Collecte Works (14 page)

Audubon

Tried selling my pictures. In jail

twice for debt. My companion

a sharp, frosty gale.

            In England unpacked

them with fear:

must I migrate back

to the woods unknown, strange

to all but the birds

I paint?

Dear Lucy, the servants here

move quiet

as killdeer.

van Gogh

At times I sit in the dunes,

faint, not enough to eat.

The path thru the dunes

is like a desert…the family's shoes

patched and worn and many more

such views.

What a woman!—hooks men like rugs,

clips as she hooks, prefers old wool, but all

childlike, lost, houseowning or pensioned men

her prey. She covets the gold in her husband's teeth.

She'd sell dirt, she'd sell your eyes fried in deep grief.

The brown muskrat, noiseless,

swims the white stream,

stretched out as if already

a woman's neck-piece.

In Red Russia the Russians

at a mile a minute

pitch back Nazi wildmen

wearing women.

The broad-leaved Arrow-head

grows vivid and strong

in my book, says: underneath

the surface of the stream the leaves

are narrow, long.

I don't investigate,

mark the page…I suppose

if I sat down beside a frost

and had no printed sign

I'd be lost. Well, up

from lying double in a book,

go long like a tree

and broad as the library.

“New Goose” Manuscript

To a Maryland editor, 1943:

The enclosed poems are sepa-

rated by stars to save paper.

Dear MacCloud:

the poems called Goose

separated by stars

to save the sun—

“We couldn't get away

with these down here

in the south on the brow

of Washington”—

appeared: your night's

folk-tongue.

Summer's away, I traded my chicks for trees

so winter's tea-kettle on the high wood stove

              my feet to the heat

              my back in the shade

will tally with the tit-wit that sang

                          from the upmost branch.

She was a mourner too. Now she's gone

                       to the earth's core,

with organ notes, buried by church that buries the live,

intoning: That torture called by men delight

                                touches her no more.

So calm she looked, half smiling: Heaven?

                                                 No, restore

my matter, never free from motion,

                             to the soil's roar.

Seven years a charming woman wore

her coat, removed the collar where it tore,

little warmth but honor in her loose

thin coat, without knowing why

she's so. Charming? Well, she's destitute.

The land of four o'clocks is here

the five of us together

           looking for our supper.

Half past endive, quarter to beets,

seven milks, ten cents cheese,

           lost, our land, forever.

Just before she died

my little grandma with her long, long hair

put her hand on mine: I'm nearly there.

What'll I do all my life,

I cried, my work's cut short; I've a share

in the speed-up; a long, long race to spare.