not allowed reading not allowed writing
not allowed his woman his friends his unknown friends
and the strong infant beginning to run.
We go down the prison hill. On our right, sheds
full of people all leaning forward, blown on some ferry.
“They are the families of the prisoners. Some can visit.
They are waiting for their numbers to be called.”
How shall we venture home?
How shall we tell each other of the poet?
How can we meet the judgment on the poet,
or his execution? How shall we free him?
How shall we speak to the infant beginning to run?
All those beginning to run?
Juvenilia
ANTIGONE
Faithful ever to thy brother,
Risking everything, e’en life,
Careless of the scorn of others,
Quelling all internal strife.
While in the bare cave around you,
Stood the somber shades of night,
Did you pray that Jove would save you,
Did you wish again for light?
Antigone! Through song and story
Lives your name and ever will,
While the sages, gray and hoary,
See the rock-cave on the hill.
When you died for Polynices,
To save him from endless shame,
Did you tear your soul in pieces,
Just to save your brother's name?
Faithful ever to thy brother,
Yes, you gave your all, your life,
Did not heed the scorn of others,
And you quelled the inward strife.
CITIES OF THE MORNING
This is the music of the cities of the morning:
Pounding of steel girders, clank of broken chains,
Cries of wordy prophets, shouting out a warning
To the silent, smiling watchers in the busy crowd;
Shouting out a warning to the new generations,
Bidding them look up, shoulder to the morning,
Brush back the clouds from the foreheads of the nations,
Beat their drums of challenge in the Eastern countries,
Stack up golden grain in the larders of the city.
Exploit the farmers, use all their produce,
Harry their homes and their land without pity…….
In one of the houses a woman is singing,
Singing this refrain to an infant in a cradle:
“—All the sons of morning to your hands are bringing
Gifts of gold, and gifts of jewels, and their flags unfurled—
The journey's just started, the joy is yet yours,
Gather the blossoms of the wide, wide world.”
This is the music of the cities of the morning:
Pounding of the girders, rattling of trains,
Paeans of church organs, sound of children singing,
And the soft, sweet stillness of the glad refrains:
“All the sons of morning to our hands are bringing
Gifts of gold, and gifts of silver, and their flags unfurled—
The journey's just started, the joy is yet ours,
We'll gather the blossoms of the wide, wide world.”
AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN
More lovely this,
With the pale dying flowers that fall and hide
The pebbles of the path,
Than the profusion of the budding Spring.
More holy this,
With the dim gentleness of failing winds,
Than any hour blessed
By sacral book and ritual-mouthing priest.
More fragrant this,
The sweet grass in a russet, sheltered place,
Than soothest incense borne
Aslant through dusky aisles in some rich shrine.
Less bitter this
Grape, whose blue globe you crush in plucking it,
Than witching honey-dew
Drunk by enchanters on Midsummer Eve.
More mellow these
Fugitive colors of an Autumn day,
With deeper reds and golds
Than dyers use to tinge their finest stuffs.
More happy I
In falling flowers, gentle winds, smooth grapes,
Than ever mortal was
In the bright plenty of budding spring.
THE BALLAD OF THE MISSING LINES
Eve walked in the Garden of a Sunday morning,
Sunlight was her kirtle and her book a rose—
Where was she going, down the aisle of trees so primly?
No one knows.
Helen in her bower looked into her dressing-glass,
(Although of course the mirror was not invented yet,)
What did she think as she preened herself for Paris?
The songs forget.
Vivien was subtle by the age-old oak tree,
But that Merlin the enchanter was her dupe, I doubt,
What did she do when he loosed the magic bondage?
There are lines left out.
Isolt didn't worry if she'd make a good impression—
She was lovely in the daytime, she was charming in the dark—
We wonder how she looked when she woke up in the morning—
The answer rests with Mark.
Rapunzel in her tower was a witch—well, a beauty,
She made of her tow-head a long and golden snare;
But the fairy-tales forget what she said to her Prince Charming
The first time he tugged her hair.
Oh, the ladies of the romances were certainly alluring,
—No understanding reader entertains a single doubt—
But there must be more than one who'd be glad to get a glimpse of
Just a few of the lines they left out.
NOVEMBER SKETCHES
1
The brown, dead leaves
Are a flock of birds that hovers listlessly
Above the City—a flock of swallows
Wheeling and pirouetting
In an antique dance.
A brown, torn garment
On the grey, still city.
2
The thin, black fingers of the ash-tree
Are combing the wind in her bereavement.
The ash-tree is a dark, lone widow
Searching the winds
For her husband, the Springtime.
Searching the winds with tremulous fingers,
And mourning in loneliness.
3
Come back to us, little grey sister,
Grey ghost of the birch-tree.
Come back to us,
Your elderly relations.
We are prim old great-aunts,
We the pine-trees,
And bearded uncles,
We the old oak-trees.
Your little brothers, the maples,
Weep for you.
Come back to us, little grey sister,
Pale little ghost of the birch-tree.
4
There was frost on my window
This morning.—A delicate stencil
Of silvery patterns,
Of deep-drooping willows,
And heavy, fantastic, the ferns
That were scattered over the sill.
—An age-honored sign of the Winter,
An infallible omen of Winter.
5
The moon is not a crescent
As in September, (it shone above the rose-bush)
Nor a great globe of false sunlight
As in mid-July.
It is only a half-moon,
Half-moon of November,
High over the City,
Waiting for Winter.
6
The wind is an insolent braggart
That is hushed for an instant
In touching with arrogant lips the dead face
Of his mother
, the Earth.
And whispering sadly the old, old promise
Of resurrection.—
He has just come from kissing
The white shoulders of mountains,
And laughing and vowing
With a smile on his lips
The same promise of Springtime.
It is strange mockery that he should enter
The dark death-chamber
After revelry such as his.
7
No pagan gods are dancing in these fields,
But the wraith of Autumn,
The breath of Winter
Have made a rendez-vous in the orchard.
The fields
Are barren, and the young acacia-tree
Is numbed and frozen by the laugh of Death.
No pagan gods are dancing in November
8
These things are the heart of Autumn:
The fading of day,—
The mourning of all Nature—
A lighted window in the dreary darkness—
And the shallow laughter of heedless children
In the grey stone streets,
After the flowers have withered.
TO A LADY TURNING MIDDLE-AGED
Two years ago,
Four years ago,
Eight years ago,
Your hands were not iris-veined,
And red, and growing shrivelled,
Your voice was never like it is today
When, after tea, you say harmonious nothings
In a strange tone.
That has none of its old timbre.
Two years ago,
Four years ago,
When middle age was but an ugly dream
As now your youth is but a sweet brief dream
You were still lovely.
Now you sit
In the clustering twilight, and sip tea
And wonder about things you never thought of
In the old days.
Of course, you may say now,
Shrugging your shoulders,
(Once narrow as a countess',)
“I have but grown mature,
This is all stupid—I am quite young yet.”
But—
Two years ago,
Four years ago,
I never knew you to sit at windows
And watch the people passing in the street.
The other day you spoke about
The people and their faces,
And yet, three summers past,
You watched the lilacs in the little roadway,
And laughed, and sang gay songs
You may enjoy sitting there
By a narrow window
Looking down into a narrow street,
But you never used to like to sit there in the evening.
Two years ago,
Four years ago,
Eight years ago.
PLACE-POEMS: NEW YORK
O CITY
City,
O my delight! Nourishment to the fat,
Sword of abstraction killing the criers at the gate,
Flower of the world on a stem of wicked stone,
Call in the misted night, poem in monotone.
There is no standing above this city, no weeping Jesus
Pedestalled on tall cliffs above a sleeping town.
And the high world is made of white and shine and brown
(The people's maskings cemented straitly on them).
Sow the bridges, watch with smiling eyes,
the lines of pale lights bloom in the blue evenings.
(A man walks over the new bridge, feeling his weakness
and drops a penny into the sheer of blue space below,
and thinks during the long whistle of its fall:
“Their power, their power, their power.”
FOURTEENTH STREET
Oranges smell of the south. Chestnuts are warm. The paint
Savors and shines on the toys. The five-and-ten
Boxes so much color away from the mute faces
Serried outside. The subway swallows many. A few stand
To hear a shout that rises from the curb:
“Here, the world changes.—This is new, that one
Should stop on the street to cry a kind revolt
On the things that they tell us in chalk
Words set on blackboards for rows of years, that have won
Wars against gray uniforms and our own swordless tribes.
Here, my people, know yourselves: you are a beast that has foaled
A fabulous thing, a unicorn of truth at last, the Day has lit
The sky with a strange light, and your light part of it.”
No prophecies, no useless diatribes.
A soap-box is like a coffin, or an altar.
The crowd bears on in the runnels of its knowing,
And the brave words like a branch in a strong water's flowing.
But they will hear, they will falter,
They quicken and turn, and the mute faces speak.
THE NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH
St. Thomas' House: “And now I will believe;
Help Thou my unbelief.” Let us prod the wounds
Of the poor with a gentle finger, but let us prod the wounds
We must know if they bleed in truth,
We must know—we must have the truth.
Let us be decorously Liberal, O Lord,
Let us look around us gravely and quietly
Never forgetting that we have Faith and Traditions.
Yes, we recant our Bourgeois Superstitions,
But let us conduct our Research Quietly.
O Lord, help the poor people.—Lord, look at Mexico,
Dear Lord, watch over them on the Lower East Side
And intercede for us if we go to war with China.
Dear Lord, we really are interested in social experiment,
And Russia, we know, is Stimulating and Large—
Dear Lord, watch over us—we are such Very Nice People.
SHERIDAN SQUARE CONVERSATION
Mr. T. S. Eliot knows the potency of music,
Mr. T. S. Eliot knows the impact of bright words—
He has forgotten the caked hands, the muscle-banded shoulders,
In loving sounds swift birds.
This year's winter closes down upon the Square
In a cry of wind and a burden of batting-snow—
A bricklayer stands, and plunges into the subway;
Shall we use him as symbol? No,
Let us be done with symbols, we who talk
Over the healthy wood of the tables here,
Let us take him and point him out to the others,
Might forget his fears,
Not with a shallow Whitman-ish acceptation,
Not for what he is, but for what he gives his years,
Mr. T. S. Eliot (whom we consider) would forget the desert,
Might forget his fears.
Carrying a hod beside this man. We might do better
Than sit here mouthing opinions, by carrying a hod,
Raising a made thing high instead of a sentence,
Worshipping with this offering our literate god.
THE NEW BRIDGE
“Look,” the city child said, “they have built over the river.
It is a lovely curve. But think what might be:
A circle on that arch would be really something to see:—”
The toll-taker heard, and grinned, and spat. “Lord, what a kid!
Like them all,—wants a good thing to go on and on forever.
Tell him he ought to be glad they made what they did.”
Made what they did!…I saw the bridge built. One spring
A riveter stood high on the iron skeleton,
And the flakes of white fire fell and his hard face shone.
Men strung out cables. They were beautiful,
Cables and men, hard, polished, gleaming,—
/> The pride that the man-work should now prove fruitful!—
The states send automobiles over the Hudson River.
A man stands on the abyss, dropping a penny down,
Breathlessly watching the rush. Stand. The light of the town
Shine down the Drive, and the grim towers of empire
Are bright, burst, to kindle the evening; the torches shiver,
Flaming high, whirling the city into one strong wind of fire.
PARK AVENUE
Idols of luxury,
Gogs, Magogs,—
“The place where bad women
Walk good dogs.”
The dogs strut down
Park Avenue,
Their growls cultured,
Their blankets new,
Proud that their harness
Is well-shined.
They look well-dinnered
And well-wined.
They parley gravely
About the weather,
And never bother
To test their tether.
The wolfhounds amble,
The spaniels waddle
Each city pampers
Its special twaddle.
COLLEGE SPECIAL
Plush lines the metal train, making the steel
Furry and warm. And Araminta's mind
Is furry, as she paces the stone hall.
The flowers lie along her shoulder, breathing.
The pale young man trots dutifully beside.
The Terminal is smooth and proud and wide,
And a neat, painted sky roofs it down from the wind.
The tastes of earth grow blander here and thinned
as Araminta clicks along the tiling,
as Araminta buys her single ticket
From a face at a window, as Araminta walks
patiently and serenely to her train.
The young pale gentleman farewelled, she sits.
The engineer is hot; he grinds the butt at his heel.
The locomotive feels the sharp rebuke of steel on steel.
EMPIRE STATE TOWER
The far lands melt to orange and to grey.
The city lies, quiet but for a rumor,
A single voice. People are guessed. We hazard
The world we know is there, below, unseen.
And in the street the many beautiful
Unstaring walk unwaiting the knives of doom
In sleep, or death, or love—the beautiful people
Setting up parapets against space and time,
like this one where small contact is forgotten.
Pitiable remove, that we should ask to go
Away from earth, from the nudge of other minds;
Clumsy abstraction, that human beings forego
For a short quiet the sight of their own kinds;
O strong unlove against our fellows here,
Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser Page 55
