506 History and politics poems

All male Quincys are now dead, excepting one. John Wheelwright, “Gestures to the Dead” 1 Vast oblong space dwindled to one solitary rock. On it I saw a heap of hay impressed with the form of a man. Beleaguered Captain Stork with his cane on some quixotic skirmish. Deserters arrived from Fort Necessity All hope was gone. Howe carrying a white flag of truce went toward the water. 2 An Apostle in white stood on a pavement of scarlet Around him stretched in deep sleep lay the dark forms of warriors. He was turned away gazing on a wide waste. His cry of alarm astonished everyone. 3 A Council of War in battle array after some siege. I ran to them shouting as I ran “Victory!” Night closed in weedy with flies. The Moon slid between moaning pines and tangled vines. 4 Neutrals collected bones or journeyed behind on foot shouting at invisible doors to open. There were guards who approached stealthy as linxes Always fresh footprints in the forest We closed a chasm then trod the ground firm I carried your name like a huge shield. 5 Because dreams were oracles agile as wild-cats we leapt on a raft of ice. Children began a wail of despair we carried them on our shoulders. A wave thrust our raft of ice against a northern shore. An Indian trail led through wood and thicket Light broke on the forest The hostile town was close at hand. We screamed our war-cry and rushed in. 6 It was Him Power of the Clouds Judge of the Dead The sheep on his right The goats on his left And all the angels. But from the book backward on their knees crawled neolithic adventurers known only to themselves. They blazed with artifice no pin, or kernel, or grain too small to pick up. A baby with a broken face lay on the leaves Hannibal—a rough looking man rushed by with a bundle of sticks. “Ah, this is fortunate,” cried Forebear and helped himself to me. 7 God is an animal figure Clearly headless. He bewitches his quarry with ambiguous wounds The wolf or poor ass had only stolen straw. O sullen Silence Nail two sticks together and tell resurrection stories. 8 There on the deck, child in her arms was the girl I had been before She waved then threw her child to me and jumped But she missed the edge and swirled away. I left you in a group of grownup children and went in search wandered sandhills snowy nights calling “Mother, Father” A Dauphin sat down to dine on dust alone in his field of wheat One war-whoop toppled a State. I thought we were in the right country but the mountains were gone. We saw five or six people coming toward us who were savages. Alhough my pen was leaky as a sieve I scribbled “Arm, Arm!” “Ear.” Barked the Moon. We paddled with hands, planks, and a pencil “Listen—The people surrender” I don’t remember the rest but it was beautiful. We were led ashore by Captain Snow “I’ll meet you soon—” he said and vanished in the fog. 9 We cooked trout and perch on forked sticks. Fire crackled in the forest stillness Fire forms stood out against the gloom Ancient trunks with wens and deformities Moss bearded ancients—and thin saplings The strong, the weak, the old, the young— Now and then some sleeper would get up Warm her hands at the fire and listen to the whisper of a leaf or the footfall of an animal I kept my gun-match burning when it rained— 10 Holding hands with my skin I walked the wintry strand. “Tickle yourself with my stroke” ticked the wiseacre clock. The river sang— “Pelucid dark and deep my waters— come and cross me alone.” The final ruins ahead revealed two figures timidly engraved on one another. 11 I built a house that faced the east I never ventured west for fear of murder. Eternity dawned. Solitary watcher of what rose and set I saw only a Golgotha of corpses. 12 Experience teaches the savage revenge an enemy always takes on forerunners who follow. You were a little army of unarmed children— A newborn infant sat in the hollow of my pillow. 13 The house was a model of harmony. Children coiled like hedgehogs or lay on their backs. A doll uttered mysterious oracles “Put on the kettle.” “Get up and go home.” The clock was alive I asked what it ate. “A Cross large enough to crucify us all.” and so on. Blankets congealed into icicles We practiced trips, falls, dives into snowdrifts. With a snowshoe for a shovel I opened the clock and we searched for peace in its deep and private present. Outside, the world swarmed with sorcerers.

(excerpt) Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land, As but th’ off-scouring of the British sand; And so much earth as was contributed By English pilots when they heav’d the lead; Or what by th’ ocean’s slow alluvion fell, Of shipwrack’d cockle and the mussel-shell; This indigested vomit of the sea Fell to the Dutch by just propriety. Glad then, as miners that have found the ore, They with mad labour fish’d the land to shore; And div’d as desperately for each piece Of earth, as if’t had been of ambergris; Collecting anxiously small loads of clay, Less than what building swallows bear away; Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll, Transfusing into them their dunghill soul. How did they rivet, with gigantic piles, Thorough the centre their new-catched miles; And to the stake a struggling country bound, Where barking waves still bait the forced ground; Building their watry Babel far more high To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky. Yet still his claim the injur’d ocean laid, And oft at leap-frog ore their steeples play’d: As if on purpose it on land had come To show them what’s their mare liberum. A daily deluge over them does boil; The earth and water play at level-coil; The fish oft-times the burgher dispossest, And sat not as a meat but as a guest; And oft the Tritons and the sea-nymphs saw Whole sholes of Dutch serv’d up for cabillau; Or as they over the new level rang’d For pickled herring, pickled heeren chang’d. Nature, it seem’d, asham’d of her mistake, Would throw their land away at duck and drake.

On seeing some pictures of the interior of his house, Washington, D.C. Only the casket left, the jewel gone Whose noble presence filled these stately rooms, And made this spot a shrine where pilgrims came— Stranger and friend—to bend in reverence Before the great, pure soul that knew no guile; To listen to the wise and gracious words That fell from lips whose rare, exquisite smile Gave tender beauty to the grand, grave face. Upon these pictured walls we see thy peers,— Poet, and saint, and sage, painter, and king,— A glorious band;—they shine upon us still; Still gleam in marble the enchanting forms Whereupon thy artist eye delighted dwelt; Thy favorite Psyche droops her matchless face, Listening, methinks, for the beloved voice Which nevermore on earth shall sound her praise. All these remain,—the beautiful, the brave, The gifted, silent ones; but thou art gone! Fair is the world that smiles upon us now; Blue are the skies of June, balmy the air That soothes with touches soft the weary brow; And perfect days glide into perfect nights,— Moonlit and calm; but still our grateful hearts Are sad, and faint with fear,— for thou art gone! Oh friend beloved, with longing, tear-filled eyes We look up, up to the unclouded blue, And seek in vain some answering sign from thee. Look down upon us, guide and cheer us still From the serene height where thou dwellest now; Dark is the way without the beacon light Which long and steadfastly thy hand upheld. Oh, nerve with courage new the stricken hearts Whose dearest hopes seem lost in losing thee.

Calm as that second summer which precedes The first fall of the snow, In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds, The City bides the foe. As yet, behind their ramparts stern and proud, Her bolted thunders sleep— Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud, Looms o’er the solemn deep. No Calpe frowns from lofty cliff or scar To guard the holy strand; But Moultrie holds in leash her dogs of war Above the level sand. And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched, Unseen, beside the flood— Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched That wait and watch for blood. Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade, Walk grave and thoughtful men, Whose hands may one day wield the patriot’s blade As lightly as the pen. And maidens, with such eyes as would grow dim Over a bleeding hound, Seem each one to have caught the strength of him Whose sword she sadly bound. Thus girt without and garrisoned at home, Day patient following day, Old Charleston looks from roof, and spire, and dome, Across her tranquil bay. Ships, through a hundred foes, from Saxon lands And spicy Indian ports, Bring Saxon steel and iron to her hands, And summer to her courts. But still, along you dim Atlantic line, The only hostile smoke Creeps like a harmless mist above the brine, From some frail, floating oak. Shall the spring dawn, and she still clad in smiles, And with an unscathed brow, Rest in the strong arms of her palm-crowned isles, As fair and free as now? We know not; in the temple of the Fates God has inscribed her doom; And, all untroubled in her faith, she waits The triumph or the tomb.

The Chichimecas are in the hills. They have built a huge bonfire. I am at my window with a telescope counting shadows flickering in front of the flames. There must be at least a thousand Chichimecas and their many dogs, for they are the dog people. Maybe there is only one Chichimeca and his dog pacing back and forth in front of the fire trying to make me think that there are one thousand Chichimecas in the hills. There are Chichimecas in the alley. They have taken down the street signs and built another bonfire—STOP, SCHOOL CROSSING, SLIPPERY WHEN WET, the Chichimecas are showing a preference for S’s slithering into smoke. The Chichimecas have broken into the abandoned train station from one of my poems. The one where the sound of the plastic tips of my shoelaces clicks against pavement like lobsters. They are cooking the lobsters in a steel drum. After they have devoured the lobsters, they lie down with their dogs. Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff the dogs. Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff the Chichimecas, for they have found aerosol paint cans and they are holding rags soaked with paint spray to their noses. This makes the moon come down. Chichi mommy,chichi mommy, chant the Chichimecas as they fall asleep in a pile with their many dogs. Chichi mommy as they snore and dream that the stars are dripping milk into their open mouths.

after Miller Williams This is to say we continued. As though continuing changed us. As though continuing brought happiness as we had known. On a dry field without cover, his skin blistered raw in the sun. Not one among us came, as though he had no relations. What did we say to our brother? How could we leave him alone while soldiers guarded his corpse as though precious to them? One of the women, in darkness, crept to the field where he died, prayed for him, covered him up. Dust over what was not dust. We would have ventured out with her if we had loved ourselves less. We had to think of our children, and he was not coming back. How could we live with the silence, live with our grief and our shame? Death did not heal what he suffered. He was making demands. We did not want him to be there, asking the question he asked us, changing the sound of his name. He had embarrassed us. This is the memory we carried, avoiding the thought that he remained face down among the charred grasses, holding the earth with his hands.

The aeroplane is shaped like a bird Or a giant mechanical penis My father escorts my mother From girlhood to unhappiness A dragonfly has iridescent wings Shorn, it’s a lowly pismire Plucked of arms and legs A throbbing red pepperpod Baby, she’s a girl Pinkly propped as a doll Baby, she’s a pearl An ulcer in the oyster of God Cry little baby clam cry The steam has opened your eyes Your secret darkly hidden The razor is sharpening the knife Abandoned taro-leaf boat Its lonely black sail broken The corpses are fat and bejeweled The hull is thoroughly rotten The worm has entered the ear And out the nose of my father Cleaned the pelvis of my mother And ringed around her fingerbone One child beats a bedpan One beats a fishhook out of wire One beats his half sister on the head Oh, teach us to fish and love Don’t say her boudoir is too narrow She could sleep but in one cold bed Don’t say you own many horses We escaped on her skinny mare’s back Man is good said Meng-Tzu We must cultivate their natures Man is evil said Hsun-Tzu There’s a worm in the human heart He gleaned a beaded purse from Hong Kong He procured an oval fan from Taiwan She married him for a green card He abandoned her for a blonde My grandmother is calling her goslings My mother is summoning her hens The sun has vanished into the ocean The moon has drowned in the fen Discs of jade for her eyelids A lozenge of pearl for her throat Lapis and kudzu in her nostrils They will rob her again and again

Heraldry and all its lovely language; I chose my time there learning elsewhere, where else than land, Landscape, and how to live, in it is not like, nothing is like, the colors or the snow, it is not like pearl and it is not like the glitter of rainwater that darkens the bark against which the occasional bloom-laden branch might be seen shedding petals. No. Here is the past: One was once a boy and read books and could not pronounce the most engaging words and read in silence under blankets. Here one was not like oneself or was quiet and wrong and did not know the words nor how to ask, who to ask. Nor why. Boy’s books with flags. Everyone’s born to the language; anyone can say something. For instance, knight banneret, that’s what she called him, having no use for him after history, she thrust him into the operatic night: A woman’s hand rose above the surface of the lake and caught the glistering sword, and slowly descended into the boy’s refuge, his astonishment, so foreign, so little like home Knights Baronets— inferior barons formed by James I in 1611, the titles were sold and the funds went toward the plantation of Ulster. For this one would receive the right to a Field argent, a sinister hand couped the wrist gules. How foreign she was when God still cared. This is like a life, like a history built fluently, as if on the innocent, Boy-books and children’s crusades: The Reading (al-Korân) versus The Writing (Scripture). Isn’t it interesting, east / west, us / them? Everyone’s born to something. You should have feared the flick of my uncle’s thick wrist and the boat rides when he took me in those days, salt water in the bay and hard slaps against the hull, back from a day of horizons, of shrimp nets, I would lie on the bow feeling anger against my whole boy’s body as the engines uttered their single syllable for twenty miles back to land, a whine more terrible than laughter. The oral tradition, a voice hard and horrifying. One might have been a chevalier. Like someone from the books, was she beautiful? Was your mother lovely and a kind of landscape herself, like snow in dark woods, not like anything else?

A Creole boy from the West Indies brought, To be in European learning taught, Some years before to Westminster he went, To a Preparatory school was sent. When from his artless tale the mistress found The child had not one friend on English ground, She ev’n as if she his own mother were, Made the dark Indian her particular care. Oft on her favourite’s future lot she thought; To know the bent of his young mind she sought, For much the kind preceptress wished to find To what profession he was most inclined, That where his genius led they might him train; For nature’s kindly bent she held not vain. But vain her efforts to explore his will; The frequent question he evaded still; Till on a day at length he to her came, Joy sparkling in his eyes; and said, the same Trade he would be those boys of colour were, Who danced so happy in the open air. It was a troop of chimney-sweeping boys, With wooden music and obstreperous noise, In tarnish’d finery and grotesque array, Were dancing in the streets the first of May.

1 Who will honor the city without a name If so many are dead and others pan gold Or sell arms in faraway countries? What shepherd's horn swathed in the bark of birch Will sound in the Ponary Hills the memory of the absent— Vagabonds, Pathfinders, brethren of a dissolved lodge? This spring, in a desert, beyond a campsite flagpole, —In silence that stretched to the solid rock of yellow and red mountains— I heard in a gray bush the buzzing of wild bees. The current carried an echo and the timber of rafts. A man in a visored cap and a woman in a kerchief Pushed hard with their four hands at a heavy steering oar. In the library, below a tower painted with the signs of the zodiac, Kontrym would take a whiff from his snuffbox and smile For despite Metternich all was not yet lost. And on crooked lanes down the middle of a sandy highway Jewish carts went their way while a black grouse hooted Standing on a cuirassier's helmet, a relict of La Grande Armée. 2 In Death Valley I thought about styles of hairdo, About a hand that shifted spotlights at the Student's Ball In the city from which no voice could reach me. Minerals did not sound the last trumpet. There was only the rustle of a loosened grain of lava. In Death Valley salt gleams from a dried-up lake bed. Defend, defend yourself, says the tick-tock of the blood. From the futility of solid rock, no wisdom. In Death Valley no hawk or eagle against the sky. The prediction of a Gypsy woman has come true. In a lane under an arcade, then, I was reading a poem Of someone who had lived next door, entitled "An Hour of Thought." I looked long at the rearview mirror: there, the one man Within three miles, an Indian, was walking a bicycle uphill. 3 With flutes, with torches And a drum, boom, boom, Look, the one who died in Istanbul, there, in the first row. He walks arm in arm with his young lady, And over them swallows fly. They carry oars or staffs garlanded with leaves And bunches of flowers from the shores of the Green Lakes, As they came closer and closer, down Castle Street. And then suddenly nothing, only a white puff of cloud Over the Humanities Student Club, Division of Creative Writing. 4 Books, we have written a whole library of them. Lands, we have visited a great many of them. Battles, we have lost a number of them. Till we are no more, we and our Maryla. 5 Understanding and pity, We value them highly. What else? Beauty and kisses, Fame and its prizes, Who cares? Doctors and lawyers, Well-turned-out majors, Six feet of earth. Rings, furs, and lashes, Glances at Masses, Rest in peace. Sweet twin breasts, good night. Sleep through to the light, Without spiders. 6 The sun goes down above the Zealous Lithuanian Lodge And kindles fire on landscapes "made from nature": The Wilia winding among pines; black honey of the Żejmiana; The Mereczanka washes berries near the Żegaryno village. The valets had already brought in Theban candelabra And pulled curtains, one after the other, slowly, While, thinking I entered first, taking off my gloves, I saw that all the eyes were fixed on me. 7 When I got rid of grieving And the glory I was seeking, Which I had no business doing, I was carried by dragons Over countries, bays, and mountains, By fate, or by what happens. Oh yes, I wanted to be me. I toasted mirrors weepily And learned my own stupidity. From nails, mucous membrane, Lungs, liver, bowels, and spleen Whose house is made? Mine. So what else is new? I am not my own friend. Time cuts me in two. Monuments covered with snow, Accept my gift. I wandered; And where, I don't know. 8 Absent, burning, acrid, salty, sharp. Thus the feast of Insubstantiality. Under a gathering of clouds anywhere. In a bay, on a plateau, in a dry arroyo. No density. No harness of stone. Even the Summa thins into straw and smoke. And the angelic choirs fly over in a pomegranate seed Sounding every few instants, not for us, their trumpets. 9 Light, universal, and yet it keeps changing. For I love the light too, perhaps the light only. Yet what is too dazzling and too high is not for me. So when the clouds turn rosy, I think of light that is level In the lands of birch and pine coated with crispy lichen, Late in autumn, under the hoarfrost when the last milk caps Rot under the firs and the hounds' barking echoes, And jackdaws wheel over the tower of a Basilian church. 10 Unexpressed, untold. But how? The shortness of life, the years quicker and quicker, not remembering whether it happened in this or that autumn. Retinues of homespun velveteen skirts, giggles above a railing, pigtails askew, sittings on chamberpots upstairs when the sledge jingles under the columns of the porch just before the moustachioed ones in wolf fur enter. Female humanity, children's snots, legs spread apart, snarled hair, the milk boiling over, stench, shit frozen into clods. And those centuries, conceiving in the herring smell of the middle of the night instead of playing something like a game of chess or dancing an intellectual ballet. And palisades, and pregnant sheep, and   pigs, fast eaters and poor eaters, and cows cured by incantations. 11 Not the Last Judgment, just a kermess by a river. Small whistles, clay chickens, candied hearts. So we trudged through the slush of melting snow To buy bagels from the district of Smorgonie. A fortune-teller hawking: "Your destiny, your planets." And a toy devil bobbing in a tube of crimson brine. Another, a rubber one, expired in the air squeaking, By the stand where you bought stories of King Otto and Melusine. 12 Why should that city, defenseless and pure as the wedding necklace of a forgotten tribe, keep offering itself to me? Like blue and red-brown seeds beaded in Tuzigoot in the copper desert seven centuries ago. Where ocher rubbed into stone still waits for the brow and cheekbone it would adorn, though for all that time there has been no one. What evil in me, what pity has made me deserve this offering? It stands before me, ready, not even the smoke from one chimney is lacking, not one echo, when I step across the rivers that separate us. Perhaps Anna and Dora Drużyno have called to me, three hundred miles inside Arizona, because except fo me no one else knows that they ever lived. They trot before me on Embankment Street, two hently born parakeets from Samogitia, and at night they unravel their spinster tresses of gray hair. Here there is no earlier and no later; the seasons of the year and of the day are simultaneous. At dawn shit-wagons leave town in long rows and municipal employees at the gate collect the turnpike toll in leather bags. Rattling their wheels, "Courier" and "Speedy" move against the current to Werki, and an oarsman shot down over England skiffs past, spread- eagled by his oars. At St. Peter and Paul's the angels lower their thick eyelids in a smile over a nun who has indecent thoughts. Bearded, in a wig, Mrs. Sora Klok sits at the counter, instructing her twelve shopgirls. And all of German Street tosses into the air unfurled bolts of fabric, preparing itself for death and the conquest of Jerusalem. Black and princely, an underground river knocks at cellars of the cathedral under the tomb of St. Casimir the Young and under the half-charred oak logs in the hearth. Carrying her servant's-basket on her shoulder, Barbara, dressed in mourning, returns from the Lithuanian Mass at St. Nicholas to the Romers' house in Bakszta Street. How it glitters! the snow on Three Crosses Hill and Bekiesz Hill, not to be melted by the breath of these brief lives. And what do I know now, when I turn into Arsenal Street and open my eyes once more on a useless end of the world? I was running, as the silks rustled, through room after room without stopping, for I believed in the existence of a last door. But the shape of lips and an apple and a flower pinned to a dress were all that one was permitted to know and take away. The Earth, neither compassionate nor evil, neither beautiful nor atro- cious, persisted, innocent, open to pain and desire. And the gift was useless, if, later on, in the flarings of distant nights, there was not less bitterness but more. If I cannot so exhaust my life and their life that the bygone crying is transformed, at last, into harmony. Like a Noble Jan Dęboróg in the Straszun's secondhand-book shop, I am put to rest forever between two familiar names. The castle tower above the leafy tumulus grows small and there is still a hardly audible—is it Mozart's Requiem?—music. In the immobile light I move my lips and perhaps I am even glad not to find the desired word. Berkeley, 1968