Collected Poems

ON MINDING ONE'S OWN BUSINESS

To let the earth collapse, and come on home. The limber scarecrow knew the •way To meet the wind, that monumental joke; But once the real man tumbled down, Funny or not, The broomstick and the straw might leap and cry. Scared of the chance to wrestle wood and stone, I howled into the air, forgot How scarecrows stumble in a field to die. Snarling, I leaped the rusty fence, I ran across The shock of leaves, blundering as I tore Into the scarecrow in the man's defense. My master rolled away on grass And saw me scatter legs and arms in air. And saw me summon all my force To shake apart The brittle shoes, the tough blades of the brains Back to the ground; the brutalformlessness, The twisted knot of its arid heart Back to the sweet roots of the autumn rains. Where do the sticks and stones get off, Mocking the shape Of eyes younger than summer, of thoughtful hands? The real man falls to nothing fast enough. I barked into the air, to keep The man quick to a joy he understands. ON MINDING ONE'S OWN BUSINESS Ignorant two, -we glide On ripples near the shore. The rainbows leap no more, And men in boats alight To see the day subside. 58 All evening fins have drowned Back in the summer dark. Above us, up the bank, Obscure on lonely ground, A shack receives the night. I hold the lefthand oar Out of the wash, and guide The skiff away so wide We wander out of sight As soundless as before. We will not land to bear Our will upon that house, Nor force on any place Our dull offensive weight. Somebody may be there, Peering at us outside Across the even lake, Wondering why we take Our time and stay so late. Long may the lovers hide In viny shacks from those Who thrash among the trees, Who curse, who have no peace, Who pitch and moan all night For fear of someone's joys, Deploring the human face. From prudes and muddying fools, Kind Aphrodite, spare All hunted criminals, Hoboes, and whip-poor-wills, And girls with rumpled hair, All, all of whom might hide Within that darkening shack. Lovers may live, and abide. SAINT JUDAS 59 Wherefore, I turn my back, And trawl our boat away, Lest someone fear to call A girl's name till we go Over the lake so slow We hear the darkness fall. THE MORALITY OF POETRY to Gerald Enscoe Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer. . . . — WHITMAN I stood above the sown and generous sea Late in the day, to muse about your words: Your human images come to pray for hands To wipe their vision clear, your human voice Flinging the poem forward into sound. Below me, roaring elegies to birds, Intricate, cold, the waters crawled the sands, Heaving and groaning, casting up a tree, A shell, a can to clamber over the ground: Slow celebration, cluttering ripple on wave. I wondered when the complicated sea Would tear and tangle in itself and die, Sheer outrage hammering itself to death: Hundreds of gulls descending to the froth, Their bodies clumped and fallen, lost to me. Counting those images, I meant to say A hundred gulls decline to nothingness; But, high in cloud, a single naked gull Shadows a depth in heaven for the eye. And, for the ear, under the wail and snarl Of groping foghorns and the winds grown old, A single human word for love of air Gathers the tangled discords up to song. Summon the rare word for the rare desire. 60 ...