Animals and Nature

The Albatross
Often to pass the time on board, the crew
will catch an albatross, one of those big birds
which nonchalently chaperone a ship
across the bitter fathoms of the sea.
Tied to the deck, this sovereign of space,
as if embarrassed by its clumsiness,
pitiably lets its great white wings
drag at its sides like a pair of unshipped oars.
How weak and awkward, even comical
this traveller but lately so adoit -
one deckhand sticks a pipestem in its beak,
another mocks the cripple that once flew!
The Poet is like this monarch of the clouds
riding the storm above the marksman's range;
exiled on the ground, hooted and jeered,
he cannot walk because of his great wings.

Correspondences
Nature is a temple whose living colonnades
Breathe forth a mystic speech in fitful sighs;
Man wanders among symbols in those glades
Where all things watch him with familiar eyes.
Like dwindling echoes gathered far away
Into a deep and thronging unison
Huge as the night or as the light of day,
All scents and sounds and colors meet as one.
Perfumes there are as sweet as the oboe's sound,
Green as the prairies, fresh as a child's caress,
- And there are others, rich, corrupt, profound
And of an infinite pervasiveness,
Like myrrh, or musk, or amber, the excite
The ecstasies of sense, the soul's delight.

Cats
They are alike, prim scholar and perfervid lover:
When comes the season of decay, they both decide
Upon sweet, husky cats to be the household pride;
Cats choose, like them, to sit, and like them, shudder.
Like partisans of carnal dalliance and science,
They search for silence and the shadowings of dread;
Hell well might harness them as horses for the dead,
If it could bend their native proudness in compliance.
In reverie they emulate the noble mood
Of giant sphinxes stretched in depths of solitude
Who seem to slumber in a never-ending dream;
Within their fertile loins a sparkling magic lies;
Finer than any sand are dusts of gold that gleam,
Vague starpoints, in the mystic iris of their eyes.

Young Bullfrogs

Jimmy Wimbleton listened a first week in June.
Ditches along prairie roads of Northern Illinois
Filled the arch of night with young bullfrog songs.
Infinite mathematical metronomic croaks rose and spoke,
Rose and sang, rose in a choir of puzzles.
They made his head ache with riddles of music.
They rested his head with beaten cadence.
Jimmy Wimbledon listened.

The Year

I


A storm of white petals,
Buds throwing open baby fists
Into hands of broad flowers.


II


Red roses running upward,
Clambering to the clutches of life
Soaked in crimson.


III


Rabbles of tattered leaves
Holding golden flimsy hopes
Against the tramplings
Into the pits and gullies.


IV


Hoarfrost and silence:
Only the muffling
Of winds dark and lonesome--
Great lullabies to the long sleepers.

The Has-Been

A stone face higher than six horses stood five thousand years gazing at the world
seeming to clutch a secret.
A boy passes and throws a niggerhead that chips off the end of the nose from the
stone face; he lets fly a mud ball that spatters the right eye and cheek of the old
looker-on.
The boy laughs and goes whistling “ee-ee-ee ee-ee-ee.” The stone face stands silent,
seeming to clutch a secret.

Plowboy


After the last red sunset glimmer,
Black on the line of a low hill rise,
Formed into moving shadows, I saw
A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray,
Plowing in the dusk the last furrow.
The turf had a gleam of brown,
And smell of soil was in the air,
And, cool and moist, a haze of April.


I shall remember you long,
Plowboy and horses against the sky in shadow.
I shall remember you and the picture
You made for me,
Turning the turf in the dusk
And haze of an April gloaming.

Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard

Stuff of the moon
Runs on the lapping sand
Out to the longest shadows.
Under the curving willows,
And round the creep of the wave line,
Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters
Make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night.

Ice Handler

I know an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with pearl buttons the size of a dollar,
And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice-box, helps himself to cold ham
and rye bread,
Tells the bartender it’s hotter than yesterday and will be hotter yet to-morrow, by
Jesus,
And is on his way with his head in the air and a hard pair of fists.
He spends a dollar or so every Saturday night on a two hundred pound woman who
washes dishes in the Hotel Morrison.
He remembers when the union was organized he broke the noses of two scabs and
loosened the nuts so the wheels came off six different wagons one morning, and he
came around and watched the ice melt in the street.
All he was sorry for was one of the scabs bit him on the knuckles of the right hand so
they bled when he came around to the saloon to tell the boys about it.

Horses and Men in Rain

Let us sit by a hissing steam radiator a winter's day, gray wind pattering frozen
raindrops on the window,
And let us talk about milk wagon drivers and grocery delivery boys.


Let us keep our feet in wool slippers and mix hot punches--and talk about mail carriers
and
messenger boys slipping along the icy sidewalks.
Let us write of olden, golden days and hunters of the
Holy Grail and men called "knights" riding horses in the rain, in the cold frozen rain for
ladies they loved.


A roustabout hunched on a coal wagon goes by, icicles drip on his hat rim, sheets of ice
wrapping
the hunks of coal, the caravanserai a gray blur in slant of rain.
Let us nudge the steam radiator with our wool slippers and write poems of Launcelot,
the hero, and
Roland, the hero, and all the olden golden men who rode horses in the rain.

Haunts


There are places I go when I am strong.
One is a marsh pool where I used to go
with a long-ear hound-dog.
One is a wild crabapple tree; I was there
a moonlight night with a girl.
The dog is gone; the girl is gone; I go to these
places when there is no other place to go.

Fog


The fog comes
on little cat feet.


It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Flanders


Flanders, the name of a place, a country of people,
Spells itself with letters, is written in books.


"Where is Flanders?" was asked one time,
Flanders known only to those who lived there
And milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home language.


"Where is Flanders?" was asked.
And the slang adepts shot the reply: Search me.


A few thousand people milking cows, raising radishes,
On a land of salt grass and dunes, sand-swept with a sea-breath on it:
This was Flanders, the unknown, the quiet,
The place where cows hunted lush cuds of green on lowlands,
And the raw-boned plowmen took horses with long shanks
Out in the dawn to the sea-breath.


Flanders sat slow-spoken amid slow-swung windmills,
Slow-circling windmill arms turning north or west,
Turning to talk to the swaggering winds, the childish winds,
So Flanders sat with the heart of a kitchen girl
Washing wooden bowls in the winter sun by a window.

Back Yard

Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.


An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion.
A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month; to-night they are
throwing you kisses.


An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a cherry tree in his back
yard.


The clocks say I must go—I stay here sitting on the back porch drinking white thoughts
you rain down.


Shine on, O moon,
Shake out more and more silver changes.

The Steppe

How lovely those journeys into quiet!
Boundless the steppe, like a seascape,
ants rustle, and the feather-grass sighs,
mosquitoes go whining through space.


The hayricks line up with the clouds,
volcano after volcano, they fade.
Grown silent, damp, the boundless steppe,
you drift, you’re buffeted, you sway.


The mist overtakes us, washes, a sea,
and burrs are clinging to stockings, today
it’s lovely to tramp the steppe’s shore,
you drift, you’re buffeted, you sway.


Is that a rick in the mist? Who knows?
Is that one ours? Yes, it’s found.
There! Yes, that’s it all right, though.
The rick, and the mist, and the steppe all round.


And the Milky Way slants towards Kerch,
like a path that cattle have stamped on.
Go past the houses, you’ll lose your breath,
on every side, broad, broad horizons.


Shadowy midnight stands by the way,
strewn with stars, that touch every verst,
and you can’t cross it, beyond the fence,
without trampling the universe.


When did the stars sweep down so low,
midnight sink so deep in tall grass,
and drenched muslin, afraid, aglow,
long for a dénouement at last?


Let the steppe judge, and night decide.
When, if not in the Beginning,
did Mosquitoes whine, Ants ride,
and Burrs go clinging to stockings?


Close them, my darling! Or go blind!
The whole steppe’s as before the Fall:
All, drowned in peace, like a parachute,
like a heaving vision, All.

The garden scatters burnt-up beetles...

The garden scatters burnt-up beetles
Like brazen ash, from braziers burst.
I witness, by my lighted candle,
A newly blossomed universe.


And like a not yet known religion
I enter this unheard of night,
In which the shabbily-grey poplar
Has curtained off the lunar light.


The pond is a presented secret.
Oh, whispers of the appletree!
The garden hangs-a pile construction,
And holds the sky in front of me.

Swifts (2)

At twilight the swifts have no power,
to hold back that pale blue coolness.
It bursts from throats, a clamour
an outpour that can’t grow less.

The swifts have no way, high
up there, overhead, of restraining
their clarion cries: ‘O, triumph,
see, see, how the earth’s receding!’

Like steam from a boiling kettle,
the furious flow rushes by –
‘See, see – no space for the earth
between the ravine and the sky.’

Nostalgia


To give this book a dedication
The desert sickened,
And lions roared, and dawns of tigers
Took hold of Kipling.


A dried-up well of dreadful longing
Was gaping, yawning.
They swayed and shivered, rubbing shoulders,
Sleek-skinned and tawny.


Since then continuing forever
Their sway in scansion,
They stroll in mist through dewy meadows
Dreamt up by Ganges.


Creeping at dawn in pits and hollows
Cold sunrays fumble.
Funereal, incense-laden dampness
Pervades the jungle.

March


The sun is hotter than the top ledge in a steam bath;
The ravine, crazed, is rampaging below.
Spring -- that corn-fed, husky milkmaid --
Is busy at her chores with never a letup.


The snow is wasting (pernicious anemia --
See those branching veinlets of impotent blue?)
Yet in the cowbarn life is burbling, steaming,
And the tines of pitchforks simply glow with health.


These days -- these days, and these nights also!
With eavesdrop thrumming its tattoos at noon,
With icicles (cachectic!) hanging on to gables,
And with the chattering of rills that never sleep!


All doors are flung open -- in stable and in cowbarn;
Pigeons peck at oats fallen in the snow;
And the culprit of all this and its life-begetter--
The pile of manure -- is pungent with ozone.

Walking Across The Atlantic

I wait for the holiday crowd to clear the beach
before stepping onto the first wave.


Soon I am walking across the Atlantic
thinking about Spain,
checking for whales, waterspouts.
I feel the water holding up my shifting weight.
Tonight I will sleep on its rocking surface.


But for now I try to imagine what
this must look like to the fish below,
the bottoms of my feet appearing, disappearing.

Picnic, Lightning

It is possible to be struck by a
meteor or a single-engine plane while
reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians
are flattened by safes falling from
rooftops mostly within the panels of
the comics, but still, we know it is
possible, as well as the flash of
summer lightning, the thermos toppling
over, spilling out on the grass.
And we know the message can be
delivered from within. The heart, no
valentine, decides to quit after
lunch, the power shut off like a
switch, or a tiny dark ship is
unmoored into the flow of the body's
rivers, the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore. This is
what I think about when I shovel
compost into a wheelbarrow, and when
I fill the long flower boxes, then
press into rows the limp roots of red
impatiens -- the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth from the
sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then
the soil is full of marvels, bits of
leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam. Then
the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the
clouds a brighter white, and all I
hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone, the small
plants singing with lifted faces, and
the click of the sundial as one hour
sweeps into the next.

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.


The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,


and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.


When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton


while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

Der Pflaumenbaum (The Plum Tree, translation)

Im Hofe steht ein Pflaumenbaum,
Der ist so klein, man glaubt es kaum.
Er hat ein Gitter drum,
So tritt ihn keiner um.
Der Kleine kann nicht größer wer'n,
Ja - größer wer'n, das möcht' er gern!
's ist keine Red davon:
Er hat zu wenig Sonn'.


Dem Pflaumenbaum, man glaubt ihm kaum,
Weil er nie eine Pflaume hat.
Doch er ist ein Pflaumenbaum:
Man kennt es an dem Blatt.


The Plum Tree


In the courtyard stands a plum tree,
It's so small, no one believes it.
It has a fence around it,
So no one can stomp on it.
The little tree can't grow,
Yes – it wants to grow!
No one talks about it;
It gets too little sun.


No one believes it's a plum tree
Because it doesn't have a single plum.
But it is a plum tree;
You can tell by its leaf.


The Plum Tree


A plum tree in the courtyard stands
so small no one believes it can.
There is a fence surrounds
so no one stomps it down.
The little tree can't grow
although it wants to so!
There is no talk thereon
and much too little sun.


No one believes in the tree
because no plums do they see.
But it's a plum tree;
you can tell by its leaf.

The Rooks

Lord, when the meadowland is cold,
and when in the downcast hamlets the long Angeluses are silent..
down on Nature barren of flowers let
them sweep from the wide skies, the dear delightful rooks.


Strange army with your stern cries,
the cold winds are assaulting your nests!
You - along yellowed rivers, over the roads with their old Calvarys,
over ditches, over holes - disperse! And rally!


In your thousands, over the fields of France
where the day before yesterday's dead are sleeping,
wheel in the wintertime, won't you,
so that each traveler may remember!


Be, then, the one who calls men to duty,
O funeral black bird of ours!
But, ye saints of the sky,
at the oak tree top, the masthead lost in the enchanted twilight,
leave alone the warblers of May, for the sake of those whom,
in the depths of the wood,
in the undergrowth from which there is no escaping,
defeat without a future has enslaved.