Above the fresh ruffles of the surf Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand. They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks, And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed Gaily digging and scattering.
And in answer to their treble interjections The sun beats lightning on the waves,
I He who has never tasted the grapes of Canaan can only view them from Pisgah.
I have my tides, O sea-foamed Venus, dearer than watercress, pipkins, thyme and clymene. You once held me by the cord of my navel, but I have not died to live in Mahomet’s paradise.
Would that I could gather up my love to me as one does one’s fate, or measure her nature as God does the sea.
We are a weary race that hates seedtime. Poor Persephone, who is Maying springtime, and the coming up of flowers! We remember only what we seed, and Persephone goes down into the earth after Spring and Summer vegetation only because Pluto gave her pomegranate seeds to remember him, but if the seed perish, Persephone will die, and memory shall pass from the earth.
A man of humble blood, with a soul of Kidron, needs a Rachel, but I labored for years in the weary fields for Leah.II The world is a wound in my soul, and I have sought the living waters in meditation, and the angelical fountains in the desert of Beersheba for solitude, for what health there is in friendship comes when one is alone.
I shed tears on the Mount of Olives because people no longer care for each other, but my friends have lacked the character for the vigil. There is no Cana wine in human affections that are not always awake, for people who do not trouble about each other are foes.
It is humiliating being the lamb and bleating to each passerby, “Feed me!” What is the use of saying that men are stones when I know I am going to try to turn them into bread.
I am afraid to say that people are truthful. When a man tells me he is honest I press my hand close to my heart where I keep my miserable wallet. If he says he has any goodness in him, I avoid him, for I trust nobody who has so little fear of the evils that grow and ripen in us while we imagine we have one virtuous trait. These demons lie in ambush in the thick, heady coverts of the blood, where hypocrisy and egoism fatten, waiting to mock or betray us in any moment of self-esteem.
I have no faith in a meek man, and regard anyone that shows a humble mien as one who is preparing to make an attack upon me, for there is some brutish, nether fault in starved vanity.
Yet once a friend leaned as gently on my coat as that disciple had on the bosom of the Saviour, and I went away, not knowing by his affection whether I was the John Christ was said to have loved most. I whispered thanks to my soul because he leaned upon me, for I shall never know who I am if I am not loved.
V Much flesh walks upon the earth void of heart and warm liver, for it is the spirit that dies soonest.
Some men have marshland natures with mist and sea-water in their intellects, and are as sterile as the Florida earth which De Soto found in those meager, rough Indian settlements, and their tongues are fierce, reedy arrows. They wound and bleed the spirit, and their oaks and chestnut trees and acorns are wild, and a terrible, barren wind from the Atlantic blows through their blood as pitiless as the primitive rivers De Soto’s soldiers could not ford.
Do not attempt to cross these mad, tumid rivers, boreal and brackish, for water is unstable, and you cannot link yourself to it.
There are also inland, domestic men who are timid pulse and vetch, and though they may appear as stupid as poultry rooting in the mire, they are housed people, and they have orchards and good, tamed wine that makes men loving rather than predatory; go to them, and take little thought of their ignorance which brings forth good fruits, for here you may eat and not be on guard for the preservation of your soul.
People who have domestic animals are patient, for atheism and the stony heart are the result of traveling: sorrow never goes anywhere. Were we as content as our forefathers were with labor in the fallow, or as a fuller with his cloth, or a drayman with his horses and mules, we would stay where we are, and that is praying.
There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone, and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment.
God forgive me for my pride; though I would relinquish my own birthright for that wretched pottage of lentils which is friendship, I mistrust every mortal.
Each day the alms I ask of heaven is not to have a new chagrin which is my daily bread.
—Was it for this That one, the fairest of all Rivers, lov'd To blend his murmurs with my Nurse's song, And from his alder shades and rocky falls, And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice That flow'd along my dreams? For this, didst Thou, O Derwent! travelling over the green Plains Near my 'sweet Birthplace', didst thou, beauteous Stream
Some claim the origin of song was a war cry some say it was a rhyme telling the farmers when to plant and reap don’t they know the first song was a lullaby pulled from a mother’s sleep said the old woman
A significant factor generating my delight in being alive this springtime is the birdsong that like a sweeping mesh has captured me like diamond rain I can’t hear it enough said the tulip
Like all his people he felt at home in the forest. The silence beneath great trees, the dimness there, The distant high rustling of foliage, the clumps Of fern like little green fountains, patches of sunlight, Patches of moss and lichen, the occasional Undergrowth of hazel and holly, was he aware Of all this? On the contrary his unawareness Was a kind of gratification, a sense of comfort
1 Who will honor the city without a name If so many are dead and others pan gold Or sell arms in faraway countries?
What shepherd's horn swathed in the bark of birch Will sound in the Ponary Hills the memory of the absent— Vagabonds, Pathfinders, brethren of a dissolved lodge?
This spring, in a desert, beyond a campsite flagpole,
The missile to launch a missile was almost a secret. Two male Ph.D.’s were picked and primed to fill it and one hundred carefully counted insects, three almost new snakes, coiled in a cube,
On this first day of spring, snow covers the fruit trees, mingling improbably with the new blossoms like identical twins brought up in different hemispheres. It is not what Housman meant when he wrote of the cherry hung with snow, though he also knew how death can mistake the seasons,
honey people murder mercy U.S.A. the milkland turn to monsters teach to kill to violate pull down destroy the weakly freedom growing fruit from being born
To live and not be Thine Own, Like Springtime is when birds are flown; Or liberty in prison bars, Or evening skies without the stars; Like diamonds that are lusterless, Or rest when there’s no weariness; Like lovely flower that have no scent, Or music when the sound is spent.
(fromAs You Like It) It was a lover and his lass, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, That o’er the green cornfield did pass, In springtime, the only pretty ring time,
1 The brutal Lord of All will rip us from each other—leave the one to suffer here alone. No need belief in god or hell to postulate that much. The dance: hands touching, leaves touching—eyes looking, clouds rising—lips touching, cheeks touching, arm about . . . Sleep. Heavy head, heavy arm, heavy dream—: Of Ymir’s flesh the earth was made and of his thoughts were all the gloomy clouds created. Oya!
________________ Out of bitterness itself the clear wine of the imagination will be pressed and the dance prosper thereby.
2 To you! whoever you are, wherever you are! (But I know where you are!) There’s Dürer’s “Nemesis” naked on her sphere over the little town by the river—except she’s too old. There’s a dancing burgess by Tenier and Villon’s maitresse—after he’d gone bald and was skin pocked and toothless: she that had him ducked in the sewage drain. Then there’s that miller’s daughter of “buttocks broad and breastes high.” Something of Nietzsche, something of the good Samaritan, something of the devil himself,—can cut a caper of a fashion, my fashion! Hey you, the dance! Squat. leap. Hips to the left. Chin—ha!—sideways! Stand up, stand up ma bonne! you’ll break my backbone. So again!—and so forth till we’re sweat soaked.
________________ Some fools once were listening to a poet reading his poem. It so happened that the words of the thing spoke of gross matters of the everyday world such as are never much hidden from a quick eye. Out of these semblances, and borrowing certain members from fitting masterpieces of antiquity, the poet began piping up his music, simple fellow, thinking to please his listeners. But they getting the whole matter sadly muddled in their minds made such a confused business of listening that not only were they not pleased at the poet’s exertions but no sooner had he done than they burst out against him with violent imprecations.
3 It’s all one. Richard worked years to conquer the descending cadence, idiotic sentimentalist. Ha, for happiness! This tore the dress in ribbons from her maid’s back and not spared the nails either; wild anger spit from her pinched eyes! This is the better part. Or a child under a table to be dragged out coughing and biting, eyes glittering evilly. I’ll have it my way! Nothing is any pleasure but misery and brokenness. THIS is the only up-cadence. This is where the secret rolls over and opens its eyes. Bitter words spoken to a child ripple in morning light! Boredom from a bedroom doorway thrills with anticipation! The complaints of an old man dying piecemeal are starling chirrups. Coughs go singing on springtime paths across a field; corruption picks strawberries and slow warping of the mind, blacking the deadly walls—counted and recounted—rolls in the grass and shouts ecstatically. All is solved! The moaning and dull sobbing of infants sets blood tingling and eyes ablaze to listen. Speed sings in the heels at long nights tossing on coarse sheets with bruning sockets staring into the black. Dance! Sing! Coil and uncoil! Whip yourselves about! Shout the deliverance! An old woman has infected her blossomy grand-daughter with a blood illness that every two weeks drives the mother into hidden songs of agony, the pad-footed mirage of creeping death for music. The face muscles keep pace. Then a darting about the compass in a tarantelle that wears flesh from bones. Here is dancing! The mind in tatters. And so the music wistfully takes the lead. Ay de mí, Juana la Loca, reina de España, esa está tu canta, reina mía!
1 This is a slight stiff dance to a waking baby whose arms have been lying curled back above his head upon the pillow, making a flower—the eyes closed. Dead to the world! Waking is a little hand brushing away dreams. Eyes open. Here’s a new world.
_______________ There is nothing the sky-serpent will not eat. Sometimes it stops to gnaw Fujiyama, sometimes to slip its long and softly clasping tongue about the body of a sleeping child who smiles thinking its mother is lifting it.
2 Security, solidity—we laugh at them in our clique. It is tobacco to us, this side of her leg. We put it in our samovar and make tea of it. You see the stuff has possibilities. You think you are opposing the rich but the truth is you’re turning toward authority yourself, to say nothing of religion. No, I do not say it means nothing. Why everything is nicely adjusted to our moods. But I would rather describe to you what I saw in the kitchen last night—overlook the girl a moment: there over the sink (1) this saucepan holds all, (2) this colander holds most, (3) this wire sieve lets most go and (4) this funnel holds nothing. You appreciate the progression. What need then to be always laughing? Quit phrase making—that is, not of course—but you will understand me or if not—why—come to breakfast sometime around evening on the fourth of January any year you please; always be punctual where eating is concerned.
________________ My little son’s improvisations exceed min: a round stone to him’s a loaf of bread or “this hen could lay a dozen golden eggs.” Birds fly about his bedstead; giants lean over him with hungry jaws; bears roam the farm by summer and are killed and quartered at a thought. There are interminable stories at eating time full of bizarre imagery, true grotesques, pigs that change to dogs in the telling, cows that sing, roosters that become mountains and oceans that fill a soup plate. There are groans and growls, dun clouds and sunshine mixed in a huge phantasmagoria that never rests, never ceased to unfold into—the day’s poor little happenings. Not that alone. He has music which I have not. His tunes follow no scale, no rhythm—alone the mood in odd ramblings up and down, over and over with a rigor of invention that rises beyond the power to follow except in some more obvious flight. Never have I heard so crushing a critique as those desolate inventions, involved half-hymns, after his first visit to a Christian Sunday school.
3 This song is to Phyllis! By this deep snow I know it’s springtime, not ring time! Good God no! The screaming brat’s a sheep bleating, the rattling crib-side sheep shaking a bush. We are young! We are happy! says Colin. What’s an icy room and the sun not up? This song is to Phyllis. Reproduction lets death in, says Joyce. Rot, say I. to Phyllis this song is!
In fresh snow that fell on old snow I see wild roses in bloom, springtime, an orchard of apple and peach trees in bloom, lovers of different preferences walking naked in new snow, not shivering, no illusion, no delusion, no bluebells. Why should I live by reality that murders? I wear a coat of hope and desire.
Gauley Bridge is a good town for Negroes, they let us stand around, they let us stand around on the sidewalks if we’re black or brown. Vanetta’s over the trestle, and that’s our town.
The hill makes breathing slow, slow breathing after your row the river, and the graveyard’s on the hill, cold in the springtime blow, the graveyard’s up on high, and the town is down below.
Did you ever bury thirty-five men in a place in back of your house, thirty-five tunnel workers the doctors didn’t attend,
I amuse myself with my country. I glimpse its future approaching on the eyelashes of an ostrich, I toy with its history and its days, I strike it with stones and thunderbolts. I extinguish its lamps and light its windows, and at the other end of day I inaugurate its history.
I am a stranger to all of you. I am from the other end. I live in a country of my own, inflating the sky to see its ashes, and in sleeping and waking I open a bud to live within.
Something must be born, so I bore caverns in my skin for lightning and build nests. I must pass like thunder into lips as sad as straw, between stone and autumn, between pore and epidermis, between thigh and thigh. And so I sing: “Form worthy of our demise—advance.” And so I shout and sing: “Who will give us the maternity of the cosmos, who will nourish us with mines?”
I advance toward my self, toward ruins. The silence of calamity takes me—I’m too short to gird the earth like a rope, I’m not sharp enough to pierce the face of history and plunge in.
You want me to be like you. You boil me in the cauldron of your prayers; you mix me with the broth of armies and the pepper of tyrants, then pitch me like a tent for the wali and hoist my skull like a flag. (My death, Nevertheless I run toward you, I rush rush rush to you.)
Beside the highway, the Giant Slide with its rusty undulations lifts out of the weeds. It hasn’t been used for a generation. The ticket booth tilts to that side where the nickels shifted over the years. A chain link fence keeps out the children and drunks. Blue morning glories climb halfway up the stairs, bright clusters
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