Collecte Works
Page 7
a sharp, frosty gale.
In England unpacked
them with fear:
must I migrate back
to the woods unknown, strange
to all but the birds
I paint?
Dear Lucy, the servants here
move quiet
as killdeer.
van Gogh
At times I sit in the dunes,
faint, not enough to eat.
The path thru the dunes
is like a desert…the family's shoes
patched and worn and many more
such views.
What a woman!—hooks men like rugs,
clips as she hooks, prefers old wool, but all
childlike, lost, houseowning or pensioned men
her prey. She covets the gold in her husband's teeth.
She'd sell dirt, she'd sell your eyes fried in deep grief.
The brown muskrat, noiseless,
swims the white stream,
stretched out as if already
a woman's neck-piece.
In Red Russia the Russians
at a mile a minute
pitch back Nazi wildmen
wearing women.
The broad-leaved Arrow-head
grows vivid and strong
in my book, says: underneath
the surface of the stream the leaves
are narrow, long.
I don't investigate,
mark the page…I suppose
if I sat down beside a frost
and had no printed sign
I'd be lost. Well, up
from lying double in a book,
go long like a tree
and broad as the library.
“New Goose” Manuscript
To a Maryland editor, 1943:
The enclosed poems are sepa-
rated by stars to save paper.
Dear MacCloud:
the poems called Goose
separated by stars
to save the sun—
“We couldn't get away
with these down here
in the south on the brow
of Washington”—
appeared: your night's
folk-tongue.
Summer's away, I traded my chicks for trees
so winter's tea-kettle on the high wood stove
my feet to the heat
my back in the shade
will tally with the tit-wit that sang
from the upmost branch.
She was a mourner too. Now she's gone
to the earth's core,
with organ notes, buried by church that buries the live,
intoning: That torture called by men delight
touches her no more.
So calm she looked, half smiling: Heaven?
No, restore
my matter, never free from motion,
to the soil's roar.
Seven years a charming woman wore
her coat, removed the collar where it tore,
little warmth but honor in her loose
thin coat, without knowing why
she's so. Charming? Well, she's destitute.
The land of four o'clocks is here
the five of us together
looking for our supper.
Half past endive, quarter to beets,
seven milks, ten cents cheese,
lost, our land, forever.
Just before she died
my little grandma with her long, long hair
put her hand on mine: I'm nearly there.
What'll I do all my life,
I cried, my work's cut short; I've a share
in the speed-up; a long, long race to spare.
Brought the enemy down
as his descendents the bombs
blew up Somerset House—
staircase at least
where records go down
to Shakespeare who never ceased.
Nothing nourishing,
common dealtout food;
no better reading
than keeps us destitute.
The number of Britons killed
by German bombs equals
the number of lakes in Wisconsin.
But more German corpses
in Stalingrad's ruins
than its stones.
Old Hamilton hailed the man from the grocery store:
What's today, Friday? Thursday! Oh,
nothing till tomorrow.
Motor cars
like china
sometimes chink each other.
Will the speeding sugar bowl
of taffy color
stop to eat people?
Allied Convoy
Reaches Russia
The ship that saved us—Uncle Joe!
Guns a quarter-mile long!
Red Comrades start their tanks in the hold,
climb in on the dock and are gone.
Depression years
My daughters left home
I was job-certified
to rake leaves
in New Madrid.
Now they tell me my girls
should support me again
and they're not out of debt
from the last time they did.
Coopered at Fish Creek,
farmed at Egg Harbor,
teamed on the ice from Green Bay to Death's Door,
kept hotel till it burned,
fished and returned
to the Creek, then started for more.
Tennessee, Black Hills,
now my farm at Lost Lake,
and that'll be the end of J.E. Thorp.
A working man appeared in the street
in soldiers suit, no work, no peace.
What'r you doing in that dress,
a policeman said, where's the fight?
And after they took him for a ride
in the ambulance, they made arrest
for failure to molest.
Woman with Umbrella
Lonely woman, not prompted
by freshness from the sky
to run with friends and laugh it off,
arrives unsparkling but dry—
she's felt the prongs of her own advance
thru the crowded street,
knows that lonely
she is dangerous to meet.
Automobile Accident
Not finding where the flowers were
he seized a tree.
…
Airplane or star?—so bright!
Star. I saw it last night.
Look, the woods, the sky, our home.
It's going to rain and if we're wise
we'll go in the wood and get us home
some chunks to keep us warm.
And while we're cutting trees it rains
and we are wise to go home
to keep from getting stiff and great.
Coming out of Sleep
O rock my baby on the tree tops
and blow me a little tin horn.
They've got us suckin the hind tit
and that's the way I was born.
O let me rise to the door-knob
and let me buy my way.
I know the owner of the store
and that's the way I was raised.
Voyageurs
sang, rowed
their canoes full of furs,
sang as they rowed.
Ten minutes every hour
rested their load.
I walked
from Chicago to Big Bull Falls (Wausau),
eighteen-forty-four,
two weeks,
little to eat.
Came night
I wrapped myself in a piece of bark
and slept beside a log.
See the girls in shorts on their bicycles
right here in Janesville. And why?—
no modesty anymore,
all gone by.
When Johnny (Chapman) Appleseed
he covered it with apple trees.
He was the early American apple
who changed the earth by dropping seeds.
He walked all over the mid-west states.
His trees grew while he slept.
Gave to the poor tho he himself
lived on roots and had no bed.
Nor had he a wife. Nor creed
that embraced grafting. Johnny
reproduced by seed.
Tell me a story about the war.
All right, six lines, no child should hear more.
The marshal of France made quite a clatter:
Dear people, I know you're too hungry to flatter
but eat your beef-ounce from a doll's platter,
you'll think it's a roast wrapped in a batter.
Along came the bishop his robe a tatter:
Sleep and it won't matter.
Poet Percival said: I struck a lode
but it was only a bunch in a chimney
without any opening
and as I left a sucker jumped me…
This is truly a rich and beautiful country.
Terrible things coming up,
these trailer houses.
People want to live in em,
park all over,
set out for somewhere,
never come home.
Nice!—
needn't clean anything,
just throw it out the window
onto somebody else.
Shiftless life!
1937
In the picture soldiers
moving thru a field
of flowers,
Spanish reds.
The flowers of war
move cautiously
not to tread
the wild heads.
Here we last,
lilacs, vacant lots,
taxes, no work,
debts, the wind widens
the grass.
In the old house
the clocks are dead,
past dead.
Their apples fall down
and rot on the ground—
they don't spray their trees,
trees need care.
You can tell they're no good
that live there.
Apples are high—
that shows they're scarce,
still the stores always seem to have plenty.
Can't get a price
the farmers say—
I guess it's because there'r too many.
The government men said Don't plant wheat,
we've got too much, just keep out weeds.
Our crop comes up thru change of season
to be stored for what good reason
way off and here we need it—Eat
who can, who can't—Don't grow wheat
or corn but quack-grass-bread!
Such things they plant around my head.
1945–1956
New!
Reason explodes. Atomic split
shows one element
Jew
Now hide
who can bombarded particles
of international
pride
(L.Z.)
“An acre of music”
or a room closer to it
movement, rest, repeat,
for those making music
but not allowed to hear it
and those in peril
on the street
Chimney Sweep
He fished the black deep
to eat,
swam the river, struck a stone
before he could sleep.
One Sunday morning,
unlearned in all but soot,
he flashed and went down
in a book.
Swept snow, Li Po,
by dawn's 40-watt moon
to the road that hies to office
away from home.
Tended my brown little stove
as one would a cow—she gives heat.
Spring—marsh frog-clatter peace
breaks out.
Regards to Mr. Glover
Yes, I've lived a good life—cows, the soil—
but what do we know for sure? Light from stars
dead a billion years still pricks…see!…
I can't conceive…let the cost of war out
of it. You say each birthday you know more,
better. Well. I don't. And I'm not stuck
in that old stuff: cosmos versus puny
man, God, no. What is life? (not always
does one feel this intimate) My only
fear: I'll go blind before I give
the soil my phosphorus. And you, my friend,
happy anniversary.
Sunday's motor-cars
jar the house.
When I'm away on work-days
hear the rose-breast.
Love the night, love the night
and if on waking it rains:
little drops of rest.
Let's play a game.
Let's play Ask for a job.
What can you do?
I can hammer and saw
and feed a dog.
You'll do! Take this slip
to the department of song.
You must ask me where I'm from.
Oh yes, you're from the country
called The Source.
Will the nurse in your plant
give me sweet pills?
No! We're not at war.
One console-ation is:
we can always play
Ask for a job.
Lugubre for a child
but for you, little one,
life pops
from a music box
shaped like a gun.
Watch! In some flowers
a hammer drops down
like a piano key's
and honeybees
wear a pollen gown.
A hammer, a hummer!
A bomber in feathers!
Hummingbirds fly
backwards—we eye
blurred propellers.
Dear fiddler: you'll carry
a counter that sings
when man sprays
rays
on small whirring things.
Could You Be Right
He asked: Will man obsolesce
when he sends the rays against himself?
And she, sore-pressed: Absurd!—
obsolesce is not a word.
But think of Troy, it was a word
before we dug and found that world…
yet ah, girl with Helen's light,
could you be right?
Look close
the senses don't get it all
a few hundred thousandths of a centimeter
in wave length and you see the mark
or you don't
Sylvashko and Robertson
shook hands hard
and the air was loaded
and after tea vodka—
“To the friendship of our countries”—
guilty of reason
matter that day
hit home
If I were a bird
I'd be a dainty contained cool
Greek figurette
on a morning shore—
H.D.
I'd flitter and feed and delouse myself
close to Williams' house
and his kind eyes
I'd be a never-museumed tinted glass
breakable from the shelves of Marianne Moore.
On Stevens' fictive sibilant hibiscus flower
I'd poise myself, a cuckoo, flamingo-pink.
I'd plunge the depths with Zukofsky
and all that means—stirred earth,
cut sky, organ-sounding, resounding
anew, anew.
I'd prick the sand in cunning, lean,
Cummings irony, a little drunk dead sober.<
br />
Man, that walk down the beach!
I'd sit on a quiet fence
and sing a quiet thing: sincere, sincere.
And that would be Reznikoff.
High, lovely, light,
the Easter cake was beaten
electrically and eaten
down. Cousins, good night.
Child at your mountain-height—
your cello and bow in Easter's
high, lovely, light,
climb this one, tone feaster:
What eggs them on to bite
a frosted muff, to sneeze on,
sleep? To what season
are they tuned tight,
high, lovely, light?
Letter from Paul
It is yes with a lyre, ax and shovel
and snowman falling down.
This is my mother's birthday.
“Don't buy me a present”—what a sound—
“don't
we can't afford it.” Selfish of her.
And when Mozart was five
just plain 5
how proud his father was
that his son had played
every single note.
Two old men—
one proposed they live together
take turns cooking, washing dishes
they were both alone.
His friend: “Our way of living
is so different:
you spit
I don't spit.”
Paul, hello
what do you know
Goodbye
why