Seeing the Eclipse in Maine

When in nineteen-thirty-seven, Etta Moten, sweetheart
of our Art Study group, kept her promise, as if clocked,
to honor my house at our first annual tea, my pride

tipped sky, but when she, Parisian-poised and as smart
as a chrome-toned page from Harper’s Bazaar, gave my shocked
guests this hideous African nude, I could have cried.

And for many subsequent suns, we, who had placed apart
this hour to proclaim our plunge into modern art, mocked

At the confluence of tea roses and Russian sage
we made a right at the curved iron fence,
one of my dead friends beside me explaining how trees communicated
but I couldn’t understand a thing because it was all blurry — 
the way it gets — and though I knew him well
I couldn’t say for sure now whether it was Larry or
Phil or Galway or Charlie until I realized it was me
talking in some kind of Hebrish they spoke

And in a little while we broke under the strain:
suppurations ad nauseam, the wanting to be taller,
though it‘s simply about being mysterious, i.e., not taller,
like any tree in any forest.
Mute, the pancake describes you.
It had tiny roman numerals embedded in its rim.
It was a pancake clock. They had ’em in those days,
always getting smaller, which is why they finally became extinct.

We thought it would come, we thought the Germans would come,
were almost certain they would. I was thirty-two,
the youngest assistant curator in the country.
I had some good ideas in those days.

Well, what we did was this. We had boxes
precisely built to every size of canvas.
We put the boxes in the basement and waited.

When word came that the Germans were coming in,

PART ONE

I

Slip-pilings on the Brooklyn littoral
—the poles still tarry, flimsy; the ferry terminus
with its walledup doors wan doorshapes
on eroded sills. Downstream, the strutwork
of the Williamsburg cable tower
threw its cool shadow half a mile inland

1

The angel —
three years we waited for him, attention riveted,
closely scanning
the pines the shore the stars.
One with the blade of the plough or the ship’s keel
we were searching to find once more the first seed
so that the age-old drama could begin again.

Argument

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,

We passed old farmer Boothby in the field.
Rugged and straight he stood; his body steeled
With stubbornness and age. We met his eyes
That never flinched or turned to compromise,
And “Luck,” he cried, “good luck!”—and waved an arm,
Knotted and sailor-like, such as no farm
In all of Maine could boast of; and away
He turned again to pitch his new-cut hay...

All the Sioux were defeated. Our clan
got poor, but a few got richer.
They fought two wars. I did not
take part. No one remembers your vision
or even your real name. Now
the children go to town and like
loud music. I married a Christian.

Crazy Horse, it is not fair