Climbing Milestone Mountain, August 22, 1937

Kenneth Rexroth

For a month now, wandering over the Sierras,

A poem had been gathering in my mind,

Details of significance and rhythm,

The way poems do, but still lacking a focus.

Last night I remembered the date and it all

Began to grow together and take on purpose.

We sat up late while Deneb moved over the zenith

And I told Marie all about Boston, how it looked

That last terrible week, how hundreds stood weeping

Impotent in the streets that last midnight.

I told her how those hours changed the lives of thousands,

How america was forever a different place

Afterwards for many.

In the morning

We swam in the cold transparent lake, the blue

Damsel flies on all the reeds like millions

Of narrow metallic flowers, and I thought

Of you behind the grille in Dedham, Vanzetti,

Saying, “Who would ever have thought we would make this history?”

Crossing the brilliant mile-square meadow

Illuminated with asters and cyclamen,

The pollen of the lodgepole pines drifting

With the shifting wind over it and the blue

And sulphur butterflies drifting with the wind,

I saw you in the sour prison light, saying,

“Goodbye comrade.”

In the basin under the crest

Where the pines end and the Sierra primrose begins,

A party of lawyers was shooting at a whiskey bottle.

The bottle stayed on its rock, nobody could hit it.

Looking back over the peaks and canyons from the last lake,

The pattern of human beings seemed simpler

Than the diagonals of water and stone.

Climbing the chute, up the melting snow and broken rock,

I remembered what you said about Sacco,

How it slipped your mind and you demanded it be read into the record.

Traversing below the ragged arête,

One cheek pressed against the rock

The wind slapping the other,

I saw you both marching in an army

You with the red and black flag, Sacco with the rattlesnake banner.

I kicked steps up the last snow bank and came

To the indescribably blue and fragrant

Polemonium and the dead sky and the sterile

Crystalline granite and final monolith of the summit.

These are the things that will last a long time, Vanzetti,

I am glad that once on your day I have stood among them.

Some day mountains will be named after you and Sacco.

They will be here and your name with them,

“When these days are but a dim remembering of the time

When man was wolf to man.”

I think men will be remembering you a long time

Standing on the mountains

Many men, a long time, comrade.

257

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The Two Hermits by Kahlil Gibran

Upon a lonely mountain, there lived two hermits who worshipped God
and loved one another.

Now these two hermits had one earthen bowl, and this was their only
possession.

One day an evil spirit entered into the heart of the older hermit
and he came to the younger and said, “It is long that we have
lived together. The time has come for us to part. Let us divide
our possessions.”

Then the younger hermit was saddened and he said, “It grieves
me, Brother, that thou shouldst leave me. But if thou must needs
go, so be it,” and he brought the earthen bowl and gave it to him
saying, “We cannot divide it, Brother, let it be thine.”

Then the older hermit said, “Charity I will not accept. I will
take nothing but mine own. It must be divided.”

And the younger one said, “If the bowl be broken, of what use would
it be to thee or to me? If it be thy pleasure let us rather cast
a lot.”

But the older hermit said again, “I will have but justice and mine
own, and I will not trust justice and mine own to vain chance. The
bowl must be divided.”

Then the younger hermit could reason no further and he said, “If
it be indeed thy will, and if even so thou wouldst have it let us
now break the bowl.”

But the face of the older hermit grew exceedingly dark, and he
cried, “O thou cursed coward, thou wouldst not fight.”