Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

by Janet Kaufman

  it is on my teeth, the song

  it is pouring the song

  wine and lightning

  the rivers coming to confluence

  in me entire.

  5

  But that was years ago. My child is grown.

  His wife and he in exile, that is, home,

  longing for home, and I home, that is exile, the much-loved country

  like the country called parents, much-loved that was, and exile.

  His wife and he turning toward the thought

  of their own child, conceive we say, a child.

  Now rise in me the old dealings : father, mother,

  not years ago, but in my last-night dream,

  waking this morning, the two Mexican figures

  black stone with their stone hollows I fill with water,

  fill with wine, with oil, poems and lightning.

  Black in morning dark, the sky going blue,

  the river going blue.

  Moving toward new form I am—

  carry again

  all the old gifts and wars.

  6

  Black parental mysteries

  groan and mingle in the night.

  Something will be born of this.

  Pay attention to what they tell you to forget

  pay attention to what they tell you to forget

  pay attention to what they tell you to forget

  Farewell the madness of the guardians

  the river, the window, they are the guardians,

  there is no guardian, it is all built into me.

  Do I move toward form, do I use all my fears?

  PAINTERS

  In the cave with a long-ago flare

  a woman stands, her arm up. Red twig, black twig, brown twig.

  A wall of leaping darkness over her.

  The men are out hunting in the early light

  But here in this flicker, one or two men, painting

  and a woman among them.

  Great living animals grow on the stone walls,

  their pelts, their eyes, their sex, their hearts,

  and the cave-painters touch them with life, red, brown, black,

  a woman among them, painting.

  RUNE

  The word in the bread feeds me,

  The word in the moon leads me,

  The word in the seed breeds me,

  The word in the child needs me.

  The word in the sand builds me,

  The word in the fruit fills me,

  The word in the body mills me,

  The word in the war kills me.

  The word in the man takes me,

  The word in the storm shakes me,

  The word in the work makes me,

  The word in the woman rakes me,

  The word in the word wakes me.

  HOW WE DID IT

  We all traveled into that big room,

  some from very far away

  we smiled at some we knew

  we did not as we talked agree

  our hearts went fast thinking of morning

  when we would walk along the path.

  We spoke. Late night. We disagreed.

  We knew we would climb the Senate steps.

  We knew we would present our claim

  we would demand : be strong now : end the war.

  How would we do it? What would we ask?

  “We will be warned,” one said. “They will warn us and take us.”

  “We can speak and walk away.”

  “We can lie down as if in mourning.”

  “We can lie down as a way of speech,

  speaking of all the dead in Asia.”

  Then Eqbal said, “We are not at this moment

  a revolutionary group, we are

  a group of dissenters. Let some, then,

  walk away, let some stand until they want to leave,

  let some lie down and let some be arrested. Some of us.

  Let each do what he feels at that moment

  tomorrow.” Eqbal's dark face.

  The doctor spoke, of friendships made in jail.

  We looked into each other's eyes

  and went all to our rooms, to sleep,

  waiting for morning.

  ISLANDS

  O for God's sake

  they are connected

  underneath

  They look at each other

  across the glittering sea

  some keep a low profile

  Some are cliffs

  The bathers think

  islands are separate like them

  BLUE SPRUCE

  Of all green trees, I love a nevergreen

  blue among dark blue, these almost black

  needles guarded the door there was, years

  before the white guardians over Sète

  …that's Sea France at the Sea Cemetery

  near Spain where Valéry…

  those short square Mediterranean

  man and woman

  couple at the black-cut shadow door

  within the immense marine

  glare of noon,

  and on the beach

  leaning from one strong hip

  a bearded Poseidon

  looking along the surface of the sea

  father and husband there he stands

  and an invisible woman him beside

  blue-eyed blue-haired blue-shadowed

  under the sun and the moon

  they blaze upon us

  and we waiting waiting

  swim to the source

  very blue evening now deepening

  needles of light ever new

  a tree of light and a tree of darkness

  blue spruce

  ARTIFACT

  When this hand is gone to earth,

  this writing hand and the paper beneath it,

  long gone, and the words on the paper forgotten,

  and the breath that slowly curls around earth with

  its old spoken words

  gone into lives unborn and they too gone to earth—

  and their memory, memory of any of these gone,

  and all who remembered them absorbed in air and dirt,

  words, earth, breeze over the oceans, all these now other,

  there may as in the past be something left,

  some artifact. This pen. Will it tell my? Will it tell our?

  This thing made in bright metal by thousands unknown to me,

  will it arrive with that unnameable wish to speak a music,

  offering something out of all I moved among?

  singing for others unknown a long-gone moment in old time sung?

  The pen—

  will some broken pieces be assembled by women, by guessing men

  (or future mutations, beings unnamed by us)—

  can these dry pieces join? Again go bright? Speak to you then?

  MS. LOT

  Well, if he treats me like a young girl still,

  That father of mine, and here's my sister

  And we're still traveling into the hills—

  But everyone on the road knows he offered us

  To the Strangers when all they wanted was men,

  And the cloud of smoke still over the twin cities

  And mother a salt lick the animals come to—

  Who's going to want me now?

  Mother did not even know

  She was not to turn around and look.

  God spoke to Lot, my father.

  She was hard of hearing. He knew that.

  I don't believe he told her, anyway.

  What kind of father is that, or husband?

  He offered us to those men. They didn't want women.

  Mother always used to say:

  Some normal man will come along and need you.

  BOYS IN THE BRANCHES

  Blue in the green trees, what are they climbing?

  And girls bringing water, what are they watering

  With their buckets spilli
ng the wet dark on dry ground?

  And up the hill the concrete-mixers rolling

  Owned by my father when I was the same youth

  As these who are my students, boys in the branches,

  Young women in the young trees.

  The last few drops from the faucet, carried

  To the tan crumbling earth.

  The earth belongs to the authorities

  Of this college, and the authorities

  Have turned the water off, have they?

  Ask the owners of colleges, who is in the trees?

  Ask the owners of concrete-mixers, who is holding

  This acre of city land against the concrete?

  We know where the water is.

  Blue green students in the branches

  Defending the tree. The trees begin to shudder.

  The concrete-mixers roll over exposed roots.

  But isn't all this a romantic delusion?

  You love the pouring of the city, don't you?

  You need the buildings, don't you?

  Sift the seeds. We need to sift the seeds.

  We know where the water is.

  They have turned the water off.

  You don't want buildings not to be built, do you?

  The blueprint lies on the flat-top desk.

  The building now is two years built,

  Most of the boys went off to war,

  I don't teach there any more.

  Here we go, swimming to civilization,

  We who stand and water and sift the seeds,

  My students saying their word, it flies behind what I hear in the air:

  “Time is God's blood,” Warren said. Avra wrote:

  “Forgive me, Mother. I am alive.”

  SONG : LYING IN DAYLIGHT

  Lying in daylight, in the strong

  light of all our fantasies,

  now touch speaking to touch, touch sees—

  night and light, the darkness-stare,

  your long look that pierces where

  light never came till now—

  moving is what we do,

  moving we are, searching,

  going high and underground,

  rain behind rain pouring down,

  river under river going

  silence on silence

  sound under sound.

  HYPNOGOGIC FIGURE

  A translation, from Gunnar Ekelöf

  In woods you know stands the wonder-working madonna

  You stub your foot on the plinth when you walk lost

  among trees

  She looks like your small bronze bell, the one in the

  shape of

  a little girl with a stand-up collar

  But it is limitless and dark, of tarnished silver

  When you crawl under her skirt, you will see the inside

  but up there, the clapper is gone, nothing is hanging down;

  bulging like Atreus' treasure-chamber, a great bell

  Ask for her sons, there are many, X, Y and Z

  You may find a door in the creases of underwear

  and grope your way up along peculiar stairways

  winding in precarious spirals like the climb up the tower at Pisa

  You are dizzy already. The risers are irregular

  Gravity works against the spiral and the balance

  you thought built-in no longer functions, you stumble

  Above the vault is her waist, you see it as her belt

  from the inside, a shimmer of colors, yellow violet and blood-red

  It is studded with square-cut stones rose-stones garnets

  aquamarines and chrysolites and amethysts

  Each stone is a chamber, a triangle pointing inward

  along two sides are divans, the hypotenuse is the window

  or a rectangle with three divans and a table in the middle

  You can walk from room to room or take your ease

  responding to color and your state of being. You can go all the way

  You will still never get back. Your vision has changed.

  I have been higher up—I could not see the heart

  but saw the jewel on her breast like a rose-window shimmering

  upon her breasts. Once I went higher up, once only:

  in her Head. There was empty space. You floated in

  weightlessness.

  THE LOST ROMANS

  Where are they, not those young men, not those

  young women

  Who walked among the bullet-headed Romans with their

  roads, their symmetry, their iron rule—

  We know the dust and bones they are gone to, those

  young Romans

  Who stood against the bitter imperial, their young

  green life with its poems—

  Where are the poems made music against the purple

  Setting their own purple up for a living sign,

  Bright fire of some forgotten future against empire,

  Their poems in the beautiful Roman tongue

  Sex-songs, love-poems, freedom-songs?

  Not only the young, but the old and in chains,

  The slaves in their singing, the fierce northern

  gentle blond rhythms,

  The Judean cantillations, lullabies of Carthage,

  Gaul with her cries, all the young Roman rebels,

  Where are their songs? Who will unlock them,

  Who will find them for us, in some undiscovered

  painted cave

  For we need you, sisters, far brothers, poems

  of our lost Rome.

  CANAL

  Sea-shouldering Ithaca

  staring past sunset

  after the islands

  darkening closing

  The narrow night. We

  came in from Ithaca

  into the inland

  narrow water

  trying to keep awake

  while the ship went forward

  but sleep came down

  shouldering

  down like Ithaca.

  Night smites, light smites

  and again light

  in a narrow place

  of old whiteness.

  We are in

  the narrowest place

  moving in still

  through an ash-white canal

  a whitened plant

  grappled to this wall

  deep-cut, Judean slaves

  cut the narrowest place

  the ship fares into,

  light smites again

  the olive-plant in the crevice

  captained through light.

  FOR KAY BOYLE

  What is the skill of this waking? Heard the singing

  of that man rambling up Frederick Street in music

  and his repeated ecstasy, in a long shaken line.

  After many and many a February storm, cyclamen

  and many a curtain of rain, the tearing of all curtains

  and, as you said, making love and facing the police

  in one afternoon. A few bright colors in permanent ink:

  black sea, light like streetlight green, blue sees in you

  the sun and the moon that stand as your guardians.

  And the young bearded rebels and students tearing it all away,

  all of it, down to the truth that barefaced naked act of

  light, streamings of the courage of the sources,

  the sun and the moon that stand at your ears.

  RESURRECTION OF THE RIGHT SIDE

  When the half-body dies its frightful death

  forked pain, infection of snakes, lightning, pull down the

  voice. Waking

  and I begin to climb the mountain on my mouth,

  word by stammer, walk stammered, the lurching deck of earth.

  Left-right with none of my own rhythms

  the long-established sex and poetry.

  I go running in sleep,

  but waking stumble down corridors of self, all
rhythms gone.

  The broken movement of love sex out of rhythm

  one halted name in a shattered language

  ruin of French-blue lights behind the eyes

  slowly the left hand extends a hundred feet

  and the right hand follows follows

  but still the power of sight is very weak

  but I go rolling this ball of life, it rolls

  and I follow it whole up the slowly-brightening slope

  A whisper attempts me, I whisper without stammer

  I walk the long hall to the time of a metronome

  set by a child's gun-target left-right

  the power of eyesight is very slowly arriving

  in this late impossible daybreak

  all the blue flowers open

  THE WARDS

  St. George's Hospital, Hyde Park Corner

  Lying in the moment, she climbs white snows;

  At the foot of the bed the chart relates.

  Here a man burns in fever; he is here, he is there,

  Five thousand years ago in the cave country.

  In this bed, I go wandering in Macao,

  I run all night the black alleys. Time runs

  Over the edge and all exists in all. We hold

  All human history, all geography,

  I cannot remember the word for what I need.

  Our explorations, all at the precipice,

  The night-table, a landscape of zebras,

  Transistor constellations. All this music,

  I heard it forming before I was born. I come

  In this way, to the place.

  Our selves lit clear,

  This moment giving me necessity

  Gives us ourselves and we risk everything,

  Walking into our life.

  THE SUN-ARTIST

  for Bob Miller

  1

  The opening of the doors. Dark.

  The opening of the large doors.

  Out of the daylight and the scent of trees

  and that lake where generations of swans

  no longer move among children. In a poisoned time.

  But the bright-headed children move.

  Dark, high, the beams of a huge building

  exposed in the high dark air.

  I see brightness with a shock of joy.

  2

  Past the darkness a lashing of color.

  Not color, strands of light.

  Not light but pure deep color beyond color,

  like the pure fierce light I once knew, before