Muriel Rukeyser

for Richard Griffith 1  THE BURNING Girl grown woman     fire     mother of fire I go to the stone street turning to fire.     Voices Go screaming     Fire     to the green glass wall. And there where my youth flies blazing into fire The     dance     of sane and insane images, noon Of seasons and days.     Noontime of my one hour. Saw down the bright noon street the crooked faces Among the tall daylight in the city of change. The scene has walls     stone     glass     all my gone life One wall a web through which the moment walks And I am open, and the opened hour The world as water-garden     lying behind it. In a city of stone, necessity of fountains, Forces water fallen on glass, men with their axes. An arm of flame reaches from water-green glass, Behind the wall I know waterlilies Drinking their light, transforming light and our eyes Skythrown under water, clouds under those flowers, Walls standing on all things stand in a city noon Who will not believe a waterlily fire. Whatever can happen in a city of stone, Whatever can come to a wall can come to this wall. I walk in the river of crisis toward the real, I pass guards, finding the center of my fear And you, Dick, endlessly my friend during storm. The arm of flame striking through the wall of form. 2  THE ISLAND Born of this river and this rock island, I relate The changes : I born when the whirling snow Rained past the general’s grave and the amiable child White past the windows of the house of Gyp the Blood. General, gangster, child.     I know in myself the island. I was the island without bridges, the child down whose blazing Eye the men of plumes and bone raced their canoes and fire Among the building of my young childhood, houses; I was those changes, the live darknesses Of wood, the pale grain of a grove in the fields Over the river fronting red cliffs across— And always surrounding her the river, birdcries, the wild Father building his sand, the mother in panic her parks— Bridges were thrown across, the girl arose From sleeping streams of change in the change city. The violent forgetting, the naked sides of darkness. Fountain of a city in growth, and island of light and water. Snow striking up past the graves, the yellow cry of spring. Whatever can come to a city can come to this city. Under the tall compulsion of the past I see the city change like a man changing I love this man with my lifelong body of love I know you among your changes wherever I go Hearing the sounds of building the syllables of wrecking A young girl watching the man throwing red hot rivets Coals in a bucket of change How can you love a city that will not stay? I love you like a man of life in change. Leaves like yesterday shed, the yellow of green spring Like today accepted and become one’s self I go, I am a city with bridges and tunnels, Rock, cloud, ships, voices.     To the man where the river met The tracks, now buried deep along the Drive Where blossoms like sex pink, dense pink, rose, pink, red. Towers falling.     A dream of towers. Necessity of fountains.     And my poor, Stirring among our dreams, Poor of my own spirit, and tribes, hope of towers And lives, looking out through my eyes. The city the growing body of our hate and love. The root of the soul, and war in its black doorways. A male sustained cry interrupting nightmare. Male flower heading upstream. Among a city of light, the stone that grows. Stigma of dead stone, inert water, the tattered Monuments rivetted against flesh. Blue noon where the wall made big agonized men Stand like sailors pinned howling on their lines, and I See stopped in time a crime behind green glass, Lilies of all my life on fire. Flash faith in a city building its fantasies. I walk past the guards into my city of change. 3  JOURNEY CHANGES Many of us     Each in his own life waiting Waiting to move     Beginning to move     Walking And early on the road of the hill of the world Come to my landscapes emerging on the grass The stages of the theatre of the journey I see the time of willingness between plays Waiting and walking and the play of the body Silver body with its bosses and places One by one touched awakened into into Touched and turned one by one into     flame The theatre of the advancing goddess     Blossoming Smiles as she stands intensely being in stillness Slowness in her blue dress advancing standing I go And far across a field over the jewel grass The play of the family stroke by stroke acted out Gestures of deep acknowledging on the journey stages Of the playings the play of the goddess and the god A supple god of searching and reaching Who weaves his strength     Who dances her more alive The theatre of all animals, my snakes, my great horses Always the journey     long     patient     many haltings Many waitings for choice and again easy breathing When the decision to go on is made Along the long slopes of choice and again the world The play of poetry approaching in its solving Solvings of relations in poems and silences For we were born to express     born for a journey Caves, theatres, the companioned solitary way And then I came to the place of mournful labor A turn in the road and the long sight from the cliff Over the scene of the land dug away to nothing and many Seen to a stripped horizon carrying barrows of earth A hod of earth taken and emptied and thrown away Repeated farther than sight.     The voice saying slowly But it is hell.     I heard my own voice in the words Or it could be a foundation     And after the words My chance came.     To enter.     The theatres of the world. 4  FRAGILE I think of the image brought into my room Of the sage and the thin young man who flickers and asks. He is asking about the moment when the Buddha Offers the lotus, a flower held out as declaration. “Isn’t that fragile?” he asks.     The sage answers: “I speak to you.     You speak to me.     Is that fragile?” 5  THE LONG BODY This journey is exploring us. Where the child stood An island in a river of crisis, now The bridges bind us in symbol, the sea Is a bond, the sky reaches into our bodies. We pray : we dive into each other’s eyes. Whatever can come to a woman can come to me. This is the long body : into life from the beginning, Big-headed infant unfolding into child, who stretches and finds And then flowing the young one going tall, sunward, And now full-grown, held, tense, setting feet to the ground, Going as we go in the changes of the body, As it is changes, in the long strip of our many Shapes, as we range shifting through time. The long body : a procession of images. This moment in a city, in its dream of war. We chose to be, Becoming the only ones under the trees when the harsh sound Of the machine sirens spoke. There were these two men, And the bearded one, the boys, the Negro mother feeding Her baby. And threats, the ambulance with open doors. Now silence. Everyone else within the walls. We sang. We are the living island, We the flesh of this island, being lived, Whoever knows us is part of us today. Whatever can happen to anyone can happen to me. Fire striking its word among us, waterlilies Reaching from darkness upward to a sun Of rebirth, the implacable.     And in our myth The Changing Woman who is still and who offers. Eyes drinking light, transforming light, this day That struggles with itself, brings itself to birth. In ways of being, through silence, sources of light Arriving behind my eye, a dialogue of light. And everything a witness of the buried life. This moment flowing across the sun, this force Of flowers and voices body in body through space. The city of endless cycles of the sun. I speak to you     You speak to me

I Whoever despises the clitoris despises the penis Whoever despises the penis despises the cunt Whoever despises the cunt despises the life of the child. Resurrection music,        silence,        and surf. II No longer speaking Listening with the whole body And with every drop of blood Overtaken by silence But this same silence is become speech With the speed of darkness. III Stillness during war, the lake. The unmoving spruces. Glints over the water. Faces, voices.        You are far away. A tree that trembles. I am the tree that trembles and trembles. IV After the lifting of the mist after the lift of the heavy rains the sky stands clear and the cries of the city risen in day I remember the buildings are space walled, to let space be used for living I mind this room is space this drinking glass is space whose boundary of glass lets me give you drink and space to drink your hand, my hand being space containing skies and constellations your face carries the reaches of air I know I am space my words are air. V Between        between the man : act        exact woman : in curve        senses in their maze frail orbits, green tries,           games of stars shape of the body speaking its evidence VI I look across at the real vulnerable        involved        naked devoted to the present of all I care for the world of its history leading to this moment. VII Life the announcer. I assure you there are many ways to have a child. I bastard mother promise you there are many ways to be born. They all come forth in their own grace. VIII Ends of the earth join tonight with blazing stars upon their meeting. These sons,        these sons fall burning into Asia. IX Time comes into it. Say it.        Say it. The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. X Lying blazing beside me you rear beautifully and up— your thinking face— erotic body reaching in all its colors and lights— your erotic face colored and lit— not colored body-and-face but now entire, colors       lights       the world thinking and reaching. XI The river flows past the city. Water goes down to tomorrow making its children        I hear their unborn voices I am working out the vocabulary of my silence. XII Big-boned man young and of my dream Struggles to get the live bird out of his throat. I am he am I?        Dreaming? I am the bird am I?        I am the throat? A bird with a curved beak. It could slit anything, the throat-bird. Drawn up slowly.        The curved blades, not large. Bird emerges        wet        being born Begins to sing. XIII My night awake staring at the broad rough jewel the copper roof across the way thinking of the poet yet unborn in this dark who will be the throat of these hours. No.        Of those hours. Who will speak these days, if not I, if not you?

for Robert Payne Great Alexander sailing was from his true course turned By a young wind from a cloud in Asia moving Like a most recognizable most silvery woman; Tall Alexander to the island came. The small breeze blew behind his turning head. He walked the foam of ripples into this scene. The trunk of the speaking tree looks like a tree-trunk Until you look again.     Then people and animals Are ripening on the branches;     the broad leaves Are leaves;     pale horses, sharp fine foxes Blossom;     the red rabbit falls Ready and running.     The trunk coils, turns, Snakes, fishes.     Now the ripe people fall and run, Three of them in their shore-dance, flames that stand Where reeds are creatures and the foam is flame. Stiff Alexander stands.     He cannot turn. But he is free to turn : this is the speaking tree, It calls your name.     It tells us what we mean.

The world is full of loss; bring, wind, my love, my home is where we make our meeting-place, and love whatever I shall touch and read within that face. Lift, wind, my exile from my eyes; peace to look, life to listen and confess, freedom to find to find to find that nakedness.

We set great wreaths of brightness on the graves of the passionate who required tribute of hot July flowers— for you, O brittle-hearted, we bring offering remembering how your wrists were thin and your delicate bones not yet braced for conquering. The sharp cries of ghost-boys are keen above the meadows, and little girls continue graceful and wondering. Flickering evening on the lakes recalls those young heirs whose developing years have sunk to earth, their strength not tested, their praise unsung. Weave grasses for their childhood—who will never see love or disaster or take sides against decay balancing the choices of maturity. Silent and coffined in silence while we pass loud in defiance of death, the helpless lie. October 1935

Make and be eaten, the poet says, Lie in the arms of nightlong fire, To celebrate the waking, wake. Burn in the daylong light; and praise Even the mother unappeased, Even the fathers of desire. Blind go the days, but joy will see Agreements of music; they will wind The shaking of your dance; no more Will the ambiguous arm-waves spell Confusion of the blessing given. Only and finally declare Among the purest shapes of grace The waking of the face of fire, The body of waking and the skill To make your body such a shape That all the eyes of hope shall stare. That all the cries of fear shall know, Staring in their bird-pierced song; Lines of such penetration make That shall bind our loves at last. Then from the mountains of the lost, All the fantasies shall wake, Strong and real and speaking turn Wherever flickers your unreal. And my strong ghosts shall fade and pass My love start fiery as grass Wherever burn my fantasies, Wherever burn my fantasies. April 1955

I lived in the first century of world wars. Most mornings I would be more or less insane, The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories, The news would pour out of various devices Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen. I would call my friends on other devices; They would be more or less mad for similar reasons. Slowly I would get to pen and paper, Make my poems for others unseen and unborn. In the day I would be reminded of those men and women, Brave, setting up signals across vast distances, Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values. As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened, We would try to imagine them, try to find each other, To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other, Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves, To let go the means, to wake. I lived in the first century of these wars.

Deeper than sleep but not so deep as death I lay there dreaming and my magic head remembered and forgot. On first cry I remembered and forgot and did believe. I knew love and I knew evil: woke to the burning song and the tree burning blind, despair of our days and the calm milk-giver who knows sleep, knows growth, the sex of fire and grass, renewal of all waters and the time of the stars and the black snake with gold bones. Black sleeps, gold burns; on second cry I woke fully and gave to feed and fed on feeding. Gold seed, green pain, my wizards in the earth walked through the house, black in the morning dark. Shadows grew in my veins, my bright belief, my head of dreams deeper than night and sleep. Voices of all black animals crying to drink, cries of all birth arise, simple as we, found in the leaves, in clouds and dark, in dream, deep as this hour, ready again to sleep.

Murmurs from the earth of this land, from the caves and craters, from the bowl of darkness. Down watercourses of our dragon childhood, where we ran barefoot. We stand as growing women and men. Murmurs come down where water has not run for sixty years. Murmurs from the tulip tree and the catalpa, from the ax of the stars, from the house on fire, ringing of glass; from the abandoned iron-black mill. Stars with voices crying like mountain lions over forgotten colors. Blue directions and a horizon, milky around the cities where the murmurs are deep enough to penetrate deep rock. Trapping the lightning-bird, trapping the red central roots. You know the murmurs. They come from your own throat. You are the bridges to the city and the blazing food-plant green; The sun of plants speaks in your voice, and the infinite shells of accretions A beach of dream before the smoking mirror. You are close to that surf, and the leaves heated by noon, and the star-ax, the miner’s glitter walls. The crests of the sea Are the same strength you wake with, the darkness is the eyes of children forming for a blaze of sight and soon, soon, Everywhere your own silence, who drink from the crater, the nebula, one another, the changes of the soul.

1 Held between wars my lifetime among wars, the big hands of the world of death my lifetime listens to yours. The faces of the sufferers in the street, in dailiness, their lives showing through their bodies a look as of music the revolutionary look that says    I am in the world to change the world my lifetime is to love to endure to suffer the music to set its portrait up as a sheet of the world the most moving the most alive Easter and bone and Faust walking among flowers of the world and the child alive within the living woman, music of man, and death holding my lifetime between great hands the hands of enduring life that suffers the gifts and madness of full life, on earth, in our time, and through my life, through my eyes, through my arms and hands may give the face of this music in portrait waiting for the unknown person held in the two hands, you. 2 Woman as gates, saying: "The process is after all like music, like the development of a piece of music. The fugues come back and again and again interweave. A theme may seem to have been put aside, but it keeps returning— the same thing modulated, somewhat changed in form. Usually richer. And it is very good that this is so." A woman pouring her opposites. "After all there are happy things in life too. Why do you show only the dark side?" "I could not answer this. But I know— in the beginning my impulse to know the working life had little to do with pity or sympathy. I simply felt that the life of the workers was beautiful." She said, "I am groping in the dark." She said, "When the door opens, of sensuality, then you will understand it too. The struggle begins. Never again to be free of it, often you will feel it to be your enemy. Sometimes you will almost suffocate, such joy it brings." Saying of her husband: "My wish is to die after Karl. I know no person who can love as he can, with his whole soul. But often too it has made me so terribly happy." She said: "We rowed over to Carrara at dawn, climbed up to the marble quarries and rowed back at night. The drops of water fell like guttering stars from our oars." She said: "As a matter of fact, I believe that bisexuality is almost    a necessary factor in artistic production; at any rate, the tinge of masculinity within me helped me in my work." She said: "The only technique I can still manage. It's hardly a technique at all, lithography. In it only the essentials count." A tight-lipped man in a restaurant last night saying to me: "Kollwitz?     She's too black-and-white." 3 Held among wars, watching all of them all these people weavers, Carmagnole Looking at all of them death, the children patients in waiting-rooms famine the street A woman seeing the violent, inexorable movement of nakedness and the confession of No the confession of great weakness, war, all streaming to one son killed, Peter; even the son left living; repeated, the father, the mother; the grandson another Peter killed in another war; firestorm; dark, light, as two hands, this pole and that pole as the gates. What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open 4Song : The Calling-Up Rumor, stir of ripeness rising within this girl sensual blossoming of meaning, its light and form. The birth-cry summoning out of the male, the father from the warm woman a mother in response. The word of death calls up the fight with stone wrestle with grief with time from the material make an art harder than bronze. 5 Self-Portrait Mouth looking directly at you eyes in their inwardness looking directly at you half light    half darkness woman, strong, German, young artist flows into wide sensual mouth meditating looking right at you eyes shadowed with brave hand looking deep at you flows into wounded brave mouth grieving and hooded eyes alive, German, in her first War flows into strength of the worn face a skein of lines broods, flows into mothers among the war graves bent over death facing the father stubborn upon the field flows into the marks of her knowing— Nie Wieder Krieg repeated in the eyes flows into "Seedcorn must not be ground" and the grooved cheek lips drawn fine the down-drawn grief face of our age flows into Pieta, mother and between her knees life as her son in death pouring from the sky of one more war flows into face almost obliterated hand over the mouth forever hand over one eye now the other great eye closed