Collected Earlier Poems (10 page)

                         Goddess, be with me now;

               Commend my music to the woods.

    There is no garden to the practiced gaze

Half so erotic: here the sixteenth century thew

Rose to its last perfection, this being chiefly due

    To the provocative role the water plays.

               Tumble and jump, the fountains’ moods

                         Teach the world how.

                         But, ah, who ever saw

               Finer proportion kept. The sum

    Of intersecting limbs was something planned.

Ligorio, the laurel! Every turn and quirk

Weaves in this waving green and liquid world to work

    Its formula, binding upon the gland,

               Even as molecules succumb

                         To Avogadro’s law.

                         The intricate mesh of trees,

               Sagging beneath a lavender snow

    Of wisteria, wired by creepers, perfectly knit

A plot to capture alive the migrant, tourist soul

In its corporeal home with all the deft control

    And artifice of an Hephaestus’ net.

               Sunlight and branch rejoice to show

                         Sudden interstices.

                         
The whole garden inclines

               The flesh as water falls, to seek

    For depth. Consider the top balustrade,

Where twinned stone harpies, with domed and virgin breasts,

Spurt from their nipples that no pulse or hand has pressed

    Clear liquid arcs of benefice and aid

               To the chief purpose. They are Greek

                         Versions of valentines

                         And spend themselves to fill

               The celebrated flumes that skirt

    The horseshoe stairs. Triumphant then to a sluice,

With Brownian movement down the giggling water drops

Past haunches, over ledges, out of mouths, and stops

    In a still pool, but, by a plumber’s ruse,

               Rises again to laugh and squirt

                         At heaven, and is still

                         Busy descending. White

               Ejaculations leap to teach

    How fertile are these nozzles; the streams run

Góngora through the garden, channel themselves, and pass

To lily-padded ease, where insubordinate lass

    And lad can cool their better parts, where sun

               Heats them again to furnace pitch

                         To prove his law is light.

                         Marble the fish that puke

               Eternally, marble the lips

    Of gushing naiads, pleased to ridicule

Adonis, marble himself, and larger than life-sized,

Untouched by Venus, posthumously circumcised

    Patron of Purity; and any fool

               Who feels no flooding at the hips

                         These spendthrift stones rebuke.

                         
It was in such a place

               That Mozart’s Figaro contrived

    The totally expected. This is none

Of your French topiary, geometric works,

Based on God’s rational, wrist-watch universe; here lurks

    The wood louse, the night crawler, the homespun

               Spider; here are they born and wived

                         And bedded, by God’s grace.

                         Actually, it is real

               The way the world is real: the horse

    Must turn against the wind, and the deer feed

Against the wind, and finally the garden must allow

For the recalcitrant; a style can teach us how

    To know the world in little where the weed

               Has license, where by dint of force

                         D’Estes have set their seal.

                         Their spirit entertains.

               And we are honorable guests

    Come by imagination, come by night,

Hearing in the velure of darkness impish strings

Mincing Tartini, hearing the hidden whisperings:

    “
Carissima
, the moon gives too much light,”

               Though by its shining it invests

                         Her bodice with such gains

                         As show their shadowed worth

               Deep in the cleavage. Lanterns, lamps

    Of pumpkin-colored paper dwell upon

The implications of the skin-tight silk, allude

Directly to the body; under the subdued

    Report of corks, whisperings, the
chaconne
,

               Boisterous water runs its ramps

                         Out, to the end of mirth.

                         
Accommodating plants

               Give umbrage where the lovers delve

    Deeply for love, give way to their delight,

As Pliny’s pregnant mouse, bearing unborn within her

Lewd sons and pregnant daughters, hears the adept beginner:

    “
Cor mio
, your supports are much too tight,”

               While overhead the stars resolve

                         Every extravagance.

                         Tomorrow, before dawn,

               Gardeners will come to resurrect

    Downtrodden iris, dispose of broken glass,

Return the diamond earrings to the villa, but

As for the moss upon the statue’s shoulder, not

    To defeat its green invasion, but to pass

               Over the liberal effect

                         Caprice and cunning spawn.

                         For thus it was designed:

               Controlled disorder at the heart

    Of everything, the paradox, the old

Oxymoronic itch to set the formal strictures

Within a natural context, where the tension lectures

    Us on our mortal state, and by controlled

               Disorder, labors to keep art

                         From being too refined.

                         Susan, it had been once

               My hope to see this place with you,

    See it as in the hour of thoughtless youth.

For age mocks all diversity, its genesis,

And whispers to the heart, “
Cor mio
, beyond all this

    Lies the unchangeable and abstract truth,”

               Claims of the grass, it is not true,

                         And makes our youth its dunce.

                         
Therefore, some later day

               Recall these words, let them be read

    Between us, let them signify that here

Are more than formulas, that age sees no more clearly

For its poor eyesight, and philosophy grows surly,

    That falling water and the blood’s career

               Lead down the garden path to bed

                         And win us both to May.

Morning has come at last. The rational light

Discovers even the humblest thing that yearns

For heaven; from its scaled and shadeless height,

Figures its difficult way among the ferns,

Nests in the trees, and is ambitious to warm

The chilled vein, and to light the spider’s thread

With modulations hastening to a storm

Of the full spectrum, rushing from red to red.

I have watched its refinements since the dawn,

When, at the birdcall, all the ghosts were gone.

The wolf, the fig tree, and the woodpecker

Were sacred once to Undertaker Mars;

Honor was done in Rome to that home-wrecker

Whose armor and whose ancient, toughened scars

Made dance the very meat of Venus’ heart,

And hot her ichor, and immense her eyes,

Till his rough ways and her invincible art

Locked and laid low their shining, tangled thighs.

My garden yields his fig tree, even now

Bearing heraldic fruit at every bough.

Someone I have not seen for six full years

Might pass this garden through, and might pass by

The oleander bush, the bitter pears

Unfinished by the sun, with only an eye

For the sun-speckled shade of the fig tree,

And shelter in its gloom, and raise his hand

For tribute and for nourishment (for he

Was once entirely at the god’s command)

But that his nature, being all undone,

Cannot abide the clarity of the sun.

Morning deceived him those six years ago.

Morning swam in the pasture, being all green

And yellow, and the swallow coiled in slow

Passage of dials and spires above the scene

Cluttered with dandelions, near the fence

Where the hens strutted redheaded and wreathed

With dark, imponderable chicken sense,

Hardly two hundred yards from where he breathed,

And where, from their declamatory roosts,

The cocks cried brazenly against all ghosts.

Warmth in the milling air, the warmth of blood;

The dampness of the earth; the forest floor

Of fallen needles, the dried and creviced mud,

Lay matted and caked with sunlight, and the war

Seemed elsewhere; light impeccable, unmixed,

Made accurate the swallow’s traveling print

Over the pasture, till he saw it fixed

Perfectly on a little patch of mint.

And he could feel in his body, driven home,

The wild tooth of the wolf that suckled Rome.

What if he came and stood beside my tree,

A poor, transparent thing with nothing to do,

His chest showing a jagged vacancy

Through which I might admire the distant view?

My house is solid, and the windows house

In their fine membranes the gelatinous light,

But darkness follows, and the dark allows

Obscure hints of a tapping sound at night.

And yet it may be merely that I dream

A woodpecker attacks the attic beam.

It is as well the light keeps him away;

We should have little to say in days like these,

Although once friends. We should have little to say,

But that there will be much planting of fig trees,

And Venus shall be clad in the prim leaf,

And turn a solitary. And her god, forgot,

Cast by that emblem out, shall spend his grief

Upon us. In that day the fruit shall rot

Unharvested. Then shall the sullen god

Perform his mindless fury in our blood.

I write from Rome. Last year, the Holy Year,

The flock was belled, and pilgrims came to see

How milkweed mocked the buried engineer,

Wedging between his marble works, where free

And famished went the lions forth to tear

A living meal from the offending knee,

And where, on pagan ground, turned to our good,

Santa Maria sopra Minerva
stood.

And came to see where Caesar Augustus turned

Brick into marble, thus to celebrate

Apollo’s Peace, that lately had been learned,

And where the Rock that bears the Church’s weight,

Crucified Peter, raised his eyes and yearned

For final sight of heavenly estate,

But saw ungainly huge above his head

Our stony base to which the flesh is wed.

And see the wealthy, terraced Palatine,

Where once the unknown god or goddess ruled

In mystery and silence, whose divine

Name has been lost or hidden from the fooled,

Daydreaming employee who guards the shrine

And has forgotten how men have been schooled

To hide the Hebrew Vowels, that craft or sin

Might not pronounce their sacred origin.

And has forgot that on the temple floor

Once was a Vestal Virgin overcome Even by muscle of the god of war,

And ran full of unearthly passion home,

Being made divinity’s elected whore

And fertile with the twins that founded Rome.

Columns are down. Unknown the ruined face

Of travertine, found in a swampy place.

Yet there was wisdom even then that said,

Nothing endures at last but only One;

Sands shift in the wind, petals are shed,

Eternal cities also are undone;

Informed the living and the pious dead

That there is no new thing under the sun,

Nor can the best ambition come to good

When it is founded on a brother’s blood.

I write from Rome. It is late afternoon

Nearing the Christmas season. Blooded light

Floods through the Colosseum, where platoon

And phalanx of the Lord slaved for the might

Of Titus’ pleasure. Blood repeats its tune

Loudly against my eardrums as I write,

And recollects what they were made to pay

Who out of worship put their swords away.

The bells declare it. “Crime is at the base,”

Rings in the belfry where the blood is choired.

Crime stares from the unknown, ruined face,

And the cold wind, endless and wrath-inspired,

Cries out for judgment in a swampy place

As darkness claims the trees. “Blood is required,

And it shall fall,” below the Seven Hills

The blood of Remus whispers out of wells.

Non, je ne puis souffrir cette lâche méthode
Qu’affectent la plupart de vos gens à la mode
…

MOLIERE
:
Le Misanthrope