The Prescriptive Stalls As

The prescriptive stalls as

to when to take effect:

the admonishment loses the

color of certainty: the

3780recommendation lies down like

a mule and rolls in the sand:

the traders arrive with their

incredible auctioneer and

commence to squabble

3785and at the end of the day

nothing has been sold or

bought: in having found no

imbalance into a way out

as yet, an imbalance that

3790throws the leaves and

hangings of imbalance into

balance, I stand for

whatever will not come round

or be whole

3795or made out or reduced:

here breakdown allows

the small solution to

operate on the local problem:

this morning I got up early

3800and took the wetsack off my

foot, toe healing:

I went down and

turned up the heat, so

everybody could get up warm,

3805then I made coffee, cooked

an egg, had toast:

it was glorious enough:

but anyhow the man said it

will truly go to fifty today:

3810it’s already 30: when all

the hills’ holdings and the

trees’ and ridges’ loosen and

commence to trickle or

slide, gouge out and roar,

3815we may have a thaw

disturbance, that aspect

to happiness and warmth:

I hope it will take on

slow-moving

3820•

or after shoals of selloffs,

options, shorts, long-terms,

after heavy-risk purchases

and quick turnovers, the

3825unspeakable auctioneer having

fed in his energy and taken

his toll, there at the day’s

end is my portion: crust:

I just got back from the

3830University: so many

matters of great interest and

no moment:

but in the moment the general

world assigns,

3835the special person, the

one taking the brunt,

finds the ultimate explosion:

a former student, now

representing a book publisher,

3840stops by: he is engaged:

soandso calls that soandso

will not keep the appointment

because her father has died:

soandso left her dog

3845at home shut up

because he runs after

bitches and winds up

in the pound:

a University writes offering

3850me a job: one who

wants to apply for the job

won’t get it:

the turn of the day:

the spill, waterfall, shed:

3855impossible to make

any version

(perversion better than no

version at all)

adequate to the circumstance:

3860one enlarges the scope

and increases the fill-in:

deepens, dumps, delineates

the fill-in:

who or what is watching over

3865the waterfall (the waterfallwatcher)

where the

spill picks up, the urgencywe can be okay

takes on muscle and speed,socially and

the fast overshoot withknow that the

3870giddy, weightless fall,same moral laws

and the splintering disturbanceare operating

against bottom, rock, water:as before, as

things pick up, of course,usual, and still

from there and go on in a newgrind crudely at

3875mildness but strange setting:the circular

some things pass intoedge between

unrecognizable strangeness:human and natural

is no one watching, oflaw, one harmony

course not,not disclosing

3880not even a gentle, universalhow it

principle with a calming circularity, meshes with

a soft persuader reminding usanother

of the marvels, the highharmony

concerns and yearnings over

3885us, the realms luminous our

understanding

need only bend for comfort to:

are we here, single things,

lifted up into clarity and

3890recognition

by the same powers and forces

to be struck down, the calm

coasting going quite on beyond

us: or is it here precisely

3895that sleeve enters sleeve

so we see the interpenetrations,

to live to die, not to

die not to live, this is

the motif, announcement,

3900deep conditioner, the knowledge

from which there is no

freedom and no freedom

except in the knowledge,

the hardest, most bitter

3905schooling beauty and decay

could have devised,

allowing, though, ironic sweets

highest invention is humbled by:

one is helpless: one weeps:e

3910terror raves beyond the tear:q

one is without help:u

and then one sees or recallsa

that on the balance line betweenn

purchases and payoffsi

3915indifference looks neither thisl

way nor that:

our help is the call of

indifference that says

come where there is no

3920need of help

and have all the help you need:

so we rock (and roll) between gratitude

and terror (burns the cheek)

so we commend ourselves to

3925what is to be and what must be

so we celebrate dome’s day, the

big theatre, we came to see

and so we quail

at show’s end, the going back

3930into forgotten dark,

the stripping off of illusion’s privileges:

the sleep beyond the

edge of the deepest sleep

•

3935my fears of the

piling up of too

much fluency

in high-rise temperature were,

I think, ill-founded

3940for though the radio says it is

now 42

the drips from the garage eaves

slow winter down:

you could write a sonnet

3945between one drop and the next

•

insecurity of registration in

a terrain measures the

potential, that susceptible

3950to disposition or re-disposition,

but to the extent that potential is pure

potential, with not a skimming

of announcement or definition,

it is nothing, who needs

3955potential: and yet who does

not, not need “give”, border

or boundary stone

relocateable: if you could,

for example, set poetry off

3960into 10 orders of this and

that, subsidiary systems spelled out, lifted into

interpenetrative connection

with what is perceived to be,

you could call it preserved

3965territory, a public or private

garden, identity certain:

but poetry resists this, yielding to erosion,

horse manure, bird droppings,

pine needles, the wind, moss,

3970bracket, bract, stone of change,

a troublesome, marvelous garden:

fertility inexhaustible, a milling:

After the Dissolve

After the dissolve,

under cedars and black and blue

3975spruce,

hemlock thickets,

crescents of coverless

ground where

if pheasant eat grass

3980pheasant can

plick chilly uprights of

green grass

or sort through the

vegetal remains, rubble for seed or

3985seed-like knobs,

clusters, or pods, roots, or

whatever

contributes generating to

the possible: but now

3990my class over for today

traces of white airiness

mean-sprinkling are expanding

into hard lightness

again, temperature falling,

3995new snow on old

melt-rinsed-to-ice snow

limited visibility

yield ahead

yield

4000stop

frost heaves

merging traffic

at most dusk

bill of goodsthe ringneck

4005deepdown cleanas if reluctant

I saw enoughto fly up to roost

of the realwalks about

to flee andon the meltshade

found enough unrealunder the cedar,

4010to return tohis feet on the

see the realground for the first

time since midDec: he walks elegantly,

slowly, now and then bends

to peck:

4015of course, he sleeps

on warm legs and feet

but all day every day he’s

snow-plopping barefooted:

scouring ugliness

4020and bathing beauty

my friend thedrover

poet is nooversold

longer attractedoversoul

to anylover

4025center of whichmover

he is notshover

the attraction

A Sift, Sprinkling, or Veil

A sift, sprinkling, or veil

of snow came

4030last evening sun after dusk

but ended soon:

today, though, is bright!

I got up at 6:30 to turn up

the heat and the

4035east was brightening: oh,

I said, the sun may come up

this morning and now it is

bursting pointblank against

the thicket

Structureless Rage, Perhaps

4040Structureless rage, perhaps,

pure energy of motion, volition, lies

alongside or moves under

and upfloats appetite: blah, blah:

an energy that we should haveone with no

4045been put here among these community has

bounties and possibilities,only the world

crippled with these walls and

spoons:

rage then flares into fear

4050that resentment has destroyed

our chances with the good

makings, the father dispraised:

it is a circumstance

medicine cannot surround or

4055work preservingly to the core

of: we must be and be

destroyed at once: rage and

love, fear and love, these

work themselves

4060out so that we become

accredited lovers and fearers

with no loss to either wing:

with no cancellation into

boredom or indifference:

4065harsh: harsh: with the

fate-like calm acceptance

that no other mix could keep this stir:

in a bush’s

fine division

4070the sparrow lights free

from the hawk’s broad shoulder:

tie one on:

another matter:

there is not

4075at the momenty

one single flakee

of snow ona

the garage roof:

a warm day again up to 45,

4080good old February

and there are wide circles

of dark ground under evergreens

and oblongs and funny

strung-out clustral darknesses

4085under groves, along hedges,

the woods in untouched natural color

but it’s gray again

(it’s gray again

like clay again!)

4090uyyllggu ugyu lygl

glugyuly yllgguuy

Tell What Will Not Tell Direct

Tell what will not tell direct

encompassingly:

the bindings of avoidance

4095gather terrain

manysided and cushioning,

should the direct route of

the direct saying emerge,

should the furrows of

4100circumference, hills

and dells, the wild,

off-the-mark talk,

lead to the very place unspoken

standing out where the stand

4105must be taken,

avoiding avoidance

go out of your

out of your

way to help

4110others

help others

but watch it what you raise into

strength may suspect you of

strength withheld and raid you

4115down and out loose, windy

since before day

and all day

the wind’s rolled billows across

us, the soundlessness,

4120rising roar, crash,weave is what it is:

muffling, suckingno matter the wisdom,

against the houseperception: the truth,

and thisyes, but only because

with the sky gray gray asattendance to truth

4125before as usualenlarges complexity:

well but even so it’s goodbut is one wave of the

weather for Februaryweave balanced by an

equal & opposite: that

great weather’sis important: is

4130destruction, though:everything stressed but

the blue dry highin its proper place:

radiant inanitionis consideration

shrinks brooks to crispobserved in the

routesdispositions: not an

4135burns grassailing net but

upholds dustadequate weave

find reality

find duplicity

two bows of a single knot

4140my feelings are caught

gauze in a strong wash

with the prevailing snow

and full moon

nothing prowls through here

4145at night

without prowling declarations

raccoon prissy

used sway

Spread It Thin

Spread it thin

4150zip it in

give me a ring

go back up for a lay

(better laid than never or up)

today continues the tropical

4155extravaganza—up to 45,

the circle of under-cedar melt having

widened halfway across the

yard and the pheasant pecking here &

there significantly

4160an interim free of spring

madness and summer dangers

a protectorate of warmth

midway winter’s wars

bees body cells of the animal, hive

4165today you couldn’t get a sprig

of hemlock to wiggle

where yesterday

bounding sloped green

surfs

4170permanent as breaking

entanglements: when the wind

does not arrange to have

tongue, much is tongueless,

as great distance

Dark Day, Warm and Windy

4175Dark day, warm and windy,

light breaking through

clouds

coloring the sides of tall

furrows, thaw decaying

4180snow, the wind stirring

time up to a rush, I come home

from work midmorning

dark with contemplations,

that the infant finds

4185his hand unopened

and the old man forgets

his has closed—that rondure:

I sit down at the piano

and try the “Fuga 1” in The

4190Well-Tempered Clavier and

my feelings lighten,

the melody so incredible,

the counter-melody incredible,

the workings in and out

4195precise and necessary

Like Fifty

Like fifty

I’m fifty

ditch water,

spring caterpillar,

4200ripples downhill,

an eager

thermometer,

the volume of motion a direct

reading of melt

4205and melt keyed to the temperature

so during the time of thaw

correction made for

shrinkage of reservoir,

the ditch

4210with some variable constant

lag tells:

I don’t care much about the

language these days (!)—turn this upside

down and you have

4215I wantthe happiness

to make a point:without measure

the point is essential,

the connection: the language

should be adequate:

4220(I’ve felt, might as well admit

it, other ways (not

necessarily opposite (

sometimes opposite) ways)

before)

4225if mush were slushdud

meep could sleepdad

scruffy lines between me & my

neighbors, lean thickets,

spirea brown fine-bush and

4230overhangings of maple, silver

and sugar, big spruce,

honeysuckle bush-stump, ground

cover, and my own kept ant

hills: a stringy wilderness

4235inhabiting civilization’s

straight lines

a half-century inscribed

birthday cake, promises

of presents, a wheelbarrow

4240(red, rained on) and stereo!

A 41 Morning, Still Cloudy

A 41 morning, still cloudy,

rainy, gray, vague, the only

snow left

skinny archipelagoes, once

4245drifts, or stalls, as by (before)

(or after) garages or thickets:

the forecast is for

skin temperatures dropping

through the day

4250into snow flurries

with no significant

accumulation:

still three months away to leaves:

for us now there

4255is a discontinuity in the

flow of energy from the

physical which we still can

trust some to the metaphysical

now exploded: ideally, the

4260physical would be the roots

or trunk and the metaphysical

would arise easily and smoothly into

the subtleties of embranchment

allowing, when leaved, flows

4265and wavings of light, variable

shades, tones and atmospheres

like the spiritual temper of a time:

for us now, we dig in to

see if the trouble with the

4270boughs is not some trouble

with the roots and so we have

nearly killed the tree:

still, however long it is to

leaves, the grass has from

4275this warm spell taken

the hint, sprung its leaves

up into the cushions of air

and given out a tint hint:

imagine, the readiness

4280of it all! the unwearying readiness

to cycle, eagerness all over

fresh, as if for the first time:

now the tree is cracked off

at the ground: a peel of

4285cambium holds the boughs:

the boulder columns

of the temple

hold

up (arbor-skinny

4290roof)

eternal emptiness

I brought in the garbage

cans, there was

(at this temperature)

4295a faint smell in them:

it was

nearly pleasant:

spring’s first

midwinter

4300fragrance:

we eat the dead, swirling decay into

such a fret it gives energy off

to us, saprohumanists:

we can’t go on long eating and shitting and

4305beshitting the world before,

eaten, we are beshat:

the banqueter’s the banquet:

(well, then, dine!)

look you to it:

4310will not the wolfer be wolfed:

can there be a dwelling for man

with no cock to cry the days

in: I hear from across the lake

in quiet spells

4315dogs barking or crows cawing: or,

even, though terribly early,

geese going over, high over:

in any case, it is not the

rooster, wing-thubbing and crowing:

4320do you not miss the biddies:

yellow butterballs

peeping about the hen’s legs

and beak:

do you dwell securely where

4325there is no cackle to the lay

and no offal dog neither

nothing

good Lord not even a guinea:

I need pig and fowl: company:

4330and the goat!

how I need a goat!

what is the flavor

of anything without

the bright-eyed,

4335astonished,

big-balled billy: or the

fucking sheep: who can do

without it: what we have is

the radio blaring

4340a flat high level

of disaster this

and disaster that:

when I lived in the world

there was nothing worth doing

4345doing

Produce and Fuctifry

Produce and fuctifry

a snow so misty, melty,

and thick

only careful looking sees it:

4350it does not resemble itself

on garage or grayass: my

teeth and victory stick

dream of being

hard on

4355cavities

guys with things so fine

they consider noses

or so blunt(earful,

they blunder earsgetting an)

4360stuprumstreamnew snow

stupulose millrunon old

washmelt narrows

brookbrooks

creek

4365branch

millrace

mill

milltown

miltown

4370Milton

Milton

geese did fly over yesterday!

northward along the east shore

harkking & honnking

4375in the accustomed ways:

seeing believes even if belief

can sustain seeing

an inch of snow fell during the night

drawing lines in the trees and

4380filling bushes with snowberries, big ones,

fork blossoms

at least

more fell

than rose

I Look Up Guff and Find the First

4385I look up guff and find the first

thing I learned about Babylon, the

gufa, the round wicker boats

in the fourth-grade reader! and I

remember the camels slinking high

4390against the flat, low line in the

background

with the aerial twist of leafage

at the palm top:

I can taste the sand now that I could

4395taste then, the muddy yellow river,

I feel the gristy hot soup of it now

that I did then!

mean business

the split between us

4400snow remains (remains

of snow) out under

the woodsedge brush

and lee of the put-out

Christmas tree, there a dab

4405(white scab)

and up here before the big yew

which brought the wind

paused to a crescent fall-out

histories of past

4410motions thawing away into motions,

runlets and trickles,

histories of redispositions

I cry nothingness nothingness as long

as the inadequate, the issuistic, is

4415proposed: I cry nothingness nothingness

to open space for the more nearly

adequate should it be deeply spoken for or of:

the dialectical

sways

4420in on the clarification of

oversimplification

and falls in to opposite or

indifferent tendencies:

and after heavy losses on both sides

4425burns itself out in error and

grief and astonished self-correction

only to go a little way

too far the other way,

take on concentration,

4430force, and direction,

lean down into an assertion

that challenges, tests others

and then the opposite sway

falls into motion

4435with heavy losses, etc.

nothing achieved apparently but excuses

to form energies idly potential, test

belief, swell the capacity to tolerate tragedy:

the economies, the allowances and costs, are so

4440finely adjusted, broadly and thoroughly applicable,

it is hard to believe the absurd design, haphazard:

though it would be dialectically just for economy to

be grounded in happenstance because only at the level

of absolute freedom of bit could swells of new

4445information rise to alter the valuations of the economies

the weather today continues

recent trends: 35 at dawn,

near 40 now at 10:37 a.m.,

supposed to go maybe to 45:

4450high for tomorrow 40:

the tiger lilies are green

nubs standing in ice:

I see a hollyhock leaf

or so lying on the ground,

4455still green, the snow cover

having kept it: they say

there are snowdrops up

(a switch from the downs) and

crocuses are heaving off

4460shelves and roofs

One at One with His Desire

One at one with his desire

slurps not the bone soup

of syllables

but rises to the other’s

4465rose and falls immediately

from

feeding desire

to recollection or anticipation

of desire

4470the business of the day

not bending the contour

out of circle

one not at one with his

desire has not a whole

4475intention

and consequently no place

to go unqualified

or any single thing to

look for but one aspect

4480of himself knows the

otherness of another aspect

so that he cannot become

disentangled

into other otherness

4485all singers are blind, of course,

for the same reason that they

do not see the world

but thickets of

complication between

4490themselves and their desire:

so much loss for the little

rescue of a lilt, a passing

fine turn, a modulation

practiced and true:

4495art’s

nonbeing’s

dark consolation:

what a nice stanza! imagine just going

on: I think I’ve invented

4500rooms to walk through

or stand amazed

or lie sleepy in:

it is no place, though,

to rehearse the flesh

4505of the beloved,

it is no place to touch

or taste

enter or leave:

it is dry delight, whatever

4510service remains when

the church closes:

the sweepstakes of

no desire

whole as fulfillment:

4515the sweetest passer of time

scheduled for emptiness:

the drug that makes erasure

bliss: an illusion some

of the uneasy can cover

4520misery with:

still when you think of the

nourishment of such delight as

over starvation,

what a numb pale

4525paradise! how constant

the music

dwelling among the constant

bushes, the deathlessness only

lifelessness can know

4530one not at one with his

desire still has to desire

so much more than nothing

this stanza compels

its way along: a

4535break will humble it:

form consumes:

form eliminates:

form forms the form

that extracts the elixir from

4540the passages of change:

well, we mustn’t let this

form reverse itself

into an opposite

though parallel

4545largely similar insistence:

must we?

a marvelous morning

dull gray aflood with the possibility of light

live unknown!

4550(the protean densitya pane’s

of that!)mirror

unmonitored bylets

the clichés of praiseeverything

through

4555well, no, the light changed

away into indistinguishableif you froze

gray, flicking wet dashes,a fog, that’s,

gravity-sprung ellipses, onturned loose on

the windowpane:a bluster, how

4560colder, foggier, suddenly:snow-fine’s

a front entering us doorsthe stuff today

/ /

we have become now in

the afternoon balled up

4565horizonless in pearly

mist, a billion bits of snow

jostling this

way and that, coming

down and putting

4570differentiation down downy:

the temperature dropped

in an hour twenty degrees an hour

an hour

sheet-deep in sleet

4575I haven’t written as

many words as an hour’s

grains of sleet

and so far only a scattering

impression of white

4580has risen from the lawn:

one should go on till one’s

hue is

unmistakeable

nature goes so far to make

4585us one of a kind

and treat us all alike

Dull Lull

Dull lull

palustral

mule

4590logging a

swampsull

pompous

ramps

amperage

4595palatial

labial

mull

gulls

dropped to eenzie teens last

4600night and snowed

three inches

now at noon it’s

the biggest teen

the car was crunchy and

4605crusty with

frozen rain in the windshield

wipers, stuck,

and the door wouldn’t break

open and every window was

4610snowed white,

tribulation’s Parian wreaths

(hark, a footnote)

hurdygurdy hurlyburly

loveydovey

4615with the snow white

as snow and the light

bright as day

one sees too much to see

outside

4620//1:50 p.m.

though it is

warm by the

window and though

the garageroof snow

4625cannot but melt

and tinkle twinklefree

at the eaves

still the thermometer

has not budged up a bit

4630all day

standing right where it

is regardless of what-all

the sun pours it on day

and (elsewhere) night

4635but the air masses will come

variably from here and there

and they warm and cool in

cycles longer than a day

longer than a week maybe

4640even longer than a year

as long maybe as the 11

year sunspot cycle or

sunspot cycles well

you get the point

4645just because you

have a fair day you

can’t expect the

temperature to

shoot right up

4650to seventy like

I told this

writing

student of

mine who

4655was a real

tomato

I said you don’t say to a

tomato you just set out make me

a tomato you say to it

4660make leaves and stems and

roots and branches, acquire

an abundant presence, and

then easy as pie you will be

able to make lots of tomatoes

4665and I think this girl got the

point that a Platonic form is one

thing and a piece of ass

something else

and nobody with that kind of

4670awareness will stay puzzled

long or talk to teachers

queer for tomatoes

enough horse do for today

ltho prhps ct shrt

The Temperature Rose 15 Degrees over

4675The temperature rose 15 degrees over

the sunless, unaided

night: clouds like freight

cars packed the heat in

here and like tarpaulins

4680held it in place: high

winds today will change the

pacings and placings, only to add heat

to heat: high

winds shake out from scruffy

4685snow-disorganized bushes

crosslimbs, tangles, and

dead twigs and comb every

long branch out into its

separate space and possibility,

4690a ruffling and swaying

that brings cleansed motions

to high alignment!

rhythm is the spreading out

of sense so that curvatures

4695of intonation, gestures of

emphasis, clusters of

relationship can find disposition

and placement within the

enclosing identity of the sense scope

4700(as metrics eats

away at motion

it loses its identity

and becomes like motion)

metrics aside, though (and

4705why not, though relevant) much

of the power of motion resides

in the reliability (see dict.)

of the repetition (al fine

senza repetizione): at some point

4710in the whole

scope of an act

of congress, encouraging

trust, there ought to be a

plateau, a plateau before the

4715peak: it needn’t be a flat

plateau: it can be building

at an angle into buoyancy:

but for this part of the act,

a regular rhythm or a regular

4720progression (generally

accelerating) ought to be

established as the highest

feeling comes on stressful

entering or unstressful

4725withdrawing: but aside from

the regularity of duration, timing,

between stresses (c’est à

decir, a poem or novel must

achieve identifiable motion

4730as the highest contour above

its many motions): it follows

from the reliability of these

stresses and durations that

the pleasures that lie ahead

4735are available, can be reached,

ought to be entertained:

reliability gradually

accelerated could then explode

into huge releases of, umm,

4740expression, into dissolving,

stressless gliding, unwrinkled

calm

expression through issuecreelo o no

is not too badcreelo o yes

4745if clusters of plurality

balance counterbalances:

that way, all expressions

are tolerable but

meaningful change is slow,

4750an undercurrent forming past

calculation in accuracy:

the unwilled will

will the future

more truly than the

4755willed will:

10:10 a.m.: it has cleared

up sunny and warmed to the thirties:

the snow’s not rushing into melt

but clumps have damp edges: one thinks

4760the buds and flower-clusters

have swelled but actually one

has only thought of spring

and noticed the buds for the

first time: they’ve been about

4765so big all winter:

prey bolts, whines

but overtaken is pulled down,

dignity of design

forgotten in dust and the

4770fastest heart beat, grace

of motion

broken down into dinner

(have so many things to do that you

rarely do them)

4775//5 p.m.

my first walk to the brook

this year and though

it was only 15 minutes

including taking out the garbage

4780it was exhaustingly delightful

the brook by the way

by the way ay ay

is sassy

up to roaring

4785the water melt-muddy with

road runoff (salt, ash, cinders,

& gravel) and cutting gullies:

good to see a streak of water oozing

in caterpillar ripples across

4790the dry highway and to notice

farther up

the forsythia thicket letting its

holdings of groundsnow go

I would love to get the poetry just

4795the way it happens, the way it comes

on, heavy and thick like

a thunder tangle or empty as high

blue, weaving, stalling,

a little bit of all the

4800progressions including the

unstirring:

hunthigh

wildass

on the walk a fart worked its

4805way loose

probing through like a variable

long balloon seeking

till

wind to wind it broke free

4810so generous & satisfying

As for Fame I’ve Had It

As for fame I’ve had it

before I’ve

had it: meanwhile,

others grow vast on

4815very little

(but it has

by wise men

often been

spoken: less is

4820more or

less more)

while the more

I give the fewer

tangles of

4825attention to me

unwind

I suppose I’ve

worried too much

about the outbreak

4830of destructive

clarification:

when most folks

are in such confusion

any slight light

4835falls into far illumination

in darkness will we

heed too much

the twinkling of a tiny

twinkler when on the

4840mountain

chasms, gulfs, ravines,

ledges and weighty slides wait:

to be made of steel!

so bullets and aches and

4845pains and sorrows

the sorrows of knowing and

not knowing and witnessing

bing off you

that would be so fine

4850provided you did not

remain stiff and

uneducated

meanwhile the day has been

beautiful from sunlight binging

4855right off the horizon

through bright to now 3:15:

not as warm as yesterday but

warm enough, 40, 45:

poetry has become an outing

4860(outage), church social, a picnic of

huggy self-embracing, small hopes

and a tremendous capacity to bear

up under daily disappointment,

no mail, no state funds, no

4865fed funds, no city or county

funds, no scholarship or fellowship

today, no

subsidy on this issue, no

programs for the public

4870or public schools this week, no

improvement at all, I’m sorry,

we can’t offer you a

reading engagement this year,

no, not now:

4875take up slack

choose cheese

When One Is a Child One Lives

When one is a child one lives

in helplessness, in terror

of arbitrary force, and in the

4880fear of death

when one is young one lives

in helplessness of the

passions, in terror of the

ultimate vulnerabilities, and

4885in the fear of death, passion’s

opposite

when one is grown one lives

in helplessness of the webs

of demand and responsibility,

4890in terror of failing, and

in the fear of death, the temptation

when one is old one lives

in helplessness, in terror, and

in the fear of death

4895a windy, almost flashingly

changeable morning, the

clouds ripping across

influxes of light, that moist

blue in the clouds, temperature

490050 but failing, the willow

yellower, perhaps, than

usual, or more noticeable

against the rank clouds

instability is a loss into

4905motion but the best integrities

move, the coming out

of “sense” from sound

progressions: the

“flow” on the court to a swish:

4910crows sit in the thicket

hushed mainly in the noon

cloudiness:

when the great geese

fly over

4915the crows appear strange

as if separated into their

contemplations

most anything, stopped, falls

apart: motion

4920is the world’s glue

holding-together

but time eventually underslips

the whole thing

it is so lovely, the world,

4925so full of change and death

how can we find ease

in the uneasy

stability and calm

in the rushing

4930where is our stay

that is in a holding

higher

than motion’s formings

here, we know a stillness that will

4935not work, and, there, a

stillness we can’t stir from:

hold on to your self and your things

as long as there is

hope of holding: then swirl

4940loose into the mercy of others, set

your sights on having nothing,

staying nowhere: rest home:

who lets go needs not even

the need to hold on

4945he is free with nothing

which is in to everything,

these strange and comforting

contradictions, emollients,

ointments, and

4950soothing sanctions for the lost:

swashbuckling bushwhacker

the weather cooled and calmed

into 4 o’clock

sunny, nice

4955I look outbang bang

the windowyr’re dead

but the onlybrush your teeth

thing comingand go to bed

is another

4960tooth out

if I hadlanguage says

more fight inwise and

me theresobering things

would be lessbut in

4965runreal binds

nobody reads

I picked up lost wood undersores run

the elm yesterday afternoonscabs

limbs airy with light rotstay put

4970bark expanding to separate

speckled white with decay

high winds trim the tree

into the continence and

security of calm

4975frijolillo

Cloud Strays Rounded Up

Cloud strays rounded up

in a windy direction before

dawn, a hustled, rustled

clearing

4980as the stone buildings at the

university get older

life seems more and more

like whitewater over an

architectural rapids

4985slope soak

seeps (spews up)

through a

highway chuckhole

late at

4990night and

freezing through

early morning

builds up ice

which

4995when dawn brings out

the cars

grinds fine

under the tires

and looks

5000like a bucket

of dumped

gook

a curiosity to pedestrians admiring

the sunny morning

5005newlyweds: honeyback guarantee

can your father stuff it

the Rangers can’t

seem to do

anything in their

5010own end

something outside the bedroom

maybe a shutter

burrs in gusts and

another thing, an electrical

5015attachment, squeaks at the

corner of the house as if

someone were squeezing

a bird or turning over on a

spring

5020(at nigh on to three the wind

has died down but the

temperature has gone right on up to

sixty)

tulip leaves are up

5025green spears of lilies show

an inch of daffodil is

up

the hollyhock clump that was

aleaf under snow

5030having lost those leaves now

to naked frost

has unfolded held small leaves

precaution freed from caution

maybe the Lord troubles

5035people’s knees so they

will pray short and get on

with what must be done

//it’s getting late &

we had a shower

5040(enough to lay the salt

and silt on snowroads):

Bernie’s coming to dinner & Don

couldn’t quite get the

backboard up on the face of

5045the garage and I have pulled

out old spirea stalks and

picked up sticks till I’m

pooped nevertheless let’s see

if we can approach the

5050brushpile principle: now

a brushpile is by nature a

place to throw things

but you must be careful

when you throw armloads of

5055this or that on the pile—

some pieces will slide

down and off the pile or you

will dribble a stalk or so

of something just before you

5060get to the pile

which is only to say that

in normal usage

you will start to blur the

line between the brush pile

5065and the periphery

this should not be permitted

because pretty soon you’d be

kneedeep in junk before you

could get to the pile with a

5070load: right:

principle: be sure to police

the periphery of your fucking

brushpile

or you will wind up with

5075nothing but a mess,

an undifferentiated junkyard:

is that what you want:

do you want that:

lines sometimes help the mind

5080take steps from

one thing to another

possibly ascending steps

to the tall place

where nobody

5085walks around

leap year

It’s Half an Hour Later Before

It’s half an hour later before

a spring shower

gets all the way down

5090to hemlock ground

last night it rained easy

all night till dawn the rain

got white and

the dawn world, stained this

5095or that, came up white

coming up on white

they’s a limit, he said:

she cracked up,

mother nature’s response

5100to male weaknessdomination

and all morning up to now

heavy stuff, white and sticky,

right on the rain line,

has been falling in a

5105calmness no tree quivers

winter trees aren’t good

winnowers: nevertheless,

fine branches snatch flakes

and big branches take

5110single ridges: the chaff

hits the ground

but the caught

turns to lit melt beads

that light up

5115trees in a different light:

march one andmarchone and

in the clearin theclear

thicket highchoiredthickethighchoired

grackles grate squeak,gracklesgrate squeak,

5120dissonant asdissonantas

a music schoola musicschool

not much verse today but we

got the backboard & hoop up

This Poem Concerns

This poem concerns

5125the elm over past

the windows of the other room

the elm includes the weather

this poem is largely about

the weather because

5130weather is a major influence

on elms

you’ve heard I know that the dutch elms

are gone

this is to remind you

5135that they are still gone

but I heard

we come from upa man once

to 30 billion yrswhose thing

of oblivion but thinkwas done and

5140of not even awhose race

little more lightlyrun say

he was ready

the great flash their selves

onto, obliterating, surroundings:

5145they are normal:

cutting back, undercutting, schools

us to lessenings, including

the total lessening, nothing:

from what bin more gigantic than stars

5150could the diet be doled:

doled! poured out!

when the biggest thing, the grand repository,

we have is oblivion, slick with emptiness

will the fed few

5155feed on

cut-aways

from the schooled starved

we applaud the loudmouth who

breaks through into the feast of our portion!

5160could shed your shingles

could shingle your shed

today was a fair day all day

and most of the snow got

mopped up except

5165here and there next to

trees, fences, in thickets

hard to get at

I turn to the word and it brings me

anything:

5170I no longer go to look about in the world:

I have become so lonely

that only the word

is free enough and large enough to take my

mind off

5175the world going day

by day over the brink

used up but unused:

how thankful I feel

bent gutless over

5180the vomited void

to have at least the word

going anywhere fetching anything:

pretty soon it may have

brought so much

5185it will not need to go off again

and then the word will

draw me up about it

The Word Cries Out

The word cries out

and I fetch

5190a thing or thought is noted

and from need or in

response to pressure

urgency for a verbal version arises

and words dash in

5195taking trial positions,

sort and re-sort themselveswor(l)d

into provisional clusters

and whole strings:

a marshal, severest linesman,

5200shouts out down the ranks

and ta-tum

the verbal version

with last minute stumbling or twitching

on the edges

5205declares itselfthere was a heavy

its trimmestfrost of snow on the garage’s

roof scales but the sun

I hunt and peckwiped it off

leaf throughor the garage crawled away

5210check alignment

do it again

start over

wait a while

look up

5215reconsider, readjust:

friendly word, image,

you hold my attention:

even as attention fails

and revives with work,

5220stirring and re-doing:

now as many snowflakes as you would find

bees working a quince clump, flakes big

as mayflies, run or stall or turn or rise

in the wind all together, flocks, swarms,

5225droves of things: this may be where fish

got the notion of turning in a single

action (it snows over oceans)

I Woke Up at 6 and It Was

I woke up at 6 and it was

light enough

5230to shell peas or water begonias:

midwinter, fine-work would

have had

to wait till eight:

two days off from spring,

5235two hours of light

attached to both ends of the

day, the middle position

will enlarge, going on

to four hours either end,

5240sixteen dark switched to

sixteen light:

the reason it makes

no difference what people

think

5245is that they don’t think

enough to make any

difference

the weather got us this week:

Tuesday an alldayer, a

5250heavy snow with the temperature

dropping, dropping (from the

shales of the morning) so low

that last night, low teens,

jungle escalations, ropes,

5255vines, fronds, seized the

windows crystal-blind again:

today

the sun came up

in light,

5260to warm to thirty: that will do

in the garage snow (an inch

on the windy side, one to three

inches on the hemlock side):

yesterday at the university as, my

5265wont, I mused out my window,

I saw a certain twist and

horny warp

registered in the deep-long

eaves icicles and since

5270Tuesday night had been windy

I thought, my word, icicles

summarize the rate of melt

and wind direction, are a glacio-spiral

version of a wind-rose: nature

5275that will uproot an eavesload

of history

can be so careful of history

A Flock of My Days

A flock of my days

either gone already or to

5280come rises up

in a flurry and flies into

itself

setting off

a maelstrom descent, whirlpool bloom

5285with a fine hollow stem figuring for a

bottomless source

in yesterday’s dusk hickory,

a flicker black on skylight,

not a grackle but a

5290robin! the behavior exact,

year’s first!

pecking his breast, grooming,

regarding the groundcover of

snow unsharply

5295(but today the temp is to go

to 60, worm raising weather)

yesterday when melt was

commencing late

in the afternoon

5300one icicle with a fringehold

on the eaves

waved back and forth

windily

as if hinged,

5305its hold become so light

but now this morning

the temperature nearing fifty

the eaves rain with

melt, rooftiles starting to show

5310radiance’s darkness

(too much light on too much snow)

I guess the lady next door

when she had the elm thinned

from the thicket

5315didn’t know

snow would cap a hemispheric cone

on the left stump

they say it took some days

for the cries in No Man’s Land

5320to die down: first

there was a noise

of pain

but a few dawns and dusks

settled things

5325down to here and there

a filament of dissent

and then the dawn came wherein

the peace was incredible

You Can’t Imitate

You can’t imitatethe extent to

5330anybody reallywhich you can’t

and the extentimitate anyone

to whichreally is enough

you can’t isoriginality

enough originality

5335one gainsafter another blow

with immortalityI pick up

a lastingloose wood

tombunder the elm,

hard branches, the

5340skinny bones

of a flesh

if you caught aleft

dusk-glimpsethat was leaves

as a first seeing

5345of the thin-tapering

hemlocks (a rowringneck &

of raving beauties)redwing

you’d think they’d,(redneck &

waggled and whipped,ringwing)

5350worn off in the

wind that way

Stevens, you should be here

now with the ringnecks

and rigorous rednecks

5355and the green billows

of grass with drained

hunks of black-old

snow floating in them

and the ringnecks

5360stirred by a nosey dog

racing into the thickets!

if you could hear the

brook like a bear breaking

through the thicket

5365(the thicket floor

a manuscript patches

of snow illuminate)

yours truly

yours treely

5370“live unknown” is

no fun unless

you have to work at it

why kill

yourself when

5375you can

die

without

your helptrees fall to

the wind

5380and falls’

murmuring

trees the wind

the comet mingling

with us this

5385week (a

windy week)

will

be back in

fifty

5390thousand yearsthe grave may

not be its

goal but that’s

where it lands

the world’s too serious

5395to take seriously &

too funny to take lightlyfaint &

fall over

Old Milling

say to the race

5400your run’s

run its race

say to the run

your race’s

race’s run

Spring’s Old Hat Is Older

5405Spring’s old hat is older

than hills:

but spring’s skinny shade

(as old)

gives cedar, pine, spruce,

5410upstart and low-profile,

the jump on maple,

elm, latecomer

my yew ball

is ten feet high and wide

5415(it doesn’t roll in

but unrolls the wind)

you can stand behind it

when there’re insistent breezes

and it’s like standing

5420on the bank of

a current and even if the wind

is sucky

blowy with variability

the whole

5425context

is diminished in a matrix

of holding

The Temperature Fell

The temperature fell

through yesterday afternoon:

5430big clouds came

and winds rose: and fell

and the clouds came and went

and the temperature fell on

through the night

5435plunging into the teens

from a daytime high

above seventy

today though the sun is out at

times and

5440though the wind, steady,

has lessened,

the temperature is staying

where it fell,

snowflakes feeling

5445their way (more

numerous than far-off legions)

through the air

in fabrics too fine for “snowing”

goalless as a ping

5450pong table I’m

as a free-versite

also netless

(courtless)

systems, structures,

5455big hunks of culture

do not melt and flow

directly

one to the other but

turn

5460articulate

dis-poise

often on single glints of

perception,

the exception sharply noticed

5465become the groundwork

of the next familiar:

as one who looks

to the mechanisms and costs

(sad joy

5470breaking away into acceptance)

in the “flow” of systems and

structures

I cannot stop to see if

at any point a thing

5475still moving was

satisfactorily complete:

the sky’s stabiles

hasten and churn:

I befriend, or hope to,

5480gently,

motion: it is my slow veracity

and belief:

the conveyance of discard is

the arising of beauty:

5485perception, flat, impersonal, out-of-context

perception disfamiliars, erupts motion:

my life (pent)

misspent &

(piddling pity)

5490unspent

has poured itself off into

a big jar, jug, cistern, pool,

bog, mere, lake, bay, or

ocean of grief but

5495this was a morning, like

any other, for anything,

a whistling colleague,

an assignation finally

accomplished, a birth,

5500death, a pheasant screeching

achieve an identity,

find a direction, such achieving

leaves behind as much as it finds

choose short-term goals and having

5505realized them, wait for the grave

wandering afloat the landscape

to find you

have long-range, even impossible,

goals and

5510you will complete no work

but you will,

eyes on the sky, stumble astonished

into the grave,

your work left

5515to others, an inheritance

imbalance providing the

illusion of direction,

the loops, sways

of exaggeration, we can, ah,

5520and, therefore

could a shady

spot of the peace

everlasting patch

the wretched ways

5525and byways of the

lusty & hard-to-take!

oh, but we should not rail!

everything but our understanding

is flawless

5530the hemlocks are

sensitive wind instruments

you can

judge by the thicket

that it’s calm

5535but just then the tips of

hemlock branches pick

up the frailest motions,

the long branches, you

know, rise out in high

5540bow-boughs from the trunk

and secondary branches

branch off,

a dense replication and

registration so that

5545when the wind blows branch

tip and branch tip

try out the sways and lofts

of space and

sure enough

5550here and there

branch tips intermingle

and where they often

intermingle (summarizing

prevailingness)

5555the tips lose needles,

fray,

and, no way proved to go,

the tip dies

and growth takes place at

5560another tip:

each way won or free:

a little past four

it has turned so clear

the sky bright blue

5565cold

the blacktipped brown

caterpillars

lured out

by yesterday’s heat

5570circle crinkled in the grass

now (one on the garage floor)

the teens cold working on

them: spring steps up

warmly saying

5575bud bloom sprout shoot

and arctic highs

mow the answering down:

to endure

a thing must speak

5580more slowly than

highs & lows

You Can

You can

walking with the wind

think yourself

5585becalmed

but turning to return

find yourself

in a ten-mile-an-hour gale

and on a great

5590bright

cold morning like

this that

calm thirty degrees

drops

5595chilling windchill degrees:

but the birds

are a chorus,

the jay’s big vocabulary:

the sparrow

5600is hauling straw

up to a streetlight

(nitelite)

sheets of ice standing in

v-bottomed ditches

5605and a vapor-ice

of white haze

on grass near water:

grackle, crow, cardinal,

robin, birds but no bees:

5610according to the weather forecast

here comes another warm

spell up to the sixties:

lately the temperature

has been up & down on

5615a four-day cycle,

teens to seventies,

really rolling differentials,

spiraling through dragging

nordic or tropic skirts:

5620let’s not get into that:

cunt is disturbing

today if it goes to 45

caterpillars run down outside

may nick away in the sun

5625the lilyshoots

though

or also,

deeply puzzled,

rush out firm

5630to sixty degrees

but bend stain-limp

to the teens

scare crows

raise money

5635field mice

they said I ought to get

a stereo because

when from seventy you subtract

fifty it only leaves

5640you twenty mo’

for stereo

(lessen yall gits lucky)

you do do do, too

The Wife’s Plaint

5645There may be

more room on

the outside than

on the inside but

there’s more

5650room on the

outside outside than

on the

outside inside.

may hernias

5655rot in your

soup! the disgusting

husband said:

may

cocksuckers ululate on

5660your doorstep! the

precious wife replied:

may the worms

in your round worms

need worming & may

5665a great Swish

swallow your Knob!

french-freud

Cunit

Cunit

close as i can

5670come without being there

cuneus is okay and cunette

fellow said he got his

tongue hung

in one

5675once (which I never believed)

and said whenever he did

the rest of it

started in to pecking on him

is what he said

5680till he couldn’t tell

whether he was coming or

going

and his whole tongue got

covered with red-peckered

5685welts like you never seen

cunnythumber

slurp slop

I never met a man

with a dirty mouth

5690(delicacy governs true passions)

that had any real

respect or deserved any

everybody well-adjusted

to sex keeps his mouth shut

5695the elm is darkening

with mere

budbead

I saw this morning

come out on the porch steps

5700and on a leaf of periwinkle

a beadblack bug

hemispheric so as

nearly to stick flat

to leaf or slate

5705two red eyes

one on either wing

It’s a Wonder the Body

It’s a wonder the body

goes on making

things not thought

5710well of, saliva, for example,

wondrous devising

containing

water, mucin, protein, salts,

and a starch-splitting

5715enzyme

that has been accorded little

common knowledge and small

applause, like great servants

who flawlessly

5720disappear

into their work

eyes spread around

inside scraps,

tips, filaments of

5725brand new or newly

worn attraction

the bigeye belly

aphids that eat up theis

roses arelove’s Polyphemos

5730as pretty

as rosesmaggots like

twice as green,undertakers (too)

their dew honey,work dead stuff

and their petals flybut are unlike

5735livelier

a gray warm

day with sprinkles

not met on concrete

I just went for a walk by the brook

5740(high brooks are interesting,

the collections aimless

above the slope drop)

geese again

Today Was Like Vomiting

Today was like vomiting:

5745all morning and until

midafternoon

the wind scoured the trees

like the dry heaves

blustering dust and pollen

5750till finally it brought

the clouds up

and by four the smallest

rain came with a quieting

wind and then later the

5755true tensions found themselves

and wind and cloud

delivered the shaking

spouting flood we’d been

waiting for

5760now there will

be some ease

the birds can settle

we can have dusk,

dinner’s smooth time

5765because winter cut a deeper

trench this year than usual

I feared last year’s

mockingbird might not make

it back or through

5770but there

down in my neighbor’s

orchardlike yard

I saw the bird dive

spread those barred

5775rounded-off wings

and splash into trilling song:

I saw that yesterday:

you know how a robin can get

variable in a pellucid dusk

5780and sound remarkable

but not quite make it, as

the mockingbird

can hold no vocal candlestick

to the woodlark

5785sound’s most beautiful song

Showers

The grass is

green by

the time the

5790clouds are blue

how much

more blowing

will establish

spring

It’s April 1

5795It’s April 1

the willow’s yellow’s

misting green:

adding white maybe

tonight or tomorrow

5800Canadian air 30 below above

the clouds has

settled into the midlands

and is moving eastward

this will bring

5805ground temperatures

within range

of the structural

flare-out snow

a look-see

5810slightly more direct

(- (-shut-eye

($ ($American dream

(* (*34" bust

great logs

5815dragged to the fireplace are

with ashspoon dipped away

earthworms are only

little long people

I’m Unwilling

I’m unwilling

5820to write this

morning but

things

keep nudging me

to sidle with

5825them into

words,

what is it, even a tension

in the mind

wants to play

5830itself

through the lit stage

wing to wing,

across and through

severe illumination,

5835burning every crick

and hue

of the hidden out;

to be announced!

pronounced!

5840shaped, made, attended

to, to have occurred as

an item of what was,

to be a thing that is

the bloom shed of the

5845maple is

spring’s

first fallthe maple itself

a falls

the milling fall making

5850of bloom parts

to hold through winter

and open

to spring’s first warmth

and fall

5855(so early this year!

midFeb)

the syrup keeps

rising through the trunk,

wooden fountain,

5860and always from

the replications and

rondures, slope heights,

of the tree

spill

5865the bloom parts

the sent

wide reaches of pollen, the

lightgathering, dismissed

leaves, hunting, spinning

5870seed

the tree,

holding to one place,

moves as far

as possible

5875abroad, away, away

to other holdings

it is not for the poet to

speak the speakable

that which long known & said

5880requires no energy

of finding or forming but to

murmur, stammer, swear, and

sing on the edges of or around

or deep into the unspeakable—

5885the unspeakable, silent sorrow!

the unspeakable, silent joy!

there was a time in January

when the light was barren

moving in blurs and glows

5890between clouds and falling

on the snow-and-ice-enameled

hills, the streaks and

thickets

of ice-brush

5895like ink brushwork

ornamentation:

the ridge, I thought,

moves, flows, and

I was held by a power

5900beyond all but silence

to contain

a joy inexpressible,

inexcusable

standing not away or at an

5905opposite pole but

in the midst of which

grief

like high icy ghosts of

lombardies

5910slow-swayed!

things arranged

at their centers so

that when we

grasp them

5915they turn slightly

(like a dishwasher

dial) and go into

another tone or slant

or cycle or flatly

5920from kind to kind

quandary lies centrally in balancing wings

so much so that as we draw near, the directness of

our sight blinds us to the full facetal radiality

so we are not likely ever to dissolve the knot because

5925we work against ourselves when we hope to for if

we did, behold, the world and we would stop: how

grateful we must be that as we reach to take the

much desired in hand it loses shape and color and

drifts apart and must be looked for all over again

5930so are we shoveled

forward half unwillingly

into the future (where futurity is lost)

praise or railing—

these two the sky equally

5935takes up unlimited

and lets vanish

The Sky Clabbered Up with

The sky clabbered up with

blue-clabber clouds

and

5940(meanwhile the temperature

falling off)

the whey-gray whey rose

shutting off from earthly

view the fine white

5945cumulus heights (yogurt)

but still whereas and

whenever he did

the cold kept coming and

pretty soon drops

5950of rain

lost sharp swift

substance

and blurred their way

down white

5955(white down)

big clumpy snow mixed with

rain, one thing popcorn

and the other popcorn popped

there’s no accumulation

5960anywhere

on hemlock, garage, lily

shoot, yew, nor in crocus

cup, nor forsythia bell

whenever it did & any

5965flake touches anything

it crumbles, shrinks,

a little bit

of nearly nothing

A Single Fact

A single fact

5970inadmissible into

sound generates

billows of volubility

whereas said out

it would turn

5975small as

a drop of rainI looked down the

brook at the outblanking

high glaze

running water gets when light

5980falls (into) against it

and thought how polished

water lofts ripples stone still

almost

and about how the dullish gold

5985gets down between the

radiant-gray ledge shoulders

and holds color over each brook-step

ledge to ledge down the hill

until of course (!)

5990everything narrows

and disappears going down

into the burial of itself

slope-lowering

burial from my sight though

5995for others beneath me

it makes sights and tunes

It Does Not Rain in

It does not rain in

air-conditioned rooms

and the fan-wind blows

6000(dust weaves in the rooms

looms and glooms

of loom-gloom) leaves

pittering across

dome-locked, skyless pavilions

6005are grocery tickets or nasal

tissues

(the brown

bushbrush

here

6010though hazes greenly

dense)

snot rags

I feel like a master:

nothing happens here that I

6015do not wish and

everything responds

(when we arrive at the

center

a wing-gate flies open

6020and turns

us into new material

out)

like water in

eddy

6025about to find

restful rondure

then sliced

from its widest

circumference

6030downstream

cold

currents settle

from polar ice

bottomward

6035like falls

motion holds moving—

(the ripple I spoke of the

other day,

now the eddy,

6040but also the millennial

deep bends &

sweeps of rock forms

and sea currents)

there’s ice under ice in

6045Antarctica so old

it’s lost to count

but is still pressing down:

the earth, mantle-deep or

crust adjustment,

6050is responding to that:

I see into so much every day

(sd the obstetrician)

my breakfast nooky quivers

mostly cloudy at sunrise but

6055now turning clear blue in

spots and a turning up and down

of light (we may go to

McDonald’s for lunch!)

One Loves

One loves

6060absolutely andin wax museums

forevermen have

anything else iswax balls

something elsebut in fire

museums

6065I know only oneballs of fire

thing to talk

about (poetry)

and that

covers everything

6070(even on a moist morning

midMarch, the street

showered still-wet,

flocks of birds foliating,

defoliating shrubs and

6075trees, the cardinal singly

chirping, even on such a

morning, the word, pliant,

suppliant,

wrenching shinnies up the

6080ash-damp heights

and higher cries out in the

cindery desert for an

answerer)

headstone-shade snow

6085melts slowly

it still can’t quite clear off

or get cloudy—

dwelling mixed

in between

6090some of both and not much of either

The Miltonic (Miltownic) Isn’t

The miltonic (miltownic) isn’t

milty or come

to think of itall you can do

tonicwith a day like today is

6095eitherslice it and eat

it, cake

blue, radiant,

frill green, also

the maplejust-right cool

6100bloomparts, cast millings,

have shrunk into meal, so

dry, granola, forsooth,

that stepped on they turn

snuff-dusty, a

6105prepared, engineered reentry:

I do not wish to speak too

highly of nature where only

what can work works,

only the possible possible

6110(though I like brooks

better than diamonds)

(no wonder things work in and

out so well together because

if they didn’t they wouldn’t

6115work long)

(the mind wishes to design other works)

that so much should come

to nothing, an abundance!

so much design be dust!

6120at-onceness

startles marveling

my head, the

skull grown

brittle thin,

6125I hold it

in my hand:

it is the world

to me: I

turn it some

6130as if

it were a

precious object:

but it is

mainly hollow

6135without longitude

or latitude,

good for lolling

and wobbling

when I

6140open a book

to a strict or

famous verse

My Father Used to Tell of an

My father used to tell of an

old lady so old

6145they ran her down and knocked

her in the head with

a lightered knot

to bury her (then

there was another

6150one so old

she dried up and turned

to something good to eat)

what my father enjoyed

most—in terms of pure,

6155high pleasure—was

scaring things: I remember

one day he and

I were coming up in Aunt

Lottie’s yard

6160when there were these

ducks ambling

along in the morning sun,

a few drakes, hens, and a string of

ducklings,

6165and my father took off his

strawhat and

shot it spinning out sailing in

a fast curving glide over the

ducks so they

6170thought they were being

swooped by a hawk,

and they just, it looked

like, hunkered down on their

rearends and slid all the

6175way like they were

greased right under the house

(in those days houses

were built up off the ground)

my father laughed the purest,

6180highest laughter

till he bent over

thinking about those

ducks sliding under

there over nothing

6185my father, if you could rise

up to where he was at, knew

how to get fun straight

out of things

he was a legend

6190in my lifetime

I remember when he was so

strong he could carry me and

my sister, one leaning to

each shoulder, with our

6195feet in the big wooden slop bucket:

he died with not a leg

to stand on

yesterday afternoon it snowed &

I scribbled: “more

6200uncertain (showery) glory,

flurries and sunshine, the

ground dry because as the

flakes melt on touch the sun

gives the moisture back to

6205the wind, also uncertain, the

flakes steeply or widely

rising almost as much as

falling but so thin-scattered,

so fine hardly

6210more than an uninformed

bluster—really nice, the

sun cracking stark bright off

one cloudhead and plunging

paling and dissolving like a

6215flake into a new blue summit”

today’s spanking bright blue

(gold willows and green evergreens)

and chilly, a

little fresh-windy, great day for a walk

Arm’s Length Renders One

6220Arm’s length renders one

helpless

(stiff and loud)

where one cannot intimately

and warmly tickle tits

6225or drive to bust

balls

one must seek

out the subtleties

and rapid

6230adjustments, suggestions, and

speed of the middle way,

using the extreme only as a

total realization of

potential (punch in face):

6235spring drought,

no significant

precipitation for ten days at

least, has persuaded the

brook down to a wink here

6240and there (lust or

rebellion) and

the ground has cracked as if

to swallow birds or fire,

not seed: it’s warming up

6245this morning, to 40, but

forecast for tomorrow is

cold, blusters, and snow flurries:

the poem hangs

on like winter,

6250words flying out and dropping

to greet

the leftover flurries and

chills:

night before last was 19 but

6255nothing was killed, just hit

scorched with the blahs:

one Sunday when I was

eleven my father and

I found the “mineral”

6260spring back

below the Hinson Field in

the woods

and we sat down where

the little hill fell away

6265toward the swamp and talked:

I carved my father’s

initials and my own in

a treetrunk and 1937:

I would not want to see that

6270work again

I’m the Type

I’m the type

FARM BOY MAKES GOOD

(not farming)

or, with more development tho

6275still very commonly,

Redneck Kid Grows Up On

Farm Goes Through Depression

But Thanks To Being In

Big War Goes To College

6280Gets Big Job Making

Big Money

(relatively speaking)

so that I am not much of a

person after all and

6285do not need be, the

lineations of the type

include egregious individuality

broaden lineation or

replicate included space

6290because of last fall’s

late bloom-thinning

the forsythia is

this year not a

golden bulwark but a

6295yellow sprinkle bush

when the wind blows through

my round yew

it changes direction so many

times to get round the branches

6300and needle leaves

it wears itself out

half way through:

eventually, though, demolished

smooth, really put together,

6305it floats on through and out,

a massive, indifferent

tranquility available to give

substance to quick turns or

swerves

6310REDNECK FARM BOY WRITE GOOD

(doesn’t sell much)

WRITE VERY GOOD

(but misses

farm, etc., also other rednecks)

6315MAKE NO MONEY

BUT

WRITE NICE

(tries hard)

(misses the mules and cows,

6320hogs and chickens, misses

the rain making little

rivers, well-figured with

tributaries, through the

sand yard)

6325REDNECK UNDERSTAND OTHERS

WRITE A LOT

(books too good

to sell, leave on

shelf in bookstore)

6330REDNECK START TO SOUND LIKE

INDIAN

him remember Indian burial

mounds in woods, sandy pine woods,

also used to plow up arrowheads

6335and not think much of it

HIM REDNECK

OPERATE UNDER TOTEM

WASP

(barefoot all summer)

6340(get hookworm)

(pale neck)

Snow Showed a Full Range

Snow showed a full range

today, showers at six

this morning with

6345the temperature falling

through sleet and grainy,

gritty, and, now, dusty

snow

a tying-off action with

6350cold striking, congealing, the

last skirts of action

the lawn is whiter than green

the hemlocks hold touchy sprays

No Matter

No matter

6355how

driving

fast or

dense

(to speak of

6360whited air, indeed, the lake

was wiped out, and the

opposite ridge’s

fields,

house-clusters, dairy barns

6365and silos

fell under) the flakes all

afternoon,

the ground would take no

steady impression

6370and the highway not stay wet:

big icicles hung off the

car like the brocade and

strings of epaulets but

the temperature held just

6375where an outflash of sun

would thaw them loose

so the sun and clouds

needled sewing and unsewing

the white sheets

6380dyeing and bleaching

so it snowed and snowed

the wind blew and the

flakes flew

and it added up to a

6385passing

the lily shoots

hold scoops and sloops of

snow

(keeps off the grass)

6390and the hairy hollyhock’s

young leaves and the hairy

green tongues of oriental poppy

had the right way to

hold snow so it would last

6395fluffed up on stiff hairs

(hairy tongues)

I hope winter will not

end like a Beethoven symphony

with big bams and

6400flurries into June but that

it will ease off

like something by Debussy

so you hardly miss it

It’s So Dry the Brook, Down

It’s so dry the brook, down

6405to nearly nothing to do

falls as if asleep, coasting,

between ledge spills

(some old men walk sloped

forward in a stumble-run,

6410the regular, keyed rhythm

surpassed

into a soothing high dance)

spray churned from the

commotion of a slight ledge

6415spill, though, can sprinkle

overhanging branches

so they freeze loaded in cold

weather, big ice nodes and

chunks interweaving branches so

6420as to ride in hard

high separation

from the central rush,

melt lasting from one cold spell

to the next

6425there is by the gorge

a slope so steep

no one interferes with its

brush and trees

(unshaken by height chills)

6430nature is not a

palimpsest there but a clear book

vine

limber enough to move

entangles a high branch

6435which, snapping off,

sways, held, in the

great tree’s

windy shoals

that which rising

6440takes over can break

down and, no longer

to be let go, no longer uphold

nature’s message is, for

the special reader,

6445though clear, sometimes written

as on a tablet underwater,

the message will blur and

seem to run but

declare itself in a smooth

6450moment to great attention

Today Will Beat Anything

Today will beat anything:

a full day of clarity

up to seventy: but

still no rain

6455(bright skies starving skies)

and the last precipitation

which was snow, though it

fell blanking out the

world, all but the very

6460immediate, had no effect on

the ground, a dampening that

did not close up the

cracks, riffles of snow on

the lawn quickly evaporating:

6465I declare I started to get

out the hose and commence

to water, because that

fertilizer I had the young

man sprinkle about

6470the hedges and under the trees

has been lying out there feed-dry

for two weeks:

when you consider how

dry it is

6475it’s amazing the brook still

runs, clips, brook-brisk: the

ground must be holding

at a height plenty:

it is so odd, upon waking

6480from a nap, to think that

one’s body, including the

back of one’s hand, one’s

fingernails, the calves

and ankles, the face, these

6485things one’s own, are also

implicated and will die,

too, with one, each

its going away

oneself I sing,

6490a person apart,

shoved aside,

silenced

cross references

seems the bushes are being

6495sprayed from a distance green

will the universe become

forever dark:

once in a lifetime

Sight Can Go Quickly, Aerial, Where

Sight can go quickly, aerial, where

6500feet can go not at all

scale clouds out of

prison windows,

splash from heights into lakes

(not drowning, not even

6505getting wet)

from high boughs can

spot rescue in the hills

though marshlands intervene

oh, sight! sight!

6510how light you make us

and how heavy!

say now

pay later

spring drought’s good for being

6515bad for molds

and fluffy funguses that leap

snarl-red in dampness or gross blue:

good for giving the roots

of young sprouts occasion to

6520lengthen into the soil and

be ready for rain when it

comes: good probably

for slowing and toughening

growth so it can better

6525resist frost

sure to be back: good

for killing off anything

too much or too weak: good

for getting early pollen

6530up into the atmosphere:

if butterflies wrote letters

of recommendation their wings

would crack: ripples on brooks

don’t advise or recommend

6535other ripples, and shale spills

to and finds alignment with

brook flow

supposed to go to 80

today, probably did:

6540the early tulips, three

scarlet-velvet red, opened

this morning just in

time to be rained in by

a trivial shower: all

6545that negligible

clouding up and passing over!

These Days Most

These days most

any brown stick

sprouts a green tip

6550how could you, walking in the mts,

be as big as the mts: only by

wandering: aimlessness

is as big as mts

The Cardinal, Slanted Watershed

The cardinal, slanted watershed,

6555in sprouting treebranch

singly singing

and some small bird, grayish

with yellowish back feathers,

dipples and dabbles in the

6560hemlock boughs, flies almost

hard-still into the willowy

withery boughs and hangs

softly on:

the delicate greenworm haunts

6565terminal tips

unseasonably this

unseasonably thatmy

tendency

to exaggerate

6570has

vastly diminished

why, a lady along the way

inquires, is your motor running

so fast:

6575and I say, is there nothing

to catch or flee:

she says, you’re too slow now,

anyway, aren’t you, to catch anything

fine: and whatever has not

6580already overtaken you is

not coming:

madam, I say, I am not

frail and

the weather may improve: she says,

6585you know those sunny rooms,

enclosed porches, that lie

off the sides of kitchens,

those long rooms with

lounge chairs and hanging green

6590blades and tongues of

cactus and big-eared begonias:

that is what you have caught,

has caught up with you: come

in: the afternoon sweeps

6595through here on a good day:

madam, I say, the long

boxes of empty afternoons, I

had anticipated fierier affairs:

come, she said: you

6600thought you saw something:

it was nothing:

I, he said, going in, am

barely able to conceive . . . or

concede belief

One Desires the Cutting

6605One desires the cutting

glassy edges of

nearly-wordless poems

but one yearns

for the openness of context,

6610too, so as to tell

what urn or bottle broke:

restore nothing:

we want nothing back:

contexts (enclosures) show

6615what ruin we’re wrecking in

or passing by,

passers-by or guides

the flawless evidence favoring

death leaves us

6620unconvinced

and we’re ready

on no evidence

to believe we live forever

flasherlaserlasher

6625slashermasermasher

in long views

even great traditions

are often bulges

from a main line

I Wonder if Pagan Is

6630I wonder if pagan is

unfairly defined in the dictionary,

a shade too much lean to bacchic

as if it were not serious or moral, or

as manifested by early man,

6635nature-boy innocence, not true:

look it up:

suspicions confirmed!

oh, well, it takes a while

to turn or bust up

6640a current

(without affecting the climate)

here is room

in this long poem’s thickets and byways,

flybys, big timber, high marsh, and

6645sea lane, for one to turn the wrong way

around this hedge, streamfork

or that, boulder,

pavilion ledge

and take on

6650unnoticed a different coloring

as if one had come

surprisingly suddenly from

a pure place or belief:

if you cannot choose,

6655here I will lose (hide) you,

wind and unwind you till you

will be a found astonishment: you

will be sitting on a stump

by a brook and a beautiful woman will

6660come by and say, who are you,

and you will say, I am a new man:

(then you will have completed

pilgrimage, and begun):

let us not patch up anything:

6665let us have it or tear it out:

one or two will get lost

perhaps in a ravine and

forget it is not Eden:

they will concentrate

6670one on the other: nature

will align its major

forces through them and every

morning shove itself into

their mouths, a fresh

6675apple!

my outrage, my anger is

oceanic: it is free as

my verse: lovingly I empty

myself of it: lovingly I write

6680out my loathing:

I would sell my book to

millions to find one to love

slender willowy

in a waterfall

Rage Spells More of My Words Right

6685Rage spells more of my words right

than any other feeling

the big red sun just set

under two vapor trails that

diverge from a crossing in

6690the sky, the planes so high

they can’t be heard—but

I have found, I think, a

copy of the northern hermit

thrush and I’ve been trying

6695to read it—a frailer, less

fluid, less crystalline-breaking sound

than the southern woodlark

but still plaintive,

liquid bell-clarity, glade music:

6700my crazy rage, depression,

my insulted silence, along

with all my dissolving talk,

my playing tensions out while

others twist believable

6705tensions tight:

all nothing! when it goes it

leaves

behind inexpressible beauty!

the happiness of lingo

On This Day Noteworthily Warm

6710On this day noteworthily warm

fossil fuel is 3¢ a ton or vat

the tough sweet element in

man . . . the newsman, no matter

how he feels, comes up

6715with news, the weatherman

with weather, the

bread&milk man doesn’t come anymore

the forecaster for today

forecasts

6720einen thunderstormen may

blusterbufferoomen through:

gossamer-in-the-wind glint,

(three sheets)

trees-in-the-breeze sneeze,

6725spruce worms, little greenies,

dangling, squirming

say it was 93 downtown

yesterday: about as hot

today: but I think

6730there’s cooling

in the evening breeze

Some Nights I Go Out to Piss

Some nights I go out to piss

among the big black scary shrubs:

the tinkling stars

6735don’t seem to mind:

cruddy crudestars & stones

ruddyrudesilent & naked

odd that where no one is to have

anything, not even his

6740own life,

having is the game:

that where no one is to win

but indeed lose losing

itself

6745the game is winning:

and where not a single love,

mother-child, lover-girl, man-son,

is to hold,

love settles in:

6750odd, odd that as the days go

by so rich, so lost, one fool, trying to save it,

wastes the day

contradiction is a center

turning around makes

6755another place to go

nasty century! whose

enlightenment

fills the air with smoke,

darkens the day

My Structure Is, Like the

6760My structure is, like the

bug’s, external:

rubbing up against others, I

acquire form: mingling

my speech with that of others,

6765I annex scaffolding:

like a man in a well, I kick

one wall, brace my back

against the other, to work my way up:

inside, I am too soft to point

6770a piling, my hard walls

wet sheets on a line:

Phyllis and John

have gone off

for a few days,

6775which they need, I suspect,

and I am,

alas, alone:

(terror, my pet lion)

the catkins

6780(small lions)

hard-sharp have

lengthened fluffy-long and waggly:

it’s better to be tough

and free than

6785to bawl and chain

I notice on my

walks that when

I move everything

moves!—

6790so much seeming

to the one motion!

pollen burn

had a voice and

couldn’t place it

6795my neighbor’s dog (big shaggy

black&white) died late last

fall in cold’s fringe

and was buried in a

small clearing in the hedge:

6800this spring

I’ve expected the ground

to spew, corruption

work up,

but the mound has given

6805notice neither outward nor inward:

there’s a slope-lawn down by

the brook whereon a young

birch frilly in early-girlish

leaf seems to have been caught

6810raining, catkins icicle long and thick:

girlish or boyish, in case one

is one and the other, other:

up the street a bit, a man

has set out two birch, one

6815three-trunked and the other four-

sometimes I twist out a roll

of nearly-dry white snot and it

unwinds some in my fingers

so disgusting

6820star stump stone stare stub stem stob

post oak

white oak

ghost oak

so much works flawed

6825it makes you think

perfection not one of

nature’s hangups: the

crow gets by with a feather-gap

or so in his wing,

6830the robin is full of worms, and

I have teeth missing trailertrucks

ride through: still, nature

doesn’t lose count: it puts

away

6835everything it brings to life—

to perfection:

You Think of the Sun That It

You think of the sun that it

burns to burn

and that the soul for its own

6840brightness burns

but the sun burns right to

the brim of necessity,

its floes dipping and

plunging to averaged effect,

6845sun spots, flares, in-feed

of interstellar trash, outflow of

radiance through whatever

cloth of radiance, an

historical burn, one-way,

6850out with surrounding

accidence wide open, stray

chunk pulled in, suns

driving to meet at a fast

sharp point, so many necessities,

6855so many sides

that the sun cannot burn for

a reason for any reason but

to burn

as the soul burns

6860to show and shed its brightness

being is the summary

of incalculable interpenetrant

necessity

motion

6865itself is the fine

tuning by which the earth

flies neither into space

nor the sun:

however

6870fine and open the adjustments

though

the structures of motion

exceed all strength of steel

woven, stainlessly wound:

6875rock whereon much

is founded will

split but motion

is

polished by millions of years

6880(the foundation

in nothingness, deeply

based, towers highest)

I thought, to water the bees,

hornets, wasps, &c., I would

6885put a bucket under the faucet

outside that leaks so little:

but I thought if I set it flat

I will have a full bucket,

the brim brimming wet all

6890around: so I thought I must

slant the bucket (but not

enough to exclude the drop) and

leave a part of the

brim-arc dry so the things can

6895light: but what, I thought,

will hold a bucket at 45 degrees:

everything hassles me: the truth

is I do not know

how to water wasps: a good

6900try, though, would be the

slightest slant, a mere lean,

to dry off a crescent, a

fine moon; then,

the things could land on the

6905high rim and walk as deep as

need be into the refreshing

flood: intricacy has as many

ins as outs:

(the good part about leaning

6910the bucket is that if the bee

fell in he would gradually

mosey over to the lip-spill

where his legs would catch

rimbottom: then he could loft

6915and shake his wings and

tiptoe to safety)

if people who can think of

nothing to do would

water bees

6920they would find themselves

working with the principles

of the universe, a mind-blowing

and consciousness-raising

experience, I suspect)

6925

short-winged swallows

#

using round nails

6930turkish birds

enslaved turkish birds

ain’t that purty

6935

longing for deconstruction

some other time

6940frameworked

if I could write a poem a

thousand pages long my point

would be established: every line

delightful but all you wd have

6945to do is lift it to discover

its weight and irrelevance!

6950unevenness had begun to

establish itself in my lawn

when I got out the mower

and, for the small, let

a lot of room in from the top

6955(so much for income tax)

sweet clarity

reconciled at

great depth

regular rational

6960discourse is good for

taking care

of highways, pick up the trash,

trim the hedges, oil the

cracks, while the imagination

6965works on giving birth to some

other form of travel

am I law and outlaw, pope and

pensioner, sage and fool,

writer and reader, male and

6970female, am I, sir, a small

town (in microcosm) where

this one and that one is

sometimes mayor, where at

any rate, government

6975concerns all:

it’s five o’clock, brightly

cold and somedeal chilly: I

have just awakened, having,

after cutting the grass and

6980getting sweaty, fallen

asleep, sweat-chilled, in the

big chair: I am hungry: I

do not know whether I will go

downstairs and scramble a

6985couple of eggs, then have a

bite at Neil’s later (where

I’m invited to be with Harold

and others at 7:30 but where,

since I was too nervous to

6990attend the afternoon sessions

of lectures, I may not go) or

go to McDonald’s for a Big

Mac (I think I’ll do that)

and have a bite later at Neil’s

6995or not have anything till I

get to Neil’s—most unlikely

I already came home at 2:30

and fed my city a fresh

banana dunked milky in frosty

7000flakes: I should not be

hungry: but it is cold and

I cut the grass: and Phyllis

and John are not here, and I

feel the need of something it

7005is so bright:

I do not care what anybody

thinks of anything, really:

that is to say, I have not

found the flavor of orange

7010juice diminished or increased

by this or that approach to

Heidegger or Harmonium: I

believe the constituency of

water has remained constant

7015since the Pleiades:

I don’t think that any

attitude I take to spider webs

will faze flies: have you seen

Stanley Fish in the flesh:

7020words sweep around but then

just miss to form their own

world: think what a

caterpillar thinks: he holds

the universe between his

7025horny toes and eats it in

worky swatches!

sublemonade

sublimeade

not only can we not look into

7030the sun but it sweeping out

its light as if eliminates

what it illuminates: that

the center of light

should be blind! well, I

7035must go off hamburgerward:

(delicious)

on full alert

massive layoffs

hurt his chances (a strong

7040case for continuing its

existence)

positive developments

(receptive to such a move)

normalize relations

7045totally fallacious allegation (lie)

death secures us from

death, words slug for our redemption

always a swing and a miss, meanwhile

it’s balls & bacon as usual, conception

7050and decay, laughter and tears,

the explosive, incredible mix

Snow

Snowwons

mons

since we must die,

7055sweet completeness will

not have us wait in attendance

on our bodies

while workers fatten

and disperse and find

7060slick tunnels to

flight and the rich (or poor)

man’s table,

while roots explore the

forehead and settle in the

7065ears, while the burrowing

beetle swims through or

around the eye (like a planet)

while the water rises and

the body log

7070spins, the bottom-gazing

face: how, I mean,

nice that though we know this

we need not witness the

knowing of this

7075life, that can be death

enough, that we need

and know, so that as we

enter into death we slip

out of it

7080like wrapping off the

chocolate:

wooden boxes eventually “give,”

the rain finds a hole and bores

through, milling the bones and mound

7085gravel: on such a day of happenings,

those who love go here and there

four days of clouds, two days

of rain, the temperature

steadily falling, this morning

7090before dawn the rain ran into

deep temperatures that popped

it white and the spruce,

cedar, grass, roofs, and all

tolerable surfaces took on

7095the accumulation of white and

when everybody got up today

he had something to talk

about: from 93 to 30:

some of the snow lingers in

7100the cedar hedges almost at

the freezing mark: it has

changed from white to look

almost like water but there is

still ice enough to hold

7105it in the boughs, so it cannot

fall, held water, islands of

snow:

then there is the presence in

the head, a figure that never

7110speaks, immortal, apparently,

who, even in one’s death, has

nothing to do with what is

taking place and will not credit

its reality, too bemused for

7115assent or concern

grit, flakes, sleet, fluff,

all day the snow snowed in

vain

nothing but green in the

7120grass nothing but leaves

in the trees

It Snowed All Night Snow

It snowed all night snow

like pear-petal snow and has

snowed all

7125morning, skimpy flakes,

solitary, wandering schools:

the clouds, just discernibly

clouds from the general gray,

move on in a brisk

7130wind: the buttercups,

leant over, have surrendered

their sturdy forms to limp

wastrelness: the birds have

vanished into bushes:

7135what has come over you

if a rope were tied between

two posts

there would be most play in

the middle: coming out

7140of the middle, the play

diminishing, one faces

the attached fact, the hard

narrowing and shortening,

the play gone out:

7145who who had

anything else

to be interested

in would be

interested in

7150the weather

we mill in a room where

a conveyor belt now and

then entangles and brings down

one who, mindlessly, is carried out:

7155the others mill

and scramble, touching bottom

lightly, getting high

on the archy:

verse the room’s ventilator

7160light showers soak my shoes

verse writers croak my nerves

hard feelings

you know when

something is wrong

7165how grateful you

have not been

how many

shocks of enlightenment

burn out

7170a tradition!

after I have been

myself enough I will

die and go

on being universe

7175modren friend when dil thou do

reaching from end to end

cripes that my bed were in my arms

and I in my love again

Drip Drip

Drip drip

7180truck it

in our galaxy alone

(billions of others)

extraterrestrial

noncelestial life

7185S P A C E

the reality man has lately

tried to conceive

in which, however,

solid ground,

7190scaffolding

ten billion people

may dance on the

pinhead of the earth’s

center

7195undercut

footings, literally, what is

our footing,

not rock, motion, space—

nothingness!

7200(and the realization,

tho hard,

that that

is the strongest

footing, providing most

7205options, the greatest

range of possibility) how

fortunate that we

did not have it

the way we thought we

7210wanted it:

the primate touching

down lightly on

the ground

now, three million years later,

7215ready to give up the ground

THE GROUND ERA

THE SPACE ERA

the heavens acquire another

side, a landing

7220both feet on the ground

no feet on the ground

there is an animal, louse-like,

but smaller, antennaed, grazing

the winter month of dust on

7225the bathroom windowsill:

I love a plant

I think too much

I bought it

I placed it by my bed

7230I think

I love it too much

a ray of sunlight just (11:44 a.m.)

broke through and hit

across the leaves of

7235my plant whose hunger and

pleasure I feel I think

some sit home and think

about their feelings but

others land elsewhere

7240the land grows peripheral

and less secure

and secure nothingness moves

centerward

my plant!

7245what is it sitting on,

the center of the galaxy,

a composition of centers

of galaxies!

the bedsidetable:

7250drip drip

the sky is drying

hot snow

the sky like water

standing in a rowed field!

7255the furrows of cloud pull

apart and show

the sky filling the ruts

blue and clear

mucousit cannot snoo

7260vomitat forty too

gush

Some Fluffy, Long-Swaggly Catkins

Some fluffy, long-swaggly catkins

have fallen to the ground, heads

swung round in looped resentment

7265or resignation, fashionable cousins

to the earthworm:

the brook has moved into

higher flow, sustained by last night’s

slow-soaker: this morning

7270the sky’s rinsed

blue, the hazy blue of color informing

itself, interrupted here and there

by ranges of white mountains:

if, as appears likely,

7275reality is not a wit solid

but a dream another

head, perhaps, is dreaming,

why, then . . .

what difference does

7280what we think and say make:

have the mountains responded:

is there word from

the sea: has the sky

looped down to question us:

7285broadcast gathers coincidence:

people have

scoffed, perhaps,

because from my

upland upstate shelter I’ve

7290looked out on the universe:

but in time it will appear

mean to have looked out on less:

the grave quits

speculation:

7295feel the astonishment

of buried roominess!

a twinkledom in the deep!

roots

would coil

7300and nest

in the eye

sockets

why but

clapper-like

7305the hard point

of the catkin

unopened sways

a tip of weight

so the fuzzy

7310mechanisms and

gold pavilions

of dispersal can

catch and tangle

with the wind,

7315the ocean whose

currents find

otherness

I think I am sick with a pure

interest in beauty,

7320a joy skinny as a fountain

that erupts

through entanglements

for real loft before gravity

unfurls fall’s umbrella

7325the wind’s rinse over ice-enameled

hill-ridges! how beautiful

all winter, the light flowing

and riding, the dark sharp

lines of hedgerow! too

7330spare, so lean!

after sunrise this morning the sky

cleared and the sun

hit the windows with light,

the indoor plants standing as if

7335in celebration:

and all day has been

beautiful, the redbud blooming,

apple trees blossoming, so

many scents and colors, the

7340brown fingers of spruce

shaking dust, so much and

water trickling in the

ditches, trickling

disconcerted like ridge water

7345I break poetry off

I have not earned very much

I am not worthy of the

energy that winds up

spruce tops and floats off

7350into the air still winding,

also I am denied much,

this beauty, though very

beautiful, is an inconsiderable

feast,

7355a snack enlarged to

astonishment where love

has little meeting

My Father, I Hollow for You

My father, I hollow for you

in the ditches

7360O my father, I say,

and when brook light, mirrored,

worms

against the stone ledges

I think it an unveiling

7365or coming loose, unsheathing

of flies

O apparition, I cry,

you have entered in

and how may you come

7370out again

your teeth will not

root

your eyes cannot

unwrinkle, your handbones

7375may not quiver and stir

O, my father, I cry,

are you returning:

I breathe and see:

it is not you yet it is you

I Knew

7380I knew

if I

went for

a walk

I’d get

7385my feet

wet but

only so

I Cannot Re-wind the Brook

I cannot re-wind the brook,

back it up and make

7390it flow through again ten

times till

it achieves the highest

compression, the concentrated

essential, of being a brook,

7395brookness finally found and

held away from all brooks:

but the brook shoots muddy

with perfect

accuracy the morning after

7400rain and in

a dry season

tinkles clarity, the

truest music birds know:

I never want to throw out

7405the brook because it is

nearly dry or too noisy

so long as it

tells the truth, an

accuracy of all the other

7410dispositions, hills, marshes,

declivities, undergound ways

of the terrain surround, an

instantaneous, just summary

and announcement:

7415art is not nature

but the flow, brook-like, in the mind

is nature

and should it be

superhumanly swollen

7420to art’s grandeurs when the accuracies

(absolute) of nature please

suitably to our context: an

ear of corn too high or heavy

is not worth planting:

7425art too strong or weak

betrays the living man:

poetry that wrestles

down all but a few

has its holding: but

7430the people, where they

turn their attention,

that is humanity:

our chief light

will put out

7435its light by

first putting too

much light out

I should be buying something

I go on paying

7440spells narrow inif all is appearance

on sayings andit is still without

catch the feelingliberty for we must

say the exact air

of this & that mere

7445illusion

gardeners aren’t fairweatherers

for weeds work

the cold, damp, cloudy days

like weeds as

7450much as roses

and you never

lack for liking

Considering the Variety

Considering the variety,

nicety, formal hardness,

7455careful contours of things

(how sight is filled with

the apparency of these) one

wonders about the byways of flow,

not much yelling of change

7460noticeable, dead trees (live

housing—will vines start

to dead trees) standing

hard, sun- and wind-rinsed:

the rumor of flow, one

7465wonders if invisibility

suppresses that, wind, water

carrying on, rearranging,

both clear, sometimes muddy,

dusty, leaf-shown: and

7470underground, a stirring,

melting:

is flux invisible to be

kept out of sight

or to emphasize the made:

7475would designed

finery lose its strut and hard

joyousness if it

lost majority: still, not an item,

not even the stones, has not been often

7480milled away and away, if come

back in a stone or divided

participating in many stones:

(the time at the heart of

stones is no greater, but purer,

7485than that of the wearing surface)

but whatever flow dissolves

flow also brought the

nourishment of, the great

spirits flow through our forms,

7490declaring themselves through us,

the freedom of sequence, the leap

from one to another, the

essential preserved:

but considerable lamentation,

7495though most scenes are quiet,

lamentation of the inexplicable,

lamentation against recalcitrant

fact, that though nothing is lost,

nothing, still the particular

7500is, that self or shape, so

carefully contrived,

crumbled, collapsed, its flow

lost in flow:

in this contemplation not a

7505wall, board, or splinter

yields: the alternatives,

side to side, are blank:

here, with breakdown,

gaiety, contrivance, and

7510immortality are sustained:

earth turns the bitter, sour,

known

to the bright sweets

born of the dead:

7515for us, it is a life, a

death, okay, take or leave it:

we

hang steadfastly on:

fresh out

7520kingdoms of light answer

to the fact

Variable Cloudiness Windy

Variable cloudiness windy

and cooler this afternoon

with showers occasionally

7525mixed with snow flurries

•

when I was young the silk

of my mind

hard as a peony head

7530unfurled

and wind bloomed the parachute:

the air-head tugged me

up,

tore my roots loose and drove

7535high, so high

I want to touch down now

and taste the ground

I want to take in

my silk

7540and ask where I am

before it is too late to know

•

big aurora last night, a beam

of light, then an aurora, with

7545a crown!

the end of the world!

every day

in a million eyes

Unisex

7550These days there’s

only one sex and

I am neither one

a blue cloud went over and ice

poured down like hail for a minute

7555this combo day mixed January

and May, sleet and tulips

On Walks I Go a Long Way along

On walks I go a long way along

a side-shallow, hardly a ditch,

dandelions grow right down

7560with grass (separating out the

stones) into the pebbly bottom

and I think if I

were struck down there

it would not be so bad,

7565perhaps; some weed stubs might

dig into my cheek but I understand

that: the stones might rustle

a little, dry, if I stirred: and

grass might half-tickle my nose

7570but I am familiar with grass:

I would not like being

held down long but

after death finished, the grip

would slacken, birds would

7575fly over indifferent as a corpse,

a worm would find a bit

to stir here and there,

the sinews would loosen and

bone spill from bone:

7580I am familiar with dandelions

between my fingers, slugs

cool in the sockets’ dark domes:

today was so beautiful, hazy

blue, cold, cold nectar in

7585the blossoms, the leaves limp

cold: fellow said to me this

morning a man has been known

to mow his lawn and shovel snow

here the same day in May

7590penetrate and get the

ball down low

One Trains Hard for

One trains hard for

inadvertency

the terrain falls away:

7595love like a flowering quince

or crabapple bush nowhere

erupts: local green

mixes with stone becoming

on the periphery

7600casket gray: though this is true

(I care nothing

but to tell what is true)

I am astonished

with gladness

7605to find the brook clear,

the ripples dark-backed,

scriptures of light

working the slate

floor,

7610flat scales opaque with revelation:

a grackle stands in the water

and drinks from between his feet:

I can hardly

forget the sound of the

7615nameplate that squeaks and clangs

on Mrs. Day’s mailbox there

when the wind blows:

I bend over clasping my

knees and the old fellow,

7620friend, frizzled schnauzer

runs out of the driveway

and whines grievous

pleasure

stretching up toward my face:

7625he knows me: we were

friends last fall:

I am myself:

I am so scared and sad I can

hardly bear to speak

7630and yet delight breaks

falls through me

and drives me off laughing

down a dozen brooks:

nothing, not anything, will

7635get over into the high land

and while some may die

as if community-ward

none, not one, will miss

unpeopled oblivion:

7640(except that in not imagining

oblivion one

cannot enter it)

what a dancer the stem of the

whirling down will be!

7645I am free:

I feel free, I think:

my chains have healed into me

as wires heal into trees

the saving world

7650saves by moving,

lost, out of

the real world

which loses all

Will Firinger Be Kissed: Will

Will Firinger be kissed: will

7655Cézanne’s house be itself or

melt into the mountains: will

art have liberty from government

help: how will things

proceed: how will other things

7660proceed: (provide, provide):

modern industrial debris!

acid thunderheads! nitric, sulphuric

rain! salamander

eggs burnt out in farm ponds: Whitman,

7665the midwestern flues, effluents,

Carl, spill crud into the processes,

the lakes, ponds, and ditches of the

northeast and who knows what

the northeast does: Walt,

7670the greatest country

isn’t wide enough to

dilute greed or bridge it:

put a drop of

water in baby’s soreeyes,

7675acid will scour th’infection out:

this billowing age enlightened

with smoke, our eyes open(ed) at last

to airy cinders: if

salamanders die,

7680flies will stifle corporate suites:

what do those little

critters with dust-fine

wings do on a drizzly damp day

like this

7685(hold their noses)home ice

the dance is the narrative of

figuremotions the dancer

inscribes on the memory

the dancer is the dancer (stylus, pen)

7690that is one way how

the other way is never

I’m tired of loving alone

roots go to water

leaves to light

7695pulling the trunk hard

between them

mist-drizzly cold

the clouds brush hillbrush:

the horizon slips

7700through

If Walking through Birdy Trees

If walking through birdy trees

you stop, several still birds will burst

into flight, your motion, conserved,

communicated into lesser, faster speeds:

7705the more familiar

hemisphere, that if having been still you

move and birds or other animals

startle and fly, why I have

not decided what to make

7710of that: make something of it:

think it over and out:

hold the same thread through numerous terrains,

transfigurations, etc.

and see to how many

7715oceanic possibilities a strand

applies:

not to hold onto the strand you have is to seem

dismissive, cutting, as if you

liked not all of reality’s

7720clothes but only

certain patches or

threads, whole cloth, a

cheapening: no matter what

intelligence went into making

7725the maze if

the one thread leads you out

They Say It Snowed

They say it snowed

a few days ago

a bit, one of

7730those rainy cold

days when skinny droplets

flurred into feathery

fluff,

whitening streaks

7735out of the dismal

downward descending

the lords of volition slice

down Hanshaw

in the after midnight (close

7740to dawn, now) hours,

toss beer cans, cigarette

packs, liquor bottles into

the ditch without a thought

for any nature than their

7745own: and specially into the

bushy border by the brook

the alarming discards of

passion fly: the early

day, when passion is spent,

7750pent, or bent

shows the brook circling

silver canfish:

the lords of volition care for

the brooks that burst their

7755breasts, the churning and flowing

there, the spills and stalls,

urgencies not of matter, wind

ripplings

I pick up after them and find

7760the slug has made a home under

the gumwrapper or grass is

holding and hiding a

Schaefer can

filled with the plump, pulp

7765bellies of mosquito larvae:

the lords of volition

caring for their own

natures care for nature

around them; they expend,

7770satisfy, create: I pick

up, tearing their doings out

of time and context, for a

neat ditch with clipped banks

lunch reservoirs on our rears

7775overlookto set our feet

look overon symbolic rock,

solid space—

that is the heave

I am so backwardhow many

7780in my correspondenceshould I

I have to stand in lineput you

to hear from myselfdown for

we(l)come

Fall 1975–Spring 1976

(See the notes for each

section’s date of

composition.)

* Betelgeuse