1630 Nature poems

The Shannon when it washes the shoreline in the wake of a cruiser susurruses exactly like the Polish language you hear in lidl on Friday evenings, 7 pm payday. That’s what Gerry says. • The river surface offers space to the song: hammer taps of Latvians and Poles nailing planks of a deck.        The place between water and sky holding sound. It is under- loved and an amphitheater. • Latvians and Lithuanians are nailing planks of grooved decking. It will be a nice feature of that riverside property. Their tap-tapping underscores the distance between this side and that. • Winter gales have made swift work of the billboard proclaiming 42 luxury bungalows only two remaining

He lives, who last night flopped from a log Into the creek, and all night by an ankle Lay pinned to the flood, dead as a nail But for the skin of the teeth of his dog. I brought him boiled eggs and broth. He coughed and waved his spoon And sat up saying he would dine alone, Being fatigue itself after that bath. I sat without in the sun with the dog. Wearing a stocking on the ailing foot, In monster crutches, he hobbled out, And addressed the dog in bitter rage. He told the yellow hound, his rescuer, Its heart was bad, and it ought Not wander by the creek at night; If all his dogs got drowned he would be poor. He stroked its head and disappeared in the shed And came out with a stone mallet in his hands And lifted that rocky weight of many pounds And let it lapse on top of the dog's head. I carted off the carcass, dug it deep. Then he came too with what a thing to lug, Or pour on a dog’s grave, his thundermug, And poured it out and went indoors to sleep. I saw him sleepless in the pane of glass Looking wild-eyed at sunset, then the glare Blinded the glass—only a red square Burning a house burning in the wilderness.

A tulip, just opened, had offered to hold A butterfly, gaudy and gay; And, rocked in a cradle of crimson and gold, The careless young slumberer lay. For the butterfly slept, as such thoughtless ones will, At ease, and reclining on flowers, If ever they study, ’t is how they may kill The best of their mid-summer hours. And the butterfly dreamed, as is often the case With indolent lovers of change, Who, keeping the body at ease in its place, Give fancy permission to range. He dreamed that he saw, what he could but despise, The swarm from a neighbouring hive; Which, having come out for their winter supplies, Had made the whole garden alive. He looked with disgust, as the proud often do, On the diligent movements of those, Who, keeping both present and future in view, Improve every hour as it goes. As the brisk little alchymists passed to and fro, With anger the butterfly swelled; And called them mechanics – a rabble too low To come near the station he held. ‘Away from my presence!’ said he, in his sleep, ‘Ye humbled plebeians! nor dare Come here with your colorless winglets to sweep The king of this brilliant parterre!’ He thought, at these words, that together they flew, And, facing about, made a stand; And then, to a terrible army they grew, And fenced him on every hand. Like hosts of huge giants, his numberless foes Seemed spreading to measureless size: Their wings with a mighty expansion arose, And stretched like a veil o’er the skies. Their eyes seemed like little volcanoes, for fire,— Their hum, to a cannon-peal grown,— Farina to bullets was rolled in their ire, And, he thought, hurled at him and his throne. He tried to cry quarter! his voice would not sound, His head ached – his throne reeled and fell; His enemy cheered, as he came to the ground, And cried, ‘King Papilio, farewell!’ His fall chased the vision – the sleeper awoke, The wonderful dream to expound; The lightning’s bright flash from the thunder-cloud broke, And hail-stones were rattling around. He’d slumbered so long, that now, over his head, The tempest’s artillery rolled; The tulip was shattered – the whirl-blast had fled, And borne off its crimson and gold. ’T is said, for the fall and the pelting, combined With suppressed ebullitions of pride, This vain son of summer no balsam could find, But he crept under covert and died.

An old woodcut of the London Bridge and a colored lithograph of a barley field. There are no other pictures on Ward D. The London Bridge lifts sooty towers above the river. But it's the barley field I see. A golden ocean of barley. It's not like the other grain-fields. Maybe it's those inward-looking eyes gone into it so it becomes heaven? A fall-colored sky, mild, with no harvesters and no scythes.

The cave looked much like any other from a little distance but as we approached, came almost to its mouth, we saw its walls within that slanted up into a dome were beating like a wild black lung— it was plastered and hung with the pulsing bodies of bats, the organ music of the body’s deep interior, alive, the sacred cave with its ten thousand gleaming eyes near the clustered rocks where the sea beat with the leather wings of its own dark waves. Below the bat-hung, throbbing walls, an altar stood, glittering with guano, a stucco sculpture like a Gaudi church, berserk Baroque, stone translated into flux—murk and mud and the floral extravagance of wet sand dripped from a giant hand, giving back blessing, excrement—return for the first fruits offered to the gods. We stayed outside, superior with fear, like tourists peering through a door, whose hanging beads rattle in the air from one who disappeared into the dim interior; we thought of the caves of Marabar, of a writer who entered and never quite emerged— the caves’ echoing black emptiness a tunnel in the English soul where he is wandering still. So the bat cave on the Bali coast, not far from Denpasar, holds us off, and beckons ... Standing there now, at the mouth of the cave—this time we enter, feel inside the flutter of those many hearts, the radiant heat of pumping veins, the stretch of wing on bone like a benediction, and the familiar faces of this many-headed god, benevolent as night is to the weary—the way at dark the cave releases them all, how they must lift like the foam on a wave breaking, how many they are as they enter the starlit air, and scatter in wild wide arcs in search of fruit, the sweet bites of mosquito ... while the great domes of our own kind slide open, the eye that watches, tracks the skies, and the huge doors roll slowly back on the hangars, the planes push out their noses of steel, their wings a bright alloy of aluminum and death, they roar down the runways, tear into the night, their heavy bodies fueled from sucking at the hidden veins of earth; they leave a trail of fire behind them as they scar the air, filling the dreams of children, sleeping—anywhere, Chicago, Baghdad—with blood, as the bombs drop, as the world splits open, as the mothers reach for their own in the night of the falling sky, madness in method, nature gone into reverse ... here, nearly unperturbed, the bats from the sacred cave fill the night with their calls, high-pitched, tuned to the solid world as eyes to the spectrum of light, gnats to the glow of a lamp—the bats circle, the clouds wheel, the earth turns pulling the dome of stars among the spinning trees, blurring the sweet globes of fruit, shaped exactly to desire—dizzy, we swing back to the cave on our stiff dark wings, the sweet juice of papaya drying on our jaws, home to the cave, to attach ourselves back to the pulsing dome, until, hanging there, sated and sleepy, we can see what was once our world upside down as it is and wonder whose altars those are, white, encrusted with shit.

The batture’s water and sand disappear when water swells the river, heat’s portion of a northern winter. Under willows cropped up since our last cow is dead and carried to the batture to be taken by the water clean into another season, we sit on green granite piled deep enough to keep the batture dry one more week. We don’t say so but we wait for the swollen body to appear before us, we want the torn leg to distract us, the loose arm to show us where. We’ve always known which way the water runs, the differences among earth, air, water and whatever the horizon offers that is not actually there. We want to be the ones to identify the missing person. We count the reward we’d earn. There is a family in southern Minnesota keeping a closet of dry-cleaned suits, a mahogany high-boy of ironed shirts, folded undershorts and sweaters. In the ashtray that says Welcome to Nevada are the coins he left without thinking, the only clue which tells his family what they didn’t want to know, he might have known what he was doing. We want to be the ones whose call is first in a series of related events which will end we hope in the family’s satisfaction with the coroner’s identification, and though it is old-fashioned and no longer done in this country, we’d like to think the pennies from his pocket will be mailed to the morgue, polished to their copper finish, pressed to float forever on his eyelids and make us take a second look as the light hits them and they beautifully glitter. We think how glad we were when we first saw him he floated face down in the water which a few moments earlier had been snow his children sledded and slipped on. Light beats gravity, lifts these young trees from the water. This is where we watch time, mark the spot across the water which is the red flag we hope calls us come across and save us. This is twenty-eight states.

Like all his people he felt at home in the forest. The silence beneath great trees, the dimness there, The distant high rustling of foliage, the clumps Of fern like little green fountains, patches of sunlight, Patches of moss and lichen, the occasional Undergrowth of hazel and holly, was he aware Of all this? On the contrary his unawareness Was a kind of gratification, a sense of comfort And repose even in the strain of running day After day. He had been aware of the prairies. He had known he hated the sky so vast, the wind Roaring in the grasses, and the brightness that Hurt his eyes. Now he hated nothing; nor could he Feel anything but the urgency that compelled him Onward continually. "May I not forget, may I Not forget," he said to himself over and over. When he saw three ravens rise on their awkward Wings from the forest floor perhaps seventy-five Ells ahead of him, he said, "Three ravens," And immediately forgot them. "May I not forget," He said, and repeated again in his mind the exact Words he had memorized, the message that was Important and depressing, which made him feel Worry and happiness at the same time, a peculiar Elation. At last he came to his people far In the darkness. He smiled and spoke his words, And he looked intently into their eyes gleaming In firelight. He cried when they cried. No rest For his lungs. He flinched and lay down while they Began to kill him with clubs and heavy stones.

Light from the ugliest lamp I ever saw, here on the table that triples for reading, eating (can’t say dining), business on the phone; ugliest except a few around the corner in that guest house at windows —plaster driftwood; cylinders like rockets or sanitary napkins propping shades; thin torso of a youth; red globe on orange globe, the works,somebody’s collection. Wouldn’t she love this one, lump of lamp base intending landscape, two donkeys in mustard glaze, heads ruefully down, one carrying two rush panniers large enough to hold your pens or salts and peppers; on the other a shifty man with droopy moustache rides, ** grumping under his sombrero; right leg broken off at the knee, left leg clipped at ankle. They make no progress, this mold-made work—the joins, arthritic ridges where dabs of grayish green suggest a wizened bush from which a brass post rises to hold a shade that doesn’t fit and twice has tried to burn, as crusty sores at the rim show. Still, it lights my work. Why hate it? Do I care? These indecorous furnishings stand for failure, are a clutter that weighs down, defeats the purpose, like dumbbells taken along on vacations; the pen jar; lamp base, sextant, portable folding triptych. ** The writing table fills with clutter. Specials coax me to nudge buying into play. A checkout coupon lets me get some brand of lunch meats fifty-five cents off if I spend two dollars but I just can’t find it when I’m shopping, the ticket— with its rubric of good news and inscrutable forest of bar code, black on red—to lead me on; back home there it is, on the table, laying waste my power to spend. What I have wanted (with Larkin) to do must be “essentially undoable, it belongs to the imagination.” Rather, the demolition has begun, piss and shit and blood mix in the snow-white bowl; and yet ** I find the Beech Forest (behind the beach dunes) that Allen recommended “without reservation.” The man was right—it more than satisfies, these beech ponds and their dune forest. I sat on a pitch pine that had blown over and then turned round and risen again, and bowed part making a seat something like a saddle; the tree was growing while I sat on it as were the other pitch pines round the pond ruddy in afternoon, late light of day, rough trunks with tufts of twisted branches green with needles, it was idyllic, wind speaking through the pines, ** solitude:—O, yes, two high-breasted girls came striding by, I heard them coming, I heard them going, yammering at full volume not looking left or right, they passed me, were out of sight and soon of earshot, Doppler effect caused by exuberant youth in oblivious chitchat. And people are smoking in these dry woods too, not policing their butts is how I know, the butts will surface from the heavier, sifting sand, sand spilling, surfing down hills, crashing in waves over the path here. But call it solitude, when a thought—but wait! I thought—I should not be ** having a thought here, this moment: yet a vision of a Chinese poet in his study overlooking such a pond as this arrives out of the silence like the yellow water lilies on the water, pads spreading out in files like a design on the broadloom of a lobby. The sage is working on a poem, brushing it on silk, inspired by a blend of Tao and Confucius. Doubtless he would not forget allusions to Sung poets, if he were not a Sung poet himself, in which case he would have to echo Han or T’ang; and he would be writing of solitude; time passing; absent friends ** (enlightenment would have to be inferred). No matter, I didn’t bring a pen today. However, over there are inkberry bushes, so with a reed I just might make a start. . . . Farther on the path I listen to a bird, a warbler perhaps, I do not know the song or see the bird. There with the pines and sand and birdsong, and no prayer- or guide- or selfhelp-book, no serious commune, the mind must yearn to be led on; it wants a deity, an altar to approach; an altar at least to take steps toward; occasion to rise to—with nothing planned for the mind, ** it’s like a person suddenly blind, not blind for a long time and knowing the ropes, but just now, rope-stung, blind—and groping, feeling around for the way, any way, or, closer to home, when the power goes at night just getting from here to there even though you know the drill, —you never find the batteries when you need them, groping down cellar for the circuit breaker then you flip it; nothing, it’s a bigger failure you are part of— know the layout in general yet without ceremony the mind leans forward, over an edge, hoping for, needing a little ritual, like a guide rail to keep it ** from falling, going down. Even then the mind finds need of other news, keeps on desiring alterity somewhere at hand. For example, walking the streets of Provincetown, nothing to see but lots to look at, all that fluff and buff, the Michelin-man day-trippers aching along; suddenly I want a prayer book, maybe not Bottles and Stools or The Little Red Book but still . . . even a pocket copy of A Shropshire Lad, such as I find soon after all the buff and fluff at Tim’s, the only bookstore on the street, handy for quick reads. Thin as a shortbread biscuit, ** THE RICHARDS PRESS LONDON 1915, no doubt with its khaki cover, intended for some Tommy’s backpack, a backward solace for off-duty hours in the trenches: admittedly not very much on the other hand just the thing I’m talking after; a talisman perhaps is all, an amulet with words that say,buck up, come on, you’ll make it, there’s something on after all this, no matter what the words say. Housman’s “vision,” his drear anguish of love for someone, something, lad and landscape that never were, that might shoot threads of gold among the bloody muslins and the mud; ** mind wants other news than what the ruffled senses bring data of—smoke or flesh or birdsong. It saw there was a space within, reserved for turning toward another; other; that no bullet, arrowwood or beach plum might fill, though these could occupy that space a moment. Again I heard the casual chirping of that bird, off in that tupelo, the song I did not know, below the cries of gull and jay I did. The unknown I saw was not enough to satisfy; or—satisfied when it was framed, complement of what is known for sure. ** It’s—like—when you go someplace strange, new, the seashore, any boundary, you want to learn the names of plants. Start looking at the edges of leaves. It gives a grip on where you are, and who, or seems to, to know bullbrier, bearberry, blueberry. You get a GUIDE or a local to tell. On the dune path I found one, a gnarled bush alone, hollylike but succulent leaf; nothing like it in the book. But why feel helped in nature by a name? When a horde of flower children wanted to know what they should do to be saved (back when) Snyder told them, “learn the names of plants; of animals; learn to do something with your hands.” ** Well I went out to that dune again: to cop a copy of the leaf I took and lost: so it’s only bayberry after all; dioecious, two-sexed: some leaves different from others, that’s OK only one got pictured in my book; but the waxiness, bayberry for sure, set to be rendered into candles for a gifte shoppe, nauseating noose of “scents.” Its nutlets twinkle near the oily leaves aglow above the sand, bone white. Doesn’t make me feel better to know now about that scrawny straggler. Sanctimonious pilgrim know-alls, Bradford & Co.! Forest into desert, just like that. No time flat, considering.

the noun A disease of the peach tree —a fungus distorts leaves. The first time I was taken to see him I was five or six. A vesicle on the skin containing serum, caused by friction, a burn, or other injury. He lived on Alabama Street next to Saint Peter’s and wore a white t-shirt, starched and snug. A similar swelling with fluid or air on the surface of a plant, or metal after cooling or the sunless area between one’s toes after a very long walk. Don’t ask me how it is I ended up holding it. An outer covering fitted to a vessel to protect against torpedoes, mines, or to improve stability. My guess is that he brought it out to show me thinking, perhaps, I had never seen one up close, let alone felt the blunt weight of one in my hands. A rounded compartment protruding from the body of a plane. What came next: no image but sensation of its hammer (my inexpert manipulation) digging into but not breaking skin—the spot at the base of my thumb balloons, slowly filling with fluid… In Spanish: ampolla —an Ampul of chrystal in the Middle Ages could be a relic containing the blood of someone holy. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t loaded.

back 90 suns to a run through the ferns I remain the eclipse of each sound as I push through the soil to the icons that run no more. my stutters explode through the shade of the twilight as crows destroy the machine → robots drone in the infinite zero, where we dwell in the pull of the Sea. the moon shaves our brain onto the plate and layers the first person far before the book to form the semblance we share in the animals who dwell in the exterior layer of our souls beyond the skin. that is where suffering plants and holds its fractal flower as hope delivers its other linked body made of the sand and the wind. the flora and fauna and others of the earth, of each person extend their net of the mind to reduce the numerical coldness of the sound. but where do the multiple hearts plant themselves in the exterior organs and the bodies of the stones? and of time cut down to the green and the stop of the harvest where the singular falls, how does it start? and where does it go?