Richard Eberhart

I The spider expects the cold of winter. When the shadows fall in long Autumn He congeals in a nest of paper, prepares The least and minimal existence, Obedient to nature. No other course Is his; no other availed him when In high summer he spun and furled The gaudy catches. I am that spider, Caught in nature, summer and winter. You are the symbol of the seasons too. II Now to expatiate and temporize This artful brag. I never saw so quieting A sight as the dawn, dew-clenched foot- Wide web hung on summer barn-eaves, spangled. It moves to zephyrs that is tough as steel. I never saw so finely-legged a creature Walk so accurate a stretch as he, Proud, capable, patient, confident. To the eye he gave close penetration Into real myth, the myth of you, of me. III Yet, by moving eyesight off from this There is another dimension. Near the barn, Down meadow to shingle, no place for spiders, The sea in large blue breathes in brainstorm tides, Pirates itself away to ancient Spain, Pirouettes past Purgatory to Paradise. Do I feed deeper on a spider, A close-hauled view upon windless meaning, Or deeper a day or dance or doom bestride On ocean’s long reach, on parables of God?

My death was arranged by special plans in Heaven And only occasioned comment by ten persons in Adams, Massachusetts. The best thing ever said about me Was that I was deft at specifying trump. I was killed by my father And married to my mother But born too early to know what happened to me, And as I was an only child I erected selfishness into a personal religion, Sat thinking forty years saying nothing. I observed all. I loved to drink gin, Would not have thought to go farther Into arcane episodes of the heavier drugs, And, being New England, always remained sober. However, I confess now, I was Always afraid of women, I don’t know why, it was just the way it was, I could never get very close to any woman. Knowledge and intelligence allowed me The grand rationalization of this; also, I respected Delicacy, but would not go too far in any direction. I thought I was a good man. I was. I did not obstruct the state, nor religion, But I saw through both and maintained my independence. I kept my counsels among the learned. My learning was more private and precious than worldly. The world had no sense of the devious, So my private vicissitudes were mine alone. I say all this with a special sort of grace For I avoided many of the pitfalls of fallen man And while I did not have heroic size, the Creative grandeur, or mastership of the mind I earned my bread by cynicism alone, And blow you all a kiss from the tomb.

Is made up of reservoirs, Birds flying South, mailmen Snow falling or rain falling, Railmen, Howard Johnson and airmen Birds of Paradise Silk lined caskets Prize poems and guitars, Beatitudes and bestiaries, Children taught contemporary manners, Time taking time away With a haymaker or a sleigh, Hope always belaboring despair. Form is a jostle, a throstle, Life a slice of sleight, Indians are looking out from the Cheekbones of Connecticut Yankees, Poltergeists deploy northward To tinderboxes in cupboards in Maine, The last chock knocked, the vessel Would not go down the Damariscotta Until the sick captain’s four-poster, Moved to the window by four oldsters Gave him a sight of her, and He gave her a beautiful sign, And there was the witch of Nobleboro Who confounded the native farmers Who, having lost the plow-bolt Right at their feet, found it Concealed in her apron: she laughed, And made the earth fecund again. The hard structure of the world, The world structure of illusion. From seeing too much of the world We do not understand it. There is something unknown in knowing. Unfaith is what keeps faith going.

In June, amid the golden fields, I saw a groundhog lying dead. Dead lay he; my senses shook, And mind outshot our naked frailty. There lowly in the vigorous summer His form began its senseless change, And made my senses waver dim Seeing nature ferocious in him. Inspecting close his maggots’ might And seething cauldron of his being, Half with loathing, half with a strange love, I poked him with an angry stick. The fever arose, became a flame And Vigour circumscribed the skies, Immense energy in the sun, And through my frame a sunless trembling. My stick had done nor good nor harm. Then stood I silent in the day Watching the object, as before; And kept my reverence for knowledge Trying for control, to be still, To quell the passion of the blood; Until I had bent down on my knees Praying for joy in the sight of decay. And so I left; and I returned In Autumn strict of eye, to see The sap gone out of the groundhog, But the bony sodden hulk remained. But the year had lost its meaning, And in intellectual chains I lost both love and loathing, Mured up in the wall of wisdom. Another summer took the fields again Massive and burning, full of life, But when I chanced upon the spot There was only a little hair left, And bones bleaching in the sunlight Beautiful as architecture; I watched them like a geometer, And cut a walking stick from a birch. It has been three years, now. There is no sign of the groundhog. I stood there in the whirling summer, My hand capped a withered heart, And thought of China and of Greece, Of Alexander in his tent; Of Montaigne in his tower, Of Saint Theresa in her wild lament.

You would think the fury of aerial bombardment Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces. History, even, does not know what is meant. You would feel that after so many centuries God would give man to repent; yet he can kill As Cain could, but with multitudinous will, No farther advanced than in his ancient furies. Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity? Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all? Is the eternal truth man’s fighting soul Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity? Of Van Wettering I speak, and Averill, Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall But they are gone to early death, who late in school Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.