New Collected Poems Read online

  VII

  Let us come to no conclusion,

  but let our bodies burn

  in time’s timelessness. Heaven

  and earth give us to this night

  in which we tell each other of

  a Kingdom yet to come, saying

  its secret, its silent names.

  We become fleshed words, one

  another’s uttered joy.

  VIII

  Joined in our mortal time,

  we come to the resurrection

  of words; they rise up

  in our mouths, set free

  of taints, errors, and bad luck.

  In their new clarities

  the leaf brightens, the air

  clears, the syllables of water are

  clear in the dark air as stars.

  IX

  We come, unsighted, in the dark,

  to the great feast of lovers

  where nothing is withheld.

  That we are there we know

  by touch, by inner sight.

  They all are here, who by

  their giving take, by taking

  give, who by their living

  love, and by loving live.

  THE THREE

  A woman wholly given in love is held

  by a dying man and an immortal one.

  The man dying knows himself departing

  from her, leaving her in the arms

  of the man who will live, cherishing her,

  given to him as she is forever.

  TO HAYDEN CARRUTH

  Dear Hayden, when I read your book I was aching

  in head, back, heart, and mind, and aching

  with your aches added to my own, and yet for joy

  I read on without stopping, made eager

  by your true mastery, wit, sorrow, and joy,

  each made true by the others. My reading done,

  I swear I am feeling better. Here in Port Royal

  I take off my hat to you up there in Munnsville

  in your great dignity of being necessary. I swear

  it appears to me you’re one of the rare fellows

  who may finally amount to something. What shall

  I say? I greet you at the beginning of a great career?

  No. I greet you at the beginning, for we are

  either beginning or we are dead. And let us have

  no careers, lest one day we be found dead in them.

  I greet you at the beginning that you have made

  authentically in your art, again and again.

  NOGUCHI FOUNTAIN

  Sits level,

  fills silently,

  overflows,

  makes music.

  SPRING

  A shower like a little song

  Overtook him going home,

  Wet his shoulders, and went on.

  IMAGINATION

  A young man’s love is bitter love

  For what he must forego,

  For what he ignorantly would have,

  Desires but does not know.

  The years, the years will teach him joys

  That are more bitter still;

  What in his having he forgoes

  He has imagined well.

  FOR AN ABSENCE

  When I cannot be with you

  I will send my love (so much

  is allowed to human lovers)

  to watch over you in the dark—

  a winged small presence

  who never sleeps, however long

  the night. Perhaps it cannot

  protect or help, I do not know,

  but it watches always, and so

  you will sleep within my love

  within the room within the dark.

  And when, restless, you wake

  and see the room palely lit

  by that watching, you will think,

  “It’s only dawn,” and go

  quiet to sleep again.

  THE STORM

  We lay in our bed as in a tomb

  awakened by thunder to the dark

  in which our house was one with night,

  and then light came as if the black

  roof of the world had cracked open,

  as if the night of all time had broken,

  and out our window we glimpsed the world

  birthwet and shining, as even

  the sun at noon had never made it shine.

  PART FOUR

  When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkedst

  whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old,

  thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall

  gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not

  JOHN 21:18

  IN EXTREMIS: POEMS ABOUT MY FATHER

  I

  I was at home alone. He came

  to fight, as I had known he would.

  The war in Vietnam was on;

  I’d spoken out, opposing it—

  and so, I thought, embarrassed him.

  Not because he loved the war.

  He feared for me, or for himself

  in me. Fear angered him. He was

  my enemy; his mind was made

  up like a fist. He sat erect

  on the chair’s edge as on a horse,

  would not take off his coat.

  That was his way. My house was not

  a house in which he would consent

  to make himself at home that day.

  The argument was hard and hot.

  Tempered alike, we each knew where

  the other’s hide was tenderest.

  We went past reason and past sense

  by way of any eloquence

  that hurt. He leaned. I saw the brown

  spot in the blue of his right eye.

  Forefinger hooking through the air,

  he said I had been led astray,

  beguiled, by he knew who, by God!

  And was I then to be his boy

  forever? Or his equal? Or

  his foe? His equal and his foe?

  By grace (I think it must have been

  by grace) I told him what I knew:

  “Do you know who has been, by God,

  the truest teacher in my life

  from the beginning until now?”

  “Who, by God?”

  “You, by God!”

  He wept and said, “By God, I’m proud.”

  II

  He was, in his strength, the most feeling

  and the most demanding man

  I have ever known. I knew at first

  only the difficulty of his demand,

  but now I know the fear in it.

  He has been afraid always of the loss

  of precious things. We live in time

  as in hard rain, and have no shelter,

  half hopeless in anxiety for the young,

  half hopeless in compassion for the old.

  The generations fail and we forget

  what we were, and are. The earth,

  even, is flowing away. And where

  is the stay against indifference?

  I know his fear now by my own.

  Precious things are being lost.

  III

  My grandfather, in the lost tongue

  of his kind and time, called drawers

  “draws.” My father pronounced the word

  that way himself from time to time

  in commemoration. And now another

  time had come. I diapered him

  like a child and helped him go

  with short slow steps to bed. Meaning

  to invoke his old remembrance

  to cheer him, I said, “Don’t lose

  your draws.” “We miss him, don’t we?”

  he said. “Yes,” I said. “Yes,” he said.

  IV

  Sometimes we do not know what time he’s in

  Or if he is in time. The dead live in his mind.

  They wait beyo
nd his sight, made radiant by his long

  Unchanging love, as by the mercy and the grace

  Of God. At night I help him to lie down upon

  That verge we reach by generation and by day.

  He says that, though we sleep, we love eternally.

  V

  He dreamed there was a storm

  And all was overturned.

  In his great need he called

  His mother and his father

  To help him, and one he’d known

  But did not know found him

  On the dark stair, led him

  Back to his bed. Next day,

  The dream still near, he said,

  In longing of this world

  That in the next is joy,

  “If I could have found Papa,

  I’d have been so comforted.”

  VI

  I imagine him as he must appear

  to his father and mother now,

  if from the world of the dead they see

  him as he now is—an old man

  sliding his feet along the floor

  in little childish steps. I imagine

  that they call him “child,” and pity

  him, and love him as they did,

  for they are senior to him still,

  having gone through the dark door,

  and learned the hard things and the good

  that only the dead can know.

  And I imagine that they know also

  the greater good, that we long for

  but cannot know, that knows

  of all our sorrow, and rejoices still.

  VII

  Sometimes in sleeping he forgets

  That he is old and, waking up,

  Intends to go out in the world

  To work, just as he did before—

  Only to find that his body now

  No longer answers to his will,

  And his mind too is changed but not

  By him. And then he rages in

  His grief, and will not be consoled.

  He cannot be consoled by us,

  More mortal in our fewer years,

  Who have not reached the limit he

  Has come to, when immortal love

  In flesh, denying time, will look

  At what is lost, and grief fulfill

  The budget of desire. Sometimes,

  At home, he longs to be at home.

  VIII

  And sometimes he fulfills

  What must have been the worst

  Of all his fears: to be

  An old man, fierce and foul,

  Outraged and unforgiving,

  One man alone, mere fact

  Beyond the reach of love.

  For fear this is his fate,

  And mine if it is his,

  I struggle with him. Thus

  We ardently debate

  The truth of fantasy

  Empowered by wrath—the facts

  He says are lies, the lies

  He says are facts—his

  Eyes in their conviction hard

  To meet, hard to avoid.

  We go into a place

  Of ruin, where light obscures,

  To the right place for us now

  In our mad argument,

  Exchanging foolish fire

  In reasoned eloquence,

  And winning no success.

  We still are as we were,

  And yet we do not fail,

  For thus estranged we both

  Oppose his loneliness.

  IX

  The dead come near him in his sleep

  And, waking, he calls out to them

  To help him in his helplessness.

  And though they in their distance keep

  Silent, and give no help to him.

  And do not answer his distress,

  I hear him calling in my sleep

  Among the living in the dim

  House, where he calls in loneliness.

  I go to help him in the deep

  Night, waked and walking in whose time?

  I am the brother called in darkness.

  X

  We watch the TV show,

  Smooth faces and smooth talk

  Made for everywhere,

  Thus alien everywhere.

  In deference to old age

  And time, we sit down for

  What no one can stand up for.

  I wish him out of it,

  That man-made other world.

  I wish undone his absence

  In body and in thought

  From open countryside,

  Our local air and light.

  To honor him aright

  I call him back to mind,

  Remember him again

  When he was my age now,

  And straighter-backed than I,

  Still hungry for the world.

  His mind was then an act

  Accomplished soon as thought,

  Though now his body serves

  Unwillingly at best

  His mind’s unresting will.

  I summon him away

  From time and heaviness.

  I see him as he was.

  XI

  The light is low and red upon the fields,

  The mists are rising in the long hollow,

  The shadows have stretched out, and he comes walking

  In deep bluegrass that silences his steps.

  Elated and upright, he walks beneath

  The walnut trees around the spring. His work

  Is done, the office shut and still, his chair

  Empty. And now at his long shadow’s foot,

  He comes to salt the ewe flock, and to hear

  The meadowlarks sing in the evening quiet.

  He calls his sheep, who know his voice and come,

  Crowding up to him as the light departs

  And earth’s great shadow gathers them in. White

  In darkening air, their fleeces glow as he

  Puts down the salt, a handful at a place,

  Along the path. At last, the bucket empty,

  He stands, watching the sheep, the deepening sky,

  The few small stars already pointing out.

  Now may he come to that good rest again.

  XII

  What did I learn from him?

  He taught the difference

  Between good work and sham,

  Between nonsense and sense.

  He taught me sentences,

  Outspoken fact for fact,

  In swift coherences

  Discriminate and exact.

  He served with mind and hand

  What we were hoping for:

  The small house on the land,

  The shade tree by the door,

  Garden, smokehouse, and cellar,

  Granary, crib, and loft

  Abounding, and no year

  Lived at the next year’s cost.

  He kept in mind, alive,

  The idea of the dead:

  “A steer should graze and thrive

  Wherever he lowers his head.”

  He said his father’s saying.

  We were standing on the hill

  To watch the cattle grazing

  As the gray evening fell.

  “Look. See that this is good,

  And then you won’t forget.”

  I saw it as he said,

  And I have not forgot.

  EPITAPH

  Having lived long in time,

  he lives now in timelessness

  without sorrow, made perfect

  by our never finished love,

  by our compassion and forgiveness,

  and by his happiness in receiving

  these gifts we give. Here in time

  we are added to one another forever.

  COME FORTH

  I dreamed of my father when he was old.

  We went to see some horses in a field;

  they were sorrels, as red almost as
blood,

  the light gold on their shoulders and haunches.

  Though they came to us, all a-tremble

  with curiosity and snorty with caution,

  they had never known bridle or harness.

  My father walked among them, admiring,

  for he was a knower of horses, and these were fine.

  He leaned on a cane and dragged his feet

  along the ground in hurried little steps

  so that I called to him to take care, take care,

  as the horses stamped and frolicked around him.

  But while I warned, he seized the mane

  of the nearest one. “It’ll be all right,”

  he said, and then from his broken stance

  he leapt astride, and sat lithe and straight

  and strong in the sun’s unshadowed excellence.

  GIVEN

  (2005)

  In Memory: Ross Feld

  PART ONE

  In a Country Once Forested

  DUST

  The dust motes float

  and swerve in the sunbeam,

  as lively as worlds,

  and I remember my brother

  when we were boys:

  “We may be living on an atom

  in somebody’s wallpaper.”

  IN A COUNTRY ONCE FORESTED

  The young woodland remembers

  the old, a dreamer dreaming

  of an old holy book,

  an old set of instructions,

  and the soil under the grass

  is dreaming of a young forest,

  and under the pavement the soil

  is dreaming of grass.

  TO TANYA ON MY SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY

  What wonder have you done to me?

  In binding love you set me free.

  These sixty years the wonder prove:

  I bring you aged a young man’s love.

  THEY

  I see you down there, white-haired

  among the green leaves,

  picking the ripe raspberries,

  and I think, “Forty-two years!”