New Collected Poems (21 page)

slowly we return to earth.

Above trees and rooftops

is the range of symbols:

banner, cross, and star;

air war, the mode of those

who live by symbols; the pure

abstraction of travel by air.

Here a spire holds up

an angel with trump and wings;

he's in
his
element.

Another lifts a hand

with forefinger pointing up

to admonish that all's not here.

All's not. But I aspire

downward. Flyers embrace

the air, and I'm a man

who needs something to hug.

All my dawns cross the horizon

and rise, from underfoot.

What I stand for

is what I stand on.

Flying at night, above the clouds, all earthmarks spurned,

lost in Heaven, where peaceful entry must be earned,

I have no pleasure here, nothing to desire.

And then I see one light below there like a star.

The gods are less

for their love of praise.

Above and below them all

is a spirit that needs

nothing but its own

wholeness,

its health and ours.

It has made all things

by dividing itself.

It will be whole again.

To its joy we come

together—the seer

and the seen, the eater

and the eaten, the lover

and the loved.

In our joining it knows

itself. It is with us then,

not as the gods

whose names crest

in unearthly fire,

but as a little bird

hidden in the leaves

who sings quietly

and waits

and sings.

True harvests no mere intent may reap.

Finally we must lie down to sleep

And leave the world, all we desire

To darkness, malevolence, and fire.

Who wakes and stands his shadow's mark

Has passed by mercy through the dark.

We save the good, lovely, and bright

By will in part, in part delight;

But they live through the night by grace

That no intention can efface.

O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken,

Who in necessity and in bounty wait,

Whose truth is light and dark, mute though spoken,

By Thy wide grace show me Thy narrow gate.

The longer we are together

the larger death grows around us.

How many we know by now

who are dead! We, who were young,

now count the cost of having been.

And yet as we know the dead

we grow familiar with the world.

We, who were young and loved each other

ignorantly, now come to know

each other in love, married

by what we have done, as much

as by what we intend. Our hair

turns white with our ripening

as though to fly away in some

coming wind, bearing the seed

of what we know. It was bitter to learn

that we come to death as we come

to love, bitter to face

the just and solving welcome

that death prepares. But that is bitter

only to the ignorant, who pray

it will not happen. Having come

the bitter way to better prayer, we have

the sweetness of ripening. How sweet

to know you by the signs of this world!

For parents, the only way

is hard. We who give life

give pain. There is no help.

Yet we who give pain

give love, by pain we learn

the extremity of love.

I read of Abraham's sacrifice

the Voice required of him,

so that he led to the altar

and the knife his only son.

The beloved life was spared

that time, but not the pain.

It was the pain that was required.

I read of Christ crucified,

the only begotten Son

sacrificed to flesh and time

and all our woe. He died

and rose, but who does not tremble

for his pain, his loneliness,

and the darkness of the sixth hour?

Unless we grieve like Mary

at His grave, giving Him up

as lost, no Easter morning comes.

And then I slept, and dreamed

the life of my only son

was required of me, and I

must bring him to the edge

of pain, not knowing why.

I woke, and yet that pain

was true. It brought his life

to the full in me. I bore him

suffering, with love like the sun,

too bright, unsparing, whole.

We who prayed and wept

for liberty from kings

and the yoke of liberty

accept the tyranny of things

we do not need.

In plentitude too free,

we have become adept

beneath the yoke of greed.

Those who will not learn

in plenty to keep their place

must learn it by their need

when they have had their way

and the fields spurn their seed.

We have failed Thy grace.

Lord, I flinch and pray,

send Thy necessity.

The morning comes. The old woman, a spot

of soot where she has touched her cheek, tears

on her face, builds a fire, sets water to boil,

puts the skillet on. The man in his middle years,

bent by the work he has done toward the work

he will do, weeps as he eats, bread in his mouth,

tears on his face. They shape the day for its passing

as if absent from it—for what needs care, caring,

feeding what must be fed. To keep them, there are only

the household's remembered ways, etched thin

and brittle by their tears. It is a sharp light

that lights the day now. It seems to shine,

beyond eyesight, also in another day

where the dead have risen and are walking

away, their backs forever turned. What

look is in their eyes? What do they say

as they walk into the fall and flow of light?

It seems that they must know where they are going.

And the living must go with them, not knowing,

a little way. And the dead go on, not turning,

knowing, but not saying. And the living

turn back to their day, their grieving and staying.

for Wallace Fowlie

The wild cherries ripen, black and fat,

Paradisal fruits that taste of no man's sweat.

Reach up, pull down the laden branch, and eat;

When you have learned their bitterness, they taste sweet.

for Kenneth Rexroth

In my line of paperwork

I have words to burn: leaves

of fallen information, wasted

words of my own. I know a light

that hastens on the dark

some work deserves—which God forgive

as we must hope. I start the blaze

and observe the fire's superlative

hunger for literature. It touches pages

like a connoisseur, turns them.

None can endure. After the passing

of that light, there is sunlight

on the ash, in the distance singing

of crickets and of birds. I turn,

unburdened, to life beyond words.

Do not think me gentle

because I speak in praise

of gentleness, or elegant

because I honor the grace

that keeps this world. I am

a man crude as any,

gross of speech, intolerant,

stubborn, angry, full

of fists and furies. That I

may have spoken well

at times, is not natural.

A wonder is what it is.

This is a story handed down.

It is about the old days when Bill

and Florence and a lot of their kin

lived in the little tin-roofed house

beside the woods, below the hill.

Mornings, they went up the hill

to work, Florence to the house,

the men and boys to the field.

Evenings, they all came home again.

There would be talk then and laughter

and taking of ease around the porch

while the summer night closed.

But one night, McKinley, Bill's younger brother,

stayed away late, and it was dark

when he started down the hill.

Not a star shone, not a window.

What he was going down into was

the dark, only his footsteps sounding

to prove he trod the ground. And Bill

who had got up to cool himself,

thinking and smoking, leaning on

the jamb of the open front door,

heard McKinley coming down,

and heard his steps beat faster

as he came, for McKinley felt the pasture's

darkness joined to all the rest

of darkness everywhere. It touched

the depths of woods and sky and grave.

In that huge dark, things that usually

stayed put might get around, as fish

in pond or slue get loose in flood.

Oh, things could be coming close

that never had come close before.

He missed the house and went on down

and crossed the draw and pounded on

where the pasture widened on the other side,

lost then for sure. Propped in the door,

Bill heard him circling, a dark star

in the dark, breathing hard, his feet

blind on the little reality

that was left. Amused, Bill smoked

his smoke, and listened. He knew where

McKinley was, though McKinley didn't.

Bill smiled in the darkness to himself,

and let McKinley run until his steps

approached something really to fear:

the quarry pool. Bill quit his pipe

then, opened the screen, and stepped out,