His grey diaries
instanced with Rose
Liver here tonight
Tomorrow we dine out
tho not like him
at Club Metaphysical
1965–1967
Autumn
Ice
on the minnow bucket
and a school of leaves
moving downstream
Last night the trash barrel
smoked from lighted paper
This morning
from sun burning
the frost
The boy tossed the news
and missed
They found it
on the bush
Popcorn-can cover
screwed to the wall
over a hole
so the cold
can't mouse in
Truth
gives heat
He blushed
when I said
before he came
I never wore beads
Lights, lifts
parts nicely opposed
this white
lice lithe
pink bird
O late fall
marsh—
I
raped by the dry
weed stalk
CHURCHILL'S DEATH
I was painting the
Whooping Crane, the
fingers-flying-pinnae
when the news came
Air Minister
Sir Bird-White
man-high
yard-long stride
over
and out
…
The funeral
Out of the great courtyard
past the Tower that can be seen
on a winter day
the Tramp of Time
via Telstar
so that we may go
with him
The Badlands
Adlai Steven-
son's death
We'd have danced
to sandstone spooks
in a beige land
but for stratified
vacancy
A student
my head always down
of the grass as I mow
I missed the cranes.
“These crayons fly
in a circle ahead”
said a tall fellow.
Bird singing
ringing yellow
green
My friend made green
ring
—his painting—
grass
the sweet bird
flew in
Easter Greeting
I suppose there is nothing
so good as human
immediacy
I do not speak loosely
of handshake
which is
of the mind
or lilies—stand closer—
smell
CITY TALK
I
The flower beds
on the superhighways—
Well they have all
the facilities
the information
from the colleges
they force it
and all that garbage
II
I'm good for people?—
penetrating?—if you mean
I'm rotting here—
I'm an alewife
the fish the seagull
has no taste for
I die along the shore
and send a bad smell in
As praiseworthy
The power of breathing (Epictetus)
while we sleep. Add:
to move the parts of the body
without sound
and to float
on a smooth green stream
in a silent boat
They've lost their leaves
the maples along the river
but the weeping willow still
hangs green
and the old cracked boat-hulk
mud-sunk
grows weeds
year after year
My mother saw the green tree toad
on the window sill
her first one
since she was young.
We saw it breathe
and swell up round.
My youth is no sure sign
I'll find this kind of thing
tho it does sing.
Let's take it in
I said so grandmother can see
but she could not
it changed to brown
and town
changed us, too.
TRADITION
I
The chemist creates
the brazen
approximation:
Life
Thy will be done
Sun
II
Time to garden
before I
die—
to meet
my compost maker
the caretaker
of the cemetery
Autumn Night
Lisp and wisp
of dry leaves
“Put me wise
to what a tree toad is”
Boy
whose little son
now walks
“Starless night”
brings to mind the stars
those glimmering talks
Sky
in my favor
to fly
to downtown crowds
home
and Bash
on my mind
Nothing to speak of
on the bus ride
—a cleaned-up route—
till the courthouse—
on that grey structure the noise
of a thousand raspy wires—
sparrows!
By what law do the chirp-screech
“sparrow folk” go screwy
the late daylight hours
of fall?
Swedenborg
Well he saw man created according
to the motion of the elements. He located
the soul: in the blood. Retired
at last—to a house where he paid
window-tax (for increasing the light!).
Lived simply. Gardened. Saw visions.
Nothing for supper but tea.
Now he saw the soul from his “Pray,
what is matter” leave for the touchy
—heavens!—blue rose kind of thing.
Strange—he did grow a blue rose,
you know.
I lost you to water, summer
when the young girls swim,
to the hot shore
to little peet-tweet-
pert girls.
Now it's cold your bright knock
—Orion's with his dog after him—
at my door, boy
on a winter
wave ride.
I married
in the world's black night
for warmth
if not repose.
At the close—
someone.
I hid with him
from the long range guns.
We lay leg
in the cupboard, head
in closet.
A slit of light
at no bird dawn—
Untaught
I thought
he drank
too much.
I say
I married
and lived unburied.
I thought—
You see here
the influence
of inference
Moon on rippled
stream
“Except as
and unless”
Your erudition
the elegant flower
of which
my blue chicory
at scrub end
of campus ditch
illuminates
Alone
a s
till state hard
as sard
then again whisper-talk
preserved in chalk
At last no (TV) gun
no more coats than one
no hair lightener
Sweetheart of the whiter
walls
Why can't I be happy
in my sorrow
my drinking man
today
my quiet
tomorrow
And what you liked
or did—
no matter
once the moon
dipped down
and fish rose
from under
Cleaned all surfaces
and behind all solids
and righted leaning things
Considered then, becurtained
the metaphysics
of flight from housecleanings
Young in Fall I said: the birds
are at their highest thoughts
of leaving
Middle life said nothing—
grounded
to a livelihood
Old age—a high gabbling gathering
before goodbye
of all we know
North Central
LAKE SUPERIOR
In every part of every living thing
is stuff that once was rock
In blood the minerals
of the rock
Iron the common element of earth
in rocks and freighters
Sault Sainte Marie—big boats
coal-black and iron-ore-red
topped with what white castlework
The waters working together
internationally
Gulls playing both sides
Radisson:
“a laborinth of pleasure”
this world of the Lake
Long hair, long gun
Fingernails pulled out
by Mohawks
(The long canoes)
“Birch Bark
and white Seder
for the ribs”
Through all this granite land
the sign of the cross
Beauty: impurities in the rock
And at the blue ice superior spot
priest-robed Marquette grazed
azoic rock, hornblende granite
basalt the common dark
in all the Earth
And his bones of such is coral
raised up out of his grave
were sunned and birch bark-floated
to the straits
Joliet
Entered the Mississippi
Found there the paddlebill catfish
come down from The Age of Fishes
At Hudson Bay he conversed in latin
with an Englishman
To Labrador and back to vanish
His funeral gratis—he'd played
Quebec's Cathedral organ
so many winters
Ruby of corundum
lapis lazuli
from changing limestone
glow-apricot red-brown
carnelian sard
Greek named
Exodus-antique
kicked up in America's
Northwest
you have been in my mind
between my toes
agate
Wild Pigeon
Did not man
maimed by no
stone-fall
mash the cobalt
and carnelian
of that bird
Schoolcraft left the Soo—canoes
US pennants, masts, sails
chanting canoemen, barge
soldiers—for Minnesota
Their South Shore journey
as if Life's—
The Chocolate River
The Laughing Fish
and The River of the Dead
Passed peaks of volcanic thrust
Hornblende in massed granite
Wave-cut Cambrian rock
painted by soluble mineral oxides
wave-washed and the rains
did their work and a green
running as from copper
Sea-roaring caverns—
Chippewas threw deermeat
to the savage maws
” Voyageurs crossed themselves
tossed a twist of tobacco in”
Inland then
beside the great granite
gneiss and the schists
to the redolent pondy lakes'
lilies, flag and Indian reed
“through which we successfully
passed”
The smooth black stone
I picked up in true source park
the leaf beside it
once was stone
Why should we hurry
Home
I'm sorry to have missed
Sand Lake
My dear one tells me
we did not
We watched a gopher there
My Life by Water
My life
by water—
Hear
spring's
first frog
or board
out on the cold
ground
giving
Muskrats
gnawing
doors
to wild green
arts and letters
Rabbits
raided
my lettuce
One boat
two—
pointed toward
my shore
thru birdstart
wingdrip
weed-drift
of the soft
and serious—
Water
TRACES OF LIVING THINGS
strange feeling of sequence”—S.M.
Museum
Having met the protozoic
Vorticellae
here is man
Leafing towards you
in this dark
deciduous hall
Far reach
of sand
A man
bends to inspect
a shell
Himself
part coral
and mud
clam
TV
See it explained—
compound interest
and the compound eye
of the insect
the wave-line
on shell, sand, wall
and forehead of the one
who speaks
We are what the seas
have made us
longingly immense
the very veery
on the fence
What cause have you
to run my wreathed
rose words
off
you weed
you pea-blossom weed
in a folk
field
Stone
and that hard
contact—
the human
On the mossed
massed quartz
on which spruce
grew dense
I met him
We were thick
We said good-bye
on The Passing Years
River
The eye
of the leaf
into leaf
and all parts
spine
into spine
neverending
head
to see
For best work
you ought to put forth
some effort
to stand
in north woods
among birch
Smile
to see the lake
lay
the still sky
And
out for an easy
make
the dragonfly
Fall
We must pull
the curtains—
we haven
't any
leaves
Years
hearing and sight
passing
walk
to the Point—
(between the waters)
—how live
(with daughters?)
at the end
Unsurpassed in beauty
this autumn day
The secretary of defence
knew precisely what
the undersecretary of state
was talking about
Human bean
and love-over-the-fence
just up
from swamp trouble
High class human
got no illumine
how a ten cent plant
winds aslant
around a post
Man, history's host
to trembles
in the tendrils
I'm a fool
can't take it cool
Ah your face
but it's whether
you can keep me warm
Sewing a dress
The need
these closed-in days
to move before you
smooth-draped
and color-elated
in a favorable wind
I walked
on New Year's Day
beside the trees
my father now gone planted
evenly following
the road
Each
Collecte Works Page 11
