Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

by Janet Kaufman

  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,