The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945–1992

Pursuit from Under

Pursuitfrom Under PAR T T H R E E Often, in these blue meadows, I hear what passes for the bark ofseals And on August week ends the cold ofa personal ice age Comes up through my bare feet Which are trying to walk like a boy's again So that nothing on earth can have changed On the ground where I was raised. The dark grass here is like The pads ofmukluks going on and on Because I once burned kerosene to read Myselfnear the North Pole In the journal ofArctic explorers Found, years after death, preserved In a tent, part ofwhose canvas they had eaten Before the last entry. All over my father's land The seal holes sigh like an organ, And one entry carries more terror Than the blank page that signified death In 1912, on the icecap. It says that, under the ice, The killer whale darts and distorts, Cut down by the flawing glass To a weasel's shadow, And when, through his ceiling, he sees Buckdancer's Choice / 2 I 6 Anything darker than snow He falls away To gather more and more force From the iron depths ofcold water, His shadow dwindling Almost to nothing at all, then charges Straight up, looms up at the ice and smashes Into it with his forehead To splinter the roof, to isolate seal or man On a drifting piece ofthe floe Which he can overturn. Ifyou run, he will follow you Under the frozen pane, Turning as you do, zigzagging, And at the most uncertain ofyour ground Will shatter through, and lean, And breathe frankly in your face An enormous breath smelling offish. With the stale lungs staining your air You know the unsaid recognition Ofwhich the explorers died: They had been given an image Ofhow the downed dead pursue us. They knew, as they starved to death, That not only in the snow But in the family field The small shadow moves, And under bare feet in the summer: That somewhere the turfwill heave, And the outraged breath ofthe dead, So long held, will form Unbreathably around the living. The cows low oddly here As I pass, a small bidden shape Going with me, trembling like foxfire Pursuit from Under / 2 I 7 Under my heels and their hooves. I shall write this by kerosene, Pitch a tent in the pasture, and starve. FoxBlood Blood blister over my thumb-moon Rising, under clear still plastic Still rising strongly, on the rise Ofunleashed dog-sounds: sound broke, Log opened. Moon rose Clear bright. Dark homeland Peeled backward, scrambling its vines. Stream showed, scent paled In the spray ofmountain-cold water. The smell dogs followed In the bush-thorns hung like a scarf, The silver sharp creek Cut; offyonder, fox feet Went printing into the dark: there) In the other wood) The uncornered animal's) running Is halffloating off Upon instinct. Sails spread) fox wings Lift him alive overgullies) Hair tips allover him lightly Touched with the moon's red silve1j Back-hearing around The stream ofhis body the tongue ofhounds Feather him. In his own animal sun Made ofhuman moonlight) Heflies like a bolt running home) Whose passage kills the current in the rive1j Whose track through the cornfield shakes The symmetryfrom the rows. Once shot, he dives through a bush Buckdancer's Choice / 2 I 8 ...