Sun-Up, and Other Poems Part 7

You inevitable, Unwieldy with enormous births, Lying on your back, eyes open, sucking down stars, Or you kissing and picking over fresh deaths...

Filth... worms... flowers...

Green and succulent pods...

Tremulous gestation Of dark water germinal with lilies...

All in you from the beginning...

Nothing buried or thrown away...

Only the moon like a white sheet Spread over the dead you carry.

III

(To H.)

Speeding gull Pa.s.sing under a cloud Caught on his white back You... drop of crystal rain.

Now you gleam softly triumphant Folding immensities of light.

IV

(To O. F. T.)

You have always gotten up after blows And smiled... and shaken off the dust...

Only you could not shake the darkness From off the bruised brown of your eyes.

V

(To E. A. R.)

Centuries shall not deflect nor many suns absorb your stream, flowing immune and cold between the banks of snow.

Nor any wind carry the dust of cities to your high waters that arise out of the peaks and return again into the mountain and never descend.

SONS OF BELIAL

I

We are old, Old as song.

Before Rome was Or Cyrene.

Mad nights knew us And old men's wives.

We knew who spilled the sacred oil For young-gold harlots of the town....

We knew where the peac.o.c.ks went And the white doe for sacrifice.

II

We were the Sons of Belial.

One black night Centuries ago We beat at a door In Gilead....

We took the Levite's concubine We plucked her hands from off the door....

We choked the cry into her throat And stuck the stars among her hair....

We glimpsed the madly swaying stars Between the rhythms of her hair And all our mute and separate strings Swelled in a raging symphony....

Our blood sang paeans All that night Till dawn fell like a wounded swan Upon the fields of Gilead.

III

We are old....

Old as song....

We are dumb song.

(Epics tingled In our blood When we haled Hypatia Over the stones In Alexandria.)

Could we loose The wild rhythms clinched in us....

March in bands of troubadours....

We would be of gentle mood.

When Christ healed us Who were dumb-- When he freed our shut-in song-- We strewed green palms At his pale feet...

We sang hosannas In Jerusalem.

And all our fumbling voices blent In a brief white harmony.

(But a mightier song Was in us pent When we nailed Christ To a four-armed tree.)

IV

We are young.

When we rise up with singing roots, (Warm rains washing Gutters of Berlin Where we stamped Rosa... Luxemburg On a night in spring.) Rhythms skurry in our blood.

Little nimble rats of song In our feet run crazily And all is dust... we trample... on.

Mad nights when we make ritual (Feet running before the sleuth-light...

And the smell of burnt flesh By a flame-ringed hut In Missouri, Sweet as on Rome's pyre....) We make ropes do rigadoons With copper feet that jig on air....

We are the Mob....

Old as song.

Tyre knew us And Israel.

REVEILLE

IN HARNESS

I

The foreman's head slowly circling...

White rims under yellow disks of eyes....

Gold hairs starting out of a blond scowl...

Hovering... disappearing... recurring...

the foreman's head.

Droning of power-machines...

droning of girl with adenoids...

Arms flapping with a fin-like motion under sun burning down through a sky-light like a gla.s.s lid.

Light skating on the rims of wheels...

boring in gimlet points.

Needles flickering fierce white threads of light fine as a wasp's sting.

Light in sweat-drops brighter than eyes and calico-pallid faces and bodies throwing off smells-- and the air a bloated presence pressing on the walls and the silence a compressed scream.

Allons enfants de la patrie-- Electric... piercing... shrill as a fife the voice of a little Russian breaks out of the shivered circle.

Another voice rises... another and another leaps like flame to flame.

And life--surging, clamorous, swarming like a rabble crazily fluttering ragged petticoats-- comes rushing back into torpid eyes like suddenly yielded gates.