Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

by Janet Kaufman

  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.