Summer was dry, dry the garden
our beating hearts, on that farm, dry
with the rows of corn the grasshoppers
came happily to strip, in hordes, the first
thing I knew about locust was they came
dry under the foot like the breaking of
a mechanical bare heart which collapses
from an unkind and incessant word whispered
in the house of the major farmer
and the catalogue company,
from no fault of anyone
my father coming home tired
and grinning down the road, turning in
is the tank full? thinking of the horse
and my lazy arms thinking of the water
so far below the well platform.
Read more…
Edward Dorn
The Resistantism of all other places
On the floor among filters and the Spillings
The cosmology of the floor of the Nation
The cosmology of finding your place
The cosmology of smelling and feeling your Natural place inside the place,
feeling the filters
feeling the rock, feeling the roll
feeling the social spray at that level
low down, with the filters and the feet
feeling the place you can fold all four legs
and be man’s best friend to the End, among the filters and the feet,
in the rock, and in the roll
in the clock and in the roll, in the hole
of the social bilge The Great White Dog
of the Rockchalk, seeks his place Seeks
The place for Him there, tries every scrap of Space The Great White Dog of
The Rockchalk Cafe
moves under the Social seeking his own Place
Read more…
Edward Dorn
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent Earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
Trans. Joanna Macy/Anita Barrows
joannamacy.net
Rainer Maria Rilke
From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through
Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,
Out of the peak’s black angularity of shadow, riding
The last tumultuous avalanche of
Light above pines and the guttural gorge,
The hawk comes.
His wing
Scythes down another day, his motion
Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear
The crashless fall of stalks of Time.
The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error.
Look! Look! he is climbing the last light
Who knows neither Time nor error, and under
Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings
Into shadow.
Long now,
The last thrush is still, the last bat
Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics. His wisdom
Is ancient, too, and immense. The star
Is steady, like Plato, over the mountain.
If there were no wind we might, we think, hear
The earth grind on its axis, or history
Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the cellar.
Robert Penn Warren
The light by the barn that shines all night
pales at dawn when a little breeze comes.
A little breeze comes breathing the fields
from their sleep and waking the slow windmill.
The slow windmill sings the long day
about anguish and loss to the chickens at work.
The little breeze follows the slow windmill
and the chickens at work till the sun goes down—
Then the light by the barn again.
The Darkness Around Us Is Deep, 1993, p. 9
See also “The Waves in the Cove“
William Stafford
In the Aztec design God crowds
into the little pea that is rolling
out of the picture.
All the rest extends bleaker
because God has gone away.
In the White Man design, though,
no pea is there.
God is everywhere
but hard to see.
The Aztecs frown at this.
How do you know He is everywhere?
And how did He get out of the pea?
The Darkness Around Us Is Deep, 1993, p. 61
William Stafford
All the Sioux were defeated. Our clan
got poor, but a few got richer.
They fought two wars. I did not
take part. No one remembers your vision
or even your real name. Now
the children go to town and like
loud music. I married a Christian.
Crazy Horse, it is not fair
to hide a new vision from you.
In our schools we are learning
to take aim when we talk, and we have
found out our enemies. They shift when
words do; they even change and hide
in every person. A teacher here says
hurt or scorned people are places
where real enemies hide. He says
we should not hurt or scorn anyone,
but help them. And I will tell you
in a brave way, the way Crazy Horse
talked: that teacher is right.
I will tell you a strange thing:
at the rodeo, close to the grandstand,
I saw a farm lady scared by a blown
piece of paper; and at that place
horses and policemen were no longer
frightening, but suffering faces were,
and the hunched-over backs of the old.
Read more…
William Stafford
Evenings, after others go inside,
my glance quietly ascends through leaves,
through branches. The night wind sighs once
and bends over. Far beyond my glimpse of sky
those friends now gone begin their chorus.
There’s a reason for whatever comes,
their song says. Released into light one star
appears, another, and those patterns affirm
where they have been waiting dissolved in blue
but holding their place inside of time.
Every evening this happens, an arch and promise
renewed. Nobody has to notice: a breath
crosses the lawn, or outside the window
a spirit roams, as mysterious as any wanderer
ever was. And it is only the night wind.
Even in Quiet Places, 1996
William Stafford
Moves in the woods without
touching the ground.
Crosses the mountains like a
scarf between peaks.
From a flat and then kicked-up ocean
creams along the shore.
Pummels clouds.
Lets a leaf come down in style.
When the sun goes down brings
the first cold star.
Reminds the valley about snow.
When bushes move talks like
a rabbit.
Lost all night, calls for
friends-help-justice.
Remembers the dead.
My Name Is William Tell, 1992
William Stafford
Maple, oak, poplar, gingko
New leaves, “new green” on a rock ledge
Of steep little uplift, tucked among trees
Hot sun dapple—
wake up.
Roll over and slide down the rockface
Walk away in the woods toward
A squirrel, toward
Rare people! Seen from a safe distance,
A murmur of traffic approaching,
Siren howls echoing
Through the gridlock of structures,
Vibrating with helicopters,
the bass tone
of a high jet.
Leap over the park stone wall
Dressed fast and light,
Slip into the migrating flow
New York like a sea anemone
Wide and waving in the Sea of Economy,
Cadres of educated youth in chic costume
Step out to the night life, good food, after work—
In the chambers of prana-subtle power-pumping
Heartbeat buildings fired
Deep at the bottom, under the basement.
Fired by old merchant marine
Ex-fire tenders gone now from sea
Read more…
Gary Snyder