New Collected Poems (17 page)

With wax and powder and rouge

As one would prettify

An unalterable fact

To give bitterness the lie.

Admit the native earth

My body is and will be,

Admit its freedom and

Its changeability.

Dress me in the clothes

I wore in the day's round.

Lay me in a wooden box.

Put the box in the ground.

Beneath this stone a Berry is planted

In his home land, as he wanted.

He has come to the gathering of his kin,

Among whom some were worthy men,

Farmers mostly, who lived by hand,

But one was a cobbler from Ireland,

Another played the eternal fool

By riding on a circus mule

To be remembered in grateful laughter

Longer than the rest. After

Doing what they had to do

They are at ease here. Let all of you

Who yet for pain find force and voice

Look on their peace, and rejoice.

for Allen Tate

The dogs of indecision

Cross and cross the field of vision.

A cloud, a buzzing fly

Distract the lover's eye.

Until the heart has found

Its native piece of ground

The day withholds its light,

The eye must stray unlit.

The ground's the body's bride,

Who will not be denied.

Not until all is given

Comes the thought of heaven.

When the mind's an empty room

The clear days come.

I tell my love in rhyme

In a sentence that must end,

A measurable dividend,

To hold her time against time.

I praise her honest eyes

That keep their beauty clear.

I have nothing to fear

From her, though the world lies,

If I don't lie. Though the hill

Of winter rise, a silent ark,

Our covenant with the dark,

We will speak on until

The flowers fall, and the birds

With their bright songs depart.

Then we will go without art,

Without measure, or words.

What she made in her body is broken.

Now she has begun to bear it again.

In the house of her son's death

his life is shining in the windows,

for she has elected to bear him again.

She did not bear him for death,

and she does not. She has taken back

into her body the seed, bitter

and joyous, of the life of a man.

In the house of the dead the windows shine

with life. She mourns, for his life was good.

She is not afraid. She is like a field

where the corn is planted, and like the rain

that waters the field, and like the young corn.

In her sorrow she renews life, in her grief

she prepares the return of joy.

She did not bear him for death, and she does not.

There was a life that went out of her to live

on its own, divided, and now she has taken it back.

She is alight with the sudden new life of death.

Perhaps it is the brightness of the dead one

being born again. Perhaps she is planting him,

like corn, in the living and in the earth.

She has taken back into her flesh,

and made light, the dark seed of her pain.

Passed through the dark wall,

set foot in the unknown track,

paths locked in the minds of beasts

and in strange tongues. Footfall

led him where he did not know.

There was a dark country where

only blind trust could go.

Some joyous animal paced the woods

ahead of him and filled the air

with steepling song to make a way.

Step by step the darkness bore

the light. The shadow opened

like a pod, and from the height

he saw a place green as welcome

on whose still water the sky lay white.

What we have been becomes

The country where we are.

Spring goes, summer comes,

And in the heat, as one year

Or a thousand years before,

The fields and woods prepare

The burden of their seed

Out of time's wound, the old

Richness of the fall. Their deed

Is renewal. In the household

Of the woods the past

Is always healing in the light,

The high shiftings of the air.

It stands upon its yield

And thrives. Nothing is lost.

What yields, though in despair,

Opens and rises in the night.

Love binds us to this term

With its yes that is crying

In our marrow to confirm

Life that only lives by dying.

Lovers live by the moon

Whose dark and light are one,

Changing without rest.

The root struts from the seed

In the earth's dark—harvest

And feast at the edge of sleep.

Darkened, we are carried

Out of need, deep

In the country we have married.

5 / 29 / 72

 

 

 

 

What has been spoiled through man's fault can be

made good again through man's work.
I Ching

Handles are shining where my life has passed.

My fields and walls are aching

in my shoulders. My subjects are my objects:

house, barn, beast, hill, and tree.

Reader, make no mistake. The meanings

of these must balance against their weight.

 

For Wallace Stegner

The crops were made, the leaves

were down, three frosts had lain

upon the broad stone

step beneath the door;

as I walked away

the houses were shut, quiet

under their drifting smokes,

the women stooped at the hearths.

Beyond the farthest tracks

of any domestic beast

my way led me, into

a place for which I knew

no names. I went by paths

that bespoke intelligence

and memory I did not know.

Noonday held sounds of moving

water, moving air, enormous

stillness of old trees.

Though I was weary and alone,

song was near me then,

wordless and gay as a deer

lightly stepping. Learning

the landmarks and the ways

of that land, so I might

go back, if I wanted to,

my mind grew new, and lost

the backward way. I stood

at last, long hunter and child,

where this valley opened,

a word I seemed to know

though I had not heard it.

Behind me, along the crooks

and slants of my approach,

a low song sang itself,

as patient as the light.

On the valley floor the woods

grew rich: great poplars,

beeches, sycamores,

walnuts, sweet gums, lindens,

oaks. They stood apart

and open, the winter light

at rest among them. Yes,

and as I came down

I heard a little stream

pouring into the river.

Since then I have arrived here

many times. I have come

on foot, on horseback, by boat,

and by machine—by earth,

water, air, and fire.

I came with axe and rifle.

I came with a sharp eye

and the price of land. I came

in bondage, and I came

in freedom not worth the name.

From the high outlook

of that first day I have come

down two hundred years

across the worked and wasted

slopes, by eroding tracks

of the joyless horsepower of greed.

Through my history's despite

and ruin, I have come

to its remainder, and here

have made the beginning

of a farm intended to become

my art of being here.

By it I would instruct

my wants: they should belong

to each other and to this place.

Until my song comes here

to learn its words, my art

is but the hope of song.

All the lives this place

has had, I have. I eat

my history day by day.

Bird, butterfly, and flower

pass through the seasons of

my flesh. I dine and thrive

on offal and old stone,

and am combined within

the story of the ground.

By this earth's life, I have

its greed and innocence,

its violence, its peace.

Now let me feed my song

upon the life that is here

that is the life that is gone.

This blood has turned to dust

and liquefied again in stem

and vein ten thousand times.

Let what is in the flesh,

O Muse, be brought to mind.

The field mouse flickers

once upon his shadow,

is gone. The watcher is left

in all silence, as after

thunder, or threat. And then

in the top of the sycamore

the redbird opens again

his clear song:
Even

so. Even so.

Divided by little songs

these silences keep folding

back upon themselves

like long cloths put away.

They are all of the one

silence that precedes

and follows us. Too much

has fallen silent here.

There are names that rest

as silent on their stone

as fossils in creek ledges.

There are those who sleep

in graves no one remembers;

there is no language here,

now, to speak their names.

Too much of our history

will seem to have taken place

in the halls of capitals,

where the accusers have

mostly been guilty, and so

have borne witness to nothing.

Whole lives of work are buried

under leaves of thickets,

hands fallen from helves.

What was memory is dust

now, and many a story

told in shade or by the fire

is gone with the old light.

On the courthouse shelves

the facts lie mute

upon their pages, useless

nearly as the old boundary

marks—“Beginning on

the bank of the Kentucky River

at the mouth of Cane Run

at a hackberry” (1865) —

lost in the silence of

old days and voices. And yet

the land and the mind

bear the marks of a history

that they do not record.