Honey and Salt (2 page)

and take it with a lonely winding

and when the winding gets too lonely

then may come the windflowers

and the breath of wind over many flowers

winding its way out of many lonely flowers

waiting in rainleaf whispers

waiting in dry stalks of noon

wanting in a music of windbreaths

so you can take love as it comes keening

as it comes with a voice and a face

and you make a talk of it

talking to yourself a talk worth keeping

and you put it away for a keen keeping

and you find it to be a hoarding

and you give it away and yet it stays hoarded

 

like a book read over and over again

like one book being a long row of books

like leaves of windflowers bending low

and bending to be never broken

Scrutinize the Scorpion constellation

and see where a hook of stars

ends with a lonely star.

 

Go to the grey sea horizon

and ask for a message

and listen and wait.

 

See whether the conundrums

of a heavy land fog

either sing or talk.

 

Let only a small cry come

in behalf of a clean sunrise:

the sun performs so often.

 

Speak to the branches of spring

and the surprise of blossoms:

they too hope for a good year.

 

Search the first winter snowstorm

for a symphonic arrangement:

it is always there.

 

Take an alphabet of gold or mud and spell

as you wish any words: kiss me, kill me,

love, hate, ice, thought, victory.

 

Read the numbers on your wrist watch

and ask: is being born, being loved,

being dead, nothing but numbers?

A biography, sirs, should begin—with the breath of a

                                                   man

when his eyes first meet the light of day—then working

                                                   on

through to the death when the light of day is gone:

so the biography then is finished—unless you reverse

                                                   the order

and begin with the death and work back to the birth—

starting the life with a coffin, moving back to a cradle—

in which case, sirs, the biography has arrived, is

                                                   completed

when you have your subject born, except for ancestry,

                                                   lineage,

forbears, pedigree, blood, breed, bones, backgrounds—

and these, sirs, may be carried far.

The grizzled Athenian ordered to hemlock,

Ordered to a drink and lights out,

Had a friend he never refused anything.

 

“Let me drink too,” the friend said.

And the grizzled Athenian answered,

“I never yet refused you anything.”

 

“I am short of hemlock enough for two,”

The head executioner interjected,

“There must be more silver for more hemlock.”

 

“Somebody pay this man for the drinks of death.”

The grizzled Athenian told his friends.

Who fished out the ready cash wanted.

 

“Since one cannot die on free cost at Athens,

Give this man his money,” were the words

Of the man named Phocion, the grizzled Athenian.

 

Yes, there are men who know how to die in a grand way.

There are men who make their finish worth mentioning.

I was the first of the fools

(So I dreamed)

And all the fools of the world

were put into me and I was

the biggest fool of all.

 

Others were fools in the morning

Or in the evening or on Saturdays

Or odd days like Friday the Thirteenth

But me—I was a fool every day in the week

And when asleep I was the sleeping fool.

(So I dreamed.)

Lief Ericson crossed the sea

to get away from a woman—

did he?

 

I have looked deep into the cisterns of the stars—
said Lief—and the stars too, every one was a struggler.

 

My neck shall not be broken without a little battle—
said Lief—and I shall always sing a little in tough weather.

 

I hunted alligators on the moon and they had excellent teeth for grinding even as the camels had excellent humps for humping—so ran one of his dreams.

 

He told the crew of a souse who said, Get me drunk and have some fun with me—and his mood changed and he told them it would be grand to travel the sky in a chariot of fire like Elijah.

 

He saw a soft milk white horse on the, top cone of an iceberg looking for a place to slide down to pearl purple sea foam—and he murmured, “I've been lonely too, though never so lonely one wind wouldn't take me home to the four winds.”

 

He went on murmuring, “Never have I known time to fail me, time with its monotonous mumbling in the masts and stanchions, its plashing plashing measuring plashing to the bulwarks, the slinking of the sea after a storm, the crying of the birds as they ride the wind when the wind goes down.”

 

He lifted his head toward scrawny warning horizons and nailed up a slogan: Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed:

 

Yes Lief Ericson crossed the sea

to get away from a woman—

perhaps—maybe.

The footprint of a bird in sand brought your face.

I said, “What of it?”

 

And the next lone footprint of a bird in the sand

brought your face again.

I said, “It is written deeper than sand.”

 

I saw a bird wing fixed forty thousand years in a rock,

a bird wing bringing your foot, your wrist.

The Indian saw the butterfly

rise out of the cocoon.

That was enough for him.

The butterfly had wings, freedom.

 

The Indian saw flowers in spring

push up out of the ground.

He saw the rain and the thunder.

They were enough for him.

 

And he saw the sun.

But he didn't worship the sun.

For him the sun was a sign, a symbol.

He bowed in prayer to what was behind the sun.

He made songs and dances to the makers and movers

of the sun.

What is a man worth?

What can he do?

What is his value?

On the one hand those who buy labor,

On the other hand those who have nothing

to sell but their labor.

And when the buyers of labor tell the

sellers, “Nothing doing today, not a

chance!”—then what?

The soiled city oblongs stand sprawling.

The blocks and house numbers go miles.

Trucks howl rushing the early morning editions.

Night-club dancers have done their main floor show.

Tavern trios improvise “Show me the way to go home.”

Soldiers and sailors look for street corners, house

                                                   numbers.

Night watchmen figure halfway between midnight and

                                                   breakfast.

Look out the window now late after the evening that

                                                   was.

On a south sky of pigeon-egg blue

Long clouds float in a silver moonbath.

This old river town saw the

early steamboats.

The line of wharf and houses

is a faded chromo.

It is bleached and bitten standing

to steady sunrises.

Passion may call for a partner

to share the music of its bones,

to weave shadows, rain, moonshine, dreams—

Passion may hammer on hard door panels,

empty a hot vocabulary of wanting, wanting—

it is all there in the fragments of Sappho.

 

Passion may consider poppies cheap

with their strong stalks in the wind,

with their crying crimson sheaths—

Passion may remember tiger lilies,

keepers of a creeping evening mist,

tawny watchers of the morning stars—

Passion may cry to the moon

for miracles of flesh,

for red answers to a white riddle—

it is told in the tears on many love letters.

 

Passion may spend its money,

its youth; its laughter, all else,

till again passion is alone

spending its cries to the moon—

and some weep, some sing, some go to war.

Passion may be alone at a window

seeking kisses fasten lips in wild troths,

a storm of red silk scarfs in a high wind,

armfuls of redbirds let loose into bush and sky—

and some weep, some sing, some go to war.

 

Passion may come with baskets

throwing paths of red rain flowers,

each folded petal a sacrament—

the evening sunsets witness and pass on.

Passion may build itself bouses of air

and look from a thousand tall windows—

till the wind rides and gathers.

 

Passion may be a wind child

transient and made of air—

Passion may be a wild grass

where a great wind came and went.

 

The evening sunsets witness and pass on.

deep sea was the wandering

deep brass the dripping loot

deep crimson the bloodspill

lyrics begotten on lush lips

and many a hawser they saw

rotting rope and rusting chain

and anchors   many lost anchors

there will be people left over

enough inhabitants among the Eskimos

among jungle folk

denizens of plains and plateaus

cities and towns synthetic miasma missed

enough for a census

enough to call it still a world

though definitely    my friends    my good friends

definitely not the same old world

the vanquished saying, “What happened?”

the victors saying, “We planned it so.”

if it should be at the end

in the smoke    the mist    the silence of the end

if it should be one side lost    the other side won

 

the changes among these leftover people

the scattered ones the miasma missed

their programs of living    their books and music

they will be simple and conclusive

in the ways and manners of early men and women

the children having playroom

rulers and diplomats finding affairs less complex

new types of cripples here and there

and indescribable babbling survivors

listening to plain scholars saying,

should a few plain scholars have come through,

“As after other wars the peace is something else again.”

 

amid the devastated areas and the untouched

the historians will take an interest

finding amid the ruins and shambles

tokens of contrast and surprise

testimonies here curious    there monstrous

nuclear-fission corpses having one face

radioactivity cadavers another look

bacteriological victims not unfamiliar

scenes and outlooks nevertheless surpassing

those of the First World War

and those of the Second or Global War

—the historians will take an interest

fill their note-books    pick their way

amid burned and tattered documents

and say to each other,

“What the hell! it isn't worth writing,

posterity won't give a damn what we write.”

A slim and singing copper girl,

They lived next to the earth for her sake

And the yellow corn was in their faces

And the copper curve of prairie sunset.

 

In her April eyes bringing

Corn tassels shining from Duluth and Itasca,

From La Crosse to Keokuk and St. Louis, to the Big

                                                   Muddy,

The yellow-hoofed Big Muddy meeting the Father of

                                                   Waters,

In her eyes cornrows running to the prairie ends,

In her eyes copper men living next to the earth for her

                                                   sake.

The shape of the world is either a box or a bag