New Collected Poems Read online

  and the loved.

  In our joining it knows

  itself. It is with us then,

  not as the gods

  whose names crest

  in unearthly fire,

  but as a little bird

  hidden in the leaves

  who sings quietly

  and waits

  and sings.

  THE NECESSITY OF FAITH

  True harvests no mere intent may reap.

  Finally we must lie down to sleep

  And leave the world, all we desire

  To darkness, malevolence, and fire.

  Who wakes and stands his shadow’s mark

  Has passed by mercy through the dark.

  We save the good, lovely, and bright

  By will in part, in part delight;

  But they live through the night by grace

  That no intention can efface.

  TO THE HOLY SPIRIT

  O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,

  Who in necessity and in bounty wait,

  Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken,

  By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.

  RIPENING

  The longer we are together

  the larger death grows around us.

  How many we know by now

  who are dead! We, who were young,

  now count the cost of having been.

  And yet as we know the dead

  we grow familiar with the world.

  We, who were young and loved each other

  ignorantly, now come to know

  each other in love, married

  by what we have done, as much

  as by what we intend. Our hair

  turns white with our ripening

  as though to fly away in some

  coming wind, bearing the seed

  of what we know. It was bitter to learn

  that we come to death as we come

  to love, bitter to face

  the just and solving welcome

  that death prepares. But that is bitter

  only to the ignorant, who pray

  it will not happen. Having come

  the bitter way to better prayer, we have

  the sweetness of ripening. How sweet

  to know you by the signs of this world!

  THE WAY OF PAIN

  1.

  For parents, the only way

  is hard. We who give life

  give pain. There is no help.

  Yet we who give pain

  give love, by pain we learn

  the extremity of love.

  2.

  I read of Abraham’s sacrifice

  the Voice required of him,

  so that he led to the altar

  and the knife his only son.

  The beloved life was spared

  that time, but not the pain.

  It was the pain that was required.

  3.

  I read of Christ crucified,

  the only begotten Son

  sacrificed to flesh and time

  and all our woe. He died

  and rose, but who does not tremble

  for his pain, his loneliness,

  and the darkness of the sixth hour?

  Unless we grieve like Mary

  at His grave, giving Him up

  as lost, no Easter morning comes.

  4.

  And then I slept, and dreamed

  the life of my only son

  was required of me, and I

  must bring him to the edge

  of pain, not knowing why.

  I woke, and yet that pain

  was true. It brought his life

  to the full in me. I bore him

  suffering, with love like the sun,

  too bright, unsparing, whole.

  WE WHO PRAYED AND WEPT

  We who prayed and wept

  for liberty from kings

  and the yoke of liberty

  accept the tyranny of things

  we do not need.

  In plentitude too free,

  we have become adept

  beneath the yoke of greed.

  Those who will not learn

  in plenty to keep their place

  must learn it by their need

  when they have had their way

  and the fields spurn their seed.

  We have failed Thy grace.

  Lord, I flinch and pray,

  send Thy necessity.

  GRIEF

  The morning comes. The old woman, a spot

  of soot where she has touched her cheek, tears

  on her face, builds a fire, sets water to boil,

  puts the skillet on. The man in his middle years,

  bent by the work he has done toward the work

  he will do, weeps as he eats, bread in his mouth,

  tears on his face. They shape the day for its passing

  as if absent from it—for what needs care, caring,

  feeding what must be fed. To keep them, there are only

  the household’s remembered ways, etched thin

  and brittle by their tears. It is a sharp light

  that lights the day now. It seems to shine,

  beyond eyesight, also in another day

  where the dead have risen and are walking

  away, their backs forever turned. What

  look is in their eyes? What do they say

  as they walk into the fall and flow of light?

  It seems that they must know where they are going.

  And the living must go with them, not knowing,

  a little way. And the dead go on, not turning,

  knowing, but not saying. And the living

  turn back to their day, their grieving and staying.

  FALL

  for Wallace Fowlie

  The wild cherries ripen, black and fat,

  Paradisal fruits that taste of no man’s sweat.

  Reach up, pull down the laden branch, and eat;

  When you have learned their bitterness, they taste sweet.

  AN AUTUMN BURNING

  for Kenneth Rexroth

  In my line of paperwork

  I have words to burn: leaves

  of fallen information, wasted

  words of my own. I know a light

  that hastens on the dark

  some work deserves—which God forgive

  as we must hope. I start the blaze

  and observe the fire’s superlative

  hunger for literature. It touches pages

  like a connoisseur, turns them.

  None can endure. After the passing

  of that light, there is sunlight

  on the ash, in the distance singing

  of crickets and of birds. I turn,

  unburdened, to life beyond words.

  A WARNING TO MY READERS

  Do not think me gentle

  because I speak in praise

  of gentleness, or elegant

  because I honor the grace

  that keeps this world. I am

  a man crude as any,

  gross of speech, intolerant,

  stubborn, angry, full

  of fists and furies. That I

  may have spoken well

  at times, is not natural.

  A wonder is what it is.

  CREATION MYTH

  This is a story handed down.

  It is about the old days when Bill

  and Florence and a lot of their kin

  lived in the little tin-roofed house

  beside the woods, below the hill.

  Mornings, they went up the hill

  to work, Florence to the house,

  the men and boys to the field.

  Evenings, they all came home again.

  There would be talk then and laughter

  and taking of ease around the porch

  while the summer night closed.

  But one night, McKinley, Bill’s younger b
rother,

  stayed away late, and it was dark

  when he started down the hill.

  Not a star shone, not a window.

  What he was going down into was

  the dark, only his footsteps sounding

  to prove he trod the ground. And Bill

  who had got up to cool himself,

  thinking and smoking, leaning on

  the jamb of the open front door,

  heard McKinley coming down,

  and heard his steps beat faster

  as he came, for McKinley felt the pasture’s

  darkness joined to all the rest

  of darkness everywhere. It touched

  the depths of woods and sky and grave.

  In that huge dark, things that usually

  stayed put might get around, as fish

  in pond or slue get loose in flood.

  Oh, things could be coming close

  that never had come close before.

  He missed the house and went on down

  and crossed the draw and pounded on

  where the pasture widened on the other side,

  lost then for sure. Propped in the door,

  Bill heard him circling, a dark star

  in the dark, breathing hard, his feet

  blind on the little reality

  that was left. Amused, Bill smoked

  his smoke, and listened. He knew where

  McKinley was, though McKinley didn’t.

  Bill smiled in the darkness to himself,

  and let McKinley run until his steps

  approached something really to fear:

  the quarry pool. Bill quit his pipe

  then, opened the screen, and stepped out,

  barefoot, on the warm boards. “McKinley!”

  he said, and laid the field out clear

  under McKinley’s feet, and placed

  the map of it in his head.

  THE FIRST

  The first man who whistled

  thought he had a wren in his mouth.

  He went around all day

  with his lips puckered,

  afraid to swallow.

  WALKING ON THE RIVER ICE

  A man could be a god

  if the ice wouldn’t melt

  and he could stand the cold.

  THROWING AWAY THE MAIL

  Nothing is simple,

  not even simplification.

  Thus, throwing away

  the mail, I exchange

  the complexity of duty

  for the simplicity of guilt.

  EXCEPT

  Now that you have gone

  and I am alone and quiet,

  my contentment would be

  complete, if I did not wish

  you were here so I could say,

  “How good it is, Tanya,

  to be alone and quiet.”

  FOR THE FUTURE

  Planting trees early in spring,

  we make a place for birds to sing

  in time to come. How do we know?

  They are singing here now.

  There is no other guarantee

  that singing will ever be.

  TRAVELING AT HOME

  Even in a country you know by heart

  it’s hard to go the same way twice.

  The life of the going changes.

  The chances change and make a new way.

  Any tree or stone or bird

  can be the bud of a new direction. The

  natural correction is to make intent

  of accident. To get back before dark

  is the art of going.

  JULY, 1773

  Seventeen seventy one

  and two. In those years the fame

  of the Long Hunters passed back

  through the settlements, with news

  of a rich and delightful country

  to the west, on the waters of the Ohio.

  My father and uncles held council

  over their future prospects.

  In the vigor of manhood and full

  of enterprise, they longed to see

  for themselves. They could not remain

  confined in the sterile mountains

  of Virginia, where only small parcels

  of fertile land and could be found

  at any one place. As soldiers

  of the Indian Wars, each had

  from the governor a grant

  of four hundred acres, which had only

  to be located and surveyed.

  And so,

  having first planted their corn

  about the tenth of May

  in the year 1773, they set out

  to visit this land of promise,

  five of them, taking along

  Sam Adams, a neighbor’s son,

  nineteen years of age.

  They sought their future homes,

  their fortunes, and the honor

  of being among the first

  in that western wilderness.

  They reached the Great Kanahway,

  then known as New River,

  about the middle of May.

  Having sent back their horses,

  they selected suitable trees,

  felled them, hollowed the trunks,

  and so made two canoes

  to carry them and their baggage:

  rifles, ammunition, tomahawks,

  butcher knives, blankets,

  fishing tackle, and gigs.

  And then, after their rough

  overland passage on horseback,

  how lightly and quietly they passed

  over the surface of the water,

  their prows breaking the reflections

  of the trees in the early morning.

  They entered the Ohio on

  the first of June, the opening

  of light on that wide water,

  its stillness and solitudes.

  Opposite the mouth of the Scotia

  they saw an old French town

  of nineteen or twenty houses,

  hewed logs and clapboard roofs,

  vacant and deserted, small

  and silent among the great trees.

  On June thirteenth, a Sunday,

  they were met by the bearer of a letter

  “to the gentleman settlers”

  from Richard Butler, a white man

  who had lived at Chilicothe

  with the Shawanoes several years:

  “They claim an absolute rite

  to all that country that you

  are about to settle. It does not

  lie in the power of those

  who sold it to give this land.

  Show a friendly countenance

  to your present neighbors, the Shawanoes.

  It lies in your power to have

  good neighbors or bad, as they

  are a people very capable

  of discerning between good treatment

  and ill. They expect you

  to be friendly with them,

  and to endeavor to restrain

  the hunters from destroying the game.”

  And this they took to show

  the means by which an All-wise

  Providence opened the way

  for exploitation and settlement.

  They camped on July fourth

  at Big Bone Lick.

  “It was a wonder to see

  the large bones that lies there

  which has been of several

  large big creatures.”

  They used the short joints

  of the backbones for stools,

  and the ribs for tent poles

  to stretch their blankets on.

  Here they met a Delaware

  about seventy years old.

  Did he know anything

  about these bones? He replied

  that when he was a boy “they

  were just so as you now see them.”

  And so they had come to a place
>
  of mystery; they could not

  enter except in awe.

  At daylight on the morning

  of July eighth, they reached

  the mouth of the Kentucky River,

  which they called the Lewvisa.

  This was the foretold stream

  that would carry them southward

  into the heart of promise.

  They set against its current,

  reaching by nightfall the mouth

  of a stream they called Eagle Creek

  for the eagles they saw hovering

  there, in the evening light.

  And the next day went on

  to the mouth of what is now

  Drennon Creek, where the river

  was nearly closed by a stone bar,

  and there they left their boats.

  They crossed a bottomland

  through a forest of beech trees,

  gray trunks in the shade

  of gold-green foliage,

  and after a mile came to

  “a salt lick which was

  a wonder to see—a mile

  in length and one hundred yards

  in breadth, & the roads that came

  to that lick no man would believe

  who did not see, & the woods

  around that place were trod

  for many miles, that there

  was not as much food

  as would feed one sheep.”

  They encountered there great numbers

  of buffalo, elk, deer,

  beaver, wolves, and bears.

  The commotion of the herds was astonishing,

  their tramplings and outcries,

  the flies and the dust. There

  where the salts of the ground flowed

  to the light, the living blood

  of that country gathered, throve

  in its seasonal pulse—such

  a gathering of beasts as these men

  had never seen. Through the nights

  they heard them, dreamed them,

  seeming to comprehend them

  more clearly in dream

  than in eyesight, for that upwelling

  and abounding, unbidden by any

  man, was powerful, bright,

  and brief for men like these,

  as a holy vision. Waking,

  they could not keep it. They did not.

  Five days and six

  nights they camped there,

  examining the lick, killing

  game, making several

  surveys of land. The uplands