ABOVE THE VALLEY ~

Senior Citizen

Probably 1,000 carpenters

Live in the southern part

Of this state, a lot of them

Hip and young with a brand new

Leather apron, heavy duty

Trucks, wives or companions

That are weavers or potters

Or dancers, and of course they

All have a story to tell.

Though yesterday I was in

An old woman’s house high off

From the back road, and she

Lived alone and missed all

Her grandchildren and braided

Rugs in the back of the house

With a hand needle and years

And years of wool, and the

Story she had to tell was

Already written in her choice

Of words, the rope of her hands,

And the scar above her left eye

Made thirty-five years ago

By the shuttle of a textile loom.

Back Road Caller

I came to have my chain saw fixed

And he did that, but

A half hour job

Stretched to three hours

Because he had to show me

All his new tools,

Plus his 75lb. bow

And the antlers from the buck

He shot last fall —

“Arrow went clean through”

Never mind the drawer

Of chewing tobacco

He offered me, and then

To his father, and we both

Politely declined a dip,

And as if that wasn’t enough —

He pulled out the flat

Enveloped reeds he used

For turkey hunting —

Tucked one up on the roof

Of his mouth and cupping

His hands chucked out a

Perfect few syllables

Which would have turned any

Bird’s head, and depending

On how he rolled his body

With a call he could make

It sound horny, but he

Only saved that one for

The summertime, when the

Weekend neighbor’s daughter

Came to visit all alone.

Approach

I’ve only been away one day

But already between the width

Of the stone wall gate

Spans the thinnest first strand of

A spider’s web, floating there

As the river fog this morning

In the valley — well enough to

Stoop beneath it,

Cause no harm.

Above the Valley

          

                        for Scott Tindall

Over 3,000 feet

Above the valley

Our eyes looking

Southward with an

Old man we came

Upon resting on a

Stump. We exchanged

Greetings in the warm

Light he enjoyed,

The leaves falling,

And asked where

He had hiked from.

And he stood up and

Pointed to a lake I knew

Far off in the lower hills

Catching the sun, saying

“The other lake after that” —

One I never knew of.

Then later in the day

Higher up from the old man,

Air sharp with balsam,

We looked back and saw how

His lake had lit up too.

_____________________

Bob Arnold

WHERE RIVERS MEET

photograph: "Berkshire from Greylock"
copyright 2015 by Two~Hands

FREAK OUT (1966) ~

Freak Out is 50 years old.

Take a bow.

MORNING AND EVENING RAGAS ~

NINETY-NINE STORIES OF GOD ~

21

If there is a crash at an American airport, the wreck-

age is removed immediately so as not to alarm the

passengers on the flights that will come after.

       This is not true at Russian airports.

       While at some airports in the major cities, such

as Moscow or Saint Petersburg, the wreckage might

be taken away quite as if nothing had occurred, small

runways in Siberia are littered with failed flights,

their rusting hulks simply pushed to one side.

       On a recent flight from Nome to Chukotka, the

woman in the seat opposite us bench quite agi-

tated as we dropped rather peremptorily through

the dark skies. She began loudly praying to God for

deliverance. My companion remarked that her fear-

vent request was useless, as God had long ago turned

His great back on Russia. She might just as well

have prayed to the luxurious black sable coat that

enveloped her from chin to ankle. We had earlier

been half-hypnotized by its beauty, what my com-

panion had dared to describe as the glimmering,

endless depths in the fur of so many little animals.

                                                                C O A T

33

A much-admired artist was giving a lecture to a

large audience. His work was known for its peculiar

cold beauty and its intellectual craftsmanship. He

was the recipient of many awards and honors, He

had received the Academia Nazionale dei Lincei's

Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize and Grand

Prix des Biennales Internationales. He was named

Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the

French Ministry of Education and Culture.

       In his own country, he had received awards

from the Academy of Achievement, the American 

Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American

Academy. On one year alone, he won the triple crown

of appreciation and adulation by racing off with the

National Book Critics Circle Award, the National

Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.

       At the point in his lecture where he was say-

ing that the representative element in a work of art is

always irrelevant, that for one to appreciate a work of

art one must bring to it nothing from life, no knowledge

of life's affairs and ideas, no familiarity with its emo-

tions and desires, he was seized by the most stupefying

boredom and he had to leave the stage.

                                             I R R E D U C I B L E

93

The Lord was in a den with a pack of wolves.

       You really are so intelligent, the Lord said, and

have such glorious eyes. Why do you think you're

hounded so? It's like they want to exterminate you,

it's awful.

       Well, sometimes it's the calves and the cows, the

wolves said.

       Of those maddening cows, the Lord said. I have

a suggestion. What if I caused you not to have a taste

for them anymore?

       It wouldn't matter. Then it wold be the deer or

the elk. Have you seen the bumper stickers on the

hunters' trucks —DID A WOLF GET YOUR ELK?

       I guess I missed that, the Lord said.

       Sentiment is very much against us down here,

the wolves said.

       I'm so awfully sorry, the Lord said.

       Thank you for inviting us to participate in your

plan anyway, the wolves said politely.

       The Lord did not want to appear addled, but

what was the plan His sons were referring to exactly?

                           F A T H E R S   A N D    S O N S

_____________________

J O Y     W I L L I A M S

Ninety-Nine Stories of GOD

TinHouse Books

2016

                

       

THE DISINTEGRATION LOOPS ~

THE WOMAN IN SUNSHINE ~

The Woman In Sunshine


It is only that this warmth and movement are like
The warmth and movement of a woman.

It is not that there is any image in the air
Nor the beginning nor end of a form:

It is empty. But a woman in threadless gold
Burns us with brushings of her dress

And a dissociated abundance of being,
More definite for what she is —

Because she is disembodied,
Bearing the odors of the summer fields,

Confessing the taciturn and yet indifferent,
Invisibly clear, the only love.


W A L L A C E     S T E V E N S

________________

"One of the great poets of our century,

someone whom the world will keep

on reading just as it keeps on listening

to Vivaldi or Scarlatti, looking at

Tiepolo or Poussin. His best poems

are the poems of a man fully

human — of someone sympathetic,

magnanimous, both brightly and deeply

intelligent; the poems see, feel, and

think with equal success. . .Minds

of this quality of genius, of this

breadth and delicacy of understanding,

are a link between us and the past,

since they are, for us, the past made

living; and they are our surest link with

the future, since they are the part of us

which the future will know. . .When

you have finished reading Stevens'

best poems you remember once more

that man is not only the jest and riddle

of the world, but the glory.

RANDALL JARRELL, Partisan Review

photograph: patti smith reading wallace stevens

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY ~

The Goose-Girl



Spring rides no horses down the hill,

But comes on foot, a goose-girl still.

And all the loveliest things there be

Come simply, so, it seems to me.

If ever I said, in grief or pride,

I tired of honest things, I lied;

And should be cursed forevermore

With Love in laces, like a whore,

And neighbors cold, and friends unsteady,

And Spring on horseback, like a lady!


("Goose-Girl" relates to the Brothers Grimm)
Millay wrote the poem in 1920.





from Fatal Interview (1931)



      L.


The heart once broken is a heart no more,

And is absorbed from all a heart must be;

All that it signed or chartered heretofore

Is cancelled now, the bankrupt heart is free;

So much of duty as you may require

Of shards and dust, this and no more of pain,

This and no more of hope, remorse, desire,

The heart once broken need support again.

How simple 'tis, and what a little sound

It makes in breaking, let the world attest:

It struggles, and it fails; the world goes round,

And the moon follows it. Heart in my breast,

'Tis half a year now since you broke in two;

The world's forgotten well, if the world knew.

__________________


Edna St. Vincent Millay
Selected Poems, annotated edition
edited by Timothy F. Jackson
introduction by Holly Peppe
Yale 2016

An exquisite collection, nicely annotated throughout with steward-care from Holly Peppe in the introduction. 

Perhaps the finest collection yet to present the poet, or to be re-acquainted.

WALK TO THE BARN ~

Walk To The Barn

All of life, even the mountains

Around him are changing.

Yet he walks twice each day

To the barn up the wide gravel drive,

No more cattle inside.

His slow and steady pace

Pays respect to the surrounding pasture,

The ring of woodland and evening birds.

What once made him prosperous

Is now gone, except for what he loves —

His wife, old dog, farm buildings and land.

He leans open the heavy sliding barn door,

Steps out of view.

At The Country Wedding

They don’t tinkle

Champagne glasses

With their spoons here

And only the old folks

Are sitting down.

A country western group

Has lugged its equipment upstairs,

And later today and into the evening

This young married couple

Will learn the sweet

And rotten joys

From the masters of it —

Dancing fathers and mothers,

Lonesome aunts and yodeling uncles.

But for the moment

Paper plates are heaped with

Homemade ham, biscuits and beans

And all a few people want

Is a kiss,

So tapping on the side

Of a beer bottle with a knife

Quiets the whole grange hall down

Into love.

Hunter

Late in the afternoon

This farmer drove his tractor

Across the river, broke open the thin ice,

Put out salt in the bare ground mowing

And if you looked, you could find his

Red jacket working behind the trees.

That night edges of the river froze again.

Big bright stars burned cold over the hills.

I was carrying in cookstove wood

For the next morning

When the gunshot shook down valley,

Then back up.

Two days later a farm dog

Held the deer’s head

Where he lay down

Chained to the barn.



___________________

Bob Arnold
WHERE RIVERS MEET
(Mad River Press)