Paterson (Revised Edition) (22 page)

Is this poetry?

A.
I would reject it as a poem. It may be, to him, a poem. But I would reject it. I can’t understand it. He’s a serious man. So I struggle very hard with it — and I get no meaning at all.

Q.
You get no meaning? But here’s part of a poem you yourself have written: “2 partridges/2 mallard ducks/a Dungeness crab/24 hours out/of the Pacific/and 2 live-frozen/trout/from Denmark   .   .   .” Now, that sounds just like a fashionable grocery list!

A.
It is a fashionable grocery list.

Q.
Well — is it poetry?

A.
We poets have to talk in a language which is not English. It is the American idiom. Rhythmically it’s organized as a sample of the American idiom. It has as much originality as jazz. If you say “2 partridges, 2 mallard ducks, a Dungeness crab” — if you treat that rhythmically, ignoring the practical sense it forms a jagged pattern. It is, to my mind, poetry.

Q.
But if you don’t “ignore the practical sense”   .   .   .   you agree that it is a fashionable grocery list.

A.
Yes. Anything is good material for poetry. Anything. I’ve said it time and time again.

Q.
Aren’t we supposed to understand it?

A.
There is a difference of poetry and the sense. Sometimes modern poets ignore sense completely. That’s what makes some of the difficulty   .   .   .   The audience is confused by the shape of the words.

Q.
But shouldn’t a word mean something when you see it?

A.
In prose, an English word means what it says. In poetry, you’re listening to two things   .   .   .   you’re listening to the sense, the common sense of what it says. But it says more. That is the difficulty.

          .          .          .          .          )

Peter Brueghel, the elder, painted

a Nativity, painted a Baby

new born!

among the words.

Armed men,

savagely armed men

armed with pikes,

halberds and swords

whispering men with averted faces

got to the heart

of the matter

as they talked to the pot bellied

greybeard (center)

the butt of their comments,

looking askance, showing their

amazement at the scene,

features like the more stupid

German soldiers of the late

war

— but the Baby (as from an

illustrated catalogue

in colors) lies naked on his Mother’s

knees

— it is a scene, authentic

enough, to be witnessed frequently

among the poor (I salute

the man Brueghel who painted

what he saw —

many times no doubt

among his own kids but not of course

in this setting

The crowned and mitred heads

of the 3 men, one of them black,

who had come, obviously from afar

(highwaymen?)

by the rich robes

they had on — offered

to propitiate their gods

Their hands were loaded with gifts

— they had eyes for visions

in those days — and saw,

saw with their proper eyes,

these things

to the envy of the vulgar soldiery

He painted

the bustle of the scene,

the unkempt straggling

hair of the old man in the

middle, his sagging lips

—— incredulous

that there was so much fuss

about such a simple thing as a baby

born to an old man

out of a girl and a pretty girl

at that

But the gifts! (works of art,

where could they have picked

them up or more properly

have stolen them?)

— how else to honor

an old man, or a woman?

— the soldiers’ ragged clothes,

mouths open,

their knees and feet

broken from 30 years of

war, hard campaigns, their mouths

watering for the feast which

had been provided

Peter Brueghel the artist saw it

from the two sides: the

imagination must be served —

and he served

dispassionately

It is no mortal sin to be poor — anything but this featureless tribe that has the money now — staring into the atom, completely blind — without grace or pity, as if they were so many shellfish. The artist, Brueghel, saw them     .     :     the suits of his peasants were of better stuff, hand woven, than we can boast.

— we have come in our time to the age of shoddy, the men are shoddy, driven by their bosses, inside and outside the job to be done, at a profit. To whom? But not true of the Portuguese mason, his own boss “in the new country” who is building a wall for me, moved by oldworld knowledge of what is “virtuous”     .     “that stuff they sell you in the stores now-a-days, no good, break in your hands     .     that manufactured stuff, from the factory, break in your hands, no care what they turn out”

The Gospel according to St. Matthew, Chapter I, verse 18, — Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Miriam was espoused to Joseph before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privately.

20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord, appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Miriam thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

Luke     .     .     And Mary kept all these sayings, pondering them in her heart.

.     no woman is virtuous

who does not give herself to her lover

— forthwith

Dear Bill:

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .

I am told by a dear friend in Paris, G.D. who is married to Henri Matisse’s daughter, and who is the one vibrant head I have met in Europe, that France today is ruled by the gendarme and the concierge. In socialist Denmark I knew a highly intelligent author, a woman, who had come to America and there had a child by a wretched scribbler. Poor and forsaken she had returned to Copenhagen, where she earned her niggard indigence doing reviews for the Politiken, and giving occasional lectures on Middle English and early Danish. She lived in the slummy part of that beautiful city, trying to support a wonderful boy, sturdy, loving, and very masculine. It was my joy to bring him oranges, chocolate, and those precious morsels which his mother could not afford. She told me that the socialist police had called on her one night, asking why she had not paid her taxes to the government. Poverty was her reply. Do you recall the epitaph on Thomas Churchyard’s tombstone? ‘Poverty and Obscurity doth this tomb enclose.’ A week later they returned, threatening to remove her furniture and have it impounded by the government. When she again pleaded that if she gave what Kroners she had her little boy would starve, the police said: ‘We went to the Vin Handel last evening, and learned from the proprietor that you had bought a bottle of wine; if you can afford to drink wine you certainly can pay your taxes.’ She then said ‘I am so poor, and so driven to despair by it that I had to have a bottle of wine to relieve me of my melancholia.’

I am quite sure too that people only have the kind of government that their bellies crave. Furthermore, I cannot cure one soul in the earth. Plato took three journeys to Dionysius, the Tyrant of Syracuse, and once was almost killed and on another occasion was nearly sold into slavery because he imagined that he influenced a devil to model his tyranny upon The Republic. Seneca was the teacher of Nero, and Aristotle tutored Alexander of Macedon. What did they teach?

We are content here because it is cheap; my wife can eat chateaubriand for seven pesetas, about 15 or 16 cents. Going to the shops in the morning is a ritual; there is the greeting from the woman who runs the Panaderia, and the salutation (courtesy always eases the spirit and relieves the nervous system), from the man or his wife at the lecheria (where you get milk), and an expansive smile from the humble woman who sells you three pesetas worth of helio, ice….

Edward

Paterson has grown older

the dog of his thoughts

has shrunk

to no more than “a passionate letter”

to a woman, a woman he had neglected

to put to bed in the past     .

And went on

living and writing

answering

letters

and tending his flower

garden, cutting his grass and trying

to get the young

to foreshorten

their errors in the use of words which

he had found so difficult, the errors

he had made in the use of the

poetic line:

“     .     the unicorn against a millefleurs background,     .     ”

There’s nothing sentimental about the technique of writing. It can’t be learned, you’ll say, by a fool. But any young man with a mind bursting to get out, to get down on a page even a clean sentence — gets courage from an older man who stands ready to help him — to talk to.

A flight of birds, all together,

seeking their nests in the season

a flock before dawn, small birds

“That slepen al the night with open yë,”

moved by desire, passionately, they

have come a long way, commonly.

Now they separate and go by pairs

each to his appointed mating. The

colors of their plumage are undecipherable

in the sun’s glare against the sky

but the old man’s mind is stirred

by the white, the yellow, the black

as if he could see them there.

Their presence in the air again

calms him. Though he is approaching

death he is possessed by many poems.

Flowers have always been his friends,

even in paintings and tapestries

which have lain through the past

in museums jealously guarded, treated

against moths. They draw him imperiously

to witness them, make him think

of bus schedules and how to avoid

the irreverent — to refresh himself

at the sight direct from the 12th

century what the old women or the young

or men or boys wielding their needles

to put in her green thread correctly

beside the purple, myrtle beside

holly and the brown threads besides:

together as the cartoon has plotted it

for them. All together, working together —

all the birds together. The birds

and leaves are designed to be woven

in his mind eating and     .     .

all together for his purposes

— the aging body

with the deformed great-toe nail

makes itself known

coming

to search me out — with a

rare smile

among the thronging flowers of that field

where the Unicorn

is penned by a low

wooden fence

in April!

the same month

when at the foot of the post

he saw the man dig up

the red snake and kill it with a spade.

Godwin told me

its tail

would not stop wriggling till

after the sun

goes down —

he knew everything

or nothing

and died insane

when he was still a young man

The (self) direction has been changed

the serpent

its tail in its mouth

“the river has returned to its beginnings”

and backward

(and forward)

it tortures itself within me

until time has been washed finally under:

and “I knew all (or enough)

it became me     .     ”

— the times are not heroic

since then

but they are cleaner

and freer of disease

the mind rotted within them     .

we’ll say

the serpent

has its tail in its mouth

AGAIN!

the all-wise serpent

Now I come to the small flowers

that cluster about the feet

of my beloved

— the hunt of

the Unicorn and

the god of love

of virgin birth

The mind is the demon

drives us     .     well,

would you prefer it to

turn vegetable and

wear no beard?

— shall we speak of love

seen only in a mirror

—no replica?

reflecting only her impalpable spirit?

which is she whom I see

and not touch her flesh?

The Unicorn roams the forest of all true lovers’ minds. They hunt it down. Bow wow! sing hey the green holly!

— every married man carries in his head

the beloved and sacred image

of a virgin

whom he has whored     .

but the living fiction

a tapestry

silk and wool shot with silver threads

a milk white one horned beast

I, Paterson, the King-self     .

saw the lady

through the rough woods

outside the palace walls

among the stench of sweating horses

and gored hounds

yelping with pain

the heavy breathing pack

to see the dead beast

brought in at last

across the saddle bow

among the oak trees.

Paterson,

keep your pecker up

whatever the detail!

Anywhere is everywhere:

You can learn from poems

that an empty head tapped on

sounds hollow

in any language! The figures

are of heroic size.

The woods

are cold though it is summer

the lady’s gown is heavy

and reaches to the grass.

All about, small flowers fill the scene.

A second beast is brought in

wounded.

And a third, survivor of the chase,

lies down to rest a while,

his regal neck