1269 Arts and sciences poems

Who is speaking? Our correspondent on the hill above the river, making pictures for exhibition in other places. Each stroke of his pen ricochets across the valley. He sees what he wants to see. He does not hear what he cannot see. A smoking ruin behind him. Another 
waiting just around the bend.airy particulates A path leads from the pa to a ford of the river hard by, which was that traversed by the raiders on their return. Nothing was heard but the occasional yell until about 8 pm, when we could again distinctly hear the yells repeated, and then all was again quiet, save the sentinels’ “All’s well.” was, it seems, waha, mouth The stream at this spot is about 90 yards wide, and its depth is about 3 feet. Then a shout of “stand to your arms,” which was followed by a heavy volley from the rebels, who set up a most unearthly yell. wavering, with two hearts The south bank is flat and low, and on that side there is a good deal of marsh. They were full of determination, and at times came within speaking distance, inviting our men to come on, who replied by recommending them to stand out. led the women in resisting the survey The north bank is high and steep, and its precipitous sides are clothed with karaka and fern trees, whose luxuriant foliage, thickly matted with the vine, and parasite plants which grow there in abundance, forms a sort of vegetable wall. Several old women were vociferous in encouraging the enemy. to get shellfish from the reef The landscape is extremely pretty. They were blowing their horns and shouting for a long time, and in the morning it was found that the sap rollers had disappeared, and also a quantity of gabions. this white flag is not an emblem of peace The camp shows above the windings of the river, which pursues its tortuous course over a shingly bed, and is lost to view in the distance. All the peach trees, karaka trees, where the picnic parties used to go, have been cut down. a comet, west northwest, portending The sun shining on the white tops of the tents renders their outline particularly distinct. Every time a shell is thrown they set up a general howl of defiance, followed by such challenges as “Come on, Pakeha!” “Come on, 
soldier — come on!” left on the ground for the pigs and sea gulls (karoro) In the distance the sea presents an unvaried, unbroken line, and the snowy peak of the mountain to the left adds considerably to the scene. During the night they contented themselves by wasting on us all the bad epithets and evil wishes their language is capable of. “a mate noa,” till death The road down to the ford on the north bank is very steep, insomuch that it is a necessary precaution to dismount and lead a horse. They have several blowing horns, by means of which they mimic our bugle sounds. These horns are heard both day and night, and it is probable that they have certain established calls, which they all understand and adopt on particular occasions. wrote his name on a tub The raiders, however, managed to get their bullock drays up to the top, but it is presumed they were empty, and that their contents must have been brought up by hand. On Monday night the guard in No. 8 Redoubt were entertained until about 2 o’clock by Hapurona, who was urging his people most vehemently to attack them, and said they were very weak in it. He said the Governor had done him all sorts of injury, and that he would scatter our bones over the Waitara. a blue shirt braided with scarlet The ground about the pa is tolerably clear, and it is in part intersected by fences. Several of the men in the redoubt knew his voice and what he said quite well. being covered with myriads of empty cartridge cases A solitary canoe was found half full of water near the ford. During the night voices heard on our right, that of a woman being most conspicuous. She was endeavoring to incite the people to some desperate action by relating the deeds of her forebears. being pouri (grieved) How do they sound, drifting back to him there on the side of the road down by the river or along the beach? A group of riders coming the other way, a group the artist did not catch in his notebook and they were gone before he thought to turn around and look after their retreating voices. Top hat and sidesaddle. Onaero, Urenui, Wai-iti, Pukearuhe.

Some fish for words from shore while others, lacking in such contemplative tact, like to go wading in up to their chins through a torrent of bone-freezing diamond, knife raised, to freeze-frame incarnadine and then bid it as with hermetic wand flow on again, ferociously, transparently, name writ in river.

In the Bavarian steeple, on the hour, two figures emerge from their scalloped house carrying sledges that they clap, in turn, against the surface of the bell. By legend they are summer and winter, youth and age, as though the forces of plenty and of loss played equally on the human soul, extracted easily the same low bronze note spreading upward from the encumbrance of the village, past alluvial fields to the pocked highland where cattle shift their massive heads at this dissonance, this faint redundant pressure in the ears, in the air. From the village, the mountain seems a single stone, a single blank completion. Seeing the summit pierce the abstract heavens, we reconstruct the valley on the mountain— a shepherd propped against his crook, birds enthralled on a branch, the branch feathering the edge of the canvas—transposing such forms as can extend the flawed earth and embody us, intact, unaltering, among the soft surprising trees of childhood, mimosa, honey locust and willow. Wood in the midst of woods, the village houses are allied in a formal shape beside a stream, the streets concluding at the monument. Again the ravishing moment of the bell: the townspeople, curious or accustomed, stop to count the strokes, odd or even—the confectioner counting out the lavendar candies for his customer, the butcher, the greengrocer, the surgeon and the constable—as the housewife stands on the stoop, shaking her mop, and sees the dust briefly veil the air, an algebra of swirling particles.

Spoon of O, spoon of nothing, spoon of ankh, spoon of poonss , spoon of the lady at the dressing table, spoon of , spoon of female, spoon of , spoon of war, spoon of the world, spoon of War of the Worlds, spoon of stick figure, spoon of girl, spoon of boy, spoon of spear thrower, spoon of fire, spoon of egg, spoon of egg race, spoon of dish, spoon of ran away with, spoon of ran away with and came back, spoon of never came back, spoon of silver, spoon of gold, spoon of milk, spoon of Saturn, spoon of vulva, spoon of vagina, spoon of Ant, spoon of Bee, spoon of Venus, spoon of Serena, spoon of vugg, spoon of vum, spoon of spider, spoon of sun, spoon of fee, fie, foe, fum. Spoon of everyone. Spoon of the belly. Spoon of the empty belly. Spoon of the full one. Spoon of no one hungry. Spoon for everyone.

Because in medieval Italian it meant “room” I tied the curtains at their elbows with what could have been honor cords or worse yet, a belt from the 60s, so hideous were the tassels that were dancing a little tarantella after I had propped the windows and the wind had carried in the song the rubbing trees were making, without any accompaniment, mind you, from a tambourine, although the bells of   the occasional sleigh played that part, while I waited for the vixen and their shameless yelping to follow the music and the cold and the night inside where I sat half man, half snow, to investigate my squeaking pencil and the flapping of the bird-white page I couldn’t seem to catch in those years when I lugged around a frozen heart and was infatuated with whiteness, since I had read somewhere it was the absence of color, which could not be true since I had once loved a pure white duck with a white bill and feet and I had even torn its white flesh with my teeth that were still then white, which should have been all the proof anyone needed to debunk our outdated theories of absence.

It’s true we have invented quark-extraction, and this allows our aiming gravity at will; it’s true also that time can now be made to flow backward or forward by the same process. It may be true as well that what is happening at the focal point, the meristem of this process, creates a future kind of space, a tiny universe that has quite different rules. In this, it seems, whatever one may choose to do or be becomes at once the case. In short, we have discovered heaven and it’s in our grasp. However, the Patent Office has not yet approved and cites less positive aspects of this invention. First, it does not generate profit, and it does make obsolete all present delivery systems for our nukes. Then, it will let private citizens do things that only a chosen few, that is, OUR sort, should be allowed— fly freely from one country to any other, spreading diseases and bankrupting transportation. Home-heating, auto-making industries will be trashed, employment shelled, depressions spread worldwide, sheer anarchy descend. For these and other reasons, no one must know of this. . . .

The angel asked, as his shoulders were pressed into the stone Why me? And taken away from the inhabited body, Like the lyric voice rustling from memory forests, Childhood rushes toward death, a wind in those woods, Crashing through trees, dying out, Settling like a white mist over everything.

That I might chisel a statue, line on line, Out of a marble’s chaste severities! Angular, harsh; no softened curves to please; Set tears within the eyes to make them shine, And furrows on the brow, deep, stern, yet fine; Gaunt, awkward, tall; no courtier of ease; The trousers bulging at the bony knees; Long nose, large mouth . . . But ah, the light divine Of Truth, – the light that set a people free!— Burning upon it in a steady flame, As sunset fires a white peak on the sky . . . Ah, God! To leave it nameless and yet see Men looking weep and bow themselves and cry— ‘Enough, enough! We know thy statue’s name!’

Virgin, sappy, gorgeous, the right-now Flutters its huge prosthetics at us, flung To the spotlights, frozen in motion, center-ice. And the first rows, shaken with an afterslice That’s bowled them into their seats like a big wet ciao. O daffy panoply O rare device O flashing leg-iron at a whopping price Whipping us into ecstasies and how, The whole galumphing Garden swung and swung, A rescue helicopter’s bottom rung Glinting and spinning off, a scud of fluff, A slash of petals up against the bough, A juggler’s avalanche of silken stuff Gushing in white-hot verticals among Camels and axels and pyramids, oh wow, Bewilderment is parachute enough. We jolt. A sidewise stutterstep in chorus. The other billboards flicker by before us. Gone! with a budded petulance that stung. So talented! So targeted! So young! Such concentration on the bottom line! We vanish down the IRT. A shine. A glimmer. Something. Nothing. To think twice Was to have lost the trick of paradise.

Doors opened and shut, the director shouted orders through a bullhorn, or babbled just out of the frame. A carpenter hammered flats nearby for the next production. All of this, and more, while the actors blocked it out, already living in that small square of light where silence reigned like a tiny theatre for the deaf. Now, almost a century later, it's peaceful, far from the center of action, the last voice on the street reduced to a whisper, then gone. Not even birdsong as evening's opening credits begin to roll. Only the film, shimmering out of a disc thinner than sound, characters moving like fish in their gray element— less than fish— not a hiss, not a bubble, not even a cry from that dim world of silence doubled by time.