Poems, 1957–1967

THE VEGETABLE KING

THE VEGETABLE KING Just after the sun Has closed, I swing the fresh paint of the door And have opened the new, green dark. From my house and my silent folk I step, and lay me in ritual down. One night each April I unroll the musty sleeping-bag And beat from it a cloud of sleeping moths. I leave the house, which leaves Its window-light on the ground In gold frames picturing grass, And lie in the unconsecrated grove Of small, suburban pines, And never move, as the ground not ever shall move, Remembering, remembering to feel The still earth turn my house around the sun Where all is dark, unhoped-for, and undone. I cannot sleep until the lights are out, And the lights of the house of grass, also, Snap off, from underground. Beneath the gods and animals of Heaven, Misrnade inspiringly, like them, I fall to a colored sleep Enveloping the house, or coming out Of the dark side of the sun, And begin to believe a dream I never once have had, Of being part of the acclaimed rebirth Of the ruined, calm world, in spring, When the drowned god and the dreamed-of sun Into the Stone 2 3 Unite, to bring the red, the blue, The common yellow flower out of earth Of the tended and untended garden : when the chosen man, Hacked apart in the growing cold Of the year, by the whole of mindless nature is assembled From the trembling, untroubled river. I believe I become that man, become As bloodless as a god, within the water, Who yet returns to walk a woman's rooms Where flowers on the mantel-piece are those Bought by his death. A warm wind springs From the curtains. Blue china and milk on the table Are mild, convincing, and strange. At that time it is light, And, as my eyelid lifts An instant before the other, the last star iswithdrawn Alive, from its fiery fable. I would not think to move, Nor cry, "I live/' just yet, Nor shake the twinkling horsehair of my head, Nor rise, nor shine, nor live With any but the slant, green, mummied light And wintry, bell-swung undergloom of waters Wherethrough my severed head has prophesied For the silent daffodil and righteous Leaf, and now has told the truth. This is the time foresaid, when I must enter The waking house, and return to a human love Cherished on faith through winter: That time when I in the night 24 Of water lay, with sparkling animals of light And distance made, with gods Which move through Heaven only as the spheres Are moved:by music, music. Mother, son, and wife Who live with me: I am in death And waking.Give me the looks that recall me. None knowswhy you have waited In the cold, thin house for winter To turn the inmost sunlight green And blue and red with life, But it must be so, since you have set Theseflowersupon the table, and milk for him Who, recurringin this body, bears you home Magnificent pardon, and dread, impending crime. Into the Stone 2 5 ...