The Hills of a Child, and: Journey Down Troublesome, and: Excerpt from Time, and: Cumberland Waters

Four Poems by ALBERT STEWART Copyright 1962 THE HILLS OF A CHILD A child knows a familiar world of light That overflows his hills into his own big yard And all the little lives that live in light: The doodle bug's inverted cone under eave drip Where earth is clean and hard; The spiders of the sunshine in the pasture pond; Insect world and leafy hill and imagined world beyond. A child comes tremulous to night And to darkness with a fear of being lost And a sense of bright things gone away. A child's hills are the night and day. JOURNEY DOWN TROUBLESOME No thought I had as I set forth To conquer or be kind Though both I knew as customs set Deep in the public mind. Now if I knew nothing of all before, I knew not well what lay behind: Dimmed faith and hope perhaps, Charity old and blind. 142 But this I knew well: By any place my eye could see, By anything my mind could name, I should go quietly . . . So quietly no bird need change its perch Because of me, So quietly no squirrel need drop its nut Or turn its tree. I was still seeker and rover Days without end In spite of bare landscape Or cold wind And whatever it was I found I should be and share, And no thing need alter Because I journey there. EXCERPT FROM TIME The journey was not too long, not too eventful, Counting the way the memory counts time . . . Over the harboring hills, over the glittering sea, And back into this valley of explosive noon: Into my country that is not my county, Among my people that are not my people, Remembering only the long climb upward, The downing slope to reluctance and release, And in the gradual exhaustion of the senses, The deceitful face in the hesitant mirror In which one looks for time. What were we after? Were we too eager To break a pasture complacence, Too stirred by the voice of sleeping tyranny, Slow hate in the withering vine? The reasons are doubtful. The campaign was won, Though I have forgotten the objective. Were we to win far hills or alien valleys, Or stamp our seal on the glittering sea?— Or win at home this small gratuity, Wind among the poplars ... ? 143 CUMBERLAND WATERS I drink of waters, first and last, Mountain primed and mineral clear, Pure rock wherein the look is cast Of meadow calm and upland wear, Aspects of enduring, old fields' care. Though streams go clouded with their past, The source is here. No water witched by witching prong Has brought me up to lonesome song. No engine flocked with haste Clocks my slow use of force. This has a river's downward course. This song was spoken young, This word spoken at the source. 144 ...