The Red Wheelbarrow & Other Poems Read online

  with disease or murder

  that she’ll be rescued by an

  agent —

  reared by the state and

  sent out at fifteen to work in

  some hard-pressed

  house in the suburbs —

  some doctor’s family, some Elsie —

  voluptuous water

  expressing with broken

  brain the truth about us —

  her great

  ungainly hips and flopping breasts

  addressed to cheap

  jewelry

  and rich young men with fine eyes

  as if the earth under our feet

  were

  an excrement of some sky

  and we degraded prisoners

  destined

  to hunger until we eat filth

  while the imagination strains

  after deer

  going by fields of goldenrod in

  the stifling heat of September

  Somehow

  it seems to destroy us

  It is only in isolate flecks that

  something

  is given off

  No one

  to witness

  and adjust, no one to drive the car

  The Yachts

  contend in a sea which the land partly encloses

  shielding them from the too-heavy blows

  of an ungoverned ocean which when it chooses

  tortures the biggest hulls, the best man knows

  to pit against its beatings, and sinks them pitilessly.

  Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute

  brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails

  they glide to the wind tossing green water

  from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls

  ant-like, solicitously grooming them, releasing,

  making fast as they turn, lean far over and having

  caught the wind again, side by side, head for the mark.

  In a well guarded arena of open water surrounded by

  lesser and greater craft which, sycophant, lumbering

  and flittering follow them, they appear youthful, rare

  as the light of a happy eye, live with the grace

  of all that in the mind is fleckless, free and

  naturally to be desired. Now the sea which holds them

  is moody, lapping their glossy sides, as if feeling

  for some slightest flaw but fails completely.

  Today no race. Then the wind comes again. The yachts

  move, jockeying for a start, the signal is set and they

  are off. Now the waves strike at them but they are too

  well made, they slip through, though they take in canvas.

  Arms with hands grasping seek to clutch at the prows.

  Bodies thrown recklessly in the way are cut aside.

  It is a sea of faces about them in agony, in despair

  until the horror of the race dawns staggering the mind;

  the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies

  lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold. Broken,

  beaten, desolate, reaching from the dead to be taken up

  they cry out, failing, failing! their cries rising

  in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over.

  To Waken an Old Lady

  Old age is

  a flight of small

  cheeping birds

  skimming

  bare trees

  above a snow glaze.

  Gaining and failing

  they are buffeted

  by a dark wind —

  But what?

  On harsh weedstalks

  the flock has rested —

  the snow

  is covered with broken

  seedhusks

  and the wind tempered

  with a shrill

  piping of plenty.

  Portrait of a Lady

  Your thighs are appletrees

  whose blossoms touch the sky.

  Which sky? The sky

  where Watteau hung a lady’s

  slipper. Your knees

  are a southern breeze — or

  a gust of snow. Agh! what

  sort of man was Fragonard?

  — as if that answered

  anything. Ah, yes — below

  the knees, since the tune

  drops that way, it is

  one of those white summer days,

  the tall grass of your ankles

  flickers upon the shore —

  Which shore? —

  the sand clings to my lips —

  Which shore?

  Agh, petals maybe. How

  should I know?

  Which shore? Which shore?

  I said petals from an appletree.

  Between Walls

  the back wings

  of the

  hospital where

  nothing

  will grow lie

  cinders

  in which shine

  the broken

  pieces of a green

  bottle

  Burning the Christmas Greens

  Their time past, pulled down

  cracked and flung to the fire

  — go up in a roar

  All recognition lost, burnt clean

  clean in the flame, the green

  dispersed, a living red,

  flame red, red as blood wakes

  on the ash —

  and ebbs to a steady burning

  the rekindled bed become

  a landscape of flame

  At the winter’s midnight

  we went to the trees, the coarse

  holly, the balsam and

  the hemlock for their green

  At the thick of the dark

  the moment of the cold’s

  deepest plunge we brought branches

  cut from the green trees

  to fill our need, and over

  doorways, about paper Christmas

  bells covered with tinfoil

  and fastened by red ribbons

  we stuck the green prongs

  in the windows hung

  woven wreaths and above pictures

  the living green. On the

  mantle we built a green forest

  and among those hemlock

  sprays put a herd of small

  white deer as if they

  were walking there. All this!

  and it seemed gentle and good

  to us. Their time past,

  relief! The room bare. We

  stuffed the dead grate

  with them upon the half burnt out

  log’s smoldering eye, opening

  red and closing under them

  and we stood there looking down.

  Green is a solace

  a promise of peace, a fort

  against the cold (though we

  did not say so) a challenge

  above the snow’s

  hard shell. Green (we might

  have said) that, where

  small birds hide and dodge

  and lift their plaintive

  rallying cries, blocks for them

  and knocks down

  the unseeing bullets of

  the storm. Green spruce boughs

  pulled down by a weight of

  snow — Transformed!

  Violence leaped and appeared.

  Recreant! roared to life

  as the flame rose throug
h and

  our eyes recoiled from it.

  In the jagged flames green

  to red, instant and alive. Green!

  those sure abutments . . . Gone!

  lost to mind

  and quick in the contracting

  tunnel of the grate

  appeared a world! Black

  mountains, black and red — as

  yet uncolored — and ash white,

  an infant landscape of shimmering

  ash and flame and we, in

  that instant, lost,

  breathless to be witnesses,

  as if we stood

  ourselves refreshed among

  the shining fauna of that fire.

  Queen-Anne’s-Lace

  Her body is not so white as

  anemone petals nor so smooth — nor

  so remote a thing. It is a field

  of the wild carrot taking

  the field by force; the grass

  does not raise above it.

  Here is no question of whiteness,

  white as can be, with a purple mole

  at the center of each flower.

  Each flower is a hand’s span

  of her whiteness. Wherever

  his hand has lain there is

  a tiny purple blemish. Each part

  is a blossom under his touch

  to which the fibres of her being

  stem one by one, each to its end,

  until the whole field is a

  white desire, empty, a single stem,

  a cluster, flower by flower,

  a pious wish to whiteness gone over —

  or nothing.

  The Poem

  It’s all in

  the sound. A song.

  Seldom a song. It should

  be a song — made of

  particulars, wasps,

  a gentian — something

  immediate, open

  scissors, a lady’s

  eyes — waking

  centrifugal, centripetal

  Pastoral

  The little sparrows

  hop ingenuously

  about the pavement

  quarreling

  with sharp voices

  over those things

  that interest them.

  But we who are wiser

  shut ourselves in

  on either hand

  and no one knows

  whether we think good

  or evil.

  Meanwhile,

  the old man who goes about

  gathering dog lime

  walks in the gutter

  without looking up

  and his tread

  is more majestic than

  that of the Episcopal minister

  approaching the pulpit

  of a Sunday.

  These things

  astonish me beyond words.

  The Last Words of My English Grandmother

  There were some dirty plates

  and a glass of milk

  beside her on a small table

  near the rank, disheveled bed —

  Wrinkled and nearly blind

  she lay and snored

  rousing with anger in her tones

  to cry for food,

  Gimme something to eat —

  They’re starving me —

  I’m all right — I won’t go

  to the hospital. No, no, no

  Give me something to eat!

  Let me take you

  to the hospital, I said

  and after you are well

  you can do as you please.

  She smiled, Yes

  you do what you please first

  then I can do what I please —

  Oh, oh, oh! she cried

  as the ambulance men lifted

  her to the stretcher —

  Is this what you call

  making me comfortable?

  By now her mind was clear —

  Oh you think you’re smart

  you young people,

  she said, but I’ll tell you

  you don’t know anything.

  Then we started.

  On the way

  we passed a long row

  of elms. She looked at them

  awhile out of

  the ambulance window and said,

  What are all those

  fuzzy looking things out there?

  Trees? Well, I’m tired

  of them and rolled her head away.

  The Term

  A rumpled sheet

  of brown paper

  about the length

  and apparent bulk

  of a man was

  rolling with the

  wind slowly over

  and over in

  The street as

  a car drove down

  upon it and

  crushed it to

  the ground. Unlike

  a man it rose

  again rolling

  with the wind over

  and over to be as

  it was before.

  The Dance

  When the snow falls the flakes

  spin upon the long axis

  that concerns them most intimately

  two and two to make a dance

  the mind dances with itself,

  taking you by the hand,

  your lover follows

  there are always two,

  yourself and the other,

  the point of your shoe setting the pace,

  if you break away and run

  the dance is over

  Breathlessly you will take

  another partner

  better or worse who will keep

  at your side, at your stops

  whirls and glides until he too

  leaves off

  on his way down as if

  there were another direction

  gayer, more carefree

  spinning face to face but always down

  with each other secure

  only in each other’s arms

  But only the dance is sure!

  make it your own.

  Who can tell

  what is to come of it?

  in the woods of your

  own nature whatever

  twig interposes, and bare twigs

  have an actuality of their own

  this flurry of the storm

  that holds us,

  plays with us and discards us

  dancing, dancing as may be credible.

  The Pot of Flowers

  Pink confused with white

  flowers and flowers reversed

  take and spill the shaded flame

  darting it back

  into the lamp’s horn

  petals aslant darkened with mauve

  red where in whorls

  petal lays its glow upon petal

  round flamegreen throats

  petals radiant with transpiercing light

  contending

  above

  the leaves

  reaching up their modest green

  from the pot’s rim

  and there, wholly dark, the pot

  gay with rough moss.

  The Descent

  The descent beckons

  as the ascent beckoned.

  Memory is a kind

  of accomplishment

  a sort of renewal

  even

  an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new placesr />
  inhabited by hordes

  heretofore unrealized

  of new kinds —

  since their movements

  are toward new objectives

  (even though formerly they were abandoned).

  No defeat is made up entirely of defeat — since

  the world it opens is always a place

  formerly

  unsuspected. A

  world lost,

  a world unsuspected,

  beckons to new places

  and no whiteness (lost) is so white as the memory

  of whiteness .

  With evening, love wakens

  though its shadows

  which are alive by reason

  of the sun shining —

  grow sleepy now and drop away

  from desire .

  Love without shadows stirs now

  beginning to awaken

  as night

  advances.

  The descent

  made up of despairs

  and without accomplishment

  realizes a new awakening:

  which is a reversal

  of despair.

  For what we cannot accomplish, what

  is denied to love,

  what we have lost in the anticipation —

  a descent follows,

  endless and indestructible .

  Young Sycamore

  I must tell you

  this young tree

  whose round and firm trunk

  between the wet

  pavement and the gutter

  (where water

  is trickling) rises

  bodily

  into the air with

  one undulant

  thrust half its height —

  and then

  dividing and waning

  sending out

  young branches on

  all sides —

  hung with cocoons

  it thins

  till nothing is left of it

  but two

  eccentric knotted

  twigs

  bending forward

  hornlike at the top

  The Poor

  By constantly tormenting them

  with reminders of the lice in

  their children’s hair, the

  School Physician first

  brought their hatred down on him.

  But by this familiarity

  they grew used to him, and so,

  at last,

  took him for their friend and adviser.

  The Rose