Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

by Janet Kaufman

  Take him by shoulder and jaw, break his look back on us,

  O hard to save, be saved, before we all shall drown!

  But he has set his look, plunged his life deep for peace,

  his face in the boiling river, and is surrendered down.

  BOY WITH HIS HAIR CUT SHORT

  Sunday shuts down on a twentieth-century evening.

  The El passes. Twilight and bulb define

  the brown room, the overstuffed plum sofa,

  the boy, and the girl's thin hands above his head.

  A neighbor radio sings stocks, news, serenade.

  He sits at the table, head down, the young clear neck exposed,

  watching the drugstore sign from the tail of his eye;

  tattoo, neon, until the eye blears, while his

  solicitous tall sister, simple in blue, bending

  behind him, cuts his hair with her cheap shears.

  The arrow's electric red always reaches its mark,

  successful neon! He coughs, impressed by that precision.

  His child's forehead, forever protected by his cap,

  is bleached against the lamplight as he turns head

  and steadies to let the snippets drop.

  Erasing the failure of weeks with level fingers,

  she sleeks the fine hair, combing: “You'll look fine tomorrow!

  You'll surely find something, they can't keep turning you down;

  the finest gentleman's not so trim as you!” Smiling, he raises

  the adolescent forehead wrinkling ironic now.

  He sees his decent suit laid out, new-pressed,

  his carfare on the shelf. He lets his head fall, meeting

  her earnest hopeless look, seeing the sharp blades splitting,

  the darkened room, the impersonal sign, her motion,

  the blue vein, bright on her temple, pitifully beating.

  COURSE

  for Betty Marshall

  Years before action when the wish alone

  has ammunition to threaten weakness down,

  when thriving on discovery we speak

  and wish a world

  that wishing may not make.

  Stretching our powers, we touch a broader street

  crowded with hostile weapons and the weight

  of death suggesting we see peace at last

  and quiet cities,

  rip out the eyes, and have our rest.

  But we are set enough to clear a space

  ample for action in this eccentric house.

  An army of wishers in a dramatic grip

  and crazy with

  America has heat to keep its purpose up.

  Determined to a world that Mr. Fist

  and all his gang can't master or digest,

  strengthened against the world that cannot hush

  words singing down

  the fever voice of death working against the wish.

  MORE OF A CORPSE THAN A WOMAN

  Give them my regards when you go to the school reunion;

  and at the marriage-supper, say that I'm thinking about them.

  They'll remember my name; I went to the movies with that one,

  feeling the weight of their death where she sat at my elbow;

  she never said a word,

  but all of them were heard.

  All of them alike, expensive girls, the leaden friends:

  one used to play the piano, one of them once wrote a sonnet,

  one even seemed awakened enough to photograph wheatfields—

  the dull girls with the educated minds and technical passions—

  pure love was their employment,

  they tried it for enjoyment.

  Meet them at the boat : they've brought the souvenirs of boredom,

  a seashell from the faltering monarchy;

  the nose of a marble saint; and from the battlefield,

  an empty shell divulged from a flower-bed.

  The lady's wealthy breath

  perfumes the air with death.

  The leaden lady faces the fine, voluptuous woman,

  faces a rising world bearing its gifts in its hands.

  Kisses her casual dreams upon the lips she kisses,

  risen, she moves away; takes others; moves away.

  Inadequate to love,

  supposes she's enough.

  Give my regards to the well-protected woman,

  I knew the ice-cream girl, we went to school together.

  There's something to bury, people, when you begin to bury.

  When your women are ready and rich in their wish for the world,

  destroy the leaden heart,

  we've a new race to start.

  THREE BLACK WOMEN

  Invading nightmare, spinning up through sleep,

  three loving Negresses ascend the night;

  one sinks with Chinese eyes a despised man

  shivering white in fear; mocking says “Take him,

  I made him vastly unhappy;” dances, lifting

  the purple belly pencilled delicate black.

  The grandmother rises on the pointed shoulder

  of the little black boy in the pink wool sweater,

  bitterly asking about the deputies.

  Burning, as dead skies over enemy cities

  tip backward sliding, a third gleams on the South;

  battlefields flicker, the scenery of doubt

  dissolves in decoration on the night of

  fire, black women, nightmare, dances, sleep.

  FORMOSA

  The sand's still blue with receding water, sky topples

  its last brightness

  down, day diminishing; two fishermen

  walk over the sandbar, their thin indicative shadows

  pointing tomorrow's sunrise on the whiteline horizon.

  Tomorrow is only an interval, night's passing interval

  cruises on open water here, anchored, while peace comes in.

  Speedboat, run again before your smoking white

  wake, while the light's collected on the hull,

  until the evening turns, engaged with night.

  The little dog races over the sandflats, the thin bathers

  turn back to foamline, half-light discourages their daring

  sea-dream. End it! omens are laughter, gay all morning,

  gay before ogre midnight, spurless midnight—

  midnight's an interval, darkness is promise, night's nothing,

  nightmare is nothing, nothing but interval.

  Eliminate all dreams : here, real : love come, high tide,

  the risen, freehold moon, the fortunate island,

  resting, blue-flooded, rests, delicately, the sea.

  NIGHT-MUSIC

  for Marya Zaturenska

  TIME EXPOSURES

  When the exposed spirit, busy in daytime,

  searches out night, only renewer.

  That time plants turn to. The world's table.

  When any single thing's condemned again.

  The changeable spirit finds itself out,

  will not employ Saint Death, detective,

  does its own hunting, runs at last to night.

  Renewer, echo of judgment, morning-source, music.

  Dark streets that light invents, one black tree standing,

  struck by the street-light to raw electric green,

  allow one man at a time to walk past, plain.

  Cities lose size. The earth is field

  and ranging these countries in sunset, we make quiet,

  living in springtime, wish for nothing, see

  glass bough, invented green, flower-sharp day

  crackle into orange and be subdued to night.

  The mind, propelled by work, reaches its evening:

  slick streets, dog-tired, point the way to sleep,

  walls rise in color, now summer shapes the Square

  (and pastel five o'clock chalked on the sky).

  We drive out to the suburbs,
bizarre lawns

  flicker a moment beside the speeding cars.

  Speed haunts our ground, throws counties at us under

  night, a black basin always spilling stars.

  Waters trouble our quiet, vanishing down

  reaches of hills whose image legend saves:

  the foggy Venus hung above the flood

  rising, rising, from the sea, with her arms full of waves

  as ours are full of flowers.

  Down polished airways a purple dove descending

  sharp on the bodies of those so lately busy apart,

  wingtip on breasttip, the deep body of feathers

  in the breastgroove along the comforted heart.

  The head inclined offers with love clear miles

  of days simple in sun and action, bright

  air poised about a face in ballet strictness

  and pure pacific night.

  But in our ears brute knocking at all doors,

  factories bellow mutilation, and we live needy still

  while strength and hours run

  checkless downhill.

  Flattered by grief, the changeable spirit

  puts on importance. Goes into the street,

  adventures everywhere but places fear

  is absent. Everywhere the face's look

  is absent, the heart is flat,

  the avenues haunted by a head whose eye

  runs tears incessantly, the other eye

  narrow in smiling. Everywhere, words fail,

  men sunk to dust, houses condemned, walls ruined,

  and dust is never an anachronism.

  Everywhere the eye runs tears. And here

  the hand, propelled somehow, marches the room

  pulling dark windowshades down around the gaze.

  And now, stately, jotting on lipstick, she

  prepares to sexualize her thistle thought.

  Loosens her earrings, smiling. Drives

  herself far into night. Smiles, fornicating. Drives

  herself deep into sleep. Sees children sleep.

  THE CHILD ASLEEP

  What's over England? A cloud. What's over France? A flame.

  And over New York? The night.

  Night is nameless, night has no name.

  The crane leans down to drink the pit.

  Look from the blackboard out the window.

  Walk down the streets that lead to school.

  Study, h'p! Pause, h'p! Recess, h'p!

  I want to grow up.

  Can you be direct as snow, straight to the face?

  When the ball arrives, catch it! Who loves you?

  What's around you and under you,

  who bends above you?

  Immortal is miles away, and age.

  And Europe. But not so the sea.

  The sea is near, mother and father near.

  Not with the dirty children, dear.

  Not to look at the sea.

  Quiet, music is playing! Never move your face.

  Wear a mask if your face moves with your

  love or anger moving. God first, then us.

  Friday candles. Never discuss.

  See the full street—the war is over!

  The birdcage swung open to the storm.

  Do not love so much. Keep cool.

  Keep collected. Keep warm.

  “And the harsh friend, pushing away the music.”

  The sand-pit high with money. The limousine.

  The chauffeur filling the frost with suicide

  smelling sick in garage. First strikers seen.

  Death first, the stiff knees pointing up, gone breath.

  “And the harsh lover: suddenly magic, making

  me forget mother, sob through shut teeth, seeing

  the kiss full on the palm erase the touch of death.”

  What's over us? The fancy snowfall. War.

  What's at our hand for truth? The curious windlass

  going into the well. Quaint. Why do those men parade?

  What's after sitting at the window, reading?

  Lying hot in the bath, weeping at night?

  Going to bed at night and at last sleeping?

  ADVENTURES, MIDNIGHT

  1

  Give a dime to a beggar for I have seen a sight

  children grown tall and tragic reason slight

  charity dealt the poor again

  I drove with my last love last night

  through Clinton Street where sick, sick, sick

  the pushcarts screened with oranges

  staggering avenues of brick

  and wealth and love were long away

  and this man wished the old love quick.

  Give more and get your dollars back all dimes

  small change of love: so lied, and kissed him tight.

  I saw his tired body gone to crust

  and chuckling pigeons take him in their throats.

  —Now see us older, foolish, refugee,

  the child awake with an advertising look

  gathering speed in motors, love in dimes—

  what's after driving at night, answering joylessly?

  The wasted pity. Thieving charity.

  2

  With those two I went driving in the dark,

  out from our town in a borrowed car whose light

  ate forests as we drove deeper into the park.

  Beloved, spoke the sweet equivocal night—

  those two stood clapped, each breast warmly on breast,

  I stood apart to remove them from my sight:

  The creased brook ran in continual unrest,

  rising to seastorm in the rioting mind.

  Here night and they and I—and who was merriest?

  He turned his face away refusing, and so signed

  for her to stop who too was comfortless

  and equally needy, as tender and as blind.

  On the road to the city stood the hedge whose darkness

  had covered me months ago with that tall stranger

  as foreign to me as this loneliness,

  as enemy to me as tonight's anger

  of grief in the country, shut with those two in the park:

  this crying, frantic at removal, the dark, the sorrowful

  danger.

  3

  Watching, on piers, exuberant travellers

  enter the ocean where the beggar sits

  desperate at exclusive waterfronts,

  see how the feasted boat leaves port

  covered with singing birds.

  Cruising to cellophane islands, shaking off

  this city's rock providing lonely tours,

  grim single passports, persevering winter,

  the ship slides down midnight's imperious harbor

  The gilt-tiered galleries awake and dance.

  What is it rippling across the deck?

  What rising? What memory of ocean?

  What is it ripples and rises?

  The drowned heart, lifted a moment

  answers clearly Here it comes.

  And get your feet wet in a drowning world?

  Stand on a rotten dock, obsessed with tide?

  The boat's condemned, the pier sinks. The long port

  offers an only country to you, traveller,

  a chance of upper air to hopeful, smothering heart.

  NIGHT-MUSIC

  When those who can never again forgive themselves

  finish their dinner, rear up from the chair,

  turning to movies are caught in demonstrations

  sweeping the avenues—Meet them there.

  Watch how their faces change like traffic-light

  bold blood gone green as horses pound the street,

  as plates of sweated muscle push

  them squarely back into retreat.

  Notice their tremulous late overthrow

  caught irresponsible : as the first rank presses

  up at the brown animal breast of law

  defy
ing government by horses.

  And after the quick night-flurry, the few jailed,

  the march stampeded, the meeting stopped, go down

  night-streets to unique rooms where horror ends,

  strike-songs are sung and the old songs remain.

  Vaguely Ilonka draws her violin

  along to Bach, greatest of trees, whereunder

  earth is again familiar, grandmother,

  and very god-music branches overhead.

  Changeable spirit! build a newer music

  rich enough to feed starvation on.

  Course down the night, past scenes of horror, among

  children awake, lands ruined, begging men.

  Rebel against torment,

  boats gone, night-battles, the sleepers up and shaking,

  fear in the streets

  cruelty on awaking.

  Make music out of night will change the night.

  DRIVEWAY

  Speeding from city, feeling day

  grimmer and more opaque,

  a thousand times more Death than night

  here on the pebbled roads, bled of all light and kind,

  hastening darkness to the impatient mind,

  we shook off nights our fever watched the street,

  besieged by laughter from the outer room,

  heard the pang, pang of bells bury our hope

  for private warmth or time or bed or house

  free from the failure public in that place.

  Here was to be moment of proof, if any

  conspiracy of night and speed and river

  could lift us whole from danger, and make real

  the veiny tree, the gleaming parallel

  of railroad tracks and water, using our trespass well

  to heal all breaches, prove our hope's disease

  curable by annealing, bandage night,

  blank out the city's bricked-up doors, the glare

  of the night-watchman's ray, No Trespassing,

  Don't Walk Here, Stay At Your Window, Keep On Looking.

  Reaching the full-grown field, danger slowed down,

  darkness enlarged around the blind, parked car.

  No need to look; the brilliant fatal skim

  of light swung over the acre, striking the night-proof dead,

  the Caretaker's flashlight sending his shadow up ahead.

  LOVER AS FOX

  Driven, at midnight, to growth, the city's wistful turnings

  lead you living on islands to some dark single house

  where vacant windows mark increased pursuit,

  chasing the runner outward beyond bounds

  around the wildest circle of the night.