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
Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser Page 38
