1630 Nature poems

It’s raining, it’s pouring, The old man’s snoring. He got into bed And bumped his head And couldn’t get up in the morning.

It sifts from Leaden Sieves - It powders all the Wood. It fills with Alabaster Wool The Wrinkles of the Road - It makes an even Face Of Mountain, and of Plain - Unbroken Forehead from the East Unto the East again - It reaches to the Fence - It wraps it Rail by Rail Till it is lost in Fleeces - It deals Celestial Vail To Stump, and Stack - and Stem - A Summer’s empty Room - Acres of Joints, where Harvests were, Recordless, but for them - It Ruffles Wrists of Posts As Ankles of a Queen - Then stills it’s Artisans - like Ghosts - Denying they have been -

It had a secret name which in later years came to mean I will continue to stand here. It had a food mouth and a shrieking mouth. Popular wisdom indicated that Its hands could heat stones and that a man could cook meat on those stones. That being said, It had a poverty hand and a riches hand. They were the same hand. A little ways above the hands the mouths spoke together but for two different reasons, like the music was behaving but the orchestra was broken. * Even in less benevolent moments, It was known to use Its own body as a tent and as the gifts inside of the tent. Early people said It had a mother hand and a father hand, and that together they made a clapping sound. Its hands delivered the children from madness. The hands saw the riverbank sliding into the river to make a more shallow river. They scooped the mud up. The hands were giving thanks. * The hands smelled like exodus. The hands were the law. One hand grew older, and the other hand younger. They said, fairly often, We’d like to try that again. Both were restless and wanted rest. One hand said,I will go where you go, while the other hand continued on alone.

Today my brother brought over a piece of the ark wrapped in a white plastic grocery bag. He set the bag on my dining table, unknotted it, peeled it away, revealing a foot-long fracture of wood. He took a step back and gestured toward it with his arms and open palms — It’s the ark, he said. You mean Noah’s ark? I asked. What other ark is there? he answered. Read the inscription, he told me, it tells what’s going to happen at the end. What end? I wanted to know. He laughed,What do you mean, “what end”? The end end. Then he lifted it out. The plastic bag rattled. His fingers were silkened by pipe blisters. He held the jagged piece of wood so gently. I had forgotten my brother could be gentle. He set it on the table the way people on television set things when they’re afraid those things might blow-up or go-off — he set it right next to my empty coffee cup. It was no ark — it was the broken end of a picture frame with a floral design carved into its surface. He put his head in his hands — I shouldn’t show you this — God, why did I show her this? It’s ancient — O, God, this is so old. Fine, I gave in,Where did you get it? The girl, he said.O, the girl. What girl? I asked. You’ll wish you never knew, he told me. I watched him drag his wrecked fingers over the chipped flower-work of the wood — You should read it. But, O, you can’t take it — no matter how many books you’ve read. He was wrong. I could take the ark. I could even take his marvelously fucked fingers. The way they almost glittered. It was the animals — the animals I could not take — they came up the walkway into my house, cracked the doorframe with their hooves and hips, marched past me, into my kitchen, into my brother, tails snaking across my feet before disappearing like retracting vacuum cords into the hollows of my brother’s clavicles, tusks scraping the walls, reaching out for him — wildebeests, pigs, the oryxes with their black matching horns, javelinas, jaguars, pumas, raptors. The ocelots with their mathematical faces. So many kinds of goat. So many kinds of creature. I wanted to follow them, to get to the bottom of it, but my brother stopped me — This is serious, he said. You have to understand. It can save you. So I sat down, with my brother wrecked open like that, and two-by-two the fantastical beasts parading him. I sat, as the water fell against my ankles, built itself up around me, filled my coffee cup before floating it away from the table. My brother — teeming with shadows — a hull of bones, lit only by tooth and tusk, lifting his ark high in the air.

Here in Italy the buildings are the color Of dead skin and the sky is “tragic” And the rivers are brown and turbulent And everybody is always stopping by To say “Ciao!” and then “Ciao!” We think a lot about emotion, chiefly The emotion of love. There is much to cry about. And after, sleep. One falls in love So as not to fall asleep. I have just awakened To the fact that I am not in love And am about to fall asleep or write an opera In which someone falls asleep and dies Or write a letter to a friend or call somebody up To meet me later for a drink. Maybe it’s too late. Tomorrow I will go out and buy something to make me happy. I remember standing in the train station in Pisa Hoping to catch the sound of an American voice In the crowd. It’s good to remember such things When you think you haven’t “lived” enough Because you need to learn not to regret What you’ve never done. Fortunately, I remember Everything that's ever happened to me. I remember asking a woman I didn't know Whether or not she was the person I was looking for And she said, “Yes, much to my regret.” That wasn’t difficult to remember Because it just happened a few minutes ago. Other things are harder. I don’t remember Right away what I had for breakfast two weeks ago Last Thursday or the specific date of my first Masturbation, though I’m sure that with some effort I could recover the lasting details. I remember My father using a green hair tonic called “H-A,” Which stood for “Hair Arranger.” I remember the night My father tore out a big clump of my mother's hair In an argument. They were drunk and I came out Of my room in my pajamas and asked them to stop. If I said I wanted to fall apart in someone’s arms You would have to assume I was being sarcastic And you would be right. No one has arms in which I care to fall apart, at least not at the moment. Tomorrow night I am going to see a play about “A contemporary man in the process of falling apart.” I think everyone falls apart about twenty times a day. I’m still confused about why I mentioned Italy At the beginning of this poem, especially since It’s all a terrible lie. My students would say It means “the poet does not know where he is; Some catastrophe has distorted his perceptions.” I am drowsy but happy and resemble the corner Of a big empty room. I am drunk and staring Into the bathtub. A lot of people are standing Around listening to music. My fingers Smell like cigarettes. I am wondering If there is any way to describe the pleasure Someone derives from seeing a man’s cock Shoved up someone’s ass, or how one Can go on like this, even after having given up Completely to nervousness, and to death. I remember the one night I spent on a ship. The porters woke us at dawn. We stood At the railing to sight the blue and transparent island Gaping through mist in the distance. For breakfast, We ate peaches. I hated the people I was with, But I must have been incredibly stupid. We spent the day On the island, seesawed in the park, and waded in the sea.

Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green, That creepeth o’er ruins old! Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed, To pleasure his dainty whim: And the mouldering dust that years have made Is a merry meal for him. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings, And a staunch old heart has he. How closely he twineth, how tight he clings, To his friend the huge Oak Tree! And slily he traileth along the ground, And his leaves he gently waves, As he joyously hugs and crawleth round The rich mould of dead men’s graves. Creeping where grim death has been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Whole ages have fled and their works decayed, And nations have scattered been; But the stout old Ivy shall never fade, From its hale and hearty green. The brave old plant, in its lonely days, Shall fatten upon the past: For the stateliest building man can raise, Is the Ivy’s food at last. Creeping on, where time has been, A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Because I am not married, I have the skin of an orange that has spent its life in the dark. Inside the orange I am blind. I cannot tell when a hand reaches in and breaks the atoms of the blood. Sometimes a blackbird will bring the wind into my hair. Or the yellow clouds falling on the cold floor are animals fighting each other out of their drifting misery. All the women I have known have been ruined by fog and the deer crossing the field at night.

All Nashville is a chill. And everywhere Like desert sand, when the winds blow, There is each moment sifted through the air, A powdered blast of January snow. O! thoughtless Dandelion, to be misled By a few warm days to leave thy natural bed, Was folly growth and blooming over soon. And yet, thou blasted yellow-coated gem, Full many a heart has but a common boon With thee, now freezing on thy slender stem. When the heart has bloomed by the touch of love’s warm breath Then left and chilling snow is sifted in, It still may beat but there is blast and death To all that blooming life that might have been.

It needn’t be tinder, this juncture of the year, a cigarette second guessed from car to brush. The woods’ parchment is given to cracking asunder the first puff of wind. Yesterday a big sycamore came across First and Hawthorne and is there yet. The papers say it has to happen, if just as dribs and drabs on the asbestos siding. But tonight is buckets of stars as hard and dry as dimes. A month’s supper things stacks in the sink. Tea brews from water stoppered in the bath and any thirst carried forward is quenched thinking you, piece by piece, an Xmas gift hidden and found weeks after: the ribbon, the box. I have reservoirs of want enough to freeze many nights over.

In party outfits, two by two or one by one (I was expected to go along as well), They step up the steep gangplank, hands on Metal railing. The river, youthful also In midnight blue with sunset-tinted wavelets, Lets them borrow its broad back For an evening’s unhurried round trip, Which won’t interrupt old river habits for long. Not the chop and churn of big propellers As the rocking stern heaves off and wheels fanwise Into the current, nor a short blast from the stack, Not the up-tempo drumbeat of the black-tie combo Nor an answering fusillade of popped corks, not geysers Of laughter pitched flagpole high among flailing Limbs out on the polished floor nor the mixed Babble of sideline comment over bubbling glasses Can shake that seamless imperturbability. . . . When the springy net of sparkles has shrunk and faded Out of sight, the last rough throb been coaxed From the tenor sax’s frog-in-the-throat, the final Needling tremolo of the clarinet been wrapped up In distance, suddenly it is strange to be here In lilac afterglow with trout-leap and mayfly. . . . Strange, too, how our part of the river continues To trundle along its tonnages of water and motion. The unused ticket spins to the ground. As much as any person not two people can I miss the jaunt, for just this one hour of dusk. . . . Then, a veiled echo, my name called as I turn To answer, eyes adjusting to where we are At the pivot of night, the cusp of light. Light enough to feel our way back to the grove Of alders along the curving path beside the river; Light enough to recognize my life when I see it, Going in its direction, more or less at the same pace.