I shod myself & said goodbye to Sally
Murmurs of other farewells half broke my heart
I set out sore indeed.
The High King failed to blossom on my enterprise.
Solely the wonderful sun shone down like lead.
Through the ridges I endured,
down in no simple valley I opened my eyes,
with my strong walk down in the vales & dealt with death.
I increased my stride, cured.
Lines to Mr Frost
FELLED in my tracks by your tremendous horse
slain in its tracks by the angel of good God,
I wonder toward your marvellous tall art
warning away maybe in that same morning
you squandered afternoon of your great age
on my good gravid wife & me, with tales
gay of your cunning & colossal fame
& awful character, and—Christ—I see
I know & can do nothing, and don’t mind—
you’re talking about American power and how
somehow we’ve got to be got to give it up—
so help me, in my poverty-stricken way
I said the same goddamn thing yesterday
to my thirty kids, so I was almost ready
to hear you from the grave with these passionate grave
last words, and frankly Sir you fill me with joy.
He Resigns
AGE, and the deaths, and the ghosts.
Her having gone away
in spirit from me. Hosts
of regrets come & find me empty.
I don’t feel this will change.
I don’t want any thing
or person, familiar or strange.
I don’t think I will sing
any more just now;
or ever. I must start
to sit with a blind brow
above an empty heart.
No
SHE says: Seek help! Ha-ha Ha-ha & Christ.
Gall in every direction, putrid olives,
stench of the Jersey flats, the greasy clasp
crones in black doorways afford their violent clients
A physicist’s lovely wife grinned to me in Cambridge
she only liked, apart from getting gamblers hot
& stalk out on them, a wino for the night
in a room off Scollay Square, a bottle, his efforts
Dust in my sore mouth, this deafening wind,
frightful spaces down from all sides, I’m pale
I faint for some soft & solid & sudden way out
as quiet as hemlock in that Attic prose
with comprehending friends attending—
a certain reluctance but desire here too,
the sweet cold numbing upward from my burning feet,
a last & calm request, which will be granted.
The Form
MUTINOUS and free I drifted off
unsightly. I did not see the creatures watch.
I had forgotten about the creatures, which
were kind, and whether any of them was mine.
I am a daemon. Ah, when Mother was ill
a Sister took me into their little chapel
to admire the plaster angels: ‘Mine are real,’
I said, ‘and fly around the chapel on my farm.’
O torso hurled high in great ’planes from town
down on confulsing town, brainsick applause
thick to sick ear, through sixteen panicked nights
a trail of tilted bottles. I had no gun,
and neither Wednesday nor Thursday did buy one
but Friday and I put it in my bag
and bought a wide-eyed and high-yaller whore
for company of darkness. Deep in dream
I saw myself upreared like William the Silent
over his tomb in Delft, armoured and impotent;
she shook me screaming. In another place
I shuddered as I combed and saw my face.
Swallowing, I felt myself deranged
and would be ever so. He has spewed me out.
I wandered, for some reason, raging, home
where then I really hurt. All that life ahead alone
vised me from midnight. I prepared for dawn.
An odd slight thought like a key slid somewhere:
‘Only tomorrow.’ Wondering, I said: ‘Oh.
It’s possible, then.’
My light terrible body unlocked, I leaned upon You.
Ecce Homo
LONG long with wonder I thought you human,
almost beyond humanity but not.
Once, years ago, only in a high bare hall
of the great Catalan museum over Barcelona,
I thought you might be more—
a Pantocrator glares down, from San Clemente de Tahull,
making me feel you probably were divine,
but not human, through that majestic image.
Now I’ve come on something where you seem both—
a photograph of it only—
Burgundian, of painted & gilt wood,
life-size almost (not that we know your Semitic stature),
attenuated, your dead head bent forward sideways,
your long feet hanging, your thin long arms out
in unconquerable beseeching—
A Prayer After All
FATHER, Father, I am overwhelmed.
I cannot speak tonight.
Do you receive me back into Your sight?
It seems it must be so, for
strangely the Virgin came into my mind
as I stood beside my bed—
whom I not only have not worshipped
since childhood, but also
harsh words have said of, that she pushed her Son
before his time was come
which he rebuked her for, and leaving home
repudiated hers & her—
and for no reason, standing in the dark
before I had knelt down
(as is my custom) to speak with You, I found
my tongue feeling its way
thro’ the Hail Mary, trying phrase by phrase
its strangeness, for the unwelcome
to my far mind estranged, awaiting some
unacceptable sense, and
Father I was amazed I could find none
and I have walked downstairs
to sit & wonder: You must have been Theirs
all these years, and They Yours,
and now I suppose I have prayed to You after all
and Her and I suppose she is the Queen of Heaven
under Your greater glory, even
more incomprehensible but forgiving glory.
Back
I WAS out of your Church for 43 years, my Dear;
adopted back in, welling blood.
Admire the techniques of your ministers
I must, succeeding, but could not enjoy them
during the rite: for the man in fury,
possessed by his own tumultuous & burning energy,
to bring to a halt is hard as tungsten carbide
and crook his knees is harder than to die.
Exceptional, singular, & mysterious,
ochered, forbidden to utter,
the revolted novice & veteran thro’ cold night
vigilant in the forest, a caring beast,
becoming sacral, perforates his nose
at first glow, in honour of the Mother.
Whose coming to be is constant,
Thou hast caused her coming-to-be in beauty.
Hello
Hello there, Biscuit! You’re a better-looking broad
by much than, and your sister’s dancing up & down.
‘I just gave one mighty Push’
your mother says, and we are all in business.
I thought your mother might powder my knuckles
gript at one point, with wild eyes on my tie
‘Don
’t move!’ and then the screams began,
they wheeled her off, and we are all in business.
I wish I knew what business (son) we’re in
I can’t wait seven weeks to see her grin
I’m not myself, we are all changing here
direction and velocity, to accommodate you, dear.
IV SCHERZO
Navajo Setting the Record Straight
‘WARRIOR Who Went With a Crowd, my sand-painter
grandfather,’
said Axel no-middle-initial Mankey Jr
to the Marine sarge, ‘served at Fort Wingate
as a sergeant-major scout, and he was buried
with full military honors in Arlington.
So screw you, Sergeant, and your Greek accent.
Moreover, from the black world into the blue
came The First People, to the yellow world,
and finally into the present sick white world
thro’ a giant reed,—which may be seen to this day
near Silverton, Colorado. Yah-ah-teh.’
His unbound black locks wind-flared as back at Left & Right
Mittens
motherless next to the earth-covered log hogan of Mrs Hetty
Rye.
Henry by Night
HENRY’S nocturnal habits were the terror of his women.
First it appears he snored, lying on his back.
Then he thrashed & tossed,
changing position like a task fleet. Then, inhuman,
he woke every hour or so—they couldn’t keep track
of mobile Henry, lost
at 3 a.m., off for more drugs or a cigarette,
reading old mail, writing new letters, scribbling
excessive Songs;
back then to bed, to the old tune or get set
for a stercoraceous cough, without quibbling
death-like. His women’s wrongs
they hoarded & forgave, mysterious, sweet;
but you’ll admit it was no way to live
or even keep alive.
I won’t mention the dreams I won’t repeat
sweating & shaking: something’s gotta give:
up for good at five.
Henry’s Understanding
HE was reading late, at Richard’s, down in Maine,
aged 32? Richard & Helen long in bed,
my good wife long in bed.
All I had to do was strip & get into my bed,
putting the marker in the book, & sleep,
& wake to a hot breakfast.
Off the coast was an island, P’tit Manaan,
the bluff from Richard’s lawn was almost sheer.
A chill at four o’clock.
It only takes a few minutes to make a man.
A concentration upon now & here.
Suddenly, unlike Bach,
& horribly, unlike Bach, it occurred to me
that one night, instead of warm pajamas,
I’d take off all my clothes
& cross the damp cold lawn & down the bluff
into the terrible water & walk forever
under it out toward the island.
Defensio in Extremis
I SAID: Mighty men have encamped against me,
and they have questioned not only the skill of my defences
but my sincerity.
Now, Father, let them have it.
Thou knowest, whatever their outcry & roar,
in quietness I read my newly simple heart
after so far returning.
O even X, great Y, fine Z
splinter at my procedures and my ends.
Surely their spiritual life is not what it might be?
Surely they are half-full of it?
Tell them to leave me damned well alone with my insights.
Damn You, Jim D., You Woke Me Up
I THOUGHT I’d say a thing to please myself
& why not him, about his talent, to him
or to some friend who’d maybe pass it on
because he printed a sweet thing about me
a long long time ago, & because of gladness
to see a good guy get out of the advertising racket
& suddenly make like the Great Chicago Fire—
yes that was it, fine, fine—(this was a dream
woke me just now)—I’ll get a pen & paper
at once & put that down, I thought, and I went
away from where I was, up left thro’ a garden
in the direction of the Avenue
but got caught on a smart kid’s escalator
going uphill against it, got entangled,
a girl was right behind me in the dark,
they hoisted up some cart and we climbed on
& over the top & down, thinking Jesus
I’ll break my arse but a parked car broke the fall
I landed softly there in the dark street
having forgotten all about the Great Chicago Fire!
V
Somber Prayer
O MY Lord, I am not eloquent
neither heretofore, nor since Thou hast spoken …
but I am slow of speech, of a dim tongue.
He mentions, here, Thy ‘counsel and dominion’;
so I will borrow Newton’s mouth. Spare me
Uccello’s ark-locked lurid deluge, I’m
the brutal oaf from the barrel stuck mid-scene,—
or ghost me past the waters … Miriam …
A twelve-year-old all solemn, sorry-faced,
described himself lately as ‘a lifetime prick.’
Me too. Maladaptive devices.
At fifty-five half-famous & effective, I still feel rotten about
myself.
Panicky weekdays, I pray hard,
not worthy.
Sucking, clinging, following, crying, smiling,
I come Your child to You.
Unknowable? perhaps not altogether
I DARE interpret: Adonai of rescue.
Whatever and ever other I have lain skew over
however O little else around You know
I doubt I’m wrong on this.
Augustine and Pascal swore the same strange.
Yet young men young men in the paddies rescue.
Add Sway omnicompetent, add pergalactic Intellect,
forbearance invisible, a tumbling thunder of laughter
(or whence our so alert pizzazz & laughter?),
an imagination of the queens of Chartres the kings there, if
these only, still
we’re trans-acting with You.
Minnesota Thanksgiving
FOR that free Grace bringing us past terrible risks
& thro’ great griefs surviving to this feast
sober & still, with the children unborn and born,
among brave friends, Lord, we stand again in debt
and find ourselves in the glad position: Gratitude.
We praise our ancestors who delivered us here
within warm walls all safe, aware of music,
likely toward ample & attractive meat
with whatever accompaniment
Kate in her kind ingenuity has seen fit to devise,
and we hope—across the most strange year to come—
continually to do them and You not sufficient honour
but such as we become able to devise
out of a decent or joyful conscience & thanksgiving.
Yippee!
Bless then, as Thou wilt, this wilderness board.
A Usual Prayer
ACCORDING to Thy will: That this day only
I may avoid the vile
and baritone away in a broader chorus
of to each other decent forbearance & even aid.
Merely sensational let’s have today,
lacking mostly thinking,—
men’s thinking being eighteen-tenths deluded.
Did I get this figure out of St Isaac of Syria?
a new drawing by Ingres!
For discipline, two self-denying minus-strokes
and my wonted isometrics, barbells, & antiphons.
Lord of happenings, & little things,
muster me westward fitter to my end—
which has got to be Your strange end for me—
and toughen me effective to the tribes en route.
Overseas Prayer
GOOD evening. At the feet of the king, my Lord,
I fall seven & yet seven times.
Behold what insult has Your servant suffered
from Shuwardata and Milkiln & his ilk.
Put them under saws, & under harrows of iron,
& under axes of iron, make them pass thro’ the brick-kiln
lest at any time they flirt at me again.
Enjoin them to the blurred & breathless dead.
The Valley of the Cheesemakers has disappeared
also, my Lord. Your precincts are in ruin,
your revenues ungathered. Minarets
blot our horizon as I pen, my Lord.
I feel myself a deep & old objection.
You gave me not a very able father,
joyless at last, Lord, and sometimes I hardly
(thinking on him) perform my duty to you.
Ah then I mutter ‘Forty-odd years past.
Do I yet repine?’ and go about your business,—
a fair wind and the honey lights of home
being all I ask this wind-torn foreign evening.
Amos
FOR three insane things evil, and for four,
will I vex Pekin in the latter days,
their ancestors shall suffer for their children
in turbid horror: so saith the Lord.
For three insane things evil, and for four,
grieve will I Kremlin presently, & the Urals,
& Omsk, and I will tear their leaderhood
that many may fly home: saith the Lord.
For three insane things evil, and for four,
torment will I the North & South & East
& West with understanding, where they stand,
and I will unman & de-parent them
and will deprive them: thus saith the Lord.