Poemunity — your poem community

Mauve mist-shadow cloaks the sky’s River-blurred, inchoate border. Dawn’s old story; and light tries— Not the last time—to devise Lasting order; From first principles assigns Laws to frame day’s jurisdiction; Drawing contours, shapes, and lines From the nebula, it shines, Strange as fiction. Such designs, though, won’t appear In the plans of a committee. Look. The moon’s pale-copper sphere Rings—a gong too faint to hear— Through the city. Let them linger, unawake. Down the mountain’s wrinkled brilliance Darkness empties like a lake. Minted gold, house windows make Coins worth millions. Both in disbelief and pride All the buildings in the distance On the river’s farther side Take up, as the shadows slide, New existence. Shadow slides along the roof, Past the guttering and gable, Shrinks, and leaves the house aloof Where the light reads out its proof Like a fable.

"Build me straight, O worthy Master! Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!" The merchant's word Delighted the Master heard; For his heart was in his work, and the heart Giveth grace unto every Art. A quiet smile played round his lips, As the eddies and dimples of the tide Play round the bows of ships, That steadily at anchor ride. And with a voice that was full of glee, He answered, "Erelong we will launch A vessel as goodly, and strong, and stanch, As ever weathered a wintry sea!" And first with nicest skill and art, Perfect and finished in every part, A little model the Master wrought, Which should be to the larger plan What the child is to the man, Its counterpart in miniature; That with a hand more swift and sure The greater labor might be brought To answer to his inward thought. And as he labored, his mind ran o'er The various ships that were built of yore, And above them all, and strangest of all Towered the Great Harry, crank and tall, Whose picture was hanging on the wall, With bows and stern raised high in air, And balconies hanging here and there, And signal lanterns and flags afloat, And eight round towers, like those that frown From some old castle, looking down Upon the drawbridge and the moat. And he said with a smile, "Our ship, I wis, Shall be of another form than this!" It was of another form, indeed; Built for freight, and yet for speed, A beautiful and gallant craft; Broad in the beam, that the stress of the blast, Pressing down upon sail and mast, Might not the sharp bows overwhelm; Broad in the beam, but sloping aft With graceful curve and slow degrees, That she might be docile to the helm, And that the currents of parted seas, Closing behind, with mighty force, Might aid and not impede her course. In the ship-yard stood the Master, With the model of the vessel, That should laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle! Covering many a rood of ground, Lay the timber piled around; Timber of chestnut, and elm, and oak, And scattered here and there, with these, The knarred and crooked cedar knees; Brought from regions far away, From Pascagoula's sunny bay, And the banks of the roaring Roanoke! Ah! what a wondrous thing it is To note how many wheels of toil One thought, one word, can set in motion! There 's not a ship that sails the ocean, But every climate, every soil, Must bring its tribute, great or small, And help to build the wooden wall! The sun was rising o'er the sea, And long the level shadows lay, As if they, too, the beams would be Of some great, airy argosy, Framed and launched in a single day. That silent architect, the sun, Had hewn and laid them every one, Ere the work of man was yet begun. Beside the Master, when he spoke, A youth, against an anchor leaning, Listened, to catch his slightest meaning. Only the long waves, as they broke In ripples on the pebbly beach, Interrupted the old man's speech. Beautiful they were, in sooth, The old man and the fiery youth! The old man, in whose busy brain Many a ship that sailed the main Was modelled o'er and o'er again; — The fiery youth, who was to be The heir of his dexterity, The heir of his house, and his daughter's hand, When he had built and launched from land What the elder head had planned. "Thus," said he, "will we build this ship! Lay square the blocks upon the slip, And follow well this plan of mine. Choose the timbers with greatest care; Of all that is unsound beware; For only what is sound and strong To this vessel shall belong. Cedar of Maine and Georgia pine Here together shall combine. A goodly frame, and a goodly fame, And the Union be her name! For the day that gives her to the sea Shall give my daughter unto thee!" The Master's word Enraptured the young man heard; And as he turned his face aside, With a look of joy and a thrill of pride Standing before Her father's door, He saw the form of his promised bride. The sun shone on her golden hair, And her cheek was glowing fresh and fair, With the breath of morn and the soft sea air. Like a beauteous barge was she, Still at rest on the sandy beach, Just beyond the billow's reach; But he Was the restless, seething, stormy sea! Ah, how skilful grows the hand That obeyeth Love's command! It is the heart, and not the brain, That to the highest doth attain, And he who followeth Love's behest Far excelleth all the rest! Thus with the rising of the sun Was the noble task begun, And soon throughout the ship-yard's bounds Were heard the intermingled sounds Of axes and of mallets, plied With vigorous arms on every side; Plied so deftly and so well, That, ere the shadows of evening fell, The keel of oak for a noble ship, Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong, Was lying ready, and stretched along The blocks, well placed upon the slip. Happy, thrice happy, every one Who sees his labor well begun, And not perplexed and multiplied, By idly waiting for time and tide! And when the hot, long day was o'er, The young man at the Master's door Sat with the maiden calm and still, And within the porch, a little more Removed beyond the evening chill, The father sat, and told them tales Of wrecks in the great September gales, Of pirates coasting the Spanish Main, And ships that never came back again, The chance and change of a sailor's life, Want and plenty, rest and strife, His roving fancy, like the wind, That nothing can stay and nothing can bind, And the magic charm of foreign lands, With shadows of palms, and shining sands, Where the tumbling surf, O'er the coral reefs of Madagascar, Washes the feet of the swarthy Lascar, As he lies alone and asleep on the turf. And the trembling maiden held her breath At the tales of that awful, pitiless sea, With all its terror and mystery, The dim, dark sea, so like unto Death, That divides and yet unites mankind! And whenever the old man paused, a gleam From the bowl of his pipe would awhile illume The silent group in the twilight gloom, And thoughtful faces, as in a dream; And for a moment one might mark What had been hidden by the dark, That the head of the maiden lay at rest, Tenderly, on the young man's breast! Day by day the vessel grew, With timbers fashioned strong and true, Stemson and keelson and sternson-knee, Till, framed with perfect symmetry, A skeleton ship rose up to view! And around the bows and along the side The heavy hammers and mallets plied, Till after many a week, at length, Wonderful for form and strength, Sublime in its enormous bulk, Loomed aloft the shadowy hulk! And around it columns of smoke, upwreathing, Rose from the boiling, bubbling, seething Caldron, that glowed, And overflowed With the black tar, heated for the sheathing. And amid the clamors Of clattering hammers, He who listened heard now and then The song of the Master and his men: — "Build me straight, O worthy Master, Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!" With oaken brace and copper band, Lay the rudder on the sand, That, like a thought, should have control Over the movement of the whole; And near it the anchor, whose giant hand Would reach down and grapple with the land, And immovable and fast Hold the great ship against the bellowing blast! And at the bows an image stood, By a cunning artist carved in wood, With robes of white, that far behind Seemed to be fluttering in the wind. It was not shaped in a classic mould, Not like a Nymph or Goddess of old, Or Naiad rising from the water, But modelled from the Master's daughter! On many a dreary and misty night, 'T will be seen by the rays of the signal light, Speeding along through the rain and the dark, Like a ghost in its snow-white sark, The pilot of some phantom bark, Guiding the vessel, in its flight, By a path none other knows aright! Behold, at last, Each tall and tapering mast Is swung into its place; Shrouds and stays Holding it firm and fast! Long ago, In the deer-haunted forests of Maine, When upon mountain and plain Lay the snow, They fell, — those lordly pines! Those grand, majestic pines! 'Mid shouts and cheers The jaded steers, Panting beneath the goad, Dragged down the weary, winding road Those captive kings so straight and tall, To be shorn of their streaming hair, And naked and bare, To feel the stress and the strain Of the wind and the reeling main, Whose roar Would remind them forevermore Of their native forests they should not see again. And everywhere The slender, graceful spars Poise aloft in the air, And at the mast-head, White, blue, and red, A flag unrolls the stripes and stars. Ah! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless, In foreign harbors shall behold That flag unrolled, 'T will be as a friendly hand Stretched out from his native land, Filling his heart with memories sweet and endless! All is finished! and at length Has come the bridal day Of beauty and of strength. To-day the vessel shall be launched! With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched, And o'er the bay, Slowly, in all his splendors dight, The great sun rises to behold the sight. The ocean old, Centuries old, Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled, Paces restless to and fro, Up and down the sands of gold. His beating heart is not at rest; And far and wide, With ceaseless flow, His beard of snow Heaves with the heaving of his breast. He waits impatient for his bride. There she stands, With her foot upon the sands, Decked with flags and streamers gay, In honor of her marriage day, Her snow-white signals fluttering, blending, Round her like a veil descending, Ready to be The bride of the gray old sea. On the deck another bride Is standing by her lover's side. Shadows from the flags and shrouds, Like the shadows cast by clouds, Broken by many a sunny fleck, Fall around them on the deck. The prayer is said, The service read, The joyous bridegroom bows his head; And in tears the good old Master Shakes the brown hand of his son, Kisses his daughter's glowing cheek In silence, for he cannot speak, And ever faster Down his own the tears begin to run. The worthy pastor — The shepherd of that wandering flock, That has the ocean for its wold, That has the vessel for its fold, Leaping ever from rock to rock — Spake, with accents mild and clear, Words of warning, words of cheer, But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. He knew the chart Of the sailor's heart, All its pleasures and its griefs, All its shallows and rocky reefs, All those secret currents, that flow With such resistless undertow, And lift and drift, with terrible force, The will from its moorings and its course. Therefore he spake, and thus said he: — "Like unto ships far off at sea, Outward or homeward bound, are we. Before, behind, and all around, Floats and swings the horizon's bound, Seems at its distant rim to rise And climb the crystal wall of the skies, And then again to turn and sink, As if we could slide from its outer brink. Ah! it is not the sea, It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, But ourselves That rock and rise With endless and uneasy motion, Now touching the very skies, Now sinking into the depths of ocean. Ah! if our souls but poise and swing Like the compass in its brazen ring, Ever level and ever true To the toil and the task we have to do, We shall sail securely, and safely reach The Fortunate Isles, on whose shining beach The sights we see, and the sounds we hear, Will be those of joy and not of fear!" Then the Master, With a gesture of command, Waved his hand; And at the word, Loud and sudden there was heard, All around them and below, The sound of hammers, blow on blow, Knocking away the shores and spurs. And see! she stirs! She starts, — she moves, — she seems to feel The thrill of life along her keel, And, spurning with her foot the ground, With one exulting, joyous bound, She leaps into the ocean's arms! And lo! from the assembled crowd There rose a shout, prolonged and loud, That to the ocean seemed to say, "Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray, Take her to thy protecting arms, With all her youth and all her charms!" How beautiful she is! How fair She lies within those arms, that press Her form with many a soft caress Of tenderness and watchful care! Sail forth into the sea, O ship! Through wind and wave, right onward steer! The moistened eye, the trembling lip, Are not the signs of doubt or fear. Sail forth into the sea of life, O gentle, loving, trusting wife, And safe from all adversity Upon the bosom of that sea Thy comings and thy goings be! For gentleness and love and trust Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives! Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'T is of the wave and not the rock; 'T is but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee, — are all with thee!

a bullet has passed through spent the time elsewhere to need, tenderly, potential does not need to be bought, cannot in fact refute the cause, rather catches

We take more than our share, Several dozen from the star- Flecked cove of a red maple Pond, fins tapered like steeples, Gill to gill in the bucket And bilge, drawn from a thicket Of drowned roots Into the night’s cool garrotes. Sorrowful brothers Choking on strange ethers, Striving, eager, bent Toward the sky by want: It was not to be, this breathing, Though not for nothing.

You better not fool with a Bumblebee!— Ef you don't think they can sting—you'll see! They're lazy to look at, an' kind o' go Buzzin' an' bummin' aroun' so slow, An' ac' so slouchy an' all fagged out, Danglin' their legs as they drone about The hollyhawks 'at they can't climb in 'Ithout ist a-tumble-un out ag'in! Wunst I watched one climb clean 'way In a jimson-blossom, I did, one day,— An' I ist grabbed it — an' nen let go— An' " Ooh-ooh! Honey! I told ye so! " Says The Raggedy Man; an' he ist run An' pullt out the stinger, an' don't laugh none, An' says: "They has be'n folks, I guess, 'At thought I wuz predjudust, more er less,— Yit I still muntain 'at a Bumblebee Wears out his welcome too quick fer me!"

Careening over the highway in my lightweight Japanese Death Star buffeted by the great and powerful winds icy winds of winter warming cold air with hot air under it accordion pleats of natural disaster my disaster in the past if you were to say to me or to rage at me in a poem about America I would charge you a great failure to even use the word. It is banality this land is suffering because poets— their great cohort— I look twice to save lives.

To all events I squirted you knowing this not to be this came to pass when we were out and it looked good. Why wouldn’t you want a fresh piece of outlook to stand in down the years? See, your house, a former human energy construction, crashed with us for a few days in May and sure enough, the polar inscape brought about some easier poems, which I guessed was a good thing. At least some of us were relaxed, Steamboat Bill included. He didn’t drink nothing. It was one thing to be ready for their challenge, quite another to accept it. And if I had a piece of advice for you, this is it: Poke fun at balm, then suffer lethargy to irradiate its shallow flood in the new packaging our enemies processed. They should know. The Gold Dust Twins never stopped supplicating Hoosiers to limn the trail. There’s no Shakespeare. Through the window, Casanova. Couldn’t get to sleep in the dumb incident of those days, crimping the frozen feet of Lincoln.

Impatient as we were for all of them to join us, The land had not yet risen into view: gulls had swept the gray steel towers away So that it profited less to go searching, away over the humming earth Than to stay in immediate relation to these other things—boxes, store parts, whatever you wanted to call them— Whose installedness was the price of further revolutions, so you knew this combat was the last. And still the relationship waxed, billowed like scenery on the breeze. They are the same aren’t they, The presumed landscape and the dream of home Because the people are all homesick today or desperately sleeping, Trying to remember how those rectangular shapes Became so extraneous and so near To create a foreground of quiet knowledge In which youth had grown old, chanting and singing wise hymns that Will sign for old age And so lift up the past to be persuaded, and be put down again. The warning is nothing more than an aspirate “h”; The problem is sketched completely, like fireworks mounted on poles: Complexion of evening, the accurate voices of the others. During Coca-Cola lessons it becomes patent Of noise on the left, and we had so skipped a stage that The great wave of the past, compounded in derision, Submerged idea and non-dreamer alike In falsetto starlight like “purity” Of design that had been the first danger sign To wash the sticky, icky stuff down the drain—pfui! How does it feel to be outside and inside at the same time, The delicious feeling of the air contradicting and secretly abetting The interior warmth? But the land curdles the dismay in which it’s written Bearing to a final point of folly and doom The wisdom of these generations. Look at what you’ve done to the landscape— The ice cube, the olive— There is a perfect tri-city mesh of things Extending all the way along the river on both sides With the end left for thoughts on construction That are always turning to alps and thresholds Above the tide of others, feeding a European moss rose without glory. We shall very soon have the pleasure of recording A period of unanimous tergiversation in this respect And to make that pleasure the greater, it is worth while At the risk of tedious iteration, to put first upon record a final protest: Rather decaying art, genius, inspiration to hold to An impossible “calque” of reality, than “The new school of the trivial, rising up on the field of battle, Something of sludge and leaf-mold,” and life Goes trickling out through the holes, like water through a sieve, All in one direction. You who were directionless, and thought it would solve everything if you found one, What do you make of this? Just because a thing is immortal Is that any reason to worship it? Death, after all, is immortal. But you have gone into your houses and shut the doors, meaning There can be no further discussion. And the river pursues its lonely course With the sky and the trees cast up from the landscape For green brings unhappiness—le vert Porte malheur. “The chartreuse mountain on the absinthe plain Makes the strong man’s tears tumble down like rain.” All this came to pass eons ago. Your program worked out perfectly. You even avoided The monotony of perfection by leaving in certain flaws: A backward way of becoming, a forced handshake, An absent-minded smile, though in fact nothing was left to chance. Each detail was startlingly clear, as though seen through a magnifying glass, Or would have been to an ideal observer, namely yourself— For only you could watch yourself so patiently from afar The way God watches a sinner on the path to redemption, Sometimes disappearing into valleys, but always on the way, For it all builds up into something, meaningless or meaningful As architecture, because planned and then abandoned when completed, To live afterwards, in sunlight and shadow, a certain amount of years. Who cares about what was there before? There is no going back, For standing still means death, and life is moving on, Moving on towards death. But sometimes standing still is also life.

Aunt Mildred tied up her petticoats with binder’s twine, and my great-uncle Ezekiel waxed and waxed his moustaches into flexibility. It was the whole family off then into the dangerous continent of air and while the salesman with the one gold eyetooth told us the cords at our ankles were guaranteed to stretch to their utmost and then bring us safely back to the fried chicken and scalloped potatoes of Sunday dinner nobody quite believed. Edwina, my father’s half sister by my grandfather’s marriage to a former dance hall girl, who got her doctorate in tensor evaluation, she said whole galaxies have been known to belch and disappear taking with them the King Charles spaniels and the gold- plated fire hydrants from where the fire finally stopped in the earthquake year. But it was no good growing roots into the vegetable garden, not after the Monarch butterflies flew up into one whirling vortex and blanked out of immediate space, it was no good hoping Ken and Barbie, sexless, would anchor us to our interchangeable faces, or that our feet those flat independent anemones, could grip forever. The salesman smiled, with his face the size of the Empire State and growing bigger and bigger and into and through the face Aunt Mildred went shouting “Banzai!” into Great-Uncle Ezekiel’s inherited ear trumpet, shredding it to tin ribbons, and Edwina, dressed in the full commencement robes of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Mother and Father wrapped in each other’s reminiscences, and the goldfish, and finally I went too, out of the mold my body had been formed in and inhabited, as if place were the only realization of person and either the cords snapped, as any sceptic might have expected, or they are stretched out finer than a human hair, that keeps growing after death, even in the black melting that may or may not be the tight coral beach beyond.

We are a sad people, without hats. The history of our nation is tragically benign. We like to watch the rabbits screwing in the graveyard. We are fond of the little bunny with the bent ear who stands alone in the moonlight reading what little text there is on the graves. He looks quite desirable like that. He looks like the center of the universe. Look how his mouth moves mouthing the words while the others are busy making more of him. Soon the more will ask of him to write their love letters and he will oblige, using the language of our ancestors, those poor clouds in the ground, beloved by us who have been standing here for hours, a proud people after all.