Collecte Works (24 page)

European Travel

(Nazi New Order)

From Croatia my home to Moelling no pay

for our work, lay down at night without hay,

three days toward Berlin, one bread for six,

saw many die of cold and the whips.

At Bergen built roads tied to a pot,

crossed to Sweden tho one in our party was shot.

Depression years

My daughters left home

I was job-certified

to rake leaves

                               in New Madrid.

Now they tell me my girls

should support me again

and they're not out of debt

              from the last time they did.

So you're married, young man,

to a woman's rich fads—

woman and those “buy! buy!”

technicolor ads.

She needs washers and dryers

she needs bodice uplift

she needs deep-well cookers

she needs power shift.

A man works in two shops—

home at last from this grave

he finds his wife out

with another slave.

She'll sue for divorce

he'll blow his brains,

the old work-horse

free at last of his reins.

She grew where every spring

water overflows the land,

married mild Henry

and then her life was sand.

Tall, thin, took cold on her nerves,

chopped wood, kept the fire,

burned the house, helped build it again,

advance, attack, retire.

Gave birth, frail warrior—gave boat

for it was mid-spring—

to Henry's daughter who stayed

on the stream listening

to Daisy: “Hatch, patch and scratch,

that's all a woman's for

but I didn't sink, I sewed and saved

and now I'm on second floor.”

I sit in my own house

secure,

follow winter break-up

thru window glass.

Ice cakes

glide downstream

the wild swans

of our day.

On hearing

the wood pewee

This is my mew

      as our days last—

            be alone

Throw it over—

       all fashions

             feud

Go home where the green bird is—

        the trees where you pass

              to grass

Along the river

           wild sunflowers

over my head

           the dead

who gave me life

           give me this

our relative the air

           floods

our rich friend

           silt

He moved in light

       to establish

the lovely

       possibility

we knew

       and let it pass

Keen and lovely man moved as in a dance

to be considerate in lighted, glass-walled

almost outdoor office. Business

wasn't all he knew. He knew music, art.

Had a heart. “With eyes like yours I should think

the dictaphone” or did he say the flute?

His sensitivity—it stopped you.

And the neighbors said “She's taking lessons

on the dictaphone” as tho it were a saxophone.

He gave the job to somebody else.

He lived—childhood summers

       thru bare feet

then years of money's lack

       and heat

beside the river—out of flood

      came his wood, dog,

woman, lost her, daughter—

       prologue

to planting trees. He buried carp

      beneath the rose

where grass-still

      the marsh rail goes.

To bankers on high land

       he opened his wine tank.

He wished his only daughter

       to work in the bank

but he'd given her a source

       to sustain her—

a weedy speech,

        marshy retainer.

I rose from marsh mud,

algae, equisetum, willows,

sweet green, noisy

birds and frogs