A Letter

 I came here, being stricken, stumbling out

At last from streets; the sun, decreasing, took me

For days, the time being the last of autumn,

The thickets not yet stark, but quivering

With tiny colors, like some brush strokes in

The manner of the pointillists; small yellows

Dart shaped, little reds in different pattern,

Clicks and notches of color on threaded bushes,

A cracked and fluent heaven, and a brown earth.

I had these, and my food and sleep—enough.

 

This is a countryside of roofless houses,—

Taverns to rain,—doorsteps of millstones, lintels

Leaning and delicate, foundations sprung to lilacs.

Orchards where boughs like roots strike into the sky.

Here I could well devise the journey to nothing,

At night getting down from the wagon by the black barns,

The zenith a point of darkness, breaking to bits,

Showering motionless stars over the houses.

Scenes relentless—the black and white grooves of a woodcut.

 

But why the journey to nothing or any desire?

Why the heart taken by even senseless adventure,

The goal a coffer of dust?    Give my mouth to the air,

Let arrogant pain lick my flesh with a tongue

Rough as a cat’s; remember the smell of cold mornings,

The dried beauty of women, the exquisite skin

Under the chins of young girls, young men’s rough beards,—

The cringing promise of this one, that one’s apology

For the knife struck down to the bone, gladioli in sick rooms,

Asters and dahlias, flowers like ruches, rosettes. . .

 

Forever enough to part grass over the stones

By some brook or well, the lovely seed-shedding stalks;

To hear in the single wind diverse branches

Repeating their sounds to the sky—that sky like scaled mackerel,

Fleeing the fields—to be defended from silence,

To feel my body as arid, as safe as a twig

Broken away from whatever growth could snare it

Up to a spring, or hold it softly in summer

Or beat it under in snow.

 

                                                       I must get well.

Walk on strong legs, leap the hurdles of sense,  

Reason again, come back to my old patchwork logic,

Addition, subtraction, money, clothes, clocks,

Memories (freesias, smelling slightly of snow and of flesh

In a room with blue curtains) ambition, despair.

I must feel again who had given feeling over,

Challenge laughter, take tears, play the piano,

Form judgments, blame a crude world for disaster.

 

To escape is nothing.    Not to escape is nothing.

The farmer’s wife stands with a halo of darkness

Rounding her head.    Water drips in the kitchen

Tapping the sink.    To-day the maples have split

Limb from the trunk with the ice, a fresh wooden wound.

The vines are distorted with ice, ice burdens the breaking

Roofs I have told you of.