W. D. Snodgrass

(After Dr. Haase gave them shots of morphine, Magda gave each child an ampule of potassium cyanide from a spoon.) This is the needle that we give Soldiers and children when they live Near the front in primitive Conditions or real dangers; This is the spoon we use to feed Men trapped in trouble or in need, When weakness or bad luck might lead Them to the hands of strangers. This is the room where you can sleep Your sleep out, curled up under deep Layers of covering that will keep You safe till all harm’s past. This is the bed where you can rest In perfect silence, undistressed By noise or nightmares, as my breast Once held you soft but fast. This is the Doctor who has brought Your needle with your special shot To quiet you; you won’t get caught Off guard or unprepared. I am your nurse who’ll comfort you; I nursed you, fed you till you grew Too big to feed; now you’re all through Fretting or feeling scared. This is the glass tube that contains Calm that will spread down through your veins To free you finally from all pains Of going on in error. This tiny pinprick sets the germ Inside you that fills out its term Till you can feel yourself grow firm Against all doubt, all terror. Into this spoon I break the pill That stiffens the unsteady will And hardens you against the chill Voice of a world of lies. This amber medicine implants Steadfastness in your blood; this grants Immunity from greed and chance, And from all compromise. This is the serum that can cure Weak hearts; these pure, clear drops insure You’ll face what comes and can endure The test; you’ll never falter. This is the potion that preserves You in a faith that never swerves; This sets the pattern of your nerves Too firm for you to alter. I set this spoon between your tight Teeth, as I gave you your first bite; This satisfies your appetite For other nourishment. Take this on your tongue; this do Remembering your mother who So loved her Leader she stayed true When all the others went, When every friend proved false, in the Delirium of treachery On every hand, when even He Had turned His face aside. He shut himself in with His whore; Then, though I screamed outside His door, Said He’d not see me anymore. They both took cyanide. Open wide, now, little bird; I who sang you your first word Soothe away every sound you’ve heard Except your Leader’s voice. Close your eyes, now; take your death. Once we slapped you to take breath. Vengeance is mine, the Lord God saith And cancels each last choice. Once, my first words marked out your mind; Just as our Leader’s phrases bind All hearts to Him, building a blind Loyalty through the nation, We shape you into a pure form. Trapped, our best soldiers tricked the storm, The Reds: those last hours, they felt warm Who stood fast to their station. You needn’t fear what your life meant; You won’t curse how your hours were spent; You’ll grow like your own monument To all things sure and good, Fixed like a frieze in high relief Of granite figures that our Chief Accepts into His true belief, His true blood-brotherhood. You’ll never bite the hand that fed you, Won’t turn away from those that bred you, Comforted your nights and led you Into the thought of virtue; You won’t be turned from your own bed; Won’t turn into that thing you dread; No new betrayal lies ahead; Now no one else can hurt you.

As we drove back, crossing the hill, The house still Hidden in the trees, I always thought— A fool’s fear—that it might have caught Fire, someone could have broken in. As if things must have been Too good here. Still, we always found It locked tight, safe and sound. I mentioned that, once, as a joke; No doubt we spoke Of the absurdity To fear some dour god’s jealousy Of our good fortune. From the farm Next door, our neighbors saw no harm Came to the things we cared for here. What did we have to fear? Maybe I should have thought: all Such things rot, fall— Barns, houses, furniture. We two are stronger than we were Apart; we’ve grown Together. Everything we own Can burn; we know what counts—some such Idea. We said as much. We’d watched friends driven to betray; Felt that love drained away Some self they need. We’d said love, like a growth, can feed On hate we turn in and disguise; We warned ourselves. That you might despise Me—hate all we both loved best— None of us ever guessed. The house still stands, locked, as it stood Untouched a good Two years after you went. Some things passed in the settlement; Some things slipped away. Enough’s left That I come back sometimes. The theft And vandalism were our own. Maybe we should have known.

For Cynthia When he would not return to fine garments and good food, to his houses and his people, Loingseachan told him, “Your father is dead.” “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said. “Your mother is dead,” said the lad. “All pity for me has gone out of the world.” “Your sister, too, is dead.” “The mild sun rests on every ditch,” he said; “a sister loves even though not loved.” “Suibhne, your daughter is dead.” “And an only daughter is the needle of the heart.” “And Suibhne, your little boy, who used to call you “Daddy”—he is dead.” “Aye,” said Suibhne, “that’s the drop that brings a man to the ground.” He fell out of the yew tree; Loingseachan closed his arms around him and placed him in manacles. —AFTER THE MIDDLE-IRISH ROMANCE, THE MADNESS OF SUIBHNE 1 Child of my winter, born When the new fallen soldiers froze In Asia’s steep ravines and fouled the snows, When I was torn By love I could not still, By fear that silenced my cramped mind To that cold war where, lost, I could not find My peace in my will, All those days we could keep Your mind a landscape of new snow Where the chilled tenant-farmer finds, below, His fields asleep In their smooth covering, white As quilts to warm the resting bed Of birth or pain, spotless as paper spread For me to write, And thinks: Here lies my land Unmarked by agony, the lean foot Of the weasel tracking, the thick trapper’s boot; And I have planned My chances to restrain The torments of demented summer or Increase the deepening harvest here before It snows again. 2 Late April and you are three; today We dug your garden in the yard. To curb the damage of your play, Strange dogs at night and the moles tunneling, Four slender sticks of lath stand guard Uplifting their thin string. So you were the first to tramp it down. And after the earth was sifted close You brought your watering can to drown All earth and us. But these mixed seeds are pressed With light loam in their steadfast rows. Child, we’ve done our best. Someone will have to weed and spread The young sprouts. Sprinkle them in the hour When shadow falls across their bed. You should try to look at them every day Because when they come to full flower I will be away. 3 The child between them on the street Comes to a puddle, lifts his feet And hangs on their hands. They start At the live weight and lurch together, Recoil to swing him through the weather, Stiffen and pull apart. We read of cold war soldiers that Never gained ground, gave none, but sat Tight in their chill trenches. Pain seeps up from some cavity Through the ranked teeth in sympathy; The whole jaw grinds and clenches Till something somewhere has to give. It’s better the poor soldiers live In someone else’s hands Than drop where helpless powers fall On crops and barns, on towns where all Will burn. And no man stands. For good, they sever and divide Their won and lost land. On each side Prisoners are returned Excepting a few unknown names. The peasant plods back and reclaims His fields that strangers burned And nobody seems very pleased. It’s best. Still, what must not be seized Clenches the empty fist. I tugged your hand, once, when I hated Things less: a mere game dislocated The radius of your wrist. Love’s wishbone, child, although I’ve gone As men must and let you be drawn Off to appease another, It may help that a Chinese play Or Solomon himself might say I am your real mother. 4 No one can tell you why the season will not wait; the night I told you I must leave, you wept a fearful rate to stay up late. Now that it’s turning Fall, we go to take our walk among municipal flowers, to steal one off its stalk, to try and talk. We huff like windy giants scattering with our breath gray-headed dandelions; Spring is the cold wind's aftermath. The poet saith. But the asters, too, are gray, ghost-gray. Last night’s cold is sending on their way petunias and dwarf marigold, hunched sick and old. Like nerves caught in a graph, the morning-glory vines frost has erased by half still scrawl across their rigid twines. Like broken lines of verses I can’t make. In its unraveling loom we find a flower to take, with some late buds that might still bloom, back to your room. Night comes and the stiff dew. I’m told a friend’s child cried because a cricket, who had minstreled every night outside her window, died. 5 Winter again and it is snowing; Although you are still three, You are already growing Strange to me. You chatter about new playmates, sing Strange songs; you do not know Hey ding-a-ding-a-ding Or where I go Or when I sang for bedtime,Fox Went out on a chilly night, Before I went for walks And did not write; You never mind the squalls and storms That are renewed long since; Outside the thick snow swarms Into my prints And swirls out by warehouses, sealed, Dark cowbarns, huddled, still, Beyond to the blank field, The fox’s hill Where he backtracks and sees the paw, Gnawed off, he cannot feel; Conceded to the jaw Of toothed, blue steel. 6 Easter has come around again; the river is rising over the thawed ground and the banksides. When you come you bring an egg dyed lavender. We shout along our bank to hear our voices returning from the hills to meet us. We need the landscape to repeat us. You lived on this bank first. While nine months filled your term, we knew how your lungs, immersed in the womb, miraculously grew their useless folds till the fierce, cold air rushed in to fill them out like bushes thick with leaves. You took your hour, caught breath, and cried with your full lung power. Over the stagnant bight we see the hungry bank swallow flaunting his free flight still; we sink in mud to follow the killdeer from the grass that hides her nest. That March there was rain; the rivers rose; you could hear killdeers flying all night over the mudflats crying. You bring back how the red- winged blackbird shrieked, slapping frail wings, diving at my head— I saw where her tough nest, cradled, swings in tall reeds that must sway with the winds blowing every way. If you recall much, you recall this place. You still live nearby—on the opposite hill. After the sharp windstorm of July Fourth, all that summer through the gentle, warm afternoons, we heard great chain saws chirr like iron locusts. Crews of roughneck boys swarmed to cut loose branches wrenched in the shattering wind, to hack free all the torn limbs that could sap the tree. In the debris lay starlings, dead. Near the park’s birdrun we surprised one day a proud, tan-spatted, buff-brown pigeon. In my hands she flapped so fearfully that I let her go. Her keeper came. And we helped snarl her in a net. You bring things I’d as soon forget. You raise into my head a Fall night that I came once more to sit on your bed; sweat beads stood out on your arms and fore- head and you wheezed for breath, for help, like some child caught beneath its comfortable woolly blankets, drowning there. Your lungs caught and would not take the air. Of all things, only we have power to choose that we should die; nothing else is free in this world to refuse it. Yet I, who say this, could not raise myself from bed how many days to the thieving world. Child, I have another wife, another child. We try to choose our life. 7 Here in the scuffled dust is our ground of play. I lift you on your swing and must shove you away, see you return again, drive you off again, then stand quiet till you come. You, though you climb higher, farther from me, longer, will fall back to me stronger. Bad penny, pendulum, you keep my constant time to bob in blue July where fat goldfinches fly over the glittering, fecund reach of our growing lands. Once more now, this second, I hold you in my hands. 8 I thumped on you the best I could which was no use; you would not tolerate your food until the sweet, fresh milk was soured with lemon juice. That puffed you up like a fine yeast. The first June in your yard like some squat Nero at a feast you sat and chewed on white, sweet clover. That is over. When you were old enough to walk we went to feed the rabbits in the park milkweed; saw the paired monkeys, under lock, consume each other's salt. Going home we watched the slow stars follow us down Heaven’s vault. You said, let’s catch one that comes low, pull off its skin and cook it for our dinner. As absentee bread-winner, I seldom got you such cuisine; we ate in local restaurants or bought what lunches we could pack in a brown sack with stale, dry bread to toss for ducks on the green-scummed lagoons, crackers for porcupine and fox, life-savers for the footpad coons to scour and rinse, snatch after in their muddy pail and stare into their paws. When I moved next door to the jail I learned to fry omelettes and griddlecakes so I could set you supper at my table. As I built back from helplessness, when I grew able, the only possible answer was you had to come here less. This Hallowe’en you come one week. You masquerade as a vermilion, sleek, fat, crosseyed fox in the parade or, where grim jackolanterns leer, go with your bag from door to door foraging for treats. How queer: when you take off your mask my neighbors must forget and ask whose child you are. Of course you lose your appetite, whine and won’t touch your plate; as local law I set your place on an orange crate in your own room for days. At night you lie asleep there on the bed and grate your jaw. Assuredly your father’s crimes are visited on you. You visit me sometimes. The time’s up. Now our pumpkin sees me bringing your suitcase. He holds his grin; the forehead shrivels, sinking in. You break this year’s first crust of snow off the runningboard to eat. We manage, though for days I crave sweets when you leave and know they rot my teeth. Indeed our sweet foods leave us cavities. 9 I get numb and go in though the dry ground will not hold the few dry swirls of snow and it must not be very cold. A friend asks how you’ve been and I don’t know or see much right to ask. Or what use it could be to know. In three months since you came the leaves have fallen and the snow; your pictures pinned above my desk seem much the same. Somehow I come to find myself upstairs in the third floor museum’s halls, walking to kill my time once more among the enduring and resigned stuffed animals, where, through a century’s caprice, displacement and known treachery between its wars, they hear some old command and in their peaceable kingdoms freeze to this still scene, Nature Morte. Here by the door, its guardian, the patchwork dodo stands where you and your stepsister ran laughing and pointing. Here, last year, you pulled my hands and had your first, worst quarrel, so toys were put up on your shelves. Here in the first glass cage the little bobcats arch themselves, still practicing their snarl of constant rage. The bison, here, immense, shoves at his calf, brow to brow, and looks it in the eye to see what is it thinking now. I forced you to obedience; I don’t know why. Still the lean lioness beyond them, on her jutting ledge of shale and desert shrub, stands watching always at the edge, stands hard and tanned and envious above her cub; with horns locked in tall heather, two great Olympian Elk stand bound, fixed in their lasting hate till hunger brings them both to ground. Whom equal weakness binds together none shall separate. Yet separate in the ocean of broken ice, the white bear reels beyond the leathery groups of scattered, drab Arctic seals arrested here in violent motion like Napoleon’s troops. Our states have stood so long at war, shaken with hate and dread, they are paralyzed at bay; once we were out of reach, we said, we would grow reasonable and strong. Some other day. Like the cold men of Rome, we have won costly fields to sow in salt, our only seed. Nothing but injury will grow. I write you only the bitter poems that you can’t read. Onan who would not breed a child to take his brother’s bread and be his brother’s birth, rose up and left his lawful bed, went out and spilled his seed in the cold earth. I stand by the unborn, by putty-colored children curled in jars of alcohol, that waken to no other world, unchanging, where no eye shall mourn. I see the caul that wrapped a kitten, dead. I see the branching, doubled throat of a two-headed foal; I see the hydrocephalic goat; here is the curled and swollen head, there, the burst skull; skin of a limbless calf; a horse’s foetus, mummified; mounted and joined forever, the Siamese twin dogs that ride belly to belly, half and half, that none shall sever. I walk among the growths, by gangrenous tissue, goiter, cysts, by fistulas and cancers, where the malignancy man loathes is held suspended and persists. And I don’t know the answers. The window’s turning white. The world moves like a diseased heart packed with ice and snow. Three months now we have been apart less than a mile. I cannot fight or let you go. 10 The vicious winter finally yields the green winter wheat; the farmer, tired in the tired fields he dare not leave, will eat. Once more the runs come fresh; prevailing piglets, stout as jugs, harry their old sow to the railing to ease her swollen dugs and game colts trail the herded mares that circle the pasture courses; our seasons bring us back once more like merry-go-round horses. With crocus mouths, perennial hungers, into the park Spring comes; we roast hot dogs on old coat hangers and feed the swan bread crumbs, pay our respects to the peacocks, rabbits, and leathery Canada goose who took, last Fall, our tame white habits and now will not turn loose. In full regalia, the pheasant cocks march past their dubious hens; the porcupine and the lean, red fox trot around bachelor pens and the miniature painted train wails on its oval track: you said, I’m going to Pennsylvania! and waved. And you’ve come back. If I loved you, they said I’d leave and find my own affairs. Well, once again this April, we’ve come around to the bears; punished and cared for, behind bars, the coons on bread and water stretch thin black fingers after ours. And you are still my daughter.

(On this date, Goebbels moved into the lowest level of the bunker, taking a room opposite Hitler’s.) Stand back, make way, you mindless scum, Squire Voland the Seducer’s come— Old Bock from Babelsberg whose tower Falls silent now, whose shrunken power For lies or lays comes hobbling home Into this concrete catacomb. Here’s Runty Joe, the cunt collector Who grew to greatness, first erector Of myths and missions, fibs and fables, Who pulled the wool then turned the tables: He piped the tunes and called the dance Where shirtless countries lost their pants. Goatfooted Pan, the nation’s gander To whom Pan-Germans all played pander, The jovial cob-swan quick to cover Lida Baarova, his check-list lover; Swellfoot the Tyrant, he could riddle Men’s minds away, hi-diddle-diddle. Our little Doctor, Joe the Gimp Comes back to limpness and his limp: Hephaistos, Vulcan the lame smith Whose net of lies caught one true myth: His wife, the famous beauty, whored By numbskull Mars, the dull warlord. What if I took my little fling At conquest, at adventuring. Pried the lid of Pandora’s box off— There’s nothing there to bring your rocks off. I never saw one fucking day So fine I courted it to stay. If I got snarled in my own mesh Of thighs and bellies, who wants flesh? I never hankered after matter. Let Hermann swell up, grosser, fatter, Weighed down by medals, houses, clothing; They leave me lean, secured in loathing. As a young man, I pricked the bubble Of every creed; I saw that rubble And offered myself the realms of earth Just to say Yes. But what’s it worth? No thank you, Ma’am. Behold the Ram Of God: I doubt, therefore I am. Here I forsake that long pricktease Of histories, hopes, lusts, luxuries. I come back to my first Ideal— The vacancy that’s always real. I sniffed out all life’s openings: I loved only the holes in things. So strip down one bare cell for this Lay Brother of the last abyss. To me, still, all abstractions smell; My head and nose clear in this cell Of concrete, this confession booth Where liars face up to blank truth. My tongue lashed millions to the knife; Here, I’ll hold hands with my soiled wife. My lies piped men out, hot to slaughter; Here, I’ll read stories to my daughter Then hack off all relations, choose Only the Nothing you can’t lose, Send back this body, fixed in its Infantile paralysis. I was born small; I shall grow less Till I burst into Nothingness, That slot in time where only pure Spirit extends, absent and sure. I am that spirit that denies, High Priest of Laymen, Prince of Lies. Your house is founded on my rock; Truth crows; now I deny my cock. Jock of this walk, I turn down all, Robbing my Peter to play Paul. I give up all goods I possess To build my faith on faithlessness. Black Peter, I belie my Lord— You’ve got to die to spread the Word. Now the last act; there’s no sequel. Soon, once more, all things shall be equal.

Up the reputable walks of old established trees They stalk, children of the nouveaux riches; chimes Of the tall Clock Tower drench their heads in blessing: “I don't wanna play at your house; I don't like you any more.” My house stands opposite, on the other hill, Among meadows, with the orchard fences down and falling; Deer come almost to the door. You cannot see it, even in this clearest morning. White birds hang in the air between Over the garbage landfill and those homes thereto adjacent, Hovering slowly, turning, settling down Like the flakes sifting imperceptibly onto the little town In a waterball of glass. And yet, this morning, beyond this quiet scene, The floating birds, the backyards of the poor, Beyond the shopping plaza, the dead canal, the hillside lying tilted in the air, Tomorrow has broken out today: Riot in Algeria, in Cyprus, in Alabama; Aged in wrong, the empires are declining, And China gathers, soundlessly, like evidence. What shall I say to the young on such a morning?— Mind is the one salvation?—also grammar?— No; my little ones lean not toward revolt. They Are the Whites, the vaguely furiously driven, who resist Their souls with such passivity As would make Quakers swear. All day, dear Lord, all day They wear their godhead lightly. They look out from their hill and say, To themselves, “We have nowhere to go but down; The great destination is to stay.” Surely the nations will be reasonable; They look at the world—don't they?—the world's way? The clock just now has nothing more to say.

The green catalpa tree has turned All white; the cherry blooms once more. In one whole year I haven’t learned A blessed thing they pay you for. The blossoms snow down in my hair; The trees and I will soon be bare. The trees have more than I to spare. The sleek, expensive girls I teach, Younger and pinker every year, Bloom gradually out of reach. The pear tree lets its petals drop Like dandruff on a tabletop. The girls have grown so young by now I have to nudge myself to stare. This year they smile and mind me how My teeth are falling with my hair. In thirty years I may not get Younger, shrewder, or out of debt. The tenth time, just a year ago, I made myself a little list Of all the things I’d ought to know, Then told my parents, analyst, And everyone who’s trusted me I’d be substantial, presently. I haven’t read one book about A book or memorized one plot. Or found a mind I did not doubt. I learned one date. And then forgot. And one by one the solid scholars Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars. And smile above their starchy collars. I taught my classes Whitehead’s notions; One lovely girl, a song of Mahler’s. Lacking a source-book or promotions, I showed one child the colors of A luna moth and how to love. I taught myself to name my name, To bark back, loosen love and crying; To ease my woman so she came, To ease an old man who was dying. I have not learned how often I Can win, can love, but choose to die. I have not learned there is a lie Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger; That my equivocating eye Loves only by my body’s hunger; That I have forces, true to feel, Or that the lovely world is real. While scholars speak authority And wear their ulcers on their sleeves, My eyes in spectacles shall see These trees procure and spend their leaves. There is a value underneath The gold and silver in my teeth. Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives, We shall afford our costly seasons; There is a gentleness survives That will outspeak and has its reasons. There is a loveliness exists, Preserves us, not for specialists.

After experience taught me that all the ordinary Surroundings of social life are futile and vain; I’m going to show you something very Ugly: someday, it might save your life. Seeing that none of the things I feared contain In themselves anything either good or bad What if you get caught without a knife; Nothing—even a loop of piano wire; Excepting only in the effect they had Upon my mind, I resolved to inquire Take the first two fingers of this hand; Fork them out—kind of a “V for Victory”— Whether there might be something whose discovery Would grant me supreme, unending happiness. And jam them into the eyes of your enemy. You have to do this hard. Very hard. Then press No virtue can be thought to have priority Over this endeavor to preserve one’s being. Both fingers down around the cheekbone And setting your foot high into the chest No man can desire to act rightly, to be blessed, To live rightly, without simultaneously You must call up every strength you own And you can rip off the whole facial mask. Wishing to be, to act, to live. He must ask First, in other words, to actually exist. And you, whiner, who wastes your time Dawdling over the remorseless earth, What evil, what unspeakable crime Have you made your life worth?