Carolyn Kizer

The poets are going home now, After the years of exile, After the northern climates Where they worked, lectured, remembered, Where they shivered at night In an indifferent world. Where God was the god of business, And men would violate the poets’ moon, And even the heavens become zones of war. The poets are going home To the blood-haunted villages, To the crumbling walls, still pocked With a spray of bullets; To the ravine, marked with a new cross, Where their brother died. No one knows the precise spot where they shot him, But there is a place now to gather, to lay wreaths. The poets will bring flowers. The poets are coming home To the cafés, to the life of the streets at twilight, To slip among the crowds and greet their friends; Thee young poets, old now, limping, who lean on a cane: Or the arm of a grandchild, peer with opaque eyes At the frightening city, the steel and concrete towers Sprung up in their absence. Yet from open doorways comes the odor of grapes Fermented, of fish, of oil, of pimiento… The poets have come home To the melodious language That settles in their heads like moths alighting, This language for which they starved In a world of gutturals, Crude monosyllables barked by strangers. Now their own language enfolds them With its warm vocables. The poets are home. Yes, they have come back To look up at the yellow moon, Cousin of that cold orb that only reflected Their isolation. They have returned to the olives, the light, The sage-scented meadows, The whitewashed steps, the tubs of geraniums, The sere plains, the riverbanks spread with laundry, The poppies, the vineyards, the bones of mountains. Yes, poets, welcome home To your small country Riven by its little war (As the world measures these events), A country that remembers heroes and tears; Where, in your absence, souls kept themselves alive By whispering your words. Now you smile at everything, even the priests, the militia, The patient earth that is waiting to receive you.

M.A.K. September, 1880-September, 1955 As I wandered on the beach I saw the heron standing Sunk in the tattered wings He wore as a hunchback’s coat. Shadow without a shadow, Hung on invisible wires From the top of a canvas day, What scissors cut him out? Superimposed on a poster Of summer by the strand Of a long-decayed resort, Poised in the dusty light Some fifteen summers ago; I wondered, an empty child, “Heron, whose ghost are you?” I stood on the beach alone, In the sudden chill of the burned. My thought raced up the path. Pursuing it, I ran To my mother in the house And led her to the scene. The spectral bird was gone. But her quick eye saw him drifting Over the highest pines On vast, unmoving wings. Could they be those ashen things, So grounded, unwieldy, ragged, A pair of broken arms That were not made for flight? In the middle of my loss I realized she knew: My mother knew what he was. O great blue heron, now That the summer house has burned So many rockets ago, So many smokes and fires And beach-lights and water-glow Reflecting pinwheel and flare: The old logs hauled away, The pines and driftwood cleared From that bare strip of shore Where dozens of children play; Now there is only you Heavy upon my eye. Why have you followed me here, Heavy and far away? You have stood there patiently For fifteen summers and snows, Denser than my repose, Bleaker than any dream, Waiting upon the day When, like grey smoke, a vapor Floating into the sky, A handful of paper ashes, My mother would drift away.

Eating is touch carried to the bitter end. Samuel Butler II I’m going to murder you with love; I’m going to suffocate you with embraces; I’m going to hug you, bone by bone, Till you’re dead all over. Then I will dine on your delectable marrow. You will become my personal Sahara; I’ll sun myself in you, then with one swallow Drain your remaining brackish well. With my female blade I’ll carve my name In your most aspiring palm Before I chop it down. Then I’ll inhale your last oasis whole. But in the total desert you become You’ll see me stretch, horizon to horizon, Opulent mirage! Wisteria balconies dripping cyclamen. Vistas ablaze with crystal, laced in gold. So you will summon each dry grain of sand And move toward me in undulating dunes Till you arrive at sudden ultramarine: A Mediterranean to stroke your dusty shores; Obstinate verdure, creeping inland, fast renudes Your barrens; succulents spring up everywhere, Surprising life! And I will be that green. When you are fed and watered, flourishing With shoots entwining trellis, dome, and spire, Till you are resurrected field in bloom, I will devour you, my natural food, My host, my final supper on the earth, And you’ll begin to die again.

Part Four of “Pro Femina” At Samoa, hardly unpacked, I commenced planting, When I’d opened the chicken crates, built the Cochins a coop. The Reverend Mr. Claxton called, found me covered with mud, My clothes torn, my hair in a wad, my bare feet bleeding. I had started the buffalo grass in the new-made clearing. The next day the priest paid a visit. Civil but restless, I was dying to plant the alfalfa seed—gave him a packet. That evening I paced up and down, dropping melon seeds, Tomatoes and bush lima beans here and there Where I thought they would grow. We were short of food now, So I cooked up a mess of fat little parrots, disturbed At the way they suggested cages and swings and stands ... An excellent meal. I have been told the dodo survived here, And yearn for a pet on a string. And I built the pig-house. I had brought sweet coconut seed from Savage Island. I planted kidney potatoes in small earthen hills. Sowed seeds of eggplant in numerous boxes of soil, Tomato and artichoke too; half-a-dozen fine pineapple Sent over by Mr. Carruthers, the island solicitor. As fast as we eat them, we plant the tops. The kitchen a shack near the house. I made bread in the rain. October, 1890. I have been here nearly a month; Put in corn, peas, onions, radishes, lettuce. Lima beans Are already coming up. The ripening cantaloupe were stolen. Carruthers gave me mint root and grenadilla Like a bouquet; he delivered a load of trees, Two mangoes among them. I set them out in a heavy rain, Then rounded off the afternoon sowing Indian corn. Louis has called me a peasant. How I brooded! Confided it to you, diary, then crossed it out. Peasant because I delve in the earth, the earth I own. Confiding my seed and root—I too a creator? My heart melts over a bed of young peas. A blossom On the rose tree is like a poem by my son. My hurt healed by its cause, I go on planting. No one else works much. The natives take it easy; The colonials keep their shops, and a shortage of customers. The mail comes four times a month, and the gossip all day. The bars are crowded with amateur politicians, Office-seekers I named the earwig consul and king: Big talkers, with small-time conspirators drinking them in. Mr. Carruthers and I picked a site for the kitchen garden. I was planting a new lot of corn and pumpkin When a young chief arrived, laden with pineapple plants. I set them out as I talked to him on the way home. Rats and a wild hen ate the corn. Lettuce got too much sun. So I dug a new patch up the road; in the fragrant evening I confided to Louis, a puff of the sweetest scent Blows back as I cast away a handful of so-called weeds! It still hurts, his remark that I have the soul of a peasant. My vanity, like a newly felled tree, lies prone and bleeding. I clear the weeds near the house for planting maize. Sweet corn and peas are showing. I send for more seeds. I clean out the potatoes, which had rotted in their hills. Of course, RLS is not idle; he is writing A Footnote to History: How the great powers combine to carve up these islands. I discovered the ylang-ylang tree: a base for perfume, Though it suggested to me the odor of boots. Another tree is scented like pepper and spice, And one terrible tree, I am forced to say, Smells like ordure ... It nearly made me ill. Breadfruit is plentiful. I found a banana grove, Began clearing it instantly, and worked till I was dizzy. The garden looks like a graveyard: beds shaped like tombs. I plant cabbage which I loathe, so the British won’t tease me For not growing it. But behold! in the hedge Among citron and lime, many lemon trees, in full bearing. Still, I will fall to brooding before the mirror, Though Louis says he finds the peasant class “interesting.” He is forty today. I am ten years his senior. On the cleared land, the green mummy-apple, Male and female, is springing up everywhere. I discover wild ginger, turmeric, something like sugar. Roots of orange, breadfruit and mango, seeds of cacao Came with a shipment from Sydney; also eleven Young navel orange trees. The strawberry plants are rotten. I am given a handful of bees. I plant more pineapple. All fall I am cursed with asthma, rheumatics, a painful ear. Christmas. A hurricane. And the New Year begins. Louis describes it divinely to Henry James. Mr. Carruthers’ gift pineapple starts to fruit. I set out one precious rhubarb plant, pause to gloat At the ripe tomatoes, the flourishing long-podded beans. But the neighbors’ horses break in and trample the corn. Sometimes, when planting, a strange subterranean rumble —Volcanic?—vexes the earth beneath this peasant haunch. I rise up from my furrow, knuckle smooth my brow As I sniff the air, suddenly chemical, a sulphurous fume. Louis insisted on going to Sydney, fell ill again. His mother comes back with him, finds me on my knees. The old lady’s heart leaps! Alas, I am planting, not praying. We both rise at five-thirty, after dreaming of weeds. Louis describes to me endless vivid deeps: Dreams of nettle-stings, stabs from the citron’s thorns, The ants’ fiery bites, the resistance of mud and slime, The evasions of wormy roots, the dead weight of heat In the sudden puffs of air ... Louis writes till nine, Then if he’s well enough, he helps with the weeding. He writes Colvin, keeper of prints at the British Museum, “I know pleasure still ... with a thousand faces, None perfect, a thousand tongues, all broken, A thousand hands, all with scratching nails ... High among joys, I place this delight of weeding, Out here alone by the garrulous water, under the silence Of the high wind, broken by sounds of birds.” The shock of bird-calls, laughing and whistling! They mimic his name till it seems, he says, “The birds re-live the business of my day.” But the rain continues to fall on birds and weeds. The new servants fooled around with the ice machine As the house leaked and listed. Mildew spread its failure. Mrs. S. gave me some nuts, and went back to Australia. Green peppers, eggplant, tomatoes are flourishing, Asparagus also. The celery does to season soup. Avocados grow at a rate that is almost frightening. Coconuts too. I read about Stanley and Livingstone. I cured my five ulcers with calomel, wished I could tell Stanley the remedy. Instead, I made perfume. The servants feared devils, so I planted the orange grove alone. For two months I misplaced this diary ... War is in the air, talk of killing all whites. I bought coffee trees, rose trees, and Indian beans, Then went to Fiji to rest, and to get more seeds From a former Kew gardener. An Indian in a shop Told me how to raise Persian melon and cauliflower And a radish that turns into a turnip when it grows up. I came home to a burgeoning world: cacao, custard squash. The new house was finished, and painted peacock blue. The jealous old cat bit off the new cat’s toes. My mother-in-law returned with her Bible and lady’s maid; My daughter, her family, and my son Lloyd came too. The relatives had a terrible row. Mrs. S. refused To pray with the servants. I threw up my hands! My diary entries grow farther and farther apart. I wrote life was a strain. Later, someone crossed it out. In pain again, from an aneurysm inside my head ... I planted more and more cacao, and a form of cherry tree, Tobacco and rubber, taught how by Mr. Sketchley. I planted more cacao through an epidemic of ’flu. Three hundred seeds in baskets broke through the ground. I get almost no time to write. I have been planting ... Four kinds of cabbage are doing very well. Mr. Haggard, the land commissioner, come to dine, Points out a weed which makes excellent eating Cooked like asparagus. I shall try it very soon. Now, when the Reverend Mr. Claxton comes to call, I refuse to see him. I am tired of the Claxtons. The political situation grows grim. I rage at Louis Who toasts, “Her Blessed Majesty the Queen,” then aggressively Throbbing, turns to my American son To say he may drink to the President afterward If he likes. I am writing this down Hoping Louis will see it later, and be ashamed Of his childishness and bad taste. (This will be erased.) Because war is near, the Germans stop growing cacao. Captain Hufnagel offers me all the seeds I can use. So now we are blazing with cacao fever, The whole family infected. Six hundred plants set out! The verandah tracked with mud, and the cacao litter. Mrs. S. upset by the mess. Twelve hundred cacaos planted. Joe, my son-in-law, planted his thousandth tree today. The tree onions make large bulbs but don’t want to seed. Most vigorous: sunflower, watermelon—weeds! The jelly from berries out of the bush is delicious; Lovely perfume from massoi, citron, vanilla, and gum. The peanuts are weeded while Joe plays on his flute. I plant cabbage by moonlight, set out more cacao. The heart of a death’s-head moth beats a tattoo in my hand. Planted coffee all day, and breadfruit, five beauties ... Planted coffee the better part of the day, eight plants. In the nursery, three times that many. Planted coffee ... Painted the storm shutters. Planted coffee all morning. I found a heap of old bones in a bush near the sty; Two heads and a body: a warrior died with his prize. Louis gave the bones a funeral and a burial. A series of hurricanes: Louis writes to The Times Of “the foul colonial politics.” I send to New York for seeds: Southern Cross cabbage, eggplant, sweet potato And two thousand custard apples. Louis’ own seed, David Balfour, is growing. I wrote nothing From June till the end of this year; too busy planting. The Samoan princes are getting nearer to war. It pains me to write this: my son-in-law has gone native In a spectacular way. Belle is divorcing him. Austin, my grandson, is in school in Monterey. I have not, I believe, mentioned Mrs. Stevenson recently. She has gone back to Scotland. The first breadfruit bore. Belle and I go on sketching expeditions To the hostile Samoan camps, stop in town for ginger beer. Mr. Haggard begged us to stay in town Because he bitterly wanted women to protect. I suggested to him that I and my daughter Could hide under his table and hand him cartridges At the window, to complete the romantic effect. It is clear that Mr. Haggard is Ryder’s brother! He said, “You’d sell your life for a bunch of banana trees.” I’ve given permission to most of the “boys” To go to the races. Lloyd has put up the lawn tennis things. Mr. Gurr, the neighbor, rushes in to say war has begun. We all race to the mission. Eleven heads have been taken. Later: Mr. Dine’s cousin received a head smeared with black (The custom is to return them to the bereaved). He washed it off and discovered it was his brother. He sat there, holding his brother’s head in his hands, Kissing it, bathing it with his tears. A scandal arose Because the heads of three girls have been taken as well (Unheard of before in Samoa), returned wrapped in silk to their kin. At Malie, the warriors danced a head-hunter’s pantomime; The men who had taken heads carried great lumps of raw pork Between their teeth, cut in the semblance of heads. I stopped writing this. Too hysterical with migraine. Also, people find where I hide it, and strike things out. Our favorite chief is exiled for life. The war winds down. Louis works on his masterpiece,The Weir of Hermiston. Well, I’ve kept him alive for eight more years, While his dear friends would have condemned him to fog and rain So they might enjoy his glorious talk in London, Though it be the end of him. Fine friends! except for James. Later: At six, Louis helped with the mayonnaise, When he put both hands to his head, said, “Oh, what a pain! Do I look strange?” I said no, not wanting to frighten him. He was never conscious again. In two hours he died. Tonight, the chiefs with their axes are digging a path To the top of the mountain. They will dig his grave. I will leave here as soon as I can, and never return, Except to be buried beside him. I will live like a gipsy In my wild, ragged clothes, until I am old, old. I will have pretty gardens wherever I am, But never breadfruit, custard apples, grenadilla, cacao, Pineapple, ylang-ylang, citron, mango, cacao, Never again succumb to the fever of planting.

It’s a spring morning; sun pours in the window As I sit here drinking coffee, reading Augustine. And finding him, as always, newly minted From when I first encountered him in school. Today I’m overcome with astonishment At the way we girls denied all that was mean In those revered philosophers we studied; Who found us loathsome, loathsomely seductive; Irrelevant, at best, to noble discourse Among the sex, the only sex that counted. Wounded, we pretended not to mind it And wore tight sweaters to tease our shy professor. We sat in autumn sunshine “as the clouds arose From slimy desires of the flesh, and from Youth’s seething spring.” Thank you, Augustine. Attempting to seem blasé, our cheeks on fire, It didn’t occur to us to rush from the room. Instead we brushed aside “the briars of unclean desire” And struggled on through mires of misogyny Till we arrived at Kierkegaard, and began to see That though Saint A. and Søren had much in common Including fear and trembling before women, The Saint scared himself, while Søren was scared of us. Had we, poor girls, been flattered by their thralldom? Yes, it was always us, the rejected feminine From whom temptation came. It was our flesh With its deadly sweetness that led them on. Yet how could we not treasure Augustine, “Stuck fast in the bird-lime of pleasure”? That roomful of adolescent poets manqué Assuaged, bemused by music, let the meaning go. Swept by those psalmic cadences, we were seduced! Some of us tried for a while to be well-trained souls And pious seekers, enmeshed in the Saint’s dialectic: Responsible for our actions, yet utterly helpless. A sensible girl would have barked like a dog before God. We students, children still, were shocked to learn The children these men desired were younger than we! Augustine fancied a girl about eleven, The age of Adeodatus, Augustine’s son. Søren, like Poe, eyed his girl before she was sixteen, To impose his will on a malleable child, when She was not equipped to withstand or understand him. Ah, the Pygmalion instinct! Mold the clay! Create the compliant doll that can only obey, Expecting to be abandoned, minute by minute. It was then I abandoned philosophy, A minor loss, although I majored in it. But we were a group of sunny innocents. I don’t believe we knew what evil meant. Now I live with a well-trained soul who deals with evil, Including error, material or spiritual, Easily, like changing a lock on the kitchen door. He prays at set times and in chosen places (At meals, in church), while I Pray without thinking how or when to pray, In a low mumble, several times a day, Like running a continuous low fever; The sexual impulse for the most part being over. Believing I believe. Not banking on it ever. It’s afternoon. I sit here drinking kir And reading Kierkegaard: “All sin begins with fear.” (True. We lie first from terror of our parents.) In, I believe, an oblique crack at Augustine, Søren said by denying the erotic It was brought to the attention of the world. The rainbow curtain rises on the sensual: Christians must admit it before they can deny it. He reflected on his father’s fierce repression Of the sexual, which had bent him out of shape; Yet he had to pay obeisance to that power: He chose his father when he broke with his Regina. Søren said by denying the erotic It is brought to the attention of the world. You must admit it before you can deny it.

Now, when he and I meet, after all these years, I say to the bitch inside me, don’t start growling. He isn’t a trespasser anymore, Just an old acquaintance tipping his hat. My voice says, “Nice to see you,” As the bitch starts to bark hysterically. He isn’t an enemy now, Where are your manners, I say, as I say, “How are the children? They must be growing up.” At a kind word from him, a look like the old days, The bitch changes her tone; she begins to whimper. She wants to snuggle up to him, to cringe. Down, girl! Keep your distance Or I’ll give you a taste of the choke-chain. “Fine, I’m just fine,” I tell him. She slobbers and grovels. After all, I am her mistress. She is basically loyal. It’s just that she remembers how she came running Each evening, when she heard his step; How she lay at his feet and looked up adoringly Though he was absorbed in his paper; Or, bored with her devotion, ordered her to the kitchen Until he was ready to play. But the small careless kindnesses When he’d had a good day, or a couple of drinks, Come back to her now, seem more important Than the casual cruelties, the ultimate dismissal. “It’s nice to know you are doing so well,” I say. He couldn’t have taken you with him; You were too demonstrative, too clumsy, Not like the well-groomed pets of his new friends. “Give my regards to your wife,” I say. You gag As I drag you off by the scruff, Saying, “Goodbye! Goodbye! Nice to have seen you again.”

after Po Chü-i, for Robert Creeley We don’t lack people here on the Northern coast, But they are people one meets, not people one cares for. So I bundle my daughters into the car And with my brother poets, go to visit you, brother. Here come your guests! A swarm of strangers and children; But the strangers write verses, the children are daughters like yours. We bed down on mattresses, cots, roll up on the floor: Outside, burly old fruit trees in mist and rain; In every room, bundles asleep like larvae. We waken and count our daughters. Otherwise, nothing happens. You feed them sweet rolls and melon, drive them all to the zoo; Patiently, patiently, ever the father, you answer their questions. Later, we eat again, drink, listen to poems. Nothing occurs, though we are aware you have three daughters Who last year had four. But even death becomes part of our ease: Poems, parenthood, sorrow, all we have learned From these of tenderness, holds us together In the center of life, entertaining daughters By firelight, with cake and songs. You, my brother, are a good and violent drinker, Good at reciting short-line or long-line poems. In time we will lose all our daughters, you and I, Be temperate, venerable, content to stay in one place, Sending our messages over the mountains and waters.

for John At a party I spy a handsome psychiatrist, And wish, as we all do, to get her advice for free. Doctor, I’ll say, I’m supposed to be a poet. All life’s awfulness has been grist to me. We learn that happiness is a Chinese meal, While sorrow is a nourishment forever. My new environment is California Dreamer. I’m fearful I’m forgetting how to brood. And, Doctor, another thing has got me worried: I’m not drinking as much as I should . . . At home, I want to write a happy poem On love, or a love poem of happiness. But they won’t do, the tensions of every day, The rub, the minor abrasions of any two Who share one space. Ah, there’s no substitute for tragedy! But in this chapter, tragedy belongs To that other life, the old life before us. Here is my aphorism of the day: Happy people are monogamous. Even in California. So how does the poem play Without the paraphernalia of betrayal and loss? I don’t have a jealous eye or fear And neither do you. In truth, I’m fond Of your ex-mate, whom I name “my wife-in-law.” My former husband, that old disaster, is now just funny, So laugh we do, in what Cyril Connolly Has called the endless, nocturnal conversation Of marriage. Which may be the best part. Darling, must I love you in light verse Without the tribute of profoundest art? Of course it won’t last. You will break my heart Or I yours, by dying. I could weep over that. But now it seems forced, here in these heaven hills, The mourning doves mourning, the squirrels mating, My old cat warm in my lap, here on our terrace As from below comes a musical cursing As you mend my favorite plate. Later of course I could pick a fight; there is always material in that. But we don’t come from fighting people, those Who scream out red-hot iambs in their hate. No, love, the heavy poem will have to come From temps perdu, fertile with pain, or perhaps Detonated by terrors far beyond this place Where the world rends itself, and its tainted waters Rise in the east to erode our safety here. Much as I want to gather a lifetime thrift And craft, my cunning skills tied in a knot for you, There is only this useless happiness as gift.