505 History and politics poems

Stand whoso list upon the slipper top Of court’s estates, and let me here rejoice; And use me quiet without let or stop, Unknown in court, that hath such brackish joys: In hidden place, so let my days forth pass, That when my years be done, withouten noise, I may die agèd after the common trace, For him death gripeth right hard by the crope That is much known of other; and of himself alas, Doth die unknown, dazed with dreadful face.

(excerpt) O knights, O squires, O gentle bloods yborn, You were not born all only for yourselves: Your country claims some part of all your pains. There should you live, and therein should you toil To hold up right and banish cruel wrong, To help the poor, to bridle back the rich, To punish vice, and virtue to advance, To see God serv’d and Belzebub suppres’d. You should not trust lieutenants in your room, And let them sway the sceptre of your charge, Whiles you, meanwhile, know scarcely what is done, Nor yet can yield accompt if you were call’d. The stately lord, which wonted was to keep A court at home, is now come up to court, And leaves the country for a common prey To pilling, polling, bribing, and deceit (All which his presence might have pacified, Or else have made offenders smell the smoke). And now the youth which might have served him In comely wise, with country clothes yclad, And yet thereby been able to prefer Unto the prince, and there to seek advance, Is fain to sell his lands for courtly clouts, Or else sits still, and liveth like a lout (Yet of these two the last fault is the less). And so those imps which might in time have sprung Aloft, good lord, and serv’d to shield the state, Are either nipp’d with such untimely frosts, Or else grow crook’d, because they be not proynd. ... EPILOGUS Alas, my lord, my haste was all too hot, I shut my glass before you gaz’d your fill, And, at a glimpse, my silly self have spied A stranger troop than any yet were seen. Behold, my lord, what monsters muster here, With angel’s face, and harmful hellish hearts, With smiling looks, and deep deceitful thoughts, With tender skins, and stony cruel minds, With stealing steps, yet forward feet to fraud. Behold, behold, they never stand content, With God, with kind, with any help of art, But curl their locks with bodkins and with braids, But dye their hair with sundry subtle sleights, But paint and slick till fairest face be foul, But bumbast, bolster, frizzle, and perfume. They mar with musk the balm which nature made And dig for death in delicatest dishes. The younger sort come piping on apace, In whistles made of fine enticing wood, Till they have caught the birds for whom they birded. The elder sort go stately stalking on, And on their backs they bear both land and fee, Castles and towers, revenues and receipts, Lordships and manors, fines, yea, farms and all. What should these be? Speak you, my lovely lord. They be not men: for why? they have no beards. They be no boys, which wear such side long gowns. They be no gods, for all their gallant gloss. They be no devils, I trow, which seem so saintish. What be they? women? masking in men’s weeds? With Dutchkin doublets, and with jerkins jagg’d? With Spanish spangs, and ruffs fet out of France, With high-copp’d hats, and feathers flaunt-a-flaunt? They be so sure, even wo to men indeed. Nay then, my lord, let shut the glass apace, High time it were for my poor muse to wink, Since all the hands, all paper, pen, and ink, Which ever yet this wretched world possess’d Cannot describe this sex in colours due! No, no, my lord, we gazed have enough; And I too much, God pardon me therefore. Better look off, than look an ace too far; And better mum, than meddle overmuch. But if my glass do like my lovely lord, We will espy, some sunny summer’s day, To look again, and see some seemly sights. Meanwhile, my Muse right humbly doth beseech, That my good lord accept this vent’rous verse, Until my brains may better stuff devise.

Stefan Zweig, come back, come back. Do not be afraid. Do not look the other way, but on all sides. Come take the road with me into those dark woods where eerie sounds of nature coalesce, where fledglings kiss you on the head and talk to you. Come fly with me, come be my friend in those darkest hours, in those darkest woods where even dreams are not permitted, but they move in nonetheless, because their darkest hours share with yours and mine to light the light, where our angels lead us on with whisperings . . . and they look on. Stefan, it’s safe now. Come hold my hand. We circle home. The light is in the window. The dance is picking up. The dance is done. Can’t you feel it now? Can’t you . . . can’t you . . . ?

We know far more about the philosophical underpinnings of Puritanism than we do about what its practitioners consumed at countless meals. —James Deetz 1 Yes. So we must reconnect ideas of God, and the definitions of “liberty,” and the psychology of our earliest models of governance, with oyster peeces in barley beer & wheet, chopt cod & venyson seethed in a blood broth, hominy pottage,also squirell. Their heads might well have brimmed with heaven and its airborne personnel, but still their mouths were a mash of white meat[cheese]and a motley collation of eel leavings,a fine samp,and a roast Fowl. Worshipp first,then after—butter Biskuits! David Ignatow: “seeking transcendence but loving bread” 2 And it is too easy to get lost in abstraction, as if smoke, and dream, and quantum ersatz-states are our proper environment... it’s easy to conceptualize in “politics” and not in the clack of the black or white dried bean we drop in the voting bowl. In some tribes, there’s a designated “reminderer,” and when the shaman novitiate—or sometimes simply a mournful family member—follows the star trail into the country of ghosts, and lingers there, this person tugs the wanderer back home: perhaps a light thwack with a broom-shock, or the rising steam of a broth that one can hungrily shinny down to Earth like a rope. In the Mesopotamian Inanna myth, it’s water and bread that resurrect the goddess and allow her to begin the long ascent out from the craters of Hell. We can spend all day, and many days, and years, in theorizing. “A Computer Recreation of Proto-Hominid Dietary Intake: An Analysis” ... we’ll float off, through these foggy lands of argot, in the way that someone else might dissolve in the blue cloud of an opium den... no wonder there’s such pleasure in uncovering the solid fossil record of those appetites, and in emptying out its evidence grain by grain, a stone piñata. How often the stories bring us back to that grounding! In 1620, a first exploratory party from the Mayflower went ashore on the northern Cape Cod coast. The weather was bad and disorienting: a half a foot of snow, in air so thick as to be directionless. But we sense they recouped their spirits that night, from three fat Geese and six Ducks whitch we ate with Soldiers stomackes. 3 And it is too easy to lose ourselves in cyberthink, untethered from the touchable, from even the cohesive force suffusing through one atom. “What we keep,” reports an archivist at the New York Times, “is the information, not the paper”... everything e-storaged now. A thousand years of pages,pffft: dismissiveness as obliterative as a bonfire, in the long run. Oh, yes, easy to cease to exist as an actual shape, inside the huge, occluding mists of legalese: we say “repatriation of native archeological remains,” and we mean human bones, that’s what we mean: hard and dear and contested. We say “ritual signifier of threat,” but what the Narragansetts sent to the colonists at Plymouth was a bundl of thair Arrows tyed about in a mightie Snake skin. I died. And I was stolen into a land of strangers—of not-the-People. I floated all day, many days. And here the ribs of my cage were empty: always I was hungry, for the things that People need. But this was not the sun, and this was not the soil, of the People; and I was restless, I had no one for between my legs, and no drum in my chest. There was much war from this: the People desired me back, they said “this one is part of many-ones,” and after words and words, their word was so. One day the breezes sent the fishes and savory beaver parts, and I knew at last that I was home: my mouth of my skull watered. 4 “When hegemonic identity-structures systemize cognition—” whoa. There are times I think my friends might flimmer away in that high-minded mush... and I concentrate, then, on the names of those people from 1621, names that are true, specific labor and specific, beautiful common things. Cooper. Fletcher. Glover. Miller. Glazer. Mason. Carpenter. Cheerfull Winter. Oceanus Hopkins. Lydia Fish, Nathaniel Fish and Steadfast Fish, of Sandwich. Zachariah Field, father, and daughter Dutiful Field. Pandora Sparrow. Who wouldn’t care to meet Peregrine Soule? And who could wish to let go of this life when faced by Countenance Bountie?

O but we talked at large before The sixteen men were shot, But who can talk of give and take, What should be and what not While those dead men are loitering there To stir the boiling pot? You say that we should still the land Till Germany’s overcome; But who is there to argue that Now Pearse is deaf and dumb? And is their logic to outweigh MacDonagh’s bony thumb? How could you dream they’d listen That have an ear alone For those new comrades they have found, Lord Edward and Wolfe Tone, Or meddle with our give and take That converse bone to bone?

Up from Msippi I grew. (Bare walk and cane stalk make a hungry belly talk.) Up from the river of death. (Walk bare and stalk cane make a hungry belly talk.) Up from Msippi I grew. Up from the river of pain. Out of the long red earth dipping, rising, spreading out in deltas and plains, out of the strong black earth turning over by the iron plough, out of the swamp green earth dripping with moss and snakes, out of the loins of the leveed lands muscling its American vein: the great Father of Waters, I grew up, beside the prickly boll of white, beside the bone-filled Mississippi rolling on and on, breaking over, cutting off, ignoring my bleeding fingers. Bare stalk and sun walk I hear a boll-weevil talk cause I grew up beside the ox and the bow, beside the rock church and the shack row, beside the fox and the crow, beside the melons and maize, beside the hound dog, beside the pink hog, flea-hunting, mud-grunting, cat-fishing, dog pissing in the Mississippi rolling on and on, ignoring the colored coat I spun of cotton fibers. Cane-sweat river-boat nigger-bone floating. Up from Msippi I grew, wailing a song with every strain. Woman gone woe man too baby cry rent-pause daddy flew.

The Christian cannot be the pitying one because he is the one pitied. From a dusty road in a straight line from przedmiescie to Krasnystaw at the entrance to town at Zhitkovski's in his house we lived, he makes coffins with crosses. On the threshold I sat as a boy opposite a building held together by nails facing the church the cloister the impurity, my mother says, I sat as a boy. On the wall Jesus and Mary. Jesus and his mother were never parted. My mother's son left her not to be on the wall. Mary's son never left, and he paid the price. —October 26-29, 1989

High in the breathless Hall the Minstrel sate, And Emont's murmur mingled with the Song.— The words of ancient time I thus translate, A festal strain that hath been silent long:— "From town to town, from tower to tower, The red rose is a gladsome flower. Her thirty years of winter past, The red rose is revived at last; She lifts her head for endless spring, For everlasting blossoming: Both roses flourish, red and white: In love and sisterly delight The two that were at strife are blended, And all old troubles now are ended.— Joy! joy to both! but most to her Who is the flower of Lancaster! Behold her how She smiles to-day On this great throng, this bright array! Fair greeting doth she send to all From every corner of the hall; But chiefly from above the board Where sits in state our rightful Lord, A Clifford to his own restored! "They came with banner, spear, and shield; And it was proved in Bosworth-field. Not long the Avenger was withstood— Earth helped him with the cry of blood: St. George was for us, and the might Of blessed Angels crowned the right. Loud voice the Land has uttered forth, We loudest in the faithful north: Our fields rejoice, our mountains ring, Our streams proclaim a welcoming; Our strong-abodes and castles see The glory of their loyalty. "How glad is Skipton at this hour— Though lonely, a deserted Tower; Knight, squire, and yeoman, page and groom, We have them at the feast of Brough'm. How glad Pendragon—though the sleep Of years be on her!—She shall reap A taste of this great pleasure, viewing As in a dream her own renewing. Rejoiced is Brough, right glad, I deem, Beside her little humble stream; And she that keepeth watch and ward Her statelier Eden's course to guard; They both are happy at this hour, Though each is but a lonely Tower:— But here is perfect joy and pride For one fair House by Emont's side, This day, distinguished without peer, To see her Master and to cheer— Him, and his Lady-mother dear! "Oh! it was a time forlorn When the fatherless was born— Give her wings that she may fly, Or she sees her infant die! Swords that are with slaughter wild Hunt the Mother and the Child. Who will take them from the light? —Yonder is a man in sight— Yonder is a house—but where? No, they must not enter there. To the caves, and to the brooks, To the clouds of heaven she looks; She is speechless, but her eyes Pray in ghostly agonies. Blissful Mary, Mother mild, Maid and Mother undefiled, Save a Mother and her Child! "Now who is he that bounds with joy On Carrock's side, a Shepherd-boy? No thoughts hath he but thoughts that pass Light as the wind along the grass. Can this be He who hither came In secret, like a smothered flame? O'er whom such thankful tears were shed For shelter, and a poor man's bread! God loves the Child; and God hath willed That those dear words should be fulfilled, The Lady's words, when forced away The last she to her Babe did say: "My own, my own, thy fellow-guest I may not be; but rest thee, rest, For lowly shepherd's life is best!" "Alas! when evil men are strong No life is good, no pleasure long. The Boy must part from Mosedale's groves, And leave Blencathara's rugged coves, And quit the flowers that summer brings To Glenderamakin's lofty springs; Must vanish, and his careless cheer Be turned to heaviness and fear. —Give Sir Lancelot Threlkeld praise! Hear it, good man, old in days! Thou tree of covert and of rest For this young Bird that is distrest; Among thy branches safe he lay, And he was free to sport and play, When falcons were abroad for prey. "A recreant harp, that sings of fear And heaviness in Clifford's ear! I said, when evil men are strong, No life is good, no pleasure long, A weak and cowardly untruth! Our Clifford was a happy Youth, And thankful through a weary time, That brought him up to manhood's prime. —Again he wanders forth at will, And tends a flock from hill to hill: His garb is humble; ne'er was seen Such garb with such a noble mien; Among the shepherd-grooms no mate Hath he, a Child of strength and state! Yet lacks not friends for simple glee, Nor yet for higher sympathy. To his side the fallow-deer Came and rested without fear; The eagle, lord of land and sea, Stooped down to pay him fealty; And both the undying fish that swim Through Bowscale-tarn did wait on him; The pair were servants of his eye In their immortality; And glancing, gleaming, dark or bright, Moved to and fro, for his delight. He knew the rocks which Angels haunt Upon the mountains visitant; He hath kenned them taking wing: And into caves where Faeries sing He hath entered; and been told By Voices how men lived of old. Among the heavens his eye can see The face of thing that is to be; And, if that men report him right, His tongue could whisper words of might. —Now another day is come, Fitter hope, and nobler doom; He hath thrown aside his crook, And hath buried deep his book; Armour rusting in his halls On the blood of Clifford calls,— 'Quell the Scot,' exclaims the Lance— Bear me to the heart of France, Is the longing of the Shield— Tell thy name, thou trembling field; Field of death, where'er thou be, Groan thou with our victory! Happy day, and mighty hour, When our Shepherd, in his power, Mailed and horsed, with lance and sword, To his ancestors restored Like a re-appearing Star, Like a glory from afar First shall head the flock of war!" Alas! the impassioned minstrel did not know How, by Heaven's grace, this Clifford's heart was framed: How he, long forced in humble walks to go, Was softened into feeling, soothed, and tamed. Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills. In him the savage virtue of the Race, Revenge and all ferocious thoughts were dead: Nor did he change; but kept in lofty place The wisdom which adversity had bred. Glad were the vales, and every cottage-hearth; The Shepherd-lord was honoured more and more; And, ages after he was laid in earth, "The good Lord Clifford" was the name he bore.

Sitteth alle stille and herkneth to me! The King of Alemaigne, by mi leaute, Thritty thousand pound askede he For to make the pees in the countre— And so he dude more. Richard, thah thou be ever trichard, Tricchen shalt thou nevermore. Richard of Alemaigne, whil that he wes king, He spende all his tresour upon swiving. Haveth he nout of Walingford o ferling! Let him habbe ase he brew—bale to dring— Maugre Windesore. Richard, thah thou be ever trichard, Tricchen shalt thou nevermore. The King of Alemaigne wende do full well: He saised the mulne for a castel; With hare sharpe swerdes he grounde the stel— He wende that the sailes were mangonel To helpe Windesore. Richard, thah thou be ever trichard, Tricchen shalt thou nevermore. The king of Alemaigne gederede his host, Makede him a castel of a mulne post, Wende with his prude and his muchele bost, Broughte from Alemaigne mony sory ghost To store Windesore. Richard, thah thou be ever trichard, Tricchen shalt thou nevermore. By God that is aboven ous, he dude muche sin That lette passen over see the Erl of Warin: He hath robbed Engelond, the more and the fen, The gold and the selver, and iboren henne, For love of Windesore. Richard, thah thou be ever trichard, Tricchen shalt thou nevermore. Sire Simon de Montfort hath swore by his chin, Hevede he now here the Erl of Warin, Shulde he never more come to his inn, Ne with sheld, ne with spere, ne with other gin, To help of Wyndesore. Richard, thah thou be ever trichard, Tricchen shalt thou nevermore. Sire Simon de Montfort hath swore by his top, Hevede he now here Sir Hue de Bigot, All he shulde equite here twelfmoneth scot— Shulde he never more with his fot pot To helpe Windesore. Richard, thah thou be ever trichard, Tricchen shalt thou nevermore. Be thee luef, be thee loth, Sire Edward, Thou shalt ride sporeles o thy liar All the righte way to Dovereward— Shalt thou nevermore breke foreward, And that reweth sore. Richard, thah thou be ever trichard, Tricchen shalt thou nevermore. Edward, thou dudest ase a shreward, Forsoke thine eme’s lore.

What of the bow? The bow was made in England: Of true wood, of yew-wood, The wood of English bows; So men who are free Love the old yew-tree And the land where the yew-tree grows. What of the cord? The cord was made in England: A rough cord, a tough cord, A cord that bowmen love; And so we will sing Of the hempen string And the land where the cord was wove. What of the shaft? The shaft was cut in England: A long shaft, a strong shaft, Barbed and trim and true; So we’ll drink all together To the grey goose-feather And the land where the grey goose flew. What of the mark? Ah, seek it not in England, A bold mark, our old mark Is waiting over-sea. When the strings harp in chorus, And the lion flag is o’er us, It is there that our mark will be. What of the men? The men were bred in England: The bowmen—the yeomen, The lads of dale and fell. Here’s to you—and to you! To the hearts that are true And the land where the true hearts dwell.