Norman Williams

The sinew of the hickory that grips The axe, the rasp of salt against the skin, Or rockbound earth that shines the steel plough In spring, are thought along our coast to lend A native character, though none can match The force of grief: compare the fisherman’s Scored cheeks; the ligaments that rope the necks Of lumberjacks; or the farmer’s gnarled wrist— Compare these with the widow’s fisted look, Then judge who has the most to bear. Think of The ghost that each night slips between her sheets Or of the sudden joy of being alone Which troubles her for weeks. And you, who thought Him mean, or too devoted to his drink, Consider how the common fingerstones, Bathed in the tidal slabs, grow luminous.

On a damp June Saturday, as colorless As cellar stone, the working classes from Dun Laoghaire spread their picnic blankets, tins, And soda bread along the coastal cliffs. Two hundred feet below, the ocean knocks Debris and timber on the rock, and near The precipice, I watch a father swing His daughter out, as though to loose her on That long descent, past rookeries of gulls As intricate as mosques, through casual Alliances of mist and fog, and toward The cowlicked Irish Sea, as fathomless And bitter as their history. With each Return, the young girl cries out her delight, Then girds once more against the peril there: As though she knows no child is desired wholly; That there is not a mother, dreading birth, Who does not sometime curse her recklessness, Nor father, yoked to press or forklift truck, Who has not brooded on the chance of some Untimely accident. Pray God that such Black thoughts do not now reach like beggar’s mitts Into his mind, or better pray that he Has vowed, despite them all, not to permit His difficult and gnarled grip to give.

Shunning the British tourist bus, we walk, My child and I, the West Woods where, like dogs Who know their death is due, the wounded took Themselves to give up hope. The horror begs Imagining—the soldiers hauling limbs Hacked off or messmates dead, and everywhere, Mixed with the summer scent of swelling plums, A stench of putrid flesh and burning hair. Here Lee was turned. That night the forest filled With muttered names of loved ones left, and cries From mangled soldiers pleading to be killed. Seeing my distant look, my daughter tries My sleeve: “What is it, what?” she asks, and I Say “nothing, nothing”—though “nothing” is a lie.

Forty degrees; the threat of rain. That time of fall When we are most inclined to end it all. Denim-jacketed, with a faded sweatshirt hood, He draws his plane along a length of wood, Then takes a chisel to a cornice piece With two light taps. His movements never cease; His cracked and callused hands, in gloves with fingers cut, Rub up for warmth, then start like hares hawked by his thought. He knows no other work; wants none. He learned this from His father—brace and auger, bob and plumb— The same way he learned how to hunt or take a beating: Not by words but by a look, and by repeating Mutely each grimace, wince, set of the jaw. His job is more than workmanlike. No flaw Or gap offends the eye. Each post and bull-nose stair Seems proof of love—if love is proved by excess care.

Southbound, downwardly mobile in A knocking ten-year-old LeSabre, Totaled once and salvaged, rust Gnawing at the rocker panels like Fire at the curtains in a melodrama, I imagine those for whom such news Must matter: sauve, smooth-featured types, Untroubled by the odd details Of racing forms or powerball, Who, while I drove truck or counted stock, Were wisely planning their estates, Diversifying portfolios, or buying A summer place with acreage. Yet how their evening now is shot! How flat the chardonnay, how bland The tips of tenderloin must taste! Of course, it’s not the Dow alone— The dollar’s through the roof, T-bills Have plunged, and, even now, the wife Is pussyfooting at the club. How birdsong-sweet and full of joy Seems my life by comparison: The Gulf’s two hours off, where rigs Pound at the solar plexus of The earth, and where, on moonlit nights, Perfumed mulattoes weave like snails By the shore, leaving shining trails.

Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat Please put a penny in the old man’s hat. If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do. If you haven’t got a ha’penny, God bless you. Tonight the wide, wet flakes of snow Drift down like Christmas suicides, Layering the eaves and boughs until The landscape seems transformed, as from A night of talk or love. I’ve come From cankered ports and railroad hubs To winter in a northern state: Three months of wind and little light. Wood split, flue cleaned, and ashes hauled, I am now proof against the cold And make a place before the stove. Mired fast in middle age, possessed Of staved-in barn and brambled lot, I think of that fierce-minded woman Whom I loved, painting in a small, Unheated room, or of a friend, Sharp-ribbed from poverty, who framed And fitted out his house by hand And writes each night by kerosene. I think, that is, of others who Withdrew from commerce and the world To work for joy instead of gain. O would that I could gather them This Yuletide, and shower them with coins.