505 History and politics poems

I-gv-yi-i Tsa-la-gi Go-whe-lv-i: A-sgo-hni-ho-’i/ FIRST CHEROKEE LESSON: MOURNING Find a flint blade Use your teeth as a whetstone Cut your hair Talk to shadows and crows Cry your red throat raw Learn to translate the words you miss most: dust                     love                    poetry Learn to say home My cracked earth lips drip words not sung as lullabies to my infant ears not laughed over dinner or choked on in despair No They played dead until the soldiers passed covered the fields like corpses and escaped into the mountains When it’s safe we’ll find you they promised But we were already gone before sunrise I crawl through a field of twisted bodies to find them I do everything Beginning Cherokee tells me Train my tongue to lie still Keep teeth tight against lips Listen to instruction tapes Study flash cards How can I greet my ancestors in a language they don’t understand My tear ducts fill with milk because what I most love was lost at birth My blood roars skin to blisters weeps haunted calls of owls bones splinter jut through skin until all of me is wounded as this tongue Ta-li-ne-i Tsa-la-gi Go-whe-lv-i: A-ni-s-gi-li/ SECOND CHEROKEE LESSON: GHOSTS Leave your hair at the foot of your bed Scratch your tongue with a cricket’s claw to speak again Stop the blood with cornmeal Your ancestors will surround you as you sleep keep away ghosts of generals presidents       priests who hunger for your rare and tender tongue They will keep away ghosts so you have strength to battle the living Stories float through lives with an owl’s sudden swooping I knew some Cherokee when I was little My cousins taught me

‘Talbingo River’—as one says of bones: ‘Captain’ or ‘Commodore’ that smelt gunpowder In old engagements no one quite believes Or understands. Talbingo had its blood As they did, ran with waters huge and clear Lopping down mountains, Turning crags to banks. Now it’s a sort of aching valley, Basalt shaggy with scales, A funnel of tobacco-coloured clay, Smoulders of puffed earth And pebbles and shell-bodied flies And water thickening to stone in pocks. That’s what we’re like out here, Beds of dried-up passions.

I   Recto Over the seaworthy cavalry arches a rocketry wickerwork: involute laceries lacerate indigo altitudes, making a skywritten filigree into which, lazily, LCTs sinuate, adjutants next to them eversharp- eyed, among delicate battleship umbrages twinkling an anger as measured as organdy. Normandy knitted the eyelets and yarn of these warriors’ armoring— ringbolt and dungaree, cable and axletree, tanktrack and ammobelt linking and opening garlands and islands of seafoam and sergeantry. Opulent fretwork: on turquoise and emerald, red instants accenting neatly a dearth of red. Gunstations issue it; vaportrails ease into smoke from it— yellow and ochre and umber and sable and out. Or that man at the edge of the tapestry holding his inches of niggardly ground and his trumpery order of red and his equipage angled and dated. He. II   Verso Wasting no energy, Time, the old registrar, evenly adds to his scrolls, rolling up in them rampage and echo and hush—in each influx of surf, in each tumble of raincloud at evening, action of seaswell and undertow rounding an introvert edge to the surge until, manhandled over, all surfaces, tapestries, entities veer from the eye like those rings of lost yesteryears pooled in the oak of your memory. Item: one Normandy Exercise. Muscle it over, an underside rises: a raggedy elegant mess of an abstract: a rip-out of kidstuff and switchboards, where amputee radio elements, unattached nervefibre conduits, openmouthed ureters, tag ends of hamstring and outrigging ripped from their unions and nexuses jumble with undeterred speakingtubes twittering orders as random and angry as ddt’d hornets. Step over a moment: peer in through this nutshell of eyeball and man your gun.

The Tartar swept across the plain In their furs and silk panties Snub-nose monkey men with cinders for eyes Attached to their ponies like centaurs Forcing the snowy passes of the Carpathians Streaming from defiles like columns of ants Arraying their host in a vasty wheel White, gray, black and chestnut steeds 10,000 each to a quadrant Turning, turning at the Jenuye’s command This terrible pinwheel Gathering speed like a Bulgar dance Faster and faster Until it explodes, columns of horsemen Peeling away in all the four directions Hard across the puszta Dust from their hooves darkening the sky They fall upon village and town Like raptors, like tigers, like wolves on the fold Mauling the zsa-zsas And leaving them senseless in puddles of goaty drool Smashing balalaikas Ripping the ears off hussars and pissing in the wounds They for whom the back of a horse Is their only country For whom a roof and four walls is like unto a grave And a city,ptuh, a city A pullulating sore that exists to be scourged Stinky dumb nomads with blood still caked On shield and cuirass And the yellow loess from the dunes of the Takla Makan And the Corridor of Kansu Between their toes and caught in their scalps Like storm clouds in the distance Fast approaching With news of the steppes, the lagoons and Bitter Lakes Edicts, torchings, infestation The smoke of chronicles Finding their way by the upper reaches Of the Selinga and the Irtysh To Issyk-Kul, the Aral, and then the Caspian Vanquishing the Bashkirs and Alans By their speed outstripping rumor Tireless mounts, short-legged and strong From whose backs arrows are expertly dispatched As fast as they can be pulled from the quiver Samarkand, Bukhara, Harat, Nishapur More violent in every destruction This race of men which had never before been seen With their roving fierceness Scarcely known to ancient documents From beyond the edge of Scythia From beyond the frozen ocean Pouring out of the Caucasus Surpassing every extreme of ferocity From the Don to the Dniester The Black Sea to the Pripet Marshes Laying waste the Ostrogoth villages Taking with them every last cookie Then dicking the help These wanton boys of nature Who shot forward like a bolt from on high Routing with great slaughter All they could come to grips with In their wild career Their beautiful shifting formations Thousands advancing at the wave of a scarf Then doubling back or making a turn With their diabolical sallies and feints Remorseless and in poor humor So they arrived at the gates of Christendom

(excerpt) England, with all thy faults, I love thee still My country! and while yet a nook is left Where English minds and manners may be found, Shall be constrain’d to love thee.  Though thy clime Be fickle, and thy year, most part, deform’d With dripping rains, or wither’d by a frost, I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies And fields without a flow’r, for warmer France With all her vines; nor for Ausonia’s groves Of golden fruitage and her myrtle bow’rs. To shake thy senate, and from heights sublime Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire Upon thy foes, was never meant my task: But I can feel thy fortunes, and partake Thy joys and sorrows with as true a heart As any thund’rer there.  And I can feel Thy follies too, and with a just disdain Frown at effeminates, whose very looks Reflect dishonour on the land I love. How, in the name of soldiership and sense, Should England prosper, when such things, as smooth And tender as a girl, all essenc’d o’er With odors, and as profligate as sweet, Who sell their laurel for a myrtle wreath, And love when they should fight; when such as these Presume to lay their hand upon the ark Of her magnificent and awful cause? Time was when it was praise and boast enough In ev’ry clime, and travel where we might, That we were born her children.  Praise enough To fill th’ ambition of a private man, That Chatham’s language was his mother tongue, And Wolfe’s great name compatriot with his own. Farewell those honors, and farewell with them The hope of such hereafter!  They have fall’n Each in his field of glory: one in arms, And one in council.  Wolfe upon the lap Of smiling victory that moment won, And Chatham, heart-sick of his country’s shame. They made us many soldiers.  Chatham still Consulting England’s happiness at home, Secur’d it by an unforgiving frown If any wrong’d her.  Wolfe, where’er he fought, Put so much of his heart into his act, That his example had a magnet’s force, And all were swift to follow whom all loved. Those suns are set.  Oh rise some other such! Or all that we have left is empty talk Of old achievements, and despair of new. . . . There is a pleasure in poetic pains Which only poets know.  The shifts and turns, Th’ expedients and inventions multiform To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms Thought apt, yet coy, and difficult to win— T’ arrest the fleeting images that fill The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast, And force them sit, ’till he has pencill’d off A faithful likeness of the forms he views; Then to dispose his copies with such art That each may find its most propitious light, And shine by situation, hardly less, Than by the labor and the skill it cost, Are occupations of the poet’s mind So pleasing, and that steal away the thought With such address from themes of sad import, That lost in his own musings, happy man! He feels th’ anxieties of life, denied Their wonted entertainment, all retire. Such joys has he that sings.  But ah! not such, Or seldom such, the hearers of his song. Fastidious, or else listless, or perhaps Aware of nothing arduous in a task They never undertook, they little note His dangers or escapes, and haply find There least amusement where he found the most. But is amusement all?  studious of song, And yet ambitious not to sing in vain, I would not trifle merely, though the world Be loudest in their praise who do no more. Yet what can satire, whether grave or gay? It may correct a foible, may chastise The freaks of fashion, regulate the dress, Retrench a sword-blade, or displace a patch; But where are its sublimer trophies found? What vice has it subdu’d? whose heart reclaim’d By rigour, or whom laugh’d into reform? Alas! Leviathan is not so tam’d: Laugh’d at, he laughs again; and, stricken hard, Turns to the stroke his adamantine scales, That fear no discipline of human hands. The pulpit, therefore (and I name it, fill’d With solemn awe, that bids me well beware With what intent I touch that holy thing) The pulpit (when the sat’rist has at last, Strutting and vap’ring in an empty school, Spent all his force and made no proselyte) I say the pulpit (in the sober use Of its legitimate, peculiar pow’rs) Must stand acknowledg’d, while the world shall stand, The most important and effectual guard, Support and ornament of virtue’s cause.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay! Alas! I am very sorry to say That ninety lives have been taken away On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember’d for a very long time. ’Twas about seven o’clock at night, And the wind it blew with all its might, And the rain came pouring down, And the dark clouds seem’d to frown, And the Demon of the air seem’d to say— “I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.” When the train left Edinburgh The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow, But Boreas blew a terrific gale, Which made their hearts for to quail, And many of the passengers with fear did say— “I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.” But when the train came near to Wormit Bay, Boreas he did loud and angry bray, And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember’d for a very long time. So the train sped on with all its might, And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight, And the passengers’ hearts felt light, Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year, With their friends at home they lov’d most dear, And wish them all a happy New Year. So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay, Until it was about midway, Then the central girders with a crash gave way, And down went the train and passengers into the Tay! The Storm Fiend did loudly bray, Because ninety lives had been taken away, On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember’d for a very long time. As soon as the catastrophe came to be known The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown, And the cry rang out all o’er the town, Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down, And a passenger train from Edinburgh, Which fill’d all the people’ hearts with sorrow, And made them for to turn pale, Because none of the passengers were sav’d to tell the tale How the disaster happen’d on the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember’d for a very long time. It must have been an awful sight, To witness in the dusky moonlight, While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray, Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay, Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay, I must now conclude my lay By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay, That your central girders would not have given way, At least many sensible men do say, Had they been supported on each side with buttresses, At least many sensible men confesses, For the stronger we our houses do build, The less chance we have of being killed.

The Phoenicians guarded a recipe that required ten thousand murex shells to make an ounce of Tyrian purple. Scan the surface of Aldebaran with a radio wave; grind lapis lazuli into ultramarine. Search the summer sky for an Anasazi turkey constellation; see algae under an electron microscope resemble a Magellanic Cloud. A chemist tried to convert benzene into quinine, but blundered into a violet aniline dye instead. Have you ever seen maggots feed on a dead rat? Listen to a red-tailed hawk glide over the hushed spruce and pines in a canyon. Feel a drop of water roll down a pine needle, and glisten, hanging, at the tip.

History can't be rushed. We didn't have time to see the village, we didn't have time to see the house fall to build light out of mud, nor did we see time burning. The city is missing, and we've saved others, our backs turned. What happened is a different reality in everyone's mind, but the direction we took tells us the world doesn't end when we force air out of bones. Now we know the myth by the cup of coffee going cold, realize we were never told how to take the street parallel to our heart.

after Frost We were the land's before we were. Or the land was ours before you were a land. Or this land was our land, it was not your land. We were the land before we were people, loamy roamers rising, so the stories go, or formed of clay, spit into with breath reeking soul— What's America, but the legend of Rock 'n' Roll? Red rocks, blood clots bearing boys, blood sands swimming being from women's hands, we originate, originally, spontaneous as hemorrhage. Un-possessing of what we still are possessed by, possessed by what we now no more possess. We were the land before we were people, dreamy sunbeams where sun don't shine, so the stories go, or pulled up a hole, clawing past ants and roots— Dineh in documentaries scoff DNA evidence off. They landed late, but canyons spoke them home. Nomadic Turkish horse tribes they don't know. What's America, but the legend of Stop 'n' Go? Could be cousins, left on the land bridge, contrary to popular belief, that was a two-way toll. In any case we'd claim them, give them some place to stay. Such as we were we gave most things outright (the deed of the theft was many deeds and leases and claim stakes and tenure disputes and moved plat markers stolen still today . . .) We were the land before we were a people, earthdivers, her darling mudpuppies, so the stories go, or emerging, fully forming from flesh of earth— The land, not the least vaguely, realizing in all four directions, still storied, art-filled, fully enhanced. Such as she is, such as she wills us to become.

In kindergarten during the Cold War, mid-day late bells jolted us, sending us single file into the hallway, where we sat, pressing our heads between our knees, waiting. During one of the bomb drills, Annette was standing. My mother said I would talk on and on about her, about how pretty she was. I still remember her that day, curly hair and pretty dress, looking perturbed the way little children do. Why Annette? There’s nothing to be upset about— The bombs won’t get us, I’ve seen what’s to come— it is the days, the steady pounding of days, like gentle rain, that will be our undoing.