1630 Nature poems

But it is not always quiet here. Things go on while we sleep the sleep of soldiers. Ancient branches crack and splinter into dust. Large wings snap open in spring like carpets splayed out over the railing. Granite splits apart at the seams and great animals cleave roads through woods. Daily, in the density, there is life on the edge of the knife that cuts the world into hemispheres of sense and death. Trees are born and die, bones turn to humus, glaciers to meadowland. It is time to turn yourself loose, like new leaves, like big lakes on which swim enormous birds at a distance deeper in breadth than the water's depth. Their shadows pull you to the shore. Their size fills your lungs with sky. It is time to heave aside the boulders and the dams, to come back out like a bear after the thaw, to be ready for the forest, for the forage, for the full and waning moons. You will get soaked in wet grass, feel the insects pierce your skin. You will learn to balance between gravity and light. There will be hot and sticky nights, sharp songs at dawn, long and bright ineffable days. This is your chance to crash your way through underbrush unlocking like so many doors.

My garden is the wild Sea of the grass. Her garden Shelters between walls. The tide could break in; I should be sorry for this. There is peace there of a kind, Though not the deep peace Of wild places. Her care For green life has enabled The weak things to grow. Despite my first love, I take sometimes her hand, Following straight paths Between flowers, the nostril Clogged with their thick scent. The old softness of lawns Persuading the slow foot Leads to defection; the silence Holds with its gloved hand The wild hawk of the mind. But not for long, windows, Opening in the trees Call the mind back To its true eyrie; I stoop Here only in play.

Thou sorrow, venom Elfe: Is this thy play, To spin a web out of thyselfe To Catch a Fly? For Why? I saw a pettish wasp Fall foule therein: Whom yet thy Whorle pins did not clasp Lest he should fling His sting. But as affraid, remote Didst stand hereat, And with thy little fingers stroke And gently tap His back. Thus gently him didst treate Lest he should pet, And in a froppish, aspish heate Should greatly fret Thy net. Whereas the silly Fly, Caught by its leg Thou by the throate tookst hastily And 'hinde the head Bite Dead. This goes to pot, that not Nature doth call. Strive not above what strength hath got, Lest in the brawle Thou fall. This Frey seems thus to us. Hells Spider gets His intrails spun to whip Cords thus And wove to nets And sets. To tangle Adams race In's stratigems To their Destructions, spoil'd, made base By venom things, Damn'd Sins. But mighty, Gracious Lord Communicate Thy Grace to breake the Cord, afford Us Glorys Gate And State. We'l Nightingaile sing like When pearcht on high In Glories Cage, thy glory, bright, And thankfully, For joy.

If ever the sweet spring comes, I’ll put aside these dead books And try to feel the herbage freshen Along the withered boughs of old dry thoughts. I’ll walk out somewhere where a garden grows, And there I’ll stand some summer evening, Hat beside elbows on the gray stone wall, And the wind will stir, coming from behind the hill. Afterward I’ll walk home, hands behind me, And pause a moment before going in, Half fancying some one has called my name, Or been awakened to a flutter as I passed. Of course, I’ll enter, but leave the door ajar, For someone might come in, you know, Expectantly I’ll sit to fancy the long evening through That a pair of eyes in the summer night Might light a candle in the dull world, So softly that none might see to smile at, Yet ardently enough—like a vestal candle burning— For a little heat in a cold house.

When the wind invades the treetops and the trees agree, shivering take me, take me, when their stealthy perfume drifts down to waft among mortals, they come out in droves: the boy whose bouncing keys speak a language all their own, the novice who gets her tricks from magazine molls (their haughtiness, swirl of cleats), the gigolo with eyes lowered, the better to judge his prey, the woman whose hemlines rise as her age does, the bad girl whose only remaining option is to get worse: despite the string of cheats and lukewarm reactions, she still has the power to pound, the knack of funneling her frustration into the arrogant click of a heel . . . at this armada of proud, unyielding soldiers I have cast ferocious stones, holding forth on barricaded gardens and souls’ communion until, heaving my bones from garret to gutter I took to the street and saw it, too, was worthy. Chasers out for a good time, flirters in for a life’s catch, strutters so skilled your lurid designs burn holes, kill the cold in the pavement, it does not matter what fever you feed, so long as you feed it freely; I hid my eyes but sickness is catching; lovers, permit me entrance.

Useless! Useless! —heavy rain driving into the sea

A working river, a working valley, The gray-green Rhône Lined with workings, heaps of dust, gravel, cement, And log jams waiting for transport, Like the island exporting itself to its neighbors one barge at a time. The river, the road, and the railway, A plait, a tangle, a place of through. The river not navigable, the boggy valley floor not walkable, The locals came down from the mountains a little way To site castles on moraine and regulate trade. Hannibal marched his elephants through here, dynamited rocks with vinegar. Poplars were planted en passant by Napoleon’s Grande Armée Two-hundred-some years ago. Goethe came to visit. The shade endures. Rilke was reminded of Spain. He lived among apricots at Muzot, Just the other side of the language barrier, And fixed to be buried with a view of France. No one knows who I am, were his dying words. Smells of hay and dung, the murmurs of subtle conversation Next door are tax-efficient sheep The underground chicken palace like CERN Or a discreet gun emplacement. The lights come on when we appear, and go off after we’re gone. Larchwood and rye bread, chocolate and slate, Dried beef and stone All one striated substance, The staff of life breaking explosively, crumblingly, If it breaks at all, A stash of daunting verticals, A washing machine delivered by helicopter Winched down into the Renaissance casbah. Time was a man had to carry his donkey across his shoulders up a cliff; Now everything is tunnel fodder. Electricity and water come piped through the mountains, The vineyards get a sousing under great rainbow arcs, Who wouldn’t want to die in a thirteenth-century tower With light sensors and cold running water Off the hills and a chill in the sunny air of the contemporary archaic.

No one knew what the stones like squatting frogs signified. There they were, fuming in rows, out of the ground; every critic had his explanation or hers. But—we had to remember—they came to nothing, every one; those large stones out of the earth served the systems of those who considered them, as explaining something about the past it was important for the explainer to explain. And yet no one had any idea truly; there was no basis in fact for any view of them, and they remained like their origins—or like smiling Olmec babies, sweet but ominous figures come from the earth to reproach us, almost cheerfully, for our ignorance—a mystery, just as the probe of our feelings came up with nothing.

Little patches of grass disappear In the jaws of lusty squirrels Who slip into the spruce. Cars collapse into parts. Spring dissolves into summer, The kitten into the cat. A tray of drinks departs from the buffet And voilà! the party’s over. All that’s left are some pickles And a sprig of wilting parsley on the rug. When I think of all those Gong-tormented Mesozoic seas I feel a ripple of extinction And blow a smoke ring through the trees. Soon there will be nothing left here but sky. When I think about the fact I am not thinking about you It is a new way of thinking about you.

The dragonfly at rest on the doorbell— too weak to ring and glad of it, but well mannered and cautious, thinking it best to observe us quietly before flying in, and who knows if he will find the way out? Cautious of traps, this one. A winged cross, plain, the body straight as a thermometer, the old glass kind that could kill us with mercury if our teeth did not respect its brittle body. Slim as an eel but a solitary glider, a pilot without bombs or weapons, and wings clear and small as a wish to see over our heads, to see the whole picture. And when our gaze grazes over it and moves on, the dragonfly changes its clothes, sheds its old skin, shriveled like laundry, and steps forth, polished black, with two circles buttoned like epaulettes taking the last space at the edge of its eyes.