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My father built a great worry around me like a dock Once I left it before I was finished And he remained with his great, empty worry. And my mother—like a tree on the shore Between her arms outstretched for me. And in '31 my hands were merry and small And in '41 they learned to use a rifle And when I loved my first love My thoughts were like a bunch of colored balloons And the girl's white hand clutched them all With a thin string—and then let them fly. And in '51 the movement of my life Was like the movement of many slaves rowing a ship, And the face of my father like the lantern at the end of a parting train, And my mother closed all the clouds in her brown closet. And I climbed up my street, And the twentieth century was the blood in my veins, Blood that wanted to go out to many wars, Through many openings. It pounds on my head from inside And moves in angry waves to my heart. But now, in the spring of '52, I see More birds have returned than left last winter. And I return down the slope of the mountain To my room where the woman's body is heavy And full of time.

I It is not to be bought for a penny in the candy store, nor picked from the bushes in the park. It may be found, perhaps, in the ashes on the distant lots, among the rusting cans and Jimpson weeds. If you wish to eat fish freely, cucumbers and melons, you should have stayed in Egypt. II I am alone— and glad to be alone; I do not like people who walk about so late; who walk slowly after midnight through the leaves fallen on the sidewalks. I do not like my own face in the little mirrors of the slot-machines before the closed stores. III Walking along the highway, I smell the yellow flowers of a shrub, watch the starlings on a lawn, perhaps— but why are all these speeding away in automobiles, where are they off to in such a hurry? They must be going to hear wise men and to look at beautiful women, and I am just a fool to be loitering here alone. IV I like the sound of the street— but I, apart and alone, beside an open window and behind a closed door. V Winter is here indeed; the leaves have long been swept from the winding walks; trees and ground are brown— all is in order. Only the lamps now flourish in the park. We walk about and talk; but the troubles of the unsuccessful middle-aged are so uninteresting! VI Now it is cold: where the snow was melting the walk crackles with black ice beneath my careful steps; and the snow is old and pitted, here grey with ashes and there yellow with sand. The walks lie in the cold shadow of houses; pigeons and sparrows are in a hollow for cold, out of the wind; but here, where the sunshine pours through a narrow street upon a little tree, black and naked of every leaf, the sparrows are in the sun, thick upon the twigs. Those who in their lives braved the anger of their fellows, bronze statues now, with outstretched arm or sword brave only the weather. I find myself talking aloud as I walk; that is bad. Only Don Juan would believe I am in conversation with the snow-covered statues; only St. Francis that I am talking to the sparrows in the naked bushes, to the pigeons in the snow. VII The ropes in the wind slapping the flag-pole (the flag has been hauled down); behind the bare tree-tops the lights of an aeroplane moving away slowly. A star or two shining between factory chimneys; the street dark and still because the street-lamp has been broken and it is cold and late. VIII Bright upon the table for your birthday, the burning candles will dissolve in rays and lumps of wax. Unlike a skull, they say politely, This is you! IX I am afraid because of the foolishness I have spoken. I must diet on silence; strengthen myself with quiet. Where is the wisdom with which I may be medicined? I will walk by myself and cure myself in the sunshine and the wind. X I do not believe that David killed Goliath. It must have been— you will find the name in the list of David’s captains. But, whoever it was, he was no fool when he took off the helmet and put down the sword and the spear and the shield and said, The weapons you have given me are good, but they are not mine: I will fight in my own way with a couple of pebbles and a sling. XI “Shall I go there?” “As you like— it will not matter; you are not at all important.” The words stuck to me like burrs. The path was hidden under the fallen leaves; and here and there the stream was choked. Where it forced a way the ripples flashed a second. She spoke unkindly but it was the truth: I shared the sunshine like a leaf, a ripple; thinking of this, sunned myself and, for the moment, was content. XII There is nobody in the street of those who crowded about David to watch me as I dance before the Lord: alone in my unimportance to do as I like. XIII Your angry words—each false name sinks into me, and is added to the heap beneath. I am still the same: they are no part of me, which I keep; but the way I go, and over which I flow. XIV The Bridge In a cloud bones of steel. XV God and Messenger This pavement barren as the mountain on which God spoke to Moses— suddenly in the street shining against my legs the bumper of a motor car. XVI A beggar stretches out his hand to touch a fur collar, and strokes it unseen, stealing its warmth for his finger tips. XVII The elevator man, working long hours for little—whose work is dull and trivial— must also greet each passenger pleasantly: to be so heroic he wears a uniform. XVIII This subway station with its electric lights, pillars of steel, arches of cement, and trains— quite an improvement on the caves of the cave-men; but, look! on this wall a primitive drawing. XIX Subway People moving, people standing still, crowds and more crowds; a thousand and ten thousand iron girders as pillars; escape! But how, shut up in the moving train? And upstairs, in the street, the sun is shining as it shines in June. XX Poet with Whiskey Bottle and Sailor There is anguish there, certainly, and a commotion in the next room; shouts of words and phrases that do not make sentences and sentences that do not make sense. I open the door: ah, the hallway is crowded— descendants of the three wise men, now male and female, come again to worship in a stable. XXI The white cat on the lawn, lying in the sun against the hedge, lovely to look at— but this stout gentleman, who needs a shave badly, leaning in an arbor hung with purple grapes, purple grapes all about him, is unpleasant. Am I becoming misanthropic? An atheist? Why, this might be the god Bacchus! XXII The bearded rag-picker seated among heaps of rags in a basement sings: It was born that way; that is the way it was born— the way it came out of some body to stink: nothing will change it— neither pity nor kindness.

I write my name as one, On sands by waves o’errun Or winter’s frosted pane, Traces a record vain. Oblivion’s blankness claims Wiser and better names, And well my own may pass As from the strand or glass. Wash on, O waves of time! Melt, noons, the frosty rime! Welcome the shadow vast, The silence that shall last! When I and all who know And love me vanish so, What harm to them or me Will the lost memory be? If any words of mine, Through right of life divine, Remain, what matters it Whose hand the message writ? Why should the “crowner’s quest” Sit on my worst or best? Why should the showman claim The poor ghost of my name? Yet, as when dies a sound Its spectre lingers round, Haply my spent life will Leave some faint echo still. A whisper giving breath Of praise or blame to death, Soothing or saddening such As loved the living much. Therefore with yearnings vain And fond I still would fain A kindly judgment seek, A tender thought bespeak. And, while my words are read, Let this at least be said: “Whate’er his life’s defeatures, He loved his fellow-creatures. “If, of the Law’s stone table, To hold he scarce was able The first great precept fast, He kept for man the last. “Through mortal lapse and dulness What lacks the Eternal Fulness, If still our weakness can Love Him in loving man? “Age brought him no despairing Of the world’s future faring; In human nature still He found more good than ill. “To all who dumbly suffered, His tongue and pen he offered; His life was not his own, Nor lived for self alone. “Hater of din and riot He lived in days unquiet; And, lover of all beauty, Trod the hard ways of duty. “He meant no wrong to any He sought the good of many, Yet knew both sin and folly,— May God forgive him wholly!”

The orbiting reflector Turns night into day: petals ping Accelerated workers swarm into the plaza A blur on the soul’s dead instrument Everywhere, windows are blanked To the same newsreel I alone Inhabit a mockup of the early nineteenth century I, the great idealist who confesses On the first page of his diary:Father! There are no living atoms & the diary answers:Identity Is that Which is eaten from within Another man is partially assembled On the table Another module Unshrouded, revolves in sunlight filtered through noise A simulated victory Crawls like a glove Animated by music

That's how it was then, a knife through cartilage, a body broken. Animal and animal as mineral ash. A window smashed. The collective howl as a general alarm followed by quiet. Boot-black night, halogen hum. Tape snaking through a stealth machine. Later, shattered glass and a checkpoint charm—the clasp of a tourist-trap bracelet. An arm. A trinket. Snap goes the clamshell. The film in the braincase preserving the sense of the drench, the angle of the leash, the connecting collar. A tracking long-shot. The descent of small-town darkness.

The poet is a man who feigns And feigns so thoroughly, at last He manages to feign as pain The pain he really feels, And those who read what once he wrote Feel clearly, in the pain they read, Neither of the pains he felt, Only a pain they cannot sense. And thus, around its jolting track There runs, to keep our reason busy, The circling clockwork train of ours That men agree to call a heart.

Shorter and shorter now the twilight clips The days, as though the sunset gates they crowd, And Summer from her golden collar slips And strays through stubble-fields, and moans aloud, Save when by fits the warmer air deceives, And, stealing hopeful to some sheltered bower, She lies on pillows of the yellow leaves, And tries the old tunes over for an hour. The wind, whose tender whisper in the May Set all the young blooms listening through th’ grove, Sits rustling in the faded boughs to-day And makes his cold and unsuccessful love. The rose has taken off her tire of red— The mullein-stalk its yellow stars have lost, And the proud meadow-pink hangs down her head Against earth’s chilly bosom, witched with frost. The robin, that was busy all the June, Before the sun had kissed the topmost bough, Catching our hearts up in his golden tune, Has given place to the brown cricket now. The very cock crows lonesomely at morn— Each flag and fern the shrinking stream divides— Uneasy cattle low, and lambs forlorn Creep to their strawy sheds with nettled sides. Shut up the door: who loves me must not look Upon the withered world, but haste to bring His lighted candle, and his story-book, And live with me the poetry of Spring.

The rusty leaves crunch and crackle, Blue haze hangs from the dimmed sky, The fields are matted with sun-tanned stalks — Wind rushes by. The last red berries hang from the thorn-tree, The last red leaves fall to the ground. Bleakness, through the trees and bushes, Comes without sound.

1 What is sometimes called a tongue of flame or an arm extended burning is only the long red and orange branch of a green maple in early September   reaching into the greenest field out of the green woods   at the edge of which the birch trees appear a little tattered   tired of sustaining delicacy all through the hot summer   re- minding everyone (in our family) of a Russian song   a story by Chekhov   or my father 2 What is sometimes called a tongue of flame or an arm extended   burning is only the long red and orange branch of a green maple in early September   reaching into the greenest field out of the green woods   at the edge of which the birch trees appear a little tattered   tired of sustaining delicacy all through the hot summer   re- minding everyone (in our family) of a Russian song   a story by Chekhov or my father on his own lawn   standing beside his own wood in the United States of America   saying (in Russian) this birch is a lovely tree   but among the others somehow superficial

Why not write something for those who scratched out improbable livings here? Someone has managed to sow This broken field with stones, it appears, So someone’s scratching it still, Although that Japanese knotweed has edged The tilth. Two wasps in the child Attempt to catch sun on a rail of the bridge. The old local doctor has passed At almost a full decade past ninety. He never seemed depressed. Seventy now, if barely, I consider the field again: Someone will drag these rocks away But they’ll be back. The air smells like rain, Which is fine, the summer’s been much too dry. Nothing is left of the barn But some rusty steel straps in some nasty red osier. The stone fence still looks sound, But even there the knotweed steps over. Hadn’t I pledged an elegy To the old ones who worked here? You couldn’t claim They thrived, exactly, but maybe They likewise scented good wind full of rain, Lifted eyes above this old orchard To the cloud-darkened hills and found their support Somehow, somewhere. No matter, They kept going until they could go no more. The trees’ puckered apples have gathered A flock of birds, and as they alight, They’re full of unseasonable chatter, As if to say that all will be right. The old ones I promised a poem Must have said it too.It’ll be all right. I never knew them. They’re gone. I say it out loud,It’ll be all right. —Caledonia County, Vermont