46 America poems

Jeremiah Dickson was a true-blue American, For he was a little boy who understood America, for he felt that he must Think about everything; because that’s all there is to think about, Knowing immediately the intimacy of truth and comedy, Knowing intuitively how a sense of humor was a necessity For one and for all who live in America. Thus, natively, and Naturally when on an April Sunday in an ice cream parlor Jeremiah Was requested to choose between a chocolate sundae and a banana split He answered unhesitatingly, having no need to think of it Being a true-blue American, determined to continue as he began: Rejecting the either-or of Kierkegaard, and many another European; Refusing to accept alternatives, refusing to believe the choice of between; Rejecting selection; denying dilemma; electing absolute affirmation: knowing in his breast The infinite and the gold Of the endless frontier, the deathless West. “Both: I will have them both!” declared this true-blue American In Cambridge, Massachusetts, on an April Sunday, instructed By the great department stores, by the Five-and-Ten, Taught by Christmas, by the circus, by the vulgarity and grandeur of Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, Tutored by the grandeur, vulgarity, and infinite appetite gratified and Shining in the darkness, of the light On Saturdays at the double bills of the moon pictures, The consummation of the advertisements of the imagination of the light Which is as it was—the infinite belief in infinite hope—of Columbus, Barnum, Edison, and Jeremiah Dickson.

Past fences the first sheepmen cast across the land, processions of cringing pitch or cedar posts pulling into the vanishing point like fretboards carrying barbed melodies, windharp narratives, songs of place, I’m thinking of the long cowboy ballads Ray taught me the beginnings of and would have taught me the ends if he could have remembered them. But remembering was years ago when Ray swamped for ranches at a dollar a day and found, and played guitar in a Saturday night band, and now he is dead and I’m remembering near the end when he just needed a drink before he could tie his shoes. We’d stay up all night playing the beginnings of songs like Falling Leaf, about a girl who died of grief, and Zebra Dun, about a horse that pawed the light out of the moon. Sometimes Ray would break through and recall a few more verses before he’d drop a line or scramble a rhyme or just go blank, and his workfat hands would drop the chords and fall away in disbelief. Between songs he’d pull on the rum or unleash coughing fits that sounded like nails in a paper bag. Done, he’d straighten and say,My cough’s not just right, I need another cigarette, and light the Parliament he bit at an upward angle like Roosevelt and play the start of another song. Then, played out and drunk enough to go home, he’d pick up his hat and case and make it, usually on the second try, through the front gate and gently list out into the early morning dark, beginning again some song without end, yodeling his vote under spangles.

To Identify the 16th, 17th, or 18th Presidentiad. Why reclining, interrogating? why myself and all drowsing? What deepening twilight—scum floating atop of the waters, Who are they as bats and night-dogs askant in the capitol? What a filthy Presidentiad! (O South, your torrid suns! O North, your arctic freezings!) Are those really Congressmen? are those the great Judges? is that the President? Then I will sleep awhile yet, for I see that these States sleep, for reasons; (With gathering murk, with muttering thunder and lambent shoots we all duly awake, South, North, East, West, inland and seaboard, we will surely awake.)

Her red dress & hat tease the sky’s level- headed blue. Outside a country depot, she could be a harlot or saint on Sunday morning. We know Hopper could slant light till it falls on our faces. She waits for a tall blues singer whose twelve-string is hours out of hock, for a pullman porter with a pigskin wallet bulging with greenbacks, who stepped out of Porgy at intermission. This is paradise made of pigment & tissue, where apples ripen into rage & lust. In a quick glance, beyond skincolor, she’s his muse, his wife— the same curves to her stance, the same breasts beneath summer cloth.

Night, and beneath star-blazoned summer skies Behold the Spirit of the musky South, A creole with still-burning, languid eyes, Voluptuous limbs and incense-breathing mouth: Swathed in spun gauze is she, From fibres of her own anana tree. Within these sumptuous woods she lies at ease, By rich night-breezes, dewy cool, caressed: ’Twixt cypresses and slim palmetto trees, Like to the golden oriole’s hanging nest, Her airy hammock swings, And through the dark her mocking-bird yet sings. How beautiful she is! A tulip-wreath Twines round her shadowy, free-floating hair: Young, weary, passionate, and sad as death, Dark visions haunt for her the vacant air, While noiselessly she lies With lithe, lax, folded hands and heavy eyes. Full well knows she how wide and fair extend Her groves bright flowered, her tangled everglades, Majestic streams that indolently wend Through lush savanna or dense forest shades, Where the brown buzzard flies To broad bayous ’neath hazy-golden skies. Hers is the savage splendor of the swamp, With pomp of scarlet and of purple bloom, Where blow warm, furtive breezes faint and damp, Strange insects whir, and stalking bitterns boom— Where from stale waters dead Oft looms the great jawed alligator’s head. Her wealth, her beauty, and the blight on these,— Of all she is aware: luxuriant woods, Fresh, living, sunlit, in her dream she sees; And ever midst those verdant solitudes The soldier’s wooden cross, O’ergrown by creeping tendrils and rank moss. Was hers a dream of empire? was it sin? And is it well that all was borne in vain? She knows no more than one who slow doth win, After fierce fever, conscious life again, Too tired, too weak, too sad, By the new light to be or stirred or glad. From rich sea-islands fringing her green shore, From broad plantations where swart freemen bend Bronzed backs in willing labor, from her store Of golden fruit, from stream, from town, ascend Life-currents of pure health: Her aims shall be subserved with boundless wealth. Yet now how listless and how still she lies, Like some half-savage, dusky Indian queen, Rocked in her hammock ’neath her native skies, With the pathetic, passive, broken mien Of one who, sorely proved, Great-souled, hath suffered much and much hath loved! But look! along the wide-branched, dewy glade Glimmers the dawn: the light palmetto trees And cypresses reissue from the shade, And she hath wakened. Through clear air she sees The pledge, the brightening ray, And leaps from dreams to hail the coming day.

We’re writing our names with sizzles of light to celebrate the fourth. I use the loops of cursive, make a big B like the sloping hills on the west side of the lake. The rest, little a,r, one small b, spit and fizz as they scratch the night. On the side of the shack where we bought them, a handmade sign: Trailer Full of Sparkles Ahead, and I imagine crazy chrysanthemums, wheels of fire, glitter bouncing off metal walls. Here, we keep tracing in tiny pyrotechnics the letters we were given at birth, branding them on the air. And though my mother’s name has been erased now, I write it, too: a big swooping I, a hissing s, an a that sighs like her last breath, and then I ring belle, belle, belle in the sulphuric smoky dark.

Look up: blazing chrysanthemums in rose shriek into bloom above the Tilt-a-Whirls, hang for a blink, then die in smoky swirls. They scream revolt at what the body knows: all revels end. We clap and sigh. Then, no— another rose! another peony! break, flame, roar, as though by roaring they might make the rides whirl in perpetuum. As though we need not finally, wearily turn, to plow back through the crush of bodies, the lank air, to buses that inch us, sweating, across town. As though we were not dropped in silence there to trudge the last blocks home, the streetlamps low, the crickets counting summer's seconds down.

I Time unhinged the gates Of Plymouth Rock and Jamestown and Ellis Island, And worlds of men with hungers of body and soul Hazarded the wilderness of waters, Cadenced their destinies With the potters’-wheeling miracles Of mountain and valley, prairie and river. These were the men Who bridged the ocean With arches of dreams And piers of devotion; Messiahs from the Sodoms and Gomorrahs of the Old World, Searchers for Cathay and Cipango and El Dorado, Mystics from Oubangui Chari and Uppsala, Serfs from Perugia and Tonle Sap, Jailbirds from Newgate and Danzig, Patriots from Yokosuka and Stralsund, Scholars from Oxford and Leyden, Beggars from Bagdad and Montmartre, Traders from the Tyrrhenian Sea and Mona Passage, Sailors from the Skagerrak and Bosporus Strait, Iconoclasts from Buteshire and Zermatt. II These were the men of many breeds Who mixed their bloods and sowed their seeds. Designed in gold and shaped of dross, They raised the Sword beside the Cross. These were the men who laughed at odds And scoffed at dooms and diced with gods, Who freed their souls from inner bars And mused with forests and sang with stars. These were the men of prose and rhyme Who telescoped empires of time, Who knew the feel of spinal verve And walked the straight line of the curve. These were the men of iron lips Who challenged Dawn’s apocalypse, Who married Earth and Sea and Sky And died to live and lived to die. These were the men who dared to be The sires of things they could not see, Whose martyred and  rejected bones Became the States’ foundation-stones. III Into the arteries of the Republic poured The babels of bloods, The omegas of peoples, The moods of continents, The melting-pots of seas, The flotsams of isms, The flavors of tongues, The yesterdays of martyrs, The tomorrows of utopias. Into the matrix of the Republic poured White gulf streams of Europe, Black tidal waves of Africa, Yellow neap tides of Asia, Niagaras of the little people. America? America is the Black Man’s country, The Red Man’s, the Yellow Man’s, The Brown Man’s, the White Man’s. America? An international river with a legion of tributaries! A magnificent cosmorama with myriad patterns and colors! A giant forest with loin-roots in a hundred lands! A cosmopolitan orchestra with a thousand instruments playing America! IV I see America in Daniel Boone, As he scouts in the Judas night of a forest aisle; In big Paul Bunyan, as he guillotines The timber avalanche that writhes a mile. I see America in Jesse James, As his legends match his horse’s epic stride; In big John Henry, as his hammer beats The monster shovel that quakes the mountainside. I see America in Casey Jones, As he mounts No. 4 with the seal of death in his hand; In Johnny Appleseed, as his miracles Fruit the hills and valleys and plains of our Promised Land. I see America in Joe DiMaggio, As his bat cuts a vacuum in the paralyzed air; In brown Joe Louis, surfed in white acclaim, As he fights his country’s cause in Madison Square. I see America in Thomas Paine, As he pinnacles the freedoms that tyrants ban; In young Abe Lincoln, tanned by prairie suns, As he splits his rails and thinks the Rights of Man. V A blind man said, “Look at the kikes.” And I saw Rosenwald sowing the seeds of culture in the Black Belt, Michelson measuring the odysseys of invisible worlds, Brandeis opening the eyes of the blind to the Constitution, Boas translating the oneness in the Rosetta stone of mankind. A blind man said, “Look at the dagos.” And I saw La Guardia shaping the cosmos of pyramided Manhattan, Brumidi verving the Capitol frescoes of Washington at Yorktown, Caruso scaling the Alpine ranges of drama with the staff of song, Toscanini enchanting earthward the music of the spheres. A blind man said, “Look at the chinks.” And I saw Lin Yutang crying the World Charter in the white man’s wilderness, Dr. Chen charting the voyages of bacteria in the Lilly Laboratories, Lu Cong weaving plant-tapestries in the Department of Agriculture, Madame Chiang Kai-shek interpreting the Orient and the Occident. A blind man said, “Look at the bohunks.” And I saw Sikorsky blue-printing the cabala of the airways, Stokowski imprisoning the magic of symphonies with a baton, Zvak erecting St. Patricks’s Cathedral in a forest of skyscrapers, Dvořák enwombing the multiple soul of the New World. A blind man said, “Look at the niggers.” And I saw Black Samson mowing down Hessians with a scythe at Brandy-wine, Marian Anderson bewitching continents with the talisman of art, Fred Douglass hurling from tombstones the philippies of freedom, Private Brooks dying at the feet of MacArthur in Bataan. VI America can sing a lullaby When slippered dusk steals down the terraced sky; Then in a voice to wake the Plymouth dead Embattled hordes of tyranny defy. America can join the riotous throng And sell her virtues for a harlot song; Then give the clothes that hide her nakedness To help her sister nations carry on. America can worship gods of brass And bow before the strut of Breed and Class; Then gather to her bosom refugees Who champion the causes of the Mass. America can loose a world of laughter To shake the States from cornerstone to rafter; Then gird her mighty loins with corded strength In the volcanic nightmare of disaster. America can knot her arms and brow And guide across frontiers the untamed plow; Then beat the plowshares into vengeful swords To keep a rendezvous with Justice now. VII Sometimes Uncle Sam Pillows his head on the Statue of Liberty, Tranquilizes himself on the soft couch of the Corn Belt, Laves his feet in the Golden Gate, And sinks into the nepenthe of slumber. And the termites of anti-Semitism busy themselves And the Ku Klux Klan marches with rope and faggot And the money-changers plunder the Temple of Democracy And the copperheads start boring from within And the robber barons pillage the countryside And the con men try to jimmy the Constitution And the men of good will are hounded over the Land And the People groan in the tribulum of tryanny. Then Comes the roar of cannon at Fort Sumter Or the explosion of Teapot Dome Or the Wall Street Crash of ‘29 Or the thunderclap of bombs at Pearl Harbor! VIII I have a rendezvous with America At Plymouth Rock, Where the Mayflower lies Battered beam on beam By titan-chested waves that heave and shock And cold December winds That in the riggings pound their fists and scream. Here, Now, The Pilgrim Fathers draw The New World’s testament of faith and law: A government of and by and for the People, A pact of peers who share and bear and plan, A government which leaves men free and equal And yet knits men together as one man. I have a rendezvous with America At Valley Forge. These are the times that try men’s souls And fetter cowards to their under goals. Through yonder gorge Hunger and Cold, Disease and Fear, Advance with treasonous blows; The bayonets of the wind stab through Our winter soldiers’ clothes, And bloody footsteps stain the deep December snows. Here, Now, Our winter soldiers keep the faith And keep their powder dry . . . To do or die! I have a rendezvous with America This Seventh of December. The maiden freshness of Pearl Harbor’s dawn, The peace of seas that thieve the breath, I shall remember. Then Out of yonder Sunrise Land of Death The fascist spawn Strikes like the talons of the mad harpoon, Strikes like the moccasin in the black lagoon, Strikes like the fury of the raw typhoon. The traitor’s ruse And the traitor’s lie, Pearl Harbor’s ruins Of sea and sky, Shall live with me Till the day I die. Here, Now, At Pearl Harbor, I remember I have a rendezvous at Plymouth Rock and Valley Forge This Seventh of December. IX In these midnight dawns Of the Gethsemanes and the Golgothas of Peoples, I put my ear to the common ground of America. From the brows of mountains And the breasts of rivers And the flanks of prairies And the wombs of valleys Swells the Victory March of the Republic, In the masculine allegro of factories And the blues rhapsody of express trains, In the bass crescendo of power dams And the nocturne adagio of river boats, In the sound and fury of threshing machines And the clarineting needles of textile mills, In the fortissimo hammers of shipyards And the diatonic picks of coal mines, In the oboe rhythms of cotton gins And the sharped notes of salmon traps, In the belting harmonics of lumber camps And the drumming derricks of oil fields. X In these midnight dawns Of the vulture Philistines of the unquiet skies And the rattlesnake Attilas of the uptorn seas … In these midnight dawns Of the Gethsemanes and the Golgothas of Peoples, America stands Granite-footed as the Rocky Mountains Beaten by the whirlpool belts of wet winds, Deep-chested as the Appalachians Sunning valleys in the palms of their hands, Tough-tendoned as the Cumberlands Shouldering the truck caravans of US 40, Clean-flanked as the lavender walls of Palo Duro Washed by the living airs of canyon rivers, Eagle-hearted as the Pacific redwoods Uprearing their heads in the dawns and dusks of ages.

Cats walk the floor at midnight; that enemy of fog, The moon, wraps the bedpost in receding stillness; sleep Collects all weary nothings and lugs away the towers, The pinnacles of dust that feed the subway. What stiff unhappy silence waits on sleep Struts like an officer; tongues next-door bewitch Themselves with divination; I like a melancholy oaf Beg the nightly pillow with impossible loves. And abnegation folds hands, crossed like the knees Of the complacent tailor, stitches cloaks of mercy To the backs of obsessions. Winter like spring no less Tolerates the air; the wild pheasant meets innocently The gun; night flouts illumination with meagre impudence. In such serenity of equal fates, why has Narcissus Urged the brook with questions? Merged with the element Speculation suffuses the meadow with drops to tickle The cow’s gullet; grasshoppers drink the rain. Antiquity breached mortality with myths. Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates A cornice on the Third National Bank. Vocabulary Becomes confusion, decoration a blight; the Parthenon In Tennessee stucco, art for the sake of death. Now (The bedpost receding in stillness) you brush your teeth “Hitting on all thirty-two;” scholarship pares The nails of Catullus, sniffs his sheets, restores His “passionate underwear;” morality disciplines the other Person; every son-of-a-bitch is Christ, at least Rousseau; Prospero serves humanity in steam-heated universities, three Thousand dollars a year. Simplicity, Flamineo, is obscene; Sunlight topples indignant from the hill. In every railroad station everywhere every lover Waits for his train. He cannot hear. The smoke Thickens. Ticket in hand, he pumps his body Toward lower six, for one more terse ineffable trip, His very eyeballs fixed in disarticulation. The berth Is clean; no elephants, vultures, mice or spiders Distract him from nonentity: his metaphors are dead. More sanitation is enough, enough remains: dreams Do not end—lucidities beyond the stint of thought. For intellect is a mansion where waste is without drain; A corpse is your bedfellow, your great-grandfather dines With you this evening on a cavalry horse. Intellect Connives with heredity, creates fate as Euclid geometry By definition: The sunlit bones in your house Are immortal in the titmouse, They trip the feet of grandma Like an afterthought each day. These unseen sunlit bones, They may be in the cat That startles them in grandma But look at this or that They meet you every way. For Pelops’ and Tantalus’ successions were at once simpler, If perplexed, and less subtle than you think. Heredity Proposes love, love exacts language, and we lack Language. When shall we speak again? When shall The sparrow dusting the gutter sing? When shall This drift with silence meet the sun? When shall I wake?

—Cincinnati, Ohio, 1972 Dear Sister, America. Late nights, we lie under the spread and listen to the stereo jazz sounds of WTKO on the FM station. He says I am so fine in my tight, pulled-back and strapless bed-sheet gown. Imagine, the polyester with sequins. A sultry Dinah Washington. Turn. He puts a pillow on his stomach, a finger to his lips and blows — he can do a Louis like nobody else. Turn, to the Golden Oldies. Sometimes, he calls me his favorite Supreme or his one and only Apollo showgirl. With the switch of a dial, we move in unison. In the infinite dark, our flickering stations turn.