New Collected Poems Page 16

  around the lick they found

  “very good, mostly

  oak timber; a great many

  small creeks and branches;

  scarce as much water

  among them all as would

  save a man’s life

  while he traveled across them.”

  One day, engaged in this work,

  Uncle James and his neighbor’s

  son, Sam Adams, were passing

  round the outskirts of the lick,

  where had gathered a large herd

  of the buffalo. The beasts

  pressed together for the salt,

  stomped, coughed, suckled

  their calves, the dust rising

  over their humps and horns,

  their tails busy at flies.

  They minded less than flies

  the two men who moved

  around them, thinking of other

  lives, times to come.

  And yet Sam Adams, boylike

  perhaps, though he was nineteen

  and a man in other ways,

  would be diverted from his work

  to gaze at the buffalo,

  more numerous than all

  his forefather’s cattle, oblivious

  abundance, there by no man’s

  will—godly, he might

  have thought it, had he not

  thought God a man.

  And why

  he shot into the herd

  is a question he did not answer,

  anyhow until afterwards,

  if at all—if he asked at all.

  He saw an amplitude

  so far beyond his need

  he could not imagine it,

  and could not let it be.

  He shot.

  And the herd, unskilled

  in fear of such a weapon

  or such a creature, ran

  in clumsy terror directly

  toward the spot where the boy

  and the man were standing.

  Agile, the boy sprang

  into a leaning mulberry.

  Not so young, or active,

  or so used to haste,

  Uncle James took shelter

  behind a young hickory

  whose girth was barely larger

  than his own.

  Then it seemed

  the earth itself rose,

  gathered, fled past them.

  The great fall of hooves shook

  ground and tree. Leaves

  trembled in the one sound.

  Dust hid everything

  from everything. Bodies

  beat against each other

  in heavy flight. Black horns

  sheared bark from the hickory

  that protected Uncle James.

  It fled. The hectic pulse

  died in the ground. The dust

  thinned. Day returned,

  as it seemed, after nightmare.

  And there was Sam Adams

  looking out of his tree

  at Uncle James, who looked

  back, his hat now tilted.

  “My good boy, you must not

  venture that again.”

  And they walked southeast from there

  two days, some thirty miles,

  left a tomahawk and fish gig

  at a fine spring, and marked

  a gum sapling at that place.

  (This poem makes extensive borrowings

  from various accounts of the McAfee

  brothers’ 1773 expedition into Kentucky.)

  THE SLIP

  for Donald Davie

  The river takes the land, and leaves nothing.

  Where the great slip gave way in the bank

  and an acre disappeared, all human plans

  dissolve. An aweful clarification occurs

  where a place was. Its memory breaks

  from what is known now, begins to drift.

  Where cattle grazed and trees stood, emptiness

  widens the air for birdflight, wind, and rain.

  As before the beginning, nothing is there.

  Human wrong is in the cause, human

  ruin in the effect—but no matter;

  all will be lost, no matter the reason.

  Nothing, having arrived, will stay.

  The earth, even, is like a flower, so soon

  passeth it away. And yet this nothing

  is the seed of all—the clear eye

  of Heaven, where all the worlds appear.

  Where the imperfect has departed, the perfect

  begins its struggle to return. The good gift

  begins again to return. The good gift

  begins again its descent. The maker moves

  in the unmade, stirring the water until

  it clouds, dark beneath the surface,

  stirring and darkening the soul until pain

  perceives new possibility. There is nothing

  to do but learn and wait, return to work

  on what remains. Seed will sprout in the scar.

  Though death is in the healing, it will heal.

  HORSES

  When I was a boy here,

  traveling the fields for pleasure,

  the farms were worked with teams.

  As late as then a teamster

  was thought an accomplished man,

  his art an essential discipline.

  A boy learned it by delight

  as he learned to use

  his body, following the example

  of men. The reins of a team

  were put into my hands

  when I thought the work was play.

  And in the corrective gaze

  of men now dead I learned

  to flesh my will in power

  great enough to kill me

  should I let it turn.

  I learned the other tongue

  by which men spoke to beasts

  —all its terms and tones.

  And by the time I learned,

  new ways had changed the time.

  The tractors came. The horses

  stood in the fields, keepsakes,

  grew old, and died. Or were sold

  as dogmeat. Our minds received

  the revolution of engines, our will

  stretched toward the numb endurance

  of metal. And that old speech

  by which we magnified

  our flesh in other flesh

  fell dead in our mouths.

  The songs of the world died

  in our ears as we went within

  the uproar of the long syllable

  of the motors. Our intent entered

  the world as combustion.

  Like our travels, our workdays

  burned upon the world,

  lifting its inwards up

  in fire. Veiled in that power

  our minds gave up the endless

  cycle of growth and decay

  and took the unreturning way,

  the breathless distance of iron.

  But that work, empowered by burning

  the world’s body, showed us

  finally the world’s limits

  and our own. We had then

  the life of a candle, no longer

  the ever-returning song

  among the grassblades and the leaves.

  Did I never forget?

  Or did I, after years,

  remember? To hear that song

  again, though brokenly

  in the distances of memory,

  is coming home. I came to

  a farm, some of it unreachable

  by machines, as some of the world

  will always be. And so

  I came to a team, a pair

  of mares—sorrels, with white

  tails and manes, beautiful!—

  to keep my sloping fields.

  Going behind them, the reins

  tight over their backs as they stepped

  thei
r long strides, revived

  again on my tongue the cries

  of dead men in the living

  fields. Now every move

  answers what is still.

  This work of love rhymes

  living and dead. A dance

  is what this plodding is,

  a song, whatever is said.

  THE WHEEL

  (1982)

  It needs a more refined perception to recognize throughout this stupendous wealth of varying shapes and forms the principle of stability. Yet this principle dominates. It dominates by means of an ever-recurring cycle . . . repeating itself silently and ceaselessly . . . . This cycle is constituted of the successive and repeated processes of birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay.

  An eastern religion calls this cycle the Wheel of Life and no better name could be given to it. The revolutions of this Wheel never falter and are perfect. Death supersedes life and life rises again from what is dead and decayed.

  Sir Albert Howard,

  The Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture

  I

  OWEN FLOOD / JANUARY 13, 1920–MARCH 27,1974

  REQUIEM

  1.

  We will see no more

  the mown grass fallen behind him

  on the still ridges before night,

  or hear him laughing in the crop rows,

  or know the order of his delight.

  Though the green fields are my delight,

  elegy is my fate. I have come to be

  survivor of many and of much

  that I love, that I won’t live to see

  come again into this world.

  Things that mattered to me once

  won’t matter any more,

  for I have left the safe shore

  where magnificence of art

  could suffice my heart.

  2.

  In the day of his work

  when the grace of the world

  was upon him, he made his way,

  not turning back or looking aside,

  light in his stride.

  Now may the grace of death

  be upon him, his spirit blessed

  in deep song of the world

  and the stars turning, the seasons

  returning, and long rest.

  ELEGY

  1.

  To be at home on its native ground

  the mind must go down below its horizon,

  descend below the lightfall

  on ridge and steep and valley floor

  to receive the lives of the dead. It must wake

  in their sleep, who wake in its dreams.

  “Who is here?” On the rock road between

  creek and woods in the fall of the year,

  I stood and listened. I heard the cries

  of little birds high in the wind.

  And then the beat of old footsteps

  came around me, and my sight was changed.

  I passed through the lens of darkness

  as through a furrow, and the dead

  gathered to meet me. They knew me,

  but looked in wonder at the lines in my face,

  the white hairs sprinkled on my head.

  I saw a tall old man leaning

  upon a cane, his open hand

  raised in some fierce commendation,

  knowledge of long labor in his eyes;

  another, a gentler countenance,

  smiling beneath a brim of sweaty felt

  in welcome to me as before.

  I saw an old woman, a saver

  of little things, whose lonely grief

  was the first I knew; and one bent

  with age and pain, whose busy hands

  worked out a selflessness of love.

  Those were my teachers. And there were more,

  beloved of face and name, who once bore

  the substance of our common ground.

  Their eyes, having grieved all grief, were clear.

  2.

  I saw one standing aside, alone,

  weariness in his shoulders, his eyes

  bewildered yet with the newness

  of his death. In my sorrow I felt,

  as many times before, gladness

  at the sight of him. “Owen,” I said.

  He turned—lifted, tilted his hand.

  I handed him a clod of earth

  picked up in a certain well-known field.

  He kneaded it in his palm and spoke:

  “Wendell, this is not a place

  for you and me.” And then he grinned;

  we recognized his stubbornness—

  it was his principle to doubt

  all ease of satisfaction.

  “The crops are in the barn,” I said,

  “the morning frost has come to the fields,

  and I have turned back to accept,

  if I can, what none of us could prevent.”

  He stood, remembering, weighing the cost

  of the division we had come to,

  his fingers resting on the earth

  he held cupped lightly in his palm.

  It seemed to me then that he cast off

  his own confusion, and assumed

  for one last time, in one last kindness,

  the duty of the older man.

  He nodded his head. “The desire I had

  in early morning and in spring,

  I never wore it out. I had

  the desire, if I had had the strength.

  But listen—what we prepared

  to have, we have.”

  He raised his eyes.

  “Look,” he said.

  3.

  We stood on a height,

  woods above us, and below

  on the half-mowed slope we saw ourselves

  as we once were: a young man mowing,

  a boy grubbing with an axe.

  It was an old abandoned field,

  long overgrown with thorns and briars.

  We made it new in the heat haze

  of that midsummer: he, proud

  of the ground intelligence clarified,

  and I, proud in his praise.

  “I wish,” I said, “that we could be

  back in that good time again.”

  “We are back there again, today

  and always. Where else would we be?”

  He smiled, looked at me, and I knew

  it was my mind he led me through.

  He spoke of some infinitude

  of thought.

  He led me to another

  slope beside another woods,

  this lighted only by stars. Older

  now, the man and the boy lay

  on their backs in deep grass, quietly

  talking. In the distance moved

  the outcry of one deep-voiced hound.

  Other voices joined that voice:

  another place, a later time,

  a hunter’s fire among the trees,

  faces turned to the blaze, laughter

  and then silence, while in the dark

  around us lay long breaths of sleep.

  4.

  And then, one by one, he moved me

  through all the fields of our lives,

  preparations, plantings, harvests,

  crews joking at the row ends,

  the water jug passing like a kiss.

  He spoke of our history passing through us,

  the way our families’ generations

  overlap, the great teaching

  coming down by deed of companionship:

  characters of fields and times and men,

  qualities of devotion and of work—

  endless fascinations, passions

  old as mind, new as light.

  All our years around us, near us,

  I saw him furious and narrow,

  like most men, and saw the virtue

  that made him unlike most.

  It was his passion to be true


  to the condition of the Fall—

  to live by the sweat of his face, to eat

  his bread, assured that cost was paid.

  5.

  We came then to his time of pain,

  when the early morning light showed,

  as always, the sweet world, and all

  an able, well-intentioned man

  might do by dark, and his strength failed

  before the light. His body had begun

  too soon its earthward journey,

  filling with gravity, and yet his mind

  kept its old way.

  Again, in the sun

  of his last harvest, I heard him say:

  “Do you want to take this row,

  and let me get out of your way?”

  I saw the world ahead of him then

  for the first time, and I saw it

  as he already had seen it,

  himself gone from it. It was a sight

  I could not see and not weep.

  He reached and would have touched me

  with his hand, though he could not.

  6.

  Finally, he brought me to a hill

  overlooking the fields that once

  belonged to him, that he once

  belonged to. “Look,” he said again.

  I knew he wanted me to see

  the years of care that place wore,

  for his story lay upon it, a bloom,

  a blessing.

  The time and place so near,

  we almost were the men we watched.

  Summer’s end sang in the light.

  We spoke of death and obligation,

  the brevity of things and men.

  Words never moved so heavily

  between us, or cost us more. We hushed.

  And then that man who bore his death

  in him, and knew it, quietly said:

  “Well. It’s a fascinating world,

  after all.”

  His life so powerfully

  stood there in presence of his place

  and work and time, I could not

  realize except with grief

  that only his spirit now was with me.

  In the very hour he died, I told him,

  before I knew his death, the thought

  of years to come had moved me

  like a call. I thought of healing,

  health, friendship going on,

  the generations gathering, our good times

  reaching one best time of all.

  7.

  My mind was overborne with questions

  I could not speak. It seemed to me

  we had returned now to the dark