1630 Nature poems

Aftear night’s thunder far away had rolled The fiery day had a kernel sweet of cold, And in the perfect blue the clouds uncurled, Like the first gods before they made the world And misery, swimming the stormless sea In beauty and in divine gaiety. The smooth white empty road was lightly strewn With leaves—the holly’s Autumn falls in June— And fir cones standing stiff up in the heat. The mill-foot water tumbled white and lit With tossing crystals, happier than any crowd Of children pouring out of school aloud. And in the little thickets where a sleeper For ever might lie lost, the nettle-creeper And garden warbler sang unceasingly; While over them shrill shrieked in his fierce glee The swift with wings and tail as sharp and narrow As if the bow had flown off with the arrow. Only the scent of woodbine and hay new-mown Travelled the road. In the field sloping down, Park-like, to where its willows showed the brook, Haymakers rested. The tosser lay forsook Out in the sun; and the long waggon stood Without its team, it seemed it never would Move from the shadow of that single yew. The team, as still, until their task was due, Beside the labourers enjoyed the shade That three squat oaks mid-field together made Upon a circle of grass and weed uncut, And on the hollow, once a chalk-pit, but Now brimmed with nut and elder-flower so clean. The men leaned on their rakes, about to begin, But still. And all were silent. All was old, This morning time, with a great age untold, Older than Clare and Cobbett, Morland and Crome, Than, at the field’s far edge, the farmer’s home, A white house crouched at the foot of a great tree. Under the heavens that know not what years be The men, the beasts, the trees, the implements Uttered even what they will in times far hence— All of us gone out of the reach of change— Immortal in a picture of an old grange.

for The People The people don't mention it much. It goes without saying, it stays without saying— that concentration camp on their reservation. And they avoid that massive site as they avoid contamination— that massive void punctuated by crusted nails, punctured pipes, crumbled failings of foundations . . . What else is there to say? This was a lush land once, graced by a gifted people gifted with the wisdom of rivers, seasons, irrigation. The waters went flowing through a network of canals in the delicate workings of balances and health . . . What else is there to say? Then came the nation. Then came the death. Then came the desert. Then came the camp. But the desert is not deserted. It goes without saying, it stays without saying— wind, spirits, tumbleweeds, pain.

Back when it took all day to come up from the curving broad ponds on the plains where the green-winged jaçanas ran on the lily pads easing past tracks at the mouths of gorges crossing villages silted in hollows in the foothills each with its lime-washed church by the baked square of red earth and its talkers eating fruit under trees turning a corner and catching sight at last of inky forests far above steep as faces with the clouds stroking them and the glimmering airy valleys opening out of them waterfalls still roared from the folds of the mountain white and thundering and spray drifted around us swirling into the broad leaves and the waiting boughs once I took a tin cup and climbed the sluiced rocks and mossy branches beside one of the high falls looking up step by step into the green sky from which rain was falling when I looked back from a ledge there were only dripping leaves below me and flowers beside me the hissing cataract plunged into the trees holding on I moved closer left foot on a rock in the water right foot on a rock in deeper water at the edge of the fall then from under the weight of my right foot came a voice like a small bell singing over and over one clear treble syllable I could feel it move I could feel it ring in my foot in my skin everywhere in my ears in my hair I could feel it in my tongue and in the hand holding the cup as long as I stood there it went on without changing when I moved the cup still it went on when I filled the cup in the falling column still it went on when I drank it rang in my eyes through the thunder curtain when I filled the cup again when I raised my foot still it went on and all the way down from wet rock to wet rock green branch to green branch it came with me until I stood looking up and we drank the light water and when we went on we could still hear the sound as far as the next turn on the way over

My mare, when she was in heat, would travel the fenceline for hours, wearing the impatience in her feet into the ground. Not a stallion for miles, I’d assure her, give it up. She’d widen her nostrils, sieve the wind for news, be moving again, her underbelly darkening with sweat, then stop at the gate a moment, wait to see what I might do. Oh, I knew how it was for her, easily recognized myself in that wide lust: came to stand in the pasture just to see it played. Offered a hand, a bucket of grain— a minute’s distraction from passion the most I gave. Then she’d return to what burned her: the fence, the fence, so hoping I might see, might let her free. I’d envy her then, to be so restlessly sure of heat, and need, and what it takes to feed the wanting that we are— only a gap to open the width of a mare, the rest would take care of itself. Surely, surely I knew that, who had the power of bucket and bridle— she would beseech me, sidle up, be gone, as life is short. But desire, desire is long.

Twenty-four thousand times in any year, lightning strikes and kills. On the Heath, the timber shells, like bony Flemish spires, point heavenwards in warning. The stags take note and bow their heads at the sky’s first challenge, or hurl a bellowing peal back in defiance. Quicken your pace. Ask for Belfont, Bedfound, Bedefunde, Beda’s spring, however the changes ring, where he dispatched his woman each morning from their heap of  halfsmart, crosswort, bloodcup, from under their thatch, to fetch even in such storms, even when she had reached nine months    ... When will it end, this barrenness, these waves of agony, barefoot through lynchet, dyke, furze, thistle, the gusts and groans, water breaking overhead? Beda’s woman lies back in the heather bed of history; you press on. At your feet is a baby, and another, heads like mushrooms, crowning, crying, put out for the Heath to take care of. Their mewings pierce the air. But there is no milk. Do not pick them. Leave them to the Dama dama who gather round. Consider instead the oaks, each ring another year that these might have suffered. Pass on through Hag Lane into Bedfont.Spring with a drinking vessel. Old English byden, a tub or container, funta, on loan from Rome (whose roots and tesserae lie scattered beneath your modern tread),fons or fontus. That distant rumbling is just a farmer bringing home grain. They are far behind you now between dead oaks and dark enclosing deer, exposed, yet silent. Thunder has paused. Head for the church, the fighting cocks (or peacocks) of St. Mary the Virgin, East Bedfont, and hurry on through its topiary nonsense, past the tombs of those who died on February the 31st, or aged three hundred and sixty-one. Enter the pudding stone. At the font like a cowled servant presenting the first and final course, is a Friar, sworn to poverty, chastity, his vessel raised, fending off storms.

Here they are. The soft eyes open. If they have lived in a wood It is a wood. If they have lived on plains It is grass rolling Under their feet forever. Having no souls, they have come, Anyway, beyond their knowing. Their instincts wholly bloom And they rise. The soft eyes open. To match them, the landscape flowers, Outdoing, desperately Outdoing what is required: The richest wood, The deepest field. For some of these, It could not be the place It is, without blood. These hunt, as they have done, But with claws and teeth grown perfect, More deadly than they can believe. They stalk more silently, And crouch on the limbs of trees, And their descent Upon the bright backs of their prey May take years In a sovereign floating of joy. And those that are hunted Know this as their life, Their reward: to walk Under such trees in full knowledge Of what is in glory above them, And to feel no fear, But acceptance, compliance. Fulfilling themselves without pain At the cycle’s center, They tremble, they walk Under the tree, They fall, they are torn, They rise, they walk again.

Crows see us as another invention. Like summer and beauty, They shimmer at sunrise in their new cars, Change their names and color when they see us. When they fly, they’re the bite marks on the sun, And nail-scratches of black against the sky. We matter little to them as we are. They prefer hamburger, youth, Oxygen and mineral water. And, of course, we sell our souls to a passing crow, Because we’re shiny things they take to heaven. Crows are always polite to humans. They have lots of money And live at a party that never ends. We’re the junk genes they left behind, That play Aztec football with our heads, When we dream and lose. Crows have relatives everywhere. Human warfare moves across the sky Making more room for them to fly. We’re just a meal in the next world. We’re the hole in the sky. Crows are legends and instructors of grace. They are the dots in the fog, And the flight of the uterus. Crows are the printed warnings Of a wasted life. They will never leave or abandon us. When we take our last breath, Navigating through our mistakes and lies, The crows will take our last word. We are the last citizens of a pale race of crows, Rearranging the furniture in the mind of God. Crows turn the planet on its axis when we die, And do nothing to the body we’ll remember. Our souls are their meal of the day. And the blue marble in its beak, As it flies away, Is the world leaving you.

The snail moves like a Hovercraft, held up by a Rubber cushion of itself, Sharing its secret With the hedgehog. The hedgehog Shares its secret with no one. We say, Hedgehog, come out Of yourself and we will love you. We mean no harm. We want Only to listen to what You have to say. We want Your answers to our questions. The hedgehog gives nothing Away, keeping itself to itself. We wonder what a hedgehog Has to hide, why it so distrusts. We forget the god Under this crown of thorns. We forget that never again Will a god trust in the world.

The Hedgehog sleeps beneath the hedge— As you may sometimes see— And I prefer it sleeping there To sleeping here with me!

This gray board fence turns blue in the evening light And the sycamores reign down upon it their diadems, And blue and green batter in wood and stems The stems of light Their green and golden gems. At once, out of a million years of energy, All turn to flesh,—board, gate, and branch— With that quick sunset wrench Which seems like chance, Out of the fashion of an entropy. If then the flesh is yours, as now it is, I have lost yard, sunset, and all Into a mild greeting, and I call The sunset to your thought, to tell it is Parent apparent to your rich apparel. August 1954