505 History and politics poems

The almighty cyclop’s-eye clouded over and the grass shook itself in the coal dust. Beaten black and blue by the night’s dreams we board the train that stops at every station and lays eggs. Almost silent. The clang of the church bells’ buckets fetching water. And someone’s inexorable cough scolding everything and everyone. A stone idol moves its lips: it’s the city. Ruled by iron-hard misunderstandings among kiosk attendants butchers metal-workers naval officers iron-hard misunderstandings, academics! How sore my eyes are! They’ve been reading by the faint glimmer of the glow-worm   lamps. November offers caramels of granite. Unpredictable! Like world history laughing at the wrong place. But we hear the clang of the church bells’ buckets fetching water every Wednesday - is it Wednesday? - so much for our Sundays!

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills, For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding, For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head! It is some dream that on the deck, You’ve fallen cold and dead. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

These times strike monied worldlings with dismay: Even rich men, brave by nature, taint the air With words of apprehension and despair: While tens of thousands, thinking on the affray, Men unto whom sufficient for the day And minds not stinted or untilled are given, Sound, healthy, children of the God of heaven, Are cheerful as the rising sun in May. What do we gather hence but firmer faith That every gift of noble origin Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath; That virtue and the faculties within Are vital,—and that riches are akin To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death?

Last night I dreamed I ran through the streets of New York Looking for help for you, Nicanor. But my few friends who are rich or influential were temporarily absent from their penthouses or hotel suites. They had gone to the opera, or flown for the weekend to Bermuda. At last I found one or two of them at home, preparing for social engagements, absently smiling, as they tried on gown after gown until heaps of rich, beautiful fabric were strewn over the chairs and sofas. They posed before mirrors, with their diamonds and trinkets and floor-length furs. Smiling at me from the mirror, they vaguely promised help. They became distracted—by constantly ringing phones, by obsequious secretaries, bustling in with packages, flowers, messages, all the paraphernalia, all part of the uninterruptible rounds of the rich, the nice rich, smiling soothingly, as they touched their hair or picked up their phone extensions. Absently patting my arm, they smiled, “It will be all right.” Dusk fell on the city as I ran, naked, weeping, into the streets. I ran to the home of Barbara, my friend, Who, as a young girl, rescued four Loyalist soldiers from a Spanish prison; in her teenage sweater set and saddle shoes and knee socks, she drove an old car sagging with Loyalist pamphlets across the Pyrenees all the way to Paris without being caught. And not long ago, she helped save a group of men from Franco’s sentence of death. In my dream, Barbara telephones Barcelona. I realize this isn’t quite right, but I just stand there paralyzed, as one does in dreams. Then, dimly, from the other end of the line, through the chatter of international operators, we hear artillery fire, the faint tones of lost men, cracked voices singing, “Los Quartros Generales” through the pulsations of the great, twisted cable under the ocean. Agonía, agonía, sueño, fermente & sueño. Este es el mundo, amigo, agonía, agonía. “No, Barbara!” I scream. "We are not back there. That’s the old revolution. Call up the new one.” Though I know that, every day, your friends, Nicanor, telephone Santiago, where the number rings and rings and rings with never an answer. And now the rings are turning into knells: The church bells of Santiago tolling the funeral of Neruda, his poems looted, his autobiography stolen, his books desecrated in his house on Isla Negra. And among the smashed glass, the broken furniture, his desk overturned, the ruined books strewn over the floor, lie the great floral wreaths from the Swedish academy, the wreaths from Paris, South Asia, the whole world over. And the bells toll on… Then I tell Barbara to hang up the phone. She dials the number again, then turns to me, smiling, smiling like an angel: “He is there.” Trembling, I take the phone from her, and hear your voice, Nicanor, sad, humorous, infinitely disillusioned, infinitely consoling: “Dear Carolyn…” It is Nicanor! And the connection is broken, because I wake up, in this white room, in this white silence, in this backwater of silence on this Isla Blanca: Nicanor, Nicanor, are you, too, silent under the earth, Brother, Brother?

Though loath to grieve The evil time's sole patriot, I cannot leave My honied thought For the priest's cant, Or statesman's rant. If I refuse My study for their politique, Which at the best is trick, The angry Muse Puts confusion in my brain. But who is he that prates Of the culture of mankind, Of better arts and life? Go, blindworm, go, Behold the famous States Harrying Mexico With rifle and with knife! Or who, with accent bolder, Dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer? I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook! And in thy valleys, Agiochook! The jackals of the negro-holder. The God who made New Hampshire Taunted the lofty land With little men; — Small bat and wren House in the oak: — If earth-fire cleave The upheaved land, and bury the folk, The southern crocodile would grieve. Virtue palters; Right is hence; Freedom praised, but hid; Funeral eloquence Rattles the coffin-lid. What boots thy zeal, O glowing friend, That would indignant rend The northland from the south? Wherefore? to what good end? Boston Bay and Bunker Hill Would serve things still; — Things are of the snake. The horseman serves the horse, The neat-herd serves the neat, The merchant serves the purse, The eater serves his meat; 'T is the day of the chattel Web to weave, and corn to grind; Things are in the saddle, And ride mankind. There are two laws discrete, Not reconciled,— Law for man, and law for thing; The last builds town and fleet, But it runs wild, And doth the man unking. 'T is fit the forest fall, The steep be graded, The mountain tunnelled, The sand shaded, The orchard planted, The glebe tilled, The prairie granted, The steamer built. Let man serve law for man; Live for friendship, live for love, For truth's and harmony's behoof; The state may follow how it can, As Olympus follows Jove. Yet do not I implore The wrinkled shopman to my sounding woods, Nor bid the unwilling senator Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes. Every one to his chosen work; — Foolish hands may mix and mar; Wise and sure the issues are. Round they roll till dark is light, Sex to sex, and even to odd; — The over-god Who marries Right to Might, Who peoples, unpeoples, — He who exterminates Races by stronger races, Black by white faces, — Knows to bring honey Out of the lion; Grafts gentlest scion On pirate and Turk. The Cossack eats Poland, Like stolen fruit; Her last noble is ruined, Her last poet mute; Straight into double band The victors divide; Half for freedom strike and stand; — The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side.

We have memorized America, how it was born and who we have been and where. In ceremonies and silence we say the words, telling the stories, singing the old songs. We like the places they take us. Mostly we do. The great and all the anonymous dead are there. We know the sound of all the sounds we brought. The rich taste of it is on our tongues. But where are we going to be, and why, and who? The disenfranchised dead want to know. We mean to be the people we meant to be, to keep on going where we meant to go. But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how except in the minds of those who will call it Now? The children. The children. And how does our garden grow? With waving hands—oh, rarely in a row— and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow. Who were many people coming together cannot become one people falling apart. Who dreamed for every child an even chance cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not. Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head cannot let chaos make its way to the heart. Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot. We know what we have done and what we have said, and how we have grown, degree by slow degree, believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become— just and compassionate, equal, able, and free. All this in the hands of children, eyes already set on a land we never can visit—it isn’t there yet— but looking through their eyes, we can see what our long gift to them may come to be. If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

( US Defence Secretary Rumsfeld dismissed those European countries which opposed the US attack on Iraq as only 'Old Europe' ) Old Europe stared at her breakfast, buttered her croissant, sipped coffee which tasted like a gun and blinked her grey eyes to restore the sun. Old Europe grasped at the old A.J.P. Taylor line, 'but in politics the impossible always happens' more and more, hoped for example, that the fact that the 'plant' for weapons in Northern Iraq was shown on the BBC an empty ex-Media Centre, and miles away a plain village, hoping not to be bombed, because by mistake young Colin, who apparently mistook often, used its name at the UN as that of the 'plant', would be accepted as a fact and then protected, thought Old Europe as her France loved to protect facts, as her Germany to act, or her Belgium to be. But, she reflected, in doubt and in debt, the future is not an ally over the sea which just needs to be convinced but a masked soldier, dead to Agincourt, Darmstadt, Verdun, wanting oil and meat and not understanding how a continental breakfast keeps the blood in your head, your brain not your gut. Old Europe set her spine straight in the doorway sun. Her hand crumbled bread as if it were old bone.

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon’s roar;— The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more! Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood Where knelt the vanquished foe, When winds were hurrying o’er the flood And waves were white below, No more shall feel the victor’s tread, Or know the conquered knee;— The harpies of the shore shall pluck The eagle of the sea! O, better that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every thread-bare sail, And give her to the god of storms,— The lightning and the gale!

Of all the people in the mornings at the mall, it’s the old liberators I like best, those veterans of the Bulge, Anzio, or Monte Cassino I see lost in Automotive or back in Home Repair, bored among the paints and power tools. Or the really old ones, the ones who are going fast, who keep dozing off in the little orchards of shade under the distant skylights. All around, from one bright rack to another, their wives stride big as generals, their handbags bulging like ripe fruit. They are almost all gone now, and with them they are taking the flak and fire storms, the names of the old bombing runs. Each day a little more of their memory goes out, darkens the way a house darkens, its rooms quietly filling with evening, until nothing but the wind lifts the lace curtains, the wind bearing through the empty rooms the rich far off scent of gardens where just now, this morning, light is falling on the wild philodendrons.

She that but little patience knew, From childhood on, had now so much A grey gull lost its fear and flew Down to her cell and there alit, And there endured her fingers' touch And from her fingers ate its bit. Did she in touching that lone wing Recall the years before her mind Became a bitter, an abstract thing, Her thought some popular enmity: Blind and leader of the blind Drinking the foul ditch where they lie? When long ago I saw her ride Under Ben Bulben to the meet, The beauty of her country-side With all youth's lonely wildness stirred, She seemed to have grown clean and sweet Like any rock-bred, sea-borne bird: Sea-borne, or balanced in the air When first it sprang out of the nest Upon some lofty rock to stare Upon the cloudy canopy, While under its storm-beaten breast Cried out the hollows of the sea.