The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945–1992

Apollo

Shaking ofshores. Night is down on us; hold me with all your fur. These waters have put every grain oftheir ice Into our red hand-marrow. Statue-faced, let us breathe On each other let us breathe the ice Sweeping into the air, for it has crossed to Within us, rigidly airborne, impassable from crossing Miles oflake-freeze in our Overwhelming direction. They hang true lovers with threadsteel through the nose. It hurts straight up and down Inside us. This is where we come, and we are crosseyed with love and every tooth root aches. Lover, this is where: I can tell you here. Apollo ... whoever lives out there in space must surely call Earth "the blue planet" . . . -Ed White 1. FOR THE FIRST MANNED MOON ORBIT So long So long as the void Is hysterical, bolted out, you float on nothing But procedure alone, Eating, sleeping like a man Deprived ofthe weight ofhis own And all humanity in the name Ofa new life and through this, making new Time slowly, the moon comes. Its mountains bulge They crack they hold together Closer spreading smashed crust Ofuncanny rock ash-glowing alchemicalizing the sun With peace: with the peace ofa country The Eye-Beaters) Blood) Victory) Madness) Buckhead and Mercy /3I4 Bombed-out by the universe. You lean back from the great lightshattered face the pale blaze OfGod-stone coming Close too close, and the dead seas turn The craters hover turn Their dark side to kill The radio, and the one voice Ofearth. You and your computers have brought out The silence ofmountains the animal Eye has not seen since the earth split. Since God first found geometry Would move move In mysterious ways. You hang Mysteriously, pulling the moon-dark pulling, And solitude breaks down Like an electrical system: it is something Else: nothing is something Something I am trying To say 0 God Almighty! To come back! To complete the curve to come back Singing with procedure back through the last dark Ofthe moon, past the dim ritual Random stones ofoblivion, and through the blinding edge Ofmoonlight into the sun And behold The blue planet steeped in its dream Of reality, its calculated vision shaking with The only love. II. THE MOON GROUND You look as though You know me, though the world we came from is striking You in the forehead like Apollo. Buddy, We have brought the gods. We know what it is to shine Far off, with earth. We alone Apollo / 3I5 Ofall men, could take off Our shoes and fly. One-sixth ofourselves, we have gathered, Both ofus, under another one Ofus overhead. He is reading the dials he is understanding Time, to save our lives. You and I are in earth light and deep moon shadow on magic ground Ofthe dead new world, and we do not but we could Leap over each other, like children in the universal playground ofstones but we must not play At being here: we must look We must look for it: the stones are going to tell us Not the why but the how ofall things. Brother, your gold face flashes On me. It is the earth. I hear your deep voice rumbling from the body Ofits huge clothes Why did we come here It does not say, but the ground looms, and the secret Oftime is lying Within amazing reach. It is everywhere We walk, our glass heads shimmering with absolute heat And cold. We leap slowly Along it. We will take back the very stones OfTime, and build it where we live. Or in the cloud striped blue ofhome, will the secret crumble In our hands with air? Will the moon-plague kill our children In their beds? The Human Planet trembles in its black Sky with what we do I can see it hanging in the god-gold only Brother ofyour face. We are this world: we are The only men. What hope is there at home In the azure of breath, or here with the stone Dead secret? My massive clothes bubble around me Crackling with static and Gray's Elegy helplessly coming From my heart, and I say I think something From high school I remember Now Fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, and all the air A solemn stillness holds. Earth glimmers And in its air-color a solemn stillness holds It. 0 brother! Earth-faced god! APOLLO! My eyes blind With unreachable tears my breath goes all over The...