[Illustration: Front cover] IT TAKES PRACTICE NOT TO DIE Elizabeth Bartlett _It Takes Practice Not to Die_ was originally published in 1964 by Van Riper and Thompson in Santa Barbara, California. The book is now out-of-print and the publisher no longer exists. The author's literary executor, Steven James Bartlett, has decided to make the book available as an open access publication, freely available to readers through Project Gutenberg under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivs license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to its content, provided that both the author and the original URL from which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work will not be used without the copyright holder's written permission in derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work without such permission). The full legal statement of this license may be found at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode [Illustration: Creative Commons logo] IT TAKES PRACTICE NOT TO DIE IT TAKES PRACTICE NOT TO DIE BY ELIZABETH BARTLETT VAN RIPER & THOMPSON, INC. SANTA BARBARA 1964 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Some of these poems appeared in the following anthologies: _The American Scene, The Golden Year, New Poems By American Poets II, New Voices 2_. Thanks are also due to the _Beloit Poetry Journal, Chelsea Review, Commentary, The Critic, Dalhousie Review, ETC., Fiddlehead, Harper's, Harper's Bazaar, Literary Review, New Mexico Quarterly, New York Times, Odyssey, Poetry Dial, Queen's Quarterly, Quixote, San Francisco Review, Saturday Review, Tamarack Review, Yale Literary Magazine_. Library of Congress Catalogue Number: 64-22731 Copyright 1964 by Elizabeth Bartlett First Edition All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form, except for review purposes. Printed in the United States of America TO PAUL AND STEVEN OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR _Poems of Yes and No Behold This Dreamer Poetry Concerto_ CONTENTS HOMO ELASTICUS BALANCE SIMPLE WITH COMPASS ACHILLES HAD HIS HEEL ASCETIC I WOULD REMEMBER AFTER THE STORM THE CAGE MENTAL HOEING HUNGER VOLUNTARY EXILE THE FOURTH CATEGORY THE CHANGING WIND JINXED ALONG THAT ROAD THE REFUGEES SHIP OF EARTH AMONG THE PASSENGERS (1 x 1)^n AIR BRIDGE AS YOU MAKE IT CITY GAME: MARBLES FREE-FALL _E_xistence=_m_ultiple _c_onditions^2 THE UNDERSTANDING WOOLEN DIGNITY THE COAT ON A ROCK OF ATLANTIS EVEN IF WE DID SELF-EVIDENT THE SACRAMENT PROLOGUE TO OLD AGE ALL THIS, BEFORE THE EARTH AGE NEGATIVE ABSOLUTE TIME WILL TELL THE TEST DIARY ITEM: BODY FOUND LANDSCAPE: WITH BREAD O TO BE AN OSTRICH THE BARREN FIG TREE THE SOWER INTERVIEW THIS SIDE THE FOG CIVILIZED SPRING REPLY TO CRITICS INSOMNIA IN THE CITY WHEN YESTERDAY COMES FULL CIRCLE CONVERT NOT JUST ONCE NOTES FOR THE FUTURE THE SLEEPWALKERS MEXICAN PROFILE DRY SANCTUARY RETURN TRIP THE CAVE DARK ANGEL FUGITIVE THE TRAP THE RUIN OF THAT HOUSE THEIR FIRST HUNT WOLF! FINAL PERFORMANCE HOUSE OF THE POET THE GHOST OF ANNE FRANK THE MISTAKE REFLECTED IN BRASS MODERN PRIMITIVE PERSONAL HISTORY I THINK I AM INSTINCT AND REASON THE SUMMING UP THERE WILL BE TIME FOR MOSS PERSPECTIVE THE QUESTION IS PROOF UNDER A THATCHED ROOF CONDITIONAL REFLEX THE DARK CENTAUR WORLD OF TOMORROW [Illustration: Abstract design] HOMO ELASTICUS I tell you it is inside, a substance no one has yet identified or described as something natural to flesh, a glutinous secretion in the cells that can harden and melt. Milky, it clings to the gums with a stickiness that fastens on the tongue to be dumb, or else stretches and winds a band around the heart so tight, it has to snap or loosen, springing back. Fluid, it waxes the bones to ease their impact and recoil as they bounce over stones, except when the latex thickens, becomes too crude, more fat than resin, and freezes in the sun. BALANCE My head has no affinity with my feet. When I stand on one heel and lean on my axis spine, I reel to the floor; I can not turn on a fixed orbit. My shadow divides me by day and escapes me at night, a trait apparently made to confuse me, since I follow a course without regularity or recurrence, my cosmos inclined to alternation at moments evident to no one, not even myself. Who is reasonable? A tightrope walker, perhaps, builders of bridges, sailors, mountain climbers--those whose direction is indicated by their opposition and held in a careful equilibrium like a golden pendulum, its means, each according to some counter force. Lacking such moderation, I look for wisdom in safety, and safety in wisdom--and dangle between. A two-legged creature, whose symmetry goes paired from ear to foot, I find duality a natural condition; a Chang and Eng existence united in fact but separate in fulfillment. Parted, we die, and together compromise our right and left, depending which has the stronger influence. Made as I am, the wonder is not that I sway or spin, but manage to stay inside my skin. SIMPLE WITH COMPASS Consider the circle. It is a miracle of completion, end and beginning one. Reduced to a point or expanded to a sphere, its ratio is unchanged by ego. Compare it to the line, that matter of fact sign of direction started but never done. Whichever way it moves, how far or long, it proves distance can go only so high or low. I think we should rejoice there is no other choice than straight or round-- makes life easy, I've found. ACHILLES HAD HIS HEEL And still the arrows fly in all directions. No one is safe. The wind has no armor. Strength, beauty, valor, whatever we find and name perfection is target to the eye. Who is immune? Either we aim--and miss, or ourselves become the victims hit. Even a hermit, locked inside his room, remembers St. Francis sang often out of tune. We learn to die from a thousand wounds, each scarred inside till the final failure. Meanwhile we endure and suffer with some pride that we can be so human-- enough, if we must, to cry. The point is inevitable. Whether heel or head, who is invulnerable is already dead. ASCETIC Be whatever you like, close your eyes: on the desert a burnished stone, in the murky sea a jewel. Go wherever you wish, bind your feet: through the night where a wing has flown, towards dawn where a leaf drops cool. Live however you would, stay your blood: with the sky over earth as friend, at peace with the mind and breath. Speak whenever you will, seal your lips: of this life proclaim time an end, in the next cry Nazareth. I WOULD REMEMBER I have walked from river's end to end, a slow companion to the light seagulls that circle overhead and I have stood still above the bend that separates the foot from distant hulls, to fill my eyes with flying sails' wings spread. I have watched them many times repair the far shore's curve around the sun and hold it there ensnared until provoked they drop midair, instinct with seaward gravitation and angry claws declared-- their mutiny a gold crazed rout that tears the cargo from its hold and scatters it about. I am not old and yet, when night brings me to town, I forget their wings and drown. AFTER THE STORM That morning, after the storm, everyone gathered about the tree and marveled at its fall: the body leaning gently on one arm, its mighty head now cushioned by deep branches, seemingly asleep. "You wouldn't think a storm," one said, then broke off, staring at the fruit that never would be eaten red and sweetened by the sun, or set in jars and slowly left to cool, the ripening years ahead gone, too. "It was the wind." "The rain." Each spoke a part of truth out of his own mouth with words that could not make it whole because the naked roots showed how much there was to doubt, the secret in the darkness crying loud. Even a tree, she thought, biting her tongue and bringing her childish thoughts down, remembering the climbs, the stout swing hung on rafters soaring to the sun, a tree built like a tower so you could visit God and talk for hours. The men sawed logs and timber all that day until there was nothing left, not even a shadow where you could wait and hide to see if it would wake, then they buried the hole and forgot what else they might have covered with the sod. Dead trees tell no tales, she thought, nor empty nests, nor little girls who see how helpless all things are when caught by storm, no matter how big or strong or secure, and she walked quietly into the house to help with the next meal. THE CAGE Thoughts like an empty cage receive the morning through the windowpane and quietly swing. No flutter brings my eye to a meaninged core for the waking light, the door transparent. Held blind by the mirror and deaf by the bell, I must search my mind by taste, smell, and touch. Bars silhouette a wall to enclose the noon where images halt and the night soon comes. O bird that set me free to try my own wings, how this false spring tree clings that I perch on! MENTAL HOEING Breaking the soil of her mind was an old habit as she plied the hoe back and forth over the year to see its design, the cut and stripped images of reason stacked in rows of answered arguments. She swore at the stones, the matted grass and stubborn clay that held her back as though to a winter still unprepared for spring. Was she never to be spared from questions rooted in the past? She attacked the clods with wrath until there were holes in the ground, then her thoughts crumpled down, taking her strength with them. Aching from remembered resentment, she turned to the struggle within herself, but moved lightly now and penitent, trying to ease the rebellious soil and soften it, to make it pliable to the new seeds, the new demands of the changing season, knowing plants thrive better in kindness than bitterness. And suddenly the year stood plain, at rest. HUNGER Hunger, I have known your pangs, the gnawing urge, the ceaseless demand from beginning to end; inevitable as air and light, as rain and seed and soil, as tides and seasons; the perpetual cause of all that moves and is moved; the force that flows through stars and men. We are born hungry. Begins the appetite with warmth and tit, with wombskin quivering yet from cry replying cry, then another sense commands another hunger fed to feed the next and the next, each heir and progenitor of this past, that future, and the cycle reset. Hungry pilgrims, we can not rest. Distance is but another nearness, as soon met, then shorelines bend and we must home again to other journeys, our Eden faith a continual repetition of arks and floods from which none returns invulnerable, the apple bitten. Creed, color, race, we have all sworn allegiance, fought bitter wars, tasted glory and gall for insatiable gods deified by our own hungers; with rites and sacrifice made bread and wine from flesh and blood that we might have eternal food here and hereafter, immortal. We are fed by desire and consumed like the fire on our tongues, in our hearts; a flame forever unappeased by our words, symbols, deeds or monuments; the phoenix, man himself, recreated from his own ashes out of hungering dreams and parched. We live with hunger always, that fearfilling, painpinching cave wherein we hide like hunted stags, lips dry, but tasting heroically of miracles... Who has not seen visionary lions fall to dust and, scornful of the world's ambition, left the hunters truth in rags? Fish, birds, beasts, all are prey to the same illusion, all wake to the hunger that stalks and prowls. Sands thirst for unquenchable seas, plains thrust toward implacable peaks, time moves unfulfilled and blind from plans unrealized to those surprised. We die hungry even while hyenas howl. VOLUNTARY, EXILE The day to day commitment to failure that judgment daily argues against me condemns me to despair. I am guilty of more than silence. At times words fail your wisest men and then, intentionally. But my silence, like all my secrecies, has no defense, none conventionally, my personal idiosyncrasies no social crimes. When pride is pain and shame an agony too keen for reason, I had no other weapon. Who is to blame? There was no intent to deceive or lie. My absence is sufficient evidence, voluntary exile, not providence. THE FOURTH CATEGORY Of vegetable, yes, but amorphous by analogy to stem leaf root not a flower nor a seed and no use as fruit. Of animal, too, but understood independently of cry growl purr not a fish nor a fowl and no good as fur. Of mineral, besides, but disinclined organically to heat break pour not iso- nor meta-morphic and no worth as ore. THE CHANGING WIND Now there are great numbers of people coming and going with the wind, and the wind seems changed; its voice is never still and its eyes are strange. Once, we remember, it was possible for the wind to move on two feet and formulate a philosophy of life and death by reason of environment. Then the wind that blew around us was a familiar one; we knew which side of the house was open and what grew from our hand each season of the year. When it was far, we could gaze beyond mountains, across seas, over days and miles of distances to twisted deserts and vast plains, bridging there with here. Wind voyageurs, we knew what a man puts into his mouth he eats, where he lays his head is shelter, that the clothing he wears, covers him. Then we had no illusions about customs or differences, since the wind was the same wind, whether it came from the north, the south, the east, or the west. Time was a place, we remember, where the wind was able to look a man in the face and remain long enough to hear what he had to say. Now there are great numbers of people coming and going with the wind, and the wind seems changed; its voice is never still and its eyes are strange. JINXED I went to the orchard where the trees were ripe and found a hard lemon. I went to the meadow when the grain was bright and heard a crow sermon. I went to the valley which was hidden from wind and saw a bleached galleon. I went to the mountain whose peak showed no print and met a lame stallion. I went to the desert, the jungle, the shore, and always some cursed omen. I went to the city at last for the source, and there in the streets were men. ALONG THAT ROAD A stranger came one day along that road and looked out on the field, the barn, the house set by itself against the woods, the air as empty in its fence of silence, as the hour of light. Alone, clothes torn, his hands streaked by the cuts of glass through which he came like hurtling stone to sudden halt, he searched the bluff of easy miles for signs of God on wheels, then limped some more and paused, the bills in his pocket less a commodity of exchange for another man's good will, than a threat of violence that was worse for being secret. _Car wreck found._ _Driver missing_. He saw the headline words small on a page, his name announced in an obituary column. Twice he glanced back over his shoulder to see whose shadow was following behind, while at a darkened window, its owner stood with gun upraised, remembering Job. A stranger came one day along that road. THE REFUGEES After the burning nights and the barren speech, after the dry wind through stony streets, we found our little green where lilies were, and knee-deep oxen stood watching us triumphant under trees. For this was peace as nature meant nature's peace to be, with fruitful soil made ready by its need, with instincts tamed in gentler ways than fear, with freedom measured freely as the sky measures breath. We lay there side by side breathing kisses, feeling the wet and cool of bodies grassed in loving, each a groove within a groove, seeking counterpart, with close-open-close, with light-in-dark and waves lapping. We heard the overflow of lake down buttressed dam and sluiced walls making music in ditches, singing birth to seed in spike, to trunk in root, one surge alike in all. Then, happily, we chose which way, and barefoot climbed the gold to tip the rim of that day's widened cup, before the darkness could descend to cheat our purpose. Together, all of us swam, caught in a shower of light that fell on hands and hoofs, on flesh and hide--the rainbow now a shore towards which we moved with one accord. And the sun ceased fire and lowered its arms, promising new terms for our tomorrow. SHIP OF EARTH This earthship, which we now sail on seas of time and space, aware of other tides and stars and winds than move about us here, is smaller than we dreamed. Once, its high mountain masts pierced infinity, as we rode, bow into future, and past at our stern, a vessel without peer in the universe, the first, the last! The sails gave way to engines, the spars to wings, the continental coasts to cosmic shores, and still we see no end to journeying. Although our rocket shrinks, we keep our course. We watch, we sleep, our dream a toylike thing that wakes and wonders---whose will, which force? AMONG THE PASSENGERS 1 Through the window of the bus, he combs a field, close-shaves the bristling oats, straps in a fence line, pockets adjoining timber, then rides into the morning, pleased. Now retired and let out to pasture, he does not mind the clouds, the rain that fogs the highway-- his eyes are patched with blue. Hands leathered and roped, knees astraddle, boots shined, he is seated beside as neat a filly as any in the herd he used to lope in season. With stallion gallantry, with sweets, he holds the miles to coffee stops and anecdotes ... till memory spurs his old man's hopes ... and the night stampedes. 2 Separated by long years and the visibility poor, her mood reflects the weather, darkening within. Dishes, diapers, sighs, and pills ... roof by roof, she hears the monotone of wheels recite the gloomy catechism, and prays for a different kind of virgin miracle. Nervously, she rubs her good luck stone, then wraps her thoughts in cellophane as a heroine of film and fashion, glad to forget home, school, and all the lost-girl tales they tell of Hollywood, She listens, nods, and smokes. She does not mind his boasts, only too aware how the ashes cling to his coat. (1 x 1)^n I can accept the being born and the dying, in doubt, alone. I do not reject or, seeing, scorn anyone's crying about the unknown. And yet. And yet. How the being alone in the living makes me mourn. I can not forget the breathing in stone, unforgiving and forsworn. AIR BRIDGE Together we talk of parting and are drawn out from the shore across a running sea that was not there before. Cautiously we lay our bridge in air, island to mainland, and wonder will it reach beyond the tide or stand. Already our eyes are widened by the miles that split us here as we turn at the bend and pause. Dark reefs appear. Together we mark the distance between words and waves, the wind swinging our cables. Chance moves forward--we, behind. AS YOU MAKE IT Your bed they said so shall you lie on it But I found rocks were kinder than clocks and did not cry for it They meant content without a sigh in it But I liked stars much better than bars and kept the sky on it No crown or down held me in tie to it But I dreamed jewels in the deepest pools where none could spy on it They thought I ought so I could die in it But I learned ends do not make amends and did not try for it Some day I may know the how and why of it CITY GAME: MARBLES Like gods competing for the universe, they shoot the planets between their fingers with trigger thumbs that scale the speed of light to intervals of space-colliding time. Ping! and fiery constellations leap apart, bright spheres of whirling suns and moons that mark the checkered squares of sidewalks, heaven's zone, and hell, the sewer curbs where lost stars roam. FREE-FALL Having lost my terror of the air and learned, by dropping hard, a pity for the grass, I grow used to the ways of cats. It takes practice not to die in the act of living, whether climbing up a tree, walking a fence, or coming to a brink, springing free. The ninth time can't be worse than the first. Meanwhile, there are birds, sunshine, roofs, and kind old ladies. The grass itself is innocent with sleep. _E_xistence=_m_ultiple _c_onditions^2 _You who would be mathematicians in your living, remember Einstein_ The problem is not always immediately apparent: it does not become one until the response to a given condition fails to satisfy the need that a continuance implies. Whether conscious in amoeba as well as hippopotamus or unaware as in water, earth and air there is evidence that each continues to be present. The process by which we seem to choose or guess solutions based on inference and conclusion regarding what is and what is not suggests both as hypotheses. For the nature of questions is to question nature since its design is reciprocal by reflection of the mind as the rainbow to its image or crystals to snow. Perplexed by reason reality itself dissolves in the sun while the question remains above and beyond all consideration of doubt and fog a bubble suspended in the hands of God. THE UNDERSTANDING What is it you want? he asked. Looking at him. As though she thought he had something to say and could find the words to say it. The words no one else had yet found or said. What is it? he repeated. Her eyes an open darkness. Leading to a corridor of black mirrors. As though at the end was a locked door and behind it the final secret. What? Within that hallway of silence, her breathing, the beating of her heart. As though echoing his questions. Waiting, hoping for the answers. If you would tell me, he said. Pinpoints of light straining towards the threshold through a soft warm mist. As though they would help him to see, to slip across barriers of being. If I knew-- Blind beams behind opaque windows. As though in an act of desperation, a man might hurl a stone. The shuddering tinkle of shattered glass. Here, he said, you take the stone. Placing it in her hands so that she could feel it, roll it between her palms, sense it through her fingers. An ineffable, tangible continuum. I give it to you, it's yours. The whole, beautiful truth, God helping. Love solidly immured within its mineral heart. Ticking away the centuries, immune to change. WOOLEN DIGNITY The needle between her fingers came to a pause as she smoothed the seams of her life and lingered over old threads of truth she had stitched with her own hands and bitten off her with her own mouth, noticing how these had blended with and become part of the cloth, until her dimmed eyes could not tell in the fading light which was which. There was not much of the garment left to mend, although the remembering hid what there was and changed the facts of dark wool to the brighter silk of summers past, when she had matched her wardrobe to her hopes and risked the need for later alterations, unmindful how both would grow outstyled and she herself become a pattern of an age more pitied than admired. Again the needle swayed and she sighed at its impatience, as though it cared that wool wear a rocking-chair pride with dignity, as though an air of mutual warmth existed between her and the winter which would help them keep what little vanity remained, and the thread grew taut again, leaving the stitches along the seam smooth and even as her last defense. THE COAT Joseph had his coat, a different color for each brother, and it was bright. What happened, we note, was seventy times seven their debts were forgiven till his coat turned white. Jesus, for his part, preferred to begin in the newborn skin of a lamb, instead. We know that his heart devoured all sin like a lion, then spilled and bled. ON A ROCK OF ATLANTIS Five. Between each the ages that separate, yet unite the pillared span. The oldest leads and guides as the short, crooked thumb of long experience. The others follow. Up and down to the last small boy trailing behind. Unevenly they stride through the gray, silent dawn toward the sea where the waves still breathe of sleep, and empty miles unwind the shoreline. Five figures probe the wind, the tide. They pace their length along the sand and pause. No light breaks. The stillness keeps, as though the current deserted, had suddenly ceased. With poles, hooks, bait in hand, the five move on. Heavy with clouds, the sky broods behind a mist, leans on cliffs and frightened by its dream of a dead world's beach, begins to slip. Until five fingers rise on the promontory's tip and lift their poles. Upheld, the morning wakes, pours gold! Fish leap! The land's alive! EVEN IF WE DID If we could unwind that brain, discover its world, the response of sense from A to Z, the place, time, weather, and human condition If we could trace the course of its myriad streams to the first rain, the slow gathering of waters in pools and springs If we could collect the whole evidence grain by grain, the words, numbers, symbols that shaped the color and sound of mountains If we could record the dreams, the chain of centuries from dusk to dawn, those testings of beliefs that broke the link and shook sparks from the sun If we could model its twin as a lasting monument, a brain with all our findings, long after men, their myths, wonders, gifts [Illustration: Abstract design] SELF-EVIDENT Some birds there are that do not like a cage, that want the whole world free to come and go as seasons do, despite drought, heat or snow; that feel their liberty a heritage no bars can shut in or no masters assuage with pretty bribes and warning threats of foe; the wilder ways of chance they choose to know with wings against the wind as surest gauge. Eagle, crow, skylark, jay--no matter what the size of beak, how sharp the claw or small-- each finds his own nest feathered best for him alone, on tree, rock, shore or grassy plot; there he can hear his own answered call, aware of baits that snare, of shears that trim! THE SACRAMENT All the breadlong day she moved about the house and nibbled at its crust, until she saw Carl walking griefwards with his shadow to the barn, whereless in his step and heedless of the cows, and she wondered how he could be so thoughtbound. What sad, whyful thing could make a man so lost within his world that he had no fisthold on it to demand a moreness for his account? She turned from that window to the hopeside one where she had reseeded a world of her own, a garden like the days of her truthhood--green, and fenced in its innocence, flowering trust, where flowers became their dreams when they woke up. Reminded by the sky hanging out the moon, she hung hers in the doorway, then lit the room and hurried to her oven's tomorrow crumbs. He came in quietly and guilt-rubbed his face, seeing Jen's waiting at the table. "Ev'ning," he said and heard her reply creak underneath as he woodenly walked to the sink and draped a towel around his neck, unwishing the blame. If soap and water clean could make a man feel holy, what use would the devil's mirror be? He felt no such deception while she said grace. They ate their silence from faithworn plates and spoons, swallowing the forgiven coffee used twice each day and aware of the greater trespass they shared in this house which was their staybetween. Cracked like their hands and cups, who knew when its seams would give? In the fearwhile, the question unasked kept their lips still, as though words tempted a risk beyond their strength to mend should the seams be loosed. The meal done, she freed the table from its chore and brought him the county's weekly paper, their footnotes to other people's answers and prayers, then bent to her needlework, seeking accord. Lost by, he stared unseeing at the words poured through his eyes as though, shuttered against exposure, the negative in his mind could be immured in its acid and yet bring some meaning forth. For a hurt away and far as a man might walk on a friendly day to a neighbor's door, lay Nielsen's farm, a credit to God had He made it with His hands, but none to the man whose straw grew luckside up as though his plow left a spore of gold in every furrow. It was a trade so many seasons back, the reasons became changestricken at this stranger who sat absorbed. Touched to the slow, Carl paused and tested the bowl of his pipe, needing a valid doubt to prod. Had he pawned his soul to find refuge in rocks and let a waterfall drain in a sinkhole? Through the smoke, he traced the wry and twisted road down whenless years that had plunged him here to rot-- and yet, of Nielson he had required no bond of hate, for this neither one had bought or sold. Torrent to trickle, not friendship had reversed the law, but an unnatural love of worm for bird, of plant for weed, of a sterile man for Merle, a woman he could not wed and mark as cursed without destroying the very universe that had mothered her and which she owed rebirth. "You take the farm and Merle. I'll make my own world over." The words had been all too well observed. He had not known how close hell was to heaven, not then and not while he lived in it alone, watching Merle's seed grow beyond his graveyard slope from buried dreams she never guessed were even there, living as she did within her children's-- not until another came to share his ghost and made him see that death was not like a coat one wore and had mended by a wife named Jen. All the thought round, he gnawed on the bitter rind, hungerwhelmed for a taste of Nielsen's larder, that orchard whose fruitening he had bartered for peelings, and dry angered at the two mice who squeaked in their chairs, each resigned to his own corner of an empty cupboard, but mostly ashamed because he could not convert thorns into leaves, grapes from stones, thirst into wine. He cleaned his parched pipe from its ashes and stood to wind a watch with broken springs, setting it for tomorrow when his shadow would be hitched. "I'm turning in, Jen. You come before you cool." His footsteps made the attic cling to the roof as she folded her needlework's piece of silk in a sewing box made like an infant's crib, then raised herself and blew its darkness on the room. PROLOGUE TO OLD AGE Not the mirror ages our reflection but the other faces that we see looking at us Not the calendar changes our season but the other voices that we hear speaking to us Not the memory troubles our silence but the other sleepers whom we meet dreaming of us Not our living suffers the violence but the other beings whom we feel dying in us ALL THIS, BEFORE I raced, I rushed, I ran, to catch the empty hand of time, before the wind, the blowing wind-- this breathless gift. I willed, I worked, I wept, to melt the frozen face of time, before the sun, the burning sun-- this frenzied bone. I drank, I danced, I dared, to tempt the stony foot of time, before the rain, the driving rain-- this raptured flame. I leaped, I laughed, I loved, to ease the burdened heart of time, before the dust, the settling dust-- this flesh, this blood. THE EARTH AGE On the caves of time again they draw their lines and circles. Earthmen. Born to prove that they can reason and compute a way to survive. Now primitives in space, they hunt with atom spears the bright eye targets of the night, and cry their mammoth victories across the cosmic waste. There they create anew high mysteries and truths, with satellites as shrines, and wire the electronic brain they use to command the light. NEGATIVE ABSOLUTE Any day now you can expect the age to come together in its own fixed image. There will be no broken glass. The jigsaw cracks, painted black, will make a Roualt mirror. Then we will truly see ourselves as the headlines say we are, creatures of disaster. The No. 1 Song in the Hit Parade will be _I Hate You_, and _ugly_ the keyword in fashion ads. Children will hug their witch dolls, blow atom bubbles in glee and play the most exciting games. Punishment will be their only reward and all the villains heroes in their goblin tales. Every man will be Satan of his own dungeon and no place like hell. Machines pretending to be human will evoke what's left of our pity and laughter. Manquakes, nightmares and fallout will lead to our final triumph. Only the worst will survive. To prevent immunity strict controls will be enforced against pure food and drink. Anyone caught sober or happy will be exiled to the upper air and banished from darkness. Mentally accelerated ones will be confined to wards in quarantine hospitals. Our most ardent wishes will be for illness, failure and misery. We will wear bad luck charms. There will be more solutions than problems in the race for non-existence. Traffic will be by tunnel and invariably fatal to minimize upkeep. All-risk benefits will be socialized on a single pay-as-you-go tax plan. To save time and expense cemeteries will provide one-room efficiencies. Everything will be reduced to simple essentials. We will need very little. Books will be easy to read backwards or upside down and even without looking. Music will be produced by noise in various degrees and ingenious combinations. A few zoos and museums will be allowed to preserve some relics of art and nature. As a change from monotony, schools and churches will be open on special anniversaries. We will be too busy dying the rest of the time to think or believe in anything else. We can hardly wait for that day. It should be coming soon. The news is getting worse and worse. TIME WILL TELL Where fireflies are stars and the evening sky a sea, there you will find me, far from the leveling demands that leveled you and me. When distant mountains bend like deep swells toward the shore, then you will see the ends for which I built my dikes against the lowly roar. Though breath was all I owned to force my heart to climb, though words were all the stones I had to seal my mind, you will know why, in time. THE TEST He who would climb the heights of tone and scale the peaks beyond the listening ear must first walk over water and learn to stand on air, alone. He who would swim the waves of light and dive past shores into a sunless glow must first merge with his shadow and melt through solid glass, like night. Where eyes are fins and sound is leap, the rhythmic force performs its own ballet; when dreams are fired in clay, they burn a path through timeless sleep. DIARY Returning miles of space, can you find the precise hour, travel through that day, locate the very moment ago, there? The mind goes back and forth, stops at what time stations, Monday morning, January 7th, winter, and ten years after then. The trunk arrives, departs: hotel, depot, airport, pier, with sticker seals to mark the sights and tag the route, remember where? With tickets, menus, souvenirs, a life's receipts in black and white to trace the course of wind and tide, the way back home from why and when. And buses, taxis, subways, cars, for how-long, how-far conversations, so much, so many, who and what, with love, regards and yes, again, name, place, date, pen. ITEM: BODY FOUND It was a silent evening, I remember, through the river's mist it comes to me-- a star pierced the air; white with speed it leaped across the sky, slipped and fell; I heard its cry, it echoed in the sea, the swift wild cry of the scornful ember. Alone I stood there, never had I need of fellow rebel more, I, a rebel. Down the dark beach I ran, I stripped; time was an eyeless reach across immensity and I plunged deeply. They blamed it on the tide, the night; they had not seen infinity like a vast unchanging vista wide before me. If you go too far you'll drown, they said. Ah no, only those grasp the sublime who challenge the dream, before going down! LANDSCAPE: WITH BREAD Let us admit it is attractive and represents something we think we need: to live beautifully and find goodness in it. Everything points in that direction: from beelines to star routes, our dreams flower in the cells of night, our days are joined to the sun. Open or closed, our eyes possess the world: all that appears fulfills the desert gardens and the glitter of gold. Yet, whether we ever can reach the source where image and reality meet, or survive the force of fire turning to ecstasy-- the immediate need we can not deny is, simply, to exist... meanwhile, perfecting the wish for astral honey and blossoms of light. [Illustration: Abstract design] O TO BE AN OSTRICH The ostrich like Shakespeare believes there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so. All problems he has found by taking his head out of the ground and looking for them. The solving obviously is a matter of foot going faster than thought to avoid being caught. Such logic of conscience may well be envied-- for who can dispute what can not be questioned or proved? THE BARREN FIG TREE In these long years of war I have seen drought, and the truth is, Father, that I am sick to death of it. Can a man set his house in order just to die? You speak of hope and honor in our day and I say hurrah for those not born, for there won't be enough fig leaves saved to cover their nakedness, or corn to stop their cries. There is no water and no sign of rain, only briar and thorn, dunghill and dust, while the poor groan like beasts on a desolate moor. You should have seen it, Father, the day they attacked, a day as dark as night, with clouds of fire both front and rear. They ran like horses, climbed walls, broke ranks, spied out of windows, their faces pained, black, while the earth bled till the moon shone red. Well, old men have their dreams, and young men their visions, but that day won't come back until the mountains fall and the hills cover us, if those are here still. I've seen green land turn to salt, and worms rot under clods, while men talk peace terms. THE SOWER Sixty seasons I have sowed, man and boy, and I tell you, Matthew, that a seed can not grow in the heart. No, one may as well throw it away or feed the chickens with it. For a fact, love is something that only the devil understands. I'd rather put my trust in stones and reap a quick crop, for ill or good. That way, you have no roots and get what you can in a few short suns. Or take cactus plants, at least a man sees the thorns and expects to be stuck, unless he's a fool--some choke on wool. As for good ground, Matthew, that's just luck; I've seen other fellows' orchards full, year after year, where no one's lifted a hand or a hoe except to pull the ripe fruits down. Some men are gifted. INTERVIEW _Poet, who are you?_ Janus, god of gates and doors and all beginnings A weather cock facing in every direction A festive singer who can wear goatskins and bleat _Are you not made like other men?_ Twin of their image and echo fired in one clay Shadow of young men's mornings and ghost of old men's nights Parabola and paranymph of lovers only _By what signs can a poet he known?_ For whom zero is an opening or a hole to be filled Who can measure the earth with a piece of rope And place the sun on a disc of paper under a cracked roof _How does a poet live?_ As alchemist and archimage of twenty-six letters In constant employment to nature Free in every sense and word except for treason _Of what value is such work?_ To dip the pen of time in dew and smoke and blood To distinguish the creak of a cradle from a coffin To demonstrate that life is the abscissa of eternity _Does a poet have any faith?_ Whose only criterion is self-corroboration Who can find God in a barrel of wine And with the hands of a spider pilot a path to the stars THIS SIDE THE FOG 1 Windless season without rain, you bring the sea up from the rocks across the cliffs, drifting clouds... Gray weaves the night as day and everything moves like sleep. Trees climb a hill, lights swing upon circles of darkness, walls bend a road where you trespass. You are the mover, the essence of all things seen and unseen. Windless you go and rainless, without form, color, or motion-- in you, all time is one. Fog or shadow of God maybe, who walks and whispers so close to me? 2 Here on the shore's last link against the landscape dream I stand listening. Intangible as air and yet like mesh, a web winds strands about my head. I can not see or hear beyond the moment's rim that holds me to this pier. Only a sixth sense of faith or fear, whichever's meant, sways in the balance. 3 Through the porthole of my mind memory ships oars and glides upon the sea outside. Whose hand was on the tiller, what buoy marked the shoals or whether there was another I do not know. A hazy twilight lay over the gray water, and I heard the distant horn of time blow once or twice in warning, while seagulls squatted on the beach, windless without wings. And I thought, will it be like that on the coast of my setting, mast and sun obscured by fact? 4 Beyond the eye's threshold a light swings in the door, blurred by the wind and blown like smoke across the dunes for ghosts who wander through in search of missing clues. Dimly they turn and return, gathering broken sherds they reefed against the world, each sorting out his own to piece the shells into a whole and find the echo lode. 5 Blind as a crab in the sand, waiting for the tide to slack, I feel through my hands blank, knowing nothing that they can not reach, yet groping to believe these signs of emptiness real. Ground, sea, sky, all are merged in the surrounding surf, where everything's reversed, where breath is radar to itself, antennaed to gray silence, and only I move, nothing else. 6 Along the coast a lone train tolls the night, slowing its race to a throttled brake as a hand plows the mist to draw a moving bridge across the mainland's tip. O magnetic eye that signals when human daylight fails and all's invisible, who guides the current, the flow of water, air and pole, what dragon's head node? CIVILIZED SPRING His fists smash against the violet air: the doors of evening must not close, locking him out! Why, is his youth a beggar, crippled and blind, or reduced so low that he should drink spit from the cup of pity? Snarling, he wipes his feet on the mocking tongue that carpets the front of a swank hotel, before the doorman beams him with a eunuch eye. O.K., beat it! And he warms his hands with his breath, then slouches off, his feline hips rolling smoothly under bluejean pockets. An expensive whore, desire taunts him down through the city's bright bazaar, like the cool white tone of a saxophone caught in the jewelrich stream of cars. Shop windows hive the honey on his lips, the perfume of live mannequins clings, while towers squat like pyramids behind a desert moon now green. Smolders the coal in his chest, burns the hole in his shoe through the pavement, as he turns up alleys where rattling cans overflow their Nile. Thickly, he quickens his course, begins to run ... till breathless and unspent, he whirls and twists and crashes beyond the guarded walls, the harem tents of night ... a purple fugitive, who gasps. REPLY TO CRITICS Tell them who scorn my ways I lived without their praise and will until I die. Let them be cynical, I have my own faith still to question and deny. The proud and stiff of neck, the small who grub and peck, both look too low or high, while I but seek to know the feel of things that grow and, by my living, why. INSOMNIA IN THE CITY Three a.m. along the river between the footfall and the snow, watching the stars leap out and quiver against the desolate scene below, the flare of match one's beacon fire, one's inner tower of warmth and cheer, to keep night safe from its desire and blow away the smoke of fear. WHEN YESTERDAY COMES I have not always been blind. My eyes opened to the sun like any child's, and I ran and played in my waking hours like schoolboys everywhere. Night was my sleep and the dark powers I knew from childhood on. I do not speak of the mind's; the others came later, when natural fears gave way to man's and I saw darker things still, things beyond the wildest flight of a boy's fancies. Who will deny there are worse dragons? But I did not see the sign of what was to come until I was blind as Samson. With one stroke, I lost all desire, hope, strength--for who needs his sight when cold age pokes the heart's fire with only a broken stick? Now at my feet a dog whines even in slumber; he sniffs another's bone as he shifts in his own darkness, hungry for gain that requires no fight, and in his dreams grows angry at dream's inconsequent wish. How can I reproach him, I who am shepherd and watchman, and as ignorant and dumb? Both of us strain at a gnat and swallow camels, the spite of those who may look at but not touch the other's ration. Yet I make no mourn or cry I have no tears to defend. By now my shoes understand how to find the door, the latch and go without any fright of stumbling up crooked paths since all paths lead to the one. Yes, yes, the words of the wise, but I do not eat their bread or cover my lips to swear by the debts of the guilty, for I can not see the light that moves men to take pity and neither can I forget. When harvest is past, the ties with summer are ended. Even the flies know better than to sit at a table where vinegar and gall blight the sense--their comfort, the chill presaging winter's opiate. I ask, who can see God's eye? Then let him be sure to scour both inside his cup and out, for though the temple is lit like gold and the altar white, the heart of the hypocrite shall betray his hands and mouth. I sleep the sleep of death, ai! An old man, I have no rod, no plague to command, no cloud to conceal my nakedness-- nothing but a toothless bite as I wander in silence, a harmless ghost walked by his dog. FULL CIRCLE The old tree weeps for its blossom, the blossom for its fruit, forgetting, when the frosts come, the seed will weep for its root. CONVERT An eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth-- this you taught me, this was truth. Now that I am wise, you turn my cheek-- and leave me eyes with which to weep. NOT JUST ONCE Sand and stars are not enough, there must be proof, such as stones capable of love to raise up children. A test beyond reason, in order to move the incredible mountain and bring down the sun. Something uncommon, a sign of God in man, not just once, but as many times as the times demand. Still nothing satisfies, human or divine: the hand that stopped Abraham drove the nail through Christ's. [Illustration: Abstract design] NOTES FOR THE FUTURE Light destroyed in minds only the stars Strength reduced to hands only the stones no other language but signs no other knowledge but chance Time returned to fear only the hurt Space defined by food only the hunt each one yoked from head to foot each one racked by claw and tooth Ears inured to hope only the drum Eyes condemned to ape only the dream THE SLEEPWALKERS With wide eyes open they walk into a morning where darkness shines, their feet descending a marble stairway in the mountain flanked by stone lions. Holding hands, they cross a sudden bridge, and pause to view the clouds below them. Silence spills from frozen waterfalls to stay the river's course. Farther on, they come to a garden whose golden stem lifts her and him in its calyx palm and bursts the lovesweet dram from their summer's bloom. Now winged, they cruise between glass walls to gaze inside the zoo of human cages, those illusions of space and size multiplied in mirrors. Not to be deceived, they glide down vertical waves of light, where love, having slipped time's gyve, can happily ever after live in the sea's bright grove. Voices in the ear form a separate soundtrack, images blur on a shifting screen, while they uphold their safe dream world on secret tides of air. MEXICAN PROFILE Buzzards in the air and flies peasants everywhere earth size Jungles by the sea and sands at each extremity bare hands Volcanos over towns and hills traditioned in the browns the wills Corn and bean for breath and bones remembered after death the stones Dark feet on the roads and wheels heavy are the loads the heels Burros led by whips and shouts in answer to the lips and clouts Adobes out of earth and cathedrals attendant on the birth of eagles DRY SANCTUARY Even the desert has learned to protect itself, to keep its inch of rain in stored defense; against the mountain's strength and pressured air, it does not stand, but daily creeps, aware. Upon its needled hands and thorny feet, it crouches, head bent, with lizard eyes alert to scorching light and sand, then seeks the deepened shadows against the coming of night. Here kangaroo rat and road runner thrive; the rattler coils his tail in sleepful ease, while bayonet and dagger guard the hive left by Indian and Spaniard in retreat. Shrewdly, the yucca's panicle of white is thrust above the ground, fully equipped to meet the world on friendly terms that hide poisoned stings, barbed walls, fists. One could do worse than put out cactus leaves: when harsh winds blow the wrong way and sleep consumes itself, from inner wells they cool their fruit and, even after a century, bloom. RETURN TRIP The recognition comes as it always does-- slowly. One feels a sense of surprise to find not all has changed: the blue of miles above the snow-rimmed clouds of old volcanoes, the tireless browns still ploughed to greening fields, the red tiled roofs that accent time between. The twenty years move slowly into place. With eye as brush and sun as palette, a full perspective emerges: as long ago today, as near to far. The wish reflects a view almost transparent. Past and distance blaze, caught in a foreground of light, then shift. The darkness grays, thickens. One tastes salt rain on the wind that blows through the mist. THE CAVE Drop by drop the earth is born, a billion years from dark to dawn Drop by drop as rivers flow past sunless cliffs no wind has known Where no grass blows and no birds sing there time drips slow and patient, clings Drop by drop till waterfalls are turned to stone Here new stars form and mountains rise clear of the storms that twist the sky Drop by drop while caverns tall carve crystal bones [Illustration: Abstract design] What dream lies walled within this night, what shape shall crawl up to the light Drop by drop as silence grows inside its vault of carbon snow When glaciers halt before no zones, when both the poles at last are one Drop by drop the dawn shall come, a billion years from cave to sun DARK ANGEL Dark angel of the night, you come on folded wings secret and silent, bringing sleep. To you belong the rosemary and poppy, the final dream from which the road turned in its lost beginning. You have seen the frightened eyes of the city glow upon bridges, along streets, behind roofed windows, and you know how small a kilowatt burns in each single, separate room, and how each one reaches at last a diminishing point beyond which none can see but you. Night is your hour and with it comes the inevitable surrender, peaceful or with clash of arms, with unfulfilled hopes, terrors, the fingers still clutching at the vanishing day, the throat strangled by the unuttered word it says, the ear straining for the unheard response, the thought immense in the dark. Only you, dark angel, born of our love and pity, can see night's passing feet around the earth, on rotating centuries across the stars, journeying over the ruins of forgotten time since we first left that home, where the dream began, where the road turned, and the sun swung in its orbit, bringing you, dark angel, down. FUGITIVE I need to live where it is cold enough to seek the sun More like that tree well seasoned to the rough of snow and ice That keeps its fire inside of root and bark till heat is done O fugitive from winter and the dark see the moon rise THE TRAP Of memory and hope I made my rope and swung not knowing its length or how much strength there hung. Backward and forward past into future I climbed higher and higher despair and desire combined. Farther and farther no present to bother my flight above now and here beyond loss and fear upright. Ah, this was the way to trap time and stay its dread yes, twisted inside then knotted and tied instead! For being was this both height and abyss outflung the head free of reason the heart without season full sprung. Not creeping by squirm an inch measured worm begrimed with darkening age to a burnt out rage consigned. But swept on an ocean of tides set in motion by light in a brilliance of air with clear eyes aware of sight. Until the strands between my hands were red and I came to a stop to let time drop down dead. THE RUIN OF THAT HOUSE I speak of the ruin of that house as the worst, for in it lived two blind creatures, blind husband and blind wife, each trying to lead the other out, and finding a ditch by the door. If there were trees, they heard them crash, when the ground split under their hands and knees. But it was not of the storm or quake they thought, or of themselves-- but of the fruit, and how to avoid both barb and thorn, each terrified in his heart at his own helplessness to save the best. Except in their speech where they bitterly laid the blame on one another for the loss and waste, since neither had fulfilled the need for a house that was deep and broad, founded on rock; secure and strong against fire and flood, rust and moth; a house uncorrupt by thief or sword, yet so full of treasure that it gleamed, with light enough to see, mote and beam, the hypocrites of their common doom. I speak in pity of the ruin. THEIR FIRST HUNT I am afraid of that woman. I have seen the scorpion tip of her soft red mood and felt the feathered grip beneath the jess, the hood. I am afraid of that man, I have smelled the oestrous rut that enjoys the sting and heard the gun click shut at the lift of the wing. I am afraid, life, of your poison and passion. I am afraid, death, of your sureness and speed. WOLF! As children we played "Wolf" and howled its hot pursuit along the canyons of our street, wailing the bushy tail that followed at our feet, sidewalk to cellar, lamp-post to door, feeling the murderous paws and ravenous breath tingling the skin of our necks, setting hair on end, and circling each eye. Wolf, are you ready? Steady on the first floor, he's coming up the stairs... second floor, third floor, he's stopping for some air... top floor, roof, and now beware! Rough coat, claws and jaws and tooth will catch _you_ and _you_ and _you_ and _YOU!_ Oh run-run-run from the WOLF! That was spring... the taste of first free days outdoors. Wasting no time, in haste and thirst we came to summer, swinging... making our own kind of hay and playing a new kind of game, with dizzy drinks, jazzy music, hazy-crazy cigarettes and kisses, and aware of other dangers, the wolfish ways of friends turned strangers... love, as fierce, as rapacious, in spite of all the shoutings and the warnings of approach, with no one ready when the roof blew in. How we ran! By autumn, to be sure, we knew the tricks and character of sticks... Nursing bruised heads and burnt fingers, we shook the straw from our pockets and settled down... to play it safe this time we thought, with a solid house, genuine antique furniture furniture and homogenized children, finding a good night's rest harvest enough for such sound dreams as conscience feeds on... not hearing the creaks beyond our snores, the furtive glide outside our doors, until one rainy day, what a storm! Then winter came... and we knew then, there was no escape. Not again, not even with bricks reinforced by steel over a concrete shelter, for our pressure is high, our metabolism low, and we can no longer run... We have set traps, posted prizes, sent out scouting parties, and armed ourselves... Waking at night and trembling, we cry, "Peter Peter, please come, we need you!" knowing only his toy gun can save us. How the wind comes through... FINAL PERFORMANCE A spinner in the green years, I trudge the snowdeep woods to find the Rima trees where I was warm in silk through those first winters. Then the unwinding thread, from which I swung by two spare arms and legs, hung in the air like a gay trapeze, each vine humming to the brace and pull and reel of child's spider ways, an upside down dancer with her feet in the clouds and the heart in her mouth a feast. A beginner in the green years, my thick wool thumbs push back the broken twig, the empty nest, the closed gray flaps to summer's ringling tent. Embarrassed, I lift a rose still red and moist and soft. Again I twist its thin stem toward the light and dare the sky to seize my heels and trick time's crafty eyes till I repair the web and climb to one last height before I leap ---- ---- ---- to catch the hands of night. HOUSE OF THE POET For the ultimate hoard I keep my board bare, no gold or lace allowed to cover or adorn that spare purpose. Stripped of frivolity, it serves as bench and table, my words a daily rite quenching thirst and hunger. Whether I gain more by my frugality than I here disown, or lose as debtor, only you, Lord, know. But were I compelled to acquit this ghost, not as a prisoner in the heart's dark cell, but as host at the altar of the mind's high temple, I would count my fast a feast in heaven, and with one candle cast the light of seven. THE GHOST OF ANNE FRANK The cocks have been crowing for two thousand years, so I understand that part of it and even expected, was prepared for what happened. This I swear. As for tears, yours are mine, since I am the cause of them, and if I could, would take the blame upon myself. I know, you think in terms of innocence and guilt, but that decision was long ago made clear in an episode of apples, bought in a hoax for a song. I recognize it still, one we will always whistle. And feel I ought to ask forgiveness for you. A turn of cheek, if you like. Why not? Back of every lie and denial is the thing we all conceal: the inner hurt that makes our fingers seek revenge, to brand the other fellow with our own scar, as though, by doing so, ours is eased. Let's admit it does and, in comparison, sets a better example, hurts less than losing an eye. How many deaths do we need to prove it? And to begin to learn to live. Love, you say, and I believe you, yet there is self-love, too, the fear of having to lose not only a garden in the sun but a chance to bloom anywhere once, which is more natural, and why I say all will fail unless each individual succeeds, for treason always starts inside a single heart. This is the fatal trap that none of us can step over or hope to escape, because no one is safe: first comes Abel, and then Cain. So please understand me. What you now do here among yourselves to free and heal yourselves from grief and anger may yet preserve and defend the world. Shalom. I pray for this release. May you be blessed and walk in peace. THE MISTAKE In April, when she tried to take him there, a farm where winter had not heard of spring, where snow lay banked on rutted roads and winds went shimmying up and down slick roofs and trees, he took one look around and said, "God, let's get out of here!" not seeing anything. Luckily, night blanketed the backwoods and they missed the bus, so they went inside the house and she thought of cows in their stalls and bread in the oven, of the simple life collected here within its own crude warmth, while he stood smirking, repeating, "You would." The next year it was Washington. They went by train and all the way she kept checking tickets, bag, baggage, feeling she had left something behind, and though he joined "the tour," she realized with a start that it was he missing and lost to everything new. Everywhere was "like the postcards" and nowhere "was worth the time and trouble it took to get back from." In fact, if not for the car she bought for later trips, they might never have seen the stars, how they moved together. "Not all," he said, "not all," and they fell apart. It was like that all summer, and even a continent full of moons did not change the difference between mountains and prairies, and she wondered how the others managed, the men and women living there. "Heavens!" he said, "I've tried! Let's call it a mistake!" "Let's," she answered, knowing she would stumble over the same stones, up to the same door, till she came to the last and final one: single admission, standing room only-- which was natural, when it came to dying, but no way to live, unless you had to. REFLECTED IN BRASS Mortar and pestle made of brass, these and two solid candlesticks were heavy fortune, her penance for being peasant born and mixed by impure stars to common metal in a foreign land. But the level to which she raised her hands in prayer each Sabbath eve was holy: lips, eyes, heart purified by the tares that softly burned, the week eclipsed of wrongs she placed upon her head in blameless white, reflecting there the migrant image of a light that moved a wilderness of tents, made rivers part and mountains cry the voice of God. All this she meant by keeping Sabbath in her home and polishing the brass like gold. MODERN PRIMITIVE When morning breaks at the edge of night and the stone mind drops to its plain of light it does not help to think of Newton. What we really need is a new invention a mental jet faster than the speed of yawn and stretch in the life we lead or a time lift on spatial pulleys operated by the lids of our eyes. PERSONAL HISTORY This calendar is one, unduplicate and unrepetitive, being my own. What system it may have I leave testate in the genes of time as my memento of the events, holidays, and seasons that made the living so importantly mine: a personal history of nones, kalends, and ides, without chronology. God knows I fought my own battles, made peace with defeats and victories, wept and cheered. A soldier without rank, I took my ease where and when I could find it, having feared and met the worst, and found the enemy no braver than myself, as much in need of saints and miracles, each pharisee to his own convictions, though we bleed. What headlines emphasized my days and nights are filed within the archive of my skull, a private record of scandals and crimes no press would care to publish, were it called to print even a single edition, for the weather alone would defy all guess, being unpredictable, rain or sun, and variable as the heart's unrest. Such rulings, documents, customs, arts my life decreed, my life was witness to: I felt, I thought, I celebrated, start to finish, the world that entered through these walls of flesh; and there its evidence shall wait, in secret tissues of the bone, until some future historian's pen can disclose the infiniteness of One. I THINK I AM Being a supposition, it is based on some ground. As such, the connection is important, if not profound, because, without it, we would no-doubt flit as in a vacuum, like birds, not needing the support of words, rising, in-fact, above them. I protest the conclusion, despite the evidence that I am a valid one, by necessity, if not consequence, for while I argue and pursue What I think is true, in self-defense, God does not suppose-- He knows-- and that makes the difference. INSTINCT AND REASON They would have us believe that to defy authority is to punish nature. I would want to be sure what they have in mind and heart and hand, what signs of body politics they mean, before I could agree. Each sense protests the fact: a bird obedient to cat, the innocence of thorns, a night without awe... And yet I would accept a world less than perfect, for the sake of eggs and kittens, berries, stars, saints, children. THE SUMMING UP On the library of my heart they have fed, the worms of my living, and now, surfeited, they are dead, leaving their husks on the pages still unread, dry, harmless little things that crumble and shred. Ambition took the harder crust we dread, the thick skin on the cover, and gnawed with slow, relentless tread the marquee lights for which it craved and glittered, weaving letter by letter a shroud embittered. Love chose the softer, tender part, the bread of my daily giving, and made each ritual ahead a carnage of communion as I bled, praying for the blessing I offered, instead. Knowledge went directly to the core, the thread that bound my life together, and bored its way up through my head, loosening by stages the gold and the red, until every chapter I had written, fled. Now that I have finished with maggots and shed their dust with some misgiving, I am glad for the words not said, for being spared the hungers other men have bred, in my old age needing but a tranquil bed. THERE WILL BE TIME FOR MOSS Inventories, like spring cleaning, annoy me, and when it rains, I sleep. Forgotten things prove me absent-minded, although I still keep goods in storage at times. Once I did pushups and kept an earnest face, collected books, maps, stamps, and played the sweepstakes. Now I rehearse dreams the better to remember them and navigate by leaves between green and golden. How I am or where, no one knows for sure except my mother; she gets letters. PERSPECTIVE They go about with curious wonder in their eyes, like children half surprised by what they doubt. The time moves out... they are more intimately wise of what they once surmised; they are devout. THE QUESTION IS PROOF If I ask why you need not reply the question is proof Only my ear can help me to hear the rain on the roof What thoughts I own are shaped by my bone and etched on my brain Nothing more real than the moods I feel and what they explain Warm hands or cold the world that I hold is all I can show The more or less I measure by guess is all that I know All that I see with my eyes is me and no other truth Here with my feet time walks on the street in age as in youth Unless you lie in asking why you have the reply UNDER A THATCHED ROOF With leaner hands I clutch December's sky who held the barefist branch through wind and ice in younger days. The breath of frost is gone, my eyes no longer sting. Warmed by the sun, my heart at last has thawed and finds a peace it never knew before when storms raged free. Soft the fingering fronds would teach me how to seed my winter in a tropic ground and save my years from being cut in two-- they sway before the wind with ease, they bow-- and yet I can not loose my hold, I blink, I fear to lie in a hammock and swing. CONDITIONAL REFLEX If you had no choice and there was nothing else to do the caged intelligence could If you had no voice and only silence coming through the caved subviolence would. THE DARK CENTAUR Between the goat and the scorpion, between the horn and the sting, the dark centaur stands. He eyes the centuries that hold him there to a slow march, half-man, half-beast, his arrow still in hand. The bow is gone, long since fallen among the angels, when love and honor warred, while Jacob wept. Hunter and hunted, marksman and mark, he travels on past island suns where none has stepped. You can see him on a clear night in the southern sky, when the earth swings and the ninth sign appears. And if you listen, you may also hear a far-off wind carry his cry down the light-years: "O blessed and damned, in heaven and hell, in passion and intellect, all you who are twinned even as I! "Who controls his fate? Say! Who can escape being pierced or grazed by its accident or chance?" A shooting star replies. WORLD OF TOMORROW Whereless in a sea of space, how shall we reckon with the dead whose graves we marked on a shifting land and left at a distance travelled by light? What pilot navigates our course through a finite but expanding void no almanac explains or chart defines? Sun, stars, birds, nothing avails since Phoenician and Viking passed with cross-staff, astrolabe and compass to bring us to shores we have left behind. We are speeding our unborn young to harbors no heard voice guides us toward, no radar yet detects, no octant sights. Now new dimensions of mind extend the geometric skull of Ptolemy and Euclid, of occult priest and philosopher, to measure time not by the sun's zenith at noon or the moon's eclipse, but by spectra through which we can identify time's white. Past and present, both are blind to the future, while the Sphinx waits for another Oedipus. O waste of sand and wind, swept by an airborne tide! Shall we find a snakeless Eden and with the apples unforbidden begin our second exodus, from Paradise? This first edition was completed in May 1964. The poems were set in 14 pt. Centaur by Mackenzie & Harris, Inc. and printed by Bradley Brownell in the shop of Van Riper & Thompson, Inc. on Curtis Colophon text. Bound by the Santa Barbara Bindery Designed and illustrated by Wayne Thompson Van Riper & Thompson, Inc. 703 Anacapa Street Santa Barbara, California [Illustration: Back cover]