On the Subway
6/8/45
A sullen faced father
can only give birth
to a sullen faced child.
And there they sit, the two,
two old people
glaring at life.
***
Notes on a parade
June 19
This is life.
Always seen from one small shut-in place,
so small the view—
a few yards
bound east and west
by buildings
and crowds,
a streamer or two
floating down in the breeze.
And yet,
from this so fenced in space
seeing all the world,
seeing beyond sight
and hearing beyond hearing.
I feel the crush of humanity
on every side
their odor and sweat
and looking about
know that each is different
and yet in their diversity
so much the same.
The hero comes,
To all this multitude
the hero
tho he is one
to each another being.
Each worships the heroic
but to each
the heroic assumes a different form.
To many the heroic
lies in the glamour
of his name
of the name
read
and reread
and made familiar
as the household soap.
Fame—the heroic.
And to some the hero
is the symbol of the warrior,
the conquering warrior.
And to some he seems
to form a small point of history,
all shaped and formed in him,
and they turn out a little ashamed
to become one of the crowd
but curious as the rest.
And I one of them.
Yet more interested in all these people
than the hero,
knowing it is they who make him what he is,
their blind and yet despite it fruitful aims
pushing him to the fore.
Without their support who is he?
The crowd, the fearful, fearsome crowd,
the crowd so easily assembled
to worship
or to fury,
so easily whipped
and led,
and yet not so easily,
not fooled,
not for long,
the crowd in whom is planted
the germ of humanity,
the seed of striving,
the will to live.
Each so different,
so different all the noses,
so many noses and none alike,
so different the hips
and thighs
and breath
and smell,
the personal history,
the personal quarrels,
the personal peace,
yet all, all standing on two feet,
two arms hanging from their sides,
wearing the same clothes,
clothes of our century,
levelled and assumed
by the same historic strides.
Man turned out
to worship a hero—
a parade—
but it is themselves they worship,
each turned out to worship
one small part of himself.
***
When I look up at the sunset
and the mountains I want only
those things that are eternal—want
no part of any passing things
want change only in
large common shapes—as a mountain
too advenes change
***
I like
the wind
Nothing can lie still
the biggest trees move
and on the mountains
so fast-secure
there is motion
___ the mountain is motion
moving with the wind.
I like nothing still.
Peach—the balance between living
and dying
Peace—in the living
Look upon the face of an old man
who has found the answer
how to be young
Living or dead—there is peace
defying death
Living beyond death.
When life and death are balanced
and death outweighs
when life slips away
and the dead are corpses
and the living are corpses
and the days lie fallow
and without fruit
then there is no peace—
only death, and war, and
destruction.
I like to hear the wind
for it is sound of life
of movement which is life
and hear the water in the brook
and hear the night
for it speaks of life
of things alive and growing.
Beginnings—
always beginnings.
We live in an old world
but the world is not old.
Why is this old world not old?
Because there are each day beginnings
The sun shines
The rain falls
and things die
But things are born—
Each day—
new plants
new life
new love
Value the mother—in her life begins
And the creator—who builds new worlds
making the old world new
refining? with him a new beginning
a new birth
not only his
but all man.
***
7/19/45
Let me taste the new
tho it be bitter, bitter as gall.
Let me feel the clean shock of the
unknown made known, for it is to
born again.
It was not easy to be born
It was a struggle out of darkness
Can we then ask ourselves ___ struggle in rebirth,
the ever renewed rebirth needed for life?
I want no lullabies, no repetition of only yesterdays.
I want to be shocked and bruised and loved anew and find new ways of being and giving and findings.
I want to meet each new moment new, for this is living, this firm hold where hands and feet all frantic seek a hold without finding—for they seek it in the past and the hold is in the now, and between the past and the now lies such an abyss, but by bridges crossed.
***
7/19/45
When the smoke rolls through
the streets and the green ___
do you say the train has brought
us ___?
***
10/8/45
I thought I alone saw in—the new leaf
of the Chinese lily, an adolescent,
youth and shimmering, tender and straight.
All day I returned to it reaching its climax
of youth ‘til I didn’t know—was it
in the leaf, or in me—this birth.
Was the birth in me clutching the leaf
for its form?
Flora came into my house and I
showed her the Chinese lily, shy to
show it or speak of it. But she too
saw it young and in its sheen which
reached out from the leaf. For
there is birth in all of us.
Had I hidden the leaf, alone, I
would not have known there is birth in all of us.
***
6/8/45
The she-animal calls in me
and I do not drive her
back into her pen.
No—I call her,
“Come here,”
Caresse her,
watch her sensuous
stretching of each limb.
You are too much mine,
so much part of me.
I will make you no house-pet
No,
be fierce,
with all the passion
into you born.
I will not seek to tame you
why make you less
than you are,
you so vibrant
so alive.
***
6/8/45
To feel irresistible!
To feel so imbued with life that
no person nor thing would refuse
me!
To feel I am a dynamo
capable of carrying
not only mine
but all the burdens in the world—
to feel that I have but to touch you
to banish tiredness
and cynicism.
Surely I feel
___ to ___
of health
of life
it will need in ___
all layers of resistance.
O, so I feel!
Wish that it were so!
***
5/27/45
Man equal to God
but not without her—
without the she
equal to the earth
the she
Open
fruitful
Woman equal to God
but not without him
without the he
equal to man
man-root
fastened to the earth
yet free
fruitful
God
wherever man and woman are free
are equal to each other.
***
5/19/45
Let me say this
I know what will be brought to me
I will bring—
what will be carried to me
I will call
and if I wish
and if I hope
it is that everything
brought and called
will be so sweet and ___ as the source,
knowing nothing
pretty
mean
small
fragile
as in my life
But filled with the
strength
the ___
the rigor
the unpunctuality
of life.
***
I would wish it
but I am not ready for it
yet ___
to call it forth and
yet un___
___
fragile
to weaken it with my own arguments
and
***
The little Etruscan statuette
burst from behind its glass
The city is lonely
lonely in its multitudes
lonely in its lore
for the person is small
I am lonely in the city
in the sense of the city’s ___
it searches for me
or for any person
to have his ___ ___
somewhere felt and heard.
***
4/45
Difficult
in the free blush of youth
clearly to see.
The rising girder,
___ form,
the steeples and the smokestacks,
and the boats, web-lines
against the sky,
the hawsers and the cranes:—
always the seeing
of two patterns—
the actual
and the actual
distorted by the personal,
perhaps through the distortion
given full meaning.
***
No unfamiliar place—
each word of yours
re-echoing
what has for ages
sounded in me.
Home.
Everywhere home.
All the world.
***
6/2/45
But in death nothing,
in the living death, life
obliterating
nothing nothing—
so many the dead
they walk
they walk—
Who is alive?
The free man—
not born to freedom—
for we are none born to
freedom,
we are all born to die,
but the free man
through all life fighting
for the freedom
making him man—
On him, in his pulse,
in the odor breathed
from him, the living
fertile odor of th
earth, you will find
the pulse of life,
you will find through him
the meaning of life.
***
Joy!- Joy!- Joy!
The wheel turns and levels
Up a play a spot of sunlight
dances
Lazy lazy stretching rhythm
Roomful of wills and dreams.
Man stretching for the sun
a coil
an unsprung tightened coil
ready to spring
with the spring
into any spark of life
Sparking
a hidden
pulsating life—
bursting sombre blueness
into a sparkle into a ___
lazy half hidden blueness
and the unnervous hands
intense with life
half possessing it
half relinquishing it—
yet crackling and sparkling
under the whip-lashing life
coiled and ___
ready
at and instant to spring
ready at the least threat
to bring
into being
his own right
might in the next ___ life.
***
Final Draft
The door shut twice once to close
once to
once to be heard
Behind you it shut
but blindly
of so blindly
I did not let myself find me
the meaning of
beauty of
loneliness.
Once
the door shut,
but again it opened
in to pour
in to crowd
a million small
intruders
alone
I was not alone
surrounded
beating
frustrate
strangers voices
out of tune
foreign,
taming,
taming the wilderness
muting my song hushing
hush
how sing
how to deaf ears bring
the chiming dearness
the nearness of my vision.
And to muted,
it sank,
into the depth of me
there to live nurtured.
Then gone! —
The door shut twice,
once closed.
My own—
My own now—
My own dance dancing
wildly
where
where oh
where does it lead me
Knowing
knowing as I ask
no answer
it will not be forced
cannot be read
into a moment,
but where,
where it will bring me,
pale the sky, grey
it will be high
where the clouds reach
beyond me
always beyond me
always to reach for.
There the dance is.
***
Without end— the bird’s din
without stop
insistent as a clock—
without end, the green grass
stretching in freedom
yet confined, confined by narrow walks,.
How does it sound here?
I have but to open the door
to step out
be one with the birdsong
or choose to run away
to another quiet.
But how does it sound
to you with no doors opening
with the doors tight shut
and and the key turned in the lock—
the key not yours.
They find no pattern in you chaos
but I find in your chaos
the insistent duet of two patterns of today—
our chaos knotted into a ball
and that ball you,
bouncing, bouncing
on the hard pavement of our cities
up, down.
Fear chains the strength
and clips the wings—
and you were taught to fear love.
***
Not the word forever
not any work
this to encompass—
No, not any word—
for the widest,
limits
bounds saying
this is my circumference
wide or small
but this do I ___
No, not forever
nor any word
Nor hymnal word
___ word
___ the word LOVE.
How do the gods cowering
speak of love
of forever?
***
6/1/45
Oh she would have you know it,
how struck out to have you knot it
each one, each human—
only how, how,
the how frustrate.
Quickly departed—
a shore quickly left—
only patches of memory,
each a color,
brown sand on a beach,
blue sky upside down
till I walked on the sky
and furthest back and beyond
green forest
hand in hand a gentle bearded man,
there I began.
I did not want you brother
I wanted to be the only one
wanted freely to posses,
hated even, as a child can, freely, wholly
all my darkness, inner and out
mirrored by your fair hair, ____
Why did you want a child
I am still a child,
petulant, standing in the doorway
a gloom ___
where the mother lay radiant.
Childhood and ___— ONE,
due left
back left
nor do the waves
once rewash that shore—
shore,
subsiding in memory.
***
6/4/45
It has begun—
with me it has begun
let each of us say that—
with me the world begins
but not the world’s beginning
fell ___ with such beginning
that has begun
full weighted my life,
this moment,
with each life—
each moment
live.
O thanks be, thanks be
that I am now here—
___ so many beginnings
able through so many ends
to break
able to converse
freely meet
with each creator
each beginner
who has been
I am there
at each source
at each far-flung tangent drinking
there, there— what joy!
knowing yet more
more envisionary
having the eyes of history
tracking down each track creative
reading there
in each
the exhausted living planet of
each
knowing yet,
O knowing ___
my ___, this moment
far far beyond
those that have been—
O you that you have been
each in this moment contained
that you were able to come alive
as your worlds have come alive
do come alive when eyes___
grasp the ___ of your memory—
but O know, I know while ___
that you are alive
all alive
in me,
in me this moment, living
this moment ___
reaching
______
reaching upon the ___
___to reach.
___
Let me say this.
I know what will be brought to me
I will bring—
what will be called to me
I will call
and if I wish
and if I hope
it is that everything
brought and called
will be as great and ___ as the source,
knowing nothing
pretty
mean
small
fragile
as is my life
But filled with the
strength
the ___
the rigor
the unpunctuality
of life.
***
5/19/45
I would wish it
but I am not ready for it
yet un___
to call it forth now
yet unnourished
fragile
fragile
to weather it with my own arguments
and pay
***
Filling up
pulling out of herself
myself
and ___if
and through it
the victims of life
the victims of living
Nor words enough to say it
shape it
bring it high
as the filling up
the inexhaustibility
the stream
ever-renewing.
I touched the source
and drunk
and was unfulfilled
but did not
plumb the source
the source unfurnished.
Life unplumbed.
Life rushing on.
Not diminished by my sips
nor gulps
nor unquenched thirst.
***
Petties (?) men
have acknowledged sainthood
to those driven out of bed
by a vision.
What saint then
am I?
What God?
That I cannot sleep
for the visions in me crowding
for the words finding through me
passage.
And the colors
on to the canvas pour?
each nuance with a vision
each stroke an ecstasy
making poor to poverty
the repentant
thrown to her knees
by a lady in a blue girdle
or wreath of thorns around a head—
what sainthood to see
what has already been seen
and known
and made a myth
Through fear
fear of the yet unspoken visions
words yet undeclared
which suckers the world
bringing new root.
Men confer sainthood
the red visions
seeking to elevate
hoping the old opiate
still will operate
to dwell
and bring to rest
this restless new
life becoming.
Man—
I declare to you
to each—
to the men
and to the women
especially to each—
you are all saints
and Gods—
you have but look
to see with new eyes
with virgin eyes
the new vision before us sweeping
of new life.
***
Before birth this is a
stillness
savor the stillness.
the still grandeur of the washed and newly planted grass
the pigeons murmur
and to its grey white flutter on the green
the grey walks white in the sun
and the shy grey and still
the grey and white and clean washed peace of the park where I sit watching
waiting for birth.
A pink man with
white hair
and a black suit
with a red poppy
against the grey white
walk flanked
with new green
and a ___
blue white
Of all trades I
wish I were a
grass mower
sitting in
my little
truck and
throwing up
with the green
spray the fresh
green smell
greener than
green.
***
Look look look
it is all wrong
wrong to ___ and look
and not to see
to see and not to feel
to feel the surface vision
and not the new new
life old old eyes
seeing only with a
trimmed and surface
vision eye revolving round
life’s orbit—
but never entering
never leading the
whole new being
into the new life
there there to ___
___ ___.