There is a deep beauty in
things as they are
Walker Evans
A GREEN MOUNTAIN IDYLL
POEMS FOR HAYDEN CARRUTH
Hayden Carruth . Lorine
Niedecker . Cid Corman . Theodore Enslin . Mary Oliver . Barbara Moraff
. Bob Arnold . David Budbill . Paul Metcalf . Joel Oppenheimer . Rene Char
. Sengai . Saigyo . Ryokan . Basho . Evan Strusinski . Issa . David Ray
. Geof Hewitt . William Matthews . David Huddle . Millen Brand . Alain
Bosquet . Janine Pommy Vega . Lyle Glazier . M. J. Bender . Peter Gurnis
. David Giannini . Barbara Howes . Samuel Green . Greg Joly . Michael Hettich
. Ozaki Hosai . Rocco Scotellaro . Peter Money . Terry Hauptman . Robert
Nichols
From the Longhouse
archive we have selected poets & poems reflecting a Vermont residence,
now or once upon a time, or a friendship with Hayden Carruth, to align
with and boost a celebration of events and readings in November around
the state for Hayden. Ive edited this modest garland and it
is our first roll at this sort of thing on-line. Its clear purpose is to
share poems by Hayden from our pages along with many poets from the state
as if a visit at the town grange. Dip into it whenever you wish. A few
weeks ago I had mistakenly announced this November event as a poet laureate
position for Hayden. Kindly laugh this off as wishful thinking on my part.
o
Once upon a time Hayden would come to visit us in our cabin by the river
far down a back road, no literary strings at all, a couple waiting by the
dim light of a woodfire. I recall one visit he made when he read aloud
his entire long poem sequence The Sleeping Beauty that was yet to
be published from Harper & Row. And then he made sure we got the only
credit for a magazine that published one poem from the sequence and that
was the poem he left with me the next morning after a blueberry breakfast
with all the fixings. He inscribed in one of his books for us just that
flavor of Susan's home cooking. Soon after, he was gone from Vermont to
Syracuse, NY; finally a steady paying job, teaching at the university and
a whole new poem came flooding forth.
Ten years later we read together at The Clark Art Museum. Hayden started
off with a poem we first published in Longhouse, "Regarding Chainsaws".
We include it here. A dandy of a poem. I was always partial to the early
lean years work where the treasure-chest anthology The Voice
That Is Great Within Us was edited from his tiny cowshed writing hut,
over-stuffed with books, box woodstove and postcard photo of Ezra Pound
on the wall. Those elusive New Directions books of poems that came with
a certain haunting quality from a certain haunting existence forever making
ends meet; every single poem a gem in From Snow and Rock, From Chaos.
Only Hayden could describe for us just where he'd been, settling in Vermont
after illness, some mainstream publishing and as the editor of Poetry;
now in a tiny house bought for peanuts, but still tough when you are only
making peanuts, and raising a young family in Johnson, Vt. Back then in
the early 60s before the influx of communes and the long hair tribe
of poets one had to feel cut off from the literary world chopping
out as a full-time resident copy editing, review writing, any nickel and
dime chore and counting as your best friend a neighbor farmer called Marshall.
You bet it sounded that romantic to me as a young poet born in these hills
and coming to live deeper in. I know it did with some other poets who came
here about the same time rousing closing 60s and early 70s. It shows forth
in all our poems. What was once romantic and the struggle is to
hold onto that love was quickly burned off into a hardcore sense
of literary maintenance and making a daily living right where you stood.
A million miles from anywhere lodged with local farmers, mechanics,
loggers, dimwits, uncanny geniuses. If you listen just right today you
may just find a peep-hole left of that time. But back in that day, it was
the work of Hayden Carruth and Ted Enslin in Maine who were the man.
No small wonder that when Susan and I were married, like knuckleheads,
we went to look for Hayden on our honeymoon up in Johnson, and inviting
us in for supper and the night he and Rose Marie put us up on their screen
porch, by the brook. Like some ancient tale, we went to find that house
and brook almost thirty years later with no luck. As Hayden will grimly
remind us in his autobiography Reluctantly, scraping together a
living out in the country, one was lucky to have the time to lift one's
head to see the foliage, never mind the pretty countryside. Irony has always
made the finest country poem.
o
The following poems
have been culled from issues of Longhouse spanning from 1971 and
still thriving. Needless to say Hayden Carruth was an early supporter and
contributor to our pages, often tipping off poets to send us work, stamps
and any means of subsistence since we published forever without grants
or funding of any kind. His kindness to struggling poets is of legend rather
than any myth. And through the kindness of strangers we continue on and
share these many voices forever within us.
Bob Arnold
Hayden
Carruth
SILENCES
North people known for silence. Long
dark of winter. Norrland families go
months without talking, Eskimos also,
except bursts of sporadic errie song.
South people different. Right and wrong
all crystal there and they squabble, no
fears, though they praise north silence. Ho,
philosophical types, men of peace.
But
take
notice please of what happens. Winter on the brain.
Youre literate, so words are what you feel.
Then youre struck dumb. To which love will you speak
the words that mean dying and going insane
and the absolute futility of the real?
Lorine
Niedecker
Something in the
water
like a flower
will devour
water
flower
Cid Corman
from IN
THE LONG RUN
Drink up - friend -
while you can.
Today is.
What glory
is glories
in this is.
Rock holds dust -
hope a cup.
Drink to this.
Theodore
Enslin
A
CONSTANCY
Love in old age is a fire of coals
burns in to the core and becomes smaller
only to see it smaller it rises
in any sudden gust becomes larger
as the youth who kindled it
when he did not know the tending needed
now that he does one more stoking it bursts
in new flower the jewels of fire
any place any time
Mary
Oliver
RACCOON
Roadkilled. Huddled
at the side of the road.
You take him up
in your arms and walk
into the shade
of the deeper trees,
beyond the blast
of the summer sun,
and curious dogs.
You hope it was quick.
You hope it didnt
hurt too much.
You know he is
your brother, you know
how many roads
flow through the world,
how many bodies
crawl toward the dark,
how many days
are marred by the bloody
flick of grief,
how many questions
will never be answered.
You put him down,
you cover him over
with thorns and leaves
and walk away
thinking, as you must,
joy to the leaves,
joy to the light,
joy to the cycles
past pain.
c Mary Oliver
Barbara
Moraff
WHAT
DO YOU MEAN HOW DO YOU GET TO VERMONT?
no one to dance
with
dance
with
falling leaves
shadows
at woods edge
hallucinate water wind
into laughing
deer
step
lightly
fade into foliage
deciduous
mist
exposing nothing
not there
Bob
Arnold
THE
REASON I LOVE TO BUILD STONE WALLS
and have for so long
is that I need few
tools to do the job
I could walk to work
free at hand
nearly whistling
until I arrive
( not wanting to
look too happy )
and the stones
are there lopsided
appearing miserably
out of place to
someone else
as I kneel
maybe with a 3 lb.
hammer Ive brought
along for company
Hayden
Carruth
NEAR
ROCHE-COLOMBE
The springtime so impetuous. Already pink blossoms
Are drifting down, a flurry in the peach grove
At the high end of the vallon. Sometimes
They become less pink than mauve,
Less mauve than deep rose, when clouds hide the sunshine
And the mountains darken. Then again they are gossamer
Weaving in brightness, falling, billowing,
Wavering. The old brown woman below
At her goat-tending looks up to see them and to see
The mysterious wind spun
From mountain stone that takes them, whirls them free
And up, up, in a vortex. With them
Her eyes too move upward. For always there is a falling
And a rising within, this beautiful helical rhythm,
And always, it seems, a vision calling and calling.
David
Budbill
AFTER
READING MENG CHAIOS
SEEING OFF MASTER TAN
Theres never any money!
All my wife and I do
is worry and fight.
I suffer to make these poems!
I wish I could be like Master Tan and go from place to place
begging for someone to pay my health insurance premiums,
car repair bills and property taxes. But I cant. I have to suffer
in silence and alone, pretending there is nothing wrong.
I know that since ancient times real poets have never gotten fat.
What I cant comprehend is how Master Tan could grow old,
hungry and neglected because of poetry, yet never dry up,
never became ironic, nasty, sarcastic or bitter.
How did he keep his innocence?
How could his sweet and grieving tears,
even when he was an old man,
still fall like rain?
Paul
Metcalf
DEATH
OF DOSTOYEVSKY
the depression of
a deep russian:
deep rest
Joel
Oppenheimer
HYACINTHS
an
april fool
hi, a
shy cunt, hunt
shy i, a.c.
ah, tushy, inc.
such tiny ah.
uh, i shy, cant.
Rene
Char
LAMANTE
/ THE LOVER
for
M.C.C.
So much had passion seized me for this delectable lover,
I not exempt from effusion and vibrant lubricity, I was,
was not to have died quietly or toned down, acknowledged
merely by my lovers eyelids. Nights of a wild novelty
had rediscovered the ardent communicating saliva, and
perfumed her feverish belonging. Thousands of adulterated
precautions invited me to the most voluptuous flesh ever.
In our hands a desire from beyond destiny, what fear at
our lips tomorrow?
-translated by Cid
Corman
Sengai
Just resting
letting the
breezes make
a thing of
a body
-translated
by Cid Corman
Saigyo
You are so nicely
into the weave you wear and
beyond undoing
ah to be woven with
you to have become that close.
-translated
by Cid Corman
Ryokan
Lost in a dreamworld
and once again the dream ends
grass for a pillow
awakening all alone
having to think of it too.
-translated by Cid
Corman
Sengai
Forget alone and
forget you have forgotten
have it both your ways.
-translated by Cid
Corman
Saigyo
With snow fallen
on
field paths and mountain paths too
covering them up
who knows where anything is
all goings up in the air
-translated by Cid
Corman
Basho
Nothing
lasts forever
Thats the trouble
with it.
-translated by Cid
Corman
Hayden
Carruth
THE
MINUTE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BIRDS AND LEAVES
She lay unmoving
a moment longer, silver thighs
Still splayed, breasts tilted apart so that the bones
Of her chest showed like interlocked fingers while she looked outward
To moonlight and gleaming, billowing trees,
And then she turned on her side and said
But
he did not hear
The words flutter down on him, touching, tickling
With little brittle feet, pecking the meal
Of his arms and belly, the golden grain; he heard rather
The unspoken that is always eloquent, her few pleas,
Echoes very distant behind the lanterns of his eyes.
He rose then, scattering words, and went to the window shivering.
Cold boards fed the hunger in his feet. He looked at the trees
In silver frost, leaves falling, severing themselves and falling,
Their silence falling in moonlight, falling all night without wind,
Mouths falling, searching the whole body of earth with their kisses.
Evan
Strusinski
I say your name
and suddenly
its as if you
were here.
But youre not.
I say
your name
again.
Cid
Corman
No one star
in heaven
too many
no matter
how many
come or go.
Issa
Morning glories
enough thatching
for this hut.
--translated by Cid
Corman
David
Ray
VISIT
TO HELL
Smoky Civil War woods,
teardrops of Issa
all along the rail,
a bit of mist, fog
of my own.
I could date it.
Geof
Hewitt
UNTITLED
These electrical storms razz me
coming on at last after so much
holding off: high humidity, THI, & sweat
seeps in through bones
Zip crash lightning wont hit me
let the wet pellets rejoice
as I dance in the mud,
naked & pink like the pigs
& later, after dark,
the storm provides our clearest light
William
Matthews
SOMETHING
STRANGE IN DAVE JEFFERIES APARTMENT
Well, the phone
lists
like an old boxers nose.
Ring, ring. Its Sugar Ray
on the nose. Jake, he says,
you cheap punk, your
cornflower blue trunks
dont impress me, you
wouldnt last three rounds
with Bucky Fuller.
Dave gasps, this phone call
is for Jake LaMotta, not me.
The rest of us are sad.
The nose is counting to ten
and sounds authentic; we hang up
just in time. Oh Lord how long
this gonna go on
elsewhere, always elsewhere.
David
Huddle
SUNDAY
DINNER
If the whole
length of the white tableclothed
table my grandparents called each other
Old Devil, Battle Ax, Bastard, and Bitch,
if having stopped smoking for Lent, Mother
was in a pout, if New Deal politics
had my father telling us how much he loathed
Roosevelt, if Grandma Lawsons notion
that we boys needed a dose of worm potion
had Charles crying hard not to look amused
and Bill whining for dessert even though
he hadnt finished his beets, if all this
and Uncle Lawrences thick White Owl smoke,
Aunt Elricas hoots, and Inezs craziness
werent my one truth, Id ask to be excused.
Joel
Oppenheimer
23
MARCH
art, zat strain
means a daft
i do
in which
tzara married
irrevocably us
and his dada
manifesto.
David
Ray
ACADEMIC
Fierce hand to hand fighting
all around
as I go writing my poems
--
THOUGHTS
ON THE WHITE HOUSE
So this
is where
they decide
to kill all
the pretty
people,
where the
disconnections
get said
in the head, where
the wrong dreams
get dreamt,
where Arlington
is driven out to
with caisson or
hired limousine.
It is a thought
that makes the
hipflask
shake in the hand,
that makes the
bus lights
massacre innocent
creatures in the
dark
Millen
Brand
THE
PAPER CRANES
I notice a paper
crane. I ask about it.
Im told this story:
Some ten years after the A-bombs
a twelve-year-old girl in Hiroshima,
Sadako Sasaki, who had been exposed to the bomb,
contracted leukemia. A friend
sent her a letter in the hospital,
enclosing--for health--a paper crane,
small, an inch and a half long
with a tapering neck and folded-over
sharp beak. The crane in Japanese legend
lives a thousand years, so a paper crane
is a symbol of health, and there is a belief
that if you fold a thousand cranes
you will get well. Sadako decided
to fold a thousand cranes. She folded
nine hundred and sixty-four
and died.
After she died, her classmates
at Nobori-cho Elementary School in grief and love
wanted a statue for her
and for all the children who died.
Funds were raised nationally,
and in Hiroshimas Heiwa Koen --Peace Park--
a statue was put up: high on a three-pronged pedestal,
a young girl who in her raised arms holds
the thin outline of a paper crane. At the statues base
in a rainbow torrent of color
are thousands of actual paper cranes and the words,
This is our cry, this is our prayer--
to establish peace in the world.
Bob
Arnold
THE
FACE OF A DICTATOR
( take your pick )
All that has made you
Sick in the past
Is present
Alain
Bosquet (Edouard Roditi)
from
SEVEN POEMS FROM: An Atheists Creed
Tell me why
I live.
Tell me why I think.
Tell me why I die.
If you can tell me,
then youre my god,
its because you believe in me
for I grant you so many powers.
Tell me why I walk.
Tell me why I dream.
Tell me why I am.
But if you keep silent,
Im your god.
David
Budbill
WHAT
I HEARD AT THE DISCOUNT DEPARTMENT STORE
Dont touch that. And stop your whining too.
Stop it. I mean it. You know I do.
If you dont stop, Ill give you fucking something
to cry about right here
and dont you think I wont either.
So she did. She slapped him across the face.
And you could hear the snap of flesh against flesh
half-way across the store. Then he wasnt whining anymore.
Instead, he wept. His little body heaved and shivered and wept.
He was seven or eight. She was maybe thirty.
Above her left breast, the pin said: Nurses Aide.
Now they walk hand in hand down the aisle
between the tables piled with tennis shoes
and underpants and plastic bags of socks.
I told you I would. You knew I would.
You cant get away with shit like that with me,
You know you cant.
Youre not in school anymore.
Youre with your mother now.
You can get away with fucking murder here,
but you cant get away with shit like that with me.
Stop that crying now I say
or Ill give you another little something
like I did before.
Thats better. Thats a whole lot better.
You know you cant do that with me.
Youre with your mother now.
Janine
Pommy Vega
HUMAN
PRAYER
Sing Sing entrance
stands over the shoreline
of the Hudson River
to the left
behind barbed wire topped wall
is a ball field
someone hits a triple as the sun
goes down
to the right
sprawled along the river
is lovers lane, a kid
peels out in a blue car,
the squeal of tires
and one side is inside
and one side is outside
the same plane passing through
the same sky over both
inside, walking out
through stone corridors
I rub a little lipstick on the wall.
Lyle
Glazier
THE
SHANTIES
- 1 -
West window looks to the river
beyond houses
strung on a valley road
east window looks to the mountain
We hear the drag of the saw
a long time before
we see the dustcloud
A team is unloading in the bay
Perry snags logs with a canthook
Maurice is sawing
Pop brings Mayflowers in April
swamp pinks in June
wild honeysuckle in July
- 2 -
Schoolnights early to bed
from the upper bunk
we boys hear voices
Keep your eye on this one, Harry,
my ringer will slip
between the legs of your leaner
without touching a hair
- 3 -
Dead level
under apple boughs
April to June is muddy,
Mel and I carry lard pails
to the spring box,
the slope
spongy with bluets
M.J.
Bender
from
VERSUS I
Black Ash
corn
borders
Northern White
Flint
barbwire
bends around
mounds of stone
--
tear out the
eyes of
each
one slain
beaver
mink otter fox each
inclination shot
flayed and
off to market skin
exchanged for
perfect duty kersey
duffel
stammels shags and beys
Peter
Gurnis
CANTERBURY,
N.H.
Shaker-
chair on the peg of noon, eclipsed
sisterhood, brother
built wagons, good gardens
in a church that lacks only
roe.
David
Giannini
SILENCE OF STONE
Voice of the workman
sounding over his
idling tractor: "What
the fuck tip of rock
is this?"
Does
he think
silence waits to be
taken custody?
What he unearths be-
comes a figure fit
to feel as sculpture
fingers of neighbor
kids playing on stone
valleys and chipped peaks
glinting and rain worn
but in stance still of
silence untaken
standing its ground rock
as rock must be: locked
voice of an ancient
future the ants walk
Barbara
Moraff
THINGS
TO DO IN VERMONT
Everything that
needs to be done.
Oh well, till that garden in October
and lay down vegetable debris which
with poormans fertilizer (snow) will
nourish the earth. Stack the firewood
in non-collapsible way. Clean out
the chimneys. Plant bulbs. Visit yr
downcountry neighbor & milk his goat
faster than he can, smile & stand back,
waiting for him to say cheese.
Getyr car an oil change, check the
tires & air filters. Sing a song to
yr steer before you shoot his brains
out. This is all called Giving Thanks
Properly. It effectively prevents:
earthquake, dropsy, cabin-fever and the other
winter ailments we northcountry folk
are heir to.
Its also a good idea to buy or make a good
wintercoat, epoxy the holes in those old
mudkickers.
There are
other things you can do in Vermont. So goes the
rumor: like observe how the clouds thin
deceptively before blizzard, let go of yr
natural hostility & dont accuse anyone of
running a junkyard; hes only making
his ends meet.
Hayden
Carruth
UBI
AMOR
This too I affirm
sacred, here
beneath yellow birch and hophornbeam,
hiddenness in our discovered glen
when we see the snake gliding
from the rock pool, the Bo and I
snake gliding on crystal
in shaded sun, in sunsplatter, the Bo and i
we urgent and outgoing, intent now,
going down away through into
crystal and the snakes perfection -
our movement against leaf-shadow
and the mosaic of stone a blue world,
for all the colors of autumn, even brown
or the brown-gray, are purity,
blue on the boys arm taut
in extension, downward, a thought muted
in his movement to shadow and stone,
to object I too joined there inseparable.
He tosses back his blue-gold hair,
thought again transparent in movement,
his ecstasy, a being gone from itself,
tough in its way, and then smiling,
touching me oh from this my own dulled
edge beyond pain, melevasti,
my Bo this, this is the love that
transmutes thought beyond selfhood,
so now I say it, descending still,
leaf-fall, year-fall, the irretrievable
a boy and a man, son and father
in the blue world where a snake
glides from the rock pool.
Bob
Arnold
IS
IT
river
flowing
beneath
the stars
or stars
flowing
over the
river
Barbara
Howes
HUNTING-SEASON
MORNING-SOUNDS
Furry with sleep,
he struggled
Up; shoved food; took off:
By 5:30, night still
Drooped over my window,
Then siphoning sound began:
Here, a junker swerving --
Each corner its last --
Now the idling hum of taxis
To La Guardia; later,
A BB gun -- a kid -- shot Roberts heifers.
Six prime bucks leapt our
road.
Furry with sleep, he died.
Samuel
Green
GRUBS
Working with the bark spud
peeling cedar logs for the shed
I uncover white grubs,
wrinkled & thick as my little finger.
They have powerful jaws.
Working in the dark, blind, in faith
toward whatever they might become,
they leave delicate etchings
in the wood. I have to say
that I understood them
more than the squawking, squabbling
chickens who crowded to peck them
from my unprotected hand.
Theodore
Enslin
MAPLE
STUDY
There is a spell
cast
over everything
I see or touch --
not a usual magic.
What adheres is my own.
A simple fact of being.
Things count
but
this is
the tree and shadow
I
have made.
You by me
will
have your own
version of what may not be
at all.
Greg
Joly
LESSON
Topping off
the wheelbarrow,
I ask jay
where he wants
the dirt dumped.
Looking up
from spade work,
he eyes me,
Not dirt.
Earth.
Michael
Hettich
THESE
ROADS
lead nowhere.
We build them to get here.
At night we put up
our tents and lie thinking
of our families, listening
to bugs bounce off
the canvas. We dream of our new road.
A few miles behind us
others follow
building houses.
Behind them others
fill the houses
with furniture, fill
the cupboards with food
and plates, make sure
everything works.
Others build stores
and schools, and then,
way back, the families,
scared-looking, sweaty,
walk, reading
the number on each house.
In every garage
a shiny car. In every kitchen
a modern stove.
There are plenty of jobs
building. There are
plenty of toys
for the children.
Mary
Oliver
WAITING
FOR RAIN
Down by the
stream
that has thinned to a single stroke
the bobwhites parched cry
thickens.
Some streams run deep,
some run shallow.
Some summers are dry.
Oh, I think, standing in a dusty field,
what can beauty do,
or happiness,
that the simple rain cannot?
On one or two small berries the mockingbird
keeps his fires going. But his music all day
floats like smoke, remembering, extolling
the elusive crystal of water, the huge down-driving
resurrection. And the shimmering
taste of it.
c Mary Oliver
Bob
Arnold
TOUGH
Leaf hangs
To one beat-up
Sawmill log
Theodore
Enslin
from
HDT
Why do men split wood? Round, as it comes from the tree, one stick, unsplit,
will burn as long as two of the same size split -- often through knots
and twisted grains, to try the patience of the axeman. The midsection burns
fastest, as the moisture is forced out both ends -- so that eventually
the two ends can be raked together and burned again. I cut my wood, and
sort it for different size stoves -- the largest for the furnace, the next
size for the library stove, smaller sticks -- the branches that many scorn
and leave in the woods to rot -- for the kitchen range, and the short ends
left over for the Franklin stove which heats the bedroom on cold nights.
Unless a stick is too large to fit through the openings, not one of them
is split. I havent laid hand to an axe this season. But if I tell
an old-timer about this, he reaches for his wedges and splitting maul,
muttering about more heat from split wood. Nearly everything, down to two
inch sticks, is split, and has been for generations. At the end of the
year, if we were to balance accounts, I imagine I burn a third less, and
keep just as warm (unless part of the value in splitting is in warming
ones self at the chopping block) as those who burn their mountains
of splinters, for no good except that their fathers and grandfathers did
the same.
--
3/21/87
something after
all
and
all in all
the snow that melts
almost
as it
falls
David
Ray
FOR
GALWAY, MY VERMONT LANDLORD
You said to
pull the burdocks,
hear em crack.
And shoot the porcupines
that eat the house-beams down.
But one was quite enough,
my first and last.
He stared out from
the woodpiles top,
dared me to go ahead
and shoot. I did,
and watched him in his own slow
time uncurl my fathers hands.
Hayden
Carruth
TO
A FRIEND NEVER SEEN
Words we are;
you
this bundle of blue
aerograms, postmark
Kyoto.
I imagine nothing, why
should I
(scent
of tea, flowers
and
fat gongs, the god
smiling
at your elbow)
nothing, no face.
Nothing; give no face,
ask none.
Two poets, worlds
apart, words
what better?
Not man but mans
being, steadiness almost
flame.
The postmarks song: Kyoto
meaning steadiness, faded
now, dogeared but still
the same, calling my
steadiness.
Would not do for brotherhood
in the ordinary way, that
sweetness of knowledge.
To lack knowledge is more
rare. To know only what is,
to see, to see, between
vision and memory
white
panther on hemlock bough,
the crouching snow,
drops,
a miniature, glass
globe of the eye,
and the brief good scream
of the doe
echo,
echo
sweet to mortality
here, there,
Clay
Hill or
Kyoto.
No more needed.
This song, this fall
of the moment, being
sung only in words.
Ozaki
Hosai
Without a bowl
both hands
receiving
-translated by Cid Corman
Cid Corman
We are offspring
the earth as earth of sky and
sky of emptiness
--
Everything is
coming to a head meaning
blossoms yet to fall.
Rocco
Scotellaro
Day is done, and we too have been brought to play
with the clothes and the shoes and the faces we had.
The hares have gone to their burrows and the cocks crow,
the face of my mother returns to the fireplace.
-translated by Cid
Corman
Peter
Money
WHEN
JOE SPENCE PUT DOWN HIS GUITAR
(after a painting by Barbara Jackson; for R.C.)
you go to this island & theres a road
& you take it and follow to the end
& across from Moms theres a little place
& you walk in & Maiziell feed you
fritters & fingers & in the back theres a jukebox
& you think thiss bettern Paris-
Miami-Florence, & you dont play
anything cause theres music all around
& its quiet.