Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
SACRAMENTAL ACTS
The Love Poems of Kenneth Rexroth
The publication of this book was supported by grants from the Lannan Founda-
tion, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Washington State Arts Com- EXCEPT AS NOTED, these poems were selected from One Hundred
mission, and by contributions from Elliott Bay Book Company, James Laughlin,
Poems from the Japanese (1955); One Hundred Poems from the Chi-
and the members of the Friends of Copper Canyon Press.
nese (1956); The Collected Shorter Poems of Kenneth Rexroth
Library a/Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (1966); Love and the Turning Year: One Hundred More Poems from
XI Introduction
5 A Dialogue of Watching
6 Between Myself and Death
8 Travelers in Erewhon
9 Oaxaca 19 2 5
10 Gradualism
11 Open the Blind
12 She Is Away
14 Mocking Birds
15 Loneliness
16 From The Thin Edge of Your Pride
17 Cinque Terre
18 Camargue
19 Among the Cypresses at the End of the Way of the Cross
20 The Wheel Revolves
22 Organization Men in Affluent Society
23 A Flute Overheard
24 .On What Planet
25 When We with Sappho
30 Runaway
31 Inversely, as the Square of Their Distances Apart
34 Delia Rexroth
35 Still on Water
VII
I
~:
VIII IX
107 An Easy Song INTRODUCTION
108 Coming
109 Pacific Beach By TURNS revolutionary and conservative, simultaneously spiri-
110 Maroon Bells tual and worldly, Asian and Western, Kenneth Rexroth created
111 Aspen Meadows what must surely be regarded as the most original synthesis of
112 Like Queen Christina transcendent metaphysical and erotic verse ever written by an
113 Northampton, 1922-San Francisco, 1939 American poet. A polyglot iconoclast, Rexroth was steeped in the
114 Andree Rexroth world's spiritual and literary traditions, absorbing ideas and phi-
115 Precession of the Equinoxes losophy into his poetry and prose all his life. The author of nearly
116 Confusion sixty books, including translations of poetry from Chinese, Japa-
117 The Lights in the Sky Are Stars nese, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Swedish, and other lan-
125 Confusion of the Senses guages, and two volumes of Classics Revisited among several vol-
126 Quietly umes of essays, he was one of the most original and universal liter-
ary scholars of this century. William Carlos Williams, reviewing
129 About the Editors the philosophical The Phoenix and the Tortoise (1944), remarked,
"Let me say that this is one of the most completely realized argu-
131 Index ments I have encountered in a book of verse in my time:'
But nowhere is Rexroth's verse more fully realized than in his
erotic poetry. While he continuously celebrated matrimonial rela-
tionships, he also refused to pretend that he did not enjoy day-
dreams of "copulating with sixteen year old nymphomaniacs of
my imagination" in a poem probably inspired by a Catullan prece-
dent. No doubt he made use of that ugly, sterile-sounding Latinate
verb precisely because such imaginings are without love. In con-
trast, his love poems, like priestly offerings, raise all that is beautiful
in this world so that it may be seen freshly transformed into the
body of the sacred. In his famous "A Letter to William Carlos
Williams;' another kind of love poem, Rexroth defines the role of
the poet as "one who creates sacramental relationships that last
always:' In his poetry the profane becomes the sacrament, the
x XI
Ii
t
diurnal, mundane moment suddenly made luminous by percep- cisco where he worked as a maritime union organizer and estab-
tions that positively resonate with philosophical and historical lished himself in the intellectual and political community. He
content. Within the parameters of such a deep spirituality, he could would remain in San Francisco for forty years.
remain astonishingly profane at times. He delighted in telling au- In 1940, while Rexroth was working on behalf of Japanese-
diences, "I write poetry to seduce women and to overthrow the Americans who faced, he believed, immanent dangers, and was
capitalist system. In that order." And yet the poetry transcends frustrated at making little headway, his first volume of poetry,
mere human sexuality, eroticism becoming but an emblem of the In What Hour, was published by Macmillan. It received a number
synthesis of self and other, the sacred revealed within the profane of reviews that were at best naive and at worst nasty and conde-
world, the light of eternal love exposed in temporal flesh. scending. Rolphe Humphries called Rexroth "a simple-minded
Born December 22,1905, in South Bend, Indiana, to a German- man with a liking for outdoors:' Horace Gregory dismissed his
American family impoverished by his father's alcoholism and his work as mere "regional verse that reflected the charms of the
mother's poor health, Rexroth was schooled at home and by age Pacific Coast." (Writing in 1984 with a little historical perspective,
four was reading history, arithmetic, astronomy, and natural sci- Robert Hass credited In What Hour with "inventing the culture of
ence under the tutelage of his mother, Delia. He continued until his the West Coast.") To complicate matters, his marriage was falling
mother's death in 1916 and the death of his father in 1918, when he apart and he was called to register with the local draft board de-
moved to Chicago to live with an aunt and enrolled in the Chicago spite being almost thirty-five. Eventually, he registered as a consci-
Art Institute at age thirteen. During his years in Chicago, his self- entious objector.
education continued, often aided by the company of musicians, In October, 1940, Andree Rexroth, the poet's wife of thirteen
artists, anarchists, Wobblies, communists, and gangsters. years, lost her lifelong struggle with an inherited brain disease with
Several years later he moved to Greenwich Village with a par- symptoms similar to epilepsy. The poet was crushed. He had met
amour and joined the New School for Social Research before drop- Marie Kass earlier at a nurses' union meeting and he married her
ping out to serve a stint as a postulant in a New York monastery. within the year. Rexroth spent the war years serving as an atten-
At nineteen, he hitchhiked across the country, working as wran- dant in a psychiatric ward in San Francisco, and the Rexroth apart-
gler, fire watch, soda jerk, and at other odd jobs until, in Hoboken, ment became the center for a weekly literary discussion group and
he signed on as mess steward on a steamer traveling to Mexico, a meeting place for anarchists and antiwar protesters, as well as
Buenos Aires, and eventually to Paris, where he met, among others, a secret convalescent center for Japanese-Americans seeking an
Tristan Tzara and the surrealists. escape from internment camps. The poems he would write for
He married a commercial artist from Chicago, Andree Schafer, Andree would immortalize his sense of love lost without reference
in 1927, and the impoverished young couple hitchhiked to Seattle to the collapse of their relationship at the end of her life. No doubt
for their honeymoon, then on down the West Coast to San Fran- the broken marriage intensified his sense ofloss as he remembered
XII XIII
moments of sublime harmony with her. The primary influence be- introducing the poets Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Michael Mc-
hind these elegies is Yuan Chen, Tang Dynasty poet and friend of Clure, Philip Lamantia, and Allen Ginsberg. The small audience
Po Chu-i revered especially for several elegies following the death included a noisy, excited Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Gregory
of his wife. Rexroth had gone to school on Arthur Waley's and Corso, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Rexroth, dressed in a second-
other translations of Asian classics in the thirties, after Witter hand suit, stepped up to a grape crate in front of the audience and
Bynner had introduced him to the great Tu Fu in the twenties. It declared, "This is a lectern for a midget who is going to recite the
was also during the war years that he began translating The Greek Iliad in haiku form." Ginsberg recited his new poem, "Howl:' while
Anthology, working first from a bilingual edition to refresh the Kerouac beat out rhythms on a winejug. Three years later, Kerouac
little ancient Greek he had learned as a child. would immortalize the evening in his The Dharma Bums.
His marriage to Marie ended in 1948, and Rexroth threw him- Rexroth's fallout with the Beat Generation came one evening
self into his work on Pacifica Radio and at the Poetry Center he'd not long after the Six Gallery reading when a rude, drunken Ker-
helped found (with Ruth Witt-Diamant) at San Francisco State ouac arrived hours late for a dinner at Rexroth's home, and with
University. He was a regular contributor to The Nation, the San Ginsberg, Snyder, and Whalen in tow, demanded more booze.
Francisco Chronicle, Saturday Review, and other journals, includ- Rexroth pitched a fit. Ginsberg announced his superiority over
ing the New York Times. Rexroth as a poet, and the evening came to an abrupt halt with the
In 1949, during a trip to Europe, Rexroth was joined by Marthe departing Kerouac yelling, "Dirty German!" over and over outside
Larsen, whom he married in Aix-en-Provence despite still being and at the top of his lungs. Several years later, Time magazine, in
married to Marie. They returned, Marthe pregnant, in December, an article on the San Francisco Renaissance, would call Rexroth
and in five years the couple had two daughters, Mary and "father of the Beats;' to which he replied, "An entomologist is not
Katherine. Marthe and their daughters inspired some of the most abug!"
remarkable love poetry in our language. Marie remained close to By 1956, Marthe was worn out with her endless chores - serving
the family, a lifelong friend and godmother to both daughters. Her as primary source of household income, secretary, co-translator,
divorce from the poet was not filed until 1955. correspondent, chief servant and supply sergeant for a demanding
By the mid-fifties, Rexroth had become the most prominent poet. She inet and fell in love with the poet Robert Creeley, and
figure in what would later be known as the San Francisco Renais- made no effort to conceal her feelings. Rexroth fell into fits of de-
sance, presiding over the most famous poetry reading of this cen- pression, rage, and paranoia. He accused Ginsberg (wrongly) of
tury, a reading proposed by a painter, Wally Hedrick, to be held at promoting Creeley's affair with Marthe, and fretted over imaginary
the Six Gallery, a tiny former auto-repair shop on Fillmore Street. plots. He wrote of this time in "Marthe Away:' later published as
Rexroth was master of ceremonies the night of October 13, 1955, "She Is Away:'
XIV xv
For one heartbeat the on an,,Amy Lowell Poetry Fellowship, visiting Italy in 1959. But
Heart was free and moved itself. 0 love, his literary successes did nothing to ease tensions in the family,
I who am lost and damned with words, and in 1961, Marthe left and filed for divorce. Rexroth learned to
Whose words are a brlsiness and an art, live alone, but his wild emotional ride continued as he alter-
I have no words. These words, this poem, this nately disparaged Marthe and wrote her impassioned love let-
Is all confusion and ignorance. ters. When New Directions planned to publish his "new and se-
lected poems:' Natural Numbers, in 1963, he removed Marthe's
When Marthe left, he begged her to return, promising to under- name from the poems he had written for her.
take therapy and make substantial changes in the way they lived. Carol Tinker became Rexroth's partner and assistant, much
But it was too late. Marie and Rexroth's dear friend James Laughlin, happier in such a role than Marthe had ever been, and the poet
publisher of New Directions, assuaged him as best they could enjoyed growing popularity. Several small awards made it pos-
while the furies overcame him. In October of 1956, Poetry maga- sible for Rexroth, Carol, and his daughter Mary to travel around
zine published his "Seven Poems for Marthe, My Wife." Rexroth's much of the world in 1967, ending their journey with a visit to
condition deteriorated so much that Marthe returned, fearing he Gary Snyder who was then living in Kyoto.
might be suicidal. Marie and Laughlin again provided some much- Offered a year-to-year teaching job at the University of Cali-
needed financial aid. fornia in Santa Barbara beginning in 1968, Rexroth, wanting a
Misdirected rages brought an end to several of Rexroth's friend- little financial security for the first time in his life, accepted, and
ships during those years. The only periods of calm seem to have with Carol Tinker left San Francisco. In a notebook he kept dur-
come while he was writing or when he was with his daughters, ing the first days in Santa Barbara, he noted, "I lived forty years
or in the company of his few intimate friends. In the poems he in San Francisco and haven't a real friend to show for it." And yet
achieved a calmness of heart and mind, a sense of grace his daily he had performed with some of the best jazz musicians in the
life did not contain. He campaigned tirelessly on behalf of the world and written with greater and broader knowledge and with
poetry of Denise Levertov, Snyder, Whalen, Lamantia and others, more diversity than any poet of his generation. He had been a
despite his often stormy relationships with the poets themselves. major contributor to leading literary journals and brought
During a month-long journey to New York, Rexroth received a poetry to the airwaves.
letter from Marthe begging him not to return. He had received a He bought a house in Montecito and had his huge library
$1,000 Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and he shipped down the coast. He was enormously popular with stu-
was writing for Esquire and other journals, leading Marthe to be- dents, especially when he disparaged "the fog factory" of the
lieve that perhaps an amicable separation could be made. It was English Department, and announced that too many university
not to be. The following year the family set off for Aix-en -Provence students at "Surfboard Tech" were "either stoned or illiterate or
XVI XVII
both." His outbursts were funny and enlightening, but they also often troubled, no doubt a significant part of that difficulty was
made enemies. The university "pink-slipped" him in 1973, saying the result of the poet's attraction to strong, independent-minded
he was too old to teach any longer. women.
He settled into his relationship with Carol Tinker. Theirs was In any case, he enjoyed his life, playing the aging enfant terrible
more a partnership of souls than a conventional husband-and- at poetry readings, performing with koto and shakuhachi accom-
wife relationship, but when he received a Fulbright Fellowship to paniment. Although he was sometimes indefensibly difficult and
visit Japan in 1974, he thought it best that they be legally married, often turbulent, he exhibited all his life a profound devotion to the
and so they were. way of poetry, and was equally capable of almost boundless gener-
His last years were his happiest. Despite his falling out with osity. His love poems realize a sense of completion, an abiding
Ginsberg, Snyder, Duncan, and others, he continued to champion sense of unity. If they are idealized in comparison to his daily life,
their poetry. In many ways, he had become "feminized" through it makes no difference. The poetry remains.
translating the great Sung Dynasty poet Li Ch'ing-chao (working In December, 1980, Rexroth suffered a heart attack and was
with the scholar Ling Chung) and an anthology of Chinese women bedridden for several months, during which time he worked on a
poets, The Orchid Boat. He invented Marichiko, writing a volume festschrift honoring James Laughlin, observing, "I wouldn't have
of poems in the voice of "a young Japanese woman poet:' and had a career without Laughlin, and I look on [him] as my best
translated classical and modern Japanese women poets. His biog- friend." The following spring, Rexroth suffered a stroke, forcing his
rapher, Linda Hamalian, suggests, "Translating the work of women wife to rush him to Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. Late that
poets from China and Japan reveals a transformation ofboth heart summer, he suffered a second (and much more severe) stroke, that
and mind." left him virtually unable to speak. He required round-the-clock
Another Rexroth scholar, Morgan Gibson, has written exten- nursing that Medicare and Blue Cross would not cover, and in Sep-
sively in two books about the deepening influence of Shingon tember, his "best friend" Laughlin stepped in once again, providing
Buddhism late in the poet's life. In Revolutionary Rexroth (Archon funds for Rexroth to be cared for at home. The last six months of
Books, 1986), he writes of Rexroth's conviction that "poetry origi- his life were plagued by a worn-out body giving in to the ravages of
nates in personal vision (communion with others) [sic], takes time - congestive heart failure, an inoperative hernia, kidney fail-
form in the direct communication of living speech, person-to- ure, yet another stroke, and even periods of paralysis. But he was
person, and functions sacramentally in community." Rexroth him- fond of his young nurse and during times when his memory for
self had said that his spiritual aim "was to move from abandon, words functioned, he would scrawl "Call Carol:' or "I'm hungry:'
to erotic mysticism, from erotic mysticism to the ethical mysticism on his small blackboard.
of sacramental marriage, thence to the realization of the ethical He died June 6,1982, of a massive heart attack that blew out the
mysticism of universal responsibility." If his domestic life was fuse of the electrocardiogram machine that was monitoring him.
XVIII XIX
He was buried in Santa Barbara in a simple grave on a hill over- Written from the haunted and celebrated depths of a life lived to
looking the Pacific Ocean. His epitaph is a poem from The Silver the fullest, Rexroth's love poetry transcends his personal suffering,
Swan (Copper Canyon Press, 1976): realizing an ascendant universalization of experience.
It is sad to note that Kenneth Rexroth sometimes bit the very
As the full moon rises hands that might have fed him, but his commitment to truth and
The swan sings a revolutionary lifestyle far out-weighed his concerns for self-
In sleep promotion. His anti-establishmentarianism cost him dearly: his
On the lake of the mind work is almost never included in major anthologies, and yet the
nature of so much of the work itself bears the undeniable and in-
It is remarkable that a life as deeply troubled as that of Kenneth delible handprint of genius - not only in the poetry, but also in his
Rexroth should produce erotic poetry of such profound transcen- essays. In his recent study of Rexroth's shorter poetry, The Holiness
dence. It is remarkable, but not that extraordinary considering of the Real (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996), Donald
how often real genius is accompanied by personal suffering and/ or Gutierrez points out that Rexroth was stigmatized by advocating
insufferable behavior. Whether writing of idealized love, of love on behalf of the Beats and poets like Robert Duncan, and that
lost, of a father's boundless love, or of the deepest spiritual engage- Rexroth has been further victimized by being found "politically
ment, he achieved again and again in his poetry exactly what he incorrect" (once again) by the present status quo. That he spent a
most longed for but could not find in his life: a passionate but lifetime encouraging literacy in general and poetry in p'articular
utterly calm self-transcendent state of infinite connectedness. In and that he was uniquely generous to so many poets, both elder
the love poems, even the longing resonates with classical over- and younger, is beyond dispute. He did more to encourage publi-
tones, the poet's staggering erudition informing poems so trans- cation of writing by young women than any other prominent
lucent, so transparent as to be confused with simple-mindedness white male of the sixties or seventies, and he established a scholar-
by a Eurocentric critic. ship for young women writers in. Japan. And equally beyond dis-
In poetry, Kenneth Rexroth, orphan polyglot iconoclast and pute are the fact and beauty of so much of his work. It remains to
autodidact, great man of letters with virtually total recall, agit- be explor~d, like a great snowcapped peak rising at the edge of the
propagandist and anti-establishment activist, ecologist and Pacific.
scholar, could finally transform desire into something larger than
either or both of the lovers themselves. He achieved something SAM HAMILL ELAINE LAURA KLEINER
almost impossibly simple - a glimpse of sacramental grace within PORT TOWNSEND TERRE HAUTE
our temporal flesh in a fragile, perishing world. "Erotic love;' he
was fond of saying, "is one of the highest forms of contemplation:'
xx XXI
SACRAMENTAL ACTS
I
A DIALOGUE OF WATCHING
5
BETWEEN MYSELF AND DEATH I like to think of you naked.
I put your naked body
Between myself alone and death.
to Jimmy Blanton's Music: If I go into my brain
SOPHISTICATED LADY, BODY AND SOUL And set fire to your sweet nipples,
To the tendons beneath your knees,
A fervor parches you sometimes, I can see far before me.
And you hunch over it, silent, It is empty there where I look,
Cruel, and timid; and sometimes But at least it is lighted.
You are frightened with wantonness,
And give me your desperation. I know how your shoulders glisten,
Mostly we lurk in our coverts, How your face sinks into trance,
Protecting our spleens, pretending And your eyes like a sleepwalker's,
That our bandages are our wounds. And your lips of a woman
But sometimes the wheel of change stops; Cruel to herself.
Illusion vanishes in peace; I like to
And suddenly pride lights your flesh - Think of you clothed, your body
Lucid as diamond, wise as pearl - Shut to the world and self-contained,
And your face, remote, absolute, Its wonderful arrogance
Perfect and final like a beast's. That makes all women envy you.
It is wonderful to watch you, I can remember every dress,
A living woman in a room Each more proud then a naked nun.
Full of frantic, sterile people, When I go to sleep my eyes
And think of your arching buttocks Close in a mesh of memory.
Under your velvet evening dress, Its cloud of intimate odor
And the beautiful fire spreading Dreams instead of myself.
From your sex, burning flesh and bone,
The unbelievably complex
Tissues of your brain all alive
Under your coiling, splendid hair.
6 7
TRAVELERS IN EREWHON OAXACA 1925
8 9
GRADUALISM OPEN THE BLIND
10 11
SHE IS AWAY Of love, betrayal, mistrust, or lie.
And later you turned again and clutched
My hand and pressed it to your body.
All night I lay awake beside you, Now I know surely and forever,
Leaning on my elbow, watching your However much I have blotted our
Sleeping face, that face whose purity Waking love, its memory is still
Never ceases to astonish me. There. And I know the web, the net,
I could not sleep. But I did not want The blind and crippled bird. For then, for
Sleep nor miss it. Against my body, One brief instant it was not blind, nor
Your body lay like a warm soft star. Trapped, nor crippled. For one heartbeat the
How many nights I have waked and watched Heart was free and moved itself. 0 love,
You, in how many places. Who knows? I who am lost and damned with words,
This night might be the last one of all. Whose words are a business and an art,
As on so many nights, once more I I have no words. These words, this poem, this
Drank from your sleeping flesh the deep still Is all confusion and ignorance.
Communion I am not always strong But I know that coached by your sweet heart,
Enough to take from you waking, the peace of love. My heart beat one free beat and sent
Foggy lights moved over the ceiling Through all my flesh the blood of truth.
Of our room, so like the rooms of France
And Italy, rooms of honeymoon,
And gave your face an ever-changing
Speech, the secret communication
Of untellable love. I knew then,
As your secret spoke, my secret self,
The blind bird, hardly visible in
An endless web of lies. And I knew
The web too, its every knot and strand,
The hidden crippled bird, the terrible web.
Towards the end of night, as trucks rumbled
In the streets, you stirred, cuddled to me,
And spoke my name. Your voice was the voice
Of a girl who had never known loss
12 13
MOCKING BIRDS LONELINESS
14 15
from THE THIN EDGE OF YOUR PRIDE CINQUE TERRE
16 17
CAMARGUE AMONG THE CYPRESSES AT THE END
OF THE WAY OF THE CROSS
18 19
THE WHEEL REVOLVES At the edge of the meadow.
Snows of a thousand winters
Melt in the sun of one summer.
You were a girl of satin and gauze Wild cyclamen bloom by the stream.
Now you are my mountain and waterfall companion. Trout veer in the transparent current.
i Long ago I read those lines of Po Chu-i In the evening marmots bark in the rocks.
, Ii
Written in his middle age. The Scorpion curls over the glimmering ice field.
: I'I
Young as I was they touched me.
I never thought in my own middle age A white-crowned night sparrow sings as the moon sets.
I would have a beautiful young dancer Thunder growls far off.
To wander with me by falling crystal waters, Our campfire is a single light
Among mountains of snow and granite, Amongst a hundred peaks and waterfalls.
Least of all that unlike Po's girl The manifold voices of falling water
She would be my very daughter. Talk all night.
Wrapped in your down bag
The earth turns towards the sun. Starlight on your cheeks and eyelids
Summer comes to the mountains. Your breath comes and goes
Blue grouse drum in the red fir woods In a tiny cloud in the frosty night.
All the bright long days. Ten thousand birds sing in the sunrise.
You put blue jay and flicker feathers Ten thousand years revolve without change.
In your hair. All this will never be again.
Two and two violet green swallows
Play over the lake.
The blue birds have come back
To nest on the little island.
The swallows sip water on the wing
And play at love and dodge and swoop
Just like the swallows that swirl
Under and over the Ponte Vecchio.
Light rain crosses the lake
Hissing faintly. After the rain
There are giant puffballs with tortoise shell backs
20 21
ORGANIZATION MEN IN AFFLUENT SOCIETY A FLUTE OVERHEARD
IIi
:1
II
II
22 23
ON WHAT PLANET WHEN WE WITH SAPPHO
Uniformly over the whole countryside " ... about the cool water
The warm air flows imperceptibly seaward; the wind sounds through sprays
The autumn haze drifts in deep bands of apple, and from the quivering leaves
Over the pale water; slumber pours down ... "
White egrets stand in the blue marshes;
Tamalpais, Diablo, St. Helena We lie here in the bee filled, ruinous
Float in the air. Orchard of a decayed New England farm,
Climbing on the cliffs of Hunter's Hill Summer in our hair, and the smell
We look out over fifty miles of sinuous Of summer in our twined bodies,
Interpenetration of mountains and sea. Summer in our mouths, and summer
In the luminous, fragmentary words
Leading up a twisted chimney, Of this dead Greek woman.
Just as my eyes rise to the level Stop reading. Lean back. Give me your mouth.
Of a small cave, two white owls Your grace is as beautiful as a sleep.
III Fly out, silent, close to my face. You move against me like a wave
They hover, confused in the sunlight, That moves in sleep.
And disappear into the recesses of the cliff. Your body spreads across my brain
Iii
III Like a bird-filled summer;
III
All day I have been watching a new climber, Not like a body, not like a separate thing,
III
ijl A young girl with ash blond hair But like a nimbus that hovers
III
Iii And gentle confident eyes. Over every other thing in all the world.
III
III Lean back. You are beautiful,
Iii She climbs slowly, precisely,
III With unwasted grace. As beautiful as the folding
III
24 25
Flashes in the wave crest I will kiss your sweet legs and feet
Or stains the murex shell. As they lie half buried in the tangle
All about us the old farm subsides Of rank-scented midsummer flowers.
Into the honey-bearing chaos of high summer. Take off your clothes. I will press
In those far islands the temples Your summer honeyed flesh into the hot
Have fallen away, and the marble Soil, into the crushed, acrid herbage
Is the color of wild honey. Of midsummer. Let your body sink
There is nothing left of the gardens Like honey through the hot
That were once about them, of the fat Granular fingers of summer.
Turf marked with cloven hooves.
Only the sea grass struggles Rest. Wait. We have enough for a while.
Over the crumbled stone, Kiss me with your mouth
Over the splintered steps, Wet and ragged, your mouth that tastes
Only the blue and yellow Of my own flesh. Read to me again
Of the sea, and the cliffs The twisting music of that language
Red in the distance across the bay. That is of all others, itself a work of art.
Lean back. Read again those isolate, poignant words
Her memory has passed to our lips now. Saved by ancient grammarians
Our kisses fall through summer's chaos To illustrate the conjugations
In our own breasts and thighs. And declensions of the more ancient dead.
Lean back in the curve of my body,
Gold colossal domes of cumulus cloud Press your bruised shoulders against
Lift over the undulant, sibilant forest. The damp hair of my body.
The air presses against the earth. Kiss me again. Think, sweet linguist,
Thunder breaks over the mountains. In this world the ablative is impossible.
Far off, over the Adirondacks, No other one will help us here.
Lightning quivers, almost invisible We must help ourselves to each other.
In the bright sky, violet against The wind walks slowly away from the storm;
The grey, deep shadows of the bellied clouds. Veers on the wooded crests; sounds
The sweet virile hair of thunderstorms In the valleys. Here we are isolate,
Brushes over the swelling horizon. One with the other; and beyond
Take off your shoes and stockings. This orchard lies isolation,
26 27
The isolation of all the world. My eyelids sink toward sleep in the hot
Never let anything intrude Autumn of your uncoiled hair.
On the isolation of this day, Your body moves in my arms
These words, isolate on dead tongues, On the v.erge of sleep;
This orchard, hidden from fact and history, And it is as though I held
These shadows, blended in the summer light, In my arms the bird filled
Together isolate beyond the world's reciprocity. Evening sky of summer.
28 29
RUNAWAY INVERSELY, AS THE SQUARE OF
THEIR DISTANCES APART
30
II 31
i
I
i
I
i1
As one doubled thing, and move our limbs And behind them the pure immense
As deft implements of one fused lust, April sky and a white frayed cloud,
Are mysteries in each other's arms. And in and behind everything,
The inescapable vacant
* Distance of loneliness.
32 33
DELIA REXROTH STILL ON WATER
34 35
INCARNATION Your breasts' very touch and smell;
The sweet secret odor of sex.
Forever the thought of you,
Climbing alone all day long And the splendor of the iris,
In the blazing waste of spring snow, The crinkled iris petal,
I came down with the sunset's edge The gold hairs powdered with pollen,
To the highest meadow, green And the obscure cantata
In the cold mist of waterfalls, Of the tangled water, and the
To a cobweb of water Burning, impassive snow peaks,
Woven with innumerable Are knotted together here.
Bright flowers of wild iris; This moment of fact and vision
And saw far down our fire's smoke Seizes immortality,
Rising between the canyon walls, Becomes the person of this place.
A human thing in the empty mountains. The responsibility
And as I stood on the stones Oflove realized and beauty
In the midst of whirling water, Seen burns in a burning angel
The whirling iris perfume Real beyond flower or stone.
Caught me in a vision of you
More real than reality:
Fire in the deep curves of your hair:
Your hips whirled in a tango,
Out and back in dim scented light;
Your cheeks snow-flushed, the zithers
Ringing, all the crowded ski lodge
Dancing and singing; your arms
White in the brown autumn water,
Swimming through the fallen leaves,
Making a fluctuant cobweb
Of light on the sycamores;
Your thigh's exact curve, the fine gauze
Slipping through my hands, and you
Tense on the verge of abandon;
37
LUTE MUSIC
FLOATING
The earth will be going on a long time Our canoe idles in the idling current
Before it finally freezes;
Of the tree and vine and rush enclosed
Men will be on it; they will take names,
Backwater of a torpid midwestern stream;
Give their deeds reasons.
Revolves slowly, and lodges in the glutted
We will be here only
Waterlilies. We are tired of paddling.
As chemical constituents -
All afternoon we have climbed the weak current,
A small franchise indeed.
Up dim meanders, through woods and pastures,
Right now we have lives,
Past muddy fords where the strong smell of cattle
Corpuscles, ambitions, caresses,
Lay thick across the water; singing the songs
Like everybody had once -
Of perfect, habitual motion; ski songs,
All the bright neige d'antan people,
Nightherding songs, songs of the capstan walk,
"Blithe Helen, white lope, and the rest;'
The levee, and the roll of the voyageurs.
All the uneasy, remembered dead.
Tired of motion, of the rhythms of motion,
Tired of the sweet play of our interwoven strength,
Here at the year's end, at the feast
We lie in each other's arms and let the palps
Of birth, let us bring to each other
Of waterlily leaf and petal hold back
The gifts brought once west through deserts _
All motion in the heat thickened, drowsing air.
The precious metal of our mingled hair,
Sing to me softly, Westron Wynde, Ah the Syghes,
The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs, Mon coeur se recommend it vous, Phoebi Claro;
The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses _
Sing the wandering erotic melodies
Let us celebrate the daily
Of men and women gone seven hundred years,
Recurrent nativity of love,
Softly, your mouth close to my cheek.
The endless epiphany of our fluent selves,
Let our thighs lie entangled on the cushions,
While the earth rolls away under us
Let your breasts in their thin cover
Into unknown snows and summers,
Hang pendant against my naked arms and throat;
Into untraveled spaces of the stars.
Let your odorous hair fall across our eyes;
Kiss me with those subtle, melodic lips.
As I undress you, your pupils are black, wet,
Immense, and your skin ivory and humid.
39
Move softly, move hardly at all, part your thighs, ANDREE REXROTH
Take me slowly while our gnawing lips
Fumble against the humming blood in our throats.
Move softly, do not move at all, but hold me, Purple and green, blue and white,
Deep, still, deep within you, while time slides away, The Oregon river mouths
As this river slides beyond this lily bed, Slide into thick smoky darkness
And the thieving moments fuse and disappear As the turning cup of day
In our mortal, timeless flesh. Slips from the whirling hemisphere.
And all that white long beach gleams
In white twilight as the lights
Come on in the lonely hamlets;
And voices of men emerge;
And dogs barking, as the wind stills.
Those August evenings are
Sixteen years old tonight and I
Am sixteen years older too -
Lonely, caught in the midst oflife,
In the chaos of the world;
And all the years that we were young
Are gone, and every atom
Of your learned and disordered
Flesh is utterly consumed.
40 41
LYELL'S HYPOTHESIS AGAIN Pauses in this immortality,
As passionate, as apathetic,
As the lava flow that burned here once;
An Attempt to Explain the Former And stopped here; and said, "This far
Changes of the Earth's Surface by And no further:' And spoke thereafter
Causes Now in Operation In the simple diction of stone.
The mountain road ends here, Naked in the warm April air,
Broken away in the chasm where We lie under the redwoods,
The bridge washed out years ago. In the sunny lee of a cliff.
The first scarlet larkspur glitters As you kneel above me I see
In the first patch of April Tiny red marks on your flanks
Morning sunlight. The engorged creek Like bites, where the redwood cones
Roars and rustles like a military Have pressed into your flesh.
Ball. Here by the waterfall, You can find just the same marks
Insuperable life, flushed In the lignite in the cliff
With the equinox, sentient Over our heads. Sequoia
And sentimental, falls away Langsdorfii before the ice,
To the sea and death. The tissue And sempervirens afterwards,
Of sympathy and agony There is little difference,
That binds the flesh in its Nessus' shirt; Except for all those years.
The clotted cobweb of unself
And self; sheds itself and flecks Here in the sweet, moribund
The sun's bed with darts of blossom Fetor of spring flowers, washed,
Like flagellant blood above Flotsam and jetsam together,
The water bursting in the vibrant Cool and naked together,
Air. This ego, bound by personal Under this tree for a moment,
Tragedy and the vast We have escaped the bitterness
Impersonal vindictiveness Oflove, and love lost, and love
Of the ruined and ruining world, Betrayed. And what might have been,
42 43
And what might be, fall equally YUGAO
Away with what is, and leave
Only these ideograms
Printed on the immortal Tonight is clearer and colder.
Hydrocarbons of flesh and stone. The new half-moon slides through clouds.
The air is full of the poignant
Odor of frost drying earth.
Late night, the stillness grows more still.
At last, nothing moves, no sound,
Even the shunting freight trains
In the distance stop.
I go out
Into the ominous dark,
Into the garden crowded with
Invisible, impalpable
Movement. The air is breathless
Under the trees. High overhead,
The wind plunges with the moon
Through breaking and driving clouds.
I seem to stand in the midst
Of an incomprehensible
Tragedy; as though a world
Doubled against this were tearing
Through the thin shell of night;
As though something earthbound with its
Own glamorous violence
Struggled beside me in the dark.
On such nights as this the young
Warriors of old time take form
In the Noh plays; and, it may be,
Some distraught, imagined girl,
Amalfi's duchess, Electra,
44 45
I ~-
Ii
Struggles like an ice bound swan, ANDREE REXROTH
Out of the imagination,
Toward a body, l?eside me,
Beyond the corner of the eye; Mt. Tamalpais
Or, may be, some old jealousy
Or hate I have forgotten The years have gone. It is spring
Still seeks flesh to walk in life. Again. Mars and Saturn will
If so, I cannot see her. Soon come on, low in the West,
I can call, plain to the mind's eye, In the dusk. Now the evening
Your bright sleeping head, nested Sunlight makes hazy girders
In its pillow, and your face, sure Over Steep Ravine above
And peaceful as your moving The waterfalls. The winter
Breath. You, wandering in your dream, Birds from Oregon, robins
Watched over by your love for me. And varied thrushes, feast on
Ripe toyon and madrone
Berries. The robins sing as
The dense light falls.
Your ashes
Were scattered in this place. Here
I wrote you a farewell poem,
And long ago another,
A poem of peace and love,
Of the lassitude of a long
Spring evening in youth. Now
It is almost ten years since
You came here to stay. Once more,
The pussy willows that come
After the New Year in this
Outlandish land are blooming.
There are deer and raccoon tracks
In the same places. A few
New sand bars and cobble beds
47
Have been left where erosion Here you did your best paintings-
Has gnawed deep into the hills. Innocent, wondering landscapes.
The rounds of life are narrow. Very few of them are left
War and peace have passed like ghosts. Anywhere. You destroyed them
The human race sinks towards In the terrible trouble
Oblivion. A bittern Of your long sickness. Eighteen years
Calls from the same rushes where Have passed since that autumn.
You heard one on our first year There was no trail here then.
In the West; and where I heard Only a few people knew
One again in the year How to enter this canyon.
Of your death. We were all alone, twenty
Miles from anybody;
Kings River Canyon A young husband and wife,
Closed in and wrapped about
My sorrow is so wide In the quiet autumn,
I cannot see across it; In the sound of quiet water,
And so deep I shall never In the turning and falling leaves,
Reach the bottom of it. In the wavering of innumerable
The moon sinks through deep haze, Bats from the caves, dipping
As though the Kings River Canyon Over the odorous pools
Were filled with fine, warm, damp gauze. Where the great trout drowsed in the evenings.
Saturn gleams through the thick light
Like a gold, wet eye; nearby, Eighteen years have been ground
Antares glows faintly, To pieces in the wheels oflife.
Without sparkle. Far overhead, You are dead. With a thousand
Stone shines darkly in the moonlight - Convicts they have blown a highway
Lookout Point, where we lay Through Horseshoe Bend. Youth is gone,
In another full moon, and first That only came once. My hair
Peered down into this canyon. Is turning grey and my body
Here we camped, by still autumnal Heavier. I too move on to death.
Pools, all one warm October. I think of Henry King's stilted
I baked you a bannock birthday cake. But desolated Exequy,
49
MAXIM IAN, ELEGY V
Of Yuan Chen's great poem,
Unbearably pitiful;
Alone by the spring river
More alone than I had ever for Mildred
Imagined I would ever be,
The sky is perfectly clear.
I think of Frieda Lawrence,
Motionless in the moonlight,
Sitting alone in New Mexico,
The redwood forest descends
In the long drought, listening
Three thousand feet to the sea,
For the hiss of the milky Isar,
To the unmoving, silent,
Over the cobbles, in a lost spring.
Thick, white fog bank that stretches
Westward to the horizon.
No sound rises from the sea;
And the forest is soundless.
Here in the open windows,
Watching the night together,
I cannot understand what
You murmur, singing sweetly,
Softly, to yourself, in French.
0, lady, you are learned,
In your hands as they touch me,
In lips that sing obscurely,
In secret, your private songs.
Your face looks white and frozen
In the moonlight, and your eyes
Glitter, rigid and immense.
The illusion of moonlight
Makes you look terror stricken.
And behind you the firelight
Draws black and red frightening
Toppling patterns on the walls.
An airplane crosses, low down,
51
50
And fills the landscape with noise FOR THE CHINESE ACTRESS,
Like an hallucination. GARDENIA CHANG
Alive or dead, the stiff heart,
As the hours slide through moonlight,
Squeezes blood and memory. When Tu Fu was a small boy
The fog climbs up the mountain, He saw Kung Sung as she danced
And leaves only one star in With two swords, and years later
The fogbound wood, like an eye He remembered, and she lived
In a tomb. Without warning In his memory, always
Your voice breaks, and your face Refining his perception,
Streams with tears, and you stagger As meditation on her
Against me. I do not speak, Sure grace had once taught Chang Hsu
But hold you still in my arms. The secret of powerful
Finally you say, "I am not And subtle calligraphy.
Weeping for our own troubles, Now, days later, you are still
But for the general chaos Clear and intact in my mind,
Of the world:' I feel you hurling Your arch, small, transcendent face,
Away, abandoned on Your voice, so pure, light, and dry,
A parachute of ruin. All your body's movement like
A violent shuddering Thought in some more noble brain,
Overcomes me, as though all All your presence vivid as
The women like you who had The swords that whirled about you.
Ever lived, had stepped across my grave. I know I shall remember
You for many, many years.
Your vision in my memory
Will teach and guide my vision,
Like the contemplation of
The deep heart of a jewel.
52 53
ROSA MUNDI From the face of Filippino's
Weary lady, exhausted with
The devotion of her worshipper.
Bright petals of evening Across the face of the Duomo
Shatter, fall, drift over Florence, The Campanile's blue shadow
And flush your cheeks a redder Marks the mathematics of beauty.
Rose and gleam like fiery flakes In San Miniato the gold
In your eyes. Allover Florence Mosaics still glitter through
The swallows whirl between the The smoky gloom. At the end
Tall roofs, under the bridge arches, Of the Way of the Cross, the dense
Spiral in the zenith like larks, Cypress wood, full of lovers,
Sweep low in crying clouds above Shivering with impatience.
The brown river and the white As the dark thickens, two by two
Riverbed. Your moist, quivering They take each other. Nightfall, all
Lips are like the wet scarlet wings The wood is filled with soft moaning,
Of a reborn butterfly who As though it were filled with doves.
Trembles on the rose petal as
Life floods his strange body.
Turn to me. Part your lips. My dear,
Some day we will be dead.
FIRE
54 55
GOLDEN SECTION Up Italy, through France, to life
Always pivoted on this place.
56 57
The brilliant green sea meadows, ONLY YEARS
Under banners of white mist.
The fires of the bivouacs of
Spartacus twinkle in the hills. I come back to the cottage in
Our train comes with the first stars. Santa Monica Canyon where
Venus over the wine-dark sea. Andree and I were poor and
Happy together. Sometimes we
All the way back the train fills Were hungry and stole vegetables
And fills up, and fills again, From the neighbors' gardens.
With girls from the fish canneries, Sometimes we went out and gathered
And girls from the lace factories, Cigarette butts by flashlight.
And girls from the fields, who have been But we went swimming every day,
Working twelve hours for nothing, All year round. We had a dog
Or at the best a few pennies. Called Proclus, a vast yellow
They laugh and sing, all the way Mongrel, and a white cat named
Back to Naples, like broad-bottomed, Cyprian. We had our first
Deep-bosomed angels, wet with sweat. Joint art show, and they began
To publish my poems in Paris.
We worked under the low umbrella
Of the acacia in the dooryard.
Now I get out of the car
And stand before the house in the dusk.
The acacia blossoms powder the walk
With little pills of gold wool.
The odor is drowsy and thick
In the early evening.
The tree has grown twice as high
As the roof. Inside, an old man
And woman sit in the lamplight.
I go back and drive away
To Malibu Beach and sit
59
With a grey-haired childhood friend and THE REFLECTING TREES OF BEING
Watch the full moon rise over the AND NOT BEING
Long rollers wrinkling the dark bay.
TRANSLATIONS
HOMECOMING OF LOVE ON THE
SUMMITS OF THE WIND
- Rafael Alberti
translated from the Spanish Didyme waved her wand at me.
I am utterly enchanted.
The sight of her beauty makes me
Melt like wax before the fire. What
Is the difference if she is black?
So is coal, but alight, it shines like roses.
- Asklepiades
- Asklepiades
66
THE GREAT CANZON Shadow. Time was, we loved once in
The grass, she loving as ever
A woman was, and the high hills
Canzonel Around us. But for sure rivers
Will flow back to the hills before
I have come at last to the short This wood, full of sap and green,
Day and the long shadow when the Ever catch fire again from me
Hills turn white and the grass fades. Still As lovely women do - I who
Longing stays green, stuck in this hard Would be glad to sleep away my
Stone that speaks and hears as if it was Life turned to stone, or live on grass,
A woman. So it was this strange If only I could be where her
Woman stood cold as shadowed snow, Skirts would cast their shadow on me.
Unmoved as stone by the sweet times Now when the shadow of the hills
When the hills turn warm and turn from Is blackest, under beautiful
White to green and are covered with Green, this young woman makes it
Flowers and grass. She, when she goes Vanish away at last, as if
Wreathed in herbs, drives every other She hid a stone in the grass.
Woman from my mind - shimmering
Gold with green - so lovely that love -Dante
Comes to rest in her shadow, she translated from the Italian
Who has caught me fast between
Two hills, faster far than fused stone.
No magic gem has her power.
No herb can heal her blow. I have
Fled through the fields, over the hills,
Trying to escape from such a
Woman, but there is no wall, no
Hill, no green leaf, can ever shade
Me from her light. Time was, I saw
Her dressed all in green, so lovely
She would have made a stone love her
As I do, who love her very
68
MY LOVER WILL SOON BE HERE THE MORNING SUN SHINES
70 71
WHEN WILL I BE HOME? A FAITHFUL WIFE
- Chang Chi
translated from the Chinese
72 73
TO THE TUNE "THE BOAT OF STARS" CREAMY BREASTS
Year after year I have watched Fragrant with powder, moist with perspiration,
My jade mirror. Now my rouge They are the pegs of a jade inlaid harp.
And creams sicken me. One more Aroused by spring, they are soft as cream
Year that he has not come back. Under the fertilizing mist.
My flesh shakes when a letter After my bath my perfumed lover
Comes from South of the River. Holds them and plays with them
I cannot drink wine since he left, And they are cool as peonies and purple grapes.
But the Autumn has drunk up all my tears.
I have lost my mind, far off - Chao Luan-Iuan (Eighth Century?)
In the jungle mists of the South. translated from the Chinese
The gates of heaven are nearer
Than the body of my beloved.
- Li Ch'ing Chao
translated from the Chinese
74 75
MARRIED LOVE TO THE TUNE "SOARING CLOUDS"
77
TO THE TUNE "THE JOY OF PEACE FROM THE PERSIAN (1)
AND BRIGHTNESS"
-Anonymous
translated from the Japanese
80 81
The cicada cries out, The sound of my laughter
Burning with love. Awoke me from the dream
The firefly burns Where we lay together,
With silent love. And I looked around me,
My eyes filled with tears.
-Anonymous
translated from the Japanese -Anonymous
translated from the Japanese
82
I will remember forever When I gathered flowers
How I met you all alone, For my girl
Your dead white face From the top of the plum tree,
Gleaming like foxfire The lower branches
In the rainy midnight. Drenched me with dew.
85
I am so lost Once, far over the breakers,
In the black depths I caught a glimpse
Of the nights of love Of a white bird
That I can no longer tell And fell in love
Dream from reality. With this dream which obsesses me.
My dear, what have you done Only truth can explain your eyes
With our old red kite? That sow stars in the vault of heaven,
Let's fly it again this evening Where the clouds float through a field of tones
As high as we can,
Through the driving sleet (The flowers which are born out of nothing,
Towards the moon in the sky. When your eyes make fate so simple,
And the stars flyaway from the hive
The shore is far away now In the blue-green waiting room of heaven)
Where we were young together once.
The red kite is torn and battered, And explain your rapport with destiny.
But maybe it will still fly.
- Gunnar Ekelof
My dear, come, let's fly it wildly, translated from the Swedish
As far out as we can
With all the cords of the heart
Through the falling sleet
Towards the moon in the sky.
- Saijo Yaso
translated from the Japanese
88
III
GROWING
93
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST A SINGING VOICE
94 95
Lonely moonlit road, or waking ON A FLYLEAF OF Rime - Gaspara Stampa
In a warm murmurous night,
I hear that voice singing that
Common song like an bought in the Libreria Serenissima
Angelic memory. Venice, June 14, 1949
97
from MARY AND THE SEASONS
Spring Rain
99
The profound blackness, full of We climbed through tatters of cloud
The throb and hiss of the rain. To the east ridge and walked through
The dripping, sparkling fir forest.
Autumn Rain In the meadow at the summit
We ate lunch in the pale sun,
Two days ago the sky was Ever so slightly cooler,
Full of mares' tails. Yesterday And watched the same long autumn
Wind came, bringing low cigar- Mares'tails and came back down the
Shaped clouds. At midnight the rain Steep rocks through the soaking ferns.
Began, the first fine, still rain
Of Autumn. Before the rain Clear Autumn
The night was warm, the sky hazy.
We lay in the field and watched This small flat clearing is not
The glowing October stars, Much bigger than a large room
Vega, Deneb, Altair, high, In the steep narrow canyon.
Hercules and the Crown setting, On every side the slender
The Great Nebula distinct Laurel trunks shut us in close.
Through the haze. Every owl High on the southern sidehill
In the world called and made love Patches of sunlight filter
And scolded. Once in a while Through the fir trees. But the sun
We would see one on the sky, Will not come back here until
Cruising, on wings more silent Winter is past. New-fallen
Than silence itself, low over Leaves shine like light on the floor.
The meadow. The air thickened. The air hums with low-flying
The stars grew dim and went out. Insects, too weakened to rise.
The owls stopped crying in the wood. The stream has stopped. Underground,
Then the rain 'came, falling so A trickle seeps from pool to pool.
Gently on the tent we did All the summer birds have gone.
Not notice until a slight Only woodpeckers and jays
Breeze blew it in on our faces. And juncos have stayed behind.
At dawn it was still raining. Soon the rains will start, and then
It cleared as we cooked breakfast. Fine, silent, varied thrushes
100 101
Will come from the dark rain forests By fine bright strands of spun glass,
Of the Northwest, but not yet. The golden floor of October,
We climb to the long west ridge Brilliant under a gauze of light.
That looks out on the ocean
And eat lunch at a high spring
Under the rocks at the top.
Holstein calves cluster around
And watch us impassively.
No wind moves in the dry grass.
The sky and the distant sea,
The yellow hills, stretching away,
Seem seen in a clouded mirror.
Buzzards on the rising air
Float without moving a wing.
Jet bombers play at killing
So high overhead only
Long white scrawls can be seen, the
Graffiti of genocide.
The planes are invisible.
Away from the sun the air
Glitters with millions of glass
Needles, falling from the zenith.
It is as though oxygen
And nitrogen were being
Penetrated and replaced
By some shining chemical.
It is the silk of a swarm
Of ballooning spiders, flashes
Of tinsel and drifting crystal
In the vast rising autumn air.
When we get back everything
Is linked with everything else
102 103
THE AMERICAN CENTURY THIS NIGHT ONLY
105
AT LEAST THAT ABANDON AN EASY SONG
As I watch at the long window It's rained every day since you
Crowds of travelers hurry Went away. I've been lonely.
Behind me, rainy darkness Lonely, empty, tenderness -
Blows before me, and the great plane Longing to kiss the corners
Circles, taxis to the runway, Of your mouth as you smile
Waits, and then roars off into Your special, inward, sensual,
The thick night. I follow it And ironic smile I love
As it rises through the clouds Because I know it means you
And levels off under the stars. Are content - content in French -
Stars, darkness, a row of lights, A special, inward, sensual,
Moaning engines, thrumming wings, And ironic state of bliss.
A silver plane over a sea Tu es contente, rna cherie?
Of starlit clouds and rain bound I am, even iflonely,
Sea. What I am following Because I can call to mind
Is a rosy, glowing coal Your body in a warm room,
Shaped like the body of a In the rainy winter night,
Woman - rushing southward a A rose on the hearth of winter,
Meteor afire with the A rose cloud standing naked,
Same fire that burns me unseen In the perfume of your flesh.
Here on the whirling earth amongst Moi aussi, je suis content.
Bright, busy, incurious
Faces of hundreds of people
Who pass me, unaware of
The blazing astrophysics
Of the end of a weekend.
106 107
COMING PACIFIC BEACH
You are driving to the airport This is the sea called peaceful,
Along the glittering highway And tonight it is quiet
Through the warm night, As sleeping flesh under
Humming to yourself. The October waning ~lOon.
The yellow rose buds that stood Late night, not a moving car
On the commode faded and fell On all the moonlit Coast Highway.
Two days ago. Last night the No sound but the offshore bells
Petals dropped from the tulips And the long, recurrent hiss
On the dresser. The signs of Of windless surf. "Sophocles
Your presence are leaving the Long ago heard it by the
House one by one. Being without Aegean:' I drive eighty
You was almost more than I Miles an hour through the still,
Could bear. Now the work is squared Moonfilled air. The surf withdraws,
Away. All the arrangements Returns, and brings into my
Have been made. All the delays Mind the turgid ebb and flow
Are past and I am thirty Of human loyalty -
Thousand feet in the air over The myriad ruined voices
A dark lustrous sea, under That have said, "Ah, love, let us
A low half moon that makes the wings Be true to one another:'
Gleam like fish under water - The moon-lured voyagers sleep
Rushing south four hundred miles In all the voiceless city.
Down the California coast Far out on the horizon
To your curving lips and your The lights of the albacore
. Ivory thighs. Fleet gleam like a golden town
In another country.
:
I
108 109
I
I
I
Ir-
!
MAROON BELLS ASPEN MEADOWS
How can I love you more than Look. Listen. They are lighting
The silver whistle of the The moon. Be still. I don't want
Coney in the rocks loves you? To hear again that wistful
How can I love you better Kyriale of husbands and lovers.
Than the blue of the bluebells Stop questioning me
By the waterfall loves you? About my women. You are
Eater of moonlight, drinker Not a schoolgirl nor I a
Of brightness, feet of jewels Lecturing paleobotanist.
On the mountain, velvet feet It's enough that the green glow
In the meadow grass, darkness Runs through the down on your arms
Braided with wild roses, wild Like a grass fire and your eyes
Mare of all the horizons .... Are fogs of the same endless light.
A far away tongue speaks in Let the folds and divisions
The time that fills me like a Of your anatomy envelop
Tongue in a bell falling All horizons. 0 my sweet
Out of all the towers of space. Topology and delusion,
Eyes wide, nostrils distended, You may be arrogant and feral
We drown in secret happy But no clock can measure
Oceans we trade in broad daylight. How long ago you fell asleep
o my girl, mistress of all In my arms in the midst of
Illuminations and all Sliding doors, parting curtains,
Commonplaces, I love you Electric fishes and candy lotuses
Like the air and the water And the warm wet moonlight.
And the earth and the fire and
The light love you and love you.
110 111
LIKE QUEEN CHRISTINA NORTHAMPTON, 1922-SAN FRANCISCO, 1939
Orange and blue and then grey All night rain falls through fog.
The frosty twilight comes down I lie awake, restless on a twisted pillow.
Through the thin trees. The fresh snow Foghorns cry over the desolate water.
Holds the light longer than the sky. How long ago was it,
Skaters on the pond vanish That night with the pear blossoms
In dusk, but their voices stay, Quivering in the pulsating moonlight?
Calling and laughing, and birds I am startled from sleep
Twitter and cry in the reeds. By the acrid fleshy odor of pear blossoms.
Indoors as night fills the white rooms,
You stand in the candlelight Somewhere in the world, I suppose,
Laughing like a splendid jewel. You are still living, a middle-aged matron,
With children on the verge of youth.
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ANDREE REXROTH PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOXES
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CONFUSION THE LIGHTS IN THE SKY ARE STARS
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Our macaroni and eat As the Cluster of Hercules
By lantern light. Stars cluster Falls down the west
Around our table like fireflies. I put the telescope by
After supper we go straight And watch Deneb
To bed. The night is windy Move towards the zenith.
And clear. The moon is three days My body is asleep. Only
Short of full. We lie in bed My eyes and brain are awake.
And watch the stars and the turning The stars stand around me
Moon through our little telescope. Like gold eyes. I can no longer
Late at night the horses stumble Tell where I begin and leave off.
Around camp and I awake. The faint breeze in the dark pines,
I lie on my elbow watching And the invisible grass,
Your beautiful sleeping face The tipping earth, the swarming stars
Like a jewel in the moonlight. Have an eye that sees itself.
If you are lucky and the
Nations let you, you will live A Maze of Sparks of Gold
Far into the twenty-first
Century. I pick up the glass Spring - the rain goes by, the stars
And watch the Great Nebula Shine pale beside the Easter
Of Andromeda swim like Moon. Scudding clouds, tossing leaves,
A phosphorescent amoeba Whirl overhead. Blossoms fall
Slowly around the Pole. Far In the dark from the fragrant
Away in distant cities Madrone trees. You lie beside
Fat-hearted men are planning Me, luminous and still in sleep.
To murder you while you sleep. Overhead bees sleep in their
Tree. Beyond them the bees in
The Heart of Herakles The Beehive in the Crab drift
Slowly past, a maze of points
Lying under the stars, Of fire. I've had ten times your
In the summer night, Years. Time holds us both fixed fast
Late, while the autumn Under the bright wasting stars.
Constellations climb the sky,
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A Sword in a Cloud of Light Know in the world or in life
Stands in the moonlit empty
Your hand in mine, we walk out Heavens, over the swarming
To watch the Christmas Eve crowds Men, women, and children, black
On Fillmore Street, the Negro And white, joyous and greedy,
District. The night is thick with Evil and good, buyer and
Frost. The people hurry, wreathed Seller, master and victim,
In their smoky breaths. Before Like some immense theorem,
The shop windows the children Which, if once solved would forever
Jump up and down with spangled Solve the mystery and pain
Eyes. Santa Clauses ring bells. Under the bells and spangles.
Cars stall and honk. Streetcars clang. There he is, the man of the
Loudspeakers on the lampposts Night before Christmas, spread out
Sing carols, on jukeboxes On the sky like a true god
In the bars Louis Armstrong In whom it would only be
Plays White Christmas. In the joints Necessary to believe
The girls strip and grind and bump A little. I am fifty
To Jingle Bells. Overhead And you are five. It would do
The neon signs scribble and No good to say this and it
Erase and scribble again May do no good to write it.
Messages of avarice, Believe in Orion. Believe
Joy, fear, hygiene, and the proud In the night, the moon, the crowded
Names of the middle classes. Earth. Believe in Christmas and
The moon beams like a pudding. Birthdays and Easter rabbits.
We stop at the main corner Believe in all those fugitive
And look up, diagonally Compounds of nature, all doomed
Across, at the rising moon, To waste away and go out.
And the solemn, orderly Always be true to these things.
Vast winter constellations. They are all there is. Never
You say, "There's Orion!" Give up this savage religion
The most beautiful object For the blood~drenched civilized
Either of us will ever Abstractions of the rascals
Who live by killing you and me.
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Protoplasm of Light Seashore and watch the sun sink
In the windy ocean. Layers
How long ago Of air break up the disc. It looks
Frances and I took the subway Like a vast copper pagoda.
To Van Cortlandt Park. The people Spume blows past our faces, jellyfish
All excited, small boys and Pulse in the standing water,
Cripples selling dark glasses. Sprawl on the wet sand at our feet.
We rushed to the open hills Twilight comes and all of the
North of the station as though Visible planets come out.
We'd be too late, and stood there Venus first, and then Jupiter,
Hand in hand, waiting. Under Mars and Saturn and finally
The trees the sun made little Mercury once more. Seals bark
Lunes of light through the bare branches On the rocks. I tell Mary
On the snow. The sky turned grey How Kepler never saw Mercury,
And very empty. One by How, as he lay dying it shone
One the stars came out. At last In his window, too late for him
The sun was only a thin To see. The mysterious
Crescent in our glasses with the Cone of lightleans up from the
Bright planets nearby like watchers. Horizon into the pale sky.
Then the great cold amoeba I say, "Nobody knows what
Of crystal light sprang out It is or even where it is.
On the sky. The wind passed like Maybe it is the great cloud
A silent crowd. The crowd sobbed Of gas around the sun which
Like a passing wind. All the dogs You will see some day if you
Howled. The silent protoplasm Are lucky. It stands out only
Oflight stood still in the black sky, During an eclipse. I saw it
In its bowels, ringed with ruby Long ago:'
Fire, its stone-black nucleus.
Mercury, cold and dark like a
Fleck of iron, stood silent by it.
That was long ago.
Mary and I stand on the
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Blood on a Dead World CONFUSION OF THE SENSES
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QUIETLY
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