Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser Read online

  ringing in answer to a word before

  all tensity is changed to eagerness.

  Translated and resolved, the anguish through,

  sensitive altogether to the present :

  “Now?” “Yes,” she says, “yes,” she says, “do.”

  Answer motion with motion, be birds flying

  be the enormous movements of the snows,

  be rain, be love, remain equilibrated

  unseeking death,

  if you must have pilgrimages

  go travelling to balance need with answer

  suiting the explosion to the ensuing shock

  the foil to the airstream running over it

  food to the mouth, tools to the body, mind

  to the bright mind that leaps in necessity

  go answering answering FLY

  NIGHT FLIGHT : NEW YORK

  Lucid at dusk the city lies revealed

  authentic purpose under masonry

  emerging into emphasis. Tenuous

  the bodies grim at noon lie scattered, limp

  on the beach of evening, and the long sea

  of night softly encroaches on reality.

  Pale the primitive blue of afternoon,

  morning's bravado made ambiguous,

  and all the bulwarks we relied upon

  relapsed to fluid concept. Now the night

  opens a shady empire odorous

  prodigal in sweetness, sweetly promiscuous.

  Foliate evening opens in a blur

  of even color on the risen stone :

  in unified unbroken shoulderings

  of tower past planned tower, twilight-softened;

  insanest noise resolves to monotone.

  The theory of the city's fact made known

  in a revelatory evening stillness.

  Traffic and work and riot, triad of waking

  are garbled into a full chord, drowning

  identity in conquering vibration

  impinging on the air, loud, rising, making

  the city conscious of propellers shaking

  hard frames of aircraft ; night cloven by twin wings,

  incisive angles ripping evening where

  blueness was closing deepest to the north

  beyond the Bridge, beyond the island, planes :

  a burr of dissonance, a swoop of bare

  fatal battalions black against the air.

  Time is metric now with the regular advance : descend the skytrack

  signal-red on the wingtips, defined by a glitter of bulbs ;

  we lean at the windows or roofrails, attentive

  under inverted amphitheatre of sky.

  The river is keen under blackness, weapon-malevolent,

  crossed jagged marks mirrored against its steel.

  Suddenly from a trance of speed are let fall bubbles slowly

  blooming in pale light, but hardening to crystal

  glows, into calcium brilliance, white bombs floating imperturbable

  along the planes of the air, in chains of burning, destruction in the wake

  of the beautiful transition. City, shimmer in amusement,

  spectators at the mocking of your bombardment.

  City, cry out : the space is full of planes, you will be heard,

  the thin shark-bodies are concentrated to listen,

  without a sound but the clean strength of the engines, dripping death-globes

  drifting down the wind

  lifted by parachutes in a metaphor of death,

  the symbol not the substance, merest detail of fact, going down

  the wincing illuminated river, fading over the city.

  Planes weave : the children laugh at the fireworks : “Oh, pretty stars!

  Oh, see the white!”

  Planes move in a calculated dance of war

  each throwing, climax to superbest flight.

  No whisper rises from the city : New York is quiet

  as a doped man walking to the electric chair, fixed in memory,

  suspended in an image of peace. Skeins of light

  are woven above the city, gathering-in evening in a harvest of peace,

  from loveliest vessels falling, the buds of annihilation.

  Turn and re-turn in precise advance, engines of power

  subtle terrific potency, rays of destruction emitted from black suns

  shining the faces of burial, loosing magnificence

  in bombs, in a sardonic joke play games of death,

  cancel the city to an achievement : zero.

  Pregnant zero breeding annihilation….

  Futility stands clear on these horizons

  marked in the zeros of a thousand clouds

  pregnant above a harvested land, whose fruit

  was peace infected with the germs of war.

  In tragic streaks the planes' formations fly

  across the black pavilions of the sky.

  Failure encompassed in success, the warplanes

  dropping flares, as a historic sum of knowledge,

  tallying Icarus loving the sun, and plunging,

  Leonardo engraved on the Florentine pale evening

  scheming toward wings, as toward an alchemy

  transferring life to golden circumstance.

  Following him, the warplanes travelling home,

  flying over the cities, over the minds

  of cities rising against imminent doom.

  Icarus' passion, Da Vinci's skill, corrupt,

  all rotted into war :

  Between murmur and murmur, birth and death,

  is the earth's turning which follows the earth's turning,

  a swift whisper of life, an ambiguous word spoken ;

  morning travelling quiet on mutinous fields,

  muscles swollen tight in giant effort ; rain ; some stars ;

  a propeller's glimpsing silver whirl, intensely upward,

  intensely forward, bearing the plane : flying.

  Believe that we bloom upon this stalk of time ;

  and in this expansion, time too grows for us

  richer and richer towards infinity.

  They promised us the gold and harps and seraphs.

  Our rising and going to sleep is better than future pinions.

  We surrender that hope, drawing our own days in,

  covering space and time draped in tornadoes,

  lightning invention, speed crushing the stars upon us,

  stretching the accordion of our lives, sounding the same chord

  longer and savoring it until the echo fails.

  Believe that your presences are strong,

  O be convinced without formula or rhyme

  or any dogma ; use yourselves : be : fly.

  Believe that we bloom upon this stalk of time.

  THEORY OF FLIGHT

  You dynamiting the structure of our loves

  embrace your lovers solving antithesis,

  open your flesh, people, to opposites

  conclude the bold configuration, finish

  the counterpoint : sky, include earth now.

  Flying, a long vole of descent

  renders us land again.

  Flight is intolerable contradiction.

  We bear the bursting seeds of our return

  we will not retreat ; never be moved.

  Stretch us onward include in us the past

  sow in us history, make us remember triumph.

  O golden fructifying, O the sonorous calls

  to arms and embattled mottoes in one war

  brain versus brain for absolutes, ring harsh!

  Miners rest from blackness : reapers, lay by the sheaves

  forgive us our tears we go to victory

  in a commune of regenerated lives.

  The birds of flight return, crucified shapes

  old deaths restoring vigor through the sky

  mergent with earth, no more horizons now

  no more unvisioned capes, no death ; we fly.
/>   Answer together the birds' flying

  reconcile rest to rest

  motion to motion's poise,

  the guns are dying the past is born again

  into these future minds the incarnate past

  gleaming upon the present

  fliers, grave men,

  lovers : do not stop to remember these,

  think of them as you travel, the tall kind prophets,

  the flamboyant leapers toward death,

  the little painful children

  how the veins were slit

  into the Roman basins to fill Europe with blood

  how our world has run over bloody with love and blood

  and the misuses of love and blood and veins.

  Now we arrive to meet ourselves at last,

  we cry beginnings

  the criers in the midnight streets call dawn ;

  respond respond

  you workers poets men of science and love.

  Now we can look at our subtle jointures, study our hands,

  the tools are assembled, the maps unrolled, propellers spun,

  do we say all is in readiness :

  the times approach, here is the signal shock : ?

  Master in the plane shouts “Contact” :

  master on the ground : “Contact!”

  he looks up : “Now?” whispering : “Now.”

  “Yes,” she says. “Do.”

  Say yes, people.

  Say yes.

  YES

  3 The Blood Is Justified

  FOR MEMORY

  for Ruth Lehman obit February 10, 1934

  LIFE AND WORKS

  Open with care the journal of those years

  firm years precipitating days to death

  This was my friend walking in color and flame

  walking through a texture of sense

  no breath

  deranges her fine hair no voice changes her face.

  It is hardly possible she will not come again

  returned for a short while out of distances

  to be re-given to distance and her loves.

  It is hardly truth to say that soon

  a letter will not come, postmarked Detroit,

  New Orleans, Chicago, ultimate Mexico.

  I think she must come, and go, and come again.

  Throatfuls of life, arms crammed with brilliant days,

  the colored years beat strength upon her youth,

  pain-bombs exploded her body, joy rocketed in her,

  the stranger forests, the books, the bitter times,

  preluded college in a sheltered town.

  Remembering the pale suede jacket and russet coat

  swinging down avenues of trees together,

  the nights of talk light cast from copper bowls,

  the fugitive journey to the coal-hills : names,

  Del Thomas, Tony Mancuso, Mrs. Silva

  the black river curdling under a midnight wind.

  Remembering how the pale wrists flickered love,

  the dark eye-sockets impelled her to the poor,

  ring changes

  tell of the loves in her life

  tell how she loved.

  This was my friend of whom I knew the face

  the steel-straight intellect, broidered fantastic dreams

  the quarrel by the lake

  and knew the hopes

  She died. And must be dead.

  And is not dead where memory prevails.

  Cut the stone, deepen her name.

  Her mother did not know her.

  Her friends were not enough, we missed essentials.

  Love was enough and its blossoms. Behind her life

  stands a tall flower-tree, around her life

  are worked her valid words into her testament

  of love and writing and a ring of love.

  HOLY DYING

  Across the country, iron hands push up chimneys

  black fingers stuck up from the blackened ground.

  The rivers bend seaward urgent in blue reaches;

  her pain turned seaward. Her life extended past

  the sea, the cities, the individual poor,

  passionate and companioned, following life.

  Through the bright years reckless and proud

  dimming into that last impossible pain.

  We cannot think she will not come again.

  The words lean on the written line, the page

  is a signal fire all the letters shine.

  Into this life is lowered now death's sign,

  the younger days flicker up, the poems burn,

  we cannot say Return.

  Slowly her death is propelled into our lives

  the yellow message the clipped convenient style

  the cancelled stamps the telephone wires ring

  confirming fear “You were right” : in a week's short while.

  Her love was never handcuffed, her hates spoke up,

  her life was a job of freedom.

  Now the news comes, the Times prints a name

  the telephone rings short music over her.

  Drink your coffee, open your throat for words.

  Loving, she died in passion and holiness.

  They share remorse who had required less.

  RITUAL FOR DEATH

  Last night she died

  Turn down the lamps tonight

  shade the walls

  let the proud voices rise

  out of the midnight street, the whistle flying

  up and along and flying in the street

  the harsh struck stone, a brake squealing the pause

  and the brave silence after a lapse of sound.

  Turn out the lights

  Her body does not move

  is striding over no hill in all the world

  there is no avenue in Illinois shall know

  the eager mouth, the fine voluptuous hands

  touch no more Mexicos in dream again.

  There was a shadow deep along her cheek,

  her eyes and hair were intricate with sun.

  Now lights are out.

  : Stand to me in the dark

  Set your mouth on me for friends we did not know

  Be strong in love

  give strength to all we meet

  the loving the kind the proletarian strong

  convey our love to her in the grey fields

  less grey for her, send her our breathing lives.

  This was my friend

  forget the “my,” speak out

  This was my friend who eager rash and brave

  has found one answer in an early grave.

  This is my body : in its youth I find

  strength given from the startle of her mind.

  If we have strength in this evening, force life between her lips

  seal it convey it post it the sheet discolored

  the ink already fading

  the dead words fading

  the dead all dead.

  Out of the South are vivid flowers sent,

  African daisies, red anemone :

  here are the riches of a continent,

  and intellectual gifts breaking you free,

  poetry sounding in the narrow skull

  sealing the sutures with music, smoothing the cheek

  with vocable comfort the long hands of sorrow.

  The full-blown flowers are given : our hands are full

  of flowers and gestures : across New England dunes

  where the stiff grasses rise against the sea,

  across the city the dark-red roofs, the stone,

  across the Alleghanies, down the Valley

  the air speaks plenty the words have all been spoken.

  Upon what skies are these ambitions written?

  across what field lies scattered the young wish,

  beneath what seas toll all those fallen dreams—?

  CITY OF MONUMENTS

  Washington 1934

  Be
proud you people of these graves

  these chiseled words this precedent

  From these blind ruins shines our monument.

  Dead navies of the brain will sail

  stone celebrate its final choice

  when the air shakes, a single voice

  a strong voice able to prevail :

  Entrust no hope to stone although the stone

  shelter the root : see too-great burdens placed

  with nothing certain but the risk

  set on the infirm column of

  the high memorial obelisk

  erect in accusation sprung against

  a barren sky taut over Anacostia :

  give over, Gettysburg ! a word will shake your glory :

  blood of the starved fell thin upon this plain,

  this battle is not buried with its slain.

  Gravestone and battlefield retire

  the whole green South is shadowed dark,

  the slick white domes are cast in night.

  But uneclipsed above the park

  the veteran of the Civil War

  sees havoc in the tended graves

  the midnight bugles blown to free

  still unemancipated slaves.

  Blinded by chromium or transfiguration

  we watch, as through a microscope, decay :

  down the broad streets the limousines

  advance in passions of display.

  Air glints with diamonds, and these clavicles

  emerge through orchids by whose trailing spoor

  the sensitive cannot mistake

  the implicit anguish of the poor.

  The throats incline, the marble men rejoice

  careless of torrents of despair.

  Split by a tendril of revolt

  stone cedes to blossom everywhere.

  STUDY IN A LATE SUBWAY

  The moon revolves outside; possibly, black air

  turns so around them facing night's concave,

  momentum the slogan of their hurling brains

  swung into speed, crying for stillness high

  suspended and rising on time's wave.

  Did these tracks have a wilder life in the ground?

  beaten from streams of metal in secret earth :

  energy travels along the veins of steel,

  their faces rush forward, missiles of discontent

  thrown vaguely to the south and north.

  That head is jointed loosely on his neck,

  his glossy eyes turn on the walls and floor :

  her face is a blank breast with sorrow

  spouting at the mouth's nipple. All eyes move

  heavily to the opening door,

  regarding in dullness how we also enter.

  An angle of track charges up to us, swings