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EArly Poems
APOSTROPHE TO DUST
(Written at age fifteen)
For context of this poem,
see Memoir 9: Miss Mary Louise Williams
I do not recognize you as my brother, Dust!
Nor do I claim you in my lineage.
Do not presume to claim me as your kin,
For I shall fight!
And be not proud that others fought and lost,
And dissolutely died to bloat your
Parched and desiccated corpse!
And be not arrogant, damned Dust, because you
Set your foot upon their monuments.
And be not boastful though you stop the mouths of singers,
Nor glory that you fill the skulls of thinkers
When empty orbits let you sift inside!
Yes, Dust, it is you who desecrates the fallen leaves;
It is you who covers colors ’till identity is lost;
Yes, Dust, you are Death.
But exult not in imagined powers, Dust:
You have none.
Although you rise to claim all things that fall,
Be not deceived, Dust:
It is not you who felled them.
They fell from weakness.
You are passive, Dust; you have no active strength.
You are no sly antagonist.
You are the collective weakness
Of all who failed;
You are the collective imperfection
Of all things made with flaws.
You are that which fills the emptiness of vacant souls.
I am different!
With a chant, I break your catenations:
Dust is death, and death is dusty.
Lust is life, and life is lusty.
For context of this poem,
see Memoir 9: Miss Mary Louise Williams
I do not recognize you as my brother, Dust!
Nor do I claim you in my lineage.
Do not presume to claim me as your kin,
For I shall fight!
And be not proud that others fought and lost,
And dissolutely died to bloat your
Parched and desiccated corpse!
And be not arrogant, damned Dust, because you
Set your foot upon their monuments.
And be not boastful though you stop the mouths of singers,
Nor glory that you fill the skulls of thinkers
When empty orbits let you sift inside!
Yes, Dust, it is you who desecrates the fallen leaves;
It is you who covers colors ’till identity is lost;
Yes, Dust, you are Death.
But exult not in imagined powers, Dust:
You have none.
Although you rise to claim all things that fall,
Be not deceived, Dust:
It is not you who felled them.
They fell from weakness.
You are passive, Dust; you have no active strength.
You are no sly antagonist.
You are the collective weakness
Of all who failed;
You are the collective imperfection
Of all things made with flaws.
You are that which fills the emptiness of vacant souls.
I am different!
With a chant, I break your catenations:
Dust is death, and death is dusty.
Lust is life, and life is lusty.
RAIN BEETLES
(Written at age fifteen)
For context of this poem,
see Memoir 9: Miss Mary Louise Williams
Hear the beetles of the rain, as they crawl across the roof,
As they clamber o’er the shingles, as they stamp each tiny hoof.
Feel them flush and flow in torrents down the gutter to the ground.
How they grate upon the drainpipe! Can you hear their rasping sound?
Can you see the moths of night as they gather score on score?
As they beat against the window, as they thump upon the door?
Watch them fall in living mountains and inter us in a tomb
As they press to reach the candle faintly flick’ring in my room!
Hear the termites of the ground, as they burrow through the walls!
As they honeycomb the floorboards with their subterranean halls.
Feel the house begin to tremble, feel it shake off all its bricks
As it staggers from the impact of these demons from the Styx!
Spy the spiders, heralds of death, knitting nets from lair to lair,
As they draw the walls together to entrap us in their snare!
See them slide across the ceiling, see them stare from every crack.
See them slinking slowly closer on each silvery, silken track.
The mosquitoes of damnation! Hear them thrumming through the sky!
They are coming after blood, whining weirdly as they fly.
See them drink the very oceans, see them wither all the trees
’Til there’s not a drop of moisture from the mountains to the seas.
See them swelling into globes of a pallid, bluish hue
Then go floating off in space, and come plunging back anew.
Feel the atoms turn to heat as these giant spheroids crash!
See the earth depart as lightning in one mighty, cosmic flash!
See the brilliant, purple sun hanging in the sky of green
And the tiny, twinkling stars of metallic copper sheen.
Let us glide and pirouette on the spiders’ silken threads,
Lest the beetles of the rain come to burrow in our heads!
For context of this poem,
see Memoir 9: Miss Mary Louise Williams
Hear the beetles of the rain, as they crawl across the roof,
As they clamber o’er the shingles, as they stamp each tiny hoof.
Feel them flush and flow in torrents down the gutter to the ground.
How they grate upon the drainpipe! Can you hear their rasping sound?
Can you see the moths of night as they gather score on score?
As they beat against the window, as they thump upon the door?
Watch them fall in living mountains and inter us in a tomb
As they press to reach the candle faintly flick’ring in my room!
Hear the termites of the ground, as they burrow through the walls!
As they honeycomb the floorboards with their subterranean halls.
Feel the house begin to tremble, feel it shake off all its bricks
As it staggers from the impact of these demons from the Styx!
Spy the spiders, heralds of death, knitting nets from lair to lair,
As they draw the walls together to entrap us in their snare!
See them slide across the ceiling, see them stare from every crack.
See them slinking slowly closer on each silvery, silken track.
The mosquitoes of damnation! Hear them thrumming through the sky!
They are coming after blood, whining weirdly as they fly.
See them drink the very oceans, see them wither all the trees
’Til there’s not a drop of moisture from the mountains to the seas.
See them swelling into globes of a pallid, bluish hue
Then go floating off in space, and come plunging back anew.
Feel the atoms turn to heat as these giant spheroids crash!
See the earth depart as lightning in one mighty, cosmic flash!
See the brilliant, purple sun hanging in the sky of green
And the tiny, twinkling stars of metallic copper sheen.
Let us glide and pirouette on the spiders’ silken threads,
Lest the beetles of the rain come to burrow in our heads!
ANOTHER GOD IS DEAD
(Written at age nineteen)
At a crossroad far from town, I
came across the snow-covered ruins
of a shack that had served as a church
for a wonder-working congregation of
migrant farm workers.
The windows were broken and the door
was swinging on a single hinge.
Dead grass was growing from the remains
of a piano keyboard beneath a place where
the roof had caved in to allow sunlight
to fall upon the instrument.
On one last rusty pivot swings the door
Moved not by hands of men who think they’ve sinned
And come, abject, forgiveness to implore--
It yields before dark morning’s winter wind.
Fine-sifted snow lies mouse-tracked ’neath a pew;
The empty choir creaks, no anthem sounds.
The nave, a foundered ship without a crew,
Is but a bare-ribbed carcass chewed by hounds.
Where are they gone, the ones who told the tales?
They’ve gone to study stars and plagues with glass.
And what of them whose faith could swallow whales?
They think quite natural now, the earth, the grass
Stand by this wreck a stone, let it be read:
“As Baal before, another god is dead.”
At a crossroad far from town, I
came across the snow-covered ruins
of a shack that had served as a church
for a wonder-working congregation of
migrant farm workers.
The windows were broken and the door
was swinging on a single hinge.
Dead grass was growing from the remains
of a piano keyboard beneath a place where
the roof had caved in to allow sunlight
to fall upon the instrument.
On one last rusty pivot swings the door
Moved not by hands of men who think they’ve sinned
And come, abject, forgiveness to implore--
It yields before dark morning’s winter wind.
Fine-sifted snow lies mouse-tracked ’neath a pew;
The empty choir creaks, no anthem sounds.
The nave, a foundered ship without a crew,
Is but a bare-ribbed carcass chewed by hounds.
Where are they gone, the ones who told the tales?
They’ve gone to study stars and plagues with glass.
And what of them whose faith could swallow whales?
They think quite natural now, the earth, the grass
Stand by this wreck a stone, let it be read:
“As Baal before, another god is dead.”
A FIGURED HAND OF STONE
(Written at age nineteen)
Written after a visit to a nineteenth-century
cemetery filled with numerous deeply weathered
marble monuments on which remained the
eroded figures of a human hand, the index
finger pointing up toward the sky.
A figured hand of stone points up
Where wreathes of bramble crown
The long-forgotten cell where sleeps
A father of the town.
“O Death, where is thy sting?” they sing,
“Thy victory, O Grave?”
But who commands a victory here?
And what is left to save?
A figured hand of stone points up
In silence as the lone,
Lean marker in eternity
Of precious life, long blown.
What matters to the yawning pit
All liturgy and prayer?
Can faith or tears or rosaries
A muted corpse repair?
Where in this aged mass of mold
Is that which priests intone?
Where is the triumph over death
Proclaimed by weathered stone?
Written after a visit to a nineteenth-century
cemetery filled with numerous deeply weathered
marble monuments on which remained the
eroded figures of a human hand, the index
finger pointing up toward the sky.
A figured hand of stone points up
Where wreathes of bramble crown
The long-forgotten cell where sleeps
A father of the town.
“O Death, where is thy sting?” they sing,
“Thy victory, O Grave?”
But who commands a victory here?
And what is left to save?
A figured hand of stone points up
In silence as the lone,
Lean marker in eternity
Of precious life, long blown.
What matters to the yawning pit
All liturgy and prayer?
Can faith or tears or rosaries
A muted corpse repair?
Where in this aged mass of mold
Is that which priests intone?
Where is the triumph over death
Proclaimed by weathered stone?
SPRING RAIN
(Written at age nineteen)
Rain puddles on my balcony.
Through glass that Spring has spattered
I see the wind-wet walk below.
Umbrellaless, two lovers kiss--
Supremely separate, soaking wet.
They’ll catch a cold for certain.
Rain puddles on my balcony.
Through glass that Spring has spattered
I see the wind-wet walk below.
Umbrellaless, two lovers kiss--
Supremely separate, soaking wet.
They’ll catch a cold for certain.
ESCAPE FROM TIME
(Written at age nineteen)
The clock broke down and moaned; I heard it clear:
A moan, and not the sound one ought to hear--
The tikcontented, tokcontented, satisfied machinery sound
Of wheels that dumbly turn predestined ’round.
How can aught of atoms made
Stray the track that fixed its trade?
Can feelings from dull custom be distilled
And, nurtured in the field that Time has tilled,
Rise up and though not win their fight with Fate
Find strength enough at last to clear the slate?
The clock broke down and moaned; I heard it clear:
A moan, and not the sound one ought to hear--
The tikcontented, tokcontented, satisfied machinery sound
Of wheels that dumbly turn predestined ’round.
How can aught of atoms made
Stray the track that fixed its trade?
Can feelings from dull custom be distilled
And, nurtured in the field that Time has tilled,
Rise up and though not win their fight with Fate
Find strength enough at last to clear the slate?