West Wind (2 page)

then I come up with a few words, like a gift.
Even as now.

Even as the darkness has remained the pure, deep darkness.
Even as the stars have twirled a little, while I stood here,

looking up,
one hot sentence after another.

A band of wild turkeys is coming down the hill. They are coming slowly—as they walk along they look under the leaves for things to eat, and besides it must be a pleasure to step alternately through the pale sunlight, then patches of slightly golden shade. They are all hens and they lift their thick toes delicately. With such toes they could march up one side of the state and down the other, or skate on water, or dance the tango. But not this morning. As they get closer the sound of their feet in the leaves is like the patter of rain, then rapid rain. My dogs perk their ears, and bound from the path. Instead of opening their dark wings the hens swirl and rush away under the trees, like little ostriches.

The meadowlark, with his yellow breast and a sort of limping flight, sings into the morning which, in this case, is perfectly blue, lucid, measureless, and without the least bump of wind. The meadowlark is a spirit, and an epiphany, if I so desire it. I need only to hear him to make something fine, even advisory, of the occasion.

And have you made inquiry yet as to what the poetry of this world is about? For what purpose do we seek it, and ponder it, and give it such value?

And also this is true—that if I consider the golden whistler and the song that pours from his narrow throat in the context of evolution, of reptiles, of Cambrian waters, of the body's wish to change, of the body's incredible crafts and efforts, of life's multitudes, of the winners and the losers, I lose nothing of the original occasion, and its infinite sweetness. For this is my skill—I am capable of pondering the most detailed knowledge, and the most fastened-up, impenetrable mystery, at the same time.

There is so much communication and understanding beneath and apart from the substantiations of language spoken out or written down that language is almost no more than a compression, or elaboration—an exactitude, declared emphasis, emotion-in-syntax—not at all essential to the message. And therefore, as an elegance, as something almost superfluous, it is likely (because it is
free
to be so used) to be carefully shaped, to take risks, to begin and even prolong adventures that may turn out poorly after all—and all in the cause of the crisp flight and the buzzing bliss of the words, as well as their directive—to make, of the body-bright commitment to life, and its passions, including (of course!) the passion of meditation, an exact celebration, or inquiry, employing grammar, mirth, and wit in a precise and intelligent way. Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.

When I'm dying,
and near paradise,
maybe
the little boat will come

like a cloud—
like a wing—
like a white light burning.
This morning,

in the actual fog
beside the rocking sea,
there was nothing—
not a sail,

not a soul.
There was only this—
an idea.
Beauty

can die all right—
but don't you worry,
from utter darkness—
since opposites are, finally, the same—

comes light's snowy field.
And, as for eternity, what's that
but the collation of all the hours we have known
of sweetness

and urgency?
The boat bounced and sparkled,
then it trembled,
then it shook,

then it lay down on the waves.
I believe in death.
I believe it is the last wonderful work.
So they spilled from the boat,

they plunged toward darkness, they drowned.
You know the story.
How the sky flares and grows brighter, all the time!
How time extends!

The trees have become
suddenly very happy
it is the rain
it is the quick white summer rain

the trees are in motion under it
they are swinging back and forth they are tossing
the heavy blossoms of their heads
they are twisting their shoulders
even their feet chained to the ground feel good
thin and gleaming

nobody can prove it but any fool can feel it
they are full of electricity now and the shine isn't just pennies
it pours out from the deepest den
oh pretty trees
patient deep-planted

may you have many such days
flinging your bodies in silver circles shaking your heads
over the swamps and the pastures
rimming the fields and the long roads hurrying by.

This morning
an osprey
with its narrow
black-and-white face

and its cupidinous eyes
leaned down
from a leafy tree
to look into the lake—it looked

a long time, then its powerful
shoulders punched out a little
and it fell,
it rippled down

into the water—
then it rose, carrying,
in the clips of its feet,
a slim and limber

silver fish, a scrim
of red rubies
on its flashing sides.
All of this

was wonderful
to look at,
so I simply stood there,
in the blue morning,

looking.
Then I walked away.
Beauty is my work,
but not my only work—

later,
when the fish was gone forever
and the bird was miles away,
I came back

and stood on the shore, thinking—
and if you think
thinking is a mild exercise,
beware!

I mean, I was swimming for my life—
and I was thundering this way and that way
in my shirt of feathers—
and I could not resolve anything long enough

to become one thing
except this: the imaginer.
It was inescapable
as over and over it flung me,

without pause or mercy it flung me
to both sides of the beautiful water—
to both sides
of the knife.

That sweet flute John Clare;
that broken branch Eddy Whitman;
Christopher Smart, in the press of blazing electricity;
my uncle the suicide;
Woolf on her way to the river;
Wolf, of the sorrowful songs;
Swift, impenetrable murk of Dublin;
Schumann, climbing the bridge, leaping into the Rhine;
Ruskin, Cowper;
Poe, rambling in the gloom-bins of Baltimore and Richmond—

light of the world, hold me.

Six black ibis
step through the black and mossy panels
of summer water.

Six times
I sigh with delight.

***

Keep looking.

***

The way a muskrat
in the snick of its teeth can carry
long branches of leaves.

***

Small hawks
cleaning their beaks
in the sun.

***

If you think daylight is just daylight
then it is just daylight.

***

Believe me these are not just words talking.
This is my life, thinking of the darkness to follow.

***

Keep looking.

***

The fox: his barking, in god's darkness, as of a little dog.
The flounce of his teeth.

***

Every morning
all those pink and green doors
into the sea.

for forty years
the sheets of white paper have
passed under my hands and I have tried
to improve their peaceful

emptiness putting down
little curls little shafts
of letters words
little flames leaping

not one page
was less to me than fascinating
discursive full of cadence
its pale nerves hiding

in the curves of the Qs
behind the soldierly Hs
in the webbed feet of the Ws
forty years

and again this morning as always
I am stopped as the world comes back
wet and beautiful I am thinking
that language

is not even a river
is not a tree is not a green field
is not even a black ant traveling
briskly modestly

from day to day from one
golden page to another.

lay
under the oak trees
in the early morning,
in a half knot,

in a curl,
and, like anyone
catching the runner at rest,
I stared

at that thick black length
whose neck, all summer,
was a river,
whose body was the same river—

whose whole life was a flowing—
whose tail could lash—
who, footless, could spin
like a black tendril and hang

upside down in the branches
gazing at everything
out of seed-shaped red eyes
as it swung to and fro,

the tail making its quick sizzle,
the head lifted
like a black spout.
Was it alive?

Of course it was alive.
This was the quick wrist of early summer,
when everything was alive.
Then I knelt down, I saw

that the snake was gone—
that the face, like a black bud,
had pushed out of the broken petals
of the old year, and it had emerged

on the hundred hoops of its belly,
the tongue sputtering its thread of smoke,
the work of the pearl-colored lung
never pausing, as it pushed

from the chin,
from the crown of the head,
leaving only an empty skin
for the mice to nibble and the breeze to blow

as over the oak leaves and across the creek
and up the far hill it had gone,
damp and shining in the starlight
like a rollicking finger of snow.

Little by little
the ocean

empties its pockets—
foam and fluff;

and the long, tangled ornateness
of seaweed;

and the whelks,
ribbed or with ivory knobs,

but so knocked about
in the sea's blue hands

that their story is at length only
about the wholeness of destruction—

they come one by one
to the shore

to the shallows
to the mussel-dappled rocks

to the rise to dryness
to the edge of the town

to offer, to the measure that we will accept it,
this wisdom:

though the hour be whole
though the minute be deep and rich

though the heart be a singer of hot red songs
and the mind be as lightning,

what all the music will come to is nothing,
only the sheets of fog and the fog's blue bell—

you do not believe it now, you are not supposed to.
You do not believe it yet—but you will—

morning by singular morning,
and shell by broken shell.

Clouds rolled
from the west—
then they thickened,
then thunder

bucked and boiled
toward the blown woods—
then lightning
slammed down

and opened the tree—
the way a tooth
would open a flower.
I fell down

in the steaming grass,
in the moss,
in the slow things
I was used to

while the branches snapped,
while they shrieked,
while the tree
spat out its solid heart

all over the ground.
Often enough,
even in easy summer,
I think of death—

how it is known to come
by dark, godforsaken inches.
And then I remember
the wheels of the wind,

the heels of the clouds—
the kick of the gold.
What do I hope for
from brother death?

May there be no quibbling.
Like the god that he is
may he slide to the ground
on his golden dial;

and there I will be,
for one last moment,
broken but burning,
like a golden tree.

All summer
I wandered the fields
that were thickening
every morning,

every rainfall,
with weeds and blossoms,
with the long loops
of the shimmering, and the extravagant—

pale as flames they rose
and fell back,
replete and beautiful—
that was all there was—

and I too
once or twice, at least,
felt myself rising,
my boots

touching suddenly the tops of the weeds,
the blue and silky air—
listen,
passion did it,

called me forth,
addled me,
stripped me clean
then covered me with the cloth of happiness—

I think
there is no other prize,
only rapture the gleaming,
rapture the illogical the weightless—

whether it be for the perfect shapeliness
of something you love—
like an old German song—
or of someone—

or the dark floss of the earth itself,
heavy and electric.
At the edge of sweet sanity open
such wild, blind wings.

You don't ever know where
a sentence will take you, depending
on its roll and fold. I was walking
over the dunes when I saw
the red fox asleep under the green
branches of the pine. It flared up
in the sweet order of its being,
the tail that was over the muzzle
lifting in airy amazement
and the fire of the eyes followed
and the pricked ears and the thin
barrel body and the four
athletic legs in their black stockings and it
came to me how the polish of the world changes
everything, I was hot I was cold I was almost
dead of delight. Of course the mind keeps
cool in its hidden palace—yes, the mind takes
a long time, is otherwise occupied than by
happiness, and deep breathing. Still,
at last, it comes too, running
like a wild thing, to be taken
with its twin sister, breath. So I stood
on the pale, peach-colored sand, watching the fox
as it opened like a flower, and I began
softly, to pick among the vast assortment of words
that it should run again and again across the page
that you again and again should shiver with praise.

I was walking the field,
in the fatness of spring
the field was flooded with water, water stained black,
black from the tissues of leaves, oak mostly,
but also
beech, also
blueberry, bay.

Then the big hawk rose. In her eyes
I could see how thoroughly she
hated me. And there was her nest, like a round raft

with three white eggs in it, just

above the black water.

***

She floats away
climbs the invisible air
on her masculine wings