Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser Read online

  heard plain and plainly understood

  can have attacked us so and so deferred.

  Fight them down, deliver yourself, friend!

  see, we all fight it down : poetry, picket-line,

  to master pride and muscle fluid with sun,

  conflicting graces moving to one end.

  Witness the unfailing war, season with season,

  license and principle, sex with tortured sex,

  class versus class, and help us to survey

  this city for faces, this hill for tracks.

  Sickness will bind itself upon our tissue

  clipping off with restriction blood and heat and milk,

  becoming real against all disbelief

  a sly ghost coughing to advertise its bulk.

  Climax to Egypt, our milestone pyramid

  forces out history and we remember

  conflict of thousands of April processions,

  rival winds ripping at the heart's deep chamber.

  No natural poison : a vicious, banker's thrust

  nudges toward dissolution during war,

  this peak of open battle points disgust

  of decay, counterattacks backing us to our door.

  This is when death thrives in the rot

  and formal nightmare, zebra of sleep,

  presents us madness, diffusion to remember,

  to cherish, loss if we lose; and dust to keep.

  Resent the nightmare, assume a waking stance,

  this clock revolt, held in the hand and striking,

  clapping, the violent wings of a struck bird,

  speaks your top hour, marks your fatal chance.

  “Still elegiac! : between two battles, when one is happy to be

  alive !” — Rosa Luxemburg

  Here was a battle forced by the brain's fortitude,

  mapping machines of peace before crisis had come;

  and by this planning we create a world

  new-hearted, secure from common delirium.

  If the strike was won, the prisoners freed at last,

  the cataract tapped for power, parade-songs sung :

  Prepare for continuance, open your brilliant love,

  your life,—front April, give it tongue !

  Below the flowering hedge

  rest in the light, forget

  grief's awful violet

  and indecision's wedge

  driven into your pride,

  and how the past has died.

  Here is transition :

  pain, but no surgeon's knife

  : anaesthetize your life?

  you lose the vision

  of how you simply walk

  toward a younger folk,

  simply, a flaming wire

  advancing on the night,

  reducing midnight

  to clear noon-fire ;

  moving upon the future

  and large, clean stature

  nearer to all your nature.

  The latchpieces of consciousness unfasten.

  We are stroked out of dream and night and myth,

  and turning slowly to awareness, listen

  to the soft bronchial whisperings of death.

  Never forget in legendary darkness

  the ways of the hands' turning and the mouth's ways,

  wander in the fields of change and not remember

  a voice and many voices and the evening's burning.

  Turn and remember, this is the world made plain

  by chart and signal, instrument and name :

  to some we say Master, others call Sister,

  to some we offer nothing but love :

  flier in advance, the cloud over his mouth ;

  the inventor who produces the moment of proof ;

  a sun and moon and other several stars ;

  and those who know each other over wars.

  Cats stream upon a hill,

  the poet-cock breaks his throat now to say :

  Moment of Proof, May dawn transposing night,

  partisan dawn's on the side of day!

  What hill can ever hold us?

  Deeply night

  found you intent upon this city river,

  asleep at heart (turn light to her at last,

  it shall be to her

  as wellwater) :

  going all day along the gilded air

  you saw at midnight

  (going, down to the river, haunted by fog-horns) :

  steam escaping over the spouting manhole,

  a rout of white cats racing through the street.

  Wet street, and the fight was ended there,

  cats and that cock, fearful antagonists

  resolved in fog, a quick pack running uphill

  to a cock rigid with joy; running, but not to kill.

  “Forehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Moby Dick!” —

  Herman Melville

  Moment of proof, when the body holds its vision,

  masses recognize masses, knowledge without all end ;

  face fathoms other face, all the hills open sunrise,

  mouth sets on mouth ; Spring, and the tulips

  totter in the wind.

  Forfeit in love, forfeit in conflict, here

  met and at last marked clear in principle,

  desire meets desire, the chase expands, and now

  forever we course, knowing the marks of growth,

  seeing the signals.

  Now we remember winter-tormented cities,

  the August farm's overgrown hollow, thick with goldenrod,

  the impetus of strain, and places where

  love set its terminals, the vivid hunger

  and satisfying food.

  Mayday is moment of proof, when recognition

  binds us in protest, binds us under a sun

  of love and subtle thought and the ductile wish.

  Tomorrow's Mayday.—How many are we?

  We'll be everyone.

  No hill can ever hold us, peak enlists peak,

  climax forces out climax, proud cock, cats streaming,

  poets and pickets contriving a valid country,

  : Mayday moment, forever provoking new

  belief and blooming.

  THE BLOOD IS JUSTIFIED

  Beat out continuance in the choking veins

  before emotion betrays us, and we find

  staring behind our faces, accomplices of death.

  Not to die, but slowly to validate our lives :

  simply to move, lightly burdened, alone,

  carrying in this brain survival, carrying

  within these ribs, history,

  the past deep in the bone.

  Unthread time till its empty needle prick your flesh

  sewing your scars with air, treating the wounds

  only by laceration and the blood is fresh

  blood on our skin on our lips over our eyes.

  Living they move on a canvas of centuries

  restored from death in artful poses, found

  once more by us, descendants, foraging,

  ravelling time back over American ground.

  How did they wish, grandparents of these wars,

  what cataracts of ambition fell across their brains? :

  The heavy boots kicked stones down Wisconsin roads,

  Augusta Coller danced her début at Oshkosh :

  they spoke these names : Milwaukee, Waukesha,

  the crackle and drawl of Indian strange words.

  Jungle-savage the south

  raw green and shining branches, the crying

  of parakeets, the pointed stone,

  the altars stained with oil :

  Mexico : and Canada wheaten and polar with

  snow halfway up the sky :

  all these unknown.

  : What treason to their race has fathered us?

  They walked in the towns, the men selling clothing etc.

  the women tatting and boiling down grape j
elly.

  : If they were asked this, surely they did not answer.

  Over the country, Wisconsin, Chicago, Yonkers,

  I was begotten, American branch no less because

  I call on the great names of other countries.

  I do not say : Forgive, to my kindred dead,

  only : Understand my treason, See I betray you kissing,

  I overthrow your milestones weeping among your tombs.

  From out your knowing eyes I sprang, child of your distant wombs,

  of your full lips. Speaking allegiance, I turn,

  steadfastly to destroy your hope. Your cargo in me

  swings to ports hostile to your old intent.

  In us recurrences. : My generation feeds

  the wise assault on your anticipation,

  repeating historic sunderings, betraying our fathers,

  all parricidal in our destinies.

  How much are we American? Not knowing

  those other lands, being

  blood wrung from your bone, our pioneers,

  we call kindred to you, we claim links, speaking

  your tongue, although we pass, shaking

  your dream with revolution since we must.

  By these roads shall we come upon our country.

  Pillowed upon this birthright, we may wake

  strong for such treason, brave with your fallen dust.

  O, we are afflicted with these present evils,

  they press between the mirror and our eyes,

  obscuring your loaned mouths and borrowed hair.

  We focus on our times, destroying you, fathers

  in the long ground : you have given strange birth

  to us who turn against you in our blood

  needing to move in our integrity, accomplices

  of life in revolution, though the past

  be sweet with your tall shadows, and although

  we turn from treasons, we shall accomplish these.

  U.S. 1

  1938

  1 The Book of the Dead

  THE ROAD

  These are roads to take when you think of your country

  and interested bring down the maps again,

  phoning the statistician, asking the dear friend,

  reading the papers with morning inquiry.

  Or when you sit at the wheel and your small light

  chooses gas gauge and clock; and the headlights

  indicate future of road, your wish pursuing

  past the junction, the fork, the suburban station,

  well-travelled six-lane highway planned for safety.

  Past your tall central city's influence,

  outside its body: traffic, penumbral crowds,

  are centers removed and strong, fighting for good reason.

  These roads will take you into your own country.

  Select the mountains, follow rivers back,

  travel the passes. Touch West Virginia where

  the Midland Trail leaves the Virginia furnace,

  iron Clifton Forge, Covington iron, goes down

  into the wealthy valley, resorts, the chalk hotel.

  Pillars and fairway; spa; White Sulphur Springs.

  Airport. Gay blank rich faces wishing to add

  history to ballrooms, tradition to the first tee.

  The simple mountains, sheer, dark-graded with pine

  in the sudden weather, wet outbreak of spring,

  crosscut by snow, wind at the hill's shoulder.

  The land is fierce here, steep, braced against snow,

  rivers and spring. KING COAL HOTEL, Lookout,

  and swinging the vicious bend, New River Gorge.

  Now the photographer unpacks camera and case,

  surveying the deep country, follows discovery

  viewing on groundglass an inverted image.

  John Marshall named the rock (steep pines, a drop

  he reckoned in 1812, called) Marshall's Pillar,

  but later, Hawk's Nest. Here is your road, tying

  you to its meanings: gorge, boulder, precipice.

  Telescoped down, the hard and stone-green river

  cutting fast and direct into the town.

  WEST VIRGINIA

  They saw rivers flow west and hoped again.

  Virginia speeding to another sea!

  1671—Thomes Batts, Robert Fallam,

  Thomas Wood, the Indian Perecute,

  and an unnamed indentured English servant

  followed the forest past blazed trees, pillars of God,

  were the first whites emergent from the east.

  They left a record to our heritage,

  breaking of records. Hoped now for the sea,

  For all mountaines have their descents about them,

  waters, descending naturally, doe alwaies resort

  unto the seas invironing those lands…

  Yea, at home amongst the mountaines in England.

  Coming where this road comes,

  flat stones spilled water which the still pools fed.

  Kanawha Falls, the rapids of the mind,

  fast waters spilling west.

  Found Indian fields, standing low cornstalks left,

  learned three Mohetons planted them; found-land

  farmland, the planted home, discovered!

  War-born:

  The battle at Point Pleasant, Cornstalk's tribes,

  last stand, Fort Henry, a revolution won;

  the granite SITE OF THE precursor EXECUTION

  sabres, apostles OF JOHN BROWN LEADER OF THE

  War's brilliant cloudy RAID AT HARPERS FERRY.

  Floods, heavy wind this spring, the beaten land

  blown high by wind, fought wars, forming a state,

  a surf, frontier defines two fighting halves,

  two hundred battles in the four years: troops

  here in Gauley Bridge, Union headquarters, lines

  bring in the military telegraph.

  Wires over the gash of gorge and height of pine.

  But it was always the water

  the power flying deep

  green rivers cut the rock

  rapids boiled down,

  a scene of power.

  Done by the dead.

  Discovery learned it.

  And the living?

  Live country filling west,

  knotted the glassy rivers;

  like valleys, opening mines,

  coming to life.

  STATEMENT: PHILIPPA ALLEN

  —You like the State of West Virginia very much, do you not?

  —I do very much, in the summertime.

  —How much time have you spent in West Virginia?

  —During the summer of 1934, when I was doing social work

  down there, I first heard of what we were pleased to call the

  Gauley tunnel tragedy, which involved about 2,000 men.

  —What was their salary?

  —It started at 40¢ and dropped to 25¢ an hour.

  —You have met these people personally?

  —I have talked to people; yes.

  According to estimates of contractors

  2,000 men were

  employed there

  period, about 2 years

  drilling, 3.75 miles of tunnel.

  To divert water (from New River)

  to a hydroelectric plant (at Gauley Junction).

  The rock through which they were boring was of a high

  silica content.

  In tunnel No. 1 it ran 97–99% pure silica.

  The contractors

  knowing pure silica

  30 years' experience

  must have known danger for every man

  neglected to provide the workmen with any safety device….

  —As a matter of fact, they originally intended to dig that

  tunnel a certain size?

  —Yes.

  —And then enlarged the size of the tunnel, due to the fact

 
; that they discovered silica and wanted to get it out?

  —That is true for tunnel No. 1.

  The tunnel is part of a huge water-power project

  begun, latter part of 1929

  direction: New Kanawha Power Co.

  subsidiary of Union Carbide & Carbon Co.

  That company—licensed:

  to develop power for public sale.

  Ostensibly it was to do that; but

  (in reality) it was formed to sell all the power to

  the Electro-Metallurgical Co.

  subsidiary of Union Carbide & Carbon Co.

  which by an act of the State legislature

  was allowed to buy up

  New Kanawha Power Co. in 1933.

  —They were developing the power. What I am trying to get at,

  Miss Allen, is, did they use this silica from the tunnel; did

  they afterward sell it and use it in commerce?

  —They used it in the electro-processing of steel.

  SiO2 SiO2

  The richest deposit.

  Shipped on the C & O down to Alloy.

  It was so pure that

  SiO2

  they used it without refining.

  —Where did you stay?

  —I stayed at Cedar Grove. Some days I would have to hitch

  into Charleston, other days to Gauley Bridge.

  —You found the people of West Virginia very happy to pick

  you up on the highway, did you not?

  —Yes; they are delightfully obliging.

  (All were bewildered. Again at Vanetta they are asking,

  “What can be done about this?”)

  I feel that this investigation may help in some manner.

  I do hope it may.

  I am now making a very general statement as a beginning.

  There are many points that I should like to develop later,

  but I shall try to give you a general history of this

  condition first….

  GAULEY BRIDGE

  Camera at the crossing sees the city

  a street of wooden walls and empty windows,

  the doors shut handless in the empty street,

  and the deserted Negro standing on the corner.

  The little boy runs with his dog

  up the street to the bridge over the river where

  nine men are mending road for the government.

  He blurs the camera-glass fixed on the street.

  Railway tracks here and many panes of glass

  tin under light, the grey shine of towns and forests:

  in the commercial hotel (Switzerland of America)

  the owner is keeping his books behind the public glass.