-
A MESSAGE HIDDEN IN AN EMPTY WINE BOTTLETHAT I THREW INTO A GULLY OF MAPLE TREESONE NIGHT AT AN INDECENT HOUR
- Wesleyan University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Trailed by shadows of rooted police, Turn aimlessly in the lashing elderberries. One cries for his father's death, And the other, the silent one, Listens into the hallway Of a dark leaf. FEAR IS WHAT QUICKENS ME i. Many animals that our fathers killed in America Had quick eyes. They stared about wildly, When the moon went dark. The new moon falls into the freight yards Of cities in the south, But the loss of the moon to the dark hands of Chicago Does not matter to the deer In this northern field. 2. What is that tall woman doing There, in the trees? I can hear rabbits and mourning doves whispering together In the dark grass, there Under the trees. 3I look about wildly. A MESSAGE HIDDEN IN AN EMPTY WINE BOTTLE THAT I THREW INTO A GULLY OF MAPLE TREES ONE NIGHT AT AN INDECENT HOUR Women are dancing around a fire By a pond ot creosote and waste water from the river In the dank fog of Ohio. They are dead. THE BRANCH WILL NOT BREAK 115 I am alone here, And I reach for the moon that dangles Cold on a dark vine. The unwashed shadows Of blast furnaces from Moundsville, West Virginia, Arc sneaking across the pits of strip mines To steal grapes In heaven. Nobody else knows I am here. All right. Come out, come out, I am dying. I am growing old. An owl rises From the cutter bar Of a hayrake. STAGES ON A JOURNEY WESTWARD i. I began in Ohio. I still dream of home. Near Mansfield, enormous dobbins enter dark barns in autumn, Where they can be lazy, where they can munch little apples, Or sleep long. But by night now, in the bread lines my father Prowls, I cannot find him: So far off, 1500 miles or so away, and yet I can hardy sleep. In a blue rag the old man limps to my bed, Leading a blind horse Of gentleness. In 1932, grimy with machinery, he sang me A lullaby of a goosegirl. Outside the house, the slag heaps waited. 2. In western Minnesota, just now, I slept again. In my dream, I crouched over a fire. 116 ...