1630 Nature poems

1 I count the rays of the jellyfish: twelve in this one, like a clock to tell time by, thirteen in the next, time gone awry. A great wind brought them in, left them here to die, indifferent time measured by whirling moon and sun, by tides in perpetual fall and rise. Englobed, transparent, they litter the beach, creatureless creatures deprived of speech who spawn more like themselves before they die. I peer into each and see a faceless red center, red spokes like a star. They are, and are not, like what we are. 2 At noon, in the too bright light, watchful, looking too hard, we saw the scene turn dark and lost the children for a moment, waves crashing around them. Shadow blended with shadow, the sun inside a cloud, and then the children were restored to us, our worst fears a hallucination. All afternoon their castles, poor and proud, rose and fell. Great civilizations were built, came to an end, the children mighty lords, their castles only as small as we are to the stars and starry structures. The day was infinite for them, time stretching to the farthest horizon, the sun their overlord. But how to reconcile these summer days washing away with our need to commemorate, to hold onto? They knew. And so they sang a song tuneless and true, admitting no fixed point, no absolute, words overheard and blurred by great winds blowing in, a rhyme or round for a time such as we live in: The world is made, knocked down, and made again! 3 This is the moment of stasis: gulls stall above the burned-out mansion on the bluff, gone for thirty years, and cairns rise up, stone balanced on stone. By evening, the beach is empty, my shadow a long-legged giant leading me past small battlements to the day’s masterpiece: a dripping castle, all towers and crenellation, tall as a child, made by many children, flying three-pointed flags that wave hopefully in the wind. Closer, I see the moat, the courtyard’s secret pool in which, macabrely, red jellyfish float, death and potentiality entwined forever. A crab small as my fingernail, dead, perfect in every detail, with hairlike spinnerets and claws, guards the open castle door from entry as night begins to fall and shadows dark as ink wash in to stain the beach. Shivering, I think, O sentry, who would enter here? 4 Traveling once, I stood under the open sky inside a great unfinished cathedral. Stonemasons, there for generations, clung like ants to thin scaffolding, carving griffins and saints, the rising spires and portals dripping like hot wax, and birds flew freely in and out of lacy walls, like angels thrown down from heaven. Gaudy and grand, it was a vision of eternal mind. Its maker, dead for a long time, had left no finished plan, design, but work went on, days turning into years, the century coming to a close. In disbelief, I touched each twisting vine and leaf, marveling at what had been done, and what was yet to be, and wished, as I wish now, O let it never be complete!

August, goldenrod blowing. We walk into the graveyard, to find my grandfather’s grave. Ten years ago I came here last, bringing marigolds from the round garden outside the kitchen. I didn’t know you then. We walk among carved names that go with photographs on top of the piano at the farm: Keneston, Wells, Fowler, Batchelder, Buck. We pause at the new grave of Grace Fenton, my grandfather’s sister. Last summer we called on her at the nursing home, eighty-seven, and nodding in a blue housedress. We cannot find my grandfather’s grave. Back at the house where no one lives, we potter and explore the back chamber where everything comes to rest: spinning wheels, pretty boxes, quilts, bottles, books, albums of postcards. Then with a flashlight we descend firm steps to the root cellar—black, cobwebby, huge, with dirt floors and fieldstone walls, and above the walls, holding the hewn sills of the house, enormous granite foundation stones. Past the empty bins for squash, apples, carrots, and potatoes, we discover the shelves for canning, a few pale pints of tomato left, and—what is this?—syrup, maple syrup in a quart jar, syrup my grandfather made twenty-five years ago for the last time. I remember coming to the farm in March in sugaring time, as a small boy. He carried the pails of sap, sixteen-quart buckets, dangling from each end of a wooden yoke that lay across his shoulders, and emptied them into a vat in the saphouse where fire burned day and night for a week. Now the saphouse tilts, nearly to the ground, like someone exhausted to the point of death, and next winter when snow piles three feet thick on the roofs of the cold farm, the saphouse will shudder and slide with the snow to the ground. Today we take my grandfather’s last quart of syrup upstairs, holding it gingerly, and we wash off twenty-five years of dirt, and we pull and pry the lid up, cutting the stiff, dried rubber gasket, and dip our fingers in, you and I both, and taste the sweetness, you for the first time, the sweetness preserved, of a dead man in the kitchen he left when his body slid like anyone’s into the ground.

Sky a shook poncho. Roof   wrung. Mind a luna moth Caught in a banjo. This weather’s witty Peek-a-boo. A study in Insincerity. Blues! Blooms! The yodel Of   the chimney in night wind. That flat daffodil. With absurd hauteur New tulips dab their shadows In water-mutter. Boys are such oxen. Girls! — sepal-shudder, shadow- Waver. Equinox. Plums on the Quad did Blossom all at once, taking Down the power grid.

I Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight, The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger than dreams that fulfil us in sleep with delight; The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops and branches that glittered and swayed Such wonders and glories of blossomlike snow or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night, Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: such mirth had the madness and might in thee made, March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms that enkindle the season they smite. II And now that the rage of thy rapture is satiate with revel and ravin and spoil of the snow, And the branches it brightened are broken, and shattered the tree-tops that only thy wrath could lay low, How should not thy lovers rejoice in thee, leader and lord of the year that exults to be born So strong in thy strength and so glad of thy gladness whose laughter puts winter and sorrow to scorn? Thou hast shaken the snows from thy wings, and the frost on thy forehead is molten: thy lips are aglow As a lover's that kindle with kissing, and earth, with her raiment and tresses yet wasted and torn, Takes breath as she smiles in the grasp of thy passion to feel through her spirit the sense of thee flow. III Fain, fain would we see but again for an hour what the wind and the sun have dispelled and consumed, Those full deep swan-soft feathers of snow with whose luminous burden the branches implumed Hung heavily, curved as a half-bent bow, and fledged not as birds are, but petalled as flowers, Each tree-top and branchlet a pinnacle jewelled and carved, or a fountain that shines as it showers, But fixed as a fountain is fixed not, and wrought not to last till by time or by tempest entombed, As a pinnacle carven and gilded of men: for the date of its doom is no more than an hour's, One hour of the sun's when the warm wind wakes him to wither the snow-flowers that froze as they bloomed. IV As the sunshine quenches the snowshine; as April subdues thee, and yields up his kingdom to May; So time overcomes the regret that is born of delight as it passes in passion away, And leaves but a dream for desire to rejoice in or mourn for with tears or thanksgivings; but thou, Bright god that art gone from us, maddest and gladdest of months, to what goal hast thou gone from us now? For somewhere surely the storm of thy laughter that lightens, the beat of thy wings that play, Must flame as a fire through the world, and the heavens that we know not rejoice in thee: surely thy brow Hath lost not its radiance of empire, thy spirit the joy that impelled it on quest as for prey. V Are thy feet on the ways of the limitless waters, thy wings on the winds of the waste north sea? Are the fires of the false north dawn over heavens where summer is stormful and strong like thee Now bright in the sight of thine eyes? are the bastions of icebergs assailed by the blast of thy breath? Is it March with the wild north world when April is waning? the word that the changed year saith, Is it echoed to northward with rapture of passion reiterate from spirits triumphant as we Whose hearts were uplift at the blast of thy clarions as men's rearisen from a sleep that was death And kindled to life that was one with the world's and with thine? hast thou set not the whole world free? VI For the breath of thy lips is freedom, and freedom's the sense of thy spirit, the sound of thy song, Glad god of the north-east wind, whose heart is as high as the hands of thy kingdom are strong, Thy kingdom whose empire is terror and joy, twin-featured and fruitful of births divine, Days lit with the flame of the lamps of the flowers, and nights that are drunken with dew for wine, And sleep not for joy of the stars that deepen and quicken, a denser and fierier throng, And the world that thy breath bade whiten and tremble rejoices at heart as they strengthen and shine, And earth gives thanks for the glory bequeathed her, and knows of thy reign that it wrought not wrong. VII Thy spirit is quenched not, albeit we behold not thy face in the crown of the steep sky's arch, And the bold first buds of the whin wax golden, and witness arise of the thorn and the larch: Wild April, enkindled to laughter and storm by the kiss of the wildest of winds that blow, Calls loud on his brother for witness; his hands that were laden with blossom are sprinkled with snow, And his lips breathe winter, and laugh, and relent; and the live woods feel not the frost's flame parch; For the flame of the spring that consumes not but quickens is felt at the heart of the forest aglow, And the sparks that enkindled and fed it were strewn from the hands of the gods of the winds of March.

Each flower a wilting sun The death of a new day is never kind Grief ain’t no song No loss is this romantic

I did not call to the Holy Spirit or whistle My lordy, lordy, Nor hum one scintilla of shame. What hid in the grass Was neither skiver nor savior, neither cheater nor ace. Besides, the doves peering over the gutters have all gone awry. If I’m only a man, born far from a boomer’s shack— Hoarding sawbucks, cherry-picking the hicks like prey, And the wusses, and the Horacian declaimers, and the lucky Grubbers who master heartache and lurk like crooks Among the rich and the rebadged—then I’m a rival devil, Carrying my brag like a brakeman. And the one certainty, That life is to be lost—and no matter the opinion, someone’s Always a fool—has me rubbed inside like a lonely breed With the swill edgy and chic and rough. Who asks: Who needs a cotton-eyed hymn to say what the old shanty By the track has meant to the human story?

Yes, but beyond happiness what is there? The question has not yet been answered. No great quotations have issued forth From there, we have no still photographs Full of men in fine leather hiking boots, Women with new-cut walking sticks. So yes, it is the realm of thin tigers Prowling, out to earn even more stripes; It is the smell of seven or eight perfumes Not currently available in America. Maybe this is wrong, of course. The place may after all be populated, Or over-populated, with dented trash cans In the streets and news of genital herpes In every smart article in every slick magazine Everywhere in the place. But everybody there smiles— Laughs, even, every time a breath can be caught. This is all true. Beyond happiness, it’s all the same, Things come back to where we are now. Of course maybe this is wrong, But don’t believe it: a happiness exists, All right, I have seen it for myself, Touched it, touched the woman Who with her daughter together keep Ammonia in Mason jars by the side window. They will throw it all in his face God Damn him if he ever comes close again.

from the Purgatorio of Dante, Canto 28, lines 1-51 And earnest to explore within—around— The divine wood, whose thick green living woof Tempered the young day to the sight—I wound Up the green slope, beneath the forest’s roof, With slow, soft steps leaving the mountain’s steep, And sought those inmost labyrinths, motion-proof Against the air, that in that stillness deep And solemn, struck upon my forehead bare, The slow, soft stroke of a continuous ... In which the ... leaves tremblingly were All bent towards that part where earliest The sacred hill obscures the morning air. Yet were they not so shaken from the rest, But that the birds, perched on the utmost spray, Incessantly renewing their blithe quest, With perfect joy received the early day, Singing within the glancing leaves, whose sound Kept a low burden to their roundelay, Such as from bough to bough gathers around The pine forest on bleak Chiassi’s shore, When Aeolus Sirocco has unbound. My slow steps had already borne me o’er Such space within the antique wood, that I Perceived not where I entered any more,— When, lo! a stream whose little waves went by, Bending towards the left through grass that grew Upon its bank, impeded suddenly My going on. Water of purest hue On earth, would appear turbid and impure Compared with this, whose unconcealing dew, Dark, dark, yet clear, moved under the obscure Eternal shades, whose interwoven looms The rays of moon or sunlight ne’er endure. I moved not with my feet, but mid the glooms Pierced with my charmed eye, contemplating The mighty multitude of fresh May blooms Which starred that night, when, even as a thing That suddenly, for blank astonishment, Charms every sense, and makes all thought take wing,— A solitary woman! and she went Singing and gathering flower after flower, With which her way was painted and besprent. Bright lady, who, if looks had ever power To bear true witness of the heart within, Dost bask under the beams of love, come lower Towards this bank. I prithee let me win This much of thee, to come, that I may hear Thy song: like Proserpine, in Enna’s glen, Thou seemest to my fancy, singing here And gathering flowers, as that fair maiden when She lost the Spring, and Ceres her more dear.

A girl in a green mini- skirt, not very pretty, walks down the street. A businessman stops, turns to stare at her ass that looks like a moldy refrigerator. There are now 200,000,000 people in America.

Lichen glows in the moonlight so fierce only cloud blocking the moon brings relief. Then passed by, recharged it leaps up off rocks and suffocates—there is no route through rocks without having to confront its beseeching—it lights the way, not the moon, and outdoes epithets like phosphorescent, fluorescent, or florescent: it smirks and smiles and lifts the corner of its lips in hideous or blissful collusion, and birds pipe an eternal dawn, never knowing when to sleep or wake. They might be tricked into thinking their time’s up, in the spectrum of lichen, its extra-gravital persuasion, its crackling movement remembered as still, indifferent, barely living under the sun, or on a dark night; climbing up you’d escape, but like all great molecular weights it leaves traces you carry with you into the realms of comfort and faith.