New Collected Poems (30 page)

In Art Rowanberry's barn, when Art's death

had become quietly a fact among

the other facts, Andy Catlett found

a jacket made of the top half

of a pair of coveralls after

the legs wore out, for Art

never wasted anything.

Andy found a careful box made

of woodscraps with a strap

for a handle; it contained

a handful of small nails

wrapped in a piece of newspaper,

several large nails, several

rusty bolts with nuts and washers,

some old harness buckles

and rings, rusty but usable,

several small metal boxes, empty,

and three hickory nuts

hollowed out by mice.

And all of these things Andy

put back where they had been,

for time and the world and other people

to dispense with as they might,

but not by him to be disprized.

This long putting away

of things maybe useful was not all

of Art's care-taking; he cared

for creatures also, every day

leaving his tracks in dust, mud,

or snow as he went about

looking after his stock, or gave

strength to lighten a neighbor's work.

Andy found a bridle made

of several lengths of baling twine

knotted to a rusty bit,

an old set of chain harness,

four horseshoes of different sizes,

and three hammerstones picked up

from the opened furrow on days

now as perfectly forgotten

as the days when they were lost.

He found a good farrier's knife,

an awl, a key to a lock

that would no longer open.

The rugs were rolled back to the wall,

The band in place, the lamps all lit.

We talked and laughed a little bit

And then obeyed the caller's call—

Light-footed, happy, half entranced—

To balance, swing, and promenade.

Do you remember how we danced

And how the fiddler played?

About midnight we left the crowd

And wandered out to take a stroll.

We heard the treefrogs and the owl;

Nearby the creek was running loud.

The good dark held us as we chanced

The joy we two together made,

Remembering how we'd whirled and pranced

And how the fiddler played.

That night is many years ago

And gone, and still I see you clear,

Clear as the lamplight in your hair.

The old time comes around me now,

And I remember how you glanced

At me, and how we stepped and swayed.

I can't forget the way we danced,

The way the fiddler played.

(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill—more of each

than you have—inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your work,

doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

What is one to make of a life given

to putting things into words,

saying them, writing them down?

Is there a world beyond words?

There is. But don't start, don't

go on about the tree unqualified,

standing in light that shines

to time's end beyond its summoning

name. Don't praise the speechless

starlight, the unspeakable dawn.

Just stop.

Well, we
can
stop

for a while, if we try hard enough,

if we are lucky. We can sit still,

keep silent, let the phoebe, the sycamore,

the river, the stone call themselves

by whatever they call themselves, their own

sounds, their own silence, and thus

may know for a moment the nearness

of the world, its vastness,

its vast variousness, far and near,

which only silence knows. And then

we must call all things by name

out of the silence again to be with us,

or die of namelessness.

. . . the man must remain obscure.

CÉZANNE              

Having begun in public anonymity,

you did not count on this

literary sublimation by which

some body becomes a “name”—

as if you have died and have become

a part of mere geography. Greet,

therefore, the roadsigns on the road.

Or perhaps you have become deaf and blind,

or merely inanimate, and may

be studied without embarrassment

by the disinterested, the dispassionate,

and the merely curious,

not fearing to be overheard.

Hello to the grass, then, and to the trees.

Or perhaps you are secretly

still alert and moving, no longer the one

they have named, but another,

named by yourself,

carrying away this morning's showers

for your private delectation.

Hello, river.

 

Well, anyhow, I am

not going to die young.

I think therefore

I think I am.

Head like a big

watermelon,

frequently thumped

and still not ripe.

Stop the killing, or

I'll kill you, you

God-damned murderer!

Let me be plain with you, dear reader.

I am an old-fashioned man. I like

the world of nature despite its mortal

dangers. I like the domestic world

of humans, so long as it pays its debts

to the natural world, and keeps its bounds.

I like the promise of Heaven. My purpose

is a language that can pay just thanks

and honor for those gifts, a tongue

set free from fashionable lies.

Neither this world nor any of its places

is an “environment.” And a house

for sale is not a “home.” Economics

is not “science,” nor “information” knowledge.

A knave with a degree is a knave. A fool

in a public office is not a “leader.”

A rich thief is a thief. And the ghost

of Arthur Moore, who taught me Chaucer,

returns in the night to say again:

“Let me tell you something, boy.

An intellectual whore is a whore.”

The world is babbled to pieces after

the divorce of things from their names.

Ceaseless preparation for war

is not peace. Health is not procured

by sale of medication, or purity

by the addition of poison. Science

at the bidding of the corporations

is knowledge reduced to merchandise;

it is a whoredom of the mind,

and so is the art that calls this “progress.”

So is the cowardice that calls it “inevitable.”

I think the issues of “identity” mostly

are poppycock. We are what we have done,

which includes our promises, includes

our hopes, but promises first. I know

a “fetus” is a human child.

I loved my children from the time

they were conceived, having loved

their mother, who loved them

from the time they were conceived

and before. Who are we to say

the world did not begin in love?

I would like to die in love as I was born,

and as myself, of life impoverished, go

into the love all flesh begins

and ends in. I don't like machines,

which are neither mortal nor immortal,

though I am constrained to use them.

(Thus the age perfects its clench.)

Some day they will be gone, and that

will be a glad and a holy day.

I mean the dire machines that run

by burning the world's body and

its breath. When I see an airplane

fuming through the once-pure sky

or a vehicle of the outer space

with its little inner space

imitating a star at night, I say,

“Get
out
of there!” as I would speak

to a fox or a thief in the henhouse.

When I hear the stock market has fallen,

I say, “Long live gravity! Long live

stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces

of fantasy capitalism!” I think

an economy should be based on thrift,

on taking care of things, not on theft,

usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.

My purpose is a language that can make us whole,

though mortal, ignorant, and small.

The world is whole beyond human knowing.

The body's life is its own, untouched

by the little clockwork of explanation.

I approve of death, when it comes in time

to the old. I don't want to live

on mortal terms forever, or survive

an hour as a cooling stew of pieces

of other people. I don't believe that life

or knowledge can be given by machines.

The machine economy has set afire

the household of the human soul,

and all the creatures are burning within it.

“Intellectual property” names

the deed by which the mind is bought

and sold, the world enslaved. We

who do not own ourselves, being free,

own by theft what belongs to God,

to the living world, and equally

to us all. Or how can we own a part

of what we only can possess entirely?

“The laborer is worthy of his hire,”

but he cannot own what he knows,

which must be freely told, or labor

dies with the laborer. The farmer

is worthy of the harvest made

in time, but he must leave the light

by which he planted, grew, and reaped,

the seed immortal in mortality,

freely to the time to come. The land

too he keeps by giving it up,

as the thinker receives and gives a thought,

as the singer sings in the common air.

I don't believe that “scientific genius”

in its naïve assertions of power

is equal either to nature or

to human culture. Its thoughtless invasions

of the nuclei of atoms and cells

and this world's every habitation

have not brought us to the light

but sent us wandering farther through

the dark. Nor do I believe

“artistic genius” is the possession

of any artist. No one has made

the art by which one makes the works

of art. Each one who speaks speaks

as a convocation. We live as councils

of ghosts. It is not “human genius”

that makes us human, but an old love,

an old intelligence of the heart

we gather to us from the world,

from the creatures, from the angels

of inspiration, from the dead—

an intelligence merely nonexistent

to those who do not have it, but