Collecte Works (41 page)

          of words

                   not the hound-

     howl

holed

Night

        the sag

                  of day

My mother

       all the years

                no day

LZ

He walked—loped—the bridge

Saluted Peck Slip

—his friend shipped fish—

             My dish

Test

and the short verse

Now he stops for lilacs

—in the
sun's
fame

              he'd say—

Stops?

Even for death

               Z

after all that “A”

would dip his wool beret

to carp-fed roots

Peace

Dark road home

            from town—

young neighbor as he walked

    wound up tiny Swiss works—

                a firefly music

Mickey Mouse leaned on a bubble

             removed a tear

from the elephant's eye

     to a brush so he

                 could scrubble

Our small boat's motor raced

             Great Blue

the heron sailing as in China

    not caring

                to win

Thomas Jefferson Inside

Winter when no flower

The Congress away from home

Love is the great good use

one person makes of another

(Daughter Polly of the strawberry

                       letter)

Frogs sing—then of a sudden

all their lights go out

The country moves toward violets

                           and aconites

Foreclosure

Tell em to take my bare walls down

my cement abutments

their parties thereof

and clause of claws

Leave me the land

Scratch out: the land

May prose and property both die out

and leave me peace

HIS CARPETS FLOWERED

William Morris

I

—how we're carpet-making

by the river

a long dream to unroll

and somehow time to pole

a boat

I designed a carpet today—

dogtooth violets

and spoke to a full hall

now that the gall

of our society's

corruption stains throughout

Dear Janey I am tossed

by many things

If the change would bring

better art

but if it would not?

O to be home to sail the flood

I'm possessed

and do possess

Employer

of labor, true—

to get done

the work of the hand…

I'd be a rich man

had I yielded

on a few points of principle

Item sabots

blouse—

I work in the dye-house

myself

Good sport dyeing

tapestry wool

I like the indigo vats

I'm drawing patterns so fast

Last night

in sleep I drew a sausage—

somehow I had to eat it first

Colorful shores—mouse ear…

horse-mint…The Strawberry Thief

our new chintz

II

Yeats saw the betterment of the workers

by religion—slow in any case

as the drying of the moon

He was not understood—

I rang the bell

for him to sit down

Yeats left the lecture circuit

yet he could say: no one

so well loved

as Morris

III

Entered new waters

Studied Icelandic

At home last minute signs

to post:

Vetch

grows here—Please do not mow

We saw it—Iceland—the end

of the world rising out of the sea-

cliffs, caves like 13th century

illuminations

of hell-mouths

Rain squalls through moonlight

Cold wet

is so damned wet

Iceland's

black sand

Stone buntings'

fly-up-dispersion

Sea-pink and campion a Persian

carpet

DARWIN

I

His holy

          slowly

                     mulled over

   matter

not all “delirium

           of delight”

                     as were the forests

   of Brazil

“Species are not

          (it is like confessing

                    a murder)

    immutable”

He was often becalmed

          in this Port Desire by illness

                    or rested from species

   at billiard table

As to Man

            “I believe Man…

                      in the same predicament

   with other animals”

II

Cordilleras to climb—Andean

           peaks “tossed about

                     like the crust

   of a broken pie”

Icy wind

          Higher, harder

                   Chileans advised eat onions

   for shortness of breath

Heavy on him:

          Andes miners carried up

                     great loads—not allowed

   to stop for breath

Fossil bones near Santa Fé

          Spider-bite-scauld

                   Fever

    Tended by an old woman

“Dear Susan…

          I am ravenous

                   for the sound

   of the pianoforte”

III

FitzRoy blinked—

           sea-shells on mountain tops!

                     The laws of change

   rode the seas

without the good captain

          who could not concede

                    land could rise from the sea

    until—before his eyes

earthquake—

          Talcahuana Bay drained out—

                   all-water wall

    up from the ocean

—six seconds—

           demolished the town

                     The will of God?

    Let us pray

And now the Galápagos Islands—

           hideous black lava

                     The shore so hot

   it burned their feet

through their boots

          Reptile life

                    Melville here later

    said the chief sound was a hiss

A thousand turtle monsters

           drive together to the water

                     Blood-bright crabs hunt ticks

    on lizards' backs

Flightless cormorants

           Cold-sea creatures—

                     penguins, seals

   here in tropical waters

Hell for FitzRoy

         but for Darwin Paradise Puzzle

                   with the jig-saw gists

   beginning to fit

IV

Years…balancing

          probabilities

                     I am ill, he said

    and books are slow work