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TurningAway Variations on Estrangement I Something for a long time has gone wrong, Got in between this you and that one other And now here you must turn away. Beyond! Beyond! Another life moves In numbing clarity begins By looking out the simple-minded window, The face untimely relieved Ofliving the expression ofits love. II Shy, sad, adolescent separated-out The gaze stands alone in the meadow Like a king starting out on a journey Away from all things that he knows. It stands there there With the ghost's will to see and not tell What it sees with its nerveless vision Ofsorrow, its queen-killing glare: The apple tree in the wind Paling with noon sleep, Light pouring down from the day-moon White-hot inside the sun's mildness, The eyes clamped by an ordinary meadow As by the latest masterpiece Under the sun. III For the face a studded look slowly Arrives from a gulley ofchickweed Like a beard, come from something Unwanted, that the face cannot help all its life. Hair curls inside the jaws The Eye-Beaters) Blood) Victory) Madness) Buckhead andA1ercy / 336 Unstoppable mindless turns white Turns straight chokes Helplessly, in more and more dangerous Iron-masked silence. IV A deadly, dramatic compression Is made ofthe normal brow. Because ofit The presence ofthe hand upon the sill Calms and does not shake the thing beheld. Every stone within sight stands ready To give you its secret Ofimpassivity, its unquestionable Silence: you wear Its reason for existence where you stand So still the tongue grows solid also Holding back the rock speech. V A hooked shape threads Through your nostrils, and you have Caesar's eagle look, and nothing For it to do, Even though, on the golden Imperial helmet, little doors close over Your face, and your head is covered With military flowers. VI Turning away, You foresee the same fields you watch. They are there an instant Before they are ready: a stream being slowly suspended Between its weeds, running where it once was, Keeping its choir-sounds going All like crowned boys But now among grasses that are Turning Away / 337 An enormous green bright growing No That frees forever. VII The mutual scar on the hand ofman And woman, earned in the kitchen, Comes forth rises for you to brush Offlike a cutworm As the weed with wings explodes In air, laying in front ofyou down Cheap flowers by hundreds ofthousands And you try to get by heart The words written after the end Ofevery marriage manual, back To the beginning, saying Change; form again; flee. VIII Despair and exultation Lie down together and thrash In the hot grass, no blade moving, A stark freedom primes your new loins: Turning away, you can breed With the farthest women And the farthest also in time: breed Through bees, like flowers and bushes: Breed Greeks, Egyptians and Romans hoplites Peasants caged kings clairvoyant bastards: The earth's whole history blazes To become this light For you are released to all others, All places and times ofall women, And for their children hunger Also: for those who could be half You, halfsomeone unmet, Someone dead, immortal, or coming. The Eye-Beaters) Blood) Viaory) Madness) Buckhead and .Mercy / 338 Near you, some being suddenly Also free, is weeping her body away. IX The watched fields shake shake Halfblind with scrutiny. All working together, grasshoppers Push on a stem apiece And the breathless meadow begins To sway dissolve revolve: Faintness but the brain rights Itselfwith a sigh in the skull And sees again nothing But intensified grass. Listen: When this much is wrong, one can fix one's head In peacetime turning away From an old peaceful love To a helmet ofsilent war Against the universe and see What to do with it all: see with the eyes Ofa very great general Roads ditches trees Which have sunk their roots to provide Not shade but covering-fire. X Somewhere in this guarded encampment The soul stands stealthily up To desert: stands up like the sex About to run running Through pinewoods creeks changes oflight night And day the wide universe streaming over it As it stands there panting over-sensitized Filled with blood from the feet Heartbeating surviving in the last Place in cloud river meadowgrass or grave waiting For bird beast or plant to tell it Turning Away / 339 How to use itself whom to meet what to do Which way to go to...

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