505 History and politics poems

The neighborhood cringes behind windows washed in magnesium light, streamers fizzling above the shingled rooftop of the apartments across the street where teenaged boys with mannish arms throw cherry bombs, bottle rockets, wings and spinners, snappers, chasers, fiery cryolite wheels onto the avenue. Paint flakes off the flammable houses and onto brave square plots of white grass. Rain-deprived vines sucker the shutters. Backyard dogs tear at the dirt, cats run flat out, their tails straight up. What's liberty to the checkout girl selling smokes and nuts, greenbacks turning her fingers to grease? The boys insist on pursuing happiness, their birthright: a box of matches, crackers on strings, sparklers, fountains, missiles, repeating shells, Roman candles, Brazilian barrages. We peek through blind slats to where they stand around a manhole cover, the gold foam of Corona bottles breaking at their feet, young up-turned faces lit by large caliber multi-shot aerials. We suffer each concussion, the sulfer rush that smells like fear, each dizzy, orgiastic display that says we love this country, democracy, the right to a speedy trial. We're afraid to complain, to cross the spent red casings melted on asphalt in the morning's stunned aftermath, to knock hard on any door, and find them draped like dead men over the couches, the floor, hands clasped behind their heads prison style, shoulders tattooed, dreaming the dreams of free men in summer, shirts off, holes in their jeans.

I remember a performance of Antigone in which she threw herself on the floor of the universe and picked up a piece of dust. Is that the particle? It startled me. Was it Scripted? Directed? Driven? I am a girl, Antigone. I have a sister. We love each other terribly. I am a woman of property. The milk of the footlights. The folds of the curtain. I remember a performance of Antigone. She stooped. There was a wild particle. It was glorified by my distance. I heard the hooves of the dust. The ticking of the script calibrating oblivion. I saw the particle hanging and Antigone needed something to do with her hands and she did it.

I Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause, Whose pathless march no mortal may control! Ye Ocean-Waves! that, wheresoe'er ye roll, Yield homage only to eternal laws! Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds singing, Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined. Save when your own imperious branches swinging, Have made a solemn music of the wind! Where, like a man beloved of God, Through glooms, which never woodman trod, How oft, pursuing fancies holy, My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, Inspired, beyond the guess of folly, By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high! And O ye Clouds that far above me soared! Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! Yea, every thing that is and will be free! Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest Liberty. II When France in wrath her giant-limbs upreared, And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea, Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free, Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared! With what a joy my lofty gratulation Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band: And when to whelm the disenchanted nation, Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand, The Monarchs marched in evil day, And Britain joined the dire array; Though dear her shores and circling ocean, Though many friendships, many youthful loves Had swoln the patriot emotion And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves; Yet still my voice, unaltered, sang defeat To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance, And shame too long delayed and vain retreat! For ne'er, O Liberty! with partial aim I dimmed thy light or damped thy holy flame; But blessed the paeans of delivered France, And hung my head and wept at Britain's name. III "And what," I said, "though Blasphemy's loud scream With that sweet music of deliverance strove! Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream! Ye storms, that round the dawning East assembled, The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!" And when, to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled, The dissonance ceased, and all seemed calm and bright; When France her front deep-scarr'd and gory Concealed with clustering wreaths of glory; When, insupportably advancing, Her arm made mockery of the warrior's ramp; While timid looks of fury glancing, Domestic treason, crushed beneath her fatal stamp, Writhed like a wounded dragon in his gore; Then I reproached my fears that would not flee; "And soon," I said, "shall Wisdom teach her lore In the low huts of them that toil and groan! And, conquering by her happiness alone, Shall France compel the nations to be free, Till Love and Joy look round, and call the Earth their own." IV Forgive me, Freedom! O forgive those dreams! I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament, From bleak Helvetia's icy caverns sent— I hear thy groans upon her blood-stained streams! Heroes, that for your peaceful country perished, And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain-snows With bleeding wounds; forgive me, that I cherished One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes! To scatter rage, and traitorous guilt, Where Peace her jealous home had built; A patriot-race to disinherit Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear; And with inexpiable spirit To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer— O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, And patriot only in pernicious toils! Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind? To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway, Yell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey; To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils From freemen torn; to tempt and to betray? V The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game They burst their manacles and wear the name Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain! O Liberty! with profitless endeavour Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour; But thou nor swell'st the victor's strain, nor ever Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power. Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee, (Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee) Alike from Priestcraft's harpy minions, And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves, Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves! And there I felt thee!—on that sea-cliff's verge, Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above, Had made one murmur with the distant surge! Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, And shot my being through earth, sea, and air, Possessing all things with intensest love, O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all, when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians: this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world where none is lonely, none hunted, alien, this man, superb in love and logic, this man shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric, not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone, but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.

Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy! For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood Upon our side, we who were strong in love! Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!—Oh! times, In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law, and statute, took at once The attraction of a country in romance! When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights, When most intent on making of herself A prime Enchantress—to assist the work Which then was going forward in her name! Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth, The beauty wore of promise, that which sets (As at some moment might not be unfelt Among the bowers of paradise itself ) The budding rose above the rose full blown. What temper at the prospect did not wake To happiness unthought of? The inert Were roused, and lively natures rapt away! They who had fed their childhood upon dreams, The playfellows of fancy, who had made All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred Among the grandest objects of the sense, And dealt with whatsoever they found there As if they had within some lurking right To wield it;—they, too, who, of gentle mood, Had watched all gentle motions, and to these Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more wild, And in the region of their peaceful selves;— Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire, And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish; Were called upon to exercise their skill, Not in Utopia, subterranean fields, Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us,—the place where in the end We find our happiness, or not at all!

Don't let's hang about on the cobblestones. The equestrian statue—keep going—represents the king. Yes, the Dante translator. Now let's move on. Lovely theatre, first rate, but no point in dawdling because this paving is contaminated (a nuclear accident near the quarry) and here we are already like ghosts on this X-ray plate, like ghouls, radiological tourists, little glass vessels blown with a breeze of electrons.

Our lives no longer feel ground under them. At ten paces you can’t hear our words. But whenever there’s a snatch of talk it turns to the Kremlin mountaineer, the ten thick worms his fingers, his words like measures of weight, the huge laughing cockroaches on his top lip, the glitter of his boot-rims. Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses he toys with the tributes of half-men. One whistles, another meouws, a third snivels. He pokes out his finger and he alone goes boom. He forges decrees in a line like horseshoes, One for the groin, one the forehead, temple, eye. He rolls the executions on his tongue like berries. He wishes he could hug them like big friends from home.

Let us praise the twilight of freedom, brothers, the great year of twilight! A thick forest of nets has been let down into the seething waters of night. O sun, judge, people, desolate are the years into which you are rising! Let us praise the momentous burden that the people’s leader assumes, in tears. Let us praise the twilight burden of power, its weight too great to be borne. Time, whoever has a heart will hear your ship going down. We have roped swallows together into legions. Now we can’t see the sun. Everywhere nature twitters as it moves. In the deepening twilight the earth swims into the nets and the sun can’t be seen. But what can we lose if we try one groaning, wide, ungainly sweep of the rudder? The earth swims. Courage, brothers, as the cleft sea falls back from our plow. Even as we freeze in Lethe we’ll remember the ten heavens the earth cost us.

These are the lines on which a committee is formed. Almost as soon as work was begun in the tunnel men began to die among dry drills. No masks. Most of them were not from this valley. The freights brought many every day from States all up and down the Atlantic seaboard and as far inland as Kentucky, Ohio. After the work the camps were closed or burned. The ambulance was going day and night, White’s undertaking business thriving and his mother’s cornfield put to a new use. “Many of the shareholders at this meeting “were nervous about the division of the profits; “How much has the Company spent on lawsuits? “The man said $150,000. Special counsel: “I am familiar with the case. Not   :   one    :    cent. “ ‘Terms of the contract. Master liable.’ “No reply. Great corporation disowning men who made. . . .” After the lawsuits had been instituted. . . . The Committee is a true reflection of the will of the people. Every man is ill. The women are not affected, This is not a contagious disease. A medical commission, Dr. Hughes, Dr. Hayhurst examined the chest of Raymond Johnson, and Dr. Harless, a former company doctor. But he saw too many die, he has written his letter to Washington. The Committee meets regularly, wherever it can. Here are Mrs. Jones, three lost sons, husband sick, Mrs. Leek, cook for the bus cafeteria, the men: George Robinson, leader and voice, four other Negroes (three drills, one camp-boy) Blankenship, the thin friendly man, Peyton the engineer, Juanita absent, the one outsider member. Here in the noise, loud belts of the shoe-repair shop, meeting around the stove beneath the one bulb hanging. They come late in the day. Many come with them who pack the hall, wait in the thorough dark. This is a defense committee. Unfinished business: Two rounds of lawsuits, 200 cases Now as to the crooked lawyers If the men had worn masks, their use would have involved time every hour to wash the sponge at mouth. Tunnel, 3⅛ miles long. Much larger than the Holland Tunnel or Pittsburgh’s Liberty Tubes. Total cost, say, $16,000,000. This is the procedure of such a committee: To consider the bill before the Senate. To discuss relief. Active members may be cut off relief, 16-mile walk to Fayetteville for cheque— west virginia relief administration, #22991 to joe henigan, gauley bridge, one and 50/100, winona national bank. paid from state funds.

People expected that the evil would finally drain away. —Aleksander Wat, My Century Faded and baked here to a tawny grit, spills of blood and seed from humanity called from it for its crimes against mute earth gully in footpaths, dribble down to the sea, payment now and forever drawn from birth through flesh’s sunny darkness. Light yeasts in it. And if I find the slope to crumbled temples of that light’s god dragging at me through heat, shallow degrees of slant up to remnant stone, then something more than burnt air, or the repeat of weight known as time, pulls heavily in this zone, something the bone brings, terrible through simple. Phoibos, slayer at distances with shock, sower of plague and arrower of healing, tension of bright-dark beyond spanning, love will not quite cast out evil while revealing your fissionables. The raven was your dove. Heavy isotopes hum with crickets in rock. Neither woman nor man, my driver laughed when his lights torched writhings down the far shoulder, cross-dresser in the night beyond Naples, huge, sinuous, crooning as we shot past. Life seems older in its variant forms, drawn by the centrifuge to the rim and swinging, swayed in time’s dream uncalfed. For the vast thrower, shafter of quivering force, sex was filigree in whoever served. Pythoness, yes, wombed keeper of those coils in the wet cellar where tongue darted and swerved. But her own throat when it swelled with voice knew toils past a man’s strength, torqued bulging from the source. And that young man fitted with bone and thong and membrane from his withers by his father the maze molder, when he climbed into flame itself in the high nucleus, dripped as slather down the sky’s maw. Union there, with an aim at the center, crisped on a central soundless gong, sizzling from his overreach extended back on itself and down, the soundless hurry of the sea far below minutely riven, trembling in place, diamonds in blue slurry nowhere disturbed yet flecking everywhere, driven— all this boy’s cry endlessly thin, suspended. The sybil when at last her throat disgorged its burdens rumbled like a pawing bull, or the bull-fiend on Krete, and shrilly warbled. Birds ride the bull’s hump in stone graphs, that full barbarity at poise piercing now the garbled clang of Ikaros, over us tensile and forged. This is the crumbling whistle of shells and frags in their close arc. Philosophy gets precise when it turns practical. This in our background whir. Archimedes, old Fermi in your eyes, naked, ecstatic with theorems that assure conclusion, your city falls, your hacked flesh sags. There was a sprig which, if you bore it in hand on landing here, your pilot drowned and your herald crushed in the surf, would bend and seem to listen— there was a branch that trailed her voice through imperiled corridors to throats of the dead, and glistened, then brought you back to your breath near shining sand. And there was pelt from the solar scavenger, its blond mane tossing with your workings, turning catastrophe to triumph, lion crud strewn now on waves, coat of the charger burning obsidian cobalt platinum and mud in craters of the shaker and avenger. Eroded skull of this squat promontory, nubbled shrine over cave by surf hypnotized before deeps enameled with fire’s mosaic, you are the structure lucid though pulverized behind the logics, and the omens prosaic in their spelling out, and the blaze of story. Give me your light! I am the darkened thing seeking it. Give me your fire and your cry! But hood me from sulfurs she inhaled when she twisted over the fissure, give me your hand from the sky we have fallen into. Give, yes, what you insisted she utter, rasped uncoilings of your spring! And then release me to the animal shy of speech yet steady in ecstasies, your cousin the outsider’s gaze through life, the drink of it down, and finally mind as frieze eternally in metamorphic strife released, sea stone and cloud infinitely small. And there the migrant and his wanderers may find the new land, and their future wars may roll, exhausted in hissing foam, to sink over the fish spines, and the blunderers of fulfillment stare at samsaric wink of ocean, stare and find sleep that dissolves the curse.