West Wind (4 page)

flows itself over the windowsill and into the room

it scatters the papers from the desk
it is in love with disorganization

now the manuscript is on the floor, and reshuffled
now the chapters have married each other
now the alphabet is lost now the white curtains are tossing wing on wing
now the body of the wind snaps

it sniffs the closet it touches into the pockets of the coats
it touches the shells upon the shelves
it touches the tops of the books
it slides along the walls

now the lamplight wavers
as the body of the wind swings over the light
outside a million stars are burning
now the ocean calls to the wind

now the wind like water slips under the sash
into the yard the garden the long black sky

in my room after such disturbance I sit, smiling.
I pick up a pencil, I put it down, I pick it up again.
I am thinking of you.
I am always thinking of you.

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
of other lives—
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer,
feel like?

Do you think this world is only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left—
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,

to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,

to the tiplets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
in the night.

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

***

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

***

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge-red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

***

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?

Fall in! Fall in!

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.

***

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daisies,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb. I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

My thanks to the editors of the following magazines in
which some of these poems, sometimes in slightly different
form, have previously been printed.

Amicus,
The cricket...; At the Shore; Sand Dabs, Three

Appalachia,
Black Oaks, The Dog Has Run Off Again

Country Journal,
The Osprey

Michigan (Quarterly Review,
At Round Pond

Ohio Review,
And what did you think love would be like?

Orion,
The Rapture

Poetry,
Forty Years, Pilot Snake

Provincetown Arts,
Dogs, Shelley, Stars, You are young...,
If there is life after the earth-life...

Shenandoah,
Three Songs, Seven White Butterflies

The Southern Review,
Spring