1630 Nature poems

After love discovers it, the little burn or birthmark in an odd spot he can neither see nor reach; after the internist's downturned mouth, specialists leaning over him like diviners, machines reading his billion cells; after the onslaught of insight, cures crawling through him like infestations, so many surgeries a wrong move leaves him leaking like overripe fruit; after the mountain aster and ice wine, Michigan football,Canes Venatici and the Four North Fracture Zone shrink to a room where voices grow hushed as if at some holy place, and even in the kindest eye there lurks the eternity to which he's been commended; after speech, touch, even the instinct to eat are gone, and he has become nothing but a collection of quiet tics and twitches as if something wanted out of his riddled bones, the carious maze of his brain; as the last day glaciers into his room, glass and chrome so infinites- imally facet- ed it seems he lives inside a diamond, he breaks into a wide smile, as if joy were the animal in him, blind, scrabbling, earth- covered creature tunneling up from God knows where to stand upright, feasting on distances, gazing dead into the sun.

Some years ago a procession of men calling themselves the sky-clad came to this district to build a hospital for birds that had been damaged by the rains. The landholders here my grandfather among them decided against it— it not being our way to intervene with monsoons which is why to this day the birds here grow so damaged & wise, or so our tutor said gravely before stepping out into the sun- washed coriander patch to watch droplets work down stems one by one, small storms suspended, while over the rooftiles came breakers of mist making our whole house to him drift back like the high prow of the viceroy’s steamship he watched sail off with his youth. Inside I still could not find the main verb the chariot wheel performed. I thought it was silver. It bore the king with 100 heads across a battlefield red with his wounded up to the end of the beginner’s workbook then blue-skinned Rama bent his bow then his raider’s arrow met the axle & then I could not stop laughing as through the doorway my mother scolded the aphasic houseboy who peed into our green watertank (black putti, untouchable) arcing the thin golden stream & singing ooo-ee ooo-ee at our ruin.

Because this is a monsoon poem expect to find the words jasmine, palmyra, Kuruntokai, red; mangoes in reference to trees or breasts; paddy fields, peacocks, Kurinji flowers, flutes; lotus buds guarding love’s furtive routes. Expect to hear a lot about erotic consummation inferred by laburnum gyrations and bamboo syncopations. Listen to the racket of wide-mouthed frogs and bent- legged prawns going about their business of mating while rain falls and falls on tiled roofs and verandas, courtyards, pagodas. Because such a big part of you seeks to understand this kind of rain — so unlike your cold rain, austere rain, get-me-the-hell- out-of-here rain. Rain that can’t fathom how to liberate camphor from the vaults of the earth. Let me tell you how little is written of mud, how it sneaks up like a sleek-gilled vandal to catch hold of your ankles. Or about the restorative properties of mosquito blood, dappled and fried against the wires of a bug-zapping paddle. So much of monsoon is to do with being overcome — not from longing as you might think, but from the sky’s steady bludgeoning, until every leaf on every unremembered tree gleams in the abyss of postcoital bliss. Come. Now sip on your masala tea, put your lips to the sweet, spicy skin of it. There’s more to see — notice the dogs who’ve been fucking on the beach, locked in embrace like an elongated Anubis, the crabs scavenging the flesh of a dopey- eyed ponyfish, the entire delirious coast with its philtra of beach and saturnine clouds arched backwards in disbelief. And the mayflies who swarm in November with all their ephemeral grandeur to die in millions at the behest of light, the geckos stationed on living room walls, cramming fistfuls of wings in their maws. Notice how hardly anyone mentions the word death, even though the fridge leaks and the sheets have been damp for weeks. And in this helter-skelter multitude of gray-greenness, notice how even the rain begins to feel fatigued. The roads and sewers have nowhere to go, and like old-fashioned pursuers they wander and spill their babbling hearts to electrical poles and creatures with ears. And what happens later, you might ask, after we’ve moved to a place of shelter, when the cracks in the earth have reappeared? We dream of wet, of course, of being submerged in millet stalks, of webbed toes and stalled clocks and eels in the mouth of a heron. We forget how unforgivably those old poems led us to believe that men were mountains, that the beautiful could never remain heartbroken, that when the rains arrive we should be delighted to be taken in drowning, in devotion.

A monster owl out on the fence flew away. What is it the sign of? The sign of an owl.

I The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom— Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters—with a sound but half its own, Such as a feeble brook will oft assume, In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. II Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine— Thou many-colour'd, many-voiced vale, Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene, Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne, Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame Of lightning through the tempest;—thou dost lie, Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, Children of elder time, in whose devotion The chainless winds still come and ever came To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging To hear—an old and solemn harmony; Thine earthly rainbows stretch'd across the sweep Of the aethereal waterfall, whose veil Robes some unsculptur'd image; the strange sleep Which when the voices of the desert fail Wraps all in its own deep eternity; Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion, A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame; Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, Thou art the path of that unresting sound— Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee I seem as in a trance sublime and strange To muse on my own separate fantasy, My own, my human mind, which passively Now renders and receives fast influencings, Holding an unremitting interchange With the clear universe of things around; One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings Now float above thy darkness, and now rest Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, In the still cave of the witch Poesy, Seeking among the shadows that pass by Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast From which they fled recalls them, thou art there! III Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep, that death is slumber, And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live.—I look on high; Has some unknown omnipotence unfurl'd The veil of life and death? or do I lie In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep Spread far around and inaccessibly Its circles? For the very spirit fails, Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep That vanishes among the viewless gales! Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, Mont Blanc appears—still, snowy, and serene; Its subject mountains their unearthly forms Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread And wind among the accumulated steeps; A desert peopled by the storms alone, Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, And the wolf tracks her there—how hideously Its shapes are heap'd around! rude, bare, and high, Ghastly, and scarr'd, and riven.—Is this the scene Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea Of fire envelop once this silent snow? None can reply—all seems eternal now. The wilderness has a mysterious tongue Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, So solemn, so serene, that man may be, But for such faith, with Nature reconcil'd; Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood By all, but which the wise, and great, and good Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. IV The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, Ocean, and all the living things that dwell Within the daedal earth; lightning, and rain, Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane, The torpor of the year when feeble dreams Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep Holds every future leaf and flower; the bound With which from that detested trance they leap; The works and ways of man, their death and birth, And that of him and all that his may be; All things that move and breathe with toil and sound Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell. Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, Remote, serene, and inaccessible: And this, the naked countenance of earth, On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains, Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power Have pil'd: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, A city of death, distinct with many a tower And wall impregnable of beaming ice. Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing Its destin'd path, or in the mangled soil Branchless and shatter'd stand; the rocks, drawn down From yon remotest waste, have overthrown The limits of the dead and living world, Never to be reclaim'd. The dwelling-place Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; Their food and their retreat for ever gone, So much of life and joy is lost. The race Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream, And their place is not known. Below, vast caves Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam, Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling Meet in the vale, and one majestic River, The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever Rolls its loud waters to the ocean-waves, Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air. V Mont Blanc yet gleams on high:—the power is there, The still and solemn power of many sights, And many sounds, and much of life and death. In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, In the lone glare of day, the snows descend Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there, Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, Or the star-beams dart through them. Winds contend Silently there, and heap the snow with breath Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home The voiceless lightning in these solitudes Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods Over the snow. The secret Strength of things Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome Of Heaven is as a law, inhabits thee! And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, If to the human mind's imaginings Silence and solitude were vacancy?

I am no shepherd of a child’s surmises. I have seen fear where the coiled serpent rises, Thirst where the grasses burn in early May And thistle, mustard, and the wild oat stay. There is dust in this air. I saw in the heat Grasshoppers busy in the threshing wheat. So to this hour. Through the warm dusk I drove To blizzards sifting on the hissing stove, And found no images of pastoral will, But fear, thirst, hunger, and this huddled chill.

As our daughter approaches graduation and puberty at the same time, at her own, calm, deliberate, serious rate, she begins to kick up her heels, jazz out her hands, thrust out her hipbones, chant I’m great! I’m great! She feels 8th grade coming open around her, a chrysalis cracking and letting her out, it falls behind her and joins the other husks on the ground, 7th grade, 6th grade, the magenta rind of 5th grade, the hard jacket of 4th when she had so much pain, 3rd grade, 2nd, the dim cocoon of 1st grade back there somewhere on the path, and kindergarten like a strip of thumb-suck blanket taken from the actual blanket they wrapped her in at birth. The whole school is coming off her shoulders like a cloak unclasped, and she dances forth in her jerky sexy child’s joke dance of self, self, her throat tight and a hard new song coming out of it, while her two dark eyes shine above her body like a good mother and a good father who look down and love everything their baby does, the way she lives their love.

January Contorted by wind, mere armatures for ice or snow, the trees resolve to endure for now, they will leaf out in April. And I must be as patient as the trees— a winter resolution I break all over again, as the cold presses its sharp blade against my throat. February After endless hibernation on the windowsill, the orchid blooms— embroidered purple stitches up and down a slender stem. Outside, snow melts midair to rain. Abbreviated month. Every kind of weather. March When the Earl King came to steal away the child in Goethe’s poem, the father said don’t be afraid, it’s just the wind. . . As if it weren’t the wind that blows away the tender fragments of this world— leftover leaves in the corners of the garden, a Lenten Rose that thought it safe to bloom so early. April In the pastel blur of the garden, the cherry and redbud shake rain from their delicate shoulders, as petals of pink dogwood wash down the ditches in dreamlike rivers of color. May May apple, daffodil, hyacinth, lily, and by the front porch steps every billowing shade of purple and lavender lilac, my mother’s favorite flower, sweet breath drifting through the open windows: perfume of memory—conduit of spring. June The June bug on the screen door whirs like a small, ugly machine, and a chorus of frogs and crickets drones like Musak at all the windows. What we don’t quite see comforts us. Blink of lightning, grumble of thunder—just the heat clearing its throat. July Tonight the fireflies light their brief candles in all the trees of summer— color of moonflakes, color of fluorescent lace where the ocean drags its torn hem over the dark sand. August Barefoot and sun-dazed, I bite into this ripe peach of a month, gathering children into my arms in all their sandy glory, heaping my table each night with nothing but corn and tomatoes. September Their summer romance over, the lovers still cling to each other the way the green leaves cling to their trees in the strange heat of September, as if this time there will be no autumn. October How suddenly the woods have turned again. I feel like Daphne, standing with my arms outstretched to the season, overtaken by color, crowned with the hammered gold of leaves. November These anonymous leaves, their wet bodies pressed against the window or falling past— I count them in my sleep, absolving gravity, absolving even death who knows as I do the imperatives of the season. December The white dove of winter sheds its first fine feathers; they melt as they touch the warm ground like notes of a once familiar music; the earth shivers and turns towards the solstice.

Marvelous Opaque Orb. Night-light for the world.

Last night, when the moon slipped into my attic room as an oblong of light, I sensed she’d come to commiserate. It was August. She traveled with a small valise of darkness, and the first few stars returning to the northern sky, and my room, it seemed, had missed her. She pretended an interest in the bookcase while other objects stirred, as in a rock pool, with unexpected life: strings of beads in their green bowl gleamed, the paper-crowded desk; the books, too, appeared inclined to open and confess. Being sure the moon harbored some intention, I waited; watched for an age her cool gaze shift first toward a flower sketch pinned on the far wall then glide down to recline along the pinewood floor, before I’d had enough.Moon, I said,We’re both scarred now. Are they quite beyond you, the simple words of love? Say them. You are not my mother; with my mother, I waited unto death.