Collecte Works (19 page)

and deep-freeze pie.

When brown folk lived a distance

from my cottages my hand full of lilies

went out to them

from potted progressive principles.

Now no one of my own hue will rent.

I'll lose my horticultural bent.

I'll lose more—how dark

if to fight to keep my livelihood

is to bleach brotherhood.

For Paul and Other Poems

FOR PAUL

Paul

now six years old:

this book of birds I loved

I give to you.

I thought now maybe Paul

growing taller than cattails

around Duck Pond

between the river and the Sound

will keep this book intact,

fly back to it each summer

maybe Paul

What bird would light

in a moving tree

the tree I carry

for privacy?

Down in the grass

the question's inept;

sora's eyes…

stillness steps.

Nearly landless and on the way to water

I push thru marsh.

I lost a view…I saw

(and proceed in depth in place of lateral range)

the child with bigger, stiller eyes than sora's.

Homer's wandering thru hell.

And we can't afford to hire him.

He loses ground building cabins—

outdoor knickknacks—that block a view.

He himself and his wife demand more elephants

on glass shelves than we have books.

In summer silence moves.

Fall pheasants' cry:

rifle shells-in-tin-box-rattle,

over us wax-leaf poplars shine and shudder

as my mother,

continue after the mind is blown.

Understand me, dead is nothing

whereas here we want each other,

silence, time to be alone

and Paul's growing up—

baseball, jabber, running off to neighbors

and back into the Iliad—“do you really believe

there were gods, all that hooey?”

And his violin—improvising

made a Vivaldi sequence his,

better than I could have done with poetry

at twice his age…

so writes your father, L. before P.

A start in life for Paul.

The efforts of a life

hold together as Einstein's

and lead to expectations of form.

To know, to love…if we knew nothing,

Baruch the blessed said, would we exist?

For Paul then at six and a half

a half scholarship—

turn the radio dead—

tho your teacher's gone back to Italy

stumped by American capital.

In my mind, the child said,

are rondeau-gavottes 1 to 11,

here is number 12.

How bright you'll find young people,

             Diddle,

                        and how unkind.

When a boy appears with a book

they cry “Who's the young Einsteind?”

Einstein, you know, said space

is what it's made up of.

And as to the human race

“Why do you deeply oppose its passing”

you'll find men asking

the man with the nebular hair

            and the fiddle.

If he is of constant depth

if he has the feeling—

numbers plus their good

by the time he's twelve

I want that chord, he cries,

and the sun and moon and stars

so what…

boy, are you Greek

without the Wisecrack god

The young ones go away to school

come home to moon

like Frederick the Great

what was it he ate

that had to be sown

in the dark of the moon

Isn't it funny

people run their acres without a hat

figuring rain in the next moon change

while you on a stool

at numbers in a heavenly scale

know the moon changes

                          night and noon

Some have chimes

three long things

as you come in.

They smile

and give you lettuce

because you've brought

your violin.