New Collected Poems Read online

  III.

  When it got there

  where was it?

  LOOK IT OVER

  I leave behind even

  my walking stick. My knife

  is in my pocket, but that

  I have forgot. I bring

  no car, no cell phone,

  no computer, no camera,

  no CD player, no fax, no

  TV, not even a book. I go

  into the woods. I sit on

  a log provided at no cost.

  It is the earth I’ve come to,

  the earth itself, sadly

  abused by the stupidity

  only humans are capable of

  but, as ever, itself. Free.

  A bargain! Get it while it lasts.

  A LETTER

  (to Ed McClanahan)

  Dear Ed,

  I dreamed that you and I were sent to Hell.

  The place we went to was not fiery

  or cold, was not Dante’s Hell or Milton’s,

  but was, even so, as true a Hell as any.

  It was a place unalterably public

  in which crowds of people were rushing

  in weary frenzy this way and that,

  as when classes change in a university

  or at quitting time in a city street,

  except that this place was wider far

  than we could see, and the crowd as large

  as the place. In that crowd every one

  was alone. Every one was hurrying.

  Nobody was sitting down. Nobody

  was standing around. All were rushing

  so uniformly in every direction, so

  uniformly frantic, that to average them

  would have stood them still. It was a place

  deeply disturbed. We thought, you and I,

  that we might get across and come out

  on the other side, if we stayed together,

  only if we stayed together. The other side

  would be a clear day in a place we would know.

  We joined hands and hurried along,

  snatching each other through small openings

  in the throng. But the place was full

  of dire distractions, dire satisfactions.

  We were torn apart, and I found you

  breakfasting upon a huge fried egg.

  I snatched you away: “Ed! Come on!”

  And then, still susceptible, I met

  a lady whose luster no hell could dim.

  She took all my thought. But then,

  in the midst of my delight, my fear

  returned: “Oh! Damn it all! Where’s Ed?”

  I fled, searching, and found you again.

  We went on together. How this ended

  I do not know. I woke before it could end.

  But, old friend, I want to tell you

  how fine it was, what a durable

  nucleus of joy it gave my fright

  to force that horrid way with you, how

  heavenly, let us say, in spite of Hell.

  P.S.

  Do you want to know why

  you were distracted by an egg, and I

  by a beautiful lady? That’s Hell.

  A LETTER

  (to my brother)

  Dear John,

  You said, “Treat your worst enemies

  as if they could become your best friends.”

  You were not the first to perpetrate

  such an outrage, but you were right.

  Try as we might, we cannot

  unspring that trap. We can either

  befriend our enemies or we can die

  with them, in the absolute triumph

  of the absolute horror constructed

  by us to save us from them.

  Tough, but “All right,” our Mary said,

  “we’ll be nice to the sons of bitches.”

  A LETTER

  (to Hayden Carruth)

  Dear Hayden,

  How good—how liberating!—to read

  of your hatred of Alice in Wonderland.

  I used to hear my mother reading it

  to my sisters, and I hated it too,

  but have always been embarrassed

  to say so, believing that everybody else

  loved it. But who the hell wants to go

  down a rabbit hole? I like my feet best

  when they’re walking on top of the ground.

  If I could burrow like a mole, I would,

  and I would like that. I would like

  to fly like a bird, if I could. Otherwise,

  my stratum of choice is the surface.

  I prefer skin to anatomy, green grass

  to buried rocks, terra firma to the view

  from anywhere higher than a tree.

  “Long live superficiality!” say I,

  as one foot fares waywardly graveward.

  A LETTER

  (to Ernest J. Gaines)

  Dear Ernie,

  I’ve known you since we were scarcely

  more than boys, sitting as guests

  at Wallace Stegner’s table, and I have read

  everything you have written since then

  because I think what you have written

  is beautiful and quietly, steadily

  brave, in the manner of the best bravery.

  I feel in a way closer to your work

  than to that of anybody else of our age.

  And why is that? I think it’s because

  we both knew the talk of old people,

  old country people, in summer evenings.

  Having worked hard all their lives long

  and all the long day, they came out

  on the gallery down in your country,

  out on the porch or doorstep in mine,

  where they would sit at ease in the cool

  of evening, and they would talk quietly

  of what they had known, of what

  they knew. In their rest and quiet talk

  there was peace that was almost heavenly,

  peace never to be forgotten, never

  again quite to be imagined, but peace

  above all else that we have longed for.

  GIVE IT TIME

  The river is of the earth

  and it is free. It is rigorously

  embanked and bound,

  and yet is free. “To hell

  with restraint,” it says.

  “I have got to be going.”

  It will grind out its dams.

  It will go over or around them.

  They will become pieces.

  QUESTIONNAIRE

  1. How much poison are you willing

  to eat for the success of the free

  market and global trade? Please

  name your preferred poisons.

  2. For the sake of goodness, how much

  evil are you willing to do?

  Fill in the following blanks

  with the names of your favorite

  evils and acts of hatred.

  3. What sacrifices are you prepared

  to make for culture and civilization?

  Please list the monuments, shrines,

  and works of art you would

  most willingly destroy.

  4. In the name of patriotism and

  the flag, how much of our beloved

  land are you willing to desecrate?

  List in the following spaces

  the mountains, rivers, towns, farms

  you could most readily do without.

  5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,

  the energy sources, the kinds of security,

  for which you would kill a child.

  Name, please, the children whom

  you would be willing to kill.

  AND I BEG YOUR PARDON

  The first mosquito:

  come here, and I will kill thee,

  holy though thou art.

  DAVID JONES

  As t
he soldier takes bodily form

  (or dissolves) within the rubble and wreck

  of war, so the holy Virgin takes

  shape within the world of creatures,

  and the angel, to come to her at all,

  must wear a caul of birds,

  his robe folded like the hills.

  TU FU

  As I sit here

  in my little boat

  tied to the shore

  of the passing river

  in a time of ruin,

  I think of you,

  old ancestor,

  and wish you well.

  A SPEECH TO THE GARDEN CLUB OF AMERICA

  With thanks to Wes Jackson and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe

  Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;

  There are so many outcomes that are worse.

  But I must add I’m sorry for getting here

  By a sustained explosion through the air,

  Burning the world in fact to rise much higher

  Than we should go. The world may end in fire

  As prophesied—our world! We speak of it

  As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit

  Of temporary progress, digging up

  An antique dark-held luster to corrupt

  The present light with smokes and smudges, poison

  To outlast time and shatter comprehension.

  Burning the world to live in it is wrong,

  As wrong as to make war to get along

  And be at peace, to falsify the land

  By sciences of greed, or by demand

  For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify

  The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.

  But why not play it cool? Why not survive

  By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?

  Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens

  By going back to school, this time in gardens

  That burn no hotter than the summer day.

  By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,

  By goods that bind us to all living things,

  Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.

  The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,

  Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger

  Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.

  A creature of the surface, like ourselves,

  The garden lives by the immortal Wheel

  That turns in place, year after year, to heal

  It whole. Unlike our economic pyre

  That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,

  An anti-life of radiance and fume

  That burns as power and remains as doom,

  The garden delves no deeper than its roots

  And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.

  WHILE ATTENDING THE ANNUAL

  CONVOCATION OF CAUSE THEORISTS

  AND BIGBANGISTS AT THE LOCAL PROVINCIAL

  RESEARCH UNIVERSITY, THE MAD FARMER

  INTERCEDES FROM THE BACK ROW

  “Chance” is a poor word among

  the mazes of causes and effects, the last

  stand of these all-explainers who,

  backed up to the first and final Why,

  reply, “By chance, of course!” As if

  that tied up ignorance with a ribbon.

  In the beginning something by chance

  existed that would bang and by chance

  it banged, obedient to the by-chance

  previously existing laws of existence

  and banging, from which the rest proceeds

  by the logic of cause and effect also

  previously existing by chance? Well,

  when all that happened who was there?

  Did the chance that made the bang then make

  the Bomb, and there was no choice, no help?

  Prove to me that chance did ever

  make a sycamore tree, a yellow-

  throated warbler nesting and singing

  high up among the white limbs

  and the golden leaf-light, and a man

  to love the tree, the bird, the song

  his life long, and by his love to save

  them, so far, from all machines.

  By chance? Prove it, then, and I

  by chance will kiss your ass.

  MEN UNTRAINED TO COMFORT

  Jason Needly found his father, old Ab, at work

  at the age of eighty in the topmost

  tier of the barn. “Come down!” Jason called.

  “You got no business up there at your age.”

  And his father descended, not by a ladder,

  there being none, but by inserting his fingers

  into the cracks between boards and climbing

  down the wall.

  And when he was young

  and some account and strong and knew

  nothing of weariness, old man Milt Wright,

  back in the days they called him “Steady,”

  carried the rastus plow on his shoulder

  up the high hill to his tobacco patch, so

  when they got there his mule would be fresh,

  unsweated, and ready to go.

  Early Rowanberry,

  for another, bought a steel-beam breaking plow

  at the store in Port William and shouldered it

  before the hardly-believing watchers, and carried it

  the mile and a half home, down through the woods

  along Sand Ripple.

  “But the tiredest my daddy

  ever got,” his son, Art, told me one day,

  “was when he carried fifty rabbits and a big possum

  in a sack on his back up onto the point yonder

  and out the ridge to town to sell them at the store.”

  “But why,” I asked, “didn’t he hitch a team

  to the wagon and haul them up there by the road?”

  “Well,” Art said, “we didn’t have but two

  horses in them days, and we spared them

  every way we could. A many a time I’ve seen

  my daddy or grandpa jump off the wagon or sled

  and take the end of a singletree beside a horse.”

  OVER THE EDGE

  To tell a girl you loved her—my God!—

  that was a leap off a cliff, requiring little

  sense, sweet as it was. And I have loved

  many girls, women too, who by various fancies

  of my mind have seemed loveable. But only

  with you have I actually tried it: the long labor,

  the selfishness, the self-denial, the children

  and grandchildren, the garden rows planted

  and gathered, the births and deaths of many years.

  We boys, when we were young and romantic

  and ignorant, new to the mystery and the power,

  would wonder late into the night on the cliff’s edge:

  Was this love real? Was it true? And how

  would you know? Well, it was time would tell,

  if you were patient and could spare the time,

  a long time, a lot of trouble, a lot of joy.

  This one begins to look—would you say?—real?

  Index of Titles and First Lines

  (Titles are in roman, first lines in italics)

  A gracious Spirit sings as it comes 281

  A high wooded hill near Florence, an April 77

  A man could be a god 251

  A people in the throes of national prosperity, who 321

  A shower like a little song 332

  A sparrow is 20

  A spring wind blowing 59

  A woman wholly given in love is held 331

  A young man’s love is bitter love, 332

  Above trees and rooftops 240

  Adze, The 231

  After the storm and the new 348

  After we saw the wild ducks 230

  Against the War in Vietnam 75<
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  Air 325

  Air and Fire 131

  All day our eyes could find no resting place. 3

  All goes back to the earth, 78

  All that I serve will die, all my delights, 130

  All that passes descends, 295

  Always, on their generations breaking wave, 159

  Amid the gray trunks of ancient trees we found 132

  And I Beg Your Pardon 376

  Anger Against Beasts 182

  Anglo-Saxon Protestant Heterosexual Men 324

  Anniversary, An 197

  Another Descent 239

  April Woods: Morning 68

  Architecture, An 19

  Aristocracy, The 17

  Arrival, The 175

  As I sit here 376

  As I started home after dark 121

  As my first blow against it, I would not stay. 142

  As spring begins the river rises, 123

  As the soldier takes bodily form 376

  At a Country Funeral 183

  At my age my father 188

  At start of spring I open a trench 233

  At the end of October 64

  At the first strokes of the fiddle bow 298

  Autumn Burning, An 247

  Awake at Night 147

  Before Dark 71

  Being, whose flesh dissolves 161

  Believe the automatic righteousness 75

  Below 240

  Better born than married, misled, 156

  Between painting a roof yesterday and the hay 132

  Between the living world 232

  Beyond this final house 9

  Bird Killer, The 18

  Birth of color 68

  Birth, The 143

  Blue Robe, The 315

  Boone 9

  Breaking 166

  Bridged and forgot, the river 292

  Broken Ground, The 29

  Burley Coulter’s Song For Kate Helen Branch 353

  By the fall of years I learn how it has been 217

  Canticle 19

  Cathedral 346

  “Chance” is a poor word among 379

  Clear Days, The 193

  Clearing, The 209

  Clumsy at first, fitting together 171

  Cold Pane, The 232

  Cold, The 65

  Come Forth 342

  Come, dear brothers, 324

  Companions, The 16

  Contrariness of the Mad Farmer, The 139

  Country of Marriage, The 167

  Creation Myth 249

  Current, The 136

  Dance, A 234

  Dance, The 299

  Dante 347