George Oppen

night – sky         bird’s         world to know         to know         in my life to know what I have said to myself the dark to escape in brilliant highways of the night sky, finally why had they not killed me why did they fire that warning wounding cannon only the one round I hold a superstition because of this    lost to be lost    Wyatt’s lyric and Rezi’s running thru my mind in the destroyed (and guilty) Theatre of the War    I’d cried and remembered boyhood    degradation         other degradations and this crime I will not recover from that landscape it will be in my mind it will fill my mind and this is horrible death bed         pavement         the secret taste of being lost dead clown in the birds’ world what names (but my name) and my love’s name to speak into the eyes of the Tyger         blaze of changes . . . ‘named the animals’         name and name the vigorous dusty strong animals gather under the joists   the boards   older than they   giving them darkness the gifted dark tho names   the names   the ‘little’ adventurous words   a mountain   the cliff a wave are taxonomy I believe in the world because it is impossible         the shack on the coast under the eaves the rain barrel flooding in the weather and no lights across rough water illumined as tho the narrow end of the funnel what are the names of the Tyger   to speak to the eyes of the Tiger   blaze of the tiger   who moves in the forest leaving no scent but the pine needles’ his eyes blink quick in         the shack in the knife-cut and the opaque white bread each side of the knife

Truth also is the pursuit of it: Like happiness, and it will not stand. Even the verse begins to eat away In the acid. Pursuit, pursuit; A wind moves a little, Moving in a circle, very cold. How shall we say? In ordinary discourse— We must talk now. I am no longer sure of the words, The clockwork of the world. What is inexplicable Is the ‘preponderance of objects.’ The sky lights Daily with that predominance And we have become the present. We must talk now. Fear Is fear. But we abandon one another.

1 Likely as not a ruined head gasket Spitting at every power stroke, if not a crank shaft Bearing knocking at the roots of the thing like a pile-driver: A machine involved with itself, a concentrated Hot lump of a machine Geared in the loose mechanics of the world with the valves jumping And the heavy frenzy of the pistons. When the thing stops, Is stopped, with the last slow cough In the manifold, the flywheel blundering Against compression, stopping, finally Stopped, compression leaking From the idle cylinders will one imagine Then because he can imagine That squeezed from the cooling steel There hovers in that moment, wraith-like and like a plume of steam, an aftermath, A still and quiet angel of knowledge and of comprehension. 2 Endlessly, endlessly, The definition of mortality The image of the engine That stops. We cannot live on that. I know that no one would live out Thirty years, fifty years if the world were ending With his life. The machine stares out, Stares out With all its eyes Thru the glass With the ripple in it, past the sill Which is dusty—If there is someone In the garden! Outside, and so beautiful. 3 What ends Is that. Even companionship Ending. ‘I want to ask if you remember When we were happy! As tho all travels Ended untold, all embarkations Foundered. 4 On that water Grey with morning The gull will fold its wings And sit. And with its two eyes There as much as anything Can watch a ship and all its hallways And all companions sink. 5 Also he has set the world In their hearts.

Her arms around me—child— Around my head, hugging with her whole arms, Whole arms as if I were a loved and native rock, The apple in her hand—her apple and her father, and my nose pressed Hugely to the collar of her winter coat—. There in the photograph It is the child who is the branch We fall from, where would be bramble, Brush, bramble in the young Winter With its blowing snow she must have thought Was ours to give to her.

1 THE GESTURE The question is: how does one hold an apple Who likes apples And how does one handle Filth? The question is How does one hold something In the mind which he intends To grasp and how does the salesman Hold a bauble he intends To sell? The question is When will there not be a hundred Poets who mistake that gesture For a style. 2 THE LITTLE HOLE The little hole in the eye Williams called it, the little hole Has exposed us naked To the world And will not close. Blankly the world Looks in And we compose Colors And the sense Of home And there are those In it so violent And so alone They cannot rest. 3 THAT LAND Sing like a bird at the open Sky, but no bird Is a man— Like the grip Of the Roman hand On his shoulder, the certainties Of place And of time Held him, I think With the pain and the casual horror Of the iron and may have left No hope of doubt Whereas we have won doubt From the iron itself And hope in death. So that If a man lived forever he would outlive Hope. I imagine open sky Over Gethsemane, Surely it was this sky. 4 PAROUSIA Impossible to doubt the world: it can be seen And because it is irrevocable It cannot be understood, and I believe that fact is lethal And man may find his catastrophe, His Millennium of obsession. air moving, a stone on a stone, something balanced momentarily, in time might the lion Lie down in the forest, less fierce And solitary Than the world, the walls Of whose future may stand forever. 5 FROM VIRGIL I, says the buzzard, I— Mind Has evolved Too long If ‘life is a search For advantage.’ ‘At whose behest Does the mind think?’ Art Also is not good For us Unless like the fool Persisting In his folly It may rescue us As only the true Might rescue us, gathered In the smallest corners Of man’s triumph. Parve puer . . . ‘Begin, O small boy, To be born; On whom his parents have not smiled No god thinks worthy of his table, No goddess of her bed’

Miracle of the children              the brilliant Children           the word Liquid as woodlands              Children? When she was a child I read Exodus To my daughter          'The children of Israel. . .' Pillar of fire Pillar of cloud We stared at the end Into each other's eyes                            Where She said hushed Were the adults              We dreamed to each other Miracle of the children The brilliant children                       Miracle Of their brilliance                      Miracle of

Town, a town, But location Over which the sun as it comes to it; Which cools, houses and lamp-posts, during the night, with the roads— Inhabited partly by those Who have been born here, Houses built—. From a train one sees him in the morning, his morning; Him in the afternoon, straightening— People everywhere, time and the work pauseless: One moves between reading and re-reading, The shape is a moment. From a crowd a white powdered face, Eyes and mouth making three— Awaited—locally—a date. * Near your eyes— Love at the pelvis Reaches the generic, gratuitous (Your eyes like snail-tracks) Parallel emotions, We slide in separate hard grooves Bowstrings to bent loins, Self moving Moon, mid-air. * Fragonard, Your spiral women By a fountain ‘1732’ Your picture lasts thru us its air Thick with succession of civilizations; And the women. * No interval of manner Your body in the sun. You? A solid, this that the dress insisted, Your face unaccented, your mouth a mouth? Practical knees: It is you who truly Excel the vegetable, The fitting of grasses—more bare than that. Pointedly bent, your elbow on a car-edge Incognito as summer Among mechanics. * ‘O city ladies’ Your coats wrapped, Your hips a possession Your shoes arched Your walk is sharp Your breasts Pertain to lingerie The fields are road-sides, Rooms outlast you. * Bad times: The cars pass By the elevated posts And the movie sign. A man sells post-cards. * It brightens up into the branches And against the same buildings A morning: His job is as regular.

The sea and a crescent strip of beach Show between the service station and a deserted shack A creek drains thru the beach Forming a ditch There is a discarded super-market cart in the ditch That beach is the edge of a nation There is something like shouting along the highway A California shouting On the long fast highway over the California mountains Point Pedro Its distant life It is impossible the world should be either good or bad If its colors are beautiful or if they are not beautiful If parts of it taste good or if no parts of it taste good It is as remarkable in one case as the other As against this We have suffered fear, we know something of fear And of humiliation mounting to horror The world above the edge of the foxhole belongs to the flying bullets, leaden superbeings For the men grovelling in the foxhole danger, danger in being drawn to them These little dumps The poem is about them Our hearts are twisted In dead men’s pride Dead men crowd us Lean over us In the emplacements The skull spins Empty of subject The hollow ego Flinching from the war’s huge air Tho we are delivery boys and bartenders We will choke on each other Minds may crack But not for what is discovered Unless that everyone knew And kept silent Our minds are split To seek the danger out From among the miserable soldiers