The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1
Page 65
Her upper teeth, said, No.
Thought versus Sense
I studied for a while the strange new impressions.
Type of erotic meeting I’d never attempted.
Took me a while, took more than a taking,
To sort out the feelings, distinguish the differences:
Squirmings and nips
And interior squeezings.
Strokings unlike a vale can do.
But then I quit studying,
And that was the greatest difference:
That my study dissolved into feeling.
I was pure feeling only.
Emulation
Bright embers, in their fire,
Which make no crackling sound,
No sound at all but wind.
In silence look around,
Stare now at their desire,
They did. And now they grinned.
Their eyes eyed each other then.
No benefit of speech.
O they have copied me
Often enough, and each
Has often wanted to be
Myself, or her, again.
Daniel Lyam Montross
Even in this. Yes, this.
They sought to probe what proving
Or prove what probing could
Copy us, mime our coupling.
They sealed it with a kiss,
Rose, and joined hands.
The Summons
They went and hid
(Or thought they did)
From Flossie, so
She wouldn’t see.
She waited long
Until they finished.
Anything wrong
Must take its time.
When they were done
And reappeared
She said, I’d feared
Y’uns’d plumb gone.
But now yo’re here,
We’ve got a chore,
A small affair
These times require.
So Day must play
His fiddle. You
Must dance your dance.
I’ll sing my song.
We three. And Dan.
Dan will call his story.
We’ll hear him call,
But we’ll be busy:
You in your dance.
Day on his strings.
Me with my voice.
To Dan’s tune and tale.
IV
* * *
The Ghost’s Song
ONE. THE OPENING
Lo lee lo-oh, lo lee oh!
Hearken to my sad, sad story.
Lo oh lee-oh, lee oh lee lo!
Of a love, and a brief glory.
Oh lee oh, lo lee-oh, lee lo lee-oh lo!
Of a girl of joy, who was the village hoor.
And the man she loved, a drunkard sure.
Lee lo, oh lo lee-oh, lo lee oh!
Ring of flesh, muscle-ring:
With this ring I thee wed,
To take me in and keep me
Even when I am limp,
To draw me, to pull me,
Swell me like a summer squash.
Ring a round a rosey.
She loves me like a locket.
Locked in liquored lacking,
Mired in more mere merriment,
I didn’t know,
I didn’t know she had a price.
Her father’s notion,
Sad father, poor father,
Shiftless wretched son of a bitch,
Son of a bastard too.
Nobody had money.
But there was barter.
I’m a human omen, Ammey,
Aim at home and hominy,
Ham omelets, ample amenities,
Harmony and empathy,
Images impossible.
The first time you asked me
For a gallon of my rakings of the hills,
I thought you wanted it
All for yourself
And thought you were too young.
Now “nay” means no or neigh not nigh.
He who knows how to hoe the hay when high
Can keep his cap and cup caped in a coop,
But a dope who’ll dip to such a depth is but a dupe.
Amen. O Ammey, my Omega,
Omphalos of my homing,
Amaze me with your amber hair,
Embarrass me among your emblems,
Amuse me with your ample impishness,
Embower me in your ring’s embrace.
But don’t ask me for barter.
I think the old bastard
Had taught her himself,
Had told her,
That this way was safest,
Would keep her from bigging.
And keep them from begging.
Keep him in liquor,
Keep them in food.
Keep her incapable
Of bearing a child.
I drank more than he did.
Only once, by accident,
I sobered up enough to learn
Lost Cove was laughing at me.
Too late.
I was in love.
TWO. THERE AND HERE
Oh lee lo-oh, lo lee oh!
Oh see the pore thing, a-settin
All by herself in yan meader,
A-pluckin daisy petals, one by one,
Lo oh lee-oh, lo lee-oh, lee lo lee oh!
He loves me,
He don’t.
He’ll have me,
He won’t.
He would if he could,
But he can’t.
He said for me
To run away
With him and go
Some other place.
It scares me so
To think of it,
Of what’s beyond
These mountains, where
No one is kin
Nor blood of mine.
What’s left of my life
Is here at home,
Is all I’ve known, or can.
This place is me.
I am this place.
Is what I had to say to Dan.
If my father says,
Go milk the cow,
It’s all the same to me as when he says,
Go milk them men.
We do what we’re told, to live.
But oh, there is a me
That’s only his.
And he knows it.
The other of me
That opens for him.
More than one opening.
He knows a word he calls it.
It, he says. It’s what he calls it
My heart I called it, or my soul.
A me that nobody’s ever known.
I am Ammey. Am me. I am
Me alone.
Oh, to them other fellers
And their quick-shootin pestles,
I’m just a hole
Where they poke and squirt,
And pay, a chunk of pork,
A plucked chicken, or a turn of meal,
A bushel of corn, leastways,
Or at least a peck.
Ass, they call it,
Gettin all slaunch-eyed and drooling,
Up your sweet asshole honey-babe!
They don’t last long, a minute.
A bushel of corn for a minute.
But they are there,
And him, he’s here.
In love of him I smile
From ear to ear.
He knows my heart,
That names it It
And seeks to find
Its deepest part.
I know his too.
We tell, we share
The thoughts we bear
Until no wall
Is left between.
He loves me,
He don’t.
He’ll have me,
He won’t.
He would if he could,
But he can’t.
THREE. THE ARRANGEMENT
Lo oh lee-oh, lee oh
lo lee!
O many a year went by, went by,
And many a day, lo lee oh!
The drunkard he drank and didn’t try.
Oh lo oh lo oh lo oh lo oh lo lee-oh!
He lost his gal to another man
And she was sad it wasn’t Dan.
Oh Jesus Christ lo lee-oh!
Walt Ailing.
His wife died on him.
Worked to death, more than likely.
So he bargained with Carlisle Ledyard:
Corn and more corn, in perpetuity:
Get that girl off her ass:
Take her into my house:
Take her away from that drunkard:
Make her my second wife-woman, sort of:
Keep you in all the corn you need,
Fair deal?
And Carlisle Ledyard dealt her.
She cried.
I held her.
Rage held me.
God help me.
There’s no God.
Please, Ammey,
Go with me,
Is that worse
Than living
With Ailing?
She said no.
But going
Is much worse
Than staying.
She lived with him. But stayed by me. An odd policy.
Wedded we were, as much as man and wife. I was glad that
Ailing took her off the “streets.” (There were no streets
Except those in her father’s mind.) She was a wife now,
Not a whore. Though neither mine. Six children by him,
By his first wife, became hers. Were her hard labor.
He wouldn’t give her one of her own. Even if he could.
On hunts the squirrels mock me:
Who are you? Stump? Stump?
Not a stump? What the deuce!
Lawk! the cuckold! Lawk the drunk!
Run, run, run! Lawk, the booger-man!
He’d been a “customer,” was how he knew of her.
And now he liked to take his pleasure whene’er he liked.
She didn’t mind. He was just one. There were no more.
Except the one who was not one of them, but me.
I stayed her love. I kept that part of her
That Walt Ailing never knew. He never knew.
Until the end.
Ammey Ammey Ammey
My nice, my neat, my neither.
Oh me, oh my, Ammey,
There is no other, either.
FOUR. THE BIRTHING
Lo lee lee lee! Lee lo lee-oh lo!
That gal she bigged and bore,
Or tried to bear, you see.
Lo lee-oh, oh lo lee-oh lee!
Her own dear mother was midwife,
But her man was gone, and her love was drunk,
And she died to birth that girl-child.
Lo lee-oh lo-oh, oh lo, boo hoo boo hoo.
She tried to keep it hid from him. That swelling belly, beltless.
She told him she was only getting fat. He believed her.
Only her mother knew, and me. Her mother, the “yarb doctor,”
Aunt Billie, was called, to bring strong doses of hot pepper tea
To “fetch on the child-thing.” And before the night was over,
Aunt Billie had used every herb she ever tried.
Nothing worked. (The village wags later said the pore creeter
Must’ve been tryin to git out the back way.)
Somebody came and told me, and I sobered up on black coffee
And rode ole Henry twenty miles at a hard gallop
To fetch a real doctor, and bring him back.
He saved the baby,
But not the mother.
She lived just long enough
To see it, and to name it
Annette, or Annie.
I lived for months, drunk, beside her grave.
And then I sobered up, for good.
FIVE. THE DUEL
Lo lee to-oh, lo lee oh!
A year went by, and another year,
While Walt got worse and worser,
His grudge it festered in his heart
Until he knew that Dan must die.
Lo! Lee! Lo! Oh! Oh! Lo! Lee-oh!
He kept telling his friends it wasn’t his fault.
He never lost a chance to tell anybody who’d listen
That he’d never been inside of Ammey’s vault,
That in fact he’d not even known she had one.
Oh, he got himself a third “wife-woman,” easy enough.
But he went on brooding. And giving me hard looks.
And he and his new wife-woman both mistreated the baby.
In time it came to this:
Get lost, or ready to die.
All the Ailings backed him.
He wouldn’t take me on
In a fight, man for man.
But he still thought
He could outshoot me.
I spent an hour at Ammey’s grave before giving him “satisfaction.”
And then I met him on the Clinchfield railroad tracks
On a straight stretch: the distance was three hundred yards.
Yes, we agreed on it: the distance had to be three hundred yards.
It takes a terrible keen eye just to see anything that far.
Swinn Brashear stood halfway and waved his red handkerchief.
My first shot missed him.
First time I’d ever missed.
But his first shot missed.
Whistled past my ear.
His second shot missed too.
Went through my shirt sleeve.
I cried for Ammey and I aimed
And hit him in his heart.
Old Woman’s Last Words
To want to git some other place.
I know that wish.
Hit was lately Feb’wary, and winter done gone.
I ast’em, When d’you’uns reckon you’ll be lightin out?
They’d a heap sight git a soon start, they tole.
I ’member me right well their last and final night:
Me tellin the last of the tale:
How Dan, after he kilt Walt with his rifle-gun,
Stole that girl-baby Annie and lit a rag
Fer some other mountains, some other place.
Didn’t nobody never lay eyes on ’em again.
Then that gal, Diana, she called to me in despair,
I can’t find Day! He’s lost! Or gone! Or hiding!
Or maybe, says I, he wudn’t never here to begin with anyhow.
Which sot her to cryin powerful miserable.
And so I said, Shush, chile, I was jist a-twittin ye.
Come, says I, I’ll holp ye to fine him.
We looked and we looked, high and low, all over.
But I found him way out a-settin under a sourwood tree.
Jist settin thar kindly wishful-like.
We called him to home for their last night.
He said he’d jist been thinkin on how he’d done
Jist as good a job of tellin Dan’s story
Back in the place they were before they come here.
Diana said, You did. I apologize, Day,
For thinking that these poems could do it better.
Dan’s wrong. Maybe nobody can tell his story,
Least of all himself.
And then, afore they went to bed, I tole as how
I’d not see ’em, come day-bust, so we’d best say our goodbyes.
I tole as how I’d had a right smart of enjoyment.
They said the same.
Don’t brood on Dan, says I. We didn’t used to know nothin
Up hyur in these mountains…except that we was alivin.
We warn’t a town, jist a place, godforsaken.
Dan made us a town, for a little while.
And now, younguns, goodnight and far thee weel. Live long.
When they went to bed, I took Dan’s second stick,
His rifle-gun, and broke it, chunked in the far.
All his sticks I chunked into the far.
Their last far, that last night, hit blazed and popped
Turrible loud and turrible hot. The sparks got out
Of hand, and lit the house. The house, my house
Commenced to burn. I cried and tried to
Wake them, but they were fast asleep,
And couldn’t never hear me.
They must a been dreaming,
Deep dreams.
The Dreaming
We dream our lives, and live our sleep’s extremes.
The one is to the other not as real.
We fabricate our future in our dreams.
The present moment isn’t what it seems.
Experience is only what we feel.
Our lives are dreamt. In sleep we live extremes.
The past is prologue, as the Bard proclaims.
It made us what we are. Let’s turn the deal
By fabricating future in our dreams.
Our night will wake to day from sound of screams.
But so our day will yearn for night to heal.
We dream our days, and live our night’s extremes.
The future enters us in bits and gleams
In order that its brightness may reveal
How we can learn to make it in our dreams.
The past is history’s. The present, schemes
Of chance or temporality can steal.
We dreamt our lives, and lived our sleep’s extremes.
We’ll fabricate our future in our dreams.
Fourth Movement
* * *
A Dream of a Small but Unlost Town
Happy are they who are happy; for there is no one to give them what they haven’t got.
—The Second Beatitude of Daniel
1
I’ll call you “G.”
Let it stand for Gumshoe, for Guide, for Guru, for Gardener, for Guzzler, for Gallynipper, for whatever you like. I’m in a hurry; out of your respect for secrecy and my disinclination to cast about for some such ludicrous anagrammatization as “Danian Goldthorn” or “Hondio Grantland” or—in a hurry, I said—“Thorndolan Gandi,” I’ll simply call you “G.”
When you were a little guy, oh five or so, you saw a movie, on one of the weekly Saturday afternoon trips when your uncle took you into the small county seat of “Jessup” [I have to shade all of them, don’t I?], a movie about the capture of kidnappers by government men, and on the way home you announced to your uncle, self-importantly, that it was henceforth your intention to be a “G-man” when you grew up. Whenever your uncle saw you after that, he would grin and call you “G.” The nickname stuck, replacing that auroral diminutive they’d all of them known you by, although, when you did manage to grow up, you never became anything remotely resembling a G-man.