Part 15

‘Speaking of contraries, see how the brook In that white wave runs counter to itself. It is from that in water we were from Long, long before we were from any creature. Here we, in our impatience of the steps, Get back to the beginning of beginnings, The stream of everything that runs away. Some say existence like a Pirouot And Pirouette, forever in one place, Stands still and dances, but it runs away, It seriously, sadly, runs away To fill the abyss’ void with emptiness. It flows beside us in this water brook, But it flows over us. It flows between us To separate us for a panic moment. It flows between us, over us, and _with_ us. And it is time, strength, tone, light, life and love-- And even substance lapsing unsubstantial; The universal cataract of death That spends to nothingness--and unresisted, Save by some strange resistance in itself, Not just a swerving, but a throwing back, As if regret were in it and were sacred. It has this throwing backward on itself So that the fall of most of it is always Raising a little, sending up a little. Our life runs down in sending up the clock. The brook runs down in sending up our life. The sun runs down in sending up the brook. And there is something sending up the sun. It is this backward motion toward the source, Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in, The tribute of the current to the source. It is from this in nature we are from. It is most us.’

‘Today will be the day You said so.’

‘No, today will be the day You said the brook was called West-running Brook.’

‘Today will be the day of what we both said.’

_Sand Dunes_

Sea waves are green and wet, But up from where they die, Rise others vaster yet, And those are brown and dry.

They are the sea made land To come at the fisher town, And bury in solid sand The men she could not drown.

She may know cove and cape, But she does not know mankind If by any change of shape, She hopes to cut off mind.

Men left her a ship to sink: They can leave her a hut as well; And be but more free to think For the one more cast off shell.

_Canis Major_

The great Overdog, That heavenly beast With a star in one eye, Gives a leap in the east.

He dances upright All the way to the west And never once drops On his forefeet to rest.

I’m a poor underdog, But tonight I will bark With the great Overdog That romps through the dark.

_A Soldier_

He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, But still lies pointed as it plowed the dust. If we who sight along it round the world, See nothing worthy to have been its mark, It is because like men we look too near, Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere, Our missiles always make too short an arc. They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect The curve of earth, and striking, break their own; They make us cringe for metal-point on stone. But this we know, the obstacle that checked And tripped the body, shot the spirit on Further than target ever showed or shone.

_Immigrants_

No ship of all that under sail or steam Have gathered people to us more and more But Pilgrim-manned the Mayflower in a dream Has been her anxious convoy in to shore.

_Hannibal_

Was there ever a cause too lost, Ever a cause that was lost too long, Or that showed with the lapse of time too vain For the generous tears of youth and song?

_The Flower Boat_

The fisherman’s swapping a yarn for a yarn Under the hand of the village barber, And here in the angle of house and barn His deep-sea dory has found a harbor.

At anchor she rides the sunny sod As full to the gunnel of flowers growing As ever she turned her home with cod From George’s bank when winds were blowing.

And I judge from that Elysian freight That all they ask is rougher weather, And dory and master will sail by fate To seek for the Happy Isles together.

_The Times Table_

More than half way up the pass Was a spring with a broken drinking glass, And whether the farmer drank or not His mare was sure to observe the spot By cramping the wheel on a water-bar, Turning her forehead with a star, And straining her ribs for a monster sigh; To which the farmer would make reply, ‘A sigh for every so many breath, And for every so many sigh a death. That’s what I always tell my wife Is the multiplication table of life.’ The saying may be ever so true; But it’s just the kind of a thing that you, Nor I, nor nobody else may say, Unless our purpose is doing harm, And then I know of no better way To close a road, abandon a farm, Reduce the births of the human race, And bring back nature in people’s place.

_The Investment_

Over back where they speak of life as staying (‘You couldn’t call it living, for it ain’t’), There was an old, old house renewed with paint, And in it a piano loudly playing.

Out in the ploughed ground in the cold a digger, Among unearthed potatoes standing still, Was counting winter dinners, one a hill, With half an ear to the piano’s vigor.

All that piano and new paint back there, Was it some money suddenly come into? Or some extravagance young love had been to? Or old love on an impulse not to care--

Not to sink under being man and wife, But get some color and music out of life?

_The Last Mowing_

There’s a place called Far-away Meadow We never shall mow in again, Or such is the talk at the farmhouse: The meadow is finished with men. Then now is the chance for the flowers That can’t stand mowers and plowers. It must be now; though, in season Before the not mowing brings trees on, Before trees, seeing the opening, March into a shadowy claim. The trees are all I’m afraid of, That flowers can’t bloom in the shade of; It’s no more men I’m afraid of; The meadow is done with the tame. The place for the moment is ours For you, oh tumultuous flowers, To go to waste and go wild in, All shapes and colors of flowers, I needn’t call you by name.

_The Birthplace_

Here further up the mountain slope Than there was ever any hope, My father built, enclosed a spring, Strung chains of wall round everything, Subdued the growth of earth to grass, And brought our various lives to pass. A dozen girls and boys we were. The mountain seemed to like the stir, And made of us a little while-- With always something in her smile. Today she wouldn’t know our name. (No girl’s, of course, has stayed the same.) The mountain pushed us off her knees. And now her lap is full of trees.

_The Door in the Dark_

In going from room to room in the dark, I reached out blindly to save my face, But neglected, however lightly, to lace My fingers and close my arms in an arc. A slim door got in past my guard, And hit me a blow in the head so hard I had my native simile jarred. So people and things don’t pair any more With what they used to pair with before.

_Dust in the Eyes_

If, as they say, some dust thrown in my eyes Will keep my talk from getting overwise, I’m not the one for putting off the proof. Let it be overwhelming, off a roof And round a corner, blizzard snow for dust, And blind me to a standstill if it must.

_Sitting by a Bush in Broad Sunlight_

When I spread out my hand here today, I catch no more than a ray To feel of between thumb and fingers; No lasting effect of it lingers.

There was one time and only the one When dust really took in the sun; And from that one intake of fire All creatures still warmly suspire.

And if men have watched a long time And never seen sun-smitten slime Again come to life and crawl off, We must not be too ready to scoff.

God once declared he was true And then took the veil and withdrew, And remember how final a hush Then descended of old on the bush.

God once spoke to people by name. The sun once imparted its flame. One impulse persists as our breath; The other persists as our faith.

_The Armful_

For every parcel I stoop down to seize, I lose some other off my arms and knees, And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns, Extremes too hard to comprehend at once, Yet nothing I should care to leave behind. With all I have to hold with, hand and mind And heart, if need be, I will do my best To keep their building balanced at my breast. I crouch down to prevent them as they fall; Then sit down in the middle of them all. I had to drop the armful in the road And try to stack them in a better load.

_What Fifty Said_

When I was young my teachers were the old. I gave up fire for form till I was cold. I suffered like a metal being cast. I went to school to age to learn the past.

Now I am old my teachers are the young. What can’t be moulded must be cracked and sprung. I strain at lessons fit to start a suture. I go to school to youth to learn the future.

_Riders_

The surest thing there is is we are riders, And though none too successful at it, guiders, Through everything presented, land and tide And now the very air, of what we ride.

What is this talked-of mystery of birth But being mounted bareback on the earth? We can just see the infant up astride, His small fist buried in the bushy hide.

There is our wildest mount--a headless horse. But though it runs unbridled off its course, And all our blandishments would seem defied, We have ideas yet that we haven’t tried.

_On Looking Up By Chance at the Constellations_

You’ll wait a long, long time for anything much To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud And the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves. The sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch, Nor strike out fire from each other, nor crash out loud. The planets seem to interfere in their curves, But nothing ever happens, no harm is done. We may as well go patiently on with our life, And look elsewhere than to stars and moon and sun For the shocks and changes we need to keep us sane. It is true the longest drouth will end in rain, The longest peace in China will end in strife. Still it wouldn’t reward the watcher to stay awake In hopes of seeing the calm of heaven break On his particular time and personal sight. That calm seems certainly safe to last tonight.

_The Bear_

The bear puts both arms around the tree above her And draws it down as if it were a lover And its choke cherries lips to kiss good-bye, Then lets it snap back upright in the sky. Her next step rocks a boulder on the wall (She’s making her cross-country in the fall). Her great weight creaks the barbed-wire in its staples As she flings over and off down through the maples, Leaving on one wire tooth a lock of hair. Such is the uncaged progress of the bear. The world has room to make a bear feel free; The universe seems cramped to you and me. Man acts more like the poor bear in a cage That all day fights a nervous inward rage, His mood rejecting all his mind suggests. He paces back and forth and never rests The toe-nail click and shuffle of his feet, The telescope at one end of his beat, And at the other end the microscope, Two instruments of nearly equal hope, And in conjunction giving quite a spread. Or if he rests from scientific tread, ’Tis only to sit back and sway his head Through ninety odd degrees of arc, it seems, Between two metaphysical extremes. He sits back on his fundamental butt With lifted snout and eyes (if any) shut, (He almost looks religious but he’s not), And back and forth he sways from cheek to cheek, At one extreme agreeing with one Greek, At the other agreeing with another Greek Which may be thought, but only so to speak. A baggy figure, equally pathetic When sedentary and when peripatetic.

_The Egg and the Machine_

He gave the solid rail a hateful kick. From far away there came an answering tick And then another tick. He knew the code: His hate had roused an engine up the road. He wished when he had had the track alone He had attacked it with a club or stone And bent some rail wide open like a switch So as to wreck the engine in the ditch. Too late though, now, he had himself to thank. Its click was rising to a nearer clank. Here it came breasting like a horse in skirts. (He stood well back for fear of scalding squirts.) Then for a moment all there was was size Confusion and a roar that drowned the cries He raised against the gods in the machine. Then once again the sandbank lay serene. The traveler’s eye picked up a turtle trail, Between the dotted feet a streak of tail, And followed it to where he made out vague But certain signs of buried turtle’s egg; And probing with one finger not too rough, He found suspicious sand, and sure enough, The pocket of a little turtle mine. If there was one egg in it there were nine, Torpedo-like, with shell of gritty leather All packed in sand to wait the trump together. ‘You’d better not disturb me any more,’ He told the distance, ‘I am armed for war. The next machine that has the power to pass Will get this plasm in its goggle glass.’

Transcriber’s Note

❧ Italics represented by surrounding _underscores_.

❧ Small caps converted to ALL CAPS.

❧ “The Pasture” added to the Table of Contents.

❧ All spelling and hyphenation kept as in the original, except for the following:

p. 328: “Oh, if you take if” changed to “Oh, if you take it”