West Wind Read online

  Shelley

  When I'm dying,

  and near paradise,

  maybe

  the little boat will come

  like a cloud—

  like a wing—

  like a white light burning.

  This morning,

  in the actual fog

  beside the rocking sea,

  there was nothing—

  not a sail,

  not a soul.

  There was only this—

  an idea.

  Beauty

  can die all right—

  but don't you worry,

  from utter darkness—

  since opposites are, finally, the same—

  comes light's snowy field.

  And, as for eternity, what's that

  but the collation of all the hours we have known

  of sweetness

  and urgency?

  The boat bounced and sparkled,

  then it trembled,

  then it shook,

  then it lay down on the waves.

  I believe in death.

  I believe it is the last wonderful work.

  So they spilled from the boat,

  they plunged toward darkness, they drowned.

  You know the story.

  How the sky flares and grows brighter, all the time!

  How time extends!

  Maples

  The trees have become

  suddenly very happy

  it is the rain

  it is the quick white summer rain

  the trees are in motion under it

  they are swinging back and forth they are tossing

  the heavy blossoms of their heads

  they are twisting their shoulders

  even their feet chained to the ground feel good

  thin and gleaming

  nobody can prove it but any fool can feel it

  they are full of electricity now and the shine isn't just pennies

  it pours out from the deepest den

  oh pretty trees

  patient deep-planted

  may you have many such days

  flinging your bodies in silver circles shaking your heads

  over the swamps and the pastures

  rimming the fields and the long roads hurrying by.

  The Osprey

  This morning

  an osprey

  with its narrow

  black-and-white face

  and its cupidinous eyes

  leaned down

  from a leafy tree

  to look into the lake—it looked

  a long time, then its powerful

  shoulders punched out a little

  and it fell,

  it rippled down

  into the water—

  then it rose, carrying,

  in the clips of its feet,

  a slim and limber

  silver fish, a scrim

  of red rubies

  on its flashing sides.

  All of this

  was wonderful

  to look at,

  so I simply stood there,

  in the blue morning,

  looking.

  Then I walked away.

  Beauty is my work,

  but not my only work—

  later,

  when the fish was gone forever

  and the bird was miles away,

  I came back

  and stood on the shore, thinking—

  and if you think

  thinking is a mild exercise,

  beware!

  I mean, I was swimming for my life—

  and I was thundering this way and that way

  in my shirt of feathers—

  and I could not resolve anything long enough

  to become one thing

  except this: the imaginer.

  It was inescapable

  as over and over it flung me,

  without pause or mercy it flung me

  to both sides of the beautiful water—

  to both sides

  of the knife.

  That Sweet Flute John Clare

  That sweet flute John Clare;

  that broken branch Eddy Whitman;

  Christopher Smart, in the press of blazing electricity;

  my uncle the suicide;

  Woolf on her way to the river;

  Wolf, of the sorrowful songs;

  Swift, impenetrable murk of Dublin;

  Schumann, climbing the bridge, leaping into the Rhine;

  Ruskin, Cowper;

  Poe, rambling in the gloom-bins of Baltimore and Richmond—

  light of the world, hold me.

  Sand Dabs, Three

  Six black ibis

  step through the black and mossy panels

  of summer water.

  Six times

  I sigh with delight.

  ***

  Keep looking.

  ***

  The way a muskrat

  in the snick of its teeth can carry

  long branches of leaves.

  ***

  Small hawks

  cleaning their beaks

  in the sun.

  ***

  If you think daylight is just daylight

  then it is just daylight.

  ***

  Believe me these are not just words talking.

  This is my life, thinking of the darkness to follow.

  ***

  Keep looking.

  ***

  The fox: his barking, in god's darkness, as of a little dog.

  The flounce of his teeth.

  ***

  Every morning

  all those pink and green doors

  into the sea.

  Forty Years

  for forty years

  the sheets of white paper have

  passed under my hands and I have tried

  to improve their peaceful

  emptiness putting down

  little curls little shafts

  of letters words

  little flames leaping

  not one page

  was less to me than fascinating

  discursive full of cadence

  its pale nerves hiding

  in the curves of the Qs

  behind the soldierly Hs

  in the webbed feet of the Ws

  forty years

  and again this morning as always

  I am stopped as the world comes back

  wet and beautiful I am thinking

  that language

  is not even a river

  is not a tree is not a green field

  is not even a black ant traveling

  briskly modestly

  from day to day from one

  golden page to another.

  Black Snake This Time

  lay

  under the oak trees

  in the early morning,

  in a half knot,

  in a curl,

  and, like anyone

  catching the runner at rest,

  I stared

  at that thick black length

  whose neck, all summer,

  was a river,

  whose body was the same river—

  whose whole life was a flowing—

  whose tail could lash—

  who, footless, could spin

  like a black tendril and hang

  upside down in the branches

  gazing at everything

  out of seed-shaped red eyes

  as it swung to and fro,

  the tail making its quick sizzle,

  the head lifted

  like a black spout.

  Was it alive?

  Of course it was alive.

  This was the quick wrist of early summer,

  when everything was alive.

  Then I knelt down, I saw

  that the snake was gone—

  that the face, like a black bud,

  had pushed out of the broken petals />
  of the old year, and it had emerged

  on the hundred hoops of its belly,

  the tongue sputtering its thread of smoke,

  the work of the pearl-colored lung

  never pausing, as it pushed

  from the chin,

  from the crown of the head,

  leaving only an empty skin

  for the mice to nibble and the breeze to blow

  as over the oak leaves and across the creek

  and up the far hill it had gone,

  damp and shining in the starlight

  like a rollicking finger of snow.

  Morning Walk

  Little by little

  the ocean

  empties its pockets—

  foam and fluff;

  and the long, tangled ornateness

  of seaweed;

  and the whelks,

  ribbed or with ivory knobs,

  but so knocked about

  in the sea's blue hands

  that their story is at length only

  about the wholeness of destruction—

  they come one by one

  to the shore

  to the shallows

  to the mussel-dappled rocks

  to the rise to dryness

  to the edge of the town

  to offer, to the measure that we will accept it,

  this wisdom:

  though the hour be whole

  though the minute be deep and rich

  though the heart be a singer of hot red songs

  and the mind be as lightning,

  what all the music will come to is nothing,

  only the sheets of fog and the fog's blue bell—

  you do not believe it now, you are not supposed to.

  You do not believe it yet—but you will—

  morning by singular morning,

  and shell by broken shell.

  Rain, Tree, Thunder and Lightning

  Clouds rolled

  from the west—

  then they thickened,

  then thunder

  bucked and boiled

  toward the blown woods—

  then lightning

  slammed down

  and opened the tree—

  the way a tooth

  would open a flower.

  I fell down

  in the steaming grass,

  in the moss,

  in the slow things

  I was used to

  while the branches snapped,

  while they shrieked,

  while the tree

  spat out its solid heart

  all over the ground.

  Often enough,

  even in easy summer,

  I think of death—

  how it is known to come

  by dark, godforsaken inches.

  And then I remember

  the wheels of the wind,

  the heels of the clouds—

  the kick of the gold.

  What do I hope for

  from brother death?

  May there be no quibbling.

  Like the god that he is

  may he slide to the ground

  on his golden dial;

  and there I will be,

  for one last moment,

  broken but burning,

  like a golden tree.

  The Rapture

  All summer

  I wandered the fields

  that were thickening

  every morning,

  every rainfall,

  with weeds and blossoms,

  with the long loops

  of the shimmering, and the extravagant—

  pale as flames they rose

  and fell back,

  replete and beautiful—

  that was all there was—

  and I too

  once or twice, at least,

  felt myself rising,

  my boots

  touching suddenly the tops of the weeds,

  the blue and silky air—

  listen,

  passion did it,

  called me forth,

  addled me,

  stripped me clean

  then covered me with the cloth of happiness—

  I think

  there is no other prize,

  only rapture the gleaming,

  rapture the illogical the weightless—

  whether it be for the perfect shapeliness

  of something you love—

  like an old German song—

  or of someone—

  or the dark floss of the earth itself,

  heavy and electric.

  At the edge of sweet sanity open

  such wild, blind wings.

  Fox

  You don't ever know where

  a sentence will take you, depending

  on its roll and fold. I was walking

  over the dunes when I saw

  the red fox asleep under the green

  branches of the pine. It flared up

  in the sweet order of its being,

  the tail that was over the muzzle

  lifting in airy amazement

  and the fire of the eyes followed

  and the pricked ears and the thin

  barrel body and the four

  athletic legs in their black stockings and it

  came to me how the polish of the world changes

  everything, I was hot I was cold I was almost

  dead of delight. Of course the mind keeps

  cool in its hidden palace—yes, the mind takes

  a long time, is otherwise occupied than by

  happiness, and deep breathing. Still,

  at last, it comes too, running

  like a wild thing, to be taken

  with its twin sister, breath. So I stood

  on the pale, peach-colored sand, watching the fox

  as it opened like a flower, and I began

  softly, to pick among the vast assortment of words

  that it should run again and again across the page

  that you again and again should shiver with praise.

  Gratitude

  I was walking the field,

  in the fatness of spring

  the field was flooded with water, water stained black,

  black from the tissues of leaves, oak mostly,

  but also

  beech, also

  blueberry, bay.

  Then the big hawk rose. In her eyes

  I could see how thoroughly she

  hated me. And there was her nest, like a round raft

  with three white eggs in it, just

  above the black water.

  ***

  She floats away

  climbs the invisible air

  on her masculine wings

  then glides back

  agitated responsible

  climbs again angry

  does not look at me.

  Halfway to my knees

  in the black water

  I look up

  I cannot stop looking up

  how much time has passed

  I can hardly see her now

  swinging in that blue blaze.

  ***

  There are days when I rise from my desk desolate.

  There are days when the field water and the slender grasses

  and the wild hawks

  have it all over the rest of us

  whether or not they make clear sense, ride the beautiful

  long spine of grammar, whether or not they rhyme.

  Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith

  Every summer

  I listen and look

  under the sun's brass and even

  in the moonlight, but I can't hear

  anything, I can't see anything—

  not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,

  nor the leaves

  deepening their damp pleats,

  nor the tassels making,


  nor the shucks, nor the cobs.

  And still,

  every day,

  the leafy fields

  grow taller and thicker—

  green gowns lofting up in the night,

  showered with silk.

  And so, every summer,

  I fail as a witness, seeing nothing—

  I am deaf too

  to the tick of the leaves,

  the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet—

  all of it

  happening

  beyond all seeable proof, or hearable hum.

  And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.

  Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.

  Let the wind turn in the trees,

  and the mystery hidden in dirt

  swing through the air.

  How could I look at anything in this world

  and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?

  What should I fear?

  One morning

  in the leafy green ocean

  the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body

  is sure to be there.

  Dogs

  Over

  the wide field

  the dark deer

  went running,

  five dogs

  screaming

  at his flanks,

  at his heels,

  my own two darlings

  among them

  lunging and buckling

  with desire

  as they leaped

  for the throat

  as they tried

  and tried again

  to bring him down.

  At the lake

  the deer

  plunged—

  I could hear

  the green wind

  of his breath

  tearing

  but the long legs

  never stopped

  till he clambered

  up the far shore.

  The dogs

  moaned and screeched

  they flung themselves

  on the grass

  panting

  and steaming.