratitude, from seeing The good that G-d has made, that G-d has given, Praising in every good the Source of being, Dwelling on good, and so not being driven. So from this week I will recall how bright Silver and crystal glittered on the boughs, While amaryllis blared its red and white To all four compass points within the house. The parsha, too, poured forth its weekly treasures, And rifts of gold gleamed from a fellow-poet's measures.*
LAMENT IN ADAR
They heard about the massacre at the wedding and still the dance continued, though each dancer had a heart torn between dancing and wailing, –perhaps one more bright soul would volunteer for duty in this world of dark and wrong, O Yonadav! When song’s bridegroom is taken, another poet needs to spin grief into song and re-enrich a world robbed of its gain. All very well, if the one who’s gone has pressed his brain, and left his treasure, to be grieved by a pupil who, as he sings, receives; but a weary mouth that long since gave its best – to refresh the desert of your absence, how should it blow? to lament what was not yet formed, how should it know?
GLIMMER OF PARTING
When a life ends, the in-held mystery That only patchwise to a friend was shown At last transpires and can in part be known, Although the most part go invisibly Back to the source. The praise that was not free In the living presence wholly to unfold Now in the shade of death appears, a gold Glimmer of parting, wonderful to see, Though grief it cannot hush. G-d gives, reclaims, And gives in taking. May our hearts be pure Enough to hold these gifts, to make their names Our standard! And make, too, our vision sure To see their like who dwell among us still, And spare us further grief. May it be Your will.
Tu B'Av/Nachamu
Dance, maidens of Jerusalem, Dance your round and sing, And call the lads of Jerusalem Around your pleasant ring.
Dance, maidens of Jerusalem, Defying guns and drought. Though foes surround Jerusalem, Love can banish fear and doubt.
Dance, maidens of Jerusalem, Bring down the holy fire, That there may be another generation Of those who love and aspire.
Dance, maidens of Jerusalem, The moon is full tonight, All the world will bathe in silvery beams, And in Jerusalem's delight.
Dance, maidens of Jerusalem, In beauty like the moon, And may G-d comfort Jerusalem Speedily, yea, soon.
I WAS
I was like that small child who cried during shofar not knowing that the shofar cried for her.
*
TO ONE FAR AWAY IN MARCH
On a March afternoon the wind was raw, The sun, half overcast, gave pallid light; But in a corner of your yard I saw The aconite.
Like sequins stitched to a dun beggar's cloak, A handful of flung golden coin, a spring Of sunlight from the earth, those blossoms woke, Just opening.
You walk amid the cherry trees' display And share a distant people's spring delight, But on your still-brown lawn I saw today The aconite.
*
VOLUME III: SONNET SEQUENCES
THE WORLD’S LAST ROSE: Sonnets for the Prince of Twilight
To P.C.
Onlie begetter of these sonnets! Quote this who more aptly can, than I to you, though Art can bear no children, as you knew, nor my renownless voice increase your note. Yet if in living minds your speech has stirred not only admiration, but regret for the root and matrix of your word, for the brave sun, so barbarously set, of a far town where books and humans lived and Solidarity was often sung, then might their flowering tree in fall revive, the harp of their existence be restrung, in that their memory makes the living just to one who speaks, not as she ought, but must.
I. In many tongues I have essayed to speak Of him who took all language to the grave, Who all the instruments of song did break, Since none had notes, with him his grief to grieve. Poesy died with him, yet must arise To sing his elegy, in his despite, Lest this last triumph have his enemies: To drown song's voice in silent endless night. Therefore now I, to whom his word has lent A life not mine, take up the dirge in this No more than any other tongue forespent To wrest him back from time's periphrasis: Him do I praise, of him do I complain, Who summoned me to summon him in vain.
II. This time, that tore so many things asunder and made earth quake beneath the tramp of hate, yet granted exiled love a single wonder, in chaos' parliament one delegate: one pupil of the earth, one troubadour, one gatherer of names, one skilled in all the mental paths that lead to the heart's core, one master of the silent searching call whereby mere words are cunningly aligned so that the reader sees more than they tell, one seer in the place where all are blind, one speaker of the binding rightful spell. That he might not have been -- O at that thought the world's last rose dissolves to ashy nought.
III. That he was here, can make no difference to those who died, their songs of love unsung, their high deeds unaccomplished, every sense tormented, and the mind by pain unstrung; no difference to the masses who exist exploited and suborned, bound hand and foot and ear and eye by falsehood, human grist for mills whose din renders the spirit mute; no difference to those who write of him to make their posts secure, and are not free to bear love faithful witness, but must trim and turn from one another and from me, to whom he made a difference; but I am less than nothing, in the wise world's eye.
IV. Now that my love has gone where lost men go and no one stands to witness he was mine by the true rite of song, the holy sign given from dream to dream, the unseen glow of candles lit on ocean floor below the deepest cast of any fisher's line, by the far face of earth, the stars' design which in his word's embrace I came to know; since all my tokens, in this world's assay, weigh light as spiderwebs, ring dull as lead: shall I begin my own words to unsay, undream the dream, and wish my soul unwed? Oh, no; this nothing that my troth is worth You could not purchase of me for the earth.
V. Yet I did not believe myself alone when first confounded by my own consent: I heard far voices answering in my own, felt distant hearts with my heart consonant. The name to which I answered was the name of all who hear and answer, all who live at sentience' center, everywhere the same, identity shorn of all adjective. I could not think but that we would convene by day, or in some chamber council-lit, and speak as friends of what this thing might mean and see whether our broken tokens fit to an earth-circling ring of hope made new. So much I really thought that love could do.
VI. As a lone mother looks into the face of her one child, I scan this grief of mine: my own resemblance I can clearly trace, the rest is diabolic or divine, the pledge of truth or mere delusion's fruit, depending on whose word for it is taken -- the outside world's, that judges by repute, or mine, who passion-blind might have mistaken that form glimpsed in the shaken candle-glare, but not by daylight, and in public never, those intimations no one overheard, the only contract an ambiguous word so formulated that the obtuse and clever can read, and find no mention of me there.
VII. Lacking the means to give love's will effect, to build a house for the understanding heart, and thus employ the busy intellect within the precinct of a sacred art, which seeks not to account for anything, but rather to use well all that is given, to find its best arrangement, furthering a motion that seems willing, and not driven; balked by the dead weight of indifference that greeted all I did or tried to do, I too have fallen into wondering whence came the pattern we are fettered to, hoping, I guess, to find some saving flaw in the vast grillwork of the Iron Law.
VIII. That we are cousin to our own machines, the macroscopic dramas of our days being staged and scripted by unwaking genes taught randomly to run survival's maze, brute impulse underlain by calculation that is not thought, that knows no I and You: of this our works afford scant refutation, nor can faith's vapor much obscure the view of a vast continental slope extending from high-thrust peak down to the shingled strand, with multifarious watercourses wending each its own way, yet wedded to one end; and probing my own motives, well I know I am not the one to say it is not so.
IX. I have not loved in ignorance. When the thought "I love" expanded with a fireball's glare in my stunned mind, that radiance also brought a knowledge pitiless as the seared air of how the damaged and the dispossessed whom nature has cast off, are often prone to the wish-fathered dream that names them blest in front of the selected, Nature's own. That this applied to me, and why, and how, was perfectly apparent; and likewise what hands upon his shoulder made him bow to seek in dust for that dishonored prize, "the love of the unloved"; that he and I were laid in twin beds of necessity.
X. So be it. To the automatons we were, artefacts of the spatiotemporal range centerless, that allows no Here and There, no Then and Now, to meet and interchange, it never chanced that in some placeless place where we were not, before we met we met, and saw each other face to unknown face, and gave each other signs, unguessed as yet, that shadowed my first years and led me blind through choices seemingly against my will to where I found what I was meant to find, though the answer seemed a riddle darker still: what purpose? and why this to you and me, if neither were you saved, nor I set free?
XI. Half-conscious, on some scholarly pretence I came, whom you so eerily had called, and you -- you froze me with a stranger's glance, then scattered hints I could not grasp for cold. And how should I presume upon the night, fearing I know not what the most: denial, or stale fulfillment, cancelling the might- have-been; truth's and reality's mistrial in some chance venue, neither here nor there, the senses' old short-circuit of the sense; or death itself, which, tired of metaphor, leaked through, corrosive, in your ambience? Constrained from thought, from motion, I perceived a small world sinking, not to be retrieved.
XII. Awareness came much later, that when I froze at your mute allusion to a name which I had borne so most unhappily, and could not find an answer to the same until that eye in which I had seen pain was closed, and I was left to speak alone, we two were acting out a certain scene that voice, with you as instrument, had drawn. So poetry had its will, although that will was self-defeat, suggested by the foe. The old bards rise to mock us, crying, "The skill is not to dream dreams only, but to know the dream-conducted shapes when they arrive by day, that both may speak their words, and live!"
XIII. Nameless are now the bards, their graves unknown, their chants, unwritten, vanished into air, into the keeping of the winds that hone themselves at eventide on the menhir, the obliterated signpost you saw loom into the dusk, once, when the sun had gone: it could not point a road back to the room where they convened to meditate as one upon the themes their universe propounded, speaking their words in turn, attuned to hear the note of wisdom whensoever it sounded -- the place where Liadan and Curithir were voices in the sacred counterpoint till the Dark Ages made our loves disjoint.
XIV. Where did I get all that? From Simone Weil, another paradoxic Jewish fate: My talk of you prompted someone to say that I would likely find her thought cognate. Her dual grasp of beauty and affliction, her bond with the oppressed, her need to find in act a poetry beyond all fiction, to trace on earth the pathways of the mind, all breathed the native air of a pays you too tried to reclaim from time and space: the Druids, viewed somewhat selectively, she thought might have inhabited that grace, and the Albigensians, from whose severed tree grew Kabbala and the great Comedy.
XV. When in mind's eye most often you appear, it is not the Quartier you led me through nor the large office, booklined, dark, austere, that gives your image background. Rather, you move on a narrow path aslant some field under an autumn sky of neutral gray, conning the plant lore in which you were skilled, pursuing in your mind an unmarked way through the world of names, where everything is present in absence and the lost await the word that builds them flesh, helps them over the threshold into our ken. Defiant of the absurd, you sought that word of love and power addressed to Comprehension, that holds all the rest.
XVI. As if earth had a mother, were indeed a household, where all things fell into place around the dwellers, ordered by their need and hallowed by the household's sacred peace, as if words too were heirlooms of that house, each witnessing the touch of generations: (you hold them in your turn and, speaking, rouse the kindred dead in vast associations); as if there were a mind, aware of all, whose will is peace, whose insight is a law we cannot frame, only attend its call, listening for its decrees in joyful awe -- so you spoke, so I heard, when we forgot, by some strange mercy, that these things are not.
XVII. This human faint desire toward harmony, love, beauty, and the intellectual good, seems a fair scion, only recently engrafted on the fratricidal wood and taken from a no less cruel stem, for ingenuity was born a foe, and this it was that lengthened out the time the engine of predation took to grow, the care it needed to become the dread of all the earth. The circle of that care was destined to be breached by the full-fed, although its vision shimmers in the air, breeding, by an ambivalent regret, follies, all kinds of lies, and cruelties darker yet.
XVIII. I understand and do not understand how what is not can yet exert a pull upon what is; can like a living hand strew a few gifts to waken and console. The locket with our two initials came before I knew that one of them was mine, before I had agreed to wear the name you gave your secret sharer. Thus design glints from the downward-plunging flux of things subject to time and to numeric fate, jerked round by lifeless power's puppet-strings, nameless. De-named. Rendered inanimate. The seas of vanished eyes. The voice that cried to me from matter itself, the year you died.
XIX. When I consider all that I have lost -- friends, progeny, repute and livelihood -- by yielding blindly to the spell you cast, it's in me then to wish I had withstood. But memory answers that before you came I felt much like a ghost, and so was seen; my lostness needed nothing but a name which you supplied, affixed a seal whose sheen illumined all that I could still hold dear: the poets' words; my mother's gifts, too long despised; the beauty others did not dare to cherish in themselves; earth's ravaged song: All this I held, my dear, with phantom you, to whom, therefore, only my thanks are due.
XX. Looking toward you as toward my second source and would-be mender of the fair earth's ring, yet I am checked in love; I see perforce you as co-author of our shattering. You built upon my silence, and you sought the praise of my ignorers; at their bidding you scarified your language and unwrought your Yea and Nay, in the end, by too much riddling. You served the text-vultures, the final guests of Poesy (though you abhorred them too), while I, "come from afar," was half a jest told to a last companion, one who knew your double heart even to the hour of death: She understood, she could not share my faith.
XXI. How could I blame her, since in you I have seen the horror at the dark heart of the world: a thought that linked you with the most obscene burst in my head, while round me four walls whirled, after that interview. Since then, to live perhaps the mechanic breath at most excuses, the craven body holds a fugitive, the mouth keeps eating what the soul refuses, and love is but a crown of self-deceit, plaited of pretty marguerites of evil, upon a death's head not quite clean as yet, at which the demon laughter well may revel. Nor have I ever truly thought the name you clothed me in, was proof against hell's flame.
XXII. Against my will I thought that hideous thought that did you wrong, and suffered pangs for this, and to this day I am not certain what was shown me in that glimpse of the abyss. Evil I saw; but was that evil new, your reaching for a share of evil power, or was it the old evil done to you, of which your pain was angel in that hour? Or was it my own evil that I saw, my envy, greed, resistance to compassion, my ruthless keen desire which, beyond law, strove toward you in a deathbound fascination? If I too chose your death -- to sear my eyes that knowledge might have flashed in such a guise.
XXIII. As on the lava-flow that hid Pompeii the sweet rains leaching fall, and airborne spores find crevices wherein to work decay, till the green host returns in all its force, waving red banners of oblivion, followed by grazing herds and husbandry, the cottage smokes beneath the smoldering cone and children caper in Abaddon's lee, so love upon the ruins of revelation replants the old illusions, vine by vine, brews from despair elixirs of elation, and soothes rough grief with measured anodyne; so we each sang of love when first released -- O not for long -- from the almighty fist.
XXIV. I am a place where something came to die without which earth is barren of the good. "You should not live" -- that message in each eye I read -- the ancient doom of widowhood. They should have burnt me quick and got it over: I am no good to them, nor they to me. Yet if I had one wish, my never-lover, I mootly still debate which it would be: the presence of that flesh from which the word came that drew from mine the answering cry, or the reunion of all souls that heard, that I might come into the company of those who speak of you as one who loved. From such a place the world might yet be moved.
XXV. It's common to describe oneself as "moved," but without any motion. Readers seem, by spiritual habit long-ingrooved, to lick the poem coldly, like ice-cream, savoring urgency as one more flavor, instead of rising to report for duty at some night-station. If I found it braver to let myself be mobilized by beauty, there's epilepsy on my mother's side, and this may be a falling-sickness too; I was weary of my life, I might have died, so that I jumped at some mad work to do, and the name called, and caught my vanity. Now therefore I go bound, while they are free.
XXVI. Transported by the dream of our embrace, I later woke and found myself alone, as usually occurs in such a case, by an untraveled road in an unknown land that seemed outside time, for all seemed ended that linked me to the march of humankind, yet in that wilderness I was befriended and led on labyrinthine paths of mind. I witnessed many versions of the tale which we had lived; on many a former page the cycle of encounter and betrayal was cyphered; I beheld the lineage of the Gestalt that I seemed meant to play, although I stumbled in it, being clay.
XXVII. There is a knowledge gathered in the cold of scientific equanimity, where things appear as artefacts controlled by laws that are set forth explicitly; and there's a knowledge only gained through love, a code that lights the sentient depths of things, their mutual inner bondedness, unproved save by the certainty that presence brings, imparted by such words as in the abyss of fevered night two lovers might exchange, without reserve breathed between kiss and kiss, in sheer oblivion of dawn and change, of separation and unending war -- the mind of love one instrument the more.
XXVIII. To live through others is a woman's gift -- so seldom are we granted our own lives; and now our liberators grudge us this -- "Live for yourself" I've heard a hundred times if I've heard once. But poetry as well means being, through the word, in many places: wherever the echo wakens, there I dwell, however circumstance may cinch the laces. And hearing you, I heard not you alone: I heard the voices you had heard, and in those voices were still others, known, unknown, as if borne on a wind from the origin to my assembling mind, which from the feel of what they said, one day beheld the real.
XXIX. There was never anything I could have done about what I saw happening, although I tried it; went to this one and that one and in the market made a kind of show. Always I spoke against the gradient by which your sapience had flowed to me, who thirsty to divine your least intent had fixed on you all senses constantly, and might not have so done, if not deprived of converse and esteem; that lack I needed, and at your sign to lose my place contrived, so that, you heeding, I should not be heeded, like the Dead Sea, to which all waters flow, but never thence, there being none below.
XXX. That water may be taught to flow uphill, the sun to rise out of the western ground; that lively ichors from cold stones distill, that our lost years may somewhere yet be found; that roses blossom at the arctic pole, that freshets purl across the desert path, the swift-sent arrow will not find the goal, nor the slow tortoise feel Achilles' wrath; that there may be two hills without a dale, that lions may be taught to draw the plow, that moth-wings make invulnerable mail, that war-ships founder on a drowned man's brow: all these false things true lovers must believe, for the world wears worse, when these illusions leave.
XXXI. I have a harsh and tenebrous desire which at its burning-point your image holds and dustily replies when I inquire what portion of dead falsehood it enfolds: what hankerings for my own and others' pain disguised as ruth; what envy, greed, dull lust -- enough to make it hard enough to scan my heart's anatomy without disgust. Yet you have sown another love in me that lets me see, unsmirched by all hell's smoke, somewhere a wise and gracious company and somewhere Her whose presence they invoke, and the tree that shelters such as you and I, met beyond sorrow and the evil eye.
XXXII. Because your love had found me in the cell where I had languished many years, I thought that presently another miracle would give me power to teach what you had taught. But with each year more formidably immured, like moated Marian, or some former earth in a black hole that has for eons lured light that cannot emerge to herald birth, so I live undelivered, although seen by many a one who did not care, nor dare, to run the gauntlet-walls that hemmed them in and breach, or merge, the circles of despair to find, even in this pit of dark disgrace, the only true and sure assembly-place.
XXXIII. I heard it said that on the seventh day, when tools of livelihood are laid aside, a light shines forth from the eternal Way that shows the world as deep as it is wide in space and time, for true minds to perceive. And this recalled the light or atmosphere of landscapes the receptive mind conceives wherever you were least oppressed by fear. Moreover it recalled how, reading you, I seemed to see you walking on a road that circled earth and time, plain to the view, though tongue could not tell all that vision showed. All fates bound up in one you showed me there, all minds convened, in one who walked aware.
XXXIV. When round me loud opinions deafly vie, each uttering not what the heart holds for true, but such phrase as may faintly justify whatever mischief they intend to do; when I hear folk, not speaking their own minds but tamely seconding a wether's bell that clanks somewhere ahead to lead the blind, though at whose bidding nobody can tell; when I attend to those whose trade is thought making a property of difference, cancelling what their predecessors taught, erecting barriers around good sense, methinks I know why truth cannot be found unless by those who seek it underground.
XXXV.
How many causes I have longed to plead in pity for earth's household goods misspent, for honest work discounted, honest need spurned, while the bough toward thriftless greed is bent; for kindly custom champed by trade's steel tooth, for hueless souls misprised in tinted mask, for laws that nurse iniquity, till truth shuns the dark sunlight where the cruel bask: All these within the ancient lute resound and knock to rouse the servant of the Muse, by whose deep grace some counsel might be found were not the art of counsel out of use. For all of these I would make argument, but the plea's hushed in my own banishment.
XXXVI.
I cannot be political, deny one half of truth until the other swell to a great simulacrum of a lie, then let the vacuum draw into that shell a horde of refugees from consciousness who leave for rhymeless act the post of thought and, not to know that they are powerless, perform on history's stage that which is not. Their acts turn counter to proclaimed intent by the momentum of the time and scene upon an axle compromise has bent before the automatic race began. I saw you see this, and heard you protest with words deep-spoken, as into your own breast.
XXXVII.
And yet I cannot say that you did right by taking refuge in obscurity, hiding your words from those in deepest plight. Listen: I have studied law since you went free, I have considered statute and contract whose tortuous if's reverse their stated aim, word-thickets where the simple mind is trapped, long arguments that balk brief honor's claim. Thus toward the nets your commentators spread you were led by your clinging to renown, until yourself supplied the sticky thread that now enshrouds you, known and yet unknown by those who prize your skill and slight your theme, even the deedless drones of academe.
XXXVIII.
In Berlin, on some day of that last spring -- if spring is ordered there as it is here -- when you might have seen orchards blossoming, they let me take your first book with a chair into the garden of the seminar. Those verses awkward as a bird's first flight, beats of a heart unused as yet to fear, those leaves still fresh beneath the touch of blight I read, and from the page most sorrow-torn glanced up to see white petals coming down --"as in that Japanese film," chimed with faint scorn the critic voice, accompanied by the sound of those late modern-tortured lines. I ask you now as then: did love set such a task?
XXXIX.
Love's work and time's who will sort out for me? Time plumps the bud and brings the autumn rain, while love delivers to captivity the souls it made with little thought of pain. Into a world whose murderous will was plain love sent you with the chrism of a kiss to be her own word-bearer and witness and build a sanctuary for her slain. But time's a powerful current, that can bend the will of anything that tries to ford it and bears our hopeful counsels toward an end which had we seen at first, we'd have abhorred it. Striving to influence a world that laughed, you grew ashamed of love, and cruel in craft.
XL.
Because I have seen love's first and final port in combat and in rank cupidity, of which the imagined good is but a sport, a sterile shoot on ill's too-fruitful tree, shall I contemn the moment of the rose, that scatterable In-One, that kingless crown which between sharp and bitter briefly shows, to waken song cold mockery must drown? I know the universe around is waste, void of the thought by which it is beheld, and will be nameless in that longest last when every thought-born image is dispelled. Yet shall reflection in itself be prized, although by all unmindfulness despised.
XLI.
It is the anniversary of that day when we two met upon the stair of time, of the redeeming word we did not say, but acted the pre-scripted pantomime, you, as man captive of his consequence, I, as woman bowed by man's disdain, I could not break your death-bound walking trance nor you unfasten my millennial chain. And many there were lost, who might have stayed and stood by me, if they could but have seen upon my shoulder your high accolade; and lost, with them, the rose that might have been. Wise, kind and beautiful they were; if you had owned me, they'd have strengthened and proved true.
XLII.
They tell me some Sephardic families, descendants of the Jews expelled from Spain, have for five hundred years preserved the keys to houses that they never can regain, whose stones perhaps were scattered long ago, the pathways to whose doors few might refind, yet still those wardless wards possession show of goods to time and violence unresigned. Even so I keep your word, though the domain of meaning and of act which it subtended is wrested nothingwards, with my true name and all of good and glad that it portended. Yet while I breathe that house of truth will stand, built whole and breachless, though upon no land.
XLIII.
Of Love and Death, those rival puppeteers, Death is by far the better businessman: Love's reasonings offend so many ears, while folk digest Death's gibes as best they can. Being too deep in dealings with the one, you were foreclosed upon; and I too late remembered to present the other's dun, which scarcely will be paid by your estate. But if I cast these sad accounts of law, it is because my words cannot convey the pulsing core of language that I saw, led out beyond the He and She and They to where the irradiated mind perceived worlds in the word begotten and conceived.
XLIV.
When first your page lay open to my sight I saw words scattered, images I sensed pushed, crushed apart by some tremendous might which still, striving to mean, they strained against. Then, among these dispersements wandering, I heard how each invoked the absent others, the sphere that they remembered, the great ring beneath whose circling shadow they were brothers. And last I came to where all words are joined into a single vast, articulate Name expanding from, contracting to a point, consumed and unconsumed in self-fed flame where turned a dual stair of thoughts combined: desire resolved, subsumed, in ashless mind.
XLV.
Suppose it true that I have been misled, I have the excuse that every faculty against more prudent reason was arranged: the sensual nerve, the ear and inner eye, the mind that longed to understand and build, even conscience, that desired to keep some faith and had assurance that this thing was willed where orders lay that antedated breath. How should I not believe so bright a source was pouring into other eyes than mine the anti-tear, the life-instilling force that seemed to flow against the clock's decline? How could I cherish what I stood to gain on the assumption that all this was vain?
XLVI.
Say that I tried to draw another's bow and missed the mark by a good universe; take as established that the error flowed from vanity, which makes us err the worst: no different from poor devils I have seen who cannot bear that they are powerless and so project on heaven's empty screen portents of recognition and redress. I have let go the good I might have done, much as the flattered crow let go the cheese which soon was snapped up by the crafty one -- thus do our passions serve our enemies -- and for my reachings have no more to show than the rede I would not grasp, long years ago.
XLVII.
One bade me speak more clearly, and again methought I understood the reason why you darkened counsel: not to speak of pain to those who will not understand a sigh; who do not, hearkening, themselves descend into the cellars where their bitterest wine awaits the sapient palate of a friend who'll know how it was brewed, beneath what sign; for whom your silence is no vacant space but echoes with the footfalls on the road by which you traveled to the meeting place: only in such a way are secrets told. For the rest, you may show the world your mind, but though the book lie open, most are blind.
XLVIII.
There is a world that cannot see the rose, only the mud, the bitten leaf, the worm which they ransack the petals to disclose: they see the flaws, they do not see the form. So they investigate your past, unseal the ear of confidence, the lip of spleen, uncovering what you labored to conceal, unmaking, thus, the carefully blank screen of pure unknowingness where you appear as Infinite Man, at last aware of all, armed, strengthened by the Intellectual Tear in love's resolve, which might redeem the fall, the man unborn, the man whom history slew, most mad and wise, most fabulous and true.
XLIX.
"Who speaks here?" I, your Mental Counterpart, the one whom you projected and beheld, the mirrored one, whom you with deepest art opposite you in equal likeness stelled; your follower in the wilderness of thought, the echo of your footsteps on the stone, the listener whom your secret servants brought, desired and undesired, known and unknown; a thing cast up from the abyss you stirred with wild appeal, a jug of tears you filled, an artefact of speech that will be heard, of word that will be fleshed, and that will build with hands you said were yours, for all to see. Few bards can boast such living poetry.
L.
I have raised high the roofbeam of a house that is not built of stone or brick or wood: whose floor is insight, rooftiles are true vows, the deep foundation is the love of good, of mutual acknowledgments the walls, discernment is the threshold of the door, that none may here give ear to counsel false, nor bear within the implements of war. Here hang the portraits, and here hangs the chart of faithful reading, plain as your lost hands, and all the undissevered mind and heart can murmur to the one that understands, from the court's inner well flows without pause to rectify the names, and mend the laws.
LI.
Within this nutshell of a form I live in the wide space of Wisdom's book unpaged, fixed to my place, and yet a fugitive, revolving in myself, yet unengaged with that which moves the world -- not love, I know --, ears stopped against the supersonic whine of processed words, the colloquies that show how folk sip up the poisoned anodyne of conscienceless distraction. Nevertheless it moves, the sphere we are plighted to, it grows that city in whose hall the bards assess the dream, and cut Time's emperor better clothes. Whatever work they set me to, I am free while I refuse to say this cannot be.
LII.
Last night, an hour before the sun went in, I thought while walking in a quiet park that I had come to years that have no twin on your sheared lifeline. Into double dark of my own age and of the age I go. But after thinking this, I raised my eyes to white clouds massed around white-yellow glow in semblance of the Rose of Paradise. Then a wide-browed, wide-mouthed young girl went past, caught me smiling, and with her own smile asked what I saw. I gestured toward the west, and, though she did not stay to hear a tale, held hope that she had gleaned some spark of light from there, from me and you, for her own night.
LIII.
Three roses did my true love give to me when he ordained me witness to the unseen, to wear upon my soul perpetually, to breathe, and with life's fluid to maintain. The first is red - the rose of love and war, of multitudes resolved to claim their right, of hearts conjoined by severance the more. The second is the pure and candid white of faithful souls that gather in the word, cling the good and so to one another in radiance manifold. Ah me, the third is the black rose wherein no one says "Brother," the rose of those brought in against their will to agony, and knowledge of all ill.
LIV.
At Lag b'Omer, in Jerusalem, a bonfire they had built up wide and tall drew me near, nearer, like a house of flame, till the heat stood against me like a wall I could not pass. A limit of my being gave notice, as when pain and fault and fear make plain the bounds without which I am nothing, the strict and shrinking smallness of my sphere. Afloat upon a northern marsh I saw white petals gleaming round a saffron heart, and comprehended in the selfsame awe all that would tear the ivory globe apart, which seemed to trust as strength, in form's strange pride, the fragile spell that cloaks the frail untried.
LV.
Some stirrings of a maker's pride I knew before it had been given me to guess (as if the figure glimpsed the hand that drew!) your shaping thought upon my consciousness. This bred in me a striving to stand forth as workmanship of yours, for piety shone its own pride, translumining self-worth, until a deepening vision showed to me myself in the shadow of that mother-mind which by song, tale and saying, instinct-led, impressed on me an image it divined in me, whom her hands clothed and combed and fed. You and I -- we were works of that same art which the world pulls so carelessly apart.
LVI.
Dear Chiron, not the ingenious word alone could make the withered bardic tree renew, although a word may to itself be true and sound (as Yeats said) in a place of stone: Retrieve man's troth from whither it has gone, give love safe-conduct in the public view, watch over the most generous, lest they rue the frank exposure of their mirth and moan. For verse is but a form within a form, a shining-forth of the invisible weft of our dealings and our sightedness. I've known seeds germinate in firestorm, but none that flourished long where no rain fell or grew more beautiful where love grew less.
LVII.
From seas of ill we praise the light of good, we love best what is gone beyond recall. The frame house in the hostile neighborhood endeared to me the matriarchal hall "a thousand miles away" -- the first refrain of a child among strangers. As for you, fate taught you to regret, if not regain, the nest from which so eagerly you flew toward the art-capital where never rang the name of that far town, so full of wit, of dreams, of kindred warmth for those who sang. That city fell; and then we heard of it, though never by its name, from one who fled, that it might be the city of all our dead.
LVIII.
In Berkeley, in a brief and generous hour when once again the rose of freedom blew -- granted, a tortuous bud-bitten flower, but still it was the best I ever knew -- I met with many poets, whom I heard and answered, and who answered me again, till almost we seemed caught up in one word, where each one's wingbeat drove the other's pen. There, from beyond the sea, I heard your voice, which as the burden of its solitude bore a remembrance of communal joys on which no brunt of history could intrude, whose essence seemed preserved perpetually in the word-swarm glad of its own company.
LIX.
Because my parents took a wise delight each in the other's mind; because my peers could not admire their work, but put a blight of persecution on my early years; because I had a Jewish look; because I had been reading Mandelstamm and Plath, because I met one Jew who'd left the laws but tried to lead us a Utopian path; because I loved a Danish lad who played Valerio, and muffed his lines, while I, the promptress, dreamed about him in the shade that hid me, while on him the lights were high, the riddle of my life before you came seemed answered in the riddle of your name.
LX.
I have seen you, friend, in many different lights, with many different senses apprehended, as flesh and blood, as soul and archetype, as light in which all I have seen were blended. I sensed you in the music of the Pole, in the aspects, enigmatically dear, of first friend, first love; in a dream's drum-roll, a verse of mine, its provenance unclear. Then, on the street, the small man, unprotected and inaccessible, the one who died; the ghost whose bidding drove me, half distracted, through tale and text to Zion's stony side; and still the fleeting beast that roams your line, born of the flicker of your nerves, and mine.
LXI.
As when a beam of infrared is trained upon an object, and a plate exposed, developed, and a photograph obtained on which a different image is disclosed from that we view by ordinary light, even so the landscape of my history, when viewed beneath your language's day-night, luminesced as a tale of mystery, where sequence could not hide the armature of correspondences, foreshadowings, a symbolism obvious and obscure propagating like ripples through all things, though at the Dark Tower's dread simplicity all quests appear to break, and glamors flee.
LXII.
Once I had dared to make your dream my own, I thought that others would make my dream theirs -- the levelling exchangeable pronoun, believing in itself, ignored the stairs of rank down which I fell precipitate. And yet, that year in Berkeley, when I spoke with good Tsippora, the Utopian's mate, I saw us characters of one great book vast in plot and rich in metaphor, as Dostoevsky deep, subtle as Proust, of which Tolstoy was but a miniature, from which no episode, no word is lost. Upon that book I see your mother's hand rest, in that photograph from Neverland.
LXIII.
In the most desolate places of the soul, where nothing lives but the wan ghost Despair, I found your word, as on a canyon wall crude petroglyphs, proclaiming you were there. Does somewhere now on earth some other wight review those lines upon their bed, and weep dry tears, and speculate upon the plight of someone else whom grief will not let sleep? Could there be ten? My distant comrades, may the kindness that exhaled those lines renew and give my words a chance to pick their way over the rubble of human trust to you. Here is my hand, dear comrade. If it finds yours, there is still employment for true minds.
LXIV.
I know the dream did not show you my face nor anything that could be mine alone: the name I answered to, a commonplace that rose, an inescapable silent groan from the infernal landscape of your seeing. And as for that image, woman or shade, was she an X-ray of my inner being, or just a role another might have played? I do not know. And glad enough I'd be if someone else would rise and say "I too." There can be little ground for jealousy In the abyss between non-I, non-You. Wherever you are, my Duplicate: rise, shine, and by your witness make my love more mine.
LXV.
There is a certain herb of ill repute which, smoked or eaten, leads the mind amaze, ties prudence in a sack, makes swift the foot of mind through far associative relays, estranges the familiar, lets you eye your doom, as if another were concerned in some done thing of ancient days gone by -- brings on, in short, the state that they call "stoned." You spoke of stone. I could not help but try, one day, the combination. Then the zone of outcast thoughts received me, who may die in exile, in the shade of things unknown; and yet it was the common home I found, a place not meant to be built underground.
LXVI.
With you I have gone down into the mine of dream and wisdom and most deep desire where transiently the miner's headlamp shines light into many an abyssal star. "These are the names," I seem to hear you say. "Yours from this wall with toil and pain I won." You handed me the hammer. I chipped away, but could not free another from the stone. With you I have gone out into the night and from a crossroads with the infinite ways looked back on the foundation of our sight and apple of the sightless cosmic gaze. You, being lighter, have escaped, while I must circle still, bound up with earth and sky.
LXVII.
Through the clear air the constant cricket shrills, the blue sky deepens into infinite, the hickory-nuts lie pale amid their hulls like knucklebones for play, or like the white stones let fall along the random way to your noplace. If true that every year our sphere attracts the dead for just one day, perhaps you drink with me this vintage air, observe that hint of bronze on yonder trees, assist my straying memory to gather old autumn-words of yours, whose frequencies carry well in the calm receptive weather -- So fair a day forbids me to believe that earth could lack you, or that you would leave.
LXVIII.
Many have worshipped idols, this I know, have given to effigies of man or woman the royal due of the untouted human, have fed daily affection's healthful glow to the foxfires of notoriety, have merged their seeing with the general, forsaking love's obscure discovery and the sole acre given them to till. And this, I know, against me will be said: you were not mine to tent, not mine to aid, and I have not lived well in following you. But never (it will be said in my defense) did vanity so put on excellence, was the obscure so famed, nor fame so true.
LXIX.
"Every poem is the anticomputer, even the one the computer writes." -- Paul Celan
My father has upgraded, at long last, his old computer. It was overdue; the one my brother finally brought him to is equal, I would say, to any task. The screen came up showing our Tellus Mater hung with programs like a Christmas tree. Two speakers let you listen to a CD while working. Brother, for a demonstrator, put on the Chopin nocturnes -- an odd choice, but he'll surprise you. The quality was clear; only, what could that ever-fading voice still betoken to us now and here? Was it a sign the electronic way's galactic turn will bring you back someday?
LXX.
Last night I got to play the tambourine at the "Rejoicing of the Law" - by all traditional accounts a curious scene. We sang the Hebrew songs we could recall, turning around the table with the scroll, men, women, children and Wichita the working dog. One youth did a good three-ball juggle. But one child touched the Torah thoughtfully and, as if she sensed my sight, slipped her hand into mine as we went round. Then out into the street, into a night of alien fall. The light of some stars found a way to us. We did what we could do. I thought of Mea Shearim; and of you.
LXXI.
When in the press of time I have forgot Thine influence; when thine idea seems No more to fulminate with dangerous gleams Over my mind with other matters fraught; When all the tumult which thy words once wrought Seems mere besottedness to reason's eye Which like the rising sun laughs to descry The wreck of revels it remembers not; When I high questions chase beneath its light, Hewing with pen a path through ways o'ergrown, Myself as well as thee forgotten quite, Then pause and read, and find the thought thine own -- Then it is proved again self cannot flee From self, nor I estrange myself from thee.
LXXII.
There is someone -- upon earth they stand, at the center which is everywhere, to other selves alerted, and aware of distant thoughts which, listened for, expand the single consciousness, till they have spanned a sky-wide tent, a space in which all share who are willing to admit that others are: These are sacred, these shall understand. And for receptors of meridian power we fashion crystal-sets: vessels of rhyme and ritual, custom and meeting-time, sifting the new, recasting what is old, shaping the senses and the heart to hold the promise that the tree will yet reflower.
1995
***
from A CHRONICLE OF SONNETS (June 1995-1996)
1.Homage to Millay
Those who cannot esteem your work, Millay, have forgotten what it is to breathe free air, to walk down the street with head held high, wear- ing your heart on your sleeve, and just warbling away. If any poet tried that on today, the editors would shoot them down like that. You've got to sidle through your lines, sing flat, cover your rump, and prominently display the badge of irony, the pledge that you have basically waived your right to mourn, to call the dead, to represent the unborn, and will not, by the gaffe of being true, create embarrassment among the sold. Yet still we come to you, Millay, when we feel cold.
*
2. Cassandra at the Ball
I am not one of you; that much is clear immediately; I am a kind of ghost, absent though present, an ambassador from nowhere, from a world counted well lost by you, so competent and in control, so never at a loss how to deflect appeals from any corner to the soul or to the all-too-consequent intellect. Our life is like a play which I alone have not rehearsed; a dance which I with clum- sy foot would spoil; a ritual with known questions, where the answers may not come; a screen of muted and unmeaning speech before the nameless void that waits for each.
*
3. In Defense of Archaism
It is our common language with the dead, whose hopes and fears, whose wonder and dismay are left, in words like consecrated bread, to strengthen us for what we have to say. It is our pledge, moreover, to the unborn that we will leave them something of the past, not cast them disinherited, forlorn, speechless, upon an earth we have laid waste. With novelty we are glutted, dazed, and blind, we see a thing and know not what it means, being to our own moment so confined we lack the sense that in time's recess gleams. Nor have the common people any say in faithless speech, that knows not yesterday.
*
4.
This is the hanged man's house. He owns it through his death. Each word you speak here has a string attached, and the string draws a cord, till you guessed it. You cannot touch anything without a squeak from somewhere further off -- say you are in the kitchen and you hear it in the upper bedroom or the loft, where sleep cannot be counted on, that's clear. Everything tastes of something else: the bread of cabbage, and the cabbage of sour cream; that lot of ominous small objects spread on the parlor table, is from some final dream; while from the windows, at all hours, one sees the sky alive, awrithe with galaxies.
*
5.
Let us be faithful in adversity, for steadfastness alone lifts us above these timebound structures whose foundations flee, the drift of crowds whom clouds of matter move. Two friends cannot have done with one another while to the eternal Spirit both are true, which in this world's called Love, and seeks to gather what strife and dull indifference thinly strew. Mistrust the voice that whispers we transcend by leaving friends behind! In every soul if deeply known, the highway without end bends on itself, encompassing the Whole, and those who keep their word while ever they can wear the true King's signet and talisman.
*
6.
None may be strong, none may be wise alone: The strong and wise in deed and rede rely on others' actions seconding their own, on others' word, which fitly they apply. The isolate mind may keep integrity while crowds and guilds prevaricate and err, but may, as well, lapse into fallacy unless with counseling friend it may confer. Nature has given us the eye of friend to see where our eyes blink or squint or dim, that we may know our road past where it bends and scan beyond our mere horizon's rim. Strongest are those whom their friends do not fail, wisest are those with whom friends may prevail.
* for J.M.
Let us keep one another from despairing though desperate matters in the world abound, build bright the thought of one another's caring to keep at bay the fierce eyes all around. Let's each be witness to the other's world: before the other's eyes let each unroll those maps of truth that lie in darkness furled when unperused by any kindred soul. Granted, we lack the power to turn the course of history, which tomorrow as today declines from bad to worse and worse and worse; yet, while we can, let's mock it in our play. Each moment of shared truth and shared delight sets a bright star against the faithless night.
*
7.
We gathered in a house beside the lake to think of how the varying faiths might find a common ground; but all the time we spoke of business matters, wearying to my mind. But just at the moment of the opening prayer over the lake a train of birds went by, passed with high many-voiced melodious cry like far enchanted huntsmen through the air of day's end in September. In my mind the cosmic songs of Kriyananda stirred, Hadassah too, Jerusalem's yogic bard, was present to my senses unconfined, and the thought of cosmic peace appeared to me like far sunlight on a cloud-covered sea.
*
8.
My thought has many curious knots untied, but one defies me still, and it is this: man's domineering, envious, cruel pride, maker of hells, and hater of all bliss, seems a material thing, born of the stress of war and generation, where control of others' will and strength confers success: hence the denial of my mind and soul. And of a similar inspiration seem those theories that declare universe dead, and the world-soul but a wishful dream. What lends such awful power to that curse that matter grovels and reveals its laws as if the Will to Power were its Cause?
*
9.
You spoke of truth, and gave that word a tone which like a tuning-fork's insistent ring gave us to know you meant not sooth alone, but constancy, which makes the word a thing, and faithful likeness to the hidden King whom generous and just all souls proclaim who, unsubdued by history's battering, still stand against the numbers with the Name. I will not say that I was wrong to trust that word, despite all this world has to teach of how each trader in the word must breach his word of honor, and convert to lust the fire that flashed forth between pole and pole of the true image asking to be whole.
*
10.
This time of year in the Jerusalem shuk you see a stall where chickens flapping, squawking add their cries to those of hawkers hawking, the noise of dealing, greeting and rebuke. The buyer takes a stand and says a prayer for human weakness and mortality, while someone snatches from the feathered sea a victim who'll be shechted then and there, having been whirled above the buyer's head who chants, "This chicken is my substitute, my stand-in, my replacement. This one's for swift death, while I shall live in peace." The poor get the carcass. You may say it's crude, but sometimes I've been in the chicken's stead.
*
11. The Stone Girl
Locked in infancy though fully grown, she cannot hear nor see nor walk nor stand, those who attend her strain to understand the gamut of her intermittent groan; at times it seems she lets herself be shown the careful sequences a teacher planned, but makes few purposed motions with her hand. Whatever she may know cannot be known.
Behind that shuttered face our minds avoid picturing the void. There must be some world there, one perhaps on which no star has shone, like earth once, swaddled in primordial cloud. But all we see is her, and that our care flows over her, like water over stone.
*
12. The First Line Is the Hardest
What's new? I work a day-job, and compose a sonnet every weekday. It is not that difficult. There is a kind of spot your have to let the mind find, a pause where the gravities can come to equipoise, a wide white silence, a minute black dot which any number of elephants of thought can balance on. From there on in it flows,
or at least the problem has been framed: mind's journeymen then make the pieces fit. And what's the good of all that? you may say. Call it something like a balance-sheet for soul's accounts. A pastime for the condemned. It keeps the little men in white away.
*
13.
A Blessing
There is one truth beyond all power to grasp, one vast reality beneath all dreams, one tree from which the carvers hew their masks, one welling fountain parcelled out in streams that run through history to separation, shaped by divides of destiny and choice, until each party hugs its variation more than it hearkens to the primal voice. But love is of the origin. Love finds the kindred spark beneath the alien shell. Love frees our souls from history, and binds true minds within an earth-embracing spell. So be, from the origin, this union blest, That in your love division may find rest.
*
14. Esau to Jacob and Esau despised his birthright
Let us face it: Highfather was mad and lucky. Twice. If Sojourner hadn't just stumbled on water, that first son he had would have converted quick to desert dust. Then No. 2 was It. He heard a voice -- God, of course, who else? -- ordering him to send old Laugher up as a sacrifice, and he could not deny God any whim. Then, lifting up the knife, he felt a qualm (poor Laugher, so defenseless -- a bit slow), and there, caught in the thicket, was this ram -- a miracle! So Laugher, as you know, was off the hook. But all his life, the old man 's run scared. Don't talk to him about the Plan.
*
15.
These golden days suspended in mid-fall favor the shelters we are bound to rear in keeping of our ancient festival, roofed open to the common roof we share with creatures that know only earth and air, rejoicing in a freedom which we call our own, while time and chance our shelters spare, braving the fact that we are vulnerable.
Thus at our ease, thus held and hazarded, we entertain the great demanding dead amid the fruits of labor and the earth. Shekhinah, may the spirit that's here housed and hearkened, through the wintertime stay roused to courage and to dark-defying mirth.
*
16.
This hut, three-sided like the letter Beit, roofed with palms and stars, full-charged inside with what is harvested, this spirit-crate that floated down to me on history's tide: with what frail confidence it seems to ride beside the armored concrete-anchored craft in which as children of this time we hide, although the hut may see them sink abaft and still bob lightly onward. Now this thought comforts my obsolete humanity, so overbulked by ingenuity it often feels itself a thing of naught. Form is the house of spirit. Till this shell ride hollow, here I live and here I dwell.
*
17.
So many doors opening on other doors, so many means between us and no-end, contacts contacting contacts through no-friend. Buttons burgeon; and is there one that restores the screen that is no screen, where what is ours is with us, and our substance is unspent or returns to us, and returning tissues the rent struck in us by the outlet of our powers?
As blood leaps to the wound, mind has gone forth into making that can make nothing dear to itself; that can rear only drear mirrorings of its might, cast to be cast off, set down only to be surpassed. Soul's bulb, abandoned, shrinks; what thing gets growth?
*
18. For Silence
O Silence, who art mother of the word, womb of wisdom, cradle of all creeds, temple of freedom: how shall we regird your precincts, breached so manywhere by greed's trespasses? Barrage after barrage of battering sound, wave after wave pounds in, seething with incitements as wave-wash seethes with foam. How shall we grow new skin over a wound struck fresh with every hour? The formless void at our lives' core, how shall it form a will, gather repellent power to turn the brunt of rage careless of all it may beget? Unless your very wound become our meeting-place, our standing-ground.
*
19.
As storm-wave chases storm-wave to the shore, so, in this time, outrage piles on outrage, making the throat of indignation sore, and actions overcrowd the civic stage till none is visible, and the people lose interest and hope: each turns away to seek their own advantage, those who still can choose, or else to bear alone what might may wreak. But if we grieve for this, and if each fears for the other's fate, there's something left to do; for mutual love holds on, it perseveres and builds the house of covenant anew, the house where each is heard in their own cause, and the true words add up to the just laws.
*
20.
Bar/Bat Mitzvah
Today you link yourself into the chain that stretches from Chaldean Ur to here, words spoken countless times you speak and hear, not knowing if the inheritance is gain. The scene has shifted since those words were set in stone. You can't and won't do all they say. It could become a bill you will not pay, an irritant, a not-quite-idle threat. But you don't have to take it so. Instead you hear your forebears' footsteps and their voices upon their road; you come to see the choices they faced, and what they made of what they had. They're company, as on your road you fare, and in some sense they know that you are there.
20. The Mortar
One must learn to serve G-d with the evil inclination too. The Talmud
You asked me how to build community, to strengthen mutual love and mutual aid, without constraining mental liberty and offering sacrifices to the shade of dominant cruelty that crushes joy, since the pure gold of love and truth appears to lack the strength, without some base alloy, to bear the load of human lusts and fears. To this I have no easy answer pat, save that I build with a particular pride in works whose mark is soul's integrity, and a community attuned to that must set its seal, if they are to abide. And strength is drawn from that necessity.
*
21. To a Fugitive from Injustice
No longer with the faithful is your place, no longer with the anxious ones who stand pressed close together at the mountain's base, waiting for words they will not understand yet rigidly will act, not too aware of those who fall beneath their juggernaut. The fearful are not merciful, cannot care for suffering that impeaches what is taught. But if yourself can hear, there is a way up the mountain, through the words, into the living silence that precedes all say, which man's misprision cannot make untrue: This is the road I wish you strength to go till you reach springs unstained by lip of foe.
*
23. Writer's Place
We do not come to read here in the pride of being chosen by those arbiters who on whatever basis may decide this person's poem is better, another's worse. We write because we must; we come to read because the heart must speak its mind, or break; and, recognizing one another's need, each with attention hears the other speak. It is a humble thing, a humble place, but greatest things spring from humility -- as the Tao says, the central empty space give the vessel its utility; and we may yet be, if we hold this dear, our city's heart and mind, its mouth and ear.
*
24. On Living in an Interesting Time
There's an uncanny feeling in the air, a vortex of events configuring fast: Something has broken loose that cannot spare, a dam we always counted on has burst, we may expect the flood. And how prepare, being bred to the pursuit of happiness, thinking there would be time and cash to spare, and someone always there to bear our stress? We shall not stand, unless we lay aside the thought it should be otherwise, and hark to the ancient inner voice that never lied in saying life is hard, the world is dark save only through awareness' steadfast eye that lets no moment, no word of truth pass by.
*
25.
None thought, in Israel, that a poet's word, born of insight and necessity, could stead the people in adversity, could help the people to be on their guard against false peace, against ill-chosen battle, and most of all against the internal hate that rises among sharers of one fate and is of all transgressions the most fatal.
A stranger, and a woman, and unwed, and poor: therefore my teaching was despised. But truth comes always in the stranger's guise. The miracle I asked for was not given, so here I lie, where like a leaf I'm driven, and weep dry tears, and shake with distant dread.
*
26.
The center of the city is not the Square, it is not on the map of any part. The city's center is a thinking heart. It is the promise that we will be there for one another, that each has a share that is not forfeited when troubles start. All civic courage and all civic art arise on the foundation of this care.
For where all are for one, each dares to be for all -- to do and say as conscience prods. But where each one serves mean and separate gods, where selfishness is sole security, there freedom flags, creative vision dies, and the city falls, whatever buildings rise.
*
27.
libbi bemizrach
My soul is far away, and yet is here. Driving through these streets without a name, still I am walking in Jerusalem, so that I think my spirit must appear to those unsevered from its atmosphere which pours through me into the present frame, into vessels which the alien flame shatters, then fuses to a wall of fear.
But there, as here, the powers of exile reign, as they must know who saw me floating back like a stained shivered spar that tells of wreck, and secret grief embitters their disdain. So wreck reflects in wreck, as whole in whole, had either place the strength to claim its soul.
*
28.
Shekhina, if in this dark world you still have any power to move the strong and weak, to touch the heart's hard places, and instill the willingness to hear when sorrow speaks, to see with loving eyes another's gift, to enter into one another's thought, I pray you now, move something for me, lift the barrier that before me I see shut. If ever I have hearkened to the wise, if ever I have owned to others' truth, if I have given attention to the cries of the oppressed, then let me too find ruth, and give us faith that we can meet your task, can do with understanding what you ask.
*
29.
I am replete, although unsatisfied, Surrounded by companions, yet alone, Sconced in tranquility, though terrified, My temple stands intact, although oe’rthrown. I have the boon for which I vainly plead, Uprooted, I am yet on certain ground, Joined indivisibly to what I need, Although its absence every sense confound. In my friend's house I slept and dreamed of foes, I have beguiled eternity with tears, With tournaments have varied the repose Of the unsleeping soul that knows not years, Till peace became a dream within a dream, Seem turned to sooth, and sooth to falsest seem.
*
30.
Some gather Israel's title to this land From words by the author of the world enscrolled; These things my reason would not understand, Nor credit more than any tale that's told, Save that I do revere the destiny Of pilgrims once again upon this coast Cast up by pounding waves of history And drawn, too, by the longing they held fast Through centuries of exile, when they stored All good that they could dream in Zion's walls: A world that now could deem that vision false Must be to evil and despair inured. O stranger, if to you the earth is dear, Then seek to guard her walls, and make her title clear.
*
31.
I have heard "peace," but in this world we see That words do not mean always what they show. Those who press Israel relentlessly, I fear, mean by it what some dare not know Who speak it after them. I see a creed Whose thirst for power concessions cannot still; I see the world's material need and greed Making the nations subject to that will. Shall it be proved that there is might alone, Material might, that hears no victim's cry? Soon, soon upon earth's tablets will be shown If there are stars of mercy in our sky. O G-d! bid your wise justice rise and trace Limits to force; preserve the human place.
*
32.
I gaze abroad where Israel mourns and fears And walks toward peace, and waits for the next blow, And light the candles of this feast to show The ancient miracle, though none appears To succor us in endless war that wears The people down, till they no longer know Their way, and take each other for the foe, And stumble into openly-laid snares.
Yet none can live against the whole world's will. May Understanding's angel then arise, Spread forth her wings, enlighten others' eyes To see their need of us, and lend us skill To show the world, upon Jerusalem's hill, Its own heart, and the home of all the wise.
*
33.
There never will be peace for Israel While others make divisions in the Name, Begin with us the tale they have to tell, Yet seek to overwrite our prior claim. We must be bad, to justify the breach They made between the teacher and the taught; To prove the news and truth of what they teach, Flaws in the former teaching must be sought, The ancient word not suffered to contain Its own futurity, nor gather in The fruits of its own sowing. Though we mute Rebuke, the conscience of an unconfessed Fault will not let the unrepentant rest, And our misfortunes blossom from that root.
*
34.
My trouble is, I am too much aware. I see the whole implied in every part, I see the far embedded in the near, Each masking face lifts up to show the heart in which I see, alas, the worm engalled, or changes to a dial on which I read eternity and time, or a threshold to some forbidden room where victims bleed. I had a friend once who confessed to me she'd seen all the Greek tragedies enacted around her, till she made herself not see. Then I began to see, and she reacted by fleeing. I was warned, and am served right; only, I lack the skill to turn from sight.
*
35.
For ignorance, my G-d, I cannot pray: I never have observed that is its bliss; Too many have made me and others pay The toll of truths they were resolved to miss. Ignorance is not happiness, but pain; It is not victory, but fleeing fear; Surely whoever severs soul from brain Drives exile's wedge into the highest sphere. I pray instead for greater light to see More of your grace, beyond where griefs contend, To bear inaction with serenity And only act, and only speak, to mend: O take this little wisp that veils my sight, That in the moment I may see to do aright.
*
36.
The world reflects itself in every soul, A far disturbance agitates the near, Within the body of the cosmic whole Past, future and remote are now and here. So those who live at ease are prey to fear, The quiet feel the stirrings of a rage That racks the antipodes; a distant tear Can leach the heart of happiness away. Yet if there's no retreat from the world's fray, There's no one without power to repair: Some portion of the world's good, every day, Is mine to aid or hinder, slay or spare; The orb of empire and the healing wand While conscience keeps its seat, are in your hand.
*
37.
If it were possible to summon aid from others, I would do it in a flash: So many appear competent and staid Whereas I am driven, shaken, gauche. But the result has proved, time and again, That these do not own all the strength they show, But hold it from the corporate sovereign Which quickly can recall all that they owe At the first sign of alien loyalty. To stand upon a freely-chosen ground Is given to few; and how my liberty Is founded, and to what conditions bound I know. So my apportioned strength is all, unless G-d aid, where with to stand or fall.
*
38. Skara Brae
There is a city hollowed in the stone of a north coast muffled in turf and tundra, like the inner ear within the temporal bone, the haunt of gulls and folk who come to wonder, to stand for a few hours on the verge listening to the gulls' unvarying keen that is not about them, and to the surge of waves that likewise have not changed their tune, and to the stanchless murmur of lost years caught in this ruined shell which they explore, visiting where they slept and laid their fires, surmising what they ate and what they wore and what they dreamt perhaps: not that someday their storm-blown kin would wander back this way.
*
39.
In my mind's eye I saw a perfect sphere That seemed all made of love and pure delight Over which as I watched, a loathsome blight Appeared to spread with color sick and drear. Then over the horizon, in sun's stead, Arose the frowning face of domination, Whose shadow touched pity, and it fell dead, While hope and wisdom fled in consternation. Yet brighter in that shadow showed the gleam Of truth and loyal memory, scarcely guessed By those who in the first unbroken dream Remained unknowing and forever blest. A little good may from great evil grow; To cherish this, the only balm we know.
*
40.
The ego of the artist -- vey is mir! You've got to take my offerings with delight, You've got to make like I'm the new Shakespeare, Or I will pout, and spoil your peace for spite. If that were all, I could at last subside, Merge happily and nameless in the whole, But there's this pressure from the Great Outside Which through the aperture of my small soul Is trying to burst forth into your midst. That's why I suffer and make such a fuss, And why you probably wish yourselves rid Of me at times. But with more time, and trust, I know you'll make a place within your shrine Where I with useful light may burn and shine.
41.
You speak of hedges, boundaries; but to me The threshold of the Law is everywhere; G-d's tuning-fork rings on perpetually And tingles in each molecule of air. Vast as the starry sky is the domain Of Understanding, yet within our grasp, Deep as an ocean which no reef contains, Yet sensible and near as friend's handclasp. Whatever we build to fence it out is fated To shatter, and let battering waves roll in; Or if it were to hold, we would be mated To absence, to soul's darkness and famine. Yet vessels to our measure we may build, Which with the infinite bounty shall be filled.
42.
I spoke of joy to you inclined to mourn, Though I have seen enough in my few days To make me wish the universe unborn, Yet know myself the more obliged to praise The crumbs of light still scattered on my path Which only I, perhaps, can see and raise. I tell you this, although Celan and Plath, who taught me much, forgot it in the end; for they impaired, when they succumbed to wrath, that hope which he (at least) had hoped to mend. The saddest is, that in their darkward flight I think they yielded to an ill-set trend that cruelly spurns the sweetness and the light true poets make, in bitter dark's despite.
43.
Poet, who looking on the world deplore its broken promises, its cruelty, I pray you look into your heart, explore your own temptation and complicity. Fame is the poet's mastering desire -- I know it well -- and those who keep the gate of publication hold a dreadful power over our souls; and power tempts to hate the candid gestures of the heart, the unstinted notes of song where spirit's freedom rings. Beware of the compulsion to be printed! Let it not turn you from the healing springs, lest you dry up your soul, and get for pay a name the desert wind will blow away.
44.
These wisps of mind, unbodied and desouled, Each with its inorganic dialect, Shards of the golden bowl of Intellect, From which the wine of spirit has been spilled: With these familiars of the sorcerer Whose mission is to baffle honesty And lengthen out the road from me to thee, I too must in my weary hours confer. In these I see our image drawn awry, full of caprices useful to the shrewd, and sinister reflections now intrude on thoughts of me and thee. I see us try to hack the human network with a word, which heaven and hell agree is most absurd.
*
45.
You said I had a message on my screen, But when I found it, it was most obscure With letter-combinations seldom seen In English, quite perplexing to this viewer. A helpful note explained it was encoded And I should use the program so-and-so To extricate your message and download it Into my gray cells. I did try it, though With little hope, knowing the gremlins' wiles, And sure enough, it didn't work. I tried the Help line, sat on Hold for quite a while, and hung it up. Now, swallowing my pride, I ask you for your poems by surface mail, which is not slowed by rain or sleet or hail.
*
46.
What principles should guide our little crew We had debated long, with little fruit, When someone finally handed round a few Maxims from the tractate called Avot. I do not know what liquor was distilled In those few words that made our minds ignite, Or how those words of ancient date were filled With our experience. Understanding's light Came out as from behind the centuries' cloud To show us, each one learned in their way, Companions of the sages on the road From Ur back then to where we are today, Dispersed and half dismayed -- and yet re-joined Where spirit's flame fuses with fire of mind.
*
47.
What incense shall I burn to celebrate Your birthday, Emily? What presents bring To you, the poet who has everything, Whose treasuries are vaster than the state, Whose islanded, in-landed mind was yet The roadstead of all seas, who wore the ring Circumference; whose fingers idly string Gems of all kinds, from dew to anthracite?
As to this form, or any ampler one, They are like robes you owned but never wore, Preferring the ingenuous pinafore With rolled-up sleeves while working to prepare The bread of solitude. I have seen you stare, With Dante, like an eagle at the sun.
*
48.
So many wires leading to every quarter, So many calls tempting me out to try From my allotted thimble to supply Infinite wants; and then at every border, at every gate, a sentinel or porter who has not heard that he must let me by, and at the goal, often as not, the dry smirk of a clerk who never placed the order.
So are my strength, substance and soul dispersed In outward flow, which I must wish reversed, For gifts are multipled through friends alone. May I at least find wisdom to stand firm, accept the limits set me as a form Which yet may speak of all that is undone.
*
49.
Wuthering Heights Revisited Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse Dante, Inferno, Canto V
This book, which to my young heart prophesied Love beyond death, passion exempt from law, Gaped like a window suddenly flung wide Upon Egyptian dark and arctic squall -- With what emotional adventurelust, Fighting for breath in some low-ceilinged room, My soul rose up to welcome in the blast, Then through the world went sniffing for its doom. I opened it again the other day: Teutonic sulphur made my nostrils flare, Gestating rock-bands made my stomach churn. If my ghost could address you, Emily, Where you stand in your room before the fire, Holding these leaves, it might well counsel: "Burn."
*
50. The Impatient One
I see myself again, a spirit pent By unbelief in the sublunar sphere; Of all the messages of comfort sent, None had yet penetrated to my ear. I looked around -- and saw a prison-yard; I looked above -- and saw an iron sky; I looked below -- the gates of horn were barred; I looked within -- the spirit-well seemed dry. Reason but served to reinforce the walls That rose before my sight insuperably; Too faint a signal seemed one inmost pulse Of unaccountable serenity. So passion's courier found me up and dressed -- Hell could not keep me from the circular quest.
*
51. The Lady of Certain Sonnets Puts In a Word
Times when you held before you my sole face As if it were the mystery of Creation, Followed with avid eyes my daily pace As if it led you toward some revelation, Not knowing, of myself, what it might be -- What was my care? The ordering of a room, The smoothing of a gown, this stitchery Of tiny flowers on the taut round frame; To know when I must bow, before whom bend; When to speak or, oftenest, to be still; To carry, like a wine that must not spill, Glances like yours; to bear for hours on end My part in pageantry till told to go, As vacant as the moon that moved you so.
*
53.
Slow as the dawn in shortest winter days When nature's show of kindness is withdrawn Behind an orb shuttered in icy glaze; When the wind tutors us how we are thrown On our own wits, or upon charity, And many learn, alas! how both can fail; When all the summer music of the tree Has shrunk to branches scraping in the gale; So slowly rises courage for the song, So small the cruse to which the wick is set, So scant seems our provision for the long Nights of dark that lie before us yet: Nevertheless we light the wick, we sing For light, for hope, for breath to last till spring.
*
54.
Dear fellow-bard, I do invite you in to share the comforts that I find in rhymes fitly mortised, in this pulse that mimes the breath and heartbeat, hastened or held in as passion or slow contemplation win predominance; to hear the endless chimes that can be rung among thought's paradigms, which do not mean to stun you with their din
but rather to strike chords in you, and wake whether a harmony or counterpoint but let it be a song. The one mistake is not to see we are voices in a joint composition, where each has a stake wide as earth and sky. Envy, aroint!
*
55.
At the exhibit on Tibetan art two monks were drawing mandalas in sand, chanting and strewing colors with a hand guided by sound-vibrations from the heart. Awed visitors observed each pattern start and shimmer into being, till the unplanned irruption of a wild-eyed one who fanned with one sweep of a sleeve the work apart.
Guards charged in, hauled the woman away. Curators hurried up in consternation. The monks just smiled and brushed the table clean, took more colored sands, began again, the work of art being just a manifestation of energies eternally at play.
*
56.
I heard of non-attachment, and the thing was hard for me. It is not that I've missed how we are dust, how acquisition's fist dashes the shimmer from the captive wing and that we dare not fail to take the sting of loss to lift us up beyond the lists of time-bound expectation to the tryst with what time cannot take away nor bring.
Yet there are bonds that may not be denied, bonds of honor and affinity, of word and flesh, of need that sets none free: from these the cradle of the soul is made. The heart that dares not grieve where these are riven is like a withered leaf, by dark winds driven.
*
57.
This time of year the veils of almond cling to stony slopes around Jerusalem like a mist risen from a hillside spring, tinged with the dawn; also the cyclamen sets out its pale down-gazing companies; asphodel, like a longing of the dead for fleshly clothing, hoists ephemeral trees; anemone utters its note of red. Like the infrequent speech of those who know more than they have the strength or wish to say, beneath the clouded sky this spare and slow showing-forth occurs. From far away I still perceive them, with some inner sense untouched by all our lilacs' eloquence.
*
58.
I heard today that on another star There may be flowing water, and hence life, Creatures that are, whatever else they are, The children of attraction and of strife. Of these the dance of reproduction's plaited, Which then to nurture and predation parts, And everything that comes of this is fated To climb, by slow refinement of these arts, To an awareness that can comprehend The self, with its surroundings and its cause, Its actions and their consequential end, Which it may study to amend by laws And precepts, and so find itself at odds With the ingrained patterns, the ancient gods.
*
59.
Yet love was first; for in the sunlit sea Where first the replicating chain entwined No rivals fought, nor mate sought mastery, Nor nations raged. Sheer happenstance combined Affinities that, meeting everywhere, Glided into a swift and strainless clasp, Till partners in the mated seas grew rare -- Then something started up to seek and grasp. And love would be the last: the single eye Trained upon the warring crowds of earth, The simple wish the world might live, not die, Which to one holy being would give birth: Circle of thought where war must turn on war And, scorpion-like, of its own sting expire.
*
60. The House of Wisdom
There is a mansion, somewhere in our city, That's destined to be emptied and receive As sacred trust in perpetuity The testaments experience may leave: The poem and the journal and the tale, The essay and the sermon and the song, True records of our city, though they fail To please an editor or draw a throng. Here are the shelves, the binders, and the wide Table in the center of each room, At which the wisest often sit and read And ponder what is past and what must come; And here, too, they convene to speak their minds As leaves in one great book which true love binds.
*
61.
I saw a plain with many houses built Each on its plot of territorial ground, The whole unpatterned, like a crazy quilt, And yet within each little patch I found Things organized upon a similar scheme. "I am the sole creator" were the words Etched upon every lintel, for a theme, And, like so many beetles on their turds, The maker's statue crowned each little dome. I thought, despairing, what they might have made Had they brought tribute to a common home, How graceful or how merry or how staid Each statue might have seemed, if given to grace A portal, or some soaring pillar's base.
*
62.
What does the human leave? A form of matter Which will dissolve like any excrement, A safe-deposit box, a testament Assigning goods for other hands to scatter; Furniture, clothes, which other forms will tatter, Keepsakes, to which a little sentiment Clings, until the ones to whom these meant Something, must face the glass that does not flatter.
Yet deep within the wrappings, at the core Of every life, there's some essential lore, Some legacy of yearning and concern. Plow up the graveyards, empty every urn, But build a house to which all may entrust Whatever thoughts they wish to keep from dust.
*
63.
I saw a building-site in the unknown With lines of workers toiling from afar To lay on the foundation each her stone -- The whole resembled an enormous star. And when I questioned one of them, she said, "This is the temple of our common pain, The house of common memory of our dead, And of the loves that we have loved in vain." The structure still lay open to the weather, But every hour the walls were rising higher, And I would see it roofed and them together Inside, could hear the singing of their choir, Singing of fair things broken and made new. That's where I'm going with this stone: you, too?
*
64. To a Fellow-Poet
As after midnight's muteness the first birds call to one another and seem to make the space between them, even so the words within a poem call each other, wake each other to a life before unknown. And should there be an end to this, a stop, at the poem's edge a boundary- or gravestone? Should we put love in quarantine, and lop, before they touch, association's trees? I hope not so; but in a pleasant shade woven of all our words to walk at ease, delighting each in what the other said, would be the highest art and truest praise of God whose life quickens each leaf, each phrase.
*
65. A Valentine for My Parents
If once a year the praises that I spend On what this world contains of fair and true Can interrupt their outward flow, and bend Back to their origin, then shall you two, Well-born and of the world's nobility, Obtain, not all your due, but some small part, Who gave me life and give it constantly Not only to myself, but to my art. If I have learned to move within a form And gracefully to wear its lightsome bond, I learned this from the way you served the norm Ungrudgingly, and faithfully were fond: Through you the thought that love and law are one Unbroken beams from the eternal sun.
*
66.
If anyone still hopes to save the planet, he Should think of calling on the secretaries. It's true their job does not conduce to vanity: Their schedule is routine and seldom varies; They do what other people tell them to; They seldom get much credit, never fame. On the other hand, if something goes askew, They're frequently the ones who take the blame. The pay won't buy a mansion. Nevertheless, They are the ones who know where things are. They are the experts at defusing stress, At finding hidden channels round each bar. Just tell them "Save this world" and go away. They'll get it done, tomorrow if not today.
*
67.
Within a narrow space upon the range Of heat and cold, we live and have our being Within parameters where any change Can send the breath out of our bodies feeling. We must have air, water, and fruits of earth, We must have clothing on our naked hide, And we depend, also, upon the dearth Of poison, which in nourishment can hide. Dream not that truth is found at the extremes: Is the soap-bubble's truth the empty air, The water-spot? Oh no, it is what seems Briefly: the globe, the bow reflected there. Then do not ask what time's disaster brings. Try not, but seek the peace of fragile things.
*
68.
When winter has outworn its cloak of snow, When cold and dark have nothing more to say, When over all the moping clouds hang low As if without the strength to move away, When rustily the last year's oak leaves cling Fast to the boughs like a notice of intent To hold on to the premises, let spring Go looking elsewhere for a tenement; When crows insist that things will stay the same, When hope stares dully at an empty bin, When winter clothes hang heavy on your frame, When influenza calls and finds you in, When time stands still as stone in cemetery, Then it is, was, and will be February.
*
69.
The world's repair begins within the soul, Child of G-d-mind and root of the good nation: It is the way, the hindrance and the goal, Sole conduit for the powers of Creation. Will, Intuition, Insight, Love, Restraint, Proportion, Steadfastness, Acknowledgment: Such is the stairway which the sages paint Between the world-stage and the firmament. For each to know the role that he must play And recognize the Other in her part, Obscuring husks have to be cleared away With loving patience and exacting art. Then thoughts and hands may joint to plan and raise The house of human hope, the altar of G-d's praise.
*
70.
The only antidote to corporations Would be the union of the just and wise Who by the spirit's tokens recognize Each other, and perceive their true relations, And then by unreserved communications Could map the situation as it lies And with combined intelligence devise A plan for its repair, with time and patience.
If there's a common truth within the soul, Some root-link to a Mother-mind that sees All of our separate realities As fragments of a once and future whole, May we be given the power to return, Each through the one low door their pride would spurn.
*
71.
Those who longed for peace are now at war. Now from the treacherous mouth let Peace reclaim Her holy and unsulliable name And in Truth's prison make herself secure. Let the rich hear the teaching of the poor, The uninvited not be put to shame, Nor the violated made to share the blame, Nor the violent made excuses for.
Forgive those who do evil? First, forgive Those who by word or deed have chidden you, Be careful not to reinforce the wrong That's in your reach; help what is good to live. So shall Peace gather in her brood, renew Her lovely wings, to rise more whole and strong.
*
72.
This is the feast of an annihilation Annulled by an improbability: The first, an old acquaintance of our nation, The second, still invisible to see Though somehow to this date we have endured, Endangered and corrupted and dispersed, To the decline of our best powers inured and in our hope's perversion sadly versed. Yet with defiant gaiety today We make our harsh predicament unreal, Burlesquing risk into the mild risque, In fuddlement confounding good and ill -- The reckoning that proves we are forsaken May, after all, turn out to be mistaken.
*
73.
Like jostling into someone who is blind Or walking underneath a cable-tower, I have stood next to somebody whose mind Was bare of every sense but that of power. I realized she only saw to see Whom to flatter, whom to disregard: The pikes of her attention constantly Were by the speaker's status raised and barred. For such in vain the blackbird's song is sweet, The evening breeze is cool, the sunset red: Sages and saints might pass her on the street: She seemed like those, to all delights unbred, Who ever again, like hounds upon a scent, Are through this world to its undoing sent.
*
74.
Four ladies in their 1940 dresses Shoulder to shoulder face the camera lens, Sturdy-slender, sweet strong-featured faces, Variants on a face you almost sense In the hedge behind them: Mom, Aunt Maude, Aunt Claire, Aunt Effie, all young wives or brides-to-be That summer. Only Nazleh isn't there, The one they seldom spoke of. Epilepsy, Then madness, had withdrawn her from the day. A second photo shows a similar row In the same sunlight that came out so grey: Dad with uncles Alex, Ted and Joe Seeming bemused to find themselves as brothers -- Sisters' men, each quite unlike the others.
* 75. “Peace” Talks
Perhaps it is a bitter kind of joke: The relatives convening to persuade The bride, who has just had a little shock. It seems her loving bridegroom has displayed Something very like a pair of horns, And something very like a tail flicked out. We're not considering a change of plans -- To soothe the jangled nerves and quiet doubt Is now our aim. The groom could use some tips On grooming, and his posture could be straighter. These measures will not help her when he strips, But that's a problem to be dealt with later, When the time comes. The bridal chamber's ready, We'll see that she walks in there calm and steady.
*
76.
In their fur coats the catkins trust the air. Geese honk in the sunset, wheeling west Toward the gold-course ponds where now they rest. The last snow seeps away, leaving lawns bare. The cardinals greet each morning with a cheer, The purple finch and redwing blackbird test Warble and whistle, and there goes a nest- building crow, with a straw. More crows next year.
Robin and mourning-dove have yet to arrive. You always worry how much has survived In these springs of diminishing returns. But see, again, that redness at sundown On budding trees. This is why we hang around, Pay our bills, fill out our tax returns.
*
77.
How it may be with you, I do not know, But in the mirror I can seldom see Myself alone. I see an endless flow Of thoughts and traits, assembling randomly Like strangers at a bus-stop, who elsewhere Are met again in other combinations: Whatever color and curl of eyes and hair, The love of words and patterns and the impatience That would not let me teach, are all on loan, Are grave-goods furbished up for one more use; And when I speak I catch, as overtone, The echo of some long-estranged friend's voice, Who left some gesture, stock phrase, trick of seeing Behind in the apartment of my being.
*
78. The Call
My cousin and I were standing on the lawn Of the Ridgewood house, soon after to be sold; Our ages averaged twelve. She was going on About her mother's life. Just what she told I don't recall, only that it conveyed The feeling of some promise come to naught To me. That's when I felt like a hand laid On my shoulder, and my deep sense caught The murmur of an inarticulate will, The dead and the unlived of all our line, Insinuating I must find the skill To give all this a meaning and design. My aunt, since then, has lived content enough, My cousin's a judge, and no one reads my stuff.
*
79. On Reading Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s Marcella
The heavy folds of somewhat purple prose Draw back upon a richly-furnished scene, Preraphaelite in style; the heroine Strikes and maintains a thoughtful, regal pose, Twirling an autumn crocus or a rose. From somewhere off the stage alight streams in Like late low sun, lending a Titian sheen To the loose dark hair, the austerely flowing clothes.
They speak. An intricate dialogue unwinds Depth upon depth of curtained subtlety. Experience with aspiration twines. Upon one wall a painting shows the free Vista of a world that came to be Through the partnership of men's and women's minds.
*
80.
The lover speaks of pain; but dare he guess How toward the mirror of the lover's eye Yearns beauty from each feature of the face That takes him in and teaches him to lie? The humble awkward flesh here features forth Its inflorescence and apology, Tendering it as a ware of rarest worth, A line of verse that calls for homily, The tablet of an unexpounded law, A labyrinthine world, once only seen, Which unupheld by the beholder's awe Dissolves in nothing, never having been. Call love not vain although it pass away: Beauty unpraised, the world is chaos' prey.
*
81.
Experience teaches wisdom, we are told, Though wisdom generally comes too late To caution history or mend the fate Of the slow pupils in that course enrolled. It offers them a vision of the gold, Well out of reach, which cannot be pyrite Like what they snatched at just the other night; It shows them how the iron, long since cold,
Should have been shaped. What good is it at all? A consolation prize, we'd barely call This pearl which has (alas) no resale price. Those who have purchased it are qualified To watch, as play continues, from the side, Knitting regrets and offering good advice.
*
82.
Let no one think they understand King Lear Till they have stood, or watched someone they love Stand at the borders of his age and stare Into the realms they own no portion of, That stretch with infinite extent away, Address the eye in future's foreign tongue, While far behind, like mists that melt away, Dim the lands once measured by a young Stride that never heard of bourne or "Halt, Who goes there?", or a domain curtailed And yet again curtailed, and the insult To be brooked, since strength to wreak has failed -- Truth, banned, unbearable, returns. The sky Is cracking -- no, it is the heart, the eye.
*
83.
Before you claimed me, I had often felt That I was half of something still unseen, Ignorant how its true name should be spelt, Or what this trait or that in me might mean. Though not unformed, I was yet undefined, An arc uncertain where its center lay, Till you, appearing, made me know my mind, Sorted my twilight into night and day. Yet never shone your disc so bright above That I could not uplift my face to see Who you were, what you were fashioned of, And how, dismayed at times, you looked to me To justify your ways and make you whole, Which neither is, unless in the One Soul.
*
84.
Fame may have been an honest thing enough When it was just the people's self-report, When of its own fashion and self-spun stuff Were those it singled from the common sort. Then one was known for counsel, one for might, One for sweet song, one for a lovely face, Dispensing virtues, as the sun its light, To the inhabitants of their time and place. But now -- a reigning unreality Has caught these up to bear its empty news, Clothed in a worth no honest eye can see, Over a crowd no longer asked to choose. With artificial lamps they light the skies Till none cares if the true sun set or rise.
*
85.
Upon my shelf at Passover, again, A lamp of memory shall burn for you, Imagination, as before, will strain To reconstruct the straits that you went through. The passing years, while tending to denude My mind of various wishful spells you cast, May yet, in deepening my solitude, Have brought me closer to you, at the last. Kinfolk we were by fate, if not by birth; Whatever you knew or meant, that much is sure; We both had glimpses of a better earth Which clouds of hateful ignorance obscure. Let me presume on this to call you brother; This is our bond; what need of any other.
*
86. Second Wind
Let us confess: the flags of youth are tattered And probably were flimsy to begin; Like morning fogs, the decades' wind has scattered The boasts of youth, so sure its right would win. A consciousness of compromises made, Of one's own territory to defend, Causes the echoes of those songs to fade Which pledged us to rebellion to the end. We feel our weariness, our limitations, We'd gladly rest on something firm, secure, Though we are ill at ease on the foundations Our fathers laid: the world makes us unsure. Yet may we find a deeper truth at last, Beyond the future, precedent to past.
* 87.
The Muse's majesty is not the power Wielded by cunning brutes, and by the abject Coveted; over both her seedlings tower From the twin stem of heart and intellect, Shutting from both the unobstructed view Of littleness that flatters every wrong, Till the antagonists unite to hew And harrow out the avenues of song. Then some lament the blindness of their fortune Whose eyes they have assisted to put out Because they would not bow to just proportion But made a party-king, with ignorant shout, Of whosoever promised them the most, Nor caring if the whole thereby be lost.
*
88. On Trollope's "The Belton Estate"
This is the mark of which our kind falls short. Upon this pleasant story let us dwell A little while, and wish the pages more, Of honest love's unconquerable spell, Of earth the gift of love, not prize of war, Of men more generous, women more brave To speak their minds, than commonly we see, Of hearts awakening in time to save From wedded and unwedded misery. And even here, it is a tightrope-act, A rapids-shoot with rocks on either side, Heart's navigation needs to be exact, With passion honed to an instinctual guide -- That we are something like this, now and then, Makes up for much in women and in men.
*
89. Santayana
He wrote a small amount of modestly Aristocratic verse, including one Sonnet that will not fade from memory Because with flawless intonation It strikes the balance of lament and praise And summons images to show them forth -- It has come back to me on many days When I have questioned what our life is worth. And there are other things, not quite as good, I'd say, but finely drawn and luminous. He always thought philosophy his trade; There, his production was voluminous And well received. Some of those books I read But now remember little of what they said.
*
90. Sapiens
We named ourselves for wisdom, not for skill: Not for our ingenuity with flint Or the eye's restlessly-devising glint But for the wit that disciplines the will. Although improving on the means to kill Might seem to be our forte, yet by dint Of repetition we had caught life's hint That self-restraint was something greater still.
This being so, of course it is the case That numbers flourish with us -- I mean those That give a measure to our speech and thought, Not engineerings that from place to place Flash images to lead us by the nose And blot out all our better reason taught.
*
91.
How good to think that no one is an island, That all of us are bound up in a bond That's proof against the treacherous and violent, All souls' unseverable common ground. How good to think each soul is given the force To stand alone amid adversity, And glitters from the streambed of time's course, A diamond, from flaws and scratches free.
But all behave as if each were rejected, Cast out with nothing there to break their fall, While at the same time seamlessly connected Into the signal-mesh that governs all: By one another's eyes they calculate Unceasingly their ratings and their fate.
*
92.
The tendency to barter, truck, exchange, Said Adam Smith, distinguishes the human From all the other animals that range In social groups, and find their food in common. The strong may rob the weaker, or the weak Beg from the strong, but neither thinks to pay The other for the benefit they seek: This is, as much as speech, the human way.
Then why do poets castigate the coin, And coin so seldom visit poet's purse? Are we the baby chimp, the big-eyed whine, Still striving to appoint the world its nurse? Unless we speak for Her from whom all wares Are taken, and for all of trucking's heirs.
*
93.
Ochone, that he, whose throat was fitly tuned To the summer wind and the deep waters' sigh, Whose spirit all its days and nights communed With love's unfathomable mystery, Should have been made the bard of that lament Which tears the throat and scarifies the ear And with a claw that never can relent Draws the heart's blood, and not the healing tear. Ochone again, that all the ranging lore, The deep invention of that peerless mind, Should rust unconned amid the shallow store Of times to intellectual worth gone blind. Ochone, the cruelty that felled those slain Boasts over his shut tome: "He spoke in vain."
*
94.
Poor old Rilke! Listen to them scold because he lived off ladies rather than join the lodge and do as he was told and talk about his women like a man. To think he actually wrote as if he liked us -- couldn't of course have been sincere; the penalties for that, these days, are stiff, on candid viciousness they're less severe. They wouldn't care to let themselves relax in the uneasy hammock he suspended from multifarious trees to which the ax is laid by those who've never apprehended, while from a chair endowed by industry the Critic slangs at sensibility.
*
95. Devotion’s Prose
The sonnet is a form that mystics made, Worshippers of the Light's unfading rose. Its cadences were their devotions' prose, The currency in which they used to trade Their ecstasies, of which time has mislaid The cypher, discontinuing the praise That round the mortal image ranged the rays Of the great Sun; strange that such fame should fade!
Yet in the form itself there still abides A kind of centering virtue that gives hope, As if the world in its enormity Is but the aura of a soul; the sides Of all contention balance round a shape That cannot change, nor forfeit dignity.
*
96.
Deep in the caverns of the Pyrenees The Paleolithic artist, by torch-flame, Drew in charcoal and ochre mixed with grease The animals his kind has marked as game: Aurochs and bison, mammoth and sabre-tooth, His body's food, became his mind's as well: He learned to catch their shapes' and movements' truth, Till into pits and over cliffs they fell. We smile at primitive magic, and aver Images have no power to subdue, While most of our contemporaries stare At their screened likenesses, then rise to do The crimes and follies they are shown, or buy Objects one-quarter substance, three-fourths lie.
*
97. Breughel
Locked into a geometry as pure As that of Sophoclean fate, these shapes Of fools, rogues, crippled beggars, lean-cheeked poor, Toiling or revelling peasantry, chained apes Whose perch commands a view they cannot see Over the city built by man, from whence Someone will come to feed them, probably, If not prevented by indifference -- Unsparingly and yet without a sneer He shows the patent baseness of the show; There is no scene or individual here That's beautiful, and yet the whole is so; And guiltily, from many pairs of eyes, The spirit gazes, taken by surprise.
*
98. Netherlandish Proverbs
This many-mansioned set, designed to gull Yet never wholly reassure the eye Which would protext, yet cannot quite prove why The assemblage ought to be impossible -- Is it the dunce-capped tower where the fool Fiddles between the gable and the keep? Or is the dark beneath that shed too deep, Given that its back is to the sea-bound rill?
This cannot be a world, though globes appear, Like bubbles here and there amid the flux Of forms, each locked in the rebus of its whim And curled in some unseen distorted sphere. God holds the smallest globe and wears a flax- en beard some silly monk has draped on him.
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99. Dear Jane
She had worked out a way to tell the world home truths, and yet maintain a civil tone. Her sister's sketch -- sad eyes, lip almost curled -- reveals a weariness not often shown to the dear reader, who is kept amused by repartee and courtship's roulette wheel -- love sought and found, mistaken and refused, through drawing rooms and shrubberies, whist and reel, though she will not discuss details of clothing. With etiquette the big eat up the small, the slavers ply; but have no fear nor loathing, she'll get her man, and that makes up for all, begetting generations who will prize her, apprised of everything, yet happily none the wiser.
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100. On a Performance of “Joseph’s Dreamcoat”
I saw the children of the many nations Whom history, the scatterer of design, Had carried to this place, take up their stations And sing in chorus, braided in a line. Of Joseph and his brothers and the flow Of fate that drew them to the Nile's domain Sang voices out of Laos and Mexico, And Africa and Europe's blended strain. Then thought I of that tiny nation still Clamped to its parcel of ancestral land Amid a sea of those who wish them ill And with so few in sight that understand. What gain have all if these should lose their fight Whose story still is told to set things right?
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101.
The ides! Our sleep is threadbare from the light That from the buckets of the brimming moon Floods through eyelids shut however tight. The roof carves a sharp shadow on the lawn, And those who stare from windows, wide awake, Risen from dreams perhaps too deep to tell, Feel prisoned in its darkness. At their napes They sense the distant caster of that spell, Their fate. Broad day itself wears to a waiting For festivals of which the name is banned: Lovers think love, and writers feel like writing, But like a pen gripped in the driven hand Of the usurper who to his own harm Indites the exiled queen's avenging charm.
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102.
A koan for the age we're going through, That makes the whole shebang blindingly plain, High-definition tubes will bring to you Programs unprecedentedly inane: A triumph of the mind, a miracle, Guaranteed to turn the wisest wight, The stainless among saints, upon first sight Into a rampant knave, a rabid fool. Hey, wasn't there a time when science meant, To those who thought of it, enlightenment? What happened? Where'd the calculation err? -- Only in cancelling the Sabbath Day And shrugging off the promptings of the Way And leaving out the science of the Word.
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103.
It is true that words cannot convey the pain Nor move the massive silence of the dead Nor lighten up the backdrop of black dread Before which all our posturings seem vain, The plot's we've acted in, likewise inane. The mountain of their dying casts a shade Enormous on the desert floor ahead Forever shadowed from the healing rain.
And yet we have the words by which they lived: They stand as ghostly prompters in the wings, Whispering, "Now as then, the play's the thing. Yours to revise the form of make-believe, Invent a story that will play this age And catch the conscience of the darkest king."
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104. Fashion Note
One thing I sort of miss is ash-blond hair, Or any of the other shades of mouse -- Grounds for complaint if it was yours to wear, But like the shingles of a Cape Cod house Or wave-smooth driftwood, comforting to see. Its unemphatic plainness let you trace, As in good black-and-white photography, Whatever was of interest in a face -- A fine-drawn eyelid, or a firm-set chin, And often the mute tones of hair and skin Made up unique, elusive harmonies. Now everyone flaunts forth in gold and red, You see the hair, but not so much the head.
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105.
A sonnet is the original sound-bite, A thought-compressor, handy and compact, For meditations concrete or abstract. It takes you fifty seconds to recite, Speaking slowly; and within that tight Compass, there is room to state a fact, Anticipate how others would react, Explain how you would see it, in the light
Of other circumstance which you relate, And lastly give a learned opinion, backed By literary precedent. That is One possibility. Or you may state Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, And wait until the couplet to retract.
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106.
I read a book by one who sought to sway A rational world with fact and argument Building to proof upon a fundament From which false notions had been cleared away, With each assertion backed by an array Of testimonial and precedent, Until the reader could not but assent To the chief things the author had to say.
The cause was great -- the saving of a nation -- And honorably maintained. But later on I saw the man who wrote thus, in the "News," Swagger and slang for bad men's approbation And compromise his cause that it might win: So are we fashioned by the tools we use.
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107.
Father, you have brought many harvests in, You can be sure of having made your mark: Over the continent, the globe, are strewn Students who from your teaching caught the spark Of scientific curiosity And scrupulous method: minds to whom you taught -- Whether they chose your discipline or not -- Something about the mind's integrity. And we, your children, are your students too. Me you taught to organize, to scan, To ask myself hard questions and be true To the answers. Here you had no teaching plan But taught by being, as the sun by sending Light. Some tasks may end, this has no ending.
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108. Le Genre Ennuyeux
See here, we like the genre ennuyeux because it doesn’t threaten our position. The boring’s safe, and no one has to listen. so sound as if you’re trying to make it new and not quite managing. Yes, that will do: The hamstrung rhythm, the incessant fishing for metaphor, the mystic Something Missing: Our mediocrity is safe with you.
Wave off the bird of song that wants to swoop down and carry you off! Learn to beware the stammer that betrays that you might care about your subject. Teach your wit to stoop, and in your passport let no stamp be seen to show you visited the land where sorrow’s queen.
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109. On a Design Issued by the United States Post Office, for Valentine’s Day, 1997
It seems an ornate heart upon first sight, Then you see it’s two swans beak to beak Floating on a still and azure lake, Their white necks curved against a rose light That shimmers down beneath, between. Is night The sequel to this scene? Is it daybreak? Franklin won’t tell us, and pray do not seek Your answer from the artists: they exploit.
I have a weakness for this kind of thing, For which there is a market once a year, Of which I in and out of season sing. Now I have twenty stamps of this design. O reader, for these dead birds sigh a prayer, This letter is for you. Be true. Be mine.
CHRONOLOGY
September 10, 1941/18 Elul 5701 – born in New York City to Eugene and Adrienne Cameron May 28, 1944 – birth of brother James September, 1947 – family settles in Madison, Wisconsin. November 28, 1952 – birth of brother Donald September, 1959-June 1961 – enrolled in Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass. June 1961-June 1962 – enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, majoring in linguistics. September 1962-August 1963 – exchange student in Germany, travels in Europe. Summer 1964 – family purchases Glen Brooks Farm near Madison. September 1963-August 1964 – senior year at Wisconsin. Senior thesis on Mandelstam’s syntax. September 1964-June 1968 – graduate studies in German at the University of California, Berkeley. Countercultural activities. Introduction to the work of Paul Celan. Fall 1968-summer 1969 – studied in Germany; on the way back to the U.S., stopped in Paris for interview with Paul Celan. Fall 1969 to winter 1971 – taught German at SUNY-Buffalo. April 1970 – death of Paul Celan. Summer 1970 – commune in Seattle. Winter 1971-spring 1972 – lived in Seattle. Spring 1972-summer 1979 – returned to Madison, Wisconsin. First of repeated attempts to found a poetic academy. August 1979 – conversion to Judaism and departure for Israel. Lived in Israel, with summer visits to Madison, until June 1990. June 1990 – return to Madison. Return visits to Israel at 1-4 year intervals since then. September 1990-June 1993 – law school. Practiced only briefly. Winter 1995-spring 1998 – two half-time secretarial jobs, one of them for Advanced Employment, an organization assisting developmentally disabled adults. 1996 – founded The Neovictorian/Cochlea (later The Deronda Review). 1999 – death of father. 2001 to present – half-time secretarial work in a law office.
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