rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.
Once up against the sky it’s hard
to tell them from the stars—
planets, that is—the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,
or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it’s still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,
receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.
Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair
of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.
The ancient owls’ nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,
and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!—a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.
Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!
May Swenson (1913 – 1989)
A Couple1
A bee rolls in the yellow rose,
does she invite his hairy rub?
He scrubs himself in her creamy folds.
A bullet soft imposes her spiral
and, spinning, burrows
to her dewy shadows.
The gold grooves almost match
the yellow bowl.
Does his touch please or scratch?
When he’s done his honey-thieving
at her matrix, whirs free, leaving,
she closes, still tall, chill
unrumpled on her stem.
David Ignatow (1914 – 1997)
The Bagel2
I stopped to pick up the bagel
rolling away in the wind,
annoyed with myself
for having dropped it
as if it were a portent.
Faster and faster it rolled,
with me running after it
bent low, gritting my teeth,
and I found myself doubled over
and rolling down the street
head over heels, one complete somersault
after another like a bagel
and strangely happy with myself.
Randall Jarrell (1914 – 1965)
Bats1
A bat is born
naked and blind and pale.
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
and catches him. He clings to her long fur
by his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting –
Her baby hangs on underneath.
All night, in happiness, she hunts and flies.
Her high sharp cries
like shining needlepoints of sound
go out into the night and, echoing back,
tell her what they have touched.
She hears how far it is, how big it is,
which way it’s going:
she lives by hearing.
The mother eats the moths and gnats she catches
in full flight; in full flight
the mother drinks the water of the pond
she skims across. Her baby hangs on tight.
Her baby drinks the milk she makes him
in moonlight or starlight, in mid-air.
Their single shadow, printed on the moon
or fluttering across the stars, whirls on all night;
at daybreak
the tired mother flaps home to her rafter.
The others are all there.
They hang themselves up by their toes,
they wrap themselves in their brown wings.
Bunched upside down, they sleep in air.
Their sharp ears, their sharp teeth,
their quick sharp faces
are dull and slow and mild.
All the bright day, as the mother sleeps,
she folds her wings about her sleeping child.
Next Day1
Moving from Cheer to Joy from Joy to All,
I take a box
and add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
food-gathering flocks
are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,
is learning what to overlook. And I am wise
if that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves
and the boy takes it to my station wagon,
what I’ve become
troubles me even if I shut my eyes.
When I was young and miserable and pretty
and poor, I’d wish
what all girls wish: to have a husband,
a house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish
is womanish:
that the boy putting groceries in my car
see me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.
For so many years
I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me
and its mouth watered.
How often they have undressed me,
the eyes of strangers!
And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile
imaginings within my imagining,
I too have taken
the chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog
and we start home. Now I am good.
The last mistaken,
ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind
happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm
some soap and water—
it was so long ago, back in some Gay
Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know … Today I miss
my lovely daughter
away at school, my sons away at school,
my husband away at work—I wish for them.
The dog, the maid,
and I go through the sure unvarying days
at home in them. As I look at my life,
I am afraid
only that it will change, as I am changing:
I am afraid, this morning, of my face.
It looks at me
from the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,
the smile I hate. Its plain, lined look
of gray discovery
repeats to me: “You’re old. “That’s all, I’m old.
And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral
I went to yesterday.
My friend’s cold made-up face,
granite among its flowers,
Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body
were my face and body.
As I think of her and I hear her telling me
how young I seem; I am exceptional;
I think of all I have.
But really no one is exceptional,
no one has anything, I’m anybody,
I stand beside my grave
confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner1
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
and I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret
with a hose.
William Stafford (1914 – 1993)
Traveling Through the Dark1
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.
The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.
I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.
Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953)
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night2
Do not go gentle into that good night,
old age should burn and rave at close of day;
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
because their words had forked no lightning they
do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Robert Lax (1915 – 2000)
Alley Violinist1
If you were an alley violinist
and they threw you money
from three windows
and the first note contained
a nickel and said:
when you play, we dance and
sing, signed
a very poor family
and the second one contained
a dime and said:
I like your playing very much,
signed
a sick old lady
and the last one contained
a dollar and said:
beat it,
would you:
stand there and play?
beat it?
walk away playing your fiddle?
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 – 2000)
A Song in the Front Yard1
I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
I want to go in the back yard now
and maybe down the alley,
to where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.
They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
how they don’t have to be in at a quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnny Mae
will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to jail soon or late.
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate.)
But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
and wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
and strut down the streets with paint on my face.
The Boy Died in my Alley2
to Running Boy
The Boy died in my alley
without my Having Known.
Policeman said, next morning,
“Apparently died Alone.”
“You heard a shot?” Policeman said.
Shots I hear and Shots I hear.
I never see the Dead.
The Shot that killed him yes I heard
as I heard the Thousand shots before;
careening tinnily down the nights
across my years and arteries.
Policeman pounded on my door.
“Who is it?” “POLICE!” Policeman yelled.
“A Boy was dying in your alley.
A Boy is dead, and in your alley.
And have you known this Boy before?”
I have known this Boy before.
I have known this boy before, who ornaments my alley.
I never saw his face at all.
I never saw his future fall.
But I have known this Boy.
I have always heard him deal with death.
I have always heard the shout, the volley.
I have closed my heart-ears late and early.
And I have killed him ever.
I joined the Wild and killed him
with knowledgeable unknowing.
I saw where he was going.
I saw him Crossed. And seeing,
I did not take him down.
He cried not only “Father!”
but “Mother!
Sister!
Brother.”
The cry climbed up the alley.
It went up to the wind.
It hung upon the heaven
for a long
stretch-strain of Moment.
The red floor of my alley
is a special speech to me.
Robert Lowell (1917 – 1977)
Reading Myself1
Like thousands, I took just pride and more than just,
struck matches that brought my blood to a boil;
I memorized the tricks to set the river on fire—
somehow never wrote something to go back to.
Can I suppose I am finished with wax flowers
and have earned my grass
on the minor slopes of Parnassus. …
no honeycomb is built without a bee
adding circle to circle, cell to cell,
the wax and honey of a mausoleum—
the round dome proves its maker is alive;
the corpse of the insect lives embalmed in honey,
prays that its perishable work live long
enough for the sweet-tooth bear to desecrate—
this open book. my open coffin.
Keith Douglas (1920 – 1944)
Vergissmeinnicht2
Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.
The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.
Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonored picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht
in a copybook gothic script.
We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that’s hard and good when he’s decayed.
But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.
Howard Nemerov (1920 – 1991)
Gyroscope1
This admirable gadget, when it is wound on a string and spun with steady
force, maintains its balance on most any smooth surface, pleasantly
humming as it goes. It is whirled not on a constant course, but still
stands in unshivering integrity for quite some time, meaning nothing
perhaps but being something agreeable to watch, a silver nearly silence
gleaning a stillness out of speed, composing unity from spin, so that its
hollow spaces seem solids of light, until it wobbles and begins to whine,
and then with an odd lunge eccentric and reckless, it skids away and
drops dead into its own skeleton.
Money1
AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE
This morning we shall spend a few minutes
upon the study of symbolism, which is basic
to the nature of money. I show you this nickel.
Icons and cryptograms are written all over
the nickel: one side shows a hunchbacked bison
bending his head and curling his tail to accommodate
the circular nature of money. Over him arches
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and squinched in
between that and his rump, E PLURIBUS UNUM,
a Roman reminiscence that appears to mean
an indeterminately large number of things
all of which are the same. Under the bison
a straight line giving him a ground to stand on
reads FIVE CENTS. And on the other side of our nickel
there is the profile of a man with long hair
and a couple of feathers in the hair; we know
somehow that he is an American Indian, and
he wears the number nineteen-thirty-six.
Right in front of his eyes the word LIBERTY, bent
The Giant Book of Poetry Page 35
