Part 1

Chapter 13,947 wordsPublic domain

Produced by Al Haines, produced from scans provided by Steven Bartlett

IT TAKES PRACTICE NOT TO DIE

Elizabeth Bartlett

_It Takes Practice Not to Die_ was originally published in 1964 by Van Riper and Thompson in Santa Barbara, California. The book is now out-of-print and the publisher no longer exists. The author's literary executor, Steven James Bartlett, has decided to make the book available as an open access publication, freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to its content, provided that both the author and the original URL from which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work will not be used without the copyright holder's written permission in derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work without such permission). The full legal statement of this license may be found at:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

IT TAKES PRACTICE NOT TO DIE

ELIZABETH BARTLETT

VAN RIPER & THOMPSON, INC. SANTA BARBARA 1964

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Some of these poems appeared in the following anthologies: _The American Scene, The Golden Year, New Poems By American Poets II, New Voices 2_.

Thanks are also due to the _Beloit Poetry Journal, Chelsea Review, Commentary, The Critic, Dalhousie Review, ETC., Fiddlehead, Harper's, Harper's Bazaar, Literary Review, New Mexico Quarterly, New York Times, Odyssey, Poetry Dial, Queen's Quarterly, Quixote, San Francisco Review, Saturday Review, Tamarack Review, Yale Literary Magazine_.

Library of Congress Catalogue Number: 64-22731

First Edition

Printed in the United States of America

TO PAUL AND STEVEN

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

_Poems of Yes and No Behold This Dreamer Poetry Concerto_

CONTENTS

HOMO ELASTICUS

BALANCE

SIMPLE WITH COMPASS

ACHILLES HAD HIS HEEL

ASCETIC

I WOULD REMEMBER

AFTER THE STORM

THE CAGE

MENTAL HOEING

HUNGER

VOLUNTARY EXILE

THE FOURTH CATEGORY

THE CHANGING WIND

JINXED

ALONG THAT ROAD

THE REFUGEES

SHIP OF EARTH

AMONG THE PASSENGERS

(1 x 1)^n

AIR BRIDGE

AS YOU MAKE IT

CITY GAME: MARBLES

FREE-FALL

_E_xistence=_m_ultiple _c_onditions^2

THE UNDERSTANDING

WOOLEN DIGNITY

THE COAT

ON A ROCK OF ATLANTIS

EVEN IF WE DID

SELF-EVIDENT

THE SACRAMENT

PROLOGUE TO OLD AGE

ALL THIS, BEFORE

THE EARTH AGE

NEGATIVE ABSOLUTE

TIME WILL TELL

THE TEST

DIARY

ITEM: BODY FOUND

LANDSCAPE: WITH BREAD

O TO BE AN OSTRICH

THE BARREN FIG TREE

THE SOWER

INTERVIEW

THIS SIDE THE FOG

CIVILIZED SPRING

REPLY TO CRITICS

INSOMNIA IN THE CITY

WHEN YESTERDAY COMES

FULL CIRCLE

CONVERT

NOT JUST ONCE

NOTES FOR THE FUTURE

THE SLEEPWALKERS

MEXICAN PROFILE

DRY SANCTUARY

RETURN TRIP

THE CAVE

DARK ANGEL

FUGITIVE

THE TRAP

THE RUIN OF THAT HOUSE

THEIR FIRST HUNT

WOLF!

FINAL PERFORMANCE

HOUSE OF THE POET

THE GHOST OF ANNE FRANK

THE MISTAKE

REFLECTED IN BRASS

MODERN PRIMITIVE

PERSONAL HISTORY

I THINK I AM

INSTINCT AND REASON

THE SUMMING UP

THERE WILL BE TIME FOR MOSS

PERSPECTIVE

THE QUESTION IS PROOF

UNDER A THATCHED ROOF

CONDITIONAL REFLEX

THE DARK CENTAUR

WORLD OF TOMORROW

HOMO ELASTICUS

I tell you it is inside, a substance no one has yet identified or described as something natural to flesh, a glutinous secretion in the cells that can harden and melt.

Milky, it clings to the gums with a stickiness that fastens on the tongue to be dumb, or else stretches and winds a band around the heart so tight, it has to snap or loosen, springing back. Fluid, it waxes the bones

to ease their impact and recoil as they bounce over stones, except when the latex thickens, becomes too crude, more fat than resin, and freezes in the sun.

BALANCE

My head has no affinity with my feet. When I stand on one heel and lean on my axis spine, I reel to the floor; I can not turn on a fixed orbit. My shadow divides me by day and escapes me at night, a trait apparently made to confuse me, since I follow a course without regularity or recurrence, my cosmos inclined to alternation at moments evident to no one, not even myself.

Who is reasonable? A tightrope walker, perhaps, builders of bridges, sailors, mountain climbers--those whose direction is indicated by their opposition and held in a careful equilibrium like a golden pendulum, its means, each according to some counter force. Lacking such moderation, I look for wisdom in safety, and safety in wisdom--and dangle between.

A two-legged creature, whose symmetry goes paired from ear to foot, I find duality a natural condition; a Chang and Eng existence united in fact but separate in fulfillment. Parted, we die, and together compromise our right and left, depending which has the stronger influence. Made as I am, the wonder is not that I sway or spin, but manage to stay inside my skin.

SIMPLE WITH COMPASS

Consider the circle. It is a miracle of completion, end and beginning one.

Reduced to a point or expanded to a sphere, its ratio is unchanged by ego.

Compare it to the line, that matter of fact sign of direction started but never done.

Whichever way it moves, how far or long, it proves distance can go only so high or low.

I think we should rejoice there is no other choice than straight or round-- makes life easy, I've found.

ACHILLES HAD HIS HEEL

And still the arrows fly in all directions. No one is safe. The wind has no armor.

Strength, beauty, valor, whatever we find and name perfection is target to the eye.

Who is immune? Either we aim--and miss, or ourselves become the victims hit.

Even a hermit, locked inside his room, remembers St. Francis sang often out of tune.

We learn to die from a thousand wounds, each scarred inside till the final failure.

Meanwhile we endure and suffer with some pride that we can be so human-- enough, if we must, to cry.

The point is inevitable. Whether heel or head, who is invulnerable is already dead.

ASCETIC

Be whatever you like, close your eyes: on the desert a burnished stone, in the murky sea a jewel.

Go wherever you wish, bind your feet: through the night where a wing has flown, towards dawn where a leaf drops cool.

Live however you would, stay your blood: with the sky over earth as friend, at peace with the mind and breath.

Speak whenever you will, seal your lips: of this life proclaim time an end, in the next cry Nazareth.

I WOULD REMEMBER

I have walked from river's end to end, a slow companion to the light seagulls that circle overhead

and I have stood still above the bend that separates the foot from distant hulls, to fill my eyes with flying sails' wings spread.

I have watched them many times repair the far shore's curve around the sun and hold it there ensnared

until provoked they drop midair, instinct with seaward gravitation and angry claws declared--

their mutiny a gold crazed rout that tears the cargo from its hold and scatters it about.

I am not old and yet, when night brings me to town, I forget their wings and drown.

AFTER THE STORM

That morning, after the storm, everyone gathered about the tree and marveled at its fall: the body leaning gently on one arm, its mighty head now cushioned by deep branches, seemingly asleep.

"You wouldn't think a storm," one said, then broke off, staring at the fruit that never would be eaten red and sweetened by the sun, or set in jars and slowly left to cool, the ripening years ahead gone, too.

"It was the wind." "The rain." Each spoke a part of truth out of his own mouth with words that could not make it whole because the naked roots showed how much there was to doubt, the secret in the darkness crying loud.

Even a tree, she thought, biting her tongue and bringing her childish thoughts down, remembering the climbs, the stout swing hung on rafters soaring to the sun, a tree built like a tower so you could visit God and talk for hours.

The men sawed logs and timber all that day until there was nothing left, not even a shadow where you could wait and hide to see if it would wake, then they buried the hole and forgot what else they might have covered with the sod.

Dead trees tell no tales, she thought, nor empty nests, nor little girls who see how helpless all things are when caught by storm, no matter how big or strong or secure, and she walked quietly into the house to help with the next meal.

THE CAGE

Thoughts like an empty cage receive the morning through the windowpane and quietly swing.

No flutter brings my eye to a meaninged core for the waking light, the door transparent.

Held blind by the mirror and deaf by the bell, I must search my mind by taste, smell, and touch.

Bars silhouette a wall to enclose the noon where images halt and the night soon comes.

O bird that set me free to try my own wings, how this false spring tree clings that I perch on!

MENTAL HOEING

Breaking the soil of her mind was an old habit as she plied the hoe back and forth over the year to see its design, the cut and stripped images of reason stacked in rows of answered arguments. She swore at the stones, the matted grass and stubborn clay that held her back as though to a winter still unprepared for spring. Was she never to be spared from questions rooted in the past? She attacked the clods with wrath until there were holes in the ground, then her thoughts crumpled down, taking her strength with them. Aching from remembered resentment, she turned to the struggle within herself, but moved lightly now and penitent, trying to ease the rebellious soil and soften it, to make it pliable to the new seeds, the new demands of the changing season, knowing plants thrive better in kindness than bitterness. And suddenly the year stood plain, at rest.

HUNGER

Hunger, I have known your pangs, the gnawing urge, the ceaseless demand from beginning to end; inevitable as air and light, as rain and seed and soil, as tides and seasons; the perpetual cause of all that moves and is moved; the force that flows through stars and men.

We are born hungry. Begins the appetite with warmth and tit, with wombskin quivering yet from cry replying cry, then another sense commands another hunger fed to feed the next and the next, each heir and progenitor of this past, that future, and the cycle reset.

Hungry pilgrims, we can not rest. Distance is but another nearness, as soon met, then shorelines bend and we must home again to other journeys, our Eden faith a continual repetition of arks and floods from which none returns invulnerable, the apple bitten.

Creed, color, race, we have all sworn allegiance, fought bitter wars, tasted glory and gall for insatiable gods deified by our own hungers; with rites and sacrifice made bread and wine from flesh and blood that we might have eternal food here and hereafter, immortal.

We are fed by desire and consumed like the fire on our tongues, in our hearts; a flame forever unappeased by our words, symbols, deeds or monuments; the phoenix, man himself, recreated from his own ashes out of hungering dreams and parched.

We live with hunger always, that fearfilling, painpinching cave wherein we hide like hunted stags, lips dry, but tasting heroically of miracles... Who has not seen visionary lions fall to dust and, scornful of the world's ambition, left the hunters truth in rags?

Fish, birds, beasts, all are prey to the same illusion, all wake to the hunger that stalks and prowls. Sands thirst for unquenchable seas, plains thrust toward implacable peaks, time moves unfulfilled and blind from plans unrealized to those surprised. We die hungry even while hyenas howl.

VOLUNTARY, EXILE

The day to day commitment to failure that judgment daily argues against me condemns me to despair. I am guilty of more than silence. At times words fail your wisest men and then, intentionally. But my silence, like all my secrecies, has no defense, none conventionally, my personal idiosyncrasies no social crimes. When pride is pain and shame an agony too keen for reason, I had no other weapon. Who is to blame? There was no intent to deceive or lie. My absence is sufficient evidence, voluntary exile, not providence.

THE FOURTH CATEGORY

Of vegetable, yes, but amorphous by analogy to stem leaf root

not a flower nor a seed and no use as fruit.

Of animal, too, but understood independently of cry growl purr

not a fish nor a fowl and no good as fur.

Of mineral, besides, but disinclined organically to heat break pour

not iso- nor meta-morphic and no worth as ore.

THE CHANGING WIND

Now there are great numbers of people coming and going with the wind, and the wind seems changed; its voice is never still and its eyes are strange.

Once, we remember, it was possible for the wind to move on two feet and formulate a philosophy of life and death by reason of environment.

Then the wind that blew around us was a familiar one; we knew which side of the house was open and what grew from our hand each season of the year.

When it was far, we could gaze beyond mountains, across seas, over days and miles of distances to twisted deserts and vast plains, bridging there with here.

Wind voyageurs, we knew what a man puts into his mouth he eats, where he lays his head is shelter, that the clothing he wears, covers him.

Then we had no illusions about customs or differences, since the wind was the same wind, whether it came from the north, the south, the east, or the west.

Time was a place, we remember, where the wind was able to look a man in the face and remain long enough to hear what he had to say.

Now there are great numbers of people coming and going with the wind, and the wind seems changed; its voice is never still and its eyes are strange.

JINXED

I went to the orchard where the trees were ripe and found a hard lemon.

I went to the meadow when the grain was bright and heard a crow sermon.

I went to the valley which was hidden from wind and saw a bleached galleon.

I went to the mountain whose peak showed no print and met a lame stallion.

I went to the desert, the jungle, the shore, and always some cursed omen.

I went to the city at last for the source, and there in the streets were men.

ALONG THAT ROAD

A stranger came one day along that road and looked out on the field, the barn, the house set by itself against the woods, the air as empty in its fence of silence, as the hour of light.

Alone, clothes torn, his hands streaked by the cuts of glass through which he came like hurtling stone to sudden halt, he searched the bluff of easy miles for signs of God on wheels, then limped some more and paused, the bills in his pocket less a commodity of exchange for another man's good will, than a threat of violence that was worse for being secret.

_Car wreck found._ _Driver missing_. He saw the headline words small on a page, his name announced in an obituary column.

Twice he glanced back over his shoulder to see whose shadow was following behind, while at a darkened window, its owner stood with gun upraised, remembering Job.

A stranger came one day along that road.

THE REFUGEES

After the burning nights and the barren speech, after the dry wind through stony streets, we found our little green where lilies were, and knee-deep oxen stood watching us triumphant under trees. For this was peace as nature meant nature's peace to be, with fruitful soil made ready by its need, with instincts tamed in gentler ways than fear, with freedom measured freely as the sky measures breath. We lay there side by side breathing kisses, feeling the wet and cool of bodies grassed in loving, each a groove within a groove, seeking counterpart, with close-open-close, with light-in-dark and waves lapping. We heard the overflow of lake down buttressed dam and sluiced walls making music in ditches, singing birth to seed in spike, to trunk in root, one surge alike in all. Then, happily, we chose which way, and barefoot climbed the gold to tip the rim of that day's widened cup, before the darkness could descend to cheat our purpose. Together, all of us swam, caught in a shower of light that fell on hands and hoofs, on flesh and hide--the rainbow now a shore towards which we moved with one accord. And the sun ceased fire and lowered its arms, promising new terms for our tomorrow.

SHIP OF EARTH

This earthship, which we now sail on seas of time and space, aware of other tides and stars and winds than move about us here, is smaller than we dreamed. Once, its high mountain masts pierced infinity, as we rode, bow into future, and past at our stern, a vessel without peer in the universe, the first, the last!

The sails gave way to engines, the spars to wings, the continental coasts to cosmic shores, and still we see no end to journeying. Although our rocket shrinks, we keep our course. We watch, we sleep, our dream a toylike thing that wakes and wonders---whose will, which force?

AMONG THE PASSENGERS

Through the window of the bus, he combs a field, close-shaves the bristling oats, straps in a fence line, pockets adjoining timber, then rides into the morning, pleased. Now retired and let out to pasture, he does not mind the clouds, the rain that fogs the highway-- his eyes are patched with blue. Hands leathered and roped, knees astraddle, boots shined, he is seated beside as neat a filly as any in the herd he used to lope in season. With stallion gallantry, with sweets, he holds the miles to coffee stops and anecdotes ... till memory spurs his old man's hopes ... and the night stampedes.

Separated by long years and the visibility poor, her mood reflects the weather, darkening within.

Dishes, diapers, sighs, and pills ... roof by roof, she hears the monotone of wheels recite the gloomy catechism, and prays for a different kind of virgin miracle. Nervously, she rubs her good luck stone, then wraps her thoughts in cellophane as a heroine of film and fashion, glad to forget home, school, and all the lost-girl tales they tell of Hollywood,

She listens, nods, and smokes. She does not mind his boasts, only too aware how the ashes cling to his coat.

(1 x 1)^n

I can accept the being born and the dying, in doubt, alone.

I do not reject or, seeing, scorn anyone's crying about the unknown.

And yet. And yet. How the being alone in the living makes me mourn.

I can not forget the breathing in stone, unforgiving and forsworn.

AIR BRIDGE

Together we talk of parting and are drawn out from the shore across a running sea that was not there before.

Cautiously we lay our bridge in air, island to mainland, and wonder will it reach beyond the tide or stand.

Already our eyes are widened by the miles that split us here as we turn at the bend and pause. Dark reefs appear.

Together we mark the distance between words and waves, the wind swinging our cables. Chance moves forward--we, behind.

AS YOU MAKE IT

Your bed they said so shall you lie on it

But I found rocks were kinder than clocks and did not cry for it

They meant content without a sigh in it

But I liked stars much better than bars and kept the sky on it

No crown or down held me in tie to it

But I dreamed jewels in the deepest pools where none could spy on it

They thought I ought so I could die in it

But I learned ends do not make amends and did not try for it

Some day I may know the how and why of it

CITY GAME: MARBLES

Like gods competing for the universe, they shoot the planets between their fingers with trigger thumbs that scale the speed of light to intervals of space-colliding time.

Ping! and fiery constellations leap apart, bright spheres of whirling suns and moons that mark the checkered squares of sidewalks, heaven's zone, and hell, the sewer curbs where lost stars roam.

FREE-FALL

Having lost my terror of the air and learned, by dropping hard, a pity for the grass, I grow used to the ways of cats. It takes practice not to die in the act of living, whether climbing up a tree, walking a fence, or coming to a brink, springing free. The ninth time can't be worse than the first. Meanwhile, there are birds, sunshine, roofs, and kind old ladies. The grass itself is innocent with sleep.

_E_xistence=_m_ultiple _c_onditions^2

_You who would be mathematicians in your living, remember Einstein_ The problem is not always immediately apparent: it does not become one until the response to a given condition fails to satisfy the need that a continuance implies.

Whether conscious in amoeba as well as hippopotamus or unaware as in water, earth and air there is evidence that each continues to be present.

The process by which we seem to choose or guess solutions based on inference and conclusion regarding what is and what is not suggests both as hypotheses.

For the nature of questions is to question nature since its design is reciprocal by reflection of the mind as the rainbow to its image or crystals to snow.

Perplexed by reason reality itself dissolves in the sun while the question remains above and beyond all consideration of doubt and fog a bubble suspended in the hands of God.

THE UNDERSTANDING

What is it you want? he asked.

Looking at him. As though she thought he had something to say and could find the words to say it. The words no one else had yet found or said.

What is it? he repeated.

Her eyes an open darkness. Leading to a corridor of black mirrors. As though at the end was a locked door and behind it the final secret.

What?

Within that hallway of silence, her breathing, the beating of her heart. As though echoing his questions. Waiting, hoping for the answers.

If you would tell me, he said.

Pinpoints of light straining towards the threshold through a soft warm mist. As though they would help him to see, to slip across barriers of being.

If I knew--

Blind beams behind opaque windows. As though in an act of desperation, a man might hurl a stone. The shuddering tinkle of shattered glass.

Here, he said, you take the stone.

Placing it in her hands so that she could feel it, roll it between her palms, sense it through her fingers. An ineffable, tangible continuum.

I give it to you, it's yours.

The whole, beautiful truth, God helping. Love solidly immured within its mineral heart. Ticking away the centuries, immune to change.

WOOLEN DIGNITY