heard plain and plainly understood
can have attacked us so and so deferred.
Fight them down, deliver yourself, friend!
see, we all fight it down : poetry, picket-line,
to master pride and muscle fluid with sun,
conflicting graces moving to one end.
Witness the unfailing war, season with season,
license and principle, sex with tortured sex,
class versus class, and help us to survey
this city for faces, this hill for tracks.
Sickness will bind itself upon our tissue
clipping off with restriction blood and heat and milk,
becoming real against all disbelief
a sly ghost coughing to advertise its bulk.
Climax to Egypt, our milestone pyramid
forces out history and we remember
conflict of thousands of April processions,
rival winds ripping at the heart's deep chamber.
No natural poison : a vicious, banker's thrust
nudges toward dissolution during war,
this peak of open battle points disgust
of decay, counterattacks backing us to our door.
This is when death thrives in the rot
and formal nightmare, zebra of sleep,
presents us madness, diffusion to remember,
to cherish, loss if we lose; and dust to keep.
Resent the nightmare, assume a waking stance,
this clock revolt, held in the hand and striking,
clapping, the violent wings of a struck bird,
speaks your top hour, marks your fatal chance.
“Still elegiac! : between two battles, when one is happy to be
alive !” — Rosa Luxemburg
Here was a battle forced by the brain's fortitude,
mapping machines of peace before crisis had come;
and by this planning we create a world
new-hearted, secure from common delirium.
If the strike was won, the prisoners freed at last,
the cataract tapped for power, parade-songs sung :
Prepare for continuance, open your brilliant love,
your life,—front April, give it tongue !
Below the flowering hedge
rest in the light, forget
grief's awful violet
and indecision's wedge
driven into your pride,
and how the past has died.
Here is transition :
pain, but no surgeon's knife
: anaesthetize your life?
you lose the vision
of how you simply walk
toward a younger folk,
simply, a flaming wire
advancing on the night,
reducing midnight
to clear noon-fire ;
moving upon the future
and large, clean stature
nearer to all your nature.
The latchpieces of consciousness unfasten.
We are stroked out of dream and night and myth,
and turning slowly to awareness, listen
to the soft bronchial whisperings of death.
Never forget in legendary darkness
the ways of the hands' turning and the mouth's ways,
wander in the fields of change and not remember
a voice and many voices and the evening's burning.
Turn and remember, this is the world made plain
by chart and signal, instrument and name :
to some we say Master, others call Sister,
to some we offer nothing but love :
flier in advance, the cloud over his mouth ;
the inventor who produces the moment of proof ;
a sun and moon and other several stars ;
and those who know each other over wars.
Cats stream upon a hill,
the poet-cock breaks his throat now to say :
Moment of Proof, May dawn transposing night,
partisan dawn's on the side of day!
What hill can ever hold us?
Deeply night
found you intent upon this city river,
asleep at heart (turn light to her at last,
it shall be to her
as wellwater) :
going all day along the gilded air
you saw at midnight
(going, down to the river, haunted by fog-horns) :
steam escaping over the spouting manhole,
a rout of white cats racing through the street.
Wet street, and the fight was ended there,
cats and that cock, fearful antagonists
resolved in fog, a quick pack running uphill
to a cock rigid with joy; running, but not to kill.
“Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick!” —
Herman Melville
Moment of proof, when the body holds its vision,
masses recognize masses, knowledge without all end ;
face fathoms other face, all the hills open sunrise,
mouth sets on mouth ; Spring, and the tulips
totter in the wind.
Forfeit in love, forfeit in conflict, here
met and at last marked clear in principle,
desire meets desire, the chase expands, and now
forever we course, knowing the marks of growth,
seeing the signals.
Now we remember winter-tormented cities,
the August farm's overgrown hollow, thick with goldenrod,
the impetus of strain, and places where
love set its terminals, the vivid hunger
and satisfying food.
Mayday is moment of proof, when recognition
binds us in protest, binds us under a sun
of love and subtle thought and the ductile wish.
Tomorrow's Mayday.—How many are we?
We'll be everyone.
No hill can ever hold us, peak enlists peak,
climax forces out climax, proud cock, cats streaming,
poets and pickets contriving a valid country,
: Mayday moment, forever provoking new
belief and blooming.
THE BLOOD IS JUSTIFIED
Beat out continuance in the choking veins
before emotion betrays us, and we find
staring behind our faces, accomplices of death.
Not to die, but slowly to validate our lives :
simply to move, lightly burdened, alone,
carrying in this brain survival, carrying
within these ribs, history,
the past deep in the bone.
Unthread time till its empty needle prick your flesh
sewing your scars with air, treating the wounds
only by laceration and the blood is fresh
blood on our skin on our lips over our eyes.
Living they move on a canvas of centuries
restored from death in artful poses, found
once more by us, descendants, foraging,
ravelling time back over American ground.
How did they wish, grandparents of these wars,
what cataracts of ambition fell across their brains? :
The heavy boots kicked stones down Wisconsin roads,
Augusta Coller danced her début at Oshkosh :
they spoke these names : Milwaukee, Waukesha,
the crackle and drawl of Indian strange words.
Jungle-savage the south
raw green and shining branches, the crying
of parakeets, the pointed stone,
the altars stained with oil :
Mexico : and Canada wheaten and polar with
snow halfway up the sky :
all these unknown.
: What treason to their race has fathered us?
They walked in the towns, the men selling clothing etc.
the women tatting and boiling down grape j
elly.
: If they were asked this, surely they did not answer.
Over the country, Wisconsin, Chicago, Yonkers,
I was begotten, American branch no less because
I call on the great names of other countries.
I do not say : Forgive, to my kindred dead,
only : Understand my treason, See I betray you kissing,
I overthrow your milestones weeping among your tombs.
From out your knowing eyes I sprang, child of your distant wombs,
of your full lips. Speaking allegiance, I turn,
steadfastly to destroy your hope. Your cargo in me
swings to ports hostile to your old intent.
In us recurrences. : My generation feeds
the wise assault on your anticipation,
repeating historic sunderings, betraying our fathers,
all parricidal in our destinies.
How much are we American? Not knowing
those other lands, being
blood wrung from your bone, our pioneers,
we call kindred to you, we claim links, speaking
your tongue, although we pass, shaking
your dream with revolution since we must.
By these roads shall we come upon our country.
Pillowed upon this birthright, we may wake
strong for such treason, brave with your fallen dust.
O, we are afflicted with these present evils,
they press between the mirror and our eyes,
obscuring your loaned mouths and borrowed hair.
We focus on our times, destroying you, fathers
in the long ground : you have given strange birth
to us who turn against you in our blood
needing to move in our integrity, accomplices
of life in revolution, though the past
be sweet with your tall shadows, and although
we turn from treasons, we shall accomplish these.
U.S. 1
1938
1 The Book of the Dead
THE ROAD
These are roads to take when you think of your country
and interested bring down the maps again,
phoning the statistician, asking the dear friend,
reading the papers with morning inquiry.
Or when you sit at the wheel and your small light
chooses gas gauge and clock; and the headlights
indicate future of road, your wish pursuing
past the junction, the fork, the suburban station,
well-travelled six-lane highway planned for safety.
Past your tall central city's influence,
outside its body: traffic, penumbral crowds,
are centers removed and strong, fighting for good reason.
These roads will take you into your own country.
Select the mountains, follow rivers back,
travel the passes. Touch West Virginia where
the Midland Trail leaves the Virginia furnace,
iron Clifton Forge, Covington iron, goes down
into the wealthy valley, resorts, the chalk hotel.
Pillars and fairway; spa; White Sulphur Springs.
Airport. Gay blank rich faces wishing to add
history to ballrooms, tradition to the first tee.
The simple mountains, sheer, dark-graded with pine
in the sudden weather, wet outbreak of spring,
crosscut by snow, wind at the hill's shoulder.
The land is fierce here, steep, braced against snow,
rivers and spring. KING COAL HOTEL, Lookout,
and swinging the vicious bend, New River Gorge.
Now the photographer unpacks camera and case,
surveying the deep country, follows discovery
viewing on groundglass an inverted image.
John Marshall named the rock (steep pines, a drop
he reckoned in 1812, called) Marshall's Pillar,
but later, Hawk's Nest. Here is your road, tying
you to its meanings: gorge, boulder, precipice.
Telescoped down, the hard and stone-green river
cutting fast and direct into the town.
WEST VIRGINIA
They saw rivers flow west and hoped again.
Virginia speeding to another sea!
1671—Thomes Batts, Robert Fallam,
Thomas Wood, the Indian Perecute,
and an unnamed indentured English servant
followed the forest past blazed trees, pillars of God,
were the first whites emergent from the east.
They left a record to our heritage,
breaking of records. Hoped now for the sea,
For all mountaines have their descents about them,
waters, descending naturally, doe alwaies resort
unto the seas invironing those lands…
Yea, at home amongst the mountaines in England.
Coming where this road comes,
flat stones spilled water which the still pools fed.
Kanawha Falls, the rapids of the mind,
fast waters spilling west.
Found Indian fields, standing low cornstalks left,
learned three Mohetons planted them; found-land
farmland, the planted home, discovered!
War-born:
The battle at Point Pleasant, Cornstalk's tribes,
last stand, Fort Henry, a revolution won;
the granite SITE OF THE precursor EXECUTION
sabres, apostles OF JOHN BROWN LEADER OF THE
War's brilliant cloudy RAID AT HARPERS FERRY.
Floods, heavy wind this spring, the beaten land
blown high by wind, fought wars, forming a state,
a surf, frontier defines two fighting halves,
two hundred battles in the four years: troops
here in Gauley Bridge, Union headquarters, lines
bring in the military telegraph.
Wires over the gash of gorge and height of pine.
But it was always the water
the power flying deep
green rivers cut the rock
rapids boiled down,
a scene of power.
Done by the dead.
Discovery learned it.
And the living?
Live country filling west,
knotted the glassy rivers;
like valleys, opening mines,
coming to life.
STATEMENT: PHILIPPA ALLEN
—You like the State of West Virginia very much, do you not?
—I do very much, in the summertime.
—How much time have you spent in West Virginia?
—During the summer of 1934, when I was doing social work
down there, I first heard of what we were pleased to call the
Gauley tunnel tragedy, which involved about 2,000 men.
—What was their salary?
—It started at 40¢ and dropped to 25¢ an hour.
—You have met these people personally?
—I have talked to people; yes.
According to estimates of contractors
2,000 men were
employed there
period, about 2 years
drilling, 3.75 miles of tunnel.
To divert water (from New River)
to a hydroelectric plant (at Gauley Junction).
The rock through which they were boring was of a high
silica content.
In tunnel No. 1 it ran 97–99% pure silica.
The contractors
knowing pure silica
30 years' experience
must have known danger for every man
neglected to provide the workmen with any safety device….
—As a matter of fact, they originally intended to dig that
tunnel a certain size?
—Yes.
—And then enlarged the size of the tunnel, due to the fact
; that they discovered silica and wanted to get it out?
—That is true for tunnel No. 1.
The tunnel is part of a huge water-power project
begun, latter part of 1929
direction: New Kanawha Power Co.
subsidiary of Union Carbide & Carbon Co.
That company—licensed:
to develop power for public sale.
Ostensibly it was to do that; but
(in reality) it was formed to sell all the power to
the Electro-Metallurgical Co.
subsidiary of Union Carbide & Carbon Co.
which by an act of the State legislature
was allowed to buy up
New Kanawha Power Co. in 1933.
—They were developing the power. What I am trying to get at,
Miss Allen, is, did they use this silica from the tunnel; did
they afterward sell it and use it in commerce?
—They used it in the electro-processing of steel.
SiO2 SiO2
The richest deposit.
Shipped on the C & O down to Alloy.
It was so pure that
SiO2
they used it without refining.
—Where did you stay?
—I stayed at Cedar Grove. Some days I would have to hitch
into Charleston, other days to Gauley Bridge.
—You found the people of West Virginia very happy to pick
you up on the highway, did you not?
—Yes; they are delightfully obliging.
(All were bewildered. Again at Vanetta they are asking,
“What can be done about this?”)
I feel that this investigation may help in some manner.
I do hope it may.
I am now making a very general statement as a beginning.
There are many points that I should like to develop later,
but I shall try to give you a general history of this
condition first….
GAULEY BRIDGE
Camera at the crossing sees the city
a street of wooden walls and empty windows,
the doors shut handless in the empty street,
and the deserted Negro standing on the corner.
The little boy runs with his dog
up the street to the bridge over the river where
nine men are mending road for the government.
He blurs the camera-glass fixed on the street.
Railway tracks here and many panes of glass
tin under light, the grey shine of towns and forests:
in the commercial hotel (Switzerland of America)
the owner is keeping his books behind the public glass.
Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser Page 11
