hear developing heaven, the growing grave-bearing earth,
my poem, my promise, my love, my sleep after love;
my hours, listening, along that music move,
and have been saved and hardly know the cold.
THE MOTIVE OF ALL OF IT
The motive of all of it was loneliness,
All the panic encounters and despair
Were bred in fear of the lost night, apart,
Outlined by pain, alone. Promiscuous
As mercy. Fear-led and led again to fear
At evening toward the cave where part fire, part
Pity lived in that voluptuousness
To end one and begin another loneliness.
This is the most intolerable motive : this
Must be given back to life again,
Made superhuman, made human, out of pain
Turned to the personal, the pure release:
The rings of Plato and Homer's golden chain
Or Lenin with his cry of Dare We Win.
GREEN LIMITS
My limits crowd around me
like years, like those I loved
whose narrow hope could never
carry themselves.
My limits stand beside me
like those two widowed aunts
who from an empty beach
tore me into the wave.
Green over my low head
the surf threw itself down
tall as my aunts whose hands
locked me past help.
The sand was far behind
and rushing underfoot
water and fear and childhood,
surf of love.
Green limits walled me, water
stood higher than I saw—
glass walls, fall back! let me
dive and be saved.
My limits stand inside me
forever like that wave
on which I ride at last
over and under me.
THE CHILDREN'S ORCHARD
In the full sun. In the fruitfall season.
Against my knees the earth and the bucket, and the soft blue prunes
echoing red echoing purple echoing in the silver bucket
sun, and over the flames of earth the sun flies down.
Over my head the little trees tremble alive in their black branches
and bare-ribbed boys golden and shouting stoop here to gather the blue,
the wild-red, the dark. Colors of ripeness in the fruitfall season.
I will remember the last light on the lowest branch.
Will see these trees as they were in spring, wild black rooted in light,
root-deep in noon, the piercing yellow noon of mustard-blossom.
Sun breathing on us the scent of heat, richness of air where my hands know
blue, full summer, strong sun. I tell you harvest.
CHRISTMAS EVE
The secret child walks down the street
of the year's winter black and white,
while evening flames, blue-green and high—
the smooth face turns in the snow-smooth street
to lights, star-bubbles, the dark tree,
the giant star in the sacred sky.
Children behind their windows sing
a cradle, a birth, the pilgrim kings,
praising the still and wild.
They praise the face, the quickening,
the various joy, the wound! They sing
a new prophetic child.
Out of the street, out of the spire,
a slow voice, radio or king,
begins above the mystery.
Tells pain and sweetness, pain and fire.
The bells begin to cast their rings
of celebration down the sky.
The secret child walks down the street
of needle-dark December smells.
She walks with wonder everywhere.
Who is that Child? Where is that sweet
face of the songs and silver bells,
the broad red saint, the angelhair?
The voice tells ragged ships that sailed
to find that birth and piercèd hand,
a little child among the Jews.
“But I,” she says, “I am a child
of Jews—” Says, “This is Christianland
and things are otherwise.
“People, beasts, and a winter rose,
procession and thorn, the suffering
that had to be, the needed loss
led to this flame among the snows.
Three agents brought about this thing:
the Father, the Jews, the blesséd cross.
“And one of these is ours and overhead;
and one is God; and one is still outside.”
Sure of the birth then, the people all went to sleep.
But the child was awake, and grieved for the time ahead,
awake all night, watching the land and the sky.
Did the child weep? No the child did not weep.
CRAYON HOUSE
Two or three lines across; the black ones, down,
into the ground where grass sparkles and shines;
but the foundation is the green and the shine.
Windows are drawn in. Overhead the sun
surrounded by his crown, continually given.
It is a real place, door, floor, and windows.
I float past it. I look in at the little children.
I climb up the straight and planted path, alone.
In the city today grown, walking on stone,
a suddenness of doors, windows, bread and rolls.
Roads are in all I know : weapon and refugee,
color of thunder calling Leave this room,
Get out of this house. Even then, joy began,
went seeking through the green world, wild and no longer wild,
always beginning again. Steady giving and green decision,
and the beginning was real. The drawing of a child.
A CHARM FOR CANTINFLAS
After the lights and after the rumba and after the bourbon
and after the beer
and after the drums and after the samba and after the
ice cream and not long after
failure, loss, despair, and loss and despair
There was the laughter and there was Cantinflas at last
and his polka
doing the bumps with a hot guitar
turning unique. Slow. Slow. Slow. Deprecating
shoulder up.
Hand up.
All the fingers tall.
Panache and rags and triumph and smile—
beggar of light in ridiculous sunlight.
All things human clumsy and fair
as graceful as loving as stupid as true.
And on this floor
the dancers, in this square the little trees,
and on this stage always the clown of our living
gives us our sunlight and our incantation
as sun does, laughing, shining, reciting dawn, noon, and down,
making all delight and healing all ills
like faraway words on jars, the labels in Protopapas' window:
marshmallow, myrtle, peppermint, pumpkin, sesame, sesame, squills.
TRADITIONAL TUNE
After the revolution came the Fuehrer;
And after the resurrection, the Christian Era.
Not yet simple and not yet free.
Just after the Exodus, in the divided sea
The chariots drowned, and then the tempering
By forty sandy years of misery.
And after the King of the Jews came Godfrey King;
Kneedeep in blood the children wandering,
Holy Holy Holy hear the children sing.
Now mouthdeep nosedeep the fires reach our eye.
Teach us from torment to fly and not to fly.
Not yet safe, not ready to die.
Il
lumination and night cast on the eyes of those
Believing and fighting, playing the Worldly Fool,
Fool of Thy Word, who feel the century
Rule, under whose deep wave explosion waits;
We know the dead power of Thy Allied States.
Not yet simple and not yet free.
Sailing, remembering the rock and the child,
Sailing remember the sand, the city, the wild
Holy songs. Deaths! Pillar of cloud and sun,
Remember us and remember them and all
Not safe, not free sailing again upon
The sacred dangerous harbor, Jerusalem.
FOGHORN IN HORROR
I know that behind these walls is the city, over these rooftops is the sun.
But I see black clothes only and white clothes with the fog running in
and all their shadows.
Every minute the sound of the harbor
intruding on horror with a bellow of horror:
blu-a! blu-aa! Ao….
I try to write to you, but here too I meet failure.
It has a face like mine.
Silence and in me and over the water
only the bellowing,
Niobe howling for her life and her children.
Did you think this sorrow of women was a graceful thing?
Horrible Niobe down on her knees:
Blu-a! Blu-aa! Ao….
Thirty years, and my full strength, and all I touch has failed.
I sit and see
the black clothes on the line are beautiful, the sky drifting away.
The white clothes of the fog beyond me, beautiful, and the shadows.
Blu-aa! Blu-aa! AO.
SUMMER, THE SACRAMENTO
To this bridge the pale river and flickers away in images of blue.
And is gone. While behind me the stone mountains
stand brown with blue lights; at my right shoulder standing
Shasta, in summer standing, blue with her white lights
near a twilight summer moon, whiter than snow
where the light of evening changes among these legends.
Under me islands lie green, planted with green feathers,
green growing, shadowy grown, gathering streams of the green trees.
A hundred streams full of shadows and your upland source
pulled past sun-islands, green in this light as grace,
risen from your sun-mountains where your voices go
returning to water and music is your face.
Flows to the flower-haunted sea, naming and singing, under my eyes
coursing, the day of the world. And the time of my spirit streams
before me, slow autumn colors, the cars of a long train;
earth-red, earth-orange, leaf, rust, twilight of earth
stream past the evening river and over into the dark of north,
stream slow like wishes continuing toward those snows.
SPEECH OF THE MOTHER, FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR
Act I, Sc. 4. She is lit, standing high, with the lit line of Anne's
sleeping body at her knee. Darkness around.
Her soliloquy will indicate the passage of a year.
A year passes behind me. Shadows grow larger. Time
dissolves to a moment. I look to my children. They
change. A smile, a brush of the lips against my heart; things
brighten and vanish into a kind of joy, a kind of light.
Chaos began us, war in my own time, war in my children's time,
irrevocable accusation! I have heard the music of the sounds of
peace:
music of rivers, of street-corners, of our South,
blues, harvest-songs; and in the faces of lovers
seen all our challenge shining as a sign
to shape the future in love and birth.
Women standing in their houses set around with order—
the bread, the doorways and tables of everyday living
through all the walls have heard the shouts of fighting,
planes in the air,
and a shrill cry of women tortured under time,
each one carrying loss like conception : a lover gone,
or a son, or her brothers disappeared. One saying, “Spain! Spain!”
One desolate for her unborn children. One standing alone
outside of lighted windows, or black against raving fires
of this year and next year.
Chaos began us, a people skillful in war, young in love,
and in peace unbegun. A people various as life
whose strength is in our many voices and our hope
of a future of many, each singing his own song.
For we know this struggle : more than forces in conflict,
we know it as always the rising changing shadow of a dream.
A woman moving in my own house among my daughters,
I remember their hands when they were little, and smoothing
their shining hair. They change. And one will have her child.
The year passes. Around me chaos grows.
And darkly
our time renews itself. And equilibrium, the healer, the young one,
the beginning of new life, poises itself on war. And life
moves in its sharpened color into another year.
As I grow old, I face the strange seasons, I rejoice in the young,
and I say, in suffering, in joy, among the marvelous changes,
among the accusations, all things glow.
THEN I SAW WHAT THE CALLING WAS
All the voices of the wood called “Muriel!”
but it was soon solved; it was nothing, it was not for me.
The words were a little like Mortal and More and Endure
and a word like Real, a sound like Health or Hell.
Then I saw what the calling was : it was the road I traveled, the clear
time and these colors of orchards, gold behind gold and the full
shadow behind each tree and behind each slope. Not to me
the calling, but to anyone, and at last I saw : where
the road lay through sunlight and many voices and the marvel
orchards, not for me, not for me, not for me.
I came into my clear being; uncalled, alive, and sure.
Nothing was speaking to me, but I offered and all was well.
And then I arrived at the powerful green hill.
Translations: Six Poems by Octavio Paz
THE BIRD
Silence of the air, of the light, of sky.
In this transparent silence
day was resting:
the transparency of space
was silence's transparency.
Motionless light of the sky was slowing
the growth of the grass.
Small things of earth, among the stones,
under identical light, were stone.
Time was sated in a minute.
And in the absorbed stillness
Noonday consumed itself.
And a bird sang, slender arrow.
The wounded silver breast shivered the sky,
the leaves moved,
and grass awoke.
And I knew that death was an arrow
who cannot know the finger on the string
and in the flicker of an eye we die.
POET'S EPITAPH
He sang until his death
singing to close his eyes
to his true life, his real life of lies;
and to remember till he died
how it had lied, his unreal life of truth.
SPARK
Sparks of fishes
in the night of the sea
and birds, sparks
in the forest night.
Our bones are sparks
in the night of the flesh.
O world, night everywhere,
the spark being life.
TWO BOD
IES
Two bodies face to face
are at times two waves
and night is an ocean.
Two bodies face to face
are at times two stones
and night is a desert.
Two bodies face to face
are at times two knives
and night strikes sparks.
Two bodies face to face
are at times two roots
and night is the earth.
Two bodies face to face
are two stars falling down
in an empty sky.
THE STREET
Here is a long and silent street.
I walk in blackness and I stumble and fall
and rise, and I walk blind, my feet
trampling the silent stones and the dry leaves.
Someone behind me also tramples, stones, leaves:
if I slow down, he slows;
if I run, he runs. I turn : nobody.
Everything dark and doorless,
only my steps aware of me,
I turning and turning among these corners
which lead forever to the street
where nobody waits for, nobody follows me,
where I pursue a man who stumbles
and rises and says when he sees me : nobody.
LOVERS
Lying in the grass
girl and boy.
Eating oranges, exchanging kisses
like waves exchanging whiteness.
Lying on the beach
girl and boy.
Eating apples, exchanging kisses
like clouds exchanging whiteness.
Lying underground
girl and boy.
Saying nothing, never kissing,
exchanging silence for silence.
Rari from the Marquesas
RARI FOR TAHIA AND PIU
by Moa Tetua
The dream-image fades, with its red pandanu keys
Strung with leaves, wet in the small rain!
He is a handsome garland.
Tahia's mouth is brave, but her eyes tremble at the spring.
Desire aroused for the valley-side boy,
Bringing the gifts of a valiant husband,
A rare fan of speckled feathers
And the loin-cloth.
Come and find the fruit!
Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser Page 29
