505 History and politics poems

October five. Seven years older in dog years and then your November the day record snowfalls hit Randolph New Hampshire in forty-three and I am thinking of something intimate and impossible to waste: Brazil’s undiscovered caverns of amethyst     endless smooth oval stones along Washington’s moody Pacific chewing a continent. But I am wrong. We pass St. Michael’s the cemetery that asks the public to mow and weed it and perhaps draw larger conclusions about the already wasted and tidy up names frayed at the edges by the ions that bind     by age the chemical salt of time that jostles stones over at their bases to remind us or alter their sentiments. We read and read and each time nothing new has come up on their markers. At home we hear the fishermen bring up their nets smack water to scare them. By now the flounder’s secret pocket where its heart and everything separate from meat and bone is cleaned and empty as a silk purse not a nickel left down in the freezer. Nothing really shines but this: I have loved you eight presidents. Forty years. Five point seven in dog.

El Patio de Mi Casa, 1990, by María Brito My patio was once a schoolyard, or maybe a barracoon, perhaps both, & the ghosts of children nest under the pink sink, mouths agape for flakes of rust, or they creep to the ceiling, sucking on the five taps of blue water, their little lips abuzz like cicadas. In the moonlight I see them bounce on my feather bed, bowed like an old donkey’s back, or they teeter-totter in my wicker chair darned with burlap string. Leave them alone, I say to my mother, who wants to cleanse the house with carvacrol, trapping these children’s souls in beehives, then stringing them up with kites so they fly to the moon. Let them drum our dented pots, let them screech happy carols, let them dance with tin spurs on their little feet. Mother, I don’t care if they nibble our family photos, soil your heirlooms of lace, or steal what few grains of rice (more like gypsum ants) you hoard in the pink pantry. Let them play cat’s cradle with spiderwebs, let them rummage in your armoire of moths, let them lurk in your shadows of ill will & tease you to laughter. Ghosts are unruly, free to be fickle, unlike me, the pig-tailed girl you kept strapped to the sewing machine in the shed of planks by the mango tree too old to fruit. Work & sweat will set you free, you said, just like Fidel on the radio. Cut me out of those sepia photos on the wall, burn those baby braids you keep in porcelain, toss my first communion gown into the sea. I wish I’d been born into a brood of mice, quick to grow, quick to breed, quick to die among the kapok trees.

Now that the salt of their blood Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea . . . —Allen Tate We leave Gulfport at noon; gulls overhead trailing the boat—streamers, noisy fanfare— all the way to Ship Island. What we see first is the fort, its roof of grass, a lee— half reminder of the men who served there— a weathered monument to some of the dead. Inside we follow the ranger, hurried though we are to get to the beach. He tells of graves lost in the Gulf, the island split in half when Hurricane Camille hit, shows us casemates, cannons, the store that sells souvenirs, tokens of history long buried. The Daughters of the Confederacy has placed a plaque here, at the fort’s entrance— each Confederate soldier’s name raised hard in bronze; no names carved for the Native Guards— 2nd Regiment, Union men, black phalanx. What is monument to their legacy? All the grave markers, all the crude headstones— water-lost. Now fish dart among their bones, and we listen for what the waves intone. Only the fort remains, near forty feet high, round, unfinished, half open to the sky, the elements—wind, rain—God’s deliberate eye.

... mindful of the unhonored dead —Thomas Gray Here they stood, whom the Kecoughtan first believed gods from another world, one pair of longjohns each, bad-yellow, knotted with lice, the godless, bandy-legged runts with ear bit off, or eye gouged, who killed and prayed over whatever flew, squatted, or swam. In huts hacked from mulberry, pine, and swamp cyprus, they huddled ripe as hounds. At cockcrow scratched, shuffled marsh paths, took skiffs and ferried to dead-rise scows, twenty-footers dutifully designed and of right draft for oysters, crabs, and croakers. They were seaworthy. According to diaries hand-scrawled, and terse court records, our ancestors: barbarous, habitual, Virginians. Some would not sail, came ashore, walked on the land, kept faces clenched, lay seed and family, moved often, and are gone. Of them this harbor says nothing. Of the sea’s workmen, not much, no brass plate of honor, no monument in the square, no square, merely the wreckage of a place. But they stood— proud, black and white, surly in mist at the hovel of the boatwright, arm pointed: Build me one like that yonder! Meaning the gray hull I see across a cove, bottom up, canting, nameless now as the hard, long arm, daddy’s or granddaddy’s, that points, but known to the one said to crush clams in his palms, thus got paid, always, who built the derelicts, and who, barring feud, took stick in hand here, made that grave gouged line of a keel, then his broad brow lifted seaward, in silence, sometimes summoning a shape in memory, and it hove up, and was changed some, they whined, but God knows all they wanted, all he made for them was to be a little unlike the drab hulls of the dead ones, but not too much. Like that one yonder! This was the image he gave them to dream of change, tomorrow only a guess, the sea’s story their life-stink and bow-slam and stillness, and they saw how the fair ones grew, quick riddle-riders our fathers feared, schools that gave us a message sewn on chest, Bible, slate, and this worm-holed future entered blindly as I now have entered his place, feeling for log-char, back-flung gates of light, and the builder. Like that one ... the lies begin, each inventing why he should rise up, he should hack out the joy they dream, his pitch boiled, black as mud seaming their legs. Suddenly, I see and take up a cap left as worthless on a stump, its stained round fitting my head like water. Merely to wait where the builder heaved shards and chips and abortive clots to the tide’s tongue-lap is to feel the unconceived shape pulse down his arm, into fingers that took up that stick to let loose the ingathered wilderness of dreams: loon, crow, osprey, gull, the man who cannot believe what he sees, but still sees it. An immense shadow making over water. Stick in hand, eyes squint. And there it is, the wind cradling of an Eagle, wing-sails, unfurled, bow-chopping white water head on, a creature now there, now gone. A man, I have to hold my face up, study how air heats, builds a rising push until the high circle of sight skids out everywhere. Dreaming change, I understand, almost, the problem: is he not harnessed, himself, this light flyer, this father designed to sail like a small god, to screech down upon pine-huddled, hungry chicks he must send off with his lethal, air-buoyed shape? Nothing in him asks what is over the wave-edge where our brothers float and sink, lovely shadows, by the millions. Putting my back to the sea-worn trunk they have left me, I pull the stick through the dirt, and remember the long line, man-weight in it, and dark-buoyed. It grows with freckling light, with the answering of birds crying out the only speech we all have above our unfinished country that looms still in the soul, that would bear us hence, out of the water that beats in, out of the water that bore us all here.

The vase was made of clay With spines of straw For strength. The sunbaked vase Soaked in a deep blue dye for days. The events in this wilderness, Portrayed in the round of the vase, Depend on shades of indigo against The masked areas of the clay, a flat pearl color To detail the big sky and snow... This Montana field in winter is not sorrowful: A bugle skips through notes: We view it all somehow from the center of the field And there are scattered groups of cavalry. Some of these Men were seasoned by civil war. Their caps are blue. Their canteens are frozen. The horses shake their heads Bothered by beads of ice, the needles of ice Forming at both sides of their great anvil heads. The long, blue cloaks of the officers fall over the haunches Of the horses. The ammunition wagons Beside the woods are blurred by the snowy weather... Beyond the wagons, farther even, into the woods There is a sloping streambed. This is The dark side of the vase which is often misunderstood. From here through the bare trees there’s A strange sight to be seen at the very middle of the field: A valet is holding a bowl of cherries—archetype and rubric, A general with white hair eats the fruit while introducing its color Which will flow through the woods in early December. An Indian woman came under dark clouds to give birth, unattended In the deep wash inside the woods. She knew the weather Could turn and staked the tips of two rooted spruce trees To the earth to make a roof. The deerskin of her robe is in her mouth. Her legs spread, He feet are tied up in the roof of darkening spruce.No stars Show through!

In today's correspondence a poetry book detailing the lives of British Queens— with a note enclosed and a question: what does it mean to be a Queen? I could reply and say — this precious stone set in a silver sea: a symbol, like a banner, for mens' love. But these are not my words. I could reply and say— glorying in the glories of my people, sorrowing with the sorrows of the lowest. But these are not my words. I could declare— that each Queen is tissue paper thin, transluscent but combined, are my flesh. But I will not solidify my words, instead I will command my secretary to write, with many kind thanks for the little book etc, but to say my thoughts on Queenship can only be ascertained by my actions.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind, For I am soft and made of melting snow —Queen Elizabeth I Her sex sent her mother to the tower, made her father profligate with arrogant desires, but she was made of flint and backbone. Think of a young girl in a blue velvet bodice, a white collar and lace, the very prototype of virginal. Think of a woman, her court enlivened by suitors and lovers in doublets, in brocaded cloaks, despite suspicions of their motives staining the sheets, the way cups of spicy, flowery mead were sipped despite the possibility of poison. Even the crown of the sun must go down each night. Could she have stood at the prow of a ship in that great Armada she ordered, instead of at a window, waiting for urgent results? Could she have guessed that the words of a man she inspired, carved into the marble of ages, had a muscular beauty more than equal to her own worldly triumphs? Daughter, Queen, Ruler of roiling seas, of meandering rivers and meadows, of armies of soldiers, their swords and armor glittering like planets to her sun. Namesake to an age. And Poet? When she turned to the empty parchment (or once to a windowpane, a diamond for quill) everything must have gone quiet. Even a queen is naked before the naked page, awaiting not the generous spoils owed to a victor but the gifts freely given of a besotted muse.

If you care about yourself at all, come to your own aid while there's still time. Marcus Aurelius 3.14 Citizen of Rome, you are the center of the universe. Problem is, circumference is—take a guess—me. “Some things are impatient to be born While others are impatient to die.” Don’t say I did not warn you. Next time they swear Shit happens, pop them square in the nose. This will not help anybody, but helping is The farthest thing from my imperial mind. If you keep your spirit blameless and pure People will drape you with laurels but No one will have sex with you in backseats Or marble mausoleums or anywhere else, A small price to pay for honor and respect Though not for me, being an emperor with no clothes. Just pretend today is the last day of your life And act accordingly—not that such strictures Apply to Yours Truly, sports fans. The forces of evil march on the fortress Of your self. I wish I could explain why. But what if evil did not exist and what if Your self was no fortress, see what I mean? Stoics get a bad name.Not in touch with feelings. Too rigid. Know-it-all cocksure mothers. So the Stoics retain PR firms, don’t tell a soul. If you really knew what was good for you, And you do, why do you care I’ll flail you alive? True, pissing off your emperor is a poor plan, Even one like me mounted bare-assed on a steed. Once upon a time, children…The story peters out. Circus revels and gladiatorial raves— Seen one, seem them all. Life is tiresome, When will it end and will we ever notice? I wish I knew. Really, I wish I cared. My pal, Marcus Aurelius, natters day and night: “Living is more like wrestling than dancing.” Guess he never saw me take Molly at the club. And he says we always have the option of Having no opinion. Right. Like he knows. OK, then, where did I put my pants?

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King; Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring; Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know, But leechlike to their fainting country cling Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow. A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field; An army, whom liberticide and prey Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield; Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed; A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed— Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

They landed and could see nothing but meadows and tall trees— cypress, nearly three fathoms about at the roots, rising straight for sixty or eighty feet without a branch. In the woods were cedars, oaks, and walnut trees; some beech, some elm, black walnut, ash, and sassafras; mul- berry trees in groves; honey-suckle and other vines hanging in clusters on many trees. They stepped on violets and other sweet flowers, many kinds in many colors; straw- berries and rasp- berries were on the ground. Blackbirds with red shoulders were flying about and many small birds, some red, some blue; the woods were full of deer; and running everywhere fresh water— brooks, rundles, springs and creeks. In the twilight, through the thickets and tall grass, creeping upon all fours—the savages, their bows in their mouths.