Lorine Niedecker

You are the man You are my other country and I find it hard going You are the prickly pear You are the sudden violent storm the torrent to raise the river to float the wounded doe

The wild and wavy event now chintz at the window was revolution . . . Adams to Miss Abigail Smith: You have faults You hang your head down like a bulrush you read, you write, you think but I drink Madeira to you and you cross your Leggs while sitting. (Later:) How are the children? If in danger run to the woods. Evergreen o evergreen how faithful are your branches.

What horror to awake at night and in the dimness see the light. Time is white mosquitoes bite I’ve spent my life on nothing. The thought that stings. How are you, Nothing, sitting around with Something’s wife. Buzz and burn is all I learn I’ve spent my life on nothing. I’m pillowed and padded, pale and puffing lifting household stuffing— carpets, dishes benches, fishes I’ve spent my life in nothing.

Ten thousand women and I the only one in boots Life’s dance: they meet he holds her leg up

I The chemist creates the brazen approximation: Life Thy will be done Sun II Time to garden before I die— to meet my compost maker the caretaker of the cemetery

I My wife is ill! And I sit waiting for a quorum II Fast ride his horse collapsed Now he saddled walked Borrowed a farmer’s unbroken colt To Richmond Richmond How stop— Arnold’s redcoats there III Elk Hill destroyed— Cornwallis carried off 30 slaves Jefferson: Were it to give them freedom he’d have done right IV Latin and Greek my tools to understand humanity I rode horse away from a monarch to an enchanting philosophy V The South of France Roman temple “simple and sublime” Maria Cosway harpist on his mind white column and arch VI To daughter Patsy: Read— read Livy No person full of work was ever hysterical Know music, history dancing (I calculate 14 to 1 in marriage she will draw a blockhead) Science also Patsy VII Agreed with Adams: send spermaceti oil to Portugal for their church candles (light enough to banish mysteries?: three are one and one is three and yet the one not three and the three not one) and send salt fish U.S. salt fish preferred above all other VIII Jefferson of Patrick Henry backwoods fiddler statesman: “He spoke as Homer wrote” Henry eyed our minister at Paris— the Bill of Rights hassle— “he remembers . . . in splendor and dissipation he thinks yet of bills of rights” IX True, French frills and lace for Jefferson, sword and belt but follow the Court to Fontainebleau he could not— house rent would have left him nothing to eat . . . He bowed to everyone he met and talked with arms folded He could be trimmed by a two-month migraine and yet stand up X Dear Polly: I said No—no frost in Virginia—the strawberries were safe I’d have heard—I’m in that kind of correspondence with a young daughter— if they were not Now I must retract I shrink from it XI Political honors “splendid torments” “If one could establish an absolute power of silence over oneself” When I set out for Monticello (my grandchildren will they know me?) How are my young chestnut trees— XII Hamilton and the bankers would make my country Carthage I am abandoning the rich— their dinner parties— I shall eat my simlins with the class of science or not at all Next year the last of labors among conflicting parties Then my family we shall sow our cabbages together XIII Delicious flower of the acacia or rather Mimosa Nilotica from Mr. Lomax XIV Polly Jefferson, 8, had crossed to father and sister in Paris by way of London—Abigail embraced her—Adams said “in all my life I never saw more charming child” Death of Polly, 25, Monticello XV My harpsichord my alabaster vase and bridle bit bound for Alexandria Virginia The good sea weather of retirement The drift and suck and die-down of life but there is land XVI These were my passions: Monticello and the villa-temples I passed on to carpenters bricklayers what I knew and to an Italian sculptor how to turn a volute on a pillar You may approach the campus rotunda from lower to upper terrace Cicero had levels XVII John Adams’ eyes dimming Tom Jefferson’s rheumatism cantering XVIII Ah soon must Monticello be lost to debts and Jefferson himself to death XIX Mind leaving, let body leave Let dome live, spherical dome and colonnade Martha (Patsy) stay “The Committee of Safety must be warned” Stay youth—Anne and Ellen all my books, the bantams and the seeds of the senega root

Popcorn-can cover screwed to the wall over a hole so the cold can’t mouse in

Grandfather advised me: Learn a trade I learned to sit at desk and condense No layoff from this condensery

And the place was water Fish fowl flood Water lily mud My life in the leaves and on water My mother and I born in swale and swamp and sworn to water My father thru marsh fog sculled down from high ground saw her face at the organ bore the weight of lake water and the cold— he seined for carp to be sold that their daughter might go high on land to learn Saw his wife turn deaf and away She who knew boats and ropes no longer played She helped him string out nets for tarring And she could shoot He was cool to the man who stole his minnows by night and next day offered to sell them back He brought in a sack of dandelion greens if no flood No oranges—none at hand No marsh marigold where the water rose He kept us afloat I mourn her not hearing canvasbacks their blast-off rise from the water Not hearing sora rails’s sweet spoon-tapped waterglass- descending scale- tear-drop-tittle Did she giggle as a girl? His skiff skimmed the coiled celery now gone from these streams due to carp He knew duckweed fall-migrates toward Mud Lake bottom Knew what lay under leaf decay and on pickerel weeds before summer hum To be counted on: new leaves new dead leaves He could not —like water bugs— stride surface tension He netted loneliness As to his bright new car my mother—her house next his—averred: A hummingbird can’t haul Anchored here in the rise and sink of life— middle years’ nights he sat beside his shoes rocking his chair Roped not “looped in the loop of her hair” I grew in green slide and slant of shore and shade Child-time—wade thru weeds Maples to swing from Pewee-glissando sublime slime- song Grew riding the river Books at home-pier Shelley could steer as he read I was the solitary plover a pencil for a wing-bone From the secret notes I must tilt upon the pressure execute and adjust In us sea-air rhythm “We live by the urgent wave of the verse” Seven year molt for the solitary bird and so young Seven years the one dress for town once a week One for home faded blue-striped as she piped her cry Dancing grounds my people had none woodcocks had— backland- air around Solemnities such as what flower to take to grandfather’s grave unless water lilies— he who’d bowed his head to grass as he mowed Iris now grows on fill for the two and for him where they lie How much less am I in the dark than they? Effort lay in us before religions at pond bottom All things move toward the light except those that freely work down to oceans’ black depths In us an impulse tests the unknown River rising—flood Now melt and leave home Return—broom wet naturally wet Under soak-heavy rug water bugs hatched— no snake in the house Where were they?— she who knew how to clean up after floods he who bailed boats, houses Water endows us with buckled floors You with sea water running in your veins sit down in water Expect the long-stemmed blue speedwell to renew itself O my floating life Do not save love for things Throw things to the flood ruined by the flood Leave the new unbought— all one in the end— water I possessed the high word: The boy my friend played his violin in the great hall On this stream my moonnight memory washed of hardships maneuvers barges thru the mouth of the river They fished in beauty It was not always so In Fishes red Mars rising rides the sloughs and sluices of my mind with the persons on the edge

Old Mother turns blue and from us, “Don’t let my head drop to the earth. I’m blind and deaf.” Death from the heart, a thimble in her purse. “It’s a long day since last night. Give me space. I need floors. Wash the floors, Lorine!— wash clothes! Weed!”