536 Philosophy poems

My boy, not of your will nor mine You keep the mountain pass and wait, Restless, for evil gold to shine And hold you to your fate. A stronger Hand than yours gave you The lawless sword—you know not why. That you must live is all too true, And other men must die. My boy, be brigand if you must, But face the traveller in your track: Stand one to one, and never thrust The dagger in his back. Nay, make no ambush of the dark. Look straight into your victim’s eyes; Then—let his free soul, like a lark, Fly, singing, toward the skies. My boy, if Christ must be betrayed, And you must the betrayer be, Oh, marked before the worlds were made! What help is there for me? Ah, if the prophets from their graves Demand such blood of you as this, Take Him, I say, with swords and staves, But—never with a kiss!

Whom should I consult? Philosophers Are happy in their homes and seminars. See this one with the mischievous bright childlike Gaze going out through walls and air, A tangent to the bent rays of the star. Hear the chalk splutter, hear the groping voice: Conceive the demiurge in his perpetual Strife with the chaos of the universe, That humming equilibrium of creation Pure and enormous, crossed by the constant Light of unimaginable combustion: Teems, how it teems. An elm tree sighs Beyond the dusty windowledge of June. As in the mind the notes of a melody Vibrate when vibration’s gone, a series Generated by a decimal has no end; Observe it closely, though; it stops when it stops. The frail spectacles are bedimmed with spring. But whom should I consult? Well-seasoned men, Ruddy with business or the salty summer, Autumnal in their woolens, gaze Toward the quick plumes above the city. A frosty morning sun reddens the river. This one is meditative and well-qualified: Decently shined, one heavy saddle-dark Perforated brogan swings from the swivel Chair arm; leaning back, the head Well-cropped and grey, the experienced Eyes quiet, with one highlighted pupil. A reader of Herodotus in the evening. The road was in receivership, the mills Were in receivership, the bondholders Suitably informed would not dissent From an able plan of reorganization. Easy did it. And his beautiful daughters Sink in a circle of white skirts like daisies, Laughing for the brash photographer. Years ago they sailed to the North Cape, Made out that flecked mass in the East With Mother and the broad-shouldered boy from Cook’s On deck in the dim summer on the grey Sea. Often they saw the fishermen Off Cherbourg in the awe of morning hitting The outside spanking seas: red sails in sea-light. Far away in the nursery a music box Plucks its icy Bavarian tune for them. Then whom? A thousand flashes from Long Island Enter the high room in the office building, A heliograph of cars turning toward sunset. Will he decipher them? The journalist Sweats in his shirtsleeves, mutilates Cigarettes in a smouldering tray, surveys Me and the world in a racket of teletypes, Sick of it and excited, needing a drink. Positive copy sprouts from the typewriter, Each paragraph a piston stroke. The sun Glitters on Hackensack, sorrows on the land, Goes out like a pliant egg sucked down a bottle. Under the shadowing azure a violet Dusk consumes the sharp walls of the world. The melancholy distributor of wit Snatches at straws amid the alien darkness, A whirl of dusty danger. For his retreat The priest lifts up the monstrance, muttering Abstracted Latin to the tinkle behind him. Presently they will bawl the Stabat Mater. And all those years at seminary, reading St. Basil and Jerome, girding his cassock For handball in the gritty cement courtyard Under the swooping smoke of the powerhouse; And ordination when the folks from Chicago Wept before the bishop. Mortify The flesh. Think on thy last end. Pray The Holy Mother of God in her infinite mercy, And Him who rests in the dark chapel always, Where the wick burns in wax, a cuddling flame: Deduced by Thomas from the tip of heaven. Or should I tumble to the recumbent Confessional, and the scientist of distress? For any child the terror in the night, The hating eyes by day may be Death’s cunning orchestration: they prepare The servant’s cry at last, absolute and lonely. See this easy gentleman in tweeds, Deepchested, a swimmer to the farthest light, Diagnostician of the subaqueous Faces of dreams: with patience like a lover He must all day sustain his authority, Must not be bored, merciful or amused. Or the anatomist and healer of bones? Trepanner, skilled in suturing, the masked And sterile hero in the cone of light; There the sweet ether cone must be inhaled With one, two pulses of the fiery spiral Singing into timeless speed or quiet: A mound under a sheet, a square of pale Mortal flesh incised in a seeping line, Spreading its lips for pretty butchery. Blankets, hypodermics and high fever, Racing delirium in the ward; the tall screen Efficiently deployed at the bedside; Intravenous ministrations: charts: starch: And how is he today. Pretty good, doc. Or else the fly sits down on the dead face In the dead sunny room. Shall I have speech With those undone by the world’s great memory? Men translated by music, treasurers Of the French phrase, the childhood images, Unregarded announcers of prophecy; Staring blind at the stained wall paper In their nightly rooms; their dreadful hearts Beating the beds where other hearts have slept Like birds under the night wind of time. See this one whom the currents under earth Intoxicate, and the flosses of the sky: Weeping, weeping in vanity and grief He walks toward remote dawn in the empty city, Facing the cold draft, fish-smell from the river, Necessitous of love. Masters of intricate Fancy, libertines of intelligence, I. Until Jove let it be, no colonist Mastered the wild earth; no land was marked, None parceled out or shared; but everyone Looked for his living in the common wold. And Jove gave poison to the blacksnakes, and Made the wolves ravage, made the ocean roll, Knocked honey from the leaves, took fire away— So man might beat out various inventions By reasoning and art. First he chipped fire Out of the veins of flint where it was hidden; Then rivers felt his skiffs of the light alder; Then sailors counted up the stars and named them: Pleiades, Hyades, and the Pole Star; Then were discovered ways to take wild things. In snares, or hunt them with the circling pack; And how to whip a stream with casting nets, Or draw the deep-sea fisherman’s cordage up; And then the use of steel and the shrieking saw; Then various crafts. All things were overcome By labor and by force of bitter need. II. Even when your threshing floor is leveled By the big roller, smoothed and packed by hand With potter’s clay, so that it will not crack, There are still nuisances. The tiny mouse Locates his house and granary underground, Or the blind mole tunnels his dark chamber; The toad, too, and all monsters of the earth, Besides those plunderers of the grain, the weevil And frantic ant, scared of a poor old age. Let me speak then, too, of the farmer’s weapons: The heavy oaken plow and the plowshare, The slowly rolling carts of Demeter, The threshing machine, the sledge, the weighted mattock, The withe baskets, the cheap furniture, The harrow and the magic winnowing fan— All that your foresight makes provision of, If you still favor the divine countryside. III. Moreover, like men tempted by the straits In ships borne homeward through the blowing sea, We too must reckon on Arcturus star, The days of luminous Draco and the Kids. When Libra makes the hours of sleep and daylight Equal, dividing the world, half light, half dark, Then drive the team, and sow the field with barley, Even under intractable winter’s rain. But Spring is the time to sow your beans and clover, When shining Taurus opens the year with his golden Horns, and the Dog’s averted star declines; For greater harvests of your wheat and spelt, Let first the Pleiades and Hyades be hid And Ariadne’s diadem go down. The golden sun rules the great firmament Through the twelve constellations, and the world Is measured out in certain parts, and heaven By five great zones is taken up entire: One glowing with sundazzle and fierce heat; And far away on either side the arctics, Frozen with ice and rain, cerulean; And, in between, two zones for sick mankind: Through each of these a slanting path is cut Where pass in line the zodiacal stars. Northward the steep world rises to Scythia And south of Libya descends, where black Styx and the lowest of the dead look on. In the north sky the Snake glides like a river Winding about the Great and Little Bear— Those stars that fear forever the touch of ocean; Southward they say profound Night, mother of Furies, Sits tight-lipped among the crowding shades, Or thence Aurora draws the daylight back; And where the East exhales the yellow morning, Reddening evening lights her stars at last. IV. As for the winter, when the freezing rains Confine the farmer, he may employ himself In preparations for serener seasons. The plowman beats the plowshare on the forge, Or makes his vats of tree-trunks hollowed out, Brands his cattle, numbers his piles of grain, Sharpens fence posts or pitchforks, prepares Umbrian trellises for the slow vine. Then you may weave the baskets of bramble twigs Or dip your bleating flock in the clean stream. Often the farmer loads his little mule With olive oil or apples, and brings home A grindstone or a block of pitch from market. And some will stay up late beside the fire On winter nights, whittling torches, while The housewife runs the shuttle through the loom And comforts the long labor with her singing; Or at the stove she simmers the new wine, Skimming the froth with leaves. Oh idle time! In that hale season, all their worries past, Farmers arrange convivialities— As after laden ships have reached home port, The happy sailors load the prow with garlands. Then is the time to gather acorns and Laurel berries and the bloodred myrtle, To lay your traps for cranes and snares for buck, To hit the fallow deer with twisted slingshots, And track the long-eared hare— When snow is deep, and ice is on the rivers. V. What of the humors and the ways of Autumn? Just when the farmer wished to reap his yellow Fields, and thresh his grain, I have often seen all the winds make war, Flattening the stout crops from the very roots; And in the black whirlwind Carrying off the ears and the light straw. And often mighty phalanxes of rain Marched out of heaven, as the clouds Rolled up from the sea the detestable tempest; Then the steep aether thundered, and the deluge Soaked the crops, filled ditches, made the rivers Rise and roar and seethe in their spuming beds. The Father himself in the mid stormy night Lets the lightning go, at whose downstroke Enormous earth quivers, wild things flee, And fear abases the prone hearts of men— As Jove splits Athos with his firebolt Or Rhodope or the Ceraunian ridge. The southwind wails in sheets of rain, And under that great wind the groves Lament, and the long breast of the shore is shaken. If you dislike to be so caught, mark well The moon’s phases and the weather signs; Notice where Saturn’s frigid star retires, Mercury’s wanderings over heaven; and revere Especially, the gods. Offer to Ceres Annual sacrifice and annual worship In the first fair weather of the spring, So may your sheep grow fat and your vines fruitful, Your sleep sweet and your mountains full of shade. Let all the country folk come to adore her, And offer her libations of milk and wine; Conduct the sacrificial lamb three times Around the ripe field, in processional, With all your chorus singing out to Ceres; And let no man lay scythe against his grain Unless he first bind oakleaves on his head And make his little dance, and sing to her. VI. When shall we herd the cattle to the stables? The wind, say, rises without intermission; The sea gets choppy and the swell increases; The dry crash of boughs is heard on hills; The long sound of the surf becomes a tumult; The gusts become more frequent in the grove; The waves begin to fight against the keels; From far at sea the gulls fly shoreward crying; The heron leaves his favorite marsh and soars Over the high cloud. Then you will see Beyond thin skimrack, shooting stars Falling, the long pale tracks behind them Whitening through the darkness of the night; And you’ll see straw and fallen leaves blowing. But when it thunders in rough Boreas’ quarter, When east and west it thunders—every sailor Furls his dripping sail. A storm should never catch you unprepared. Aerial cranes take flight before its rising, The restless heifer with dilated nostrils Sniffs the air; the squeaking hirondelle Flits round and round the lake, and frogs, Inveterate in their mud, croak a chorale. And too the ant, more frantic in his gallery, Trundles his eggs out from their hiding place; The rainbow, cloud imbiber, may be seen; And crows go cawing from the pasture In a harsh throng of crepitating wings; The jeering jay gives out his yell for rain And takes a walk by himself on the dry sand. Stormwise, the various sea-fowl, and such birds As grub the sweet Swan River in Asia, May be observed dousing themselves and diving Or riding on the water, as if they wished— What odd exhilaration—to bathe themselves. VII. After a storm, clear weather and continuing Sunny days may likewise be foretold: By the sharp twinkle of the stars, the moon Rising to face her brother’s rays by day; No tenuous fleeces blowing in the sky, No halcyons, sea favorites, on the shore Stretching out their wings in tepid sunlight; But mists go lower and lie on the fields, The owl, observing sundown from his perch, Modulates his meaningless melancholy. Aloft in crystal air the sparrow hawk Chases his prey; and as she flits aside The fierce hawk follows screaming on the wind, And as he swoops, she flits aside again. With funereal contractions of the windpipe The crows produce their caws, three at a time, And in their high nests, pleased at I know not what, Noise it among themselves: no doubt rejoicing To see their little brood after the storm, But not, I think, by reason of divine Insight or superior grasp of things. VIII. But if you carefully watch the rapid sun And the moon following, a fair night’s snare Never deceives you as to next day’s weather. When the new moon collects a rim of light, If that bow be obscured with a dark vapor, Then a great tempest is in preparation; If it be blushing like a virgin’s cheek, There will be wind; wind makes Diana blush; If on the fourth night (most significant) She goes pure and unclouded through the sky, All that day and the following days will be, For one full month, exempt from rain and wind. The sun, too, rising and setting in the waves, Will give you weather signs, trustworthy ones Whether at morning or when stars come out. A mackerel sky over the east at sunrise Means look out for squalls, a gale is coming, Unfavorable to trees and plants and flocks. Or when through denser strata the sun’s rays Break out dimly, or Aurora rises Pale from Tithonus’ crocus-colored chamber, Alas, the vine-leaf will not shield the cluster In the hubbub of roof-pattering bitter hail. It will be well to notice sunset, too, For the sun’s visage then has various colors; Bluish and dark means rain; if it be fiery That means an East wind; if it be dappled And mixed with red gold light, then you will see Wind and rain in commotion everywhere. Nobody can advise me, on that night, To cast off hawsers and put out to sea. But if the next day passes and the sunset Then be clear, you need not fear the weather: A bright Norther will sway the forest trees. IX. Last, what the late dusk brings, and whence the fair Clouds are blown, and secrets of the Southwind You may learn from the sun, whose prophecies No man denies, seeing black insurrections, Treacheries, and wars are told by him. When Caesar died, the great sun pitied Rome, So veiling his bright head, the godless time Trembled in fear of everlasting night; And then were portents given of earth and ocean, Vile dogs upon the roads, and hideous Strange birds, and Aetna quaking, and her fires Bursting to overflow the Cyclops’ fields With flames whirled in the air and melted stones. Thunder of war was heard in Germany From south to north, shaking the granite Alps; And a voice also through the silent groves Piercing; and apparitions wondrous pale Were seen in dead of night. Then cattle spoke (O horror!), streams stood still, the earth cracked open And tears sprang even from the temple bronze. The Po, monarch of rivers, on his back Spuming whole forests, raced through the lowland plains And bore off pens and herds; and then continually The viscera of beasts were thick with evil, Blood trickled from the springs; tall towns at night Re-echoed to the wolf-pack’s shivering howl; And never from pure heaven have there fallen So many fires, nor baleful comets burned. It seemed that once again the Roman lines, Alike in arms, would fight at Philippi; And heaven permitted those Thessalian fields To be enriched again with blood of ours. Some future day, perhaps, in that country, A farmer with his plow will turn the ground, And find the javelins eaten thin with rust, Or knock the empty helmets with his mattock And wonder, digging up those ancient bones. Paternal gods! Ancestors! Mother Vesta! You that guard Tiber and the Palatine! Now that long century is overthrown, Let not this young man fail to give us peace! Long enough beneath your rule, O Caesar, Heaven has hated us and all those triumphs Where justice was thrown down—so many wars, So many kinds of wickedness! No honor Rendered the plow, but the fields gone to ruin, The country-folk made homeless, and their scythes Beaten to straight swords on the blowing forge! War from the Euphrates to Germany; Ruptured engagements, violence of nations, And impious Mars raging the whole world over— As when a four horsed chariot rears away Plunging from the barrier, and runs wild, Heedless of the reins or the charioteer. Terrorizers of themselves, laughers in Language and priests of any mystery— Not by authority. What of the revered Historian, the painstaking public man? His dusty briefcase worn to a splitting bulge, The scholar descending from the library Smiles at the doves, and at the glowing grass. Letters gone frail and yellow in their strings Spill fuzz and dust from the stuck folds: It might be inferred from what the ambassador Wrote to his daughter in Virginia That others were privy to the situation. These judges are gentle and well-cultivated Honorable stylists, penetrating men, Mirrors of duplicity and bewilderment, Mirrors of magnificent deep-rooted structural Policy and implacable miscarriage. The documents are all photostated, the files Arranged. Let humane logic Guide them in the wilderness of the State. The pallid husbandman grunts at his fields, Sells his new lambs in the damp of March, Thumbs the slick catalogue of the mail order House for ginghams for the girls of summer; Chews with the county agent at the gate. He will be ruddy as the sun goes over, The clouds go over, the tractor shudders on Through the high fields. The piling west will grow Fractious with lightning, the wild branches bend, Curtains blow out like goodbye handkerchiefs Hilarious in the gloomy wind. Autumn Comes with marriages to the aging house, Winter comes with comforts and old death. Still the farmer’s dull hand holds the seed; The low star glimmers on the dewy sill.

Words from a leaf on the shell of a snail? Tendency as reciprocity etched in shale. Cider vinegar wrapped in sealskin? Accept it, so little is genuine. A box on a meteor compelled by earth? Lies, emptiness, grief: it’s not a first. Frost on the dock at Penetanguishene? Tears from Lake Huron, Erie, and Michigan. Not a moment to yourself? Don’t let love put you on a shelf. A preponderance of errors? The soft one sucks her rivers. Love, love, needs no reason. Yes, yes, yes, is my season.

Halfway between crib and cage the French language puts crate, a simple slatted box for transporting those fruits that fall ill at the least lack of air. Built in such a way that it can be broken down effortlessly after use, it is never used twice. It is really more perishable than the deliquescing foodstuffs that it carries. On the corners of streets that lead to the markets, it gleams like white wood without wood’s vanity. Still very new, and slightly surprised to find itself in this awkward position, having been thrown into the gutter without hope of retrieval, it remains a most likable object on whose fate we will not dwell for long. Translated from the French

Someone was searching for a Form of Fire. Bird-eyed, the wind watched. Four deer in a blowsy meadow. As though it were simply random, a stately stare. What’s six and six and two and ten? Time that my eye ached, my heart shook, why. Mistaking lime for lemon. Dressed in cobalt, charcoal, thistle—and control. If they had more they would need less. A proposal from the squinting logician. Seems we are legal, seems we are ill. Ponderous purpose, are you weather, are you wheel? Gold with a heart of cinder. Little blue chip dancing in the light of the loom. Mistress, May-girl, whom will you kiss? The death of water is the birth of air.

Instead of a cup of tea, instead of a milk- silk whelk of a cup, of a cup of nearly six o'clock teatime, cup of a stumbling block, cup of an afternoon unredeemed by talk, cup of a cut brown loaf, of a slice, a lack of butter, blueberry jam that's almost black, instead of tannin seeping into the cracks of a pot, the void of an hour seeps out, infects the slit of a cut I haven't the wit to fix with a surgeon's needle threaded with fine-gauge silk as a key would thread the cylinder of a lock. But no key threads the cylinder of a lock. Late afternoon light, transitory, licks the place of the absent cup with its rough tongue, flicks itself out beneath the wheel's revolving spoke. Taut thought's gone, with a blink of attention, slack, a vision of "death and distance in the mix" (she lost her words and how did she get them back when the corridor of a day was a lurching deck? The dream-life logic encodes in nervous tics she translated to a syntax which connects intense and unfashionable politics with morning coffee, Hudson sunsets, sex; then the short-circuit of the final stroke, the end toward which all lines looped out, then broke). What a gaze out the window interjects: on the southeast corner, a black Lab balks, tugged as the light clicks green toward a late-day walk by a plump brown girl in a purple anorak. The Bronx-bound local comes rumbling up the tracks out of the tunnel, over west Harlem blocks whose windows gleam on the animal warmth of bricks rouged by the fluvial light of six o'clock.

Another one of those Pyrrhic experiences. Call it an ex

the porcelain cup is similar to my skull. when i grasp the cup firmly with my hand an arm out of nowhere sprouts on my arm like a graft and the hand on that arm raises the porcelain cup high and hurls it to the wooden floor. since that arm is safeguarding the porcelain cup the thing that is broken into pieces then is my skull that is similar to the porcelain cup. even if my arm had moved before the graft-arm slid into my arm like a snake the white paper that warded off flood would have ripped. yet my arm continues to safeguard the porcelain cup. Translated from the Korean

Cut out as a horse is cut from the pack. Peeled off, but a long time back. Now such a feeling for the way they touch and shift as one, the beauty when they run.

cymothoa exigua *: the tongue as what it is not—blemish and parasite: gimp and glottal stop: what question can be answered with a truant mouth: can the lynched man hung from the sails of a windmill taste the lead pipe wedged between his lips: when the signifiers dangle, empty chum lines in a cold creek: when the men in Waco, wearing white straw hats, fraying at the crisp edges of their white shirts, leave Jesse, leave John, leave Paul in ashes in the unpaved streets to choke passing mules into prophecy: when we pinch our noses to staunch the smell of the twice burnt black man burning for a third time this day: when the boys, sweet and good animals, come to what’s been left in shallow ditches: false rib and femur, clavicle and severed hand—quite simply, the language of sorrow: glyph of the gadfly rooting himself into the rotting meat of the dead: when it is too late to refuse our bodies being made urns: corn, unharvested and heavy in its husks: when, in the marketplace, the butcher lifts our tongue from a bed of ice, shouts:who will speak for this flesh: when the tongue answers as all severed tongues do: