Pennsylvania, 1948-1949

The garden of Nature opens. 
The grass at the threshold is green. 
And an almond tree begins to bloom. 

Sunt mihi Dei Acherontis propitii! 
Valeat numen triplex Jehovae! 
Ignis, aeris, aquae, terrae spiritus, 
Salvete!?says the entering guest. 

Ariel lives in the palace of an apple tree, 
But will not appear, vibrating like a wasp?s wing, 
And Mephistopheles, disguised as an abbot 
Of the Dominicans or the Franciscans, 
Will not descend from a mulberry bush 
Onto a pentagram drawn in the black loam of the path. 


But a rhododendron walks among the rocks 
Shod in leathery leaves and ringing a pink bell. 
A hummingbird, a child?s top in the air, 
Hovers in one spot, the beating heart of motion. 
Impaled on the nail of a black thorn, a grasshopper 
Leaks brown fluid from its twitching snout. 
And what can he do, the phantom-in-chief, 
As he?s been called, more than a magician, 
The Socrates of snails, as he?s been called, 
Musician of pears, arbiter of orioles, man? 
In sculptures and canvases our individuality 
Manages to survive. In Nature it perishes. 
Let him accompany the coffin of the woodsman 
Pushed from a cliff by a mountain demon, 
The he-goat with its jutting curl of horn. 
Let him visit the graveyard of the whalers 
Who drove spears into the flesh of leviathan 
And looked for the secret in guts and blubber. 
The thrashing subsided, quieted to waves. 
Let him unroll the textbooks of alchemists 
Who almost found the cipher, thus the scepter. 
Then passed away without hands, eyes, or elixir. 


Here there is sun. And whoever, as a child, 
Believed he could break the repeatable pattern 
Of things, if only he understood the pattern, 
Is cast down, rots in the skin of others, 
Looks with wonder at the colors of the butterfly, 
Inexpressible wonder, formless, hostile to art. 


To keep the oars from squeaking in their locks, 
He binds them with a handkerchief. The dark 
Had rushed east from the Rocky Mountains 
And settled in the forests of the continent: 
Sky full of embers reflected in a cloud, 
Flight of herons, trees above a marsh, 
The dry stalks in water, livid, black. My boat 
Divides the aerial utopias of the mosquitoes 
Which rebuild their glowing castles instantly. 
A water lily sinks, fizzing, under the boat?s bow. 


Now it is night only. The water is ash-gray. 
Play, music, but inaudibly! I wait an hour 
In the silence, senses tuned to a beaver?s lodge. 
Then suddenly, a crease in the water, a beast?s 
black moon, rounded, ploughing up quickly 
from the pond-dark, from the bubbling methanes. 
I am not immaterial and never will be. 
My scent in the air, my animal smell, 
Spreads, rainbow-like, scares the beaver: 
A sudden splat. 
I remained where I was 
In the high, soft coffer of the night?s velvet, 
Mastering what had come to my senses: 
How the four-toed paws worked, how the hair 
Shook off water in the muddy tunnel. 
It does not know time, hasn?t heard of death, 
Is submitted to me because I know I?ll die. 


I remember everything. That wedding in Basel, 
A touch to the strings of a viola and fruit 
In silver bowls. As was the custom in Savoy, 
An overturned cup for three pairs of lips, 
And the wine spilled. The flames of the candles 
Wavery and frail in a breeze from the Rhine. 
Her fingers, bones shining through the skin, 
Felt out the hooks and clasps of the silk 
And the dress opened like a nutshell, 
Fell from the turned graininess of the belly. 
A chain for the neck rustled without epoch, 
In pits where the arms of various creeds 
Mingle with bird cries and the red hair of caesars. 


Perhaps this is only my own love speaking 
Beyond the seventh river. Grit of subjectivity, 
Obsession, bar the way to it. 
Until a window shutter, dogs in the cold garden, 
The whistle of a train, an owl in the firs 
Are spared the distortions of memory. 
And the grass says: how it was I don?t know. 


Splash of a beaver in the American night. 
The memory grows larger than my life. 
A tin plate, dropped on the irregular red bricks 
Of a floor, rattles tinnily forever. 
Belinda of the big foot, Julia, Thaïs, 
The tufts of their sex shadowed by ribbon. 


Peace to the princesses under the tamarisks. 
Desert winds beat against their painted eyelids. 
Before the body was wrapped in bandelettes, 
Before wheat fell asleep in the tomb, 
Before stone fell silent, and there was only pity. 


Yesterday a snake crossed the road at dusk. 
Crushed by a tire, it writhed on the asphalt. 
We are both the snake and the wheel. 
There are two dimensions. Here is the unattainable 
Truth of being, here, at the edge of lasting