1630 Nature poems

All these years I overlooked them in the racket of the rest, this symbiotic splash of plant and fungus feeding on rock, on sun, a little moisture, air — tiny acid-factories dissolving salt from living rocks and eating them. Here they are, blooming! Trail rock, talus and scree, all dusted with it: rust, ivory, brilliant yellow-green, and cliffs like murals! Huge panels streaked and patched, quietly with shooting-stars and lupine at the base. Closer, with the glass, a city of cups! Clumps of mushrooms and where do the plants begin? Why are they doing this? In this big sky and all around me peaks & the melting glaciers, why am I made to kneel and peer at Tiny? These are the stamps of the final envelope. How can the poisons reach them? In such thin air, how can they care for the loss of a million breaths? What, possibly, could make their ground more bare? Let it all die. The hushed globe will wait and wait for what is now so small and slow to open it again. As now, indeed, it opens it again, this scentless velvet, crumbler-of-the-rocks, this Lichen!

The red eyes of rabbits aren't sad. No one passes the sad golden village in a barge any more. The sunset will leave it alone. If the curtains hang askew it is no one's fault. Around and around and around everywhere the same sound of wheels going, and things growing older, growing silent. If the dogs bark to each other all night, and their eyes flash red, that's nobody's business. They have a great space of dark to bark across. The rabbits will bare their teeth at the spring moon.

I watch a squirrel get run over by a car on my walk to work. She is lying dead in the street and still has an acorn in her little hands. I am amazed at how she is able to hold on to her acorn after being tumbled like that, after bouncing so high off the street. I walk over to the squirrel and see that her face is blown to bits and looks like uncased sausage spilling onto the asphalt. But that acorn is still so tight in her hands. I pick her up by her tail, take off my dress shirt and swaddle her in it, then put her in my bag. I know right where she is as I walk into work, everybody looking at me, everybody asking me about my shirtlessness. The world is as steady as if it were sewn into the skin of the universe.

One rusty horseshoe hangs on a nail above the door, still losing its luck, and a work-collar swings, an empty old noose. The silence waits, wild to be broken by hoofbeat and heavy harness slap, will founder but remain; while, outside, above the stable, eight, nine, now ten buzzards swing low in lazy loops, a loose black warp of patience, bearing the blank sky like a pall of wind on mourning wings. But the bones of this place are long picked clean. Only the hayrake's ribs still rise from the rampant grasses.

In my cries I don’t cease (some dumb bird) when from the swinging trees a stag at eve comes prancing, body dappled by the shadows of dripping leaves. It’s fall, after all, when the land undoes its lingerie laces and stands naked for the dark wood, balding plains, for parking lots slick with strange water, for hills growing lush in emptiness and into this scene enters the stag, moon lunate and swinging on a tether of leather scored then cured, from one just like him a year earlier. Some dumb bird, I bid him hello and goodbye in a shriek so lusty he turns his expensive head just to curse me.

This is the multitude, the beasts you wanted to show me, drawing me upstream, all morning up through wind- scoured heather to the hillcrest. Below us, in the next glen, is the grave calm brotherhood, descended out of winter, out of hunger, kneeling like the signatories of a covenant; their weighty, antique-polished antlers rising above the vegetation like masts in a harbor, or city spires. We lie close together, and though the wind whips away our man-and-woman smell, every stag-face seems to look toward us, toward, but not to us: we’re held, and hold them, in civil regard. I suspect you’d hoped to impress me, to lift to my sight our shared country, lead me deeper into what you know, but loath to cause fear you’re already moving quietly away, sure I’ll go with you, as I would now, almost anywhere.

Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused With rain, where thick the crocus blows, Past the dark forges long disused, The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes. The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride, Through forest, up the mountain-side. The autumnal evening darkens round, The wind is up, and drives the rain; While, hark! far down, with strangled sound Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain, Where that wet smoke, among the woods, Over his boiling cauldron broods. Swift rush the spectral vapours white Past limestone scars with ragged pines, Showing—then blotting from our sight!— Halt—through the cloud-drift something shines! High in the valley, wet and drear, The huts of Courrerie appear. Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher Mounts up the stony forest-way. At last the encircling trees retire; Look! through the showery twilight grey What pointed roofs are these advance?— A palace of the Kings of France? Approach, for what we seek is here! Alight, and sparely sup, and wait For rest in this outbuilding near; Then cross the sward and reach that gate. Knock; pass the wicket! Thou art come To the Carthusians' world-famed home. The silent courts, where night and day Into their stone-carved basins cold The splashing icy fountains play— The humid corridors behold! Where, ghostlike in the deepening night, Cowl'd forms brush by in gleaming white. The chapel, where no organ's peal Invests the stern and naked prayer— With penitential cries they kneel And wrestle; rising then, with bare And white uplifted faces stand, Passing the Host from hand to hand; Each takes, and then his visage wan Is buried in his cowl once more. The cells!—the suffering Son of Man Upon the wall—the knee-worn floor— And where they sleep, that wooden bed, Which shall their coffin be, when dead! The library, where tract and tome Not to feed priestly pride are there, To hymn the conquering march of Rome, Nor yet to amuse, as ours are! They paint of souls the inner strife, Their drops of blood, their death in life. The garden, overgrown—yet mild, See, fragrant herbs are flowering there! Strong children of the Alpine wild Whose culture is the brethren's care; Of human tasks their only one, And cheerful works beneath the sun. Those halls, too, destined to contain Each its own pilgrim-host of old, From England, Germany, or Spain— All are before me! I behold The House, the Brotherhood austere! —And what am I, that I am here? For rigorous teachers seized my youth, And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire, Show'd me the high, white star of Truth, There bade me gaze, and there aspire. Even now their whispers pierce the gloom: What dost thou in this living tomb? Forgive me, masters of the mind! At whose behest I long ago So much unlearnt, so much resign'd— I come not here to be your foe! I seek these anchorites, not in ruth, To curse and to deny your truth; Not as their friend, or child, I speak! But as, on some far northern strand, Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek In pity and mournful awe might stand Before some fallen Runic stone— For both were faiths, and both are gone. Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born, With nowhere yet to rest my head, Like these, on earth I wait forlorn. Their faith, my tears, the world deride— I come to shed them at their side. Oh, hide me in your gloom profound, Ye solemn seats of holy pain! Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round, Till I possess my soul again; Till free my thoughts before me roll, Not chafed by hourly false control! For the world cries your faith is now But a dead time's exploded dream; My melancholy, sciolists say, Is a pass'd mode, an outworn theme— As if the world had ever had A faith, or sciolists been sad! Ah, if it be pass'd, take away, At least, the restlessness, the pain; Be man henceforth no more a prey To these out-dated stings again! The nobleness of grief is gone Ah, leave us not the fret alone! But—if you cannot give us ease— Last of the race of them who grieve Here leave us to die out with these Last of the people who believe! Silent, while years engrave the brow; Silent—the best are silent now. Achilles ponders in his tent, The kings of modern thought are dumb, Silent they are though not content, And wait to see the future come. They have the grief men had of yore, But they contend and cry no more. Our fathers water'd with their tears This sea of time whereon we sail, Their voices were in all men's ears We pass'd within their puissant hail. Still the same ocean round us raves, But we stand mute, and watch the waves. For what avail'd it, all the noise And outcry of the former men?— Say, have their sons achieved more joys, Say, is life lighter now than then? The sufferers died, they left their pain— The pangs which tortured them remain. What helps it now, that Byron bore, With haughty scorn which mock'd the smart, Through Europe to the Ætolian shore The pageant of his bleeding heart? That thousands counted every groan, And Europe made his woe her own? What boots it, Shelley! that the breeze Carried thy lovely wail away, Musical through Italian trees Which fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay? Inheritors of thy distress Have restless hearts one throb the less? Or are we easier, to have read, O Obermann! the sad, stern page, Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head From the fierce tempest of thine age In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau, Or chalets near the Alpine snow? Ye slumber in your silent grave!— The world, which for an idle day Grace to your mood of sadness gave, Long since hath flung her weeds away. The eternal trifler breaks your spell; But we—we learned your lore too well! Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity. Sons of the world, oh, speed those years; But, while we wait, allow our tears! Allow them! We admire with awe The exulting thunder of your race; You give the universe your law, You triumph over time and space! Your pride of life, your tireless powers, We laud them, but they are not ours. We are like children rear'd in shade Beneath some old-world abbey wall, Forgotten in a forest-glade, And secret from the eyes of all. Deep, deep the greenwood round them waves, Their abbey, and its close of graves! But, where the road runs near the stream, Oft through the trees they catch a glance Of passing troops in the sun's beam— Pennon, and plume, and flashing lance! Forth to the world those soldiers fare, To life, to cities, and to war! And through the wood, another way, Faint bugle-notes from far are borne, Where hunters gather, staghounds bay, Round some fair forest-lodge at morn. Gay dames are there, in sylvan green; Laughter and cries—those notes between! The banners flashing through the trees Make their blood dance and chain their eyes; That bugle-music on the breeze Arrests them with a charm'd surprise. Banner by turns and bugle woo: Ye shy recluses, follow too! O children, what do ye reply?— "Action and pleasure, will ye roam Through these secluded dells to cry And call us?—but too late ye come! Too late for us your call ye blow, Whose bent was taken long ago. "Long since we pace this shadow'd nave; We watch those yellow tapers shine, Emblems of hope over the grave, In the high altar's depth divine; The organ carries to our ear Its accents of another sphere. "Fenced early in this cloistral round Of reverie, of shade, of prayer, How should we grow in other ground? How can we flower in foreign air? —Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease; And leave our desert to its peace!"

Here, in the withered arbor, like the arrested wind, Straight sides, carven knees, Stands the statue, with hands flung out in alarm Or remonstrances. Over the lintel sway the woven bracts of the vine In a pattern of angles. The quill of the fountain falters, woods rake on the sky Their brusque tangles. The birds walk by slowly, circling the marble girl, The golden quails, The pheasants, closed up in their arrowy wings, Dragging their sharp tails. The inquietudes of the sap and of the blood are spent. What is forsaken will rest. But her heel is lifted,—she would flee,—the whistle of the birds Fails on her breast.

I passed through nature into the next. Children running in unsupervised shadows. Last century’s fountains learning not to lie. Risk to identify with only one element since one will die but in the summer air around each thought, something is built and avoided. You go through an arch and aren’t the arch, just infinity of form, curve’s curve of becoming, a phrase tracking it to future’s celadon relief. As others dressed as others we were supposed to meet. Citizens walked here without disappointment, seeing no statue or palace with eleven axes, patient in the mindless heat—

Stepping crow. Moon at half mast. Dawn horse, horse, blanket and mule. The fool knows something you don’t. Stepping crow. Both feet in the boat. Books stacked up, and nowhere to store ’em. Decorum is spontaneous order. Stepping crow. Gone north of the Border. Magic in motion and magic at rest. Only divest, no need to announce it. Stepping crow. Locked in from the outset. Feet in the boat and we’re already rowing. I don’t like thinking, I like already knowing. Stepping crow. Take hammer to coin. Anvil to anvil, and figure to ground. Hateful, the sound of recriminations. Stepping crow. Uncountable Haitians. Hospital, barracks; Harvard and prison. Give the rhythm what it wants. And the people. Stepping crow. Horace primeval. Wrist-deep in sheep’s guts, breaking the set. But memory is the better poet. Stepping crow. Clogged is the conduit. Explain and explain, you try and get on with it: You just give ’em something to fight with. Stepping crow. Christian Enlightenment. A bubble, sluggish, in a carpenter’s level. But bad’s not the Devil.  Bad can be good. Stepping crow. They misunderstood. Nobody rightly prefers a surprise. The wise like looking forward. Stepping crow. Don’t try to ignore it: The strain in the closet and school letting out. I doubt it’ll ever be casual. Stepping crow. I just happen to know. I don’t happen to trust the self I’m serving. This pleasure’s a lie, unless it’s permanent. Stepping crow. And thirteenth tercet. The place where the Wall tunnels into the sea. It’s not not me you’re aiming at. Stepping crow. Gotta add and subtract. I see now we have no choice but to leave The brutal honesty to the brutes. Stepping crow. I know it’s no use. The Sport of Kings and the Book of Love. They’re not above irregular perquisites. Stepping crow. Can never be sure of it. Blood orange, orange; persimmon and onion; And women are young men too … Stepping crow. Oh, say it ain’t so. A fist full of leaves and another of arrows: I’m setting the trap where the passage narrows.