Halfway to Silence (5 page)

Watching splashed light and shadow on the fold

Where restless clouds flock over and disband.

To what have I been faithful in the end?

What lover loved forever well or ill?

As clouds come over to darken a line of trees

And then far off shadow a wooded hill,

I have to answer, “faithful only to these,

To earth itself turning toward the fall,

To earth’s relentless changing mysteries.”

All lovers sow and reap their harvests from

This flesh ever to be renewed and reconceived

As the bright ploughs break open the dark loam.

Whatever the cost and whatever I believed,

Only the earth itself, great honeycomb,

Gives comfort to the many times bereaved.

Whatever cloud comes over with black rain

To make my life seem of so little worth,

To cover the bright gold with guilt and pain,

The poem, life itself, labor of birth

Has been forced back again and again

To find renewal in the fertile earth.

Fidelity to what? To a gnarled tree, a root,

To the necessity for growth and discipline.

Now I am old why mourn what had to go?

Despite the loss and so much fallen fruit,

The harvest is so rich it fills my bin.

What had to grow has been allowed to grow.

A Winter Notebook

1

Low tide—

The sea’s slow motion,

The surge and slur

Over rocky shingle.

A few gulls ride

Rocking-horse waves.

Under blurred gray sky

The field shines white.

2

I am not available

At the moment

Except to myself.

Downstairs the plumber

Is emptying the big tank,

Water-logged.

The pump pumped on and on

And might have worn out.

So many lives pour into this house,

Sometimes I get too full;

The pump wears out.

So now I am emptying the tank.

It is not an illness

That keeps me from writing.

I am simply staying alive

As one does

At times by taking in,

At times by shutting out.

3

I wake in a wide room

Before dawn,

Just a little light framed by three windows.

I wake in a large space

Listening to the gentle hush of waves.

I watch the sea open like a flower

A huge blue flower

As the sun rises

Out of the dark.

4

It is dark when I go downstairs

And always the same shiver

As I turn on the light—

There they are, alive in the cold,

Hyacinths, begonias,

Cyclamen, a cloud of bloom

As though they were birds

Settled for a moment in the big window.

I wake my hand, still half asleep,

With a sweet geranium leaf.

After breakfast

I tend to all their needs,

These extravagant joys,

Become a little drunk on green

And the smell of earth.

We have lived through another

Bitter cold night.

5

On this dark cold morning

After the ice storm

A male pheasant

Steps precisely across the snow.

His red and gold,

The warmth and shine of him

In the white freeze,

Explosive!

A firecracker pheasant

Opens the new year.

6

I sit at my desk under attack,

Trying to survive

Panic and guilt, the flu…

Outside

Even sunlight looks cold

Glancing off glare ice.

Inside,

Narcissus in bloom,

And a patch of sun on the pile

Of unanswered letters.

I lift my eyes

To the blue

Open-ended ocean.

Why worry?

Some things are always there.

7

The ornamental cherry

Is alive

With cedar waxwings,

Their dandy crests silhouetted

Against gray sky.

They are after cherries,

Dark-red jewels

In frozen clusters

On the asymmetrical twigs.

In the waste of dirty snow

The scene is as brilliant

As a Rajput painting.

I note the yellow-banded tail feathers,

A vermilion accent on the wing—

What elegance!

8

The dark islands

Float on a silvery sea.

I see them like a mirage

Through the branches of the great oak.

After the leaves come out

They will be gone—

These winter joys

And snow coming tonight.

Of the Muse

There is no poetry in lies,

But in crude honesty

There is hope for poetry.

For a long time now