Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

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Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser Page 38

by Janet Kaufman


  The sea resists rearing to the horizon

  Confusion of land approaching the state of sculpture

  The naked forehead of the world is raised

  Rock smoothed and polished to cut a poem on

  Display of light that opens its fan of names

  Here is the seed of a singing like a tree

  Here are the wind and names beautiful in the wind

  FABLE

  The state of fire and the state of air

  Prancing of water

  From green to yellow

  Yellow to red

  From dream to vigil

  From desire to act

  You needed only a step and that taken without effort

  The insects then were jewels who were alive

  The heat lay down to rest at the edge of the pool

  Rain was the light hair of a willow-tree

  There was a tree growing within your hand

  And as it grew it sang laughed prophesied

  It cast the spells that cover space with wings

  There were the simple miracles called birds

  Everything belonged to everyone

  Everyone was everything

  Only one word existed immense without opposite

  A word like a sun

  One day it exploded into tiny fragments

  They were the words of the language that we speak

  They are fragments which never will unite

  They are the splintered mirrors where the world

  can see itself shattered

  DAY

  A day is lost

  In a sky suddenly there

  Light leaves no footprints in the snow

  A day is lost

  Opening and shutting all the doors

  The seed of the sun splits open soundlessly

  A day begins

  The fog goes up in the foothills

  A man goes down to the river

  They meet and are together in your eyes

  And you are lost in this day

  Singing among the leaves of light

  The bells making their music far away

  Every call of theirs a wave

  Every wave gone down for ever

  One move one word light against cloud

  You laugh and you do your hair distractedly

  A day begins at your feet

  Skin hand whiteness these are not names

  For this skin this hand and this whiteness

  The visible and palpable which is outside

  That which is within and which is nameless

  By acts of touch they go searching in us

  Following the turns that language made

  Crossing the bridge this image strung from them

  As light pouring itself among the fingers

  As you yourself between my hands

  As your hand interlaced within my hands

  A day begins in my words

  Light which goes ripening until it becomes flesh

  Until it becomes shadow of your flesh light of your shadow

  Armor of warmth skin of your light

  A day begins in your mouth

  Day which is lost in our eyes

  Day which begins in our night

  PROVERBS

  One cornstalk is all cornfields

  A feather is a bird alive and singing

  A man of flesh is a man of dream

  Truth is indivisible

  One clap of thunder proclaims the acts of the lightning

  One dreaming woman gives us the form of love forever

  The sleeping tree speaks all green oracles

  Water talks ceaseless never repeating a word

  There are eyelids whose poise is never disturbed by dream

  And the poise of delirium which dream never disturbs

  The mouth of a woman saying Yes to life

  The bird of paradise opening his wings

  [UNTITLED]

  In her splendor islanded

  This woman burning like a charm of jewels

  An army terrifying and asleep

  This woman lying within the night

  Like clear water lying on closed eyes

  In a tree's shadow

  A waterfall halted halfway in its flight

  A rapid narrow river suddenly frozen

  At the foot of a great and seamless rock

  At the foot of a mountain

  She is lake-water in April as she lies

  In her depths binding poplar and eucalyptus

  Fishes or stars burning between her thighs

  Shadow of birds scarcely hiding her sex

  Her breasts two still villages under a peaceful sky

  This woman lying here like a white stone

  Like water on the moon in a dead crater

  Not a sound in the night not moss nor sand

  Only the slow budding of my words

  At the ear of water at the ear of flesh

  Unhurried running

  And clear memorial

  Here is the moment burning and returned

  Drowning itself in itself and never consumed

  [UNTITLED]

  Like ivy the creeper with a thousand hands

  Like fire and the avid plumes of fire

  Like Spring arriving to assault the year

  The fingers of music

  The talons of music

  The burning bush of music

  Covering our bodies covering our souls

  Tattooing our bodies with those burning sounds

  Like the body of god in images constellated

  Like the body of heaven tattooed by the raging stars

  Souls blazing bodies blazing

  Music arrives here to tear out our eyes

  (We will see only if music gives us sight

  We will not hear without the swords of light)

  Music arrives here to tear out our tongues

  Now its huge mouth is devouring the bodies

  The world arrives

  Burning its name the names that clothe the world

  Nothing remains but an enormous sound

  Tower of glass that shelters birds of glass

  Invisible birds

  Made of a substance identical with light

  LIFE OF THE POET

  Words? Yes, made of air,

  and in the air dissolved.

  Give me your gift, to lose my self in words,

  let me become the air on living lips,

  one breath that goes wandering without barriers,

  scent of a moment in the air diffused.

  Even so light in itself is lost.

  THE PRISONER

  Homage to D. A. F. de Sade

  les traces de ma tombe disparaissent

  de dessus la surface de la terre

  comme je me flatte que ma memoire

  s'effacent de l'esprit des homes…

  Testament of Sade

  You have not disappeared.

  The letters of your name are still a scar that will not heal,

  the tattoo of disgrace on certain faces.

  Comet whose body is substance, whose tail glitters in dialectics.

  You rush through the nineteenth century holding a grain of truth,

  exploding as you come to our own time.

  A mask that smiles beneath a veil of pink

  made of the eyelids of the executed,

  truth broken into a thousand flames of fire.

  What is the meaning of these giant fragments,

  this herd of icebergs sailing from your pen and from the high seas

  heading toward the nameless coasts?

  these delicate surgical instruments made for cutting away

  the chancre of God?

  these howls interrupting your kingly elephant thoughts?

  the frightful striking of out-of-order clocks?

  all of this rusty armament of torture?

  The learned man and the poet,

  the scholar, the writer, the lo
ver, the maniac,

  and the man who has cancelled out our threat from reality, who

  goes along drugged in his dream,

  they fight like dogs over the bones of your work.

  You who stood against all of them,

  you are today a name, a leader, a banner.

  Bending over life like Saturn over his sons

  you scan with your steady look of love and wonder

  the white ridges left by semen, by love, by blood.

  These bodies, face to face like blazing stars,

  are made of the same substance as the suns.

  We call this love or death; liberty, doom.

  Is it catastrophe? Is it the grave of man?

  Where is the borderline between spasm and earthquake,

  eruption and coitus?

  Prisoner in your castle of crystal of rock

  you pass through dungeons, chambers and galleries,

  enormous courts whose vines twist on ancestral pillars,

  seductive graveyards where the still black poplars dance.

  Walls, things, bodies, reflecting you.

  All is mirror!

  Your image follows you.

  Man is inhabited by silence and by space.

  How can this hunger be met and satisfied?

  How can you still the silence? How can the void be filled?

  How can my image ever be escaped?

  Only in my resemblant can I transcend myself,

  only his blood affirms another life.

  Justine is alive only through Juliette,

  the victims breed their executioners.

  This body which today we sacrifice,

  is it not the god, tomorrow's sacrifice?

  Imagination is desire's spur,

  whose territory is endless, it is infinite

  like boredom's who is its opposite and twin.

  Pleasure or death, vomit or flooding in,

  autumn, resembling daybreak,

  sex or volcano,

  high wind, and spring that sets the fields on fire,

  talons or galaxies,

  the stony woman riding the horse called Dread,

  red foam of desire, slaughter on the seas,

  and the great azure hill, delirium,

  forms, images, bubbles, and the rage for life,

  eternities in flashes,

  excesses: it is you who are the measure of man.

  Now dare forward:

  freedom is the willing choice of necessity.

  You are the arrow, the bow, the chord and the cry.

  Dream is explosive. It bursts. And becomes the sun.

  And in your castle on fire with diamonds, your image destroying

  itself, remaking itself, unweakened, tirelessly.

  FROM SUN STONE

  ….

  now the world stands visible through your body,

  the world, transparent through your transparency.

  I go a journey in galleries of sound,

  I flow among the resonant presences,

  going, a blind man passing transparencies

  one mirror cancels me, I rise from another,

  forest whose trees are the pillars of magic,

  under the arches of light I go among

  the corridors of a dissolving autumn,

  I go among your body as among the world

  your belly the sunlit center of the city

  your breasts two churches where are celebrated

  the great parallel mysteries of the blood,

  the looks of my eyes cover you like ivy,

  you are a city by the sea assaulted,

  you are a rampart by the light divided

  into two halves, distinct, color of peaches,

  and you are a saltiness, you are rocks and birds

  beneath the edict of concentrated noon,

  and dressed in the coloring of my desire

  as soon you will be stripped by my thought naked,

  I go among your eyes as I swim water,

  the tigers come to these eyes to drink their dreams,

  the hummingbird is burning among these cries,

  I go upon your forehead as on the moon,

  like cloud I go among your imagining

  journey your belly as I journey your dream

  ….

  3

  SUITE FOR LORD TIMOTHY DEXTER

  1

  They face us in sea-noon sun, just as he saw them waiting,

  Bolted down, fastened together by their nailhead proverbs.

  The sun still pouring all male all female through their blood

  And away through the salt marsh and the white salt sand

  Sea-blaze over their shoulders, fantasy

  A blue invisible mountain up whose side

  Laughter and sharp clouds race as he saw them ride

  In witness when he as a boy walked down

  With morning for a sign.

  Smelling of acid, like his trade.

  Ready to throw their lifeday down their throats like wine,

  Death-rotten proverbs and the jokes all made,

  Himself the wine-bottle burning in the sun.

  More here than power over proverbs. But that power pours here.

  And the sure sun of story, on top the live gold mast.

  What's strong, what's lost? What boy walked salty in the light?

  A raging worshipping fantastic man,

  Tasting money and words, live-breasted women,

  The tanner's boy streaked with truth. In the young States

  He saw young morning. Wild he was.

  And most

  A clap of mockery clean in the sea-brightness,

  A legend of this coast.

  2 HOW TO IMPRESS MASSACHUSETTS

  A name's a name but

  Nothing's the same,

  Now King-No-More knows

  Lady-No-More;

  There may be shame but

  He's Mr. Guilt, and

  Hell is Mr. War.

  The wooden golden eagle

  Announces from the rooftree:

  Miss Equal, Mr. E.,

  Dr. and Mrs. Eden, and

  I am Miss Liberty.

  But we see Timothy, The tanner's boy,

  No more the colonized, after we become

  Look around after labor. the United States,

  Not a single neighbor invests in our

  Gives him his due acclaim. currency, which

  Timothy's surprised: is generally

  A harsh laugh, a short knife, regarded as

  Started his prodigious life. worthless;

  But he took hold of fate,

  Invested in the State, with

  Money not worth a damn.

  “I,” he said, “am what I am,

  What's to be done will be done,

  The capital will be Washington.

  Mr. Hamilton keeps his word,

  This country's bond's as sound as me,

  Timothy.

  What' dyou say?

  ‘Sound as I'—?

  Very well; me is I,

  I the tree

  Flourishing.”

  Mr. Hamilton truly meant

  An almost infinite per cent

  Would accrue

  Quickly to

  The trustful and the nourishing.

  The newborn Federal bank has stirred. becomes rich,

  Timothy is a sword.

  A sword without blessing,

  A sword without fame,

  A sword bearing no signal name.

  If Newburyport

  Will be blind,

  Will seem bored,

  Never mind.

  New Hampshire's kind, and

  Calls him “Lord.” and acquires

  Apprentice then, on the road his new

  Next day wore his freedom suit, first name.

  Brided widow and won his house,

  Ground their proverbs underfoot.

  A poor boy made and found

 
And funding came to his own tune.

  “Lord” is the center of that sound,

  And all the songs proclaim

  He is the bright blue morning rhyme,

  A great name rides before his name.

  Turn, burn, and overturn!

  Among the squarest houses, he

  Is more than Timothy,

  And more than merry.

  Can forever now retort

  Very much Newbury-

  Port:

  The voice of the people and I can't help it,

  But all's easy and no bones broken,

  All is well, all in Love.

  The first Lord of the age has spoken.

  Now all the torment Massachusetts bore

  Triumphs in a blaze of love.

  Love, love, fantasy,

  For

  Out of shame and poverty,

  From oppression, commerce, war,

  Rose a new sovereignty:

  The states are free and trade is free

  And Dexter's Lord Timothy.

  3 THREE NIGHTS I DREAMED

  Sharp clouds and a sea-moon sang to me

  Where were you born my young my dear

  I said nowhere vary your singing He makes his

  Now where was your mother shaded, they sang, fortune as

  Nowhere I answered the ring the rung a merchant:

  Dark bells rang and I was young—

  O on the water then, wine on the sea—

  Nowhere they cried and they sang to me—

  Nowhere my dear my darling,

  My dearly darling beware.

  Where and nowhere and then the singing changed

  Past hills of prophecy the words went ranging,

  The colors of the words to images

  Went formed. And all I saw was warming-pans,

  Three nights of warming-pans until I woke selling warming–

  And a great ship's bare spars sailing my window, pans in the

  Up to my tall room window a ship's spars, West Indies,

  And I remembered all the nights and wars,

  Sang in my waking of poverty and dream:

  My dearly darling beware.

  The sun all male and female through me poured,

  Awake I bought a cargo all of dream, where they are

  Warming-pans for the South, to all the roaring snapped up for

  Nothing, to those who mock at my song. molasses-ladles;

  I have entrusted south my folly cargo,

  A full hold coming home now showers gold.

  My warming-pans sailed gently to Jamaica—

  The lids ripped off, made fine molasses-ladles,

  Rum, rum, my darling beware.

  Gold I am, lord of the cats of gold, And then, to spite

  Mittens and kittens and coals of gold, their business

 

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