Far in New Jersey, among split-level houses,
behind the concrete filling-station I found
a yellow building and the flags of prayer.
Two Tibetans in their saffron bowed, priests
of their robes, their banners, their powers.
Little Tibetan children playing stickball
on the black road.
Day conscious and unconscious.
Words on the air.
Before the great
images arrive, riderless horses.
Words on an uproar silent hour.
In our own time.
ORGY
There were three of them that night.
They wanted it to happen in the first woman's room.
The man called her; the phone rang high.
Then she put fresh lipstick on.
Pretty soon he rang the bell.
She dreamed, she dreamed, she dreamed.
She scarcely looked him in the face
But gently took him to his place.
And after that the bell, the bell.
They looked each other in the eyes,
A hot July it was that night,
And he then slow took off his tie,
And she then slow took off her scarf,
The second one took off her scarf,
And he then slow his heavy shoe,
And she then slow took off her shoe,
The other one took off her shoe,
He then took off his other shoe,
The second one, her other shoe,
A hot July it was that night.
And he then slow took off his belt,
And she then slow took off her belt,
The second one took off her belt…
THE OVERTHROW OF ONE O'CLOCK AT NIGHT
is my concern. That's this moment,
when I lean on my elbows out the windowsill
and feel the city among its time-zones, among its seas,
among its late night news, the pouring in
of everything meeting, wars, dreams, winter night.
Light in snowdrifts causing the young girls
lying awake to fall in love tonight
alone in bed; or the little children
half world over tonight rained on by fire—that's us—
calling on somebody—that's us—to come
and help them.
Now I see at the boundary of darkness
extreme of moonlight.
Alone. All my hopes
scattered in people quarter world away
half world away, out of all hearing.
Tell myself:
Trust in experience. And in the rhythms.
The deep rhythms of your experience.
AMONG ROSES
Lying here among grass, am I dead am I sleeping
amazed among silences you touch me never
Here deep under, the small white moon
cries like a dime and do I hear?
The sun gone copper or I dissolve
no touch no touch a tactless land
denies my death my fallen hand
silence runs down the riverbeds
One tall wind walks over my skin
breeze, memory
bears to my body (as the world fades)
going in
very late in the world's night to see roses opening
Remember, love, lying among roses.
Did we not lie among roses?
WHAT I SEE
Lie there, in sweat and dream, I do, and “there”
Is here, my bed, on which I dream
You, lying there, on yours, locked, pouring love,
While I tormented here see in my reins
You, perfectly at climax. And the lion strikes.
I want you with whatever obsessions come—
I wanted your obsession to be mine
But if it is that unknown half-suggested strange
Other figure locked in your climax, then
I here, I want you and the other, want your obsession, want
Whatever is locked into you now while I sweat and dream.
BELIEVING IN THOSE INEXORABLE LAWS
Believing in those inexorable laws
After long rebellion and long discipline
I am cut down to the moment in all my flaws
Creeping to the feet of my master the sun
On the sea-beach, tides beaten by the moon woman,
And will not think of you, but lie at my full length
Among the great breakers. I find the clear outwater
Shine crash speaking of truth behind the law.
The many-following waves turn into you.
I see in vision that northern bay : pines, villages,
And the flat water suddenly rears up
The high wave races against all edicts, taller,
Finally powerful. Water becomes your mouth,
And all laws all polarities your truth.
SONG : LOVE IN WHOSE RICH HONOR
Love
in whose rich honor
I stand looking from my window
over the starved trees of a dry September
Love
deep and so far forbidden
is bringing me
a gift
to claw at my skin
to break open my eyes
the gift longed for so long
The power
to write
out of the desperate ecstasy at last
death and madness
NIOBE NOW
Niobe
wild
with unbelief
as all
her ending
turns to stone
Not gentle
weeping
and souvenirs
but hammering
honking
agonies
Forty-nine tragic years
are done
and the twentieth century
not begun:
All tears,
all tears,
all tears.
Water
from her rock
is sprung
and in this water
lives a seed
That must endure
and grow
and shine
beasts, gardens
at last rivers
A man
to be born
to start again
to tear
a woman
from his side
And wake
to start
the world again.
SONG : THE STAR IN THE NETS OF HEAVEN
The star in the nets of heaven blazed past your breastbone,
Willing to shine among the nets of your growth,
The nets of your love,
The bonds of your dreams.
AIR
Flowers of air
with lilac defining air;
buildings of air
with walls defining air;
this May, people of air
advance along the street;
framed in their bodies, air,
their eyes speaking to me,
air in their mouths made
into live meanings.
GIFT
the child, the poems, the child, the poems, the journeys
back and forth across our long country
of opposites,
and through myself, through you, away from you, toward
you, the dreams of madness and of an
impossible complete time—
gift be forgiven.
CRIES FROM CHIAPAS
Hunger
of mountains
spoke
from a tiger's throat.
Tiger-tooth peaks.
The moon.
A thousand mists
turning.
Desires of mountains
like the desires of women,
moon-drawn,
distant
,
clear black among
confusions of silver.
Women of Chiapas!
Dream-borne
voices of women.
Splinters of mountains,
broken obsidian,
silver.
White tigers
haunting
your forehead here
sloped in shadow—
black hungers of women,
confusion
turning like tigers
And your voice—
I am
almost asleep
almost awake
in your arms.
THE WAR COMES INTO MY ROOM
Knowing again
that nothing
has been spoken
not now
not this night time
the broken singing
as we move
or of
the endless war
our lives
that above all
there is not said
nothing
of this moment
in the poems
our love
in all the songs
now I will
live out
this moment
saying
it
in my breath
to you
across the air
DELTA POEMS
Among leaf-green
this morning, they
walk near water-blue,
near water-green
of the river-mouths
this boy this girl
they die with their heads near each other,
their young mouths
A sharp glint out among the sea
These are lives coming out of their craft
Men who resemble….
Sound is bursting the sun
Two dead bodies against the leaves
A young man and a girl
Their heads close together
No weapons, only grasses and waves
Lives, grasses
Something is flying through the high air over the river-mouth country,
Something higher than the look can go,
Higher than herons fly,
Higher than planes is it?
It is nothing now
But now it is sound beyond bigness
Turns into the hugeness : death. A leaf shakes on the sky.
Of the children in flames, of the grown man
his face burned to the bones, of the full woman
her body stopped from the nipples down, nursing
the live strong baby at her breast
I do not speak.
I am a woman
in a New York room
late in the twentieth century.
I am crying. I will write no more.—
Young man and girl walking along the sea,
among the leaves.
Fresh hot day among the river-mouths,
yellow-green leaves green rivers running to sea.
A young man and a girl
go walking in the delta country
The war has lasted their entire lifetime.
They look at each other with their mouths.
They look at each other with their whole bodies.
A glint as of bright fire, metal over the sea-waters.
A girl has died upon green leaves,
a young man has died against the sky.
A girl is walking printed against green leaves,
A young man walks printed upon the sky.
I remember you. We walked near the harbor.
You a young man believing in the future of summer,
in yellow, in green, in touch, in entering,
in the night-sky, in the gifts of this effort.
He believes in January,
he believes in the pulses beating along his body,
he believes in her young year.
I walk near the rivers.
They are walking again at the edge of waters.
They are killed again near the lives, near the waves.
They are walking, their heads are close together,
their mouths are close as they die.
A girl and a young man walk near the water.
SPIRALS AND FUGUES
Spirals and fugues, the power most like music
Turneth all worlds to meaning
And meaning to matter, all continually,
And sweeps in the sacred motion,
Spirals and fugues its lifetime,
To move my life to yours,
and all women and men and the children in their light,
The little stone in the middle of the road, its veins and
patience,
Moving the constellations of all things.
ANEMONE
My eyes are closing, my eyes are opening.
You are looking into me with your waking look.
My mouth is closing, my mouth is opening.
You are waiting with your red promises.
My sex is closing, my sex is opening.
You are singing and offering : the way in.
My life is closing, my life is opening.
You are here.
FIGHTING FOR ROSES
After the last freeze, in easy air,
Once the danger is past, we cut them back severely;
Pruning the weakest hardest, pruning for size
Of flower, we deprived will not deprive the sturdy.
The new shoots are preserved, the future bush
Cut down to a couple of young dormant buds.
But the early sun of April does not burn our lives :
Light straight and fiery brings back the enemies.
Claw, jaw, and crawler, all those that devour.
We work with smoke against the robber blights,
With copper against rust; the season fights itself
In deep strong rich loam under swarm attacks.
Head hidden from the wind, the power of form
Rises among these brightnesses, thorned and blowing.
Where they glow on the earth, water-drops tremble on them.
Soon we must cut them back, against damage of storms.
But those days gave us flower budded on flower,
A moment of light achieved, deep in the air of roses.
FOR MY SON
You come from poets, kings, bankrupts, preachers,
attempted bankrupts, builders of cities, salesmen,
the great rabbis, the kings of Ireland, failed drygoods
storekeepers, beautiful women of the songs,
great horsemen, tyrannical fathers at the shore of ocean,
the western mothers looking west beyond from their
windows,
the families escaping over the sea hurriedly and by night—
the roundtowers of the Celtic violet sunset,
the diseased, the radiant, fliers, men thrown out of town,
the man bribed by his cousins to stay out of town,
teachers, the cantor on Friday evening, the lurid
newspapers,
strong women gracefully holding relationship, the Jewish girl
going to parochial school, the boys racing their iceboats
on the Lakes,
the woman still before the diamond in the velvet window,
saying “Wonder of nature.”
Like all men,
you come from singers, the ghettoes, the famines, wars and
refusal of wars, men who built villages
that grew to our solar cities, students, revolutionists, the
pouring of buildings, the market newspapers,
a poor tailor in a darkening room,
a wilderness man, the hero of mines, the astronomer, a
white-faced woman hour on hour teaching piano and
her crippled wrist,
like all men,
you have not seen your father's face
but he is known to
you forever in song, the coast of the skies,
in dream, wherever you find man playing his
part as father, father among our light, among our
darkness,
and in your self made whole, whole with yourself and
whole with others,
the stars your ancestors.
POEM
I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other.
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.
I lived in the first century of these wars.
THE POWER OF SUICIDE
The potflower on the windowsill says to me
In words that are green-edged red leaves :
Flower flower flower flower
Today for the sake of all the dead Burst into flower.
1963
THE SEEMING
for Helen Lynd
Between the illuminations of great mornings
there comes the dailiness of doing and being
and the hand as it makes as it brightens burnishes
the surfaces seemings mirrors of the world
We do not know the springs of these colored and loving
acts or what triggers birth what sleep is
but name them as we name bird-wakened morning
having our verbs of the world
to which all action seems
to resolve, being
Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser Page 43
