Collecte Works (59 page)

redcoats there

3

Elk Hill destroyed—

Cornwallis

carried off 30 slaves

Jefferson:

Were it to give them freedom

he'd have done right

4

South of France

To gaze

alone through the whole

Speculate

on the causes of sea color

Here concur

air, earth and water

…

Men at Paris die

from great cold

as do our American cattle

reasons the same—

want of feed and housing

Ill-governed France

but its soil good

For America

I taste their glorious wine

note how they make

Parmesan cheese

Under penalty of law

slip rice out of Lombardy

Around Nantes the ragged people

eat rye

and the women smite the anvil

….

Roman temple

“simple and sublime”

Maria Cosway on

his mind

white column

and arch

of the truest

proportions

5

To daughter Patsy: Read—

read Livy

No person full of work

was ever hysterical

Learn music, drawing

dancing

(I calculate 14 to 1

in marriage

she will draw

a blockhead)

Science also

Patsy

6

I was confident

the French Revolution

would end well

Adams differed: What is freedom

to their thousands upon thousands

who cannot read or write—

“impracticable as for the Elephants Lions

Tigers Panthers Wolves and Bears

in the Royal Menagerie of Versailles”

I gave the Lafayette dinner

ten days before the fall

of the Bastille

Their cool argument

“disfigured by no tinsel”

worthy of Xenophon

Plato, Cicero

7

Agreed with Adams:

spermaceti oil to Portugal

(for their church candles)

and salt fish

U.S. salt fish preferred

above all other

8

Jefferson of Patrick Henry

backwoods fiddler statesman:

“He spoke as Homer wrote”

Henry eyed our minister at Paris—

the Bill of Rights hassel—

“he remembers…

in splendor and dissipation

He thinks yet of bills of rights”

9

True, French frills and lace

for Jefferson, sword and belt

but follow the Court to Fontainbleau

he could not—

house rent would have left him

nothing to eat

…

He bowed to those he met

and talked with arms folded

He could be trimmed

by a two-month migraine

and yet

            stand up

10

Dear Polly:

I said No—no frost

in Virginia

The strawberries were safe

I'd have heard—I'm in

that kind of correspondence

with a young daughter—

if they were not

Now I must retract

I shrink from it

11

On view in the capital

his invention

the moldboard plow

Robert Fulton's dynamometer

tested the amount of force

to pull it

On view—to turn the ground

of knowledge

12

Political honors “splendid torments”

“if one could establish an absolute

power of silence over oneself”

When I set out for Monticello—

My grandchildren, could they

       not      know      me?

a good housejoiner will go with me

How are my young chestnut trees?

13

What is my religion?

Don't pin me down on the mysteries—

three are one and one is three

and yet the one not three

and the three not one

Let us accept the precepts common

to all religions and let alone

the particular dogmas

in which all religions differ

14

The old grudge would always pop up

Adams: Where was you?

Dear Adams: I was there—I was a Stoic

but I longed for Tranquility

Horace, Epicurus

I value the passions

(the senses stimulate the mind)

though yours drew you away from me

Adams: I have no doubt you was “fast asleep

in philosophical Tranquility

when ten thousand People paraded

the streets of Philadelphia”

15

Hamilton and the bankers

would make my country Carthage

I am abandoning the rich—

their dinner parties

I shall eat my simlins

with the class of science

or not at all

Next year the last of labors

among conflicting parties

Then my family

we shall sow our cabbages

together

16

We must hope for a natural aristocracy

of philosophy and art

Remember—Adams again: the greengrocer's daughter

she walks the streets of London dayly

spinach on her head

The Painters see her lovely face

elegant figure, she sitts for them

“The scientific Sir Wm. Hamilton

outbids the Painters, sends her to Schools

for a genteel Education, marries her

The Lady not only causes the Triumphs of the Nile

of Copenhagen and Trafalgar

but separates Naples from France

and banishes the King and Queen of Sicily

Such is the aristocracy

of the natural Talent of Beauty”

17

The delicious flower

of the acacia

or Mimosa Nilotica

from Mr. Lomax

18

Polly Jefferson at 8 had crossed

to father and sister in Paris

by way of London—Abigail

embraced her—Adams said

“in all my life I never saw

more charming child”

Death of Polly, 25,

Monticello

19

My harpsichord

my alabaster vase

and bridle bit bound

for Alexandria, Virginia

The good sea weather

of retirement

The drift and suck

and die-down of life

20

These were my passions:

Monticello and the temples

of learning and of law

I passed on to carpenters

bricklayers what I knew

and to an Italian sculptor

how to turn a volute

on a pillar

Approach the campus rotunda

from lower to upper

terrace—Cicero

had levels

21

Adams envied him

his “Eyes, hand and Horse”

his own eyes dim

Ah one should not envy

Tom Jefferson's cantering

rheumatism

22

Body leaving, let mind leave

Let dome live, the spherical dome

and colonnade

Martha (Patsy) stay

The Committee of Safety

must be warned

Stay youth—Anne and Ellen

the telescope, the bantams

and the seeds of the senega root

Revised to the present text for
Origin
ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 57-64, with variant Arabic numerals.

BC
uses Roman numerals and omits the final line of VI (“Patsy”).

VV excerpts only

My wife is ill!

And I sit

          waiting

for a quorum

The Ballad of Basil
       Unpublished in book form [H&SF].

Stony Brook
3/4 (1969): 31, and posthumously in
BC
(1976).

Wilderness
       Unpublished [H&SF].

On her tape recording, she titles the poem, “Wild Man,” hence
BC
's use of the same title. CC's transcription of “Wild Man” used posthumously in
Montemora
2 (Summer 1976).

Consider
       Unpublished in book form [H&SF].

Untitled in
Origin
ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 56, where the poem begins: Consider the alliance—

Copytext for posthumous publication in
BC
(1976).

Otherwise
       Unpublished [H&SF].

In the 13-poem MS dated Jan. 1958, where the poem is titled “
Letter/of Gerard Manley Hopkins,”
a variant line 9 reads: By the way I've not found

Revised to the present text for H&SF.

For
BC
, CC transcribed LN's tape-recorded reading of the poem, hence the variant lineation and the title
“Gerard Manley Hopkins.”

Nursery Rhyme
       Unpublished [H&SF].

On the tape recording, she omits both title and subtitle, hence its untitled appearance in
BC.
LN's “that” of her line 9 is easily mistaken on the tape recording for the “It” of CC's transcribed line 8 in
BC.

LN to LZ, Nov. 18, 1962: “Mont[gomery] Ward man came and fixed pump—he cdn't have done better if he'd been ‘the greatest plumber in all London’ as Hunt's neighbors called the one that lived near em. A model now of silent perfection, that pump, between drawings of water. Greatest plumber poem finished…” (
NCZ
325).

Three Americans
       Unpublished [H&SF].

An early version dated July 23, 1970, forms part of the Roub Collection:

I

John Adams was our man

but delicate beauty

touched the other one—

an architect

and a woman artist

walked beside Jefferson

II

Abigail

(long face horse-name)

of stony acre

cheesemaker, chickenraiser

spoke, wrote

for John and TJ to savour

III

The tragedies

The men in the boxes—

Jefferson mourned: to arrive

in Paris just too late

to see Diderot

alive

LN's annotation: “(I give three packages of gum and cattails in tall grass for a title) (But o my God what travail till this was completed) Abigail is Mrs. John Adams. The name Gail is wonderful but that terribly prosaic and kitchen-maid Abi preceding is horrible. But what a wonderful original woman.”

Revised to the present text for H&SF: “savour” is LN's spelling.

On the tape recording, she omits the title, hence its untitled appearance in
BC.

POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE

Blue and white         Unpublished in book form [EA, VV, H&SF].

A separate poem in
Origin
ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 54, and posthumously in
BC
(1976).

The soil is poor         Unpublished in book form [EA, H&SF].

The first of four
“POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE”
in
Stony Brook
3/4 (1969): 32.

Michelangelo
       Unpublished in book form [EA, H&SF].

The fourth of four
“POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE”
in
Stony Brook
3/4 (1969): 32.

Wallace Stevens
       Unpublished in book form [EA, VV, H&SF].

A separate poem in Origin ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 56, and in
BC
(1976).
Stony Brook's
other two
“POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE”
are “The man of law” and “Not all harsh sounds displease” (see p. 271).

BC's
“POEMS AT THE PORTHOLE”
duplicate
Stony Brook's.

SUBLIMINAL
       The title is first used in H&SF.

Sleep's dream         Unpublished in book form [H&SF].

A separate poem in
Origin
ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 55, with two additional lines at the end of the poem:

           and my sometimes

happy fatherphosphor

Copytext for posthumous publication in
BC
(1976).

Waded, watched, warbled         Unpublished in book form [H&SF].

In
Origin
ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 55, this two-stanza poem is followed by three bullets and a further three stanzas:

Faithful to the marsh

of my childhood

we camp on the dryest portion

In April's flood-freeze

crystals hang low on the bush

all day

Then green—we're en rapport

with grass as once or twice

with humans

Copytext for posthumous publication in
BC
(1976).

Revised to the present text for H&SF.

Illustrated night clock's; Honest; and Night         Unpublished [H&SF].

After seeing the H&SF typescript, CC published the complete five-poem sequence, “SUBLIMINAL,” in
Origin
ser. 4, 16 (July 1981): 32-33.

LZ
       Unpublished in book form [H&SF].

Origin
ser. 3, 12 (Jan. 1969): 3:

line 2: waved toward Peck Slip

line 5: was “Test”

Copytext for posthumous publication in
BC
(1976).

LN to CC, Aug. 6, 1968: “Peck Slip—you know—it's the fish market area my father shipping carp from our lake in refrigerated cars to Peck Slip. We followed Jewish holidays—the buyers did—but LZ says his folks did not eat carp. LZ was at our place in ′36 & my father spoke confidentially and kindly in his gentle fashion to him and LZ was touched” (
BYHM
170).

Peace
       Unpublished in book form [H&SF].

Origin
ser. 3, 19 (Oct. 1970): 54, and
BC
(1976).

LN to LZ, April 1956: “AEn[eas McAllister] came over to show me two tiny music box movements—wound one up (Strauss waltzes) and went out into the dark night with it to go home—a kind of musical firefly” (
NCZ
227).

Thomas Jefferson Inside
       Unpublished in book form [H&SF].

Tuatara
2 (June 1970): 8, and posthumously in
BC
(1976).

Foreclosure
       Unpublished in book form [H&SF].

Tuatara
2 (June 1970): 8, and posthumously in
BC
(1976).

HIS CARPETS FLOWERED
       Unpublished in book form [EA, H&SF].