I am a great American I am almost nationalistic about it! I love America like a madness! But I am afraid to return to America I’m even afraid to go into the American Express—
Even as the sun with purple-colour’d face
Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek’d Adonis tried him to the chase;
Hunting he lov’d, but love he laugh’d to scorn;
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-fac’d suitor ‘gins to woo him.
How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country. PART I It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
I came an errand one cloud-blowing evening To a slab-built, black-paper-covered house Of one room and one window and one door, The only dwelling in a waste cut over A hundred square miles round it in the mountains: And that not dwelt in now by men or women. (It never had been dwelt in, though, by women, So what is this I make a sorrow of?)
“Oh where are you going with your love-locks flowing On the west wind blowing along this valley track?” “The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye, We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.”
So they two went together in glowing August weather, The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right; And dear she was to dote on, her swift feet seemed to float on The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.
“Oh what is that in heaven where gray cloud-flakes are seven, Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt?” “Oh that’s a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous, An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt.”
I like Rosh Hashonah late, when the leaves are half burnt umber and scarlet, when sunset marks the horizon with slow fire and the black silhouettes of migrating birds perch on the wires davening.
A hole torn in the fabric of the world, the web, the whole infernal weave through which life-giving rain is falling but mixing with the tears and with the blood. Dead body-snatchers enter, the mega-corpses, much in the news these days, enter and grind bones, flesh and sinews down to dry tree bark, mixing with tree bark, crawling with the demonic
Light over the Hudson recovers a Caribbean I have never seen. We list islands: Molokai, Oahu, Kauai; St. Lucia, Haiti…. The surf folds tunnels of light while a hand folds over a wrist (tell-tale pulse), counting. The long tunnel is a wrist of blown spume.
It is like a dance, I think, this silence full of questions. Pulse-beat; pulse-beat. Pulse. Pulse.
I push my hair back into the memories of palm trees,
xxiv What is far hence led to the den of making: Moves unlike wildfire | not so simple-happy Ploughman hammers ploughshare his durum dentem Digging the Georgics
Vision loads landscape | lauds Idoto Mater Bearing up sacrally so graced with bodies Voids the challenge how far from Igboland great- Stallioned Argos
Vehemencies minus the ripe arraignment Clapper this art taken to heart the fiction What are those harsh cryings astrew the marshes Weep not to hear them
Fashionable women in luxurious homes, With men to feed them, clothe them, pay their bills, Bow, doff the hat, and fetch the handkerchief; Hostess or guest, and always so supplied With graceful deference and courtesy; Surrounded by their servants, horses, dogs, — These tell us they have all the rights they want.
Successful women who have won their way Alone, with strength of their unaided arm, Or helped by friends, or softly climbing up By the sweet aid of ‘woman’s influence’; Successful any way, and caring naught For any other woman’s unsuccess, — These tell us they have all the rights they want.
Is anything central? Orchards flung out on the land, Urban forests, rustic plantations, knee-high hills? Are place names central? Elm Grove, Adcock Corner, Story Book Farm? As they concur with a rush at eye level Beating themselves into eyes which have had enough Thank you, no more thank you.
Along Ancona’s hills the shimmering heat, A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro To mark the shore. The farmer does not know
The lean hands of wagon men put out pointing fingers here, picked this crossway, put it on a map, set up their sawbucks, fixed their shotguns, found a hitching place for the pony express, made a hitching place for the iron horse, the one-eyed horse with the fire-spit head,
Once in late summer, the road already deep in twilight, mixing colors with some straggly wildflowers, I came to a village I did not know was there until I stepped into its narrow street. Admiring the prim, white houses
It is easily forgotten, year to year, exactly where the plot is, though the place is entirely familiar— a willow tree by a curving roadway sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves;
damp grass strewn with flower boxes, canvas chairs, darkskinned old ladies circling in draped black crepe family stones,
Roughly figured, this man of moderate habits, This average consumer of the middle class, Consumed in the course of his average life span Just under half a million cigarettes, Four thousand fifths of gin and about A quarter as much vermouth; he drank Maybe a hundred thousand cups of coffee, And counting his parents’ share it cost
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