James Joyce
If I could write : Summer waits your coming,
the flowers are colored, but half-alive and weak,
earth sickens, as I sicken, with waiting,
and the clouds print on the dull moon a dark and blotting streak.
If I could write : no energy is kinetic,
storm breaks nor foot falls until you arrive,
the trees thrive, but no fruit is born to hang
heavily : and the stale wind continues to drive
all pausing summer before it into the distance
from which you, shining, will come…. But summer lives,
and minds grow, and nerves are sensitized to power
and no winds wait, and no tree stands but gives
richly to the store of the burning harvest :
the door stands open for you, and other figures pass,
and I receive them joyfully and live : but wait for you
(and sometimes secretly watch for wrinkles, in my glass).
SAND-QUARRY WITH MOVING FIGURES
Father and I drove to the sand-quarry across the ruined marshlands,
miles of black grass, burned for next summer's green.
I reached my hand to his beneath the lap-robe,
we looked at the stripe of fire, the blasted scene.
“It's all right,” he said, “they can control the flames,
on one side men are standing, and on the other the sea;”
but I was terrified of stubble and waste of black
and his ugly villages he built and was showing me.
The countryside turned right and left about the car,
straight through October we drove to the pit's heart;
sand, and its yellow canyon and standing pools
and the wealth of the split country set us farther apart.
“Look,” he said, “this quarry means rows of little houses,
stucco and a new bracelet for you are buried there;”
but I remembered the ruined patches, and I saw the land ruined,
exploded, burned away, and the fiery marshes bare.
“We'll own the countryside, you'll see how soon I will,
you'll have acres to play in” : I saw the written name
painted on stone in the face of the steep hill:
“That's your name, Father!” “And yours!” he shouted, laughing.
“No, Father, no!” He caught my hand as I cried,
and smiling, entered the pit, ran laughing down its side.
WEDDING PRESENTS
1
Griefs
marking indelibly our later loves.
Fantastic juxtapose that sets the wish
opposite the insubordinate flesh
interring the fact of the inconstant rain
in the fixed lightly-palpitant brain,
the anthropoid hunger laid against the will
making small music in the ventricle
until evolved man hears with each breath-intake
the sweetly mathematical sound of Bach.
2
Be bold, friend ; all your nymphs have disappeared
dwindled upon those green and classic banks,
the goddesses are gone, and the chivalric ranks.
Where'er you walk, cool gales will fan the glade
breathing themselves to death, sighing against the towers
upon the firm and beautiful machines ;
trees, where you sit, will crowd into a shade
eclipsing Handel, shining electric powers
of energy on polytechnic scenes.
Believe Eurydice unregained at last,
see that those idyll afternoons are past.
Accept the gathering skies that tell our morning,
open your hands open your thighs for strength
inviolate in beauty, ill-defined
ready for the Columbus of the mind.
Trembling, the mouth relaxes in the kiss.
The lemon body and purple blood beneath
award themselves in love, most perfect wreath.
THREE SIDES OF A COIN
1
Am I in your light?
No, go on reading
(the hackneyed light of evening quarrelling with the bulbs;
the book's bent rectangle solid on your knees)
only my fingers in your hair, only, my eyes
splitting the skull to tickle your brain with love
in a slow caress blurring the mind,
kissing your mouth awake
opening the body's mouth and stopping the words.
This light is thick with birds, and
evening warns us beautifully of death.
Slowly I bend over you, slowly your breath
runs rhythms through my blood
as if I said
I love you
and you should raise your head
listening, speaking into the covert night
: Did someone say something?
Love, am I in your light?
Am I?
Refrain See how love alters the living face
go spin the immortal coin through time
watch the thing flip through space
tick tick
2
We all had a good time
the throne was there and all
and there she was with that primitive unforgivable mouth
saying sophistications about nothing at all
as the young men cavorted up the room Darling
it's a swell party and those Martinis with
the olives so delicately soaked in alcohol
and William Flesh, the inventor, being cute
about the revolution and the Negro Question
until Dick said “Lynch the Jews!” (his name was Fleischman
but the war brought about a number of changes)
and the Objectivist poet fresh from Butte
with his prePosterous suggestion….
After a while, of course, we left,
the room was getting so jammed with editors.
And William and Maurice and Del and I
went back and we took turns using the couch with them.
We all had a good time
and Del had hysterics at about 3 A.M.
we dashed water into her face
I held her temples and Maurice said
what could we hope to look for next:
it's one thing to be faithful to the dead
(he said) but for her to stick to an oversexed
old fool : but she only laughed and cried and beat the floor
until the neighbors rattled at the door.
Refrain Runnels of wine ran down his chin and laughter
softened his words until quite suddenly
the walls fell and the night stood blank and after
tick tick
3
He turned the lights on and walked to the window :
Son of a bitch : he said : if it isn't the reds again
parading through the streets with those lousy posters.
The Village was never like this in the old days,
throw a brick down the street and you'd hit a female poet
and life went on like a string of roller coasters.
Workers of the world :
we've worked the world for all the damn thing's worth
tick tick
I was little and they promised me the hills of glory
a great life and a sounding name on the earth :
tick tick
this is a different story.
Here's a list I've been making : reasons for living
on the right, reasons for my sudden death on the left.
Right now they balance so I could flip a coin
determine the imperative tonight
tick tick
flip that amazing coin through time and space this night
and the Village : and the army with banners
and
the hot girls
and the rotgut all gone
like a blown fuse :
I'd get a paragraph or two of news
obituary as a shutting door
meaning no more
leaving the world to the sun and the workers
the straight beautiful children the coins the clocks
tick tick
BREATHING LANDSCAPE
Lying in the sun
and lying here so still
an egg might slowly hatch in this still hand.
The people pass
abruptly they nod : they smile
trailed in the air, silence follows their faces.
I know, lying
how the hills are fixed
and the day-moon runs at the head of the fixed hills.
Nothing crossed the field
all day but a bird
skirting the tall grass in briefest transit.
Their stern ideas
are a long work to each
and even armored we hardly touch each other.
The wind leans,
the air placed formally
about these faces and thoughts in formal dance.
Silence hangs in the air.
Nothing speaks but the sound
of certain rivers continuing underground.
FOUR IN A FAMILY
The father and mother sat, and the sister beside her.
I faced the two women across the table's width,
speaking, and all the time he looked at me,
sorrowing, saying nothing, with his hard tired breath.
Their faces said : This is your home; and I :
I never come home, I never go away.
And they all answered : Stay.
All day the city turned about this room,
and silence had remained between our faces,
divisions outside to concentrate a world
tally here only to dead profits and losses.
We follow barrier voices, and we go fast,
unknown to each other, they race, I turn away.
No voice is strong enough to cry me Stay.
My sister, I wished upon you those delights
time never buries,
more precious than heroes.
Strange father, strange mother, who are you, who are you?
Where have I come,
how shall I prosper home?
THIS HOUSE, THIS COUNTRY
Always I travelled farther
dreading a barrier
starting at shadows scattered on the ground
fearful of the invisible night-sound,
till in that straight career
I crossed frontier
the questions asked the proofs shown the name
signed smiling I reached knowledge of my home.
I praised their matings
and corner-meetings
their streets the brightest I had yet walked down :
my family swore I did not leave my town
thought that I lied
and had not signed
those passports, tickets, contracts, bills of sale
but still rested among them and wished them well.
Over my shoulder
I see they grow older
their vision fails : observe I travel light
fear distance hope I shall only spend the night.
But night in this country
is deep promise of day,
is busy with preparations and awake for fighting
and there is no time for leavetaking and regretting.
I know their tired house
full of remorse
I know in my body the door, the entrance-hall
a wall and my space and another wall.
I have left forever
house and maternal river
given up sitting in that private tomb
quitted that land that house that velvet room.
Frontiers admitted me
to a growing country
I carry the proofs of my birth and my mind's reasons
but reckon with their struggle and their seasons.
2 Theory of Flight
PREAMBLE
Earth, bind us close, and time ; nor, sky, deride
how violate we experiment again.
In many Januaries, many lips
have fastened on us while we deified
the waning flesh : now, fountain, spout for us,
mother, bear children : lover, yet once more :
in final effort toward your mastery.
Many Decembers suffered their eclipse
death, and forgetfulness, and the year bore round ;
now years, be summed in one access of power.
Fortresses, strengths, beauties, realities,
gather together, discover to us our wings
new special product of mortality.
Fortuitously have we gained loneliness,
fallen in waste places liberated,
relieved ourselves from weakness' loveliness :
remain unpitied now, never descend
to that soft howling of the prostrate mind.
Cut with your certain wings; engrave space now
to your ambition : stake off sky's dimensions.
We have plunged on nightmares to destruction
too long; and learned aggression divides wind,
pale early Venus is signature of night
and wish gnawed clean by plans precurses flight.
Distinguish the metaphor most chromium clear
for distant calendars to identify :
Frail mouthings will fall diminished on old ears
in dusty whispers, light from extinctest stars
will let us sleep, nor may we replica
ourselves in hieroglyphs and broken things
but there is reproduction for this act
linking the flight's escape with strict contact.
Look! Be : leap ;
paint trees in flame
bushes burning
roar in the broad sky
know your color : be :
produce that the widenesses
be full and burst their wombs
riot in redness, delirious with light,
swim bluely through the mind
shout green as the day breaks
put up your face to the wind
FLY
chant as the tomtom hubbubs crash
elephants in the flesh's jungle
reek with vigor sweat pour your life
in a libation to itself
drink from the ripe ground
make children over the world
lust in a heat of tropic orange
stamp and writhe ; stamp on a wet floor
know earth know water know lovers
know mastery
FLY
Walks down the street
Kaleidoscope a man
where patterns meet
his mind colored
with mirage
Leonardo's tomb
not in Italian earth
but in a fuselage
designed
in the historic mind
time's instrument
blue-print of birth.
We know sky overhead, earth to be stepped
black under the toes, rubble between our fingers,
horizons are familiar ; we have been taught colors.
Rehearse these ; sky, earth, and their meeting-place,
confound them in a blur of distance, swallow
the blueness of guessed-at places, merge them now.
Sky being meeting of sky and no-sky
including our sources the earth water air
fire to weld them : unity in knowing
all space in one unpunctuated flowing.
Flight, thus, is meeting of flight and no-flight.
We bear the seeds of our return forever,
the flowers of our leaving, fruit of flight,
perfect for present, fertile for its roots
in past in future in motility.
THE GYROSCOPE
But this is our desire, and of its worth….
Power electric-clean, gravitating outward at all points,
moving in savage fire, fusing all durable stuff
but never itself being fused with any force
homing in no hand nor breast nor sex
for buried in these lips we rise again,
bent over these plans, our faces raise to see.
Direct spears are shot outward from the conscience
fulfilling what far circuits? Orbit of thought
what axis do you lean on, what strictnesses evade
impelled to the long curves of the will's ambition?
Centrifugal power, expanding universe
within expanding universe, what stillnesses
lie at your center resting among motion?
Study communications, looking inward, find what traffic
you may have with your silences : looking outward, survey
what you have seen of places :
many times this week I seemed
to hear you speak my name
how you turn the flatnesses
of your cheek and will not hear my words
then reaching the given latitude
and longitude, we searched for the ship and found nothing
and, gentlemen, shall we define desire
including every impulse toward psychic progress?
Roads are cut into the earth leading away from our place
at the inevitable hub. All directions are out,
all desire turns outward : we, introspective,
continuing to find in ourselves the microcosm
imaging continents, powers, relations, reflecting
all history in a bifurcated Engine.
Here is the gyroscope whirling out pulsing in tides illimitably
widening, live force contained
in a sphere of rigid boundary ; concentrate
at the locus of all forces, spinning with black speed
revolving outward perpetually, turning with its torque
all the developments of the secret will.
Flaming origins were our fathers in the heat of the earth,
pushing to the crust, water and sea-flesh,
undulant tentacles ingrown on the ocean's floor,
frondy anemones and scales' armor gave us birth.
Bring us to air, ancestors! and we breathed
the young flesh wincing against naked December.
Masters of fire, fire gave us riches, gave us life.
Masters of water, water gave us riches, gave us life,
masters of earth, earth gave us riches, gave us life.
Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser Page 6
