Animals and Nature

Nina's Reply (Les Reparties De Nina)

HE - Your breast on my breast,
Eh ? We could go,
With our nostrils full of air,
Into the cool light


Of the blue good morning that bathes you
In the wine of daylight ?…
When the whole shivering wood bleeds,
Dumb with love


From every branch green drops,
Pale buds,
You can feel in things unclosing
The quivering flesh :


You would bury in the lucerne
Your white gown,
Changing to rose-colour in the fresh air the blue tint which encircles
Your great black eyes,


In love with the country,
Scattering everywhere,
Like champagne bubbles,
Your crazy laughter :


breast,
Mingling our voices,
Slowly we'd reach the stream,
Then the great woods !…


Then, like a little ghost,
Your heart fainting,
You'd tell me to carry you,
Your eyes half closed…


I'd carry your quivering body
Along the path :
The bird would sping out his andante :
Hard by the hazeltree…


I'd speak into your mouth ;
And go on, pressing
Your body like a little girl's I was putting to bed,
Drunk with the blood


That runs blue under your white skin
With its tints of rose :
And speaking to you in that frank tongue…
There !… - that you understand…


Our great woods would smell of sap,
And the sunlight



Would dust with fine gold their great
Green and bronze dream.


……………………………………………


In the evening ?… We'd take the white road
Which meanders,
Like a grazing herd,
All over the place


Oh the pleasant orchards with blue grass,
And twisted apple trees !
How you can smell a whole league
Off their strong perfume !


We'd get back to the village
When the sky was half dark ;
And there'd be a smell of milking
In the evening air ;


It would smell of the cowshed, full
Of warm manure,
Filled with the slow rythm of breathing,
And with great backs


Gleaming under some light or other ;
And, right down at the far end,
There'd be a cow dunging proudly
At every step…


-Grandmother's spectacles
And her long nose
Deep in her missal ; the jug of beer
Circled with pewter
Foaming among the big-bowled pipes
Gallantly smoking :
And the frightfull blubber lips
Which, still puffing,


Snatch ham from forks :
So much, and more :
The fire lighting up the bunks
And the cupboards.


The shining fat buttocks
Of the fat baby
On his hands and knees, who nuzzles into the cups,
His white snout


Tickled by a gently
Growling muzzle,



That licks all over the round face
Of the little darling…


Black and haughty on her chair's edge,
A terrifying profile,
And old woman in front of the embers,
Spinning


What sights we shall see, dearest,
In those hovels,
When the bright fire lights up
The grey window panes !…


-And then, small and nestling
Inside the cool
Dark lilacs : the hidden window
Smiling in there…
You'll come, you will come, I love you so !
It will be lovely.
You will come, won't you ? and even…


ELLE : - And what about my office ?


Original French


Les reparties de Nina


LUI - Ta poitrine sur ma poitrine,
Hein ? nous irions,
Ayant de l'air plein la narine,
Aux frais rayons


Du bon matin bleu, qui vous baigne
Du vin de jour ?...
Quand tout le bois frissonnant saigne
Muet d'amour


De chaque branche, gouttes vertes,
Des bourgeons clairs,
On sent dans les choses ouvertes
Frémir des chairs :


Tu plongerais dans la luzerne
Ton blanc peignoir,
Rosant à l'air ce bleu qui cerne
Ton grand oeil noir,


Amoureuse de la campagne,
Semant partout,



Comme une mousse de champagne,
Ton rire fou :


Riant à moi, brutal d'ivresse,
Qui te prendrais
Comme cela, - la belle tresse,
Oh ! - qui boirais


Ton goût de framboise et de fraise,
O chair de fleur !
Riant au vent vif qui te baise
Comme un voleur,


Au rose, églantier qui t'embête
Aimablement :
Riant surtout, ô folle tête,
À ton amant !....


........................................................


-Ta poitrine sur ma poitrine,
Mêlant nos voix,
Lents, nous gagnerions la ravine,
Puis les grands bois !...
Puis, comme une petite morte,
Le coeur pâmé,
Tu me dirais que je te porte,
L'oeil mi-fermé...


Je te porterais, palpitante,
Dans le sentier :
L'oiseau filerait son andante
Au Noisetier...


Je te parlerais dans ta bouche..
J'irais, pressant
Ton corps, comme une enfant qu'on couche,
Ivre du sang


Qui coule, bleu, sous ta peau blanche
Aux tons rosés.
Et te parlant la langue franche - .....
Tiens !... - que tu sais...


Nos grands bois sentiraient la sève,
Et le soleil
Sablerait d'or fin leur grand rêve
Vert et vermeil


........................................................



Le soir ?... Nous reprendrons la route
Blanche qui court
Flânant, comme un troupeau qui broute,
Tout à l'entour


Les bons vergers à l'herbe bleue,
Aux pommiers tors !
Comme on les sent toute une lieue
Leurs parfums forts !


Nous regagnerons le village
Au ciel mi-noir ;
Et ça sentira le laitage
Dans l'air du soir ;


Ca sentira l'étable, pleine
De fumiers chauds,
Pleine d'un lent rythme d'haleine,
Et de grands dos


Blanchissant sous quelque lumière ;
Et, tout là-bas,
Une vache fientera, fière,
À chaque pas...


-Les lunettes de la grand-mère
Et son nez long
Dans son missel ; le pot de bière
Cerclé de plomb,
Moussant entre les larges pipes
Qui, crânement,
Fument : les effroyables lippes
Qui, tout fumant,


Happent le jambon aux fourchettes
Tant, tant et plus :
Le feu qui claire les couchettes
Et les bahuts.


Les fesses luisantes et grasses
D'un gros enfant
Qui fourre, à genoux, dans les tasses,
Son museau blanc


Frôlé par un mufle qui gronde
D'un ton gentil,
Et pourlèche la face ronde
Du cher petit.....


Que de choses verrons-nous, chère,
Dans ces taudis,



Quand la flamme illumine, claire,
Les carreaux gris !...

-Puis, petite et toute nichée,
Dans les lilas
Noirs et frais : la vitre cachée,
Qui rit là-bas....
Tu viendras, tu viendras, je t'aime !
Ce sera beau.
Tu viendras, n'est-ce pas, et même...


Elle - Et mon bureau ?

May Banners

In the bright lime-tree branches
Dies a fainting mort. But lively song
Flutters among the currant bushes.
So that our bloods may laugh in our veins,
See the vines tangling themselves.


The sky is as pretty as an angel,
The azure and the wave commune.
I go out. If a sunbeam wounds me
I shall succumb on the moss.
Being patient and being bored
Are too simple. To the devil with my cares.


I want dramatic summer
To bind me to its chariot of fortune.
Let me most because of you, o Nature, -
Ah ! less alone and less useless ! - die.


There where the Shepherds, it's strange,
Die more or less because of the world.
I am willing that the seasons should wear me out.
To you, Nature, I surrender ;
With my hunger and all my thirst.


And, if it please you, feed and water me.
Nothing, nothing at all deceives me ;
To laugh at the sun is to laugh at one's parents,
But I do not wish to laugh at anything ;
And may this misfortune go free.
~~


May Banners
(alternative translation
)


In the bright branches of the lindens dies a sickly hunting call.
But the lively songs fly about in the currant bushes.
So that our blood will laugh in our veins, here are the vines all entangled.
The sky is pretty as an angel.
The azure and the wave commune.
I go out. If a ray of light wounds me, I will expire on the moss


To be patient and to be bored are to simple. Fie* on my cares.
I want a dramatic summer to bind me to it's chariot of fortune.
Let me, o nature, mostly through you


-Ah ! less alone and less worthless ! - die.
In the place where the shepherds, it is strange,
die approximately through out the world
I am willing that the seasons wear me out.


To you nature, I give myself over;
And my hunger and all my thirst.
And, if you will, feed and water me.


Nothing at all deceives me;
To laugh at the sun is to laugh at one's parents,
but I do not want to laugh at anything;
And may this misfortune be free.

Conclusion


The pigeons which flutter in the meadow,
the game which runs and sees in the dark,
the water animals, the animal enslaved,
the last butterflies!.. also are thirsty.
But to dissolve where that wandering cloud is dissolving -
Oh! Favoured by what is fresh!
To expire in those damp violets
whose awakening fills these woods?

Blackcurrant River

Blackcurrant river rolls unknown in strange valleys;
the voices of a hundred rooks go with it,
the true benevolent voice of angles:
with the wide movements of the fir woods
when several winds sweep down.


Everything flows with [the] horrible mysteries of ancient landscapes;
of strongholds visited, of large estates:
it is along these banks that you can hear
the dead passions of errant knights:
but how the wind is wholesome!


Let the traveler look through these clerestories:
he will journey on more bravely.
Forest soldiers whom the Lord sends,
dear delightful rooks! Drive away from here the crafty peasant,
clinking glasses with his old stump of an arm.

Antique


Gracious son of Pan! Around your forehead
crowned with flowerets
and with laurel, restlessly roll
those precious balls, your eyes.


Spotted with brown lees, your cheeks are hollow.
Your fangs gleam. Your breast is like a lyre,
tinklings circulate through your pale arms.
Your heart beats in that belly where sleeps the double sex.
Walk through the night, gently moving that thigh,
that second thigh, and that left leg.

After The Flood

As soon as the idea of the Deluge had subsided,
A hare stopped in the clover and swaying flowerbells,
and said a prayer to the rainbow,
through the spider's web.


Oh! the precious stones that began to hide,-and
the flowers that already looked around.
In the dirty main street, stalls were set up
and boats were hauled toward the sea,
high tiered as in old prints.


Blood flowed at Blue Beard's,-through
slaughterhouses, in circuses,
where the windows were blanched by God's seal.
Blood and milk flowed. Beavers built.


'Mazagrans' smoked in the little bars.
In the big glass house, still dripping,
children in mourning looked
at the marvelous pictures.


A door banged; and in the village square
the little boy waved his arms,
understood by weather vanes
and cocks on steeples everywhere,
in the bursting shower.


Madame *** installed a piano in the Alps.
Mass and first communions were celebrated
at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral.
Caravans set out. And Hotel Splendid was built
in the chaos of ice and of the polar night.


Ever after the moon heard jackals howling
across the deserts of thyme,
and eclogues in wooden shoes growling in the orchard.
Then in the violet and budding forest,
Eucharis told me it was spring.


Gush, pond,-- Foam, roll on the bridge and over the woods;-black
palls and organs, lightening and thunder, rise and roll;-waters
and sorrows rise and launch the Floods again.
For since they have been dissipated-oh!
the precious stones being buried and the opened flowers!-it's
unbearable! and the Queen, the Witch who lights her fire
in the earthen pot will never tell us what she knows,
and what we do not know.

Two Rivers
SAYS Tweed to Till--
'What gars ye rin sae still?'
Says Till to Tweed--
'Though ye rin with speed
And I rin slaw,
For ae man that ye droon
I droon twa.'

May in the Green-Wood
IN somer when the shawes be sheyne,
And leves be large and long,
Hit is full merry in feyre foreste
To here the foulys song.
To se the dere draw to the dale
And leve the hilles hee,
And shadow him in the leves grene
Under the green-wode tree.
Hit befell on Whitsontide
Early in a May mornyng,
The Sonne up faire can shyne,
And the briddis mery can syng.
'This is a mery mornyng,' said Litulle Johne,
'Be Hym that dyed on tre;
A more mery man than I am one
Lyves not in Christiante.
'Pluk up thi hert, my dere mayster,'
Litulle Johne can say,
'And thynk hit is a fulle fayre tyme
In a mornynge of May.'

This Pig Went to Market
This pig went to market,
That pig staid at home;
This pig had roast meat,
That pig had none;
This pig went to the barn-door,
And cry'd week, week, for more.

Nell Flaherty’s Drake
MY NAME it is Nell, right candid I tell,
And I live near a dell I ne’er will deny,
I had a large drake, the truth for to spake,
My grandfather left me when going to die;
He was merry and sound, and would weigh twenty pound,
The universe round would I rove for his sake.
Bad luck to the robber, be he drunken or sober,
That murdered Nell Flaherty’s beautiful drake.
His neck it was green, and rare to be seen,
He was fit for a queen of the highest degree.
His body so white, it would you delight,
He was fat, plump, and heavy, and brisk as a bee.
This dear little fellow, his legs they were yellow,
He could fly like a swallow, or swim like a hake,
But some wicked habbage, to grease his white cabbage,
Has murdered Nell Flaherty’s beautiful drake!
May his pig never grunt, may his cat never hunt,
That a ghost may him haunt in the dark of the night.
May his hens never lay, may his horse never neigh,
May his goat fly away like an old paper kite;
May his duck never quack, may his goose be turned black
And pull down his stack with her long yellow beak.
May the scurvy and itch never part from the britch
Of the wretch that murdered Nell Flaherty’s drake!
May his rooster ne’er crow, may his bellows not blow,
Nor potatoes to grow—may he never have none—
May his cradle not rock, may his chest have no lock,
May his wife have no frock for to shade her backbone.
That the bugs and the fleas may this wicked wretch tease,
And a piercing north breeze make him tremble and shake.
May a four-years’-old bug build a nest in the lug
Of the monster that murdered Nell Flaherty’s drake.
May his pipe never smoke, may his tea-pot be broke,
And to add to the joke may his kettle not boil;
May he be poorly fed till the hour he is dead.
May he always be fed on lobscouse and fish oil.
May he swell with the gout till his grinders fall out,
May he roar, howl, and shout with a horrid toothache,
May his temple wear horns and his toes carry corns,
The wretch that murdered Nell Flaherty’s drake.
May his dog yelp and howl with both hunger and cold,
May his wife always scold till his brains go astray.
May the curse of each hag, that ever carried a bag,
Light down on the wag till his head it turns gray.
May monkeys still bite him, and mad dogs affright him,
And every one slight him, asleep or awake.
May wasps ever gnaw him, and jackdaws ever claw him,


The monster that murdered Nell Flaherty’s drake.
But the only good news I have to diffuse,
Is of Peter Hughes and Paddy McCade,
And crooked Ned Manson, and big-nosed Bob Hanson,
Each one had a grandson of my beautiful drake.
Oh! my bird he has dozens of nephews and cousins,
And one I must have, or my heart it will break.
To keep my mind easy, or else I’ll run crazy,
And so ends the song of my beautiful drake.

Ding Dong Bell
Ding dong bell,
The cat is in the well.
Who put her in?
Little Johnny Green.
What a naughty boy was that,
To drown poor Pussy cat.
Who never did any harm,
And kill'd the mice in his father's barn.

Caesar's Song
Bow, wow, wow,
Whose dog art thou?
Little Tom Tinker's dog,
Bow, wow, wow.

Bah, Bah, Black Sheep
Bah, bah, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, marry have I,
Three bags full;
One for my master,
One for my dame,
But none for the little boy
Who cries in the lane.

Amergin
I AM the wind which breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows,
I am the ox of the seven combats,
I am the vulture upon the rocks,
I am a beam of the sun,
I am the fairest of plants,
I am a wild boar in valour,
I am a salmon in the water,
I am a lake in the plain,
I am a word of science,
I am the point of the lance in battle,
I am the God who creates in the head the fire.
Who is it who throws light into the meeting on the mountain?
Who announces the ages of the moon?
Who teaches the place where couches the sun?

Twa Corbies
As I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane unto the t'other say,
"Where sall we gang and dine to-day?"
"—In behint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new-slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.
"His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady's ta'en another mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.
"Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pick out his bonnie blue een;
Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair
We'll theek our nest when it grows bare
"Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken where he is gane;
O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair."

The Twa Corbies
As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane unto the t'other say,
"Where sall we gang and dine to-day?"
"In behint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.
"His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame;
His lady's ta'en another mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.
"Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike out his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
We'll theek our nest when it grows bare.
"Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken where he is gane;
Oer his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair."

Riddle
A moth, I thogh, munching a word.
How marvellously weird! a worm
Digesting a mans sayings -
A sneakthief nibbling in the shadows
At the shape of a poet`s thunderous phrases -
How unutterably strange!
And the pilfering parasite none the wiser
For the words he has swallowed.

Cuckoo Song
Sing, cuccu, nu! Sing, cuccu!
Sing, cuccu! Sing, cuccu, nu!
Sumer is icumen in;
Lhud{.e} sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springth the wud{.e} nu.
Sing, cuccu!
Aw{.e} bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calv{.e} cu;
Bulluc sterteth, buck{.e} verteth;
Muri{.e} sing, cuccu!
Cuccu! cuccu!
Wel sing{.e}s thu, cuccu;
Ne swik thu naver nu.

Weep Not Too Much

Weep not too much, my darling;
Sigh not too oft for me;
Say not the face of Nature
Has lost its charm for thee.
I have enough of anguish
In my own breast alone;
Thou canst not ease the burden, Love,
By adding still thine own.
I know the faith and fervour
Of that true heart of thine;
But I would have it hopeful
As thou wouldst render mine.
At night, when I lie waking,
More soothing it will be
To say 'She slumbers calmly now,'
Than say 'She weeps for me.'

When through the prison grating
The holy moonbeams shine,
And I am wildly longing
To see the orb divine
Not crossed, deformed, and sullied
By those relentless bars
That will not show the crescent moon,
And scarce the twinkling stars,

It is my only comfort
To think, that unto thee
The sight is not forbidden The
face of heaven is free.
If I could think Zerona
Is gazing upward now Is
gazing with a tearless eye
A calm unruffled brow;

That moon upon her spirit
Sheds sweet, celestial balm, The
thought, like Angel's whisper,
My misery would calm.
And when, at early morning,
A faint flush comes to me,
Reflected from those glowing skies
I almost weep to see;

Or when I catch the murmur
Of gently swaying trees,
Or hear the louder swelling
Of the soulinspiring
breeze,
And pant to feel its freshness
Upon my burning brow,
Or sigh to see the twinkling leaf,
And watch the waving bough;


If, from these fruitless yearnings
Thou wouldst deliver me,
Say that the charms of Nature
Are lovely still to thee;
While I am thus repining,
O! let me but believe,
'These pleasures are not lost to her,'
And I will cease to grieve.

O, scorn not Nature's bounties!
My soul partakes with thee.
Drink bliss from all her fountains,
Drink for thyself and me!
Say not, 'My soul is buried
In dungeon gloom with thine;'
But say, 'His heart is here with me;
His spirit drinks with mine.'

A.E.

The Captive Dove

Poor restless dove, I pity thee;
And when I hear thy plaintive moan,
I mourn for thy captivity,
And in thy woes forget mine own.
To see thee stand prepared to fly,
And flap those useless wings of thine,
And gaze into the distant sky,
Would melt a harder heart than mine.


In vain in
vain! Thou canst not rise:
Thy prison roof confines thee there;
Its slender wires delude thine eyes,
And quench thy longings with despair.


Oh, thou wert made to wander free
In sunny mead and shady grove,
And, far beyond the rolling sea,
In distant climes, at will to rove!


Yet, hadst thou but one gentle mate
Thy little drooping heart to cheer,
And share with thee thy captive state,
Thou couldst be happy even there.


Yes, even there, if, listening by,
One faithful dear companion stood,
While gazing on her full bright eye,
Thou mightst forget thy native wood.


But thou, poor solitary dove,
Must make, unheard, thy joyless moan;
The heart, that Nature formed to love,
Must pine, neglected, and alone.

Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day

My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
For above and around me the wild wind is roaring,
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.
The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves, beneath them, are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.


I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray;
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing,
And hear the wild roar of their thunder today!


Acton

Wales Visitation

White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow
Trees moving in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist
above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine—


Bardic, O Self, Visitacione, tell naught
but what seen by one man in a vale in Albion,
of the folk, whose physical sciences end in Ecology,
the wisdom of earthly relations,
of mouths & eyes interknit ten centuries visible
orchards of mind language manifest human,
of the satanic thistle that raises its horned symmetry
flowering above sister grass-daisies’ pink tiny
bloomlets angelic as lightbulbs—


Remember 160 miles from London’s symmetrical thorned tower
& network of TV pictures flashing bearded your Self
the lambs on the tree-nooked hillside this day bleating
heard in Blake’s old ear, & the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness
clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey—
Bard Nameless as the Vast, babble to Vastness!


All the Valley quivered, one extended motion, wind
undulating on mossy hills
a giant wash that sank white fog delicately down red runnels
on the mountainside
whose leaf-branch tendrils moved asway
in granitic undertow down—
and lifted the floating Nebulous upward, and lifted the arms of the trees
and lifted the grasses an instant in balance
and lifted the lambs to hold still
and lifted the green of the hill, in one solemn wave


A solid mass of Heaven, mist-infused, ebbs thru the vale,
a wavelet of Immensity, lapping gigantic through Llanthony Valley,
the length of all England, valley upon valley under Heaven’s ocean
tonned with cloud-hang,
—Heaven balanced on a grassblade.
Roar of the mountain wind slow, sigh of the body,
One Being on the mountainside stirring gently
Exquisite scales trembling everywhere in balance,
one motion thru the cloudy sky-floor shifting on the million feet of daisies,
one Majesty the motion that stirred wet grass quivering
to the farthest tendril of white fog poured down
through shivering flowers on the mountain’s head—



No imperfection in the budded mountain,
Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,
daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,
grass shimmers green
sheep speckle the mountainside, revolving their jaws with empty eyes,
horses dance in the warm rain,
tree-lined canals network live farmland,
blueberries fringe stone walls on hawthorn’d hills,
pheasants croak on meadows haired with fern—


Out, out on the hillside, into the ocean sound, into delicate gusts of wet air,
Fall on the ground, O great Wetness, O Mother, No harm on your body!
Stare close, no imperfection in the grass,
each flower Buddha-eye, repeating the story,
myriad-formed—
Kneel before the foxglove raising green buds, mauve bells dropped
doubled down the stem trembling antennae,
& look in the eyes of the branded lambs that stare
breathing stockstill under dripping hawthorn—
I lay down mixing my beard with the wet hair of the mountainside,
smelling the brown vagina-moist ground, harmless,
tasting the violet thistle-hair, sweetness—
One being so balanced, so vast, that its softest breath
moves every floweret in the stillness on the valley floor,
trembles lamb-hair hung gossamer rain-beaded in the grass,
lifts trees on their roots, birds in the great draught
hiding their strength in the rain, bearing same weight,


Groan thru breast and neck, a great Oh! to earth heart
Calling our Presence together
The great secret is no secret
Senses fit the winds,
Visible is visible,
rain-mist curtains wave through the bearded vale,
gray atoms wet the wind’s kabbala
Crosslegged on a rock in dusk rain,
rubber booted in soft grass, mind moveless,
breath trembles in white daisies by the roadside,
Heaven breath and my own symmetric
Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru Capel-Y-Ffn,
Sounds of Aleph and Aum
through forests of gristle,
my skull and Lord Hereford’s Knob equal,
All Albion one.


What did I notice? Particulars! The



vision of the great One is myriad—
smoke curls upward from ashtray,
house fire burned low,
The night, still wet & moody black heaven
starless
upward in motion with wet wind.

Sunflower Sutra

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade
of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look for the sunset over the box house hills and cry.

Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the
same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled
steel roots of trees of machinery.

The only water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks,
no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and
hung-over like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily.

Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a
man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust-


--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake--my
visions--Harlem

and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes greasy Sandwiches, dead baby
carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank,
condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the
razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past-


and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the
smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye-


corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out
of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy
head like a dried wire spiderweb,

leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke
pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,

Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!

The grime was no man's grime but death and human locomotives,

all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that
eyelid of black mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial
worse-than-dirt--industrial--modern--all that civilization spotting your crazy golden
crown-


and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots
below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the
guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty
tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the
cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs &
sphincters of dynamos--all these

entangled in your mummied roots--and you standing before me in the sunset, all your
glory in your form!

A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet


natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset
shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!

How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the
heavens of your railroad and your flower soul?

Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your
skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive?
the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?

You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!

And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!

So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,

and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul too, and anyone who'll listen,

--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive,
we're all golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked
accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied
on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly
tincan evening sitdown vision.

In Back of the Real

railroad yard in San Jose
I wandered desolate
in front of a tank factory
and sat on a bench
near the switchman's shack.


A flower lay on the hay on
the asphalt highway
--the dread hay flower
I thought--It had a
brittle black stem and
corolla of yellowish dirty
spikes like Jesus' inchlong
crown, and a soiled
dry center cotton tuft
like a used shaving brush
that's been lying under
the garage for a year.


Yellow, yellow flower, and
flower of industry,
tough spiky ugly flower,
flower nonetheless,
with the form of the great yellow
Rose in your brain!
This is the flower of the World.