New Collected Poems Read online

  We are the you and I who were

  they whom we remember.

  CATHEDRAL

  Stone

  of the earth

  made

  of its own weight

  light

  DANTE

  If you imagine

  others are there,

  you are there yourself.

  THE MILLENNIUM

  What year

  does the phoebe

  think it is?

  JUNE WIND

  Light and wind are running

  over the headed grass

  as though the hill had

  melted and now flowed.

  WHY

  Why all the embarrassment

  about being happy?

  Sometimes I’m as happy

  as a sleeping dog,

  and for the same reasons,

  and for others.

  THE REJECTED HUSBAND

  After the storm and the new

  stillness of the snow, he returns

  to the graveyard, as though

  he might lift the white coverlet,

  slip in beside her as he used to do,

  and again feel, beneath his hand,

  her flesh quicken and turn warm.

  But he is not her husband now.

  To participate in resurrection, one

  first must be dead. And he goes

  back into the whitened world, alive.

  THE INLET

  In a dream I go

  out into the sunlit street

  and I see a boy walking

  clear-eyed in the light.

  I recognize him, he is

  Bill Lippert, wearing the gray

  uniform of the school

  we attended many years ago.

  And then I see that my brother

  is with me in the dream,

  dressed too in the old uniform.

  Our friend looks as he did

  when we first knew him,

  and until I wake I believe

  I will die of grief, for I know

  that this boy grew into a man

  who was a faithful friend

  who died.

  Where I stood,

  seeing and knowing, was time,

  where we die of grief. And surely

  the bright street of my dream,

  in which we saw again

  our old friend as a boy

  clear-eyed in innocence of his death,

  was some quickly-crossed

  small inlet of eternity.

  LISTEN!

  How fine to have a radio

  and beautiful music playing

  while I sit at rest in the evening.

  How fine to hear through the music

  the cries of wild geese on the river.

  IN ART ROWANBERRY’S BARN

  In Art Rowanberry’s barn, when Art’s death

  had become quietly a fact among

  the other facts, Andy Catlett found

  a jacket made of the top half

  of a pair of coveralls after

  the legs wore out, for Art

  never wasted anything.

  Andy found a careful box made

  of woodscraps with a strap

  for a handle; it contained

  a handful of small nails

  wrapped in a piece of newspaper,

  several large nails, several

  rusty bolts with nuts and washers,

  some old harness buckles

  and rings, rusty but usable,

  several small metal boxes, empty,

  and three hickory nuts

  hollowed out by mice.

  And all of these things Andy

  put back where they had been,

  for time and the world and other people

  to dispense with as they might,

  but not by him to be disprized.

  This long putting away

  of things maybe useful was not all

  of Art’s care-taking; he cared

  for creatures also, every day

  leaving his tracks in dust, mud,

  or snow as he went about

  looking after his stock, or gave

  strength to lighten a neighbor’s work.

  Andy found a bridle made

  of several lengths of baling twine

  knotted to a rusty bit,

  an old set of chain harness,

  four horseshoes of different sizes,

  and three hammerstones picked up

  from the opened furrow on days

  now as perfectly forgotten

  as the days when they were lost.

  He found a good farrier’s knife,

  an awl, a key to a lock

  that would no longer open.

  BURLEY COULTER’S SONG FOR KATE HELEN BRANCH

  The rugs were rolled back to the wall,

  The band in place, the lamps all lit.

  We talked and laughed a little bit

  And then obeyed the caller’s call—

  Light-footed, happy, half entranced—

  To balance, swing, and promenade.

  Do you remember how we danced

  And how the fiddler played?

  About midnight we left the crowd

  And wandered out to take a stroll.

  We heard the treefrogs and the owl;

  Nearby the creek was running loud.

  The good dark held us as we chanced

  The joy we two together made,

  Remembering how we’d whirled and pranced

  And how the fiddler played.

  That night is many years ago

  And gone, and still I see you clear,

  Clear as the lamplight in your hair.

  The old time comes around me now,

  And I remember how you glanced

  At me, and how we stepped and swayed.

  I can’t forget the way we danced,

  The way the fiddler played.

  HOW TO BE A POET

  (to remind myself)

  Make a place to sit down.

  Sit down. Be quiet.

  You must depend upon

  affection, reading, knowledge,

  skill—more of each

  than you have—inspiration,

  work, growing older, patience,

  for patience joins time

  to eternity. Any readers

  who like your work,

  doubt their judgment.

  Breathe with unconditional breath

  the unconditioned air.

  Shun electric wire.

  Communicate slowly. Live

  a three-dimensioned life;

  stay away from screens.

  Stay away from anything

  that obscures the place it is in.

  There are no unsacred places;

  there are only sacred places

  and desecrated places.

  Accept what comes from silence.

  Make the best you can of it.

  Of the little words that come

  out of the silence, like prayers

  prayed back to the one who prays,

  make a poem that does not disturb

  the silence from which it came.

  WORDS

  1.

  What is one to make of a life given

  to putting things into words,

  saying them, writing them down?

  Is there a world beyond words?

  There is. But don’t start, don’t

  go on about the tree unqualified,

  standing in light that shines

  to time’s end beyond its summoning

  name. Don’t praise the speechless

  starlight, the unspeakable dawn.

  Just stop.

  2.

  Well, we can stop

  for a while, if we try hard enough,

  if we are lucky. We can sit still,

  keep silent, let the phoebe, the sycamore,

  the river, the stone cal
l themselves

  by whatever they call themselves, their own

  sounds, their own silence, and thus

  may know for a moment the nearness

  of the world, its vastness,

  its vast variousness, far and near,

  which only silence knows. And then

  we must call all things by name

  out of the silence again to be with us,

  or die of namelessness.

  TO A WRITER OF REPUTATION

  . . . the man must remain obscure.

  CÉZANNE

  Having begun in public anonymity,

  you did not count on this

  literary sublimation by which

  some body becomes a “name”—

  as if you have died and have become

  a part of mere geography. Greet,

  therefore, the roadsigns on the road.

  Or perhaps you have become deaf and blind,

  or merely inanimate, and may

  be studied without embarrassment

  by the disinterested, the dispassionate,

  and the merely curious,

  not fearing to be overheard.

  Hello to the grass, then, and to the trees.

  Or perhaps you are secretly

  still alert and moving, no longer the one

  they have named, but another,

  named by yourself,

  carrying away this morning’s showers

  for your private delectation.

  Hello, river.

  PART TWO

  Further Words

  SEVENTY YEARS

  Well, anyhow, I am

  not going to die young.

  A PASSING THOUGHT

  I think therefore

  I think I am.

  THE LEADER

  Head like a big

  watermelon,

  frequently thumped

  and still not ripe.

  THE ONGOING HOLY WAR AGAINST EVIL

  Stop the killing, or

  I’ll kill you, you

  God-damned murderer!

  SOME FURTHER WORDS

  Let me be plain with you, dear reader.

  I am an old-fashioned man. I like

  the world of nature despite its mortal

  dangers. I like the domestic world

  of humans, so long as it pays its debts

  to the natural world, and keeps its bounds.

  I like the promise of Heaven. My purpose

  is a language that can pay just thanks

  and honor for those gifts, a tongue

  set free from fashionable lies.

  Neither this world nor any of its places

  is an “environment.” And a house

  for sale is not a “home.” Economics

  is not “science,” nor “information” knowledge.

  A knave with a degree is a knave. A fool

  in a public office is not a “leader.”

  A rich thief is a thief. And the ghost

  of Arthur Moore, who taught me Chaucer,

  returns in the night to say again:

  “Let me tell you something, boy.

  An intellectual whore is a whore.”

  The world is babbled to pieces after

  the divorce of things from their names.

  Ceaseless preparation for war

  is not peace. Health is not procured

  by sale of medication, or purity

  by the addition of poison. Science

  at the bidding of the corporations

  is knowledge reduced to merchandise;

  it is a whoredom of the mind,

  and so is the art that calls this “progress.”

  So is the cowardice that calls it “inevitable.”

  I think the issues of “identity” mostly

  are poppycock. We are what we have done,

  which includes our promises, includes

  our hopes, but promises first. I know

  a “fetus” is a human child.

  I loved my children from the time

  they were conceived, having loved

  their mother, who loved them

  from the time they were conceived

  and before. Who are we to say

  the world did not begin in love?

  I would like to die in love as I was born,

  and as myself, of life impoverished, go

  into the love all flesh begins

  and ends in. I don’t like machines,

  which are neither mortal nor immortal,

  though I am constrained to use them.

  (Thus the age perfects its clench.)

  Some day they will be gone, and that

  will be a glad and a holy day.

  I mean the dire machines that run

  by burning the world’s body and

  its breath. When I see an airplane

  fuming through the once-pure sky

  or a vehicle of the outer space

  with its little inner space

  imitating a star at night, I say,

  “Get out of there!” as I would speak

  to a fox or a thief in the henhouse.

  When I hear the stock market has fallen,

  I say, “Long live gravity! Long live

  stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces

  of fantasy capitalism!” I think

  an economy should be based on thrift,

  on taking care of things, not on theft,

  usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.

  My purpose is a language that can make us whole,

  though mortal, ignorant, and small.

  The world is whole beyond human knowing.

  The body’s life is its own, untouched

  by the little clockwork of explanation.

  I approve of death, when it comes in time

  to the old. I don’t want to live

  on mortal terms forever, or survive

  an hour as a cooling stew of pieces

  of other people. I don’t believe that life

  or knowledge can be given by machines.

  The machine economy has set afire

  the household of the human soul,

  and all the creatures are burning within it.

  “Intellectual property” names

  the deed by which the mind is bought

  and sold, the world enslaved. We

  who do not own ourselves, being free,

  own by theft what belongs to God,

  to the living world, and equally

  to us all. Or how can we own a part

  of what we only can possess entirely?

  “The laborer is worthy of his hire,”

  but he cannot own what he knows,

  which must be freely told, or labor

  dies with the laborer. The farmer

  is worthy of the harvest made

  in time, but he must leave the light

  by which he planted, grew, and reaped,

  the seed immortal in mortality,

  freely to the time to come. The land

  too he keeps by giving it up,

  as the thinker receives and gives a thought,

  as the singer sings in the common air.

  I don’t believe that “scientific genius”

  in its naïve assertions of power

  is equal either to nature or

  to human culture. Its thoughtless invasions

  of the nuclei of atoms and cells

  and this world’s every habitation

  have not brought us to the light

  but sent us wandering farther through

  the dark. Nor do I believe

  “artistic genius” is the possession

  of any artist. No one has made

  the art by which one makes the works

  of art. Each one who speaks speaks

  as a convocation. We live as councils

  of ghosts. It is not “human genius”

  that makes us human, but an old love,

&nb
sp; an old intelligence of the heart

  we gather to us from the world,

  from the creatures, from the angels

  of inspiration, from the dead—

  an intelligence merely nonexistent

  to those who do not have it, but

  to those who have it more dear than life.

  And just as tenderly to be known

  are the affections that make a woman and a man,

  their household, and their homeland one.

  These too, though known, cannot be told

  to those who do not know them, and fewer

  of us learn them, year by year,

  loves that are leaving the world

  like the colors of extinct birds,

  like the songs of a dead language.

  Think of the genius of the animals,

  every one truly what it is:

  gnat, fox, minnow, swallow, each made

  of light and luminous within itself.

  They know (better than we do) how

  to live in the places where they live.

  And so I would like to be a true

  human being, dear reader—a choice

  not altogether possible now.

  But this is what I’m for, the side

  I’m on. And this is what you should

  expect of me, as I expect it of myself,

  though for realization we may wait

  a thousand or a million years.

  LYSIMACHIA NUMMULARIA

  It is called moneywort

  for its “coinlike” leaves

  and perhaps its golden flowers.

  I love it because it is

  a naturalized exotic

  that does no harm,

  and for its lowly thriving,

  and for its actual

  unlikeness to money.

  LEAVINGS

  (2010)

  I dedicate this book

  with respect

  to the poet John Haines

  LIKE SNOW

  Suppose we did our work

  like the snow, quietly, quietly,

  leaving nothing out.

  ON THE THEORY OF THE BIG BANG AS THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE

  I.

  What banged?

  II.

  Before banging

  how did it get there?