Now and Then

N

for Kenward Elmslie


Up from the valley
now and then a chain saw rising to a shriek, subsiding to a buzz
“Someone” is “cutting in his wood lot” another day
shows they are not
someone is two men clearing shoulders
of a narrow high-crowned road
stacked poles were lately sapling
the leaves on the slash gone limp, unstarched, unsized
one man with one fierce eye and where the other should be
an ill-knit cicatrix
men who don’t make much aren’t much
for spending what they do
on glass eyes, tooth-straightening devices (“a mouth
like the back of a switchboard”), nose jobs, dewenning operations
a country look prevails
and a vestigial fear of the evil eye lurks
“. . . my skin creeps . . .”
Out of Adamant Co-op
men in “overhauls” step into evening rising
in long-shadowed bluish haze to gold and pink
by Sodom Lake (was it that any Bible name
was an OK name?) and boys stare unabashed
and unaggressive not what the man on the bus fled
from his one day job talking excitedly about
“teen-age Puerto Rican tail-bait” and
“You can have New York!” Some present
you’d rather have wouldn’t you an apple tree
that climbed up into keels over
sad, and too bad, the best apples on Apple Hill
still, it can be propped or budded on new stock or just
that it once was there
Driving past, driving down, driving over
along the Winooski
through the home of Granite city Real Ice Cream
The Monument Capitol
buildings of rusticated granite marred
to our eyes by etched polished granite remodeled downstairs
may be found by a future happily heterodox
“There’s a touch of autumn—
there’s another touch of autumn”
and the dark tranquility of hemlocks encroaching on untilled fields
“You can’t make a living
plowing stones” subsistence
farming is well out of style: “You can’t call it living
without the margin”
coveted obsolescence!
a margin like that on this page
a paper luxury “Collectors”
the lady in the antique shop said “are snapping up
silver” “Since we’re off the silver standard?” “Why,
maybe so” Perhaps
six 1827 Salem coin-silver spoons for $18
or what about
“Have you The Pearl of Orr’s Island?”
That’s a book I’d want to read myself.
I’m from here but live in Florida.
Winters are too hard: 40 below.
You don’t feel it though
like zero in Boston. I’ll take St. Johnsbury any day
over Boston.”
Over St. Johnsbury the clouds shift in curds
and a street goes steeply down
into Frenchtown by the railroad station
into which anachronistically comes
a real train: yesterday’s torment of dust-exhaling plush
on the backs of bare knees today’s nostalgia
but not much. Curls cut out of wood, brick
of a certain cut and color, a hopped-up cripple
on a hill above his pond, a slattern
frowning at the early-closed state liquor store,
an attic window like a wink,
The Scale Co., St. Johnsbury has everything
Not this high hill a road
going in undergrowth leads up to
by walls of flat cleared-field stones
so many and so long a time to take
so much labor so long ago and so soon
to be going back, a host to hardhack
and blueberry baby steps
first fallings from a sky
in which the wind is moving furniture
the upholstery of summer coming all unstitched
the air full of flying kapok
and resolutions: “remember to fetch the ax
whack back pine intrusions”
from the road turning down to a lower field
and across the roughest one the County keeps
a woman and a boy come up
on heavy horses. “Morning!
Had frost
last night at Adamant.
Might have a killing frost
tonight.” Quick and clear as the water
where cress grows the cold
breaks on the hills to the soft crash
of a waterfall beyond
a beaver pond
and slides on
flinging imaginary fragments of cat’s ice
from its edges to flash
a bright reality in the night sky and it —
the cold—stands, a rising pool, about
Sloven’s farmhouse and he dreams
of dynamite. A bog sucks
at his foundations. Somewhere a deer
breaks branches. The trees
say Wesson. Mazola
replies a frog.
It doesn’t happen though the cold
that is not that night. It happens all right
not then when the white baneberry
leans secretively where a road forks
met with surprise: “Why here it is:
the most beautiful thing.” The spirit
of Gelett Burgess sets mother Nature
gabbing. “That’s my Actea pachypoda, dear, we
call it Doll’s-Eyes.” Got up as smart
as ever in muck and dank she belches
—“’Scuse: just a touch of gas”—
swamp maple flames and ambles over and plunks
down on a dead rubber tire
to contemplate smashed glass and a rusty tin
and “some of my choicer bits: that
I call Doctor’s Dentures. These
are Little Smellies.” Not
the sort you look to meet so near
gold-domed, out of scale Montpelier
a large-windowed kind of empty public bigness
so little to show, so much
to take pride in rather more than on the way to Stowe
a pyrocrafted maple board in a Gyp-to-teria
IF MORE MEN WERE SELF STARTERS
FEWER WIVES WOULD HAVE TO CRANK.
Welcome to the chair lift and cement chalet.
Days
of unambiguous morning when dawn
peels back like a petal to disclose blue depths
deep beyond all comprehending and tall field growth bends
with a crushing weight of water cut
into sac-shaped portions, each less than a carat
and which streak an early walker’s trouser legs
“You’re soaked!” crossing on a door
the spill to where Nodding Ladies’ Tresses
pallidly braid their fragrance and the woods
emit their hum. Days
when the pond holds on its steel one cloud
in which thin drowned trees stand
spare shapes of winter when summer
is just loosening to fall and bits of ribbon
from an electric typewriter patch a screen.
Croquet days, scissor-and-paste nights
after dinner on the better sort of ham
and coffee strong enough to float a goose egg.
Are those geese, that V, flying so early?
Can it be so late? in the green state
needles, leaves, fronds, blades, lichens and moss create
Can it be so soon before the long white
refrozen in frost on frost
on all twigs again will flash
cross cutting star streaks—the atoms
dance—on a treacherous night
in headlights?

“Horrible Cold Night
Remain at Home”

“Clear and Beautiful
Remain at Home”
236
Rating:

Comment form:

*Max text - 1500. Manual moderation.

Similar Poems:

Thirteen Implements by W. S. Graham
W. S. Graham
Do not allow me to sink, I said
To a top floating ribbon of kelp.
As I was lifted on each wave
And made to slide into the vale
I wanted not to drown. I wanted
To make it all right with my dear,
To tell my cat I’ll be away,
To have them all destroyed, the poems
Read Poem
0
273
Rating:

The Swamp Angel by Herman Melville
Herman Melville
There is a coal-black Angel
With a thick Afric lip,
And he dwells (like the hunted and harried)
In a swamp where the green frogs dip.
But his face is against a City
Which is over a bay of the sea,
And he breathes with a breath that is blastment,
And dooms by a far decree.
Read Poem
0
306
Rating:

The Ecstasy by John Donne
John Donne
Where, like a pillow on a bed
A pregnant bank swell'd up to rest
The violet's reclining head,
Sat we two, one another's best.
Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm, which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;
So to'intergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As 'twixt two equal armies fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls (which to advance their state
Read Poem
0
283
Rating:

Late Ripeness by Czeslaw Milosz
Czeslaw Milosz
Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.
Read Poem
0
232
Rating:

Prometheus by Lord Byron (George Gordon)
Lord Byron (George Gordon)
Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.

Read Poem
0
285
Rating:

The Beasts' Confession by Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
To the Priest, on Observing how most Men mistake their own Talents When beasts could speak (the learned say,
They still can do so ev'ry day),
It seems, they had religion then,
As much as now we find in men.
Read Poem
0
329
Rating:

Betrothed by Louise Bogan
Louise Bogan
You have put your two hands upon me, and your mouth,
You have said my name as a prayer.
Here where trees are planted by the water
I have watched your eyes, cleansed from regret,
And your lips, closed over all that love cannot say,

My mother remembers the agony of her womb
And long years that seemed to promise more than this.
She says, “You do not love me,
Read Poem
0
284
Rating:

from Don Juan: Canto 1, Stanzas 60-63 by Lord Byron (George Gordon)
Lord Byron (George Gordon)
60
Her eye (I'm very fond of handsome eyes)
Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire
Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise
Flash'd an expression more of pride than ire,
And love than either; and there would arise
A something in them which was not desire,
But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul
Which struggled through and chasten'd down the whole.

61
Her glossy hair was cluster'd o'er a brow
Bright with intelligence, and fair, and smooth;
Her eyebrow's shape was like the aerial bow,
Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth,
Read Poem
0
268
Rating:

Apollo Musagetes by Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold
Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts,
Thick breaks the red flame;
All Etna heaves fiercely
Her forest-clothed frame.

Not here, O Apollo!
Are haunts meet for thee.
But, where Helicon breaks down
In cliff to the sea,

Where the moon-silver'd inlets
Send far their light voice
Up the still vale of Thisbe,
O speed, and rejoice!

Read Poem
1
301
Rating:

Flatted Fifths   by Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Little cullud boys with beards
re-bop be-bop mop and stop.

Little cullud boys with fears,
frantic, kick their CC years
into flatted fifths and flatter beers
that at a sudden change become
sparkling Oriental wines
rich and strange
Read Poem
0
381
Rating:

Of the Death of Sir T. W. The Elder by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest;
Whose heavenly gifts increased by disdain,
And virtue sank the deeper in his breast;
Such profit he by envy could obtain.

A head where wisdom mysteries did frame,
Whose hammers beat still in that lively brain
As on a stithy where that some work of fame
Read Poem
0
293
Rating:

January 22nd, Missolonghi by Lord Byron (George Gordon)
Lord Byron (George Gordon)
On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
Read Poem
0
227
Rating:

Love and Death by Lord Byron (George Gordon)
Lord Byron (George Gordon)
1.

I watched thee when the foe was at our side,
Ready to strike at him—or thee and me,
Were safety hopeless—rather than divide
Aught with one loved save love and liberty.

Read Poem
0
260
Rating:

Fawn by Mary Barnard
Mary Barnard
Out of a high meadow where flowers
bloom above cloud, come down;
pursue me with reasons for smiling without malice.

Bring mimic pride like that of the seedling fir,
surprise in the perfect leg-stems
and queries unstirred by recognition or fear
pooled in the deep eyes.

Come down by regions where rocks
Read Poem
0
219
Rating:

Fable of the Ant and the Word by Mary Barnard
Mary Barnard
Ink-black, but moving independently
across the black and white parquet of print,
the ant cancels the author out. The page,
translated to itself, bears hair-like legs
disturbing the fine hairs of its fiber.
These are the feet of summer, pillaging meaning,
destroying Alexandria. Sunlight is silence
laying waste all languages, until, thinly,
Read Poem
0
243
Rating:

Byzantium by William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
Read Poem
0
303
Rating:

The Folk Who Live in Backward Town by Mary Ann Hoberman
Mary Ann Hoberman
The folk who live in Backward Town
Are inside out and upside down.
They wear their hats inside their heads
And go to sleep beneath their beds.
They only eat the apple peeling
And take their walks across the ceiling.
Read Poem
0
270
Rating:

The Tower by William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats
I

What shall I do with this absurdity —
O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
Read Poem
0
328
Rating:

An Egg Island Equinox by Brendan Galvin
Brendan Galvin
There is no radical shift of light
or redwings calling areas of marsh
their territories yet, nor plovers
probing for copepods. Only a yellow
front-end loader laying out a new berm
on the beach, from tubes too heavy
to be called hoses, its audience one man
and his protesting dog. No frosted
Read Poem
0
291
Rating:

The Dreamer by Eva Gore-Booth
Eva Gore-Booth
All night I stumble through the fields of light,
And chase in dreams the starry rays divine
That shine through soft folds of the robe of night,
Hung like a curtain round a sacred shrine.

When daylight dawns I leave the meadows sweet
And come back to the dark house built of clay,
Over the threshold pass with lagging feet,
Open the shutters and let in the day.
Read Poem
0
254
Rating: