Country Music: Selected Early Poems

Delta Traveller

Delta Traveller —MWW, 1910-1964 Born in the quarter-night, brash Tongue on the tongueless ward, the moon down, The lake rising on schedule and Dr Hurt Already across the water, and headed home— And so I came sailing out, first child, A stream with no bed to lie in, A root with no branch to leaf, The black balloon of promise tied to your wrist, One inch of pain and an inch of light. -* No wonder the children stand by those moist graves. And produce is spread on the cobbled streets, And portraits are carried out, and horns play. And women, in single file, untangle Corn from the storage bins, and soft cheese. I shield my eyes against the sunlight, Holding, in one hand, a death's-head, Spun sugar and marzipan. I call it Love, And shield my eyes against the sunlight. XI lie down with you, I rise up with you. If a grain turns in my eye, I know it is you, entering, leaving, Your name like a lozenge upon my tongue. You drift through the antilife, Scrim and snow-scud, fluff stem, hair And tendril. You bloom in your own throat, Frost flame in the frost dust, One scratch on the slipstream,a closed mouth. 79 High-necked and high-collared, slumped and creased, A dress sits in a chair. Your dress, Or your mother's dress, a dress On a wooden chair, in a cold room, a room With no windows and no doors, full of the east wind. The dress gets up, windbone and windskin, To open the window. It is not there. It goes to the door. It is not there. The dress goes back and sits down. The dress gets up . itThree teeth and a thumbnail, white, white; four Fingers that cradle a black chin; Outline of eye-hole and nose-hole. This skull And its one hand float up from the tar And lime pit of dreams, night after slick night, To lodge in the fork of the gum tree, Its three teeth in the leaflight, Its thumbnail in flash and foil, Its mouth-hole a nothing I need to know. -xCat 's-eye and cloud, you survive. The porcelain corridors That glide forever beneath your feet, The armed lawn chair you sit in, Your bones like paint, your skin the wrong color— All this you survive, and hold on, A way of remembering, a pulse That comes and goes in the night, Match flare and wink, that comes and goes in the night. 80 If the wafer of light offends me, If the split tongue in the snake's mouth offends me, I am not listening. They make the sound, Which is the same sound, of the ant hill, The hollow trunk, the fruit of the tree. It is the Echo, the one transmitter of things: Transcendent and inescapable, It is the cloud, the mosquito's buzz, The trickle of water across the leaf's vein. -xAiid so with the dead, the rock dead and the dust: Worm and worm-fill, pearl, milk-eye And light in the earth, the dead are brought Back to vis, piece by piece— Under the sponged log, inside the stump, They shine with their secret lives, and grow Big with their messages, wings Beginning to stir, paths fixed and hearts clocked, Rising and falling back and rising. 81 ...