XXXIV.
Diesel’s scent, warm, billowing
wrapped up in its own thing like an identity
wafts over a tangled country
like a chessboard
The water, the swamp, the trees
the housing blocks, the baseball
diamonds, the post-industrial lots
and haze, crash together
mingled crazily and without form, without
lot or consequence
Something unearthly, something
less than everyday yet
in this world, totally so
totally there.
Electrical supercharged on
towards Connecticut, the train
charges along the twisted scope
of the sound-shore.
The sky is blue, too blue
as if smiling
it looks to scorn the shade and cool
of the sombre trails of illusory
half-substantial draperies
—As the damasked robes
of a wandering ghost.
XXXV.
Returning to the town
of the green-on-the-whitesward
O bells clanging
for compline!
The sun crashes down
whitely, whitely
—Over an edge
serrated, separated
A human work of
common spaces and block-jagged
lines.
Not losing at the Mass
comes a desire
Highly and coldly and
thrillingly.
Love to gold
the lamplight turns
—the gold in that lamplight
Affinity, liking, two worlds
connect.
XXXVI.
To the city of the saved
they came, singing.
The birds traced through the air
Augurs’ justifications and
Raven-quilled spelled out their
benedictive warnings.
Darkly, darkly
missing time, missing
action
sitting down and
chewing the mind’s
cud—
Wait for a more
miraculous circuit
miraculous district
miraculous feeling in
lesser
agony.
Without surcease
Without reasoning
In the city of the saved
the birds lure
to imperfection
Imperfectly good
beyond
the clouds
the place
where we belong—
In blazing being and
behind the lines
of questionable sunlight
the feeling of the
ancient burning land
persists in the beating
of the sin-sick heart.
XXXVII.
I am not sure of
what just happened.
He and I were struggling
of course, but
we were having fun
just a minute ago.
I had, numerous times
offered brave assays at
delivering him unto
my clutches
But—
He had laughed
He had scorned me off
so what, why
now, is this
that has happened here?
It was fun
just a minute ago.
I did not wish for
anything like this
to happen, truly
I did not wish for this.
Everything has slid
so far out of all
control, that I almost
wish that I could pray.
So, here I stand
in infinite regret.
XXXVIII.
High, high in the dark dome
Whirl the stars in spinning gusts
And in the light of something like
A new day, there is blood
On the golden sands of Cyrene.
Temperature falling, pressure
Rises, though, up into spheres
Built from time beyond time
To take immemorial torrid bursts
Of streaming and heatless light.
Not understand but neither losing to
The blasts that take themselves up in
Our hearts, may we spread ourselves
Out, luxuriant, upon such a sward as
We should not perhaps have even made?
The suppuration is in our hearts and
The fog is in the fir-trees that stand
On the ancient blasted rocky shore
And into the twisted realms of light
Above the black belly of the thunderhead.
So on we go in great gain, with loss
Not less, perhaps, than infinite, wanting
Much and ever more as new wants are
Made for us in agony and bloody sweat
In this excessive shadowless kingdom.
XXXIX.
Life, in observation
sings its immemorial
sorrowing desires.
At a third point,
the stair turns.
See there below, it is—
in itself, there, definitely
always there, always
present, but—
But not all always
is always, in every point
through every motion
the same.
XL.
Fasting, flooding, adrift
a form hanging feet-first
lies in distinction of district.
She is beyond our reach
beyond our thoughts or
prayers for her inchoate
yet corporeal mortal soul.
That person lies there
in a lying like standing
above the flood that is
the desert waste farther off.
Sound of the blue clouds,
give your voice piping and longing
unto the resting whispering souls
of those passed, sighing, in the chasms
Give them your voice and
give them your peace
that they may in spirit and
body move
incorporate
in the foundation of the world.
Far off, far off she hangs
Along with the whirling
Currents of the spirits that
Forever will in the world
Their secret being-here-in
In stock and stone and coppice.
Let them be, let them stay
There and here and in all
Places with all people, let them
Give us some mild foretaste
Of what it is to be in that village
where land and water end.
XLI.
O my child,
—this town will never let us go.
It takes us, seizes us
spindles us and places us
in the high architecture of a suspect
and suspecting brain.
Its old brick buildings
call to us
its newer buildings hold
and have us.
Above, the sky is dark
—trending on towards
evening.
To the side,
Hadley stands by Connecticut, heaving
its old belly up over the
swerving waterline by the bridge
chanting
being to pre-Adamite being
in the cool mists of early Spring.
In our elder days
let us return, in O our
humanity, to this
beating heart of
place.
XLII.
In the head there was
a King
Edenic, running, running
seeing and grasping, and
to grasp
Below, on the wave
on the wing
the overwhelming
crushing flow of
death, the overwhelming
drumming trill of
life; all things signified
to all men and women
and it signified solely
to me.
And the Lord said.
‘Do you hear my
words? Words do
you hear them? Do
you understand
at all? Catch it all
catch it and take
it all in absoluteness?’
And we answer:
rent an old flat
in the old red brick
flat-roofed building,
get a job at the corner
bakery, or in
the stone library on
Amity Street.
That is our answer
to the solely simply
posed little question
of being-here-in
The question of being
here, truly, really here
in the very beginning
of the whole world.
Come on, come on
Get set, get set
Let all things sing
In total fruition
In total absolution
Sing in penitence
Sing out joyfully
Joy in penitence
Come on higher
Higher and faster
Lure to perfection
The rose of the
Unforgettable garden
Beyond the end of
Endless mortal love
Mortal deathlessness
Healing sickness
Here on the bed
Of the sanctified
Queen of the universe.
XLIII.
Warmer after a
sudden cold, the world
as it were is
letting go
See blueness, high
above still so chilly
air, see drifting
object-in-space—
The sword that
smites evil stands
stands, eternal-high
Upon the point
of the bladed cloud.
Sugar shacks in the
hills
Manure on the fields
—over the Milky Way
the dark shines, lowing.
How sad, how sad
this Earth seems to lie
at eventual sunset
at its eventual prideful
dusk.
XLIV.
In success and with temptation,
come by come by
Every town across the nation,
come by come by
To the place where love is falling,
come by come by
Past the graves where crows are calling,
come by come by
Do not try to understand
come by come by
The anatomy of perfection’s hand
come by come by
For it is gone beneath the flood
come by come by
The beating surge of life’s hot blood
come by come by
Tracing the form of a human heart
come by come by
Rips the woof of the world apart
come by come by
Trace that form, and in its bends
come by come by
See the way the ill-made ends
come by come by
XLV.
The night sky
calls aloud
The cold earth
below offers
questions on the
doctrine of Annunciation.
It is come! Behold!
The earth, questioning
at once honestly rejoices.
Two worlds connect, two
worlds in a separation
not ideal, not properly, perhaps
looked for or accepted by
the faithful heart.
It is come!
Loving, running, in
suffering it all moves
on and on, go on
following the pathless path
treading the earth
frozen in the sudden bravery of a moonbeam.
Passing over Troy
on its way winding to
Tripoli, the Annunciation
on the promontory where
the rocky shrine stands
makes itself clear.
In the clearness the stars wheel
Orion still in the spring sky,
the Great Bear of course, and
Arcturus with his car and train.
Let the summer come, unimaginable
summer contained in the circuit of Spica.
Let it be here now,
that suddenly articulated
idea of frozen summer.
XLVI.
The idea of announcement continues to make itself
Known and heard throughout the resounding sound
Of the blue sky that hangs over the Holyoke Range.
The Connecticut surges beneath the stony bridge of
Dedication to a stony president, and spreads its waters
Out gloriously in a world still held up in stock and stone
Farm and fallow, wood and valley, dell and grove and hill.
Knowing that the world turns in its own note and manner
Transcendental the people look up at the floating clouds
And seeing them ask in wonder what they are about
What they are doing here and where the sky takes them.
The questions, not questions simply of fact in reality
Take on the character of sacrament, of questions asked
For the simple purpose of resacralising a simple world.
Many years past, this valley was filled with dark woods
Wherein Metacomet had his kingdom, wherein Lord Jeff
Penetrated, tanned from Virginia, on his way northwards
Into Acadian fastness, and in this history the scattered towns
Question their existence, question their circuits and districts.
Raising voices in a chorus of communitarian atonement
Living peacefully, not bothering our neighbours when they
Do not bother us, farming as kindly and sustainably as any
Can manage, we must be America, if we are anything and
If America is anything remaining at all in the northlands.
The sky shouts, the people run, the country is what it is.
Over it all the voice of penitence shouts its announcement joyously.
XLVII.
The world, all alive, passes
under the pall of nightly
being, minus
total grief and absolution
raining
down upon the disturbed head.
Higher up through
the stars, beneath their
shine, the railroad
chugs along and descending
from the bus the soul
arrives.
Under the lea and on
the river, the soul comes back
to the land, singing
songs of oldness and
wildness, praying
sense of the self into the
hardness of the ground.
XLVIII.
The lights fall through the dawn
and fly together into the greater
light that shines over the serrated
lines of the town and the light
sudden character of tree-lined hills
between here and the deep chill
Quabbin’s waters.
Running together, the world
advances, though but in mild
and tentative movements, from
the bricks and curved streets of
Northampton over hill and flood
to the distant and unforgotten
tidal country.
The world turns and life goes
on and on in consolation of its
detritus, saying that things must
come together and in togetherness
be well as they cannot be otherwise
moving, moving, everything
over and through.
XLIX.
Brotherhood advances.
Life, the nature of it
in absolute advance
beating, sounding
resounding in the reckless
joy of apology.
Alienation advances.
Against the reckless
apology to and acceptance
of joy, it comes, the
rival Kaiser, holding a crown
studded with counterfeit pearls.
Three points advance.
They converge each on
the others, claiming
selfhood and selflessness
through the resounding sound of
a divinely spiraling horn.
Life advances.
It is the middle sister
it is pain and it
advances, soundless
yet noisy and active
in happy chaos.
Agony advances.
Agony is life, is joy
in its chaos, something
masochistic, not seeing
beneath the roof of the third flame
a possibility of a door.
Susurration advances.
It is only a whisper
only something said
but softly across the distance
between the abysmal
and the named.
L.
Greyly the world passes
From sunset to sunrise.
Goldenly the world passes
From sunrise to sunset.
The sunrise and the sunset
Pass around each other
In this world, exulting
The solar dance making
The lunar dance go on.
Kissing, sun and moon
Make themselves gods
Beneath the throne standing on
The backs of seraphim, gods
And mirrors of God
Among so many others.
The nature of this world is
To take up those gods
And exalt them beyond their
Proper role in the holy work
Or else cast them down, saying
‘This is a clockwork universe, this
Is rational, the world is
Rational, the overmind
Of rational mankind can take
The world and puzzle it and
From its shell, twisting, prise
Ultimate knowledge like pearls
From an old oyster’s seeded mantle.’
Not so, you see, as the world
In which the gods move and in which
They act uniformly without
Uniformity, is not that which
In the rational mind makes itself
Known or thought to be known.
The world is a mirror of
Worlds, as its gods are mirrors of
God, who is not a world, not even
A person, merely the geography
And the architecture of a place
Whose character is to have character
Whose nature is to show the nature
Of a person or of a world
Dancing happy and alive
Lordly in stately emptiness.
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