New Collected Poems Read online

  when even the gods were different.

  And the organ music, though decorous

  as for somebody else’s grief, has its source

  in the outcry of pain and hope in log churches,

  and on naked hillsides by the open grave,

  eastward in mountain passes, in tidelands,

  and across the sea. How long a time?

  Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let my hide my

  self in Thee. They came, once in time,

  in simple loyalty to their dead, and returned

  to the world. The fields and the work

  remained to be returned to. Now the entrance

  of one of the old ones into the Rock

  too often means a lifework perished from the land

  without inheritor, and the field goes wild

  and the house sits and stares. Or it passes

  at cash value into the hands of strangers.

  Now the old dead wait in the open coffin

  for the blood kin to gather, come home

  for one last time, to hear old men

  whose tongues bear an essential topography

  speak memories doomed to die.

  But our memory of ourselves, hard earned,

  is one of the land’s seeds, as a seed

  is the memory of the life of its kind in its place,

  to pass on into life the knowledge

  of what has died. What we owe the future

  is not a new start, for we can only begin

  with what has happened. We owe the future

  the past, the long knowledge

  that is the potency of time to come.

  That makes of a man’s grave a rich furrow.

  The community of knowing in common is the seed

  of our life in this place. There is not only

  no better possibility, there is no

  other, except for chaos and darkness,

  the terrible ground of the only possible

  new start. And so as the old die and the young

  depart, where shall a man go who keeps

  the memories of the dead, except home

  again, as one would go back after a burial,

  faithful to the fields, lest the dead die

  a second and more final death.

  THE RECOGNITION

  You put on my clothes

  and it was as though

  we met some other place

  and I looked and knew

  you. This is what we keep

  going through, the lyrical

  changes, the strangeness

  in which I know again

  what I have known before.

  PLANTING CROCUSES

  1.

  I made an opening

  to reach through blind

  into time, through

  sleep and silence, to new

  heat, a new rising,

  a yellow flower opening

  in the sound of bees.

  2.

  Deathly was the giving

  of that possibility

  to a motion of the world

  that would bring it

  out, bright, in time.

  3.

  My mind pressing in

  through the earth’s

  dark motion toward

  bloom, I thought of you,

  glad there is no escape.

  It is this we will be

  turning and re-

  turning to.

  PRAISE

  1.

  Don’t think of it.

  Vanity is absence.

  Be here. Here

  is the root and stem

  unappraisable

  on whose life

  your life depends

  2.

  Be here

  like the water

  of the hill

  that fills each

  opening it

  comes to, to leave

  with a sound

  that is a part

  of local speech.

  THE GATHERING

  At my age my father

  held me on his arm

  like a hooded bird,

  and his father held him so.

  Now I grow into brotherhood

  with my father as he

  with his has grown,

  time teaching me

  his thoughts in my own.

  Now he speaks in me

  as when I knew him first,

  as his father spoke

  in him when he had come

  to thirst for the life

  of a young son. My son

  will know me in himself

  when his son sits hooded on

  his arm and I have grown

  to be brother to all

  my fathers, memory

  speaking to knowledge,

  finally, in my bones.

  A HOMECOMING

  One faith is bondage. Two

  are free. In the trust

  of old love, cultivation shows

  a dark graceful wilderness

  at its heart. Wild

  in that wilderness, we roam

  the distances of our faith,

  safe beyond the bounds

  of what we know. O love,

  open. Show me

  my country. Take me home.

  THE MAD FARMER’S LOVE SONG

  O when the world’s at peace

  and every man is free

  then will I go down unto my love.

  O and I may go down

  several times before that.

  TESTAMENT

  And now to the Abbyss I pass

  Of that unfathomable Grass…

  1.

  Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath

  Grows large and free in air, don’t call it death—

  A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire

  His surly art of imitating life; conspire

  Against him. Say that my body cannot now

  Be improved upon; it has no fault to show

  To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh

  Has a perfection in compliance with the grass

  Truer than any it could have striven for.

  You will recognize the earth in me, as before

  I wished to know it in myself: my earth

  That has been my care and faithful charge from birth,

  And toward which all my sorrows were surely bound,

  And all my hopes. Say that I have found

  A good solution, and am on my way

  To the roots. And say I have left my native clay

  At last, to be a traveler; that too will be so.

  Traveler to where? Say you don’t know.

  2.

  But do not let your ignorance

  Of my spirit’s whereabouts dismay

  You, or overwhelm your thoughts.

  Be careful not to say

  Anything too final. Whatever

  Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger

  Than flesh. Beyond reach of thought

  Let imagination figure

  Your hope. That will be generous

  To me and to yourselves. Why settle

  For some know-it-all’s despair

  When the dead may dance to the fiddle

  Hereafter, for all anybody knows?

  And remember that the Heavenly soil

  Need not be too rich to please

  One who was happy in Port Royal.

  I may be already heading back,

  A new and better man, toward

  That town. The thought’s unreasonable,

  But so is life, thank the Lord!

  3.

  So treat me, even dead,

  As a man who has a place

  To go, and something to do

  Don’t muck up my face

  With wax and powder and rouge

  As one would prettify

  An unalterable fact

  To give bitterness the lie.

&nbs
p; Admit the native earth

  My body is and will be,

  Admit its freedom and

  Its changeability.

  Dress me in the clothes

  I wore in the day’s round.

  Lay me in a wooden box.

  Put the box in the ground.

  4.

  Beneath this stone a Berry is planted

  In his home land, as he wanted.

  He has come to the gathering of his kin,

  Among whom some were worthy men,

  Farmers mostly, who lived by hand,

  But one was a cobbler from Ireland,

  Another played the eternal fool

  By riding on a circus mule

  To be remembered in grateful laughter

  Longer than the rest. After

  Doing what they had to do

  They are at ease here. Let all of you

  Who yet for pain find force and voice

  Look on their peace, and rejoice.

  THE CLEAR DAYS

  for Allen Tate

  The dogs of indecision

  Cross and cross the field of vision.

  A cloud, a buzzing fly

  Distract the lover’s eye.

  Until the heart has found

  Its native piece of ground

  The day withholds its light,

  The eye must stray unlit.

  The ground’s the body’s bride,

  Who will not be denied.

  Not until all is given

  Comes the thought of heaven.

  When the mind’s an empty room

  The clear days come.

  SONG

  I tell my love in rhyme

  In a sentence that must end,

  A measurable dividend,

  To hold her time against time.

  I praise her honest eyes

  That keep their beauty clear.

  I have nothing to fear

  From her, though the world lies,

  If I don’t lie. Though the hill

  Of winter rise, a silent ark,

  Our covenant with the dark,

  We will speak on until

  The flowers fall, and the birds

  With their bright songs depart.

  Then we will go without art,

  Without measure, or words.

  POEM FOR J.

  What she made in her body is broken.

  Now she has begun to bear it again.

  In the house of her son’s death

  his life is shining in the windows,

  for she has elected to bear him again.

  She did not bear him for death,

  and she does not. She has taken back

  into her body the seed, bitter

  and joyous, of the life of a man.

  In the house of the dead the windows shine

  with life. She mourns, for his life was good.

  She is not afraid. She is like a field

  where the corn is planted, and like the rain

  that waters the field, and like the young corn.

  In her sorrow she renews life, in her grief

  she prepares the return of joy.

  She did not bear him for death, and she does not.

  There was a life that went out of her to live

  on its own, divided, and now she has taken it back.

  She is alight with the sudden new life of death.

  Perhaps it is the brightness of the dead one

  being born again. Perhaps she is planting him,

  like corn, in the living and in the earth.

  She has taken back into her flesh,

  and made light, the dark seed of her pain.

  THE LONG HUNTER

  Passed through the dark wall,

  set foot in the unknown track,

  paths locked in the minds of beasts

  and in strange tongues. Footfall

  led him where he did not know.

  There was a dark country where

  only blind trust could go.

  Some joyous animal paced the woods

  ahead of him and filled the air

  with steepling song to make a way.

  Step by step the darkness bore

  the light. The shadow opened

  like a pod, and from the height

  he saw a place green as welcome

  on whose still water the sky lay white.

  AN ANNIVERSARY

  What we have been becomes

  The country where we are.

  Spring goes, summer comes,

  And in the heat, as one year

  Or a thousand years before,

  The fields and woods prepare

  The burden of their seed

  Out of time’s wound, the old

  Richness of the fall. Their deed

  Is renewal. In the household

  Of the woods the past

  Is always healing in the light,

  The high shiftings of the air.

  It stands upon its yield

  And thrives. Nothing is lost.

  What yields, though in despair,

  Opens and rises in the night.

  Love binds us to this term

  With its yes that is crying

  In our marrow to confirm

  Life that only lives by dying.

  Lovers live by the moon

  Whose dark and light are one,

  Changing without rest.

  The root struts from the seed

  In the earth’s dark—harvest

  And feast at the edge of sleep.

  Darkened, we are carried

  Out of need, deep

  In the country we have married.

  5 / 29 / 72

  CLEARING

  (1977)

  For Dan Wickenden

  What has been spoiled through man’s fault can be

  made good again through man's work. I Ching

  Handles are shining where my life has passed.

  My fields and walls are aching

  in my shoulders. My subjects are my objects:

  house, barn, beast, hill, and tree.

  Reader, make no mistake. The meanings

  of these must balance against their weight.

  HISTORY

  For Wallace Stegner

  1.

  The crops were made, the leaves

  were down, three frosts had lain

  upon the broad stone

  step beneath the door;

  as I walked away

  the houses were shut, quiet

  under their drifting smokes,

  the women stooped at the hearths.

  Beyond the farthest tracks

  of any domestic beast

  my way led me, into

  a place for which I knew

  no names. I went by paths

  that bespoke intelligence

  and memory I did not know.

  Noonday held sounds of moving

  water, moving air, enormous

  stillness of old trees.

  Though I was weary and alone,

  song was near me then,

  wordless and gay as a deer

  lightly stepping. Learning

  the landmarks and the ways

  of that land, so I might

  go back, if I wanted to,

  my mind grew new, and lost

  the backward way. I stood

  at last, long hunter and child,

  where this valley opened,

  a word I seemed to know

  though I had not heard it.

  Behind me, along the crooks

  and slants of my approach,

  a low song sang itself,

  as patient as the light.

  On the valley floor the woods

  grew rich: great poplars,

  beeches, sycamores,

  walnuts, sweet gums, lindens,

  oaks. They stood apart

  and open, the winter light

  at rest among them. Yes,

  and as I came
down

  I heard a little stream

  pouring into the river.

  2.

  Since then I have arrived here

  many times. I have come

  on foot, on horseback, by boat,

  and by machine—by earth,

  water, air, and fire.

  I came with axe and rifle.

  I came with a sharp eye

  and the price of land. I came

  in bondage, and I came

  in freedom not worth the name.

  From the high outlook

  of that first day I have come

  down two hundred years

  across the worked and wasted

  slopes, by eroding tracks

  of the joyless horsepower of greed.

  Through my history’s despite

  and ruin, I have come

  to its remainder, and here

  have made the beginning

  of a farm intended to become

  my art of being here.

  By it I would instruct

  my wants: they should belong

  to each other and to this place.

  Until my song comes here

  to learn its words, my art

  is but the hope of song.

  3.

  All the lives this place

  has had, I have. I eat

  my history day by day.

  Bird, butterfly, and flower

  pass through the seasons of

  my flesh. I dine and thrive

  on offal and old stone,

  and am combined within

  the story of the ground.

  By this earth’s life, I have

  its greed and innocence,

  its violence, its peace.

  Now let me feed my song

  upon the life that is here

  that is the life that is gone.

  This blood has turned to dust

  and liquefied again in stem

  and vein ten thousand times.

  Let what is in the flesh,

  O Muse, be brought to mind.

  WHERE

  The field mouse flickers

  once upon his shadow,

  is gone. The watcher is left

  in all silence, as after

  thunder, or threat. And then

  in the top of the sycamore

  the redbird opens again