1630 Nature poems

Tu Fu, “Thoughts While Traveling at Night” There’s a wind in the grass — Is there here a boat’s mast claiming my lonely night too? I see the stars can’t be called hanged, exactly, just hanging down, not over emptiness, but honest ground, the moon trying the black skin of this river, black corpse    ... But, even plainer — I wonder if these words, my words, will ever bring me fame. I have my age, my injuries. They limit me. I’m like some spook bird I know, solo and roped between where rotting happens and a sky.

I do. Victim. Sales Met Wipe Her Less. Was a disappointment We say it. Study nature. Or Who Towering. Mispronounced Spelling. She Was Astonishing To No One For Fun Study from nature. I Am Pleased Thoroughly I Am Thoroughly Pleased. By. It. It is very likely. They said so. Oh. I want. To do. What Is Later To Be Refined. By Turning. Of turning around. I will wait.

Or how, when last sun,

Last summer, two discrete young snakes left their skin on my small porch, two mornings in a row. Being postmodern now, I pretended as if I did not see them, nor understand what I knew to be circling inside me. Instead, every hour I told my son to stop with his incessant back-chat. I peeled a banana. And cursed God—His arrogance, His gall—to still expect our devotion after creating love. And mosquitoes. I showed my son the papery dead skins so he could know, too, what it feels like when something shows up at your door—twice—telling you what you already know.

As the morning advanced the sun became bright and warm, cloudless, calm, serene. About nine an appearance very unusual began to demand our attention—a shower of cobwebs falling from very elevated regions, & continuing, without any interruption, till the close of the day . . . There is a natural occurrence to be met with upon the highest part of our down in hot summer days, and that is a loud audible humming of bees in the air, though not one insect is to be seen . . . In a district so diversified as this, so full of hollow vales and hanging woods, it is no wonder that echoes should abound. Many we have discovered that return a tunable ring of bells, or the melody of birds; but we were still at a loss for a polysyllabical, articulate echo, till a young gentleman, who had parted from his company in a summer walk, and was calling after them, stumbled upon a very curious one in a spot where it might least be expected . . . We procured a cuckoo, and cutting open the breastbone and exposing the intestines to sight, found the crop lying as mentioned above. This stomach was large and round, and stuffed hard, like a pincushion, with food, which upon nice examination, we found to consist of various insects, such as small scarabs, spiders, and dragon-flies; the last of which, as they were just emerging out of the aurelia state, we have seen cuckoos catching on the wing. Among this farrago also were to be seen maggots, and many seeds, which belonged either to gooseberries, currants, cranberries, or some such fruit . . . All nature is so full, that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined . . . Gilbert White 1 Upon First Opening a Cuckoo

Absolute zero: the locust sings: summer’s caught in eternity’s rings: the rock explodes, the planet dies, we shovel up our verities. The razor rasps across the face and in the glass our fleeting race lit by infinity’s lightning wink under the thunder tries to think. In this frail gourd the granite pours the timeless howls like all outdoors the sensuous moment builds a wall open as wind, no wall at all: while still obedient to valves and knobs the vascular jukebox throbs and sobs expounding hope propounding yearning proposing love, but never learning or only learning at zero’s gate like summer’s locust the final hate formless ice on a formless plain that was and is and comes again.

The squirrels are spreading the rumor: no more monkey business. The Dow Jones hops up, then down, then back up, trying for attention, up against dog days. The Capitol dome rattles like a witch doctor's gourd. “More Republicans,” warn the talking drums. The networks labor underground to stockpile T, A, and blood capsules for Sweeps Week, when all hell won’t be enough to save some. Pedestrians slip into light coats of pollen and mold spores. The Enquirer reports the sighting of Satan's image over Chicago during the heat emergency. His words were, “For the hottest deals in town, see Sal at Mutto's Chevrolet on East Wacker.” The old elms shrug: “You think this is hot: we could tell you about hot.” Walmart and Kmart burgeon into crooked towers of back-to-school candy. They're heaven-bound, via the moon. Greeters offer themselves to the lowest common denominator. There's a Blue- Light on moon caps. Representatives from Tire City have announced they intend a hostile takeover and cleansing of their former territory, now known as Carpet City. Furniture City will not intervene. The NFL’s negotiating for rights to the Baptist Church. The carnies have packed up the Tilt-A-Whirl and Ferris wheel, leaving us up to our ass in free parking. Everyone under 30 dreams of shoplifting some Air Jordans for school. Everyone over 30 dreams of going to prison for shoplifting. The hypochondriacs wake up noticing little dark spots in front of their eyes, think they could be in the middle of something serious. “Winterize now,” say the prime-time commercials. “Spend, spend, spend!” cry the cicadas and katydids over the scorched, moonlit lawns.

Finnish rural life, ca. 1910 Fires, always fires after midnight, the sun depending in the purple birches and gleaming like a copper kettle. By the solstice they’d burned everything, the bad-luck sleigh, a twisted rocker, things “possessed” and not-quite-right. The bonfire coils and lurches, big as a house, and then it settles. The dancers come, dressed like rainbows (if rainbows could be spun), and linking hands they turn to the melancholy fiddles. A red bird spreads its wings now and in the darker days to come.

It is a place whither I’ve often gone For peace, and found it, secret, hushed, and cool, A beautiful recess in neighboring woods. Trees of the soberest hues, thick-leaved and tall, Arch it o’erhead and column it around, Framing a covert, natural and wild, Domelike and dim; though nowhere so enclosed But that the gentlest breezes reach the spot Unwearied and unweakened. Sound is here A transient and unfrequent visitor; Yet if the day be calm, not often then, Whilst the high pines in one another’s arms Sleep, you may sometimes with unstartled ear Catch the far fall of voices, how remote You know not, and you do not care to know. The turf is soft and green, but not a flower Lights the recess, save one, star-shaped and bright— I do not know its name—which here and there Gleams like a sapphire set in emerald. A narrow opening in the branched roof, A single one, is large enough to show, With that half-glimpse a dreamer loves so much, The blue air and the blessing of the sky. Thither I always bent my idle steps, When griefs depressed, or joys disturbed my heart, And found the calm I looked for, or returned Strong with the quite rapture in my soul. But one day, One of those July days when winds have fled One knows not whither, I, most sick in mind With thoughts that shall be nameless, yet, no doubt, Wrong, or at least unhealthful, since though dark With gloom, and touched with discontent, they had No adequate excuse, nor cause, nor end, I, with these thoughts, and on this summer day, Entered the accustomed haunt, and found for once No medicinal virtue. Not a leaf Stirred with the whispering welcome which I sought, But in a close and humid atmosphere, Every fair plant and implicated bough Hung lax and lifeless. Something in the place, Its utter stillness, the unusual heat, And some more secret influence, I thought, Weighed on the sense like sin. Above I saw, Though not a cloud was visible in heaven, The palid sky look through a glazed mist Like a blue eye in death. The change, perhaps, Was natural enough; my jaundiced sight, The weather, and the time explain it all: Yet have I drawn a lesson from the spot, And shrined it in these verses for my heart. Thenceforth those tranquil precincts I have sought Not less, and in all shades of various moods; But always shun to desecrate the spot By weak repinings, sickly sentiments, Or inconclusive sorrows. Nature, though Pure as she was in Eden when her breath Kissed the white brow of Eve, doth not refuse, In her own way and with a just reserve, To sympathize with human suffering; But for the pains, the fever, and the fret Engendered of a weak, unquiet heart, She hath no solace; and who seeks her when These be the troubles over which he moans, Reads in her unreplying lineaments Rebukes, that, to the guilty consciousness, Strike like contempt.

A spear of zinc light wounds stone and water, stripping the scarlet fuchsia bells and yellow buttercups of any discretion, so they confess their end in this luminous declaration that they are no more than shortlived absolutes in living colour, bright eyes open against the dark. A light in which everything is exact-edged, flat, no bulk or heft to it, yet decisively itself in outline: islands, the matte grey sea, and miles away the fine glowing line of the horizon that like desire will be the last to go. The mountain's immense green and brown triangle reflects on itself in lakewater, doubling its shape and colour there, its stillness something drastic, an aspect of dread—as if a lover tried to remember that loved other body by looking in the mirror. Almost at random, shadows fall across the small roads—which can never follow their own bent, but always take the grain of the hill, turning to its every tilt and inclination—and evening starts to seep into hedges and hung washing: it is the brown colour of a bat's wing, and silent as a bat is. Even your own family now would have to be streaked with it, their faces by degrees bleeding away in the gather-dark, whole patches of them blackening like zones of a map thrown on smouldering embers.