Malta, the Baltic, the Caribbee, sayings, cats to
And Britain commend their money to me Malta; mittens
As I go funding among the dreamers, north; and,
Among their golden nightmares ringing finally, coals
Among their proverbs a wine-gold bell, to Newcastle.
Sounding a folly my dear my darling
My dearly darling dream well.
4 KINGS AND CONTEMPORARIES
How can I speak to them today? What can I know,
What can I show so that we see ourselves?
Voices of stinted singing in the towns,
Voices of wildness and fear of wilderness.
The rhythm, the root. Gathering in
Sources of music and the wild sea-rose.
Sea-music and the sea building its waters,
The weathervane beast. My song.
Whenever I say what I mean
They mock and call me mad.
They slip my meaning—
When I mock at them, I
always make money—
How can this go on?
Harum scarum, merchant marum,
My house is built, and my wall of pillars,
A noted house to the Isles of Shoals.
My kings, my presidents, stand round:
I speak in images so they may know
My gold spread-eagle on the cupalow.
Dr. Franklin, Mr. Hamilton, John Hancock, Rufus King,
John Jay, two grenadiers. He sets up,
Four lions, and here the roof runs so, around his
That a lamb can lie down with one of the lions, house, the
And an eagle on the cupalow. figures of
those he
One unicorn, one dog, one horse, most admires.
And in the Garden Adam and Eve—
I will if I please have Adam and Eve.
If no man murders me summer or snow
I'll carry this to its fair concluding
With an eagle on the cupalow.
Three of the apostles, viz.
St. Paul St. Peter and St. John. The Royal Arch,
Venus, Hiram, and Solomon— with lifesize
The President's platform and columns grow— painted figures
I meant marble, but wood it is, carved by Joseph
And an eagle on the cupalow. Wilson, the
figurehead sculptor.
George Third, L'Ouverture,
Lord Nelson Baron of the Nile.
Constantinople's Grand Signior,
All heroes, each one in his style—
The Chief Cornplanter with his bow,
His moccasins, arrows, and tomahawk,
And an eagle on the cupalow.
Black rum and silver gin,
Drink for this company.
For the resident poet, Jonathan Plummer,
With a wheelbarrow full of broadsides and haddock—
Malaga wine for Madam Hooper,
Timothy Dexter's fortune-teller;
And for brandy-breasted Lucy, Lucy Lancaster,
Daughter of princes in Africa,
Feathers and majesty—what for her?
Black rum and silver gin
And a coach with cream-color horses.
Filisy, folosy, silver gin,
Stingalum, stangalum, wine for day,
Ram pan, muski dan,
And wine for night on the sound blind sea.
Stingalum, stangalum, buck.
Rum, whalerbone, whackerbone,
Waterfront, turnpike, Merrimack bridge,
Sea-berry, sea-gold, pine-forest edge;
Wire, briar, limber lock,
Timothy's a red red rock
Surrounded by waves of whisky and wine,
Loving waves called Jonathan,
Lucy Lancaster, Madam Hooper,
And a coach with cream-color horses.
5 THE PICKLE, THE TEMPLE
The Pickle
I will say what I mean here; in a book;
I wants to make
My Enemies grin
Like a cat over
A hot puddin.
If you can bear the truth From A Pickle For
Then I will tell the truth: the Knowing Ones,
Man's the best animal, Timothy Dexter's book.
And the worst—
All men, I say, are more or
Less the Devil's.
Odds make the difference
And there's a sight of odds.
Some half, some quarters.
Odds make the difference.
I see in all places God, the God
Of nature in all things.
We live and move in God,
We live in God.
When great powers ruled,
I was born. Of his birth
In a snowstorm, the signs and becoming.
In the seventh house.
Mars came forward
Holding the candle—
Jupiter stood by.
I was to be
One great man.
(I think I am a Quaker
But have so little sense
I can't deceive.)
The bubble is the soul…
Man is the giant toad…
I have thoughts about clocks
Nobody will believe.
Ask me and I will tell.
Now turn the system of knowledge
Into light—
Parents and masters begin, begin schoolmasters
At Cadameys and Collegeys,
Begin ministers,
Leave off, scarecrows in courage,
Brave good apelets—
One thing masters must teach:
Have good manners
To parents and people in streets,
And don't be too nosey.
I recommend a school A plan for
Of languages, the young:
Scholars to go to
Far parts to trade—
Go supercargo
To learn navigation
And character.
There will in time take
Many brave men,
Advantage to merchants
And funding to country—
Wise men pos-pos on this.
Goodbye—Timothy Dexter.
I command peace and the
Gratest brotherly love
And Not fade, be linked
Together with that best of troue Love
So as to govern all nasions
On the fass of the gloub
Not to
Tiranize over them A Congress of Nations;
But to
Put them to order…
A Congress of nasions
To be allways in france
All Despouts is
To be there settled
And this way be Dun
This will balless power
And then all was Dun
A Way—there-for I have the Lam
To Lay Dow with the Lion
Now this may be dun
If the powers would
A geray to Lay whats called
Devel to one side
I being a man without learning
Please to give me Light. His appeal.
The knowing ones complain
Of my book
The first edition
Had no stops
I put in a Nuf here
And they may peper
And solt it as they plese
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The Temple
Then with a touch of the gout, and being
A little sober in the morning
I raised in the garden a Temple of Reason
For my own funeral,
Furnished with pipes and tobacco, a speaking trumpet
And fireworks in the tomb,
A Bible to read, and some good songs.
I sent out invitations.
Now it was time to begin. He holds his
own funeral,
It was a fine clear day,
I had fine pallbearers
Lord East Lord West Lord North and Lord South
Lord Megul and Lord Shambow.
The minister made his prayer—
Doctor Strong, he was—
And the flimsy sextons were there
And very much crying.
About 3000 came,
Oh, half the town, I'd say.
The procession wound and watches from
Under my window an upper window
Across the garden to my
Temple of Reason.
My coffin was long ready,
Painted in my house.
White lead inside
And outside touched with green.
Noble trimmings, eight handles
And an uncommon lock.
Now it was put into the
Temple of Reason.
Out in the kitchen I was
Beating my wife;
The ghostly lady
Had hardly mourned at all.
Very few people
Should attend funerals.
Many catch cold, and we
Want to settle Ohio;
We can't spare these beauties
To die so soon.
6 THE KIND OF WOMAN
Ghostly in my house
A woman I married—
Ghostly up the stairs,
Like snow in the hall.
At midnight in her bed
The ghostly-breasted;
I cannot have her ghost
Walking my palace. He is haunted by
They say she is alive. his living wife.
I say she will ever be
Mrs. Dexter that was.
The attacks of the ghost
Will not let me sleep.—
Now to save my life.
I will sell the house,
Horses, the cream-color horses
And the coach.
If not I will let it.
Wait. I can sweep my house
And get all anew “I must have a
And go out of hell. Companon four
I will advertise. good by all.”
“A very colding wife
Is poison to me.
I wish to be still
And master of my cash;
And therefore I wish for
One very good housekeeper.
Them that know me know
The kind of woman.
Now I will say
What kind of a person,
From thirty to forty
And a good jade
That will trot pace and gallop—
Not to heave one off
But, rather of the two,
Heave on.—I mean right well.
Now stop, I got off the path;
Now I am honest: I wish for
A middling woman for size,
Sensible honest and comely,
Knowing when to speak
and when to be silent,
With a nose like mine.”
7 GUESSING TIME
A feat of laughter and a coastwise dance
Among the ills of ocean, in pauper light
Imagining truth, at dawn turning from madness
Into the unknown world, up blue invisible
Mountains of fantasy climbing
To the sea.
Where he as a boy walked down, salty, in brightness
Raging and worshipping.
Their faces turn again the nailhead stare
Of proverbs glaring at the intuitive.
My old head has
Worn out three bodies.
Amen. Clean truth.
Pay the whole debt, it will make nations tremble.
Keep up to what we set out to be, honest republicans,
No king, but you won't go it long without being honest;
If dishonest, you must have a king.
Keep Judas out of your councils.
Watch day and night, for mankind is mankind.
Jockey-handed priests, deacons, grunters, whiners—
(And I will show you one more private torture:
Abraham Bishop my son-in-law from whom
I live in hell on earth; pity me, fellow mortals,
A.B. mad with learning, as poor as a snake,
As proud as Lucifer. A.B. is a beast,
A Connecticut bull, short neck, thick curly hair.
When I see my father, the great good man,
Father Thomas Jefferson, he'll shed great tears with grief.)
A sortment, a sortment is good in a shop.
How many nicknames three things have:
Sex and glory and the grave.
Now I suppose I may guess
As it is guessing time:
I guess the world is all one
Very large living creature;
Mankind is the master beast,
As in the sea the whale
Is head fish—master over the
Whole of beasts and fish,
But still we're all one creature.
Man is the masterly beast,
And also the worst of the whole,
Knowing the most and acting the worst
According to what we know.
I think when the candle goes out
Men and women are done at one blow,
We will lie then as dirt of rocks
Until the great gun go—
9,000,000,000 tons
Of the best good powder.
That will shake and bring all the
Bones together,
Then the world will be to an end.
All kinds of music then,
And funding laid aside,
The melody will be very great,—
Now why won't you believe me?
It is as true as apple-seed,
The sea and sea-music.
True as the voices that through me burn—
As true as we died and we are born,
Apple-seed and apple-thorn
Calling root and calling hand,
Saying Amen, mockery, Amen, fantasy,
Sea-music and the sea.
4
ARE YOU BORN?—1
A man riding on the meaning of rivers
Sang to me from the cloud of the world:
Are you born? Are you born?
My name is gone into the burning heart
That knows the change deep in the form of things.
—I saw from the treeline all our cities shine.
A woman riding on the moon of ocean
Sang to me through the cloud of the world:
Are you born? Are you born?
The form of growing in leaf and crystal flows,
And in the eyes and rivers of the land.
—From the rock of our sky, I came to recognize.
A voice riding on the morning of air
Sang to me from the cloud of the world:
Are you born? Are you born?
Bring all the singing home;
There is a word of lightning in the grass.
—I stood alive in the young cloud.
[UNTITLED]
Murmurs from the earth of this land, from the caves and craters,
from the bowl of darkness. Down watercourses of our
dra
gon childhood, where we ran barefoot.
We stand as growing women and men. Murmurs come down
where water has not run for sixty years.
Murmurs from the tulip tree and the catalpa, from the ax of
the stars, from the house on fire, ringing of glass; from
the abandoned iron-black mill.
Stars with voices crying like mountain lions over forgotten
colors.
Blue directions and a horizon, milky around the cities where the
murmurs are deep enough to penetrate deep rock,
Trapping the lightning-bird, trapping the red central roots.
You know the murmurs. They come from your own throat.
You are the bridges to the city and the blazing food-plant green;
The sun of plants speaks in your voice, and the infinite shells of
accretion
A beach of dream before the smoking mirror.
You are close to that surf, and the leaves heated by noon, and
the star-ax, the miner's glitter walls. The crests of the sea
Are the same strength you wake with, the darkness is the eyes
of children forming for a blaze of sight and soon, soon,
Everywhere your own silence, who drink from the crater, the
nebula, one another, the changes of the soul.
[UNTITLED]
The tree of rivers seen and forgotten,
With all its lightnings laid over it, the white law.
Strokes of the spirit on the flowing spirit
Seen, forgotten, and seen, until the source.
But the source, simple and various
As possibility, the nest of light,
Is open; what do you forget who have forgotten?
At home or hunting, forgetting takes your throat.
This dream of rivers responding, as many lives respond:
The cant of a dam and the running of fresh waters
Allow discovery deep in the city of your days
Starting up, before your faces born,
Born and reborn of your perceive,
Of your smile that you recognize
The meanings as they move.
[UNTITLED]
The power of war leads to a plan of lives
Involving rivers. The many-stated million
Human concerns. This touches, this gives life
To all its forms. Now clothe our force,
Make it as flexible as a man venturing
To fend for himself in his own enterprise.
Now in the unity of all vision, unity of the land, the forests
and water,
See nature, the nation, as a web of lives
On the earth together, full of their potencies.
The total unity, reached past images,
Reaching past the naming of religions.
We reach to create. That is our central meaning,
Suggestion of art and altar in all our passwords,
Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser Page 39
