872 Life poems

This was a true happening but (as you will see shortly) not such as would ready me for future ones. What has brisk disaster to do with a leisurely ordeal? Neither event, as you will notice also, has made me an understanding man. It was my watch one night, away then on the sea, when leaning on a couple of crates of something I dreamed of nothing special into the dark, and whispered the smoke of a sugared native product into the dark. Then from behind a quick rush burst not six feet over me with a sawing and then a cracking sound, and the other watch pointed up where a black squall ran port-side into the distance and a six by six crate lid veered and disappeared like a gull. But the other time we were idle ashore for days somewhere there are sandy foothills and small plains with weeds that stand like birds, and there was a steady blow on land that left off out at sea, leaving us all peculiar if I remember. The wind rasped the dense whorls of sharp leaves low on the ground and shrilled through the heads on the tall seed-stalks, and all those days the sound rose until we, without hope, without breath bore the conviction that our sojourn had not begun and had no end, like a period of dissipation. In certain Spanish havens the beggars come to you saying “Give me an amount. God will make it good.” Had they been wise those ladies would have said something of that kind and proffered a gratifying smile to their junior treasurer the other Tuesday and maybe been spared a peculiar fall. For forgetting their cards or missing dues or due to rancor from a month of planning they were turned away from the luncheon which might have saved them through its regular plaudits and calls to order. Instead they turned immediately back after some while waiting with other members in vying groups where the sound rose and narrowed, and from the dim hushed hall those five ladies, my individual patrons, came across the park together, under a hefty sun, under slight muffling rain, to my teashop. I worked on a cruising vessel one season and saw a woman being led below about a minute after she had vaulted the rail, and now her face cluttered with casts of hair returned to me, and a suggestion of the odor of moist wool. Then, after ordering, over the tinkle of service, the ladies called me and began the question of a particular person none had touched, wondering by turns in words like these: “Maybe when he was a child he went alone one night along the lakeside or followed streams in the dark and mating mayflies swarmed him or he was caught by a swirl of slippery animals risen from rotted cresses. It could be too a bird’s egg fell on him, that red and yellow spattering his coat showed him the partial form of brain and bill and wings like candy arms.” A second lady established the problem but in studious and in idle terms: “He must have tried becoming a sphere once when something hurt and must have failed. He is a cylinder and lacking the perfected self-containment of the sphere he nonetheless has beauty and though incomplete is unassailable.” The third advanced the first with this addition: “Maybe when he was a child and a good half he planted a happy garden for himself and tried to bring a boyish girl inside to share his secrets he could not bestow.” The fourth supposed some more years and less hope and figured on effects of disaffection: “Perhaps it was a time sprouting potatoes came creeping like things of the undersea surrounding him that gave him the first fevered turn toward what we now call his fine beauty.” The last lady came near to reconciling them: “Some awareness certainly shook him unawares once and he flinched and flinching has made him beautiful to all of us who admire huge eyed skittishness, the fawn standing some steps off always awkward and desired.” Odd gulls often join before a gale to bank and shrill in company, then at the heavy time of it they hush and float broadcast. Those ladies did the same the other Tuesday. Hopeless and breathless, both I and they rode like sitting birds into a last lull, and I was not (as you have seen) prepared by quick calamities of ocean labor for land bound suffering at ease. Understanding or unconcern could serve but pain and malice won, and who may be forgiven even his shapeless victories? “The boy is never by himself,” I said, “but by him stands an unseen friend whose face came in the petal fall under a secret tree, who meets his vague eyes with beaming gaps and his remote grin with a long lipless smile.”

Because a black bird flew across the road; Because the attendant at the pump turned surly; Because the uncertain weather Made Mother nervous, And, back home, the telephone kept ringing In an empty house; Because a white bird flew across the road. How far had they come? How far did they go? Seeing, along river after river, Between shores of brush and willow, Only the bend ahead and the bend behind Under a sky featureless and hard As a shallow bowl; through tautologies Of a landscape unendingly repeated Mile after mile; down Main Street After Main Street, replications Of the same petty civic scenery; Hearing the ghosts of trains Crossing between cornfields, Clattering over the points, moaning Above creosote and cinders, As if the imagination Could produce nothing more Than the same landscape, cornfields, Rivers, and Main Streets Pulling them, like a magnet, not toward But away from , not into the future, But away from the past; Until a white bird flew across the road With its mysterious message, that said to some, “Turn back,” and to the rest, “Go on.”

In the huddle you said “Go long—get open” and at the snap I took off along the right sideline and then cut across left in a long arc and I’m sure I was open at several points— glancing back I saw you pump-fake more than once but you must not have been satisfied with what you saw downfield and then I got bumped off course and my hands touched the turf but I regained my balance and dashed back to the right I think or maybe first left and then right and I definitely got open but the throw never came— maybe you thought I couldn’t hang on to a ball flung so far or maybe you actually can’t throw so far but in any case I feel quite open now, the defenders don’t seem too interested in me I sense only open air all around me though the air is getting darker and it would appear by now we’re well into the fourth quarter and I strongly doubt we can afford to settle for dinky little first downs if the score is what I think it is so come on, star boy, fling a Hail Mary with a dream-coached combination of muscle and faith and I will gauge the arc and I will not be stupidly frantic and I will time my jump and—I’m just going to say in the cool gloaming of this weirdly long game it is not impossible that I will make the catch.

Maker-of-sevens in the scheme of things From earth to star; Thy cycle holds whatever is fate, and Over the border the bar. Though rank and fierce the mariner Sailing the seven seas, He prays, as he holds his glass to his eyes, Coaxing the Pleiades. I cannot love them; and I feel your glad Chiding from the grave, That my all was only worth at all, what Joy to you it gave. These seven links the Law compelled For the human chain— I cannot love them; and you, oh, Seven-fold months in Flanders slain! A jungle there, a cave here, bred six And a million years, Sure and strong, mate for mate, such Love as culture fears; I gave you clear the oil and wine; You saved me your hob and hearth— See how even life may be ere the Sickle comes and leaves a swath. But I can wait the seven of moons, Or years I spare, Hoarding the heart’s plenty, nor spend A drop, nor share— So long but outlives a smile and A silken gown; Then gaily I reach up from my shroud, And you, glory-clad, reach down.

Drunk on the Umbrian hills at dusk and drunk On one pink cloud that stood beside the moon, Drunk on the moon, a marble smile, and drunk, Two young Americans, on one another, Far from home and wanting this forever— Who needed God? We had our bodies, bread, And glasses of a raw, green, local wine, And watched our Godless perfect darkness breed Enormous softly burning ancient stars. Who needed God? And why do I ask now? Because I’m older and I think God stirs In details that keep bringing back that time, Details that are just as vivid now— Our bodies, bread, a sharp Umbrian wine.

The story is written, the slip of a girl is loosed And her life folds over. Against the cold, the waiting For the what will happen. The next. Wonderful Awful. The blonde in a chemical bath. The story keeps on being written As a woman who waits for never to happen As an empty wall waits for light to form a bridge And under it, a mass of open eyes, Waiting for the awful eventual. Now? And yes is what is said. Then here it is, the box We live in where the crazy face of the day looks back At the closed eye of the night looking in. A boy of four comes in as an example Of where the door of life is left open for a moment. Time tumbles hour after hour until it's morning again. Some glass is for looking through, some is for seeing back. Every outline is a cage one way or another.

It’s the way they cannot understand the window they buzz and buzz against, the bees that take a wrong turn at my door and end up thus in a drift at first of almost idle curiosity, cruising the room until they find themselves smack up against it and they cannot fathom how the air has hardened and the world they know with their eyes keeps out of reach as, stuck there with all they want just in front of them, they must fling their bodies against the one unalterable law of things—this fact of glass—and can only go on making the sound that tethers their electric fury to what’s impossible, feeling the sting in it.

You slow down to watch cumulus clouds stream across the sky. You choose a more circuitous route home and pass a tree with white bags tied around random apples. The apples remind you of clouds, how each hangs in the sky, singular yet part of a flock. Each item in the flock is a coordinate of earth and sky, enumerating space. The flocks of apples and clouds are actual infinities, an endless collection of discrete items that one can conceivably count to the end. This is different from potential infinity, which is the entirety of infinity, an immeasurable continuum that is greater than the sum of its parts. After your first glimpse, you are lonely for more contraction of space around the light of your mind contemplating what cannot be conceived. What cannot be conceived this morning? The Army has found the larynx of an Iraqi man that American soldiers slowly strangled to death. His ribs, additional evidence for the trial, are still missing. They are in a refrigerator in Washington, D.C. These are discrete items; whereas how the passage of time felt as the soldiers strangled him is a continuum of infinite pain. And his words and songs and prayers and curses he will never speak are an empty set.

Sometimes it’s the shoes, the tying and untying, the bending of the heart to put them on, take them off, the rush of blood between the head and feet, my face, sometimes, if I could see it, astonished. Other times the stairs, three, four stages at the most, “flights” we call them, in honor of the wings we’ll never have, the fifth floor the one that kills the breath, where the bird in the building flies to first. Love, too, a leveler, a dying all its own, the parts left behind not to be replaced, a loss ongoing, and every day increased, like rising in the night, at 3:00 am, to watch the snow or the dead leaf fall, the rings around the streetlight in the rain, and then the rain, the red fist in the heart opening and closing almost without me. “ — Yesterday brought to today so lightly!” The morning, more and more, like evening. When I bend to tie my shoes and the blood fills the cup, it’s as if I see into the hidden earth, see the sunburned path on which I pass in shoes that look like sandals and arrive at a house where my feet are washed and wiped with my mother’s hair and anointed with the autumn oils of wildflowers.

The village life, and every care that reigns O'er youthful peasants and declining swains; What labour yields, and what, that labour past, Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last; What forms the real picture of the poor, Demands a song—the Muse can give no more. Fled are those times, if e'er such times were seen, When rustic poets praised their native green; No shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse, Their country's beauty or their nymphs' rehearse; Yet still for these we frame the tender strain, Still in our lays fond Corydons complain, And shepherds' boys their amorous pains reveal, The only pains, alas! they never feel. On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous reign, If Tityrus found the Golden Age again, Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong, Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song? From truth and nature shall we widely stray, Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way? Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains, Because the Muses never knew their pains. They boast their peasants' pipes, but peasants now Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough; And few amid the rural tribe have time To number syllables and play with rhyme; Save honest Duck, what son of verse could share The poet's rapture and the peasant's care? Or the great labours of the field degrade With the new peril of a poorer trade? From one chief cause these idle praises spring, That themes so easy few forbear to sing; They ask no thought, require no deep design, But swell the song and liquefy the line; The gentle lover takes the rural strain, A nymph his mistress and himself a swain; With no sad scenes he clouds his tuneful prayer, But all, to look like her, is painted fair. I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms For him that gazes or for him that farms; But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace The poor laborious natives of the place, And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray, On their bare heads and dewy temples play; While some, with feebler heads and fainter hearts, Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts: Then shall I dare these real ills to hide In tinsel trappings of poetic pride? No, cast by Fortune on a frowning coast, Which can no groves nor happy valleys boast; Where other cares than those the Muse relates, And other shepherds dwell with other mates; By such examples taught, I paint the cot, As truth will paint it, and as bards will not: Nor you, ye poor, of lettered scorn complain, To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain; O'ercome by labour and bowed down by time, Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme? Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread, By winding myrtles round your ruined shed? Can their light tales your weighty griefs o'erpower, Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour? Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, Lends the light turf that warms the neighboring poor; From thence a length of burning sand appears, Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears; Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, Reign o'er the land and rob the blighted rye: There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar, And to the ragged infant threaten war; There poppies, nodding, mock the hope of toil, There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil; Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf, The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf; O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade, And the wild tare clings round the sickly blade; With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound, And a sad splendor vainly shines around. So looks the nymph whom wretched arts adorn, Betrayed by man, then left for man to scorn; Whose cheek in vain assumes the mimic rose While her sad eyes the troubled breast disclose; Whose outward splendour is but folly's dress, Exposing most, when most it gilds distress. Here joyless roam a wild amphibious race, With sullen woe displayed in every face; Who far from civil arts and social fly, And scowl at strangers with suspicious eye. Here too the lawless merchant of the main Draws from his plough th' intoxicated swain; Want only claimed the labor of the day, But vice now steals his nightly rest away. Where are the swains, who, daily labor done, With rural games played down the setting sun; Who struck with matchless force the bounding ball, Or made the pond'rous quoit obliquely fall; While some huge Ajax, terrible and strong, Engaged some artful stripling of the throng, And, foiled, beneath the young Ulysses fell, When peals of praise the merry mischief tell? Where now are these?—Beneath yon cliff they stand, To show the freighted pinnace where to land; To load the ready steed with guilty haste; To fly in terror o'er the pathless waste, Or, when detected in their straggling course, To foil their foes by cunning or by force; Or, yielding part (when equal knaves contest), To gain a lawless passport for the rest. Here, wand'ring long amid these frowning fields, I sought the simple life that Nature yields; Rapine and Wrong and Fear usurped her place, And a bold, artful, surly, savage race; Who, only skilled to take the finny tribe, The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe Wait on the shore and, as the waves run high, On the tossed vessel bend their eager eye, Which to their coast directs its vent'rous way, Theirs, or the ocean's, miserable prey. As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand, And wait for favoring winds to leave the land; While still for flight the ready wing is spread: So waited I the favouring hour, and fled; Fled from these shores where guilt and famine reign, And cried, Ah! hapless they who still remain; Who still remain to hear the ocean roar, Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore; Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway, Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away; When the sad tenant weeps from door to door, And begs a poor protection from the poor! But these are scenes where Nature's niggard hand Gave a spare portion to the famished land; Hers is the fault, if here mankind complain Of fruitless toil and labor spent in vain; But yet in other scenes, more fair in view, Where Plenty smiles—alas! she smiles for few And those who taste not, yet behold her store, Are as the slaves that dig the golden ore, The wealth around them makes them doubly poor. Or will you deem them amply paid in health, Labor's fair child, that languishes with wealth? Go then! and see them rising with the sun, Through a long course of daily toil to run; Like him to make the plenteous harvest grow, And yet not shard the plenty they bestow; See them beneath the dog-star's raging heat, When the knees tremble and the temples beat; Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o'er The labour past, and toils to come explore; See them alternate suns and showers engage, And hoard up aches and anguish for their age; Through fens and marshy moors their steps pursue, When their warm pores imbibe the evening dew; Then own that labour may as fatal be To these thy slaves, as luxury to thee. Amid this tribe too oft a manly pride Strives in strong toil the fainting heart to hide; There may you see the youth of slender frame Contend with weakness, weariness, and shame: Yet urged along, and proudly loth to yield, He strives to join his fellows of the field; Till long-contending nature droops at last, Declining health rejects his poor repast, His cheerless spouse the coming danger sees, And mutual murmurs urge the slow disease. Yet grant them health, 'tis not for us to tell, Though the head droops not, that the heart is well; Or will you urge their homely, plenteous fare, Healthy and plain and still the poor man's share! Oh! trifle not with wants you cannot feel, Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal; Homely not wholesome, plain not plenteous, such As you who envy would disdain to touch. Ye gentle souls, who dream of rural ease, Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet please; Go! if the peaceful cot your praises share, Go, look within, and ask if peace be there: If peace be his—that drooping weary sire, Or theirs, that offspring round their feeble fire, Or hers, that matron pale, whose trembling hand Turns on the wretched hearth th' expiring brand. Nor yet can time itself obtain for these Life's latest comforts, due respect and ease; For yonder see that hoary swain, whose age Can with no cares except his own engage; Who, propped on that rude staff, looks up to see The bare arms broken from the withering tree, On which, a boy, he climbed the loftiest bough, Then his first joy, but his sad emblem now. He once was chief in all the rustic trade, His steady hand the straightest furrow made; Full many a prize he won, and still is proud To find the triumphs of his youth allowed. A transient pleasure sparkles in his eyes, He hears and smiles, then thinks again and sighs: For now he journeys to his grave in pain; The rich disdain him, nay, the poor disdain; Alternate masters now their slave command, And urge the efforts of his feeble hand; Who, when his age attempts its task in vain, With ruthless taunts of lazy poor complain. Oft may you see him, when he tends the sheep, His winter-charge, beneath the hillock weep; Oft hear him murmur to the winds that blow O'er his white locks and bury them in snow; When, roused by rage and muttering in the morn, He mends the broken hedge with icy thorn: "Why do I live, when I desire to be At once from life and life's long labour free? Like leaves in spring, the young are blown away, Without the sorrows of a slow decay; I, like yon withered leaf, remain behind, Nipped by the frost, and shivering in the wind; There it abides till younger buds come on, As I, now all my fellow-swains are gone; Then, from the rising generation thrust, It falls, like me, unnoticed to the dust. "These fruitful fields, these numerous flocks I see, Are others' gain, but killing cares to me; To me the children of my youth are lords, Slow in their gifts but hasty in their words: Wants of their own demand their care, and who Feels his own want and succors others too? A lonely, wretched man, in pain I go, None need my help and none relieve my woe; Then let my bones beneath the turf be laid, And men forget the wretch they would not aid." Thus groan the old, till, by disease oppressed, They taste a final woe, and then they rest. Theirs is yon house that holds the parish poor, Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door; There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play, And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day; There children dwell, who know no parents' care, Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there; Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed; Dejected widows with unheeded tears, And crippled age with more than childhood-fears; The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they! The moping idiot and the madman gay. Here too the sick their final doom receive, Here brought, amid the scenes of grief, to grieve, Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow, Mixed with the clamors of the crowd below; Here, sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan, And the cold charities of man to man: Whose laws indeed for ruined age provide, And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride; But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh, And pride embitters what it can't deny. Say ye, oppressed by some fantastic woes, Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose; Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance With timid eye to read the distant glance; Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease To name the nameless ever-new disease; Who with mock patience dire complaints endure, Which real pain, and that alone, can cure; How would ye bear in real pain to lie, Despised, neglected, left alone to die? How would ye bear to draw your latest breath, Where all that's wretched paves the way for death? Such is that room which one rude beam divides, And naked rafters form the sloping sides; Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen, And lath and mud is all that lie between; Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patched, gives way To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day. Here, on a matted flock, with dust o'erspread, The drooping wretch reclines his languid head; For him no hand the cordial cup applies, Nor wipes the tear that stagnates in his eyes; No friends with soft discourse his pain beguile, Nor promise hope till sickness wears a smile. But soon a loud and hasty summons calls, Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls. Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat, All pride and business, bustle and conceit; With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe, With speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go, He bids the gazing throng around him fly, And carries fate and physic in his eye; A potent quack, long versed in human ills, Who first insults the victim whom he kills; Whose murd'rous hand a drowsy bench protect, And whose most tender mercy is neglect. Paid by the parish for attendance here, He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer; In haste he seeks the bed where misery lies, Impatience marked in his averted eyes; And, some habitual queries hurried o'er, Without reply, he rushes on the door: His drooping patient, long inured to pain, And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain; He ceases now the feeble help to crave Of man, and mutely hastens to the grave. But ere his death some pious doubts arise, Some simple fears, which "bold bad" men despise; Fain would he ask the parish priest to prove His title certain to the joys above; For this he sends the murmuring nurse, who calls The holy stranger to these dismal walls; And doth not he, the pious man, appear, He, "passing rich with forty pounds a year"? Ah! no; a shepherd of a different stock, And far unlike him, feeds this little flock: A jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday's task As much as God or man can fairly ask; The rest he gives to loves and labors light, To fields the morning and to feasts the night; None better skilled the noisy pack to guide, To urge their chase, to cheer them or to chide; Sure in his shot, his game he seldom missed, And seldom failed to win his game at whist; Then, while such honors bloom around his head, Shall he sit sadly by the sick man's bed To raise the hope he feels not, or with zeal To combat fears that ev'n the pious feel Now once again the gloomy scene explore, Less gloomy now; the bitter hour is o'er, The man of many sorrows sighs no more. Up yonder hill, behold how sadly slow The bier moves winding from the vale below; There lie the happy dead, from trouble free, And the glad parish pays the frugal fee. No more, oh Death! thy victim starts to hear Churchwarden stern, or kingly overseer; No more the farmer gets his humble bow, Thou art his lord, the best of tyrants thou! Now to the church behold the mourners come, Sedately torpid and devoutly dumb; The village children now their games suspend, To see the bier that bears their ancient friend: For he was one in all their idle sport, And like a monarch ruled their little court; The pliant bow he formed, the flying ball, The bat, the wicket, were his labours all; Him now they follow to his grave, and stand Silent and sad, and gazing, hand in hand; While bending low, their eager eyes explore The mingled relics of the parish poor. The bell tolls late, the moping owl flies round, Fear marks the flight and magnifies the sound; The busy priest, detained by weightier care, Defers his duty till the day of prayer; And, waiting long, the crowd retire distressed, To think a poor man's bones should lie unblessed.