The Heart Is Strange (8 page)

woolsey workmen, grandiose, and slack.

On m’analyse
, the key to secrets. Kinsey

Shortly will tell us sharply back

Habits we stuttered. How revive to join

(Great evils grieve beneath: eye Caesar’s coin)

And lure a while more home

The vivid wanderers, uneasy with our shame?

Priests of the infinite! ah, not for long.

The dove whispers, and diminishes

Up the blue leagues. And no doubt we heard wrong—

Wax of our lives collects & dulls; but was

What we heard hurried as we memorized,

Or brightened, or adjusted? Undisguised

We pray our tongues & fingers

Record the strange word that blows suddenly and lingers.

Imagine a patience in the works of love

Luck sometimes visits. Ages we have sighed,

And cleave more sternly to a music of

Even this sore word ‘genocide’.

Each to his own! Clockless & thankless dream

And labour Makers, being what we seem.

Soon soon enough we turn

Our tools in; brownshirt Time chiefly our works will burn.

I remember: white fine flour everywhere whirled

Ceaselessly, wheels rolled, a slow thunder boomed,

And there were snowy men in the mill-world

With sparkling eyes, light hair uncombed,

And one of them was humming an old song,

Sack upon sack grew portly, until strong

Arms moved them on, by pairs,

And then the bell clanged and they ran like hares.

Scotch in his oxter, my Retarded One

Blows in before the midnight; freezing slush

Stamps off, off. Worst of years! . . no matter, begone;

Your slash and spells (in the sudden hush)

We see now we had to suffer some day, so

I cross the dragon with a blessing, low,

While the black blood slows. Clock-wise,

We clasp upon the stroke, kissing with happy cries.

Of 1947

The Dispossessed

‘and something that … that is theirs—no longer ours’

stammered to me the Italian page. A wood

seeded & towered suddenly. I understood.—

The Leading Man’s especially, and the Juvenile Lead’s,

and the Leading Lady’s thigh that switches & warms,

and their grimaces, and their flying arms:

our
arms, our story. Every seat was sold.

A crone met in a clearing sprouts a beard

and has a tirade. Not a word we heard.

Movement of stone within a woman’s heart,

abrupt & dominant. They gesture how

fings really are. Rarely a child sings now.

My harpsichord weird as a koto drums

adagio
for twilight, for the storm-worn dove

no more de-iced, and the spidery business of love.

The Juvenile Lead’s the Leader’s arm, one arm

running the whole bole, branches, roots, (O watch)

and the faceless fellow waving from her crotch,

Stalin-unanimous! who procured a vote

and care not use it, who have kept an eye

and care not use it, percussive vote, clear eye.

That which a captain and a weaponeer

one day and one more day did, we did,
ach

we did not,
They
did . . cam slid, the great lock

lodged, and no soul of us all was near was near,—

an evil sky (where the umbrella bloomed)

twirled its mustaches, hissed, the ingenue fumed,

poor virgin, and no hero rides. The race

is done. Drifts through, between the cold black trunks,

the peachblow glory of the perishing sun

in empty houses where old things take place.

The Cage

(1950)

The Cage

And the Americans put Pound in a cage

In the Italian summer coverless

On a hillside up from Pisa in his age

Roofless the old man with a blanket yes

On the ground.
Shih
in his pocket luck jammed there

When the partigiani with a tommy-gun

Broke in the villa door. Great authors fare

Well; for they fed him, the Americans

And after four weeks were afraid he’d die

So the Americans took him out of the cage

And tented him like others. He lay wry

To make the Pisan cantos with his courage

Sorrow and memory in a slowing drive

(And after five months they told Dorothy

Where Ezra was, and what,—i.e., alive)

Until from fingers such something twitcht free

… O years go bare, a madman lingered through

The hall-end where we talked and felt my book

Till he was waved away; Pound tapped his shoe

And pointed and digressed with an impatient look

‘Bankers’ and ‘Yids’ and ‘a conspiracy’

And of himself no word, the second worst,

And ‘Who is seeryus now?’ and then ‘J. C.

Thought he’d got something, yes, but Ari was first’

His body bettered. And the empty cage

Sings in the wringing winds where winds blow

Backward and forward one door in its age

And the great cage suffers nothing whatever no

Homage to Mistress Bradstreet

(1953)

Homage to Mistress Bradstreet

[Born 1612 Anne Dudley, married at 16 Simon Bradstreet, a Cambridge man, steward to the Countess of Warwick and protégé of her father Thomas Dudley secretary to the Earl of Lincoln. Crossed in the
Arbella
, 1630, under Governor Winthrop.]

1

The Governor your husband lived so long

moved you not, restless, waiting for him? Still,

you were a patient woman.—

I seem to see you pause here still:

Sylvester, Quarles, in moments odd you pored

before a fire at, bright eyes on the Lord,

all the children still.

‘Simon…’ Simon will listen while you read a Song.

2

Outside the New World winters in grand dark

white air lashing high thro’ the virgin stands

foxes down foxholes sigh,

surely the English heart quails, stunned.

I doubt if Simon than this blast, that sea,

spares from his rigour for your poetry

more. We are on each other’s hands

who care. Both of our worlds unhanded us. Lie stark,

3

thy eyes look to me mild. Out of maize & air

your body’s made, and moves. I summon, see,

from the centuries it.

I think you won’t stay. How do we

linger, diminished, in our lovers’ air,

implausibly visible, to whom, a year,

years, over interims; or not;

to a long stranger; or not; shimmer & disappear.

4

Jaw-ript, rot with its wisdom, rending then;

then not. When the mouth dies, who misses you?

Your master never died,

Simon ah thirty years past you—

Pockmarkt & westward staring on a haggard deck

it seems I find you, young. I come to check,

I come to stay with you,

and the Governor, & Father, & Simon, & the huddled men.

5

By the week we landed we were, most, used up.

Strange ships across us, after a fortnight’s winds

unfavouring, frightened us;

bone-sad cold, sleet, scurvy; so were ill

many as one day we could have no sermons;

broils, quelled; a fatherless child-unkennelled; vermin

crowding & waiting: waiting.

And the day itself he leapt ashore young Henry Winthrop

6

(delivered from the waves; because he found

off their wigwams, sharp-eyed, a lone canoe

across a tidal river,

that water glittered fair & blue

& narrow, none of the other men could swim

and the plantation’s prime theft up to him,

shouldered on a glad day

hard on the glorious feasting of thanksgiving) drowned.

7

How long with nothing in the ruinous heat,

clams & acorns stomaching, distinction perishing,

at which my heart rose,

with brackish water, we would sing.

When whispers knew the Governor’s last bread

was browning in his oven, we were discourag’d.

The Lady Arbella dying—

dyings—at which my heart    rose, but I did submit.

8

That beyond the Atlantic wound our woes enlarge

is hard, hard that starvation burnishes our fear,

but I do gloss for You.

Strangers & pilgrims fare we here,

declaring we seek a City. Shall we be deceived?

I know whom I have trusted, & whom I have believed,

and that he is able to

keep    that I have committed to his charge.

9

Winter than summer worse, that first, like a file

on a quick, or the poison suck of a thrilled tooth;

and still we may unpack.

Wolves & storms among, uncouth

board-pieces, boxes, barrels vanish, grow

houses, rise. Motes that hop in sunlight slow

indoors, and I am Ruth

away: open my mouth, my eyes wet: I wóuld smile:

10

vellum I palm, and dream. Their forest dies

to greensward, privets, elms & towers, whence

a nightingale is throbbing.

Women sleep sound. I was happy once . .

(Something keeps on not happening; I shrink?)

These minutes all their passions & powers sink

and I am not one chance

for an unknown cry or a flicker of unknown eyes.

11

Chapped souls ours, by the day Spring’s strong winds swelled,

Jack’s pulpits arched, more glad. The shawl I pinned

flaps like a shooting soul

might in such weather Heaven send.

Succumbing half, in spirit, to a salmon sash

I prod the nerveless novel succotash—

I must be disciplined,

in arms, against that one, and our dissidents, and myself.

12

Versing, I shroud among the dynasties;

quarternion on quarternion, tireless I phrase

anything past, dead, far,

sacred, for a barbarous place.

—To please your wintry father? all this bald

abstract didactic rime I read appalled

harassed for your fame

mistress neither of fiery nor velvet verse, on your knees

13

hopeful & shamefast, chaste, laborious, odd,

whom the sea tore. —The damned roar with loss,

so they hug & are mean

with themselves, and I cannot be thus.

Why then do I repine, sick, bad, to long

after what must not be? I lie wrong

once more. For at fourteen

I found my heart more carnal and sitting loose from God,

14

vanity & the follies of youth took hold of me;

then the pox blasted, when the Lord returned.

That year for my sorry face

so-much-older Simon burned,

so Father smiled, with love. Their will be done.

He to me ill lingeringly, learning to shun

a bliss, a lightning blood

vouchsafed, what did seem life. I kissed his Mystery.

15

Drydust in God’s eye the aquavivid skin

of Simon snoring lit with fountaining dawn

when my eyes unlid, sad.

John Cotton shines on Boston’s sin—

I ám drawn, in pieties that seem

the weary drizzle of an unremembered dream.

Women have gone mad

at twenty-one. Ambition mines, atrocious, in.

16

Food endless, people few, all to be done.

As pippins roast, the question of the wolves

turns & turns.

Fangs of a wolf will keep, the neck

round of a child, that child brave. I remember who

in meeting smiled & was punisht, and I know who

whispered & was stockt.

We lead a thoughtful life. But Boston’s cage we shun.

17

The winters close, Springs open, no child stirs

under my withering heart, O seasoned heart

God grudged his aid.

All things else soil like a shirt.

Simon is much away. My executive stales.

The town came through for the cartway by the pales,

but my patience is short.

I revolt from, I am like, these savage foresters

18

whose passionless dicker in the shade, whose glance

impassive & scant, belie their murderous cries

when quarry seems to show.

Again I must have been wrong, twice.

Unwell in a new way. Can that begin?

God brandishes. O love, O I love. Kin,

gather. My world is strange

and merciful, ingrown months, blessing a swelling trance.

19

So squeezed, wince you I scream? I love you & hate

off with you. Ages!
Useless
. Below my waist

he has me in Hell’s vise.

Stalling. He let go. Come back: brace

me somewhere. No. No. Yes! everything down

hardens I press with horrible joy down

my back cracks like a wrist

shame I am voiding oh behind it is too late

20

hide me forever I work thrust I must free

now I all muscles & bones concentrate

what is living from dying?

Simon I must leave you so untidy

Monster you are killing me Be sure

I’ll have you later Women do endure

I can
can
no longer

and it passes the wretched trap whelming and I am me

21

drencht & powerful. I did it with my body!

One proud tug greens Heaven. Marvellous,

unforbidding Majesty.

Swell, imperious bells. I fly.

Mountainous, woman not breaks and will bend:

sways God nearby: anguish comes to an end.

Blossomed Sarah, and I

blossom. Is that thing alive? I hear a famisht howl.

22

Beloved household, I am Simon’s wife,

and the mother of Samuel—whom greedy yet I miss

out of his kicking place.

More in some ways I feel at a loss,