BE HIS rest the rest he sought:
Calm and deep.
Let no wayward word or thought
Vex his sleep.
Peace—the peace that no man knows—
Now remains
Where the wasted woodwind blows,
Wakes and wanes.

Latter leaves, in Autumn’s breath,
White and sere,
Sanctify the scholar’s death,
Lying here.

Soft surprises of the sun—
Swift, serene—
O’er the mute grave-grasses run,
Cold and green.

Wet and cold the hillwinds moan;
Let them rave!

The first flush of grey light, the herald of daylight,
Is dimly outlining the musterer's camp,
Where over the sleeping, the stealthily creeping
Breath of the morning lies chilly and damp,



As, blankets forsaking, 'twixt sleeping and waking,
The black-boys turn out to the manager's call;
Whose order, of course, is, "Be after the horses,
And take all sorts of care you unhobble them all."



Then, each with a bridle (provokingly idle)
They saunter away his commands to fulfil -

547

I've seen a Dying Eye
Run round and round a Room—
In search of Something—as it seemed—
Then Cloudier become—
And then—obscure with Fog—
And then—be soldered down
Without disclosing what it be
'Twere blessed to have seen—

I stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can't get enough of the trees--
they're so hopeful, so green.

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I'm at the window of the prison infirmary.

I can't smell the medicines--
carnations must be blooming nearby.

It's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.


Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)

It was an April morning: fresh and clear
The Rivulet, delighting in its strength,
Ran with a young man's speed; and yet the voice
Of waters which the winter had supplied
Was softened down into a vernal tone.
The spirit of enjoyment and desire,
And hopes and wishes, from all living things
Went circling, like a multitude of sounds.
The budding groves seemed eager to urge on
The steps of June; as if their various hues
Were only hindrances that stood between
Them and their object: but, meanwhile, prevailed

426

It don't sound so terrible—quite—as it did—
I run it over—"Dead", Brain, "Dead."
Put it in Latin—left of my school—
Seems it don't shriek so—under rule.

Turn it, a little—full in the face
A Trouble looks bitterest—
Shift it—just—
Say "When Tomorrow comes this way—
I shall have waded down one Day."

I suppose it will interrupt me some
Till I get accustomed—but then the Tomb
Like other new Things—shows largest—then—
And smaller, by Habit—

It's shrewder then
Put the Thought in advance—a Year—

They told me I had three months to live,
So I crept to Bernadotte,
And sat by the mill for hours and hours
Where the gathered waters deeply moving
Seemed not to move:
O world, that's you!
You are but a widened place in the river
Where Life looks down and we rejoice for her
Mirrored in us, and so we dream
And turn away, but when again
We look for the face, behold the low-lands
And blasted cotton-wood trees where we empty
Into the larger stream!
But here by the mill the castled clouds
Mocked themselves in the dizzy water;

From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
     please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
     please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
     pl ease come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces fro dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving

If you go deep
Into the heart
What do you find there?
Fear, fear,
Fear of the jaws of the rock,
Fear of the teeth and splinters of iron that tear
Flesh from the bone, and the moist
Blood, running unfelt
From the wound, and the hand
Suddenly moist and red.

If you go deep
Into the heart
What do you find?
Grief, grief,
Grief for the life unlived,
For the loves unloved,
For the child never to be born,
Th'unbidden anguish, when the fair moon
Rises over still summer seas, and the pain