1630 Nature poems

The wind that makes your hair grow faster opens a child’s mouth full of strawberry and sand. Slow and sure on the scales of the ocean the child’s head outweighs the sun. Inside of the wind— a blister of a church, its walls thicker than the space from wall to wall where the wind shifts shade and light like two rival chess pieces or two unmatched pieces of furniture. Inside of the church—such a stillness that when a feather floats down in a fist of dust it becomes a rock by the time it hits the ground. Organ pipes glint like a cold radiator, contained in a case of a carved tree, its branches tied up with a snake. Organ pedals, golden and plump, are the tree’s only fruit. It is all about the release of weight: the player crushes the pedals like grapes underneath his feet. My body, like an inaccurate cashier, adds your weight to itself. Your name, called into the wind, slows the wind down. When a body is ripe, it falls and rots from the softest spot. Only when a child slips and drops off a tree, the tree suddenly learns that it is barren.

(excerpt) Thou know’st my praise of nature most sincere, And that my raptures are not conjur’d up To serve occasions of poetic pomp, But genuine, and art partner of them all. How oft upon yon eminence our pace Has slacken’d to a pause, and we have borne The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew, While admiration, feeding at the eye, And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene. Thence with what pleasure have we just discern’d The distant plough slow-moving, and beside His lab’ring team, that swerv’d not from the track, The sturdy swain diminish’d to a boy! Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o’er, Conducts the eye along its sinuous course Delighted.  There, fast rooted in his bank, Stand, never overlook’d, our fav’rite elms, That screen the herdsman’s solitary hut; While far beyond, and overthwart the stream That as with molten glass inlays the vale, The sloping land recedes into the clouds; Displaying on its varied side the grace Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tow’r, Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells Just undulates upon the list’ning ear, Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote. Scenes must be beautiful which daily view’d Please daily, and whose novelty survives Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years. Praise justly due to those that I describe. . . . But though true worth and virtue, in the mild And genial soil of cultivated life Thrive most, and may perhaps thrive only there, Yet not in cities oft.  In proud and gay And gain-devoted cities; thither flow, As to a common and most noisome sewer, The dregs and fæculence of ev’ry land. In cities foul example on most minds Begets its likeness.  Rank abundance breeds In gross and pamper’d cities sloth and lust, And wantonness and gluttonous excess. In cities, vice is hidden with most ease, Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there Beyond th’ atchievement of successful flight. I do confess them nurs’ries of the arts, In which they flourish most: where, in the beams Of warm encouragement, and in the eye Of public note, they reach their perfect size. Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaim’d The fairest capital of all the world, By riot and incontinence the worst. There, touch’d by Reynolds, a dull blank becomes A lucid mirror, in which Nature sees All her reflected features.  Bacon there Gives more than female beauty to a stone, And Chatham’s eloquence to marble lips. . . . God made the country, and man made the town: What wonder then, that health and virtue, gifts That can alone make sweet the bitter draught That life holds out to all, should most abound And least be threaten’d in the fields and groves? Possess ye therefore, ye who, borne about In chariots and sedans, know no fatigue But that of idleness, and taste no scenes But such as art contrives, possess ye still Your element; there only ye can shine, There only minds like yours can do no harm. Our groves were planted to console at noon The pensive wand’rer in their shades.  At eve The moon-beam, sliding softly in between The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish, Birds warbling all the music.  We can spare The splendour of your lamps, they but eclipse Our softer satellite. Your songs confound Our more harmonious notes: the thrush departs Scar’d, and th’ offended nightingale is mute. There is a public mischief in your mirth, It plagues your country.  Folly such as your’s, Grac’d with a sword, and worthier of a fan, Has made, which enemies could ne’er have done, Our arch of empire, steadfast but for you, A mutilated structure, soon to fall.

A mockingbird perched on the hood of a pay phone half-buried in a hedge of wild rose and heard it ring The clapper ball trilled between brass gongs for two seconds then wind and then again With head cocked the bird took note absorbed the ringing deep in its throat and frothed an ebullient song The leitmotif of bright alarm recurred in a run from hawk to meadowlark from May to early June The ringing spread from syrinx to syrinx from Kiowa to Comanche to Clark till someone finally picked up and heard a voice on the other end say Konza or Consez or Kansa which the French trappers heard as Kaw which is only the sound of a word for wind then only the sound of wind

A Colonial Custom Bathsheba came out to the sun, Out to our wallèd cherry-trees; The tears adown her cheek did run, Bathsheba standing in the sun, Telling the bees. My mother had that moment died; Unknowing, sped I to the trees, And plucked Bathsheba’s hand aside; Then caught the name that there she cried Telling the bees. Her look I never can forget, I that held sobbing to her knees; The cherry-boughs above us met; I think I see Bathsheba yet Telling the bees.

for Nathaniel, 1900—1968 All afternoon you worked at cutting them down. Branch after branch tossed into the heap. You had your ceremony. Old pants. The pipe. The pipe rested in the cleft of the tree. When the pile got big enough, you threw the kerosene. Now the woods are clouded again. You forgot the world could be this messy. Air thickens into leaves, the leaves into worms. Behind the barn, overnight, it seems, tents have spread out in the apple trees. There’s work for you. So you come back in your pants old as dirt. With a pipe heavy as stone. No time to lose. Whatever is rotten, whatever won’t hold the weight of another season, you hack down. There’s one moment, though, when you feel almost sorry for them. The tents break into flame and the small, black pieces of anguish crawl out into the grass. Those that get away, well, you let them get away this time.

Our high and mighty termite mound arises far above the ground, and just as deep, grows underground. Our nest is blessed to be immense.   It gives us all a firm defense, superior to any fence.   It shields us from our enemies.   It keeps us cooler, by degrees. From floods and droughts it guarantees.   A prize nobody will assign in architectural design, but still our hill suits us just fine.

Who shall invoke her, who shall be her priest, With single rites the common debt to pay? On some green headland fronting to the East Our fairest boy shall kneel at break of day. Naked, uplifting in a laden tray New milk and honey and sweet-tinctured wine, Not without twigs of clustering apple-spray To wreath a garland for Our Lady's shrine. The morning planet poised above the sea Shall drop sweet influence through her drowsing lid; Dew-drenched, his delicate virginity Shall scarce disturb the flowers he kneels amid, That, waked so lightly, shall lift up their eyes, Cushion his knees, and nod between his thighs.

Tsung Ping (375—443): "Now I am old and infirm. I fear I shall no more be able to roam among the beautiful mountains. Clarifying my mind, I meditate on the mountain trails and wander about only in dreams." -in The Spirit of the Brush, tr. by Shio Sakanishi, p. 34 for Kenneth Rexroth I always say I won't go back to the mountains I am too old and fat there are bugs mean mules And pancakes every morning of the world Mr. Edward Wyman (63) Steams along the trail ahead of us all Moaning, "My poor feet ache, my back Is tired and I've got a stiff prick" Uprooting alder shoots in the rain Then I'm alone in a glass house on a ridge Encircled by chiming mountains With one sun roaring through the house all day & the others crashing through the glass all night Conscious even while sleeping Morning fog in the southern gorge Gleaming foam restoring the old sea-level The lakes in two lights green soap and indigo The high cirque-lake black half-open eye Ptarmigan hunt for bugs in the snow Bear peers through the wall at noon Deer crowd up to see the lamp A mouse nearly drowns in the honey I see my bootprints mingle with deer-foot Bear-paw mule-shoe in the dusty path to the privy Much later I write down: "raging. Viking sunrise The gorgeous death of summer in the east!" (Influence of a Byronic landscape— Bent pages exhibiting depravity of style.) Outside the lookout I lay nude on the granite Mountain hot September sun but inside my head Calm dark night with all the other stars HERACLITUS: "The waking have one common world But the sleeping turn aside Each into a world of his own." I keep telling myself what I really like Are music, books, certain land and sea-scapes The way light falls across them, diffusion of Light through agate, light itself . . . I suppose I'm still afraid of the dark "Remember smart-guy there's something Bigger something smarter than you." Ireland's fear of unknown holies drives My father's voice (a country neither he Nor his great-grandfather ever saw) A sparkly tomb a plated grave A holy thumb beneath a wave Everything else they hauled across Atlantic Scattered and lost in the buffalo plains Among these trees and mountains From Duns Scotus to this page A thousand years (". . . a dog walking on this hind legs— not that he does it well but that he does it at all.") Virtually a blank except for the hypothesis That there is more to a man Than the contents of his jock-strap EMPEDOCLES: "At one time all the limbs Which are the body's portion are brought together By Love in blooming life's high season; at another Severed by cruel Strife, they wander each alone By the breakers of life's sea." Fire and pressure from the sun bear down Bear down centipede shadow of palm-frond A limestone lithograph—oysters and clams of stone Half a black rock bomb displaying brilliant crystals Fire and pressure Love and Strife bear down Brontosaurus, look away My sweat runs down the rock HERACLITUS: "The transformations of fire are, first of all, sea; and half of the sea is earth, half whirlwind. . . . It scatters and it gathers; it advances and retires." I move out of a sweaty pool (The sea!) And sit up higher on the rock Is anything burning? The sun itself! Dying Pooping out, exhausted Having produced brontosaurus, Heraclitus This rock, me, To no purpose I tell you anyway (as a kind of loving) . . . Flies & other insects come from miles around To listen I also address the rock, the heather, The alpine fir BUDDHA: "All the constituents of being are Transitory: Work out your salvation with diligence." (And everything, as one eminent disciple of that master Pointed out, had been tediously complex ever since.) There was a bird Lived in an egg And by ingenious chemistry Wrought molecules of albumen To beak and eye Gizzard and craw Feather and claw My grandmother said: "Look at them poor bed- raggled pigeons!" And the sign in McAlister Street: "IF YOU CAN'T COME IN SMILE AS YOU GO BY LOVE THE BUTCHER I destroy myself, the universe (an egg) And time—to get an answer: There are a smiler, a sleeper and a dancer We repeat the conversation in the glittering dark Floating beside the sleeper. The child remarks, "You knew it all the time." I: "I keep forgetting that the smiler is Sleeping; the sleeper, dancing." From Sauk Lookout two years before Some of the view was down the Skagit To Puget Sound: From above the lower ranges, Deep in the forest—lighthouses on clear nights. This year's rock is a spur from the main range Cuts the valley in two and is broken By the river; Ross Dam repairs the break, Makes trolley buses run Through the streets of dim Seattle far away. I'm surrounded by mountains here A circle of 108 beads, originally seeds of ficus religiosa Bo-Tree A circle, continuous, one odd bead Larger than the rest and bearing A tassel (hair-tuft) (the man who sat under the tree) In the center of the circle, a void, an empty figure containing All that's multiplied; Each bead a repetition, a world Of ignorance and sleep. Today is the day the goose gets cooked Day of liberation for the crumbling flower Knobcone pinecone in the flames Brandy in the sun Which, as I said, will disappear Anyway it'll be invisible soon Exchanging places with stars now in my head To be growing rice in China through the night. Magnetic storms across the solar plains Make Aurora Borealis shimmy bright Beyond the mountains to the north. Closing the lookout in the morning Thick ice on the shutters Coyote almost whistling on a nearby ridge The mountain is THERE (between two lakes) I brought back a piece of its rock Heavy dark-honey color With a seam of crystal, some of the quartz Stained by its matrix Practically indestructible A shift from opacity to brilliance (The Zenbos say, "Lightening-flash & flint-spark") Like the mountains where it was made What we see of the world is the mind's Invention and the mind Though stained by it, becoming Rivers, sun, mule-dung, flies— Can shift instantly A dirty bird in a square time Gone Gone REALLY gone Into the cool O MAMA! Like they say, "Four times up, Three times down." I'm still on the mountain.

Once I loved a spider When I was born a fly, A velvet-footed spider With a gown of rainbow-dye. She ate my wings and gloated. She bound me with a hair. She drove me to her parlor Above her winding stair. To educate young spiders She took me all apart. My ghost came back to haunt her. I saw her eat my heart.

Something blurred, warmed in the eye’s corner, like woodsmoke becoming tears; but when you turned to look the stoop was still, the pumpkin and tacky mum pot wouldn’t talk — just a rattle at the gutter and a sense of curtains, somewhere, pulled. Five of   them later, scarfing the oak’s black bole, laying a dream of snakes. Needy and reticent at once, these squirrels in charred November recall, in Virgil, what it is to feel: moods, half-moods, swarming, then darting loose; obscure hunches that refuse to speak, but still expect in some flash of   luck to be revealed. The less you try to notice them, the more they will know of  you.