JOAN MURRAY (1917-1942) ~

Vermont and the Hills and the Valleys



1

Tremendous are the ways of the simple people,

The hills speak with their mouths,

The sky laughs out the rims of their eyes,

The earth walks with the feet of the people

And the wind and the dead are their souls awake

And the sleep, that is theirs comes when the eye-lid

Slips down to meet the soiled slant of their cheeks.



2

Great are the mountain slopes curving along the line

Flanked by the river or the smooth-glint track of train:

A speed of smoke, a sprung-coil loosely heaped beyond the span of 

   steel.

Look to right — look to the left and the fields

That fit in languid patterns between trees,

Umber cornstalks, hay in warm-split stacks!



3

Tight is the hair of women who call cows to the milking,

Wrists and fingers playing out the movement of the udder-press.

White is the angle and the piss and splash of milk.



Let it be remembered, O, let it be remembered

That there are the women and the simple people!




4

The oxen plow and wagon the hay in its high dung-gold,

Making long horns shape and hold the moon,

The red of their sides squat.

The green of the trees spring in wide green waves to the wind,

To the fields and the wide-palmed spread of space.




5

The men are before the night:

With the cracks of their cheeks filled with dust,

And the hands heavy like listless takes swung down,

And the dirt and sweat on their lips,

And the rise and fall of their chests.



6

The women go from the milking to the pot without compunction.

Steps of men and women from the field to the home,

From the plow to the reaping in the deep high swell of wheat.



There are the simple people

Whose hands rest still on a Sabbath,

And great are the fields and the mountains,

And great are the slopes and the valleys.





—————————————

JOAN MURRAY
Drafts, Fragments, and Poems
The Complete Poetry
edited by Farnoosh Fathi
NYRB 2018




M O R E !

VISIT TO THE CINEMA ~

TOM RAPP ~

T O M     R A P P

photo ~

Tom Rapp in the Netherlands early in his career, when he led the band Pearl Before Swine.CreditBill O'Leary/The Washington Post, via Getty Images

JONATHAN GREENE ~

Late August



Deafening cicadas

hide my tinnitus

from myself



while the cricket

keeps its location

hidden in the grass







Homage



Every street you wander,

carrying your family tree with you,

down to your toes, roots

looking for an earth to scratch in.



You thank your ancestors

for so much. Then stub your big toe

on some malady they passed on.

Encoded as it is.



You are their whole package.

By chance. Entrusted.

Good and bad.



And without thinking

add some small increment

all your own.







In the Pumpkin Patch




The toddler used to

getting his way, picks out

a pumpkin he can't lift.




—————————
Jonathan Greene
AFLOAT
Poems 2014-2017
BROADSTONE 2018





ALSO ~

Gists Orts Shards
a Commonplace Book
Enlarged & Revised
Jonathan Greene
(Broadstone 2018)

MEATYARD / MERTON ~

R E A D     O N

F I N D     M E

ACRES ~

Acres

There is a

field surrounded

by changing leaves

and there our

bicycles go

—

a tree

in the

way no

way go

around

—

dripped

red

sumac

—

not just

a field

but along

a river

twist

—

so sunny

she lay

back in

the grass

flat

—

he played

so we played

it was all play

—

to hold your

son as a young

boy for one of

the very last times

—

he is so young

and happy all

above how blue

the sky

————————————

BOB ARNOLD

I'm In Love With You

Who Is In Love With Me

Longhouse 2012

THAT'S HOW I GOT TO MEMPHIS ~

BILL FAY ~

MICHAEL PALMER ~

After

And to write a poem

beneath the sickle moon

is barbaric

And to trace a poem

upon the lover's body

is barbaric

And to write a poem

amidst the dust

amidst the dust

storm of history is barbaric

And to read a poem

To read

while the book is burning

and to enter the Paper House

while the streets are burning

To enter the Paper House

which is silent

And to hear the song

should we call it a song

soonest gone

of the cicadas

in the parching heat

when to drink

of the lover's liquid

is barbaric

And to wander

in a dark wood

wander lost

in a dark wood

to look

and to begin

to say farewell

to begin

and to dwell

to dwell upon

to dwell among

——————————

Michael Palmer

The Laughter of the Sphinx

New Directions 2016

GONE, GONE, GONE ~

WORLD WIDE BOOKSHOPS ~

R E V I E W

GONE TO EARTH ~

A roof is no guarantee

that you'll sleep

The unease of premises

pins together the curtains

at night

Waiting for a clearness

of purpose

Eating 3 meals a day

we go to bed hungry

Privacy is not a remedy

We've become separated

by "efficiencies"

Nobody can do anything with

A kind of machine person

Floundering in the dark

It's hard to believe

5 sparrows were sold for this

An Empty Account

The simplest relationships happen without

any expectation this is what I believe

The infatuation in a girl's cheeks

The eyes of a man when he looks on

My spouse, I am poor

I'm a paper situation

Year by year

year after year

There have been a string of bad years

I sit at a large table

Words don't unravel overnight

The kingdom of money

and the kingdom of memory

The necessity to bend one's head forward

Nothing but a blind prompting

A woman turned to Him, you know

His mouth a towel into which

His resigning

His panic stricken resignation

was withdrawn

This overwhelming lamentation

The things that are never confided

A child walking and running

He takes hold of my hand

fascinated by the squirrel

Something deeper than "use"

I could love home in a deep sense

Gone to Earth

Beyond innocence

the exhibition

of obedient faith

is precedent

Work on the limits

A limit of what can be thought

outlives ambivalence

You work yourself to death

To enlarge an abstract

madness

Never so divine

a will

One step further

and the bed is no longer

under you

and no letter

I'm out of humor

This is for the you

In my memory

A picture

you would be the better of

You have hidden yourself well,

in attention

Little else to occupy your heart

Small change

The birds spreading their wings

to which I am joined

————————

Pam Rehm

Gone to Earth

Flood Editions

2001

DAVID SHAPIRO ~

City Lights

2017

The Cherry-Blossom Proof

The Milky Way is shrinking,

So the cherry blossoms are growing

Larger. You send me longish letters.

Therefore, God exists.

In the Other Pocket Dust

Sisyphus had a bad back.

Why? Well, I get up in the morning

And my wife wants me to carry

A big blue bag of garbage

To my son now

Sleeping in a studio in N.Y. Five flights he will not carry.

Oh I say I'm not supposed to carry

More than five pounds of garbage

And she crosses the border with it

There was a dead body like little Pedro rolled down the

Hill by Bunuel and not the long kiss

Of L'age d'or but the dog and dog-dream

In Los Olivados. How do you abandon dirt?

The blue bag also rolls down by itself, full of Pedro

Something little Pedro always wanted to do

It's a cold day. Man is garbage.

Sisyphus has a bad back.

Dirty Pond

       What is music

    We wander through the park until we reach green dirty

ponds

    You buy earrings

You lean you hair over our son

and kiss him until he cries

More!

—————————————

David Shapiro
IN MEMORY OF AN ANGEL
City Lights Books

RYSZARD KRYNICKI ~

My Wife Fights To Protect Man's 
Natural Environment


My delicate wife fights to protect
man's natural environment.
Mornings her slim body vanishes in clouds
of soot and sulphur, on streets giving birth
to cars and hunger, to nooks in skyscrapers
ceaselessly breeding large families,
among mines and mills, in the spastic depths
of a city built from rust and concrete, crawling,
motionless, like a gray glacier. I look for her in vain
— then suddenly I find her, lost, in a train
(am I lost? fleeing myself?)
and through the thick raster I scarcely recognize
her uncertain smile in the group photograph
illustrating a labored feature on new methods
of protecting the environment in the local paper,
which once more promises iron and coal,
a car, a new steel mill, and a Poland of sorts


for every family. Ours too, alas.






Who Isn't


Fear the God

who isn't


in your heart.







Not Much


Our poor dead

gaze at us with their

empty eyes

and see everything to come —

but even they can't help



or warn us,



since neither war nor peace



has taught us much.






Silence


His terrifying fits of rage

*

He worked hard in the forest, he knew how to do everything. He
wanted to teach me everything too, since he believed that only phys-
ical labor would save me when the next war came. Remember, they'll
know you by your hands, he used to say. If your hands are rough, you
go right, if they're delicate, educated, you go left, to the camps or up
against a wall.

  He taught me to plow, to use a scythe, to reap. To tell edible from
inedible plants. Most are edible, you won't starve to death — he said.
He tried teaching me to fish, but quickly gave up; I proved to be a
remarkably stubborn pupil. He showed me how to build a hut, to
dig a shelter. Even how to make a fire, though he'd never managed
it himself.

  He taught me to use an ax. I was a little boy, but I could chop wood
as well as my virtual comrade in misery from The Seven Samurai. And
also from The Magnificent Seven? I don't remember.

  More than anything, though, for reasons I still don't understand
he wanted me to learn to swim and o stay under water as long as I
could. It may save your life when you have to escape — he'd repeat.

  During my next-to-last summer vacation, we worked together in
the woods. He gave me the easiest job, wood barking. We'd leave in
the morning, get back at night. On the way home he liked to take dips
in a woodland lake. One evening he dived in as usual and didn't come
back up. I thought he'd swum across and was waiting for me on the
other side. I circled the lake, not a trace. His stuff had vanished too.
I went around a second time, a third, no luck. I didn't know what to
do. Scared, I couldn't find the road in the dark. I wandered a long
time before I got home.

  He was there, as if nothing had happened. Alone. Mother had
gone out looking for me in the night. He was silent. So was I. I was
afraid to say anything.

  And that's how it stayed.

  I didn't learn much. I would have died in the wilderness. I would
have died trying to escape.

*

When the telegram came, I went straight to the hospital from the
station. He lay in an oxygen tank. He wasn't expecting me, he gazed
at me absently. At last he recognized me. He cried. His right lung,
removed a few days earlier, already journeyed through its uncertain,
crippled afterlife.



————————————

Ryszard Krynicki
MAGNETIC POINT
seleceted poems
translated by Clare Cavanagh
New Directions 2017