Populist

I dreamed myself of their people, I am of their people,

I thought they watched me that I watched them

that they

watched the sun and the clouds for the cities

are no longer mine image images

of existence (or song

of myself?) and the roads for the light

in the rear-view mirror is not

death but the light

of other lives tho if I stumble on a rock I speak

of rock if I am to say anything anything

if I am to tell of myself splendor

of the roads secrecy

of paths for a word like a glass

sphere encloses

the word opening

and opening

myself and I am sick

for a moment

with fear let the magic

infants speak we who have brought steel

and stone again

and again

into the cities in that word blind

word must speak

and speak the magic

infants’ speech driving

northward the populist

north slowly in the sunrise the lapping

of shallow

waters tongues

of the inlets glisten

like fur in the low tides all that

childhood envied the sounds

of the ocean

over the flatlands poems piers foolhardy

structures and the lives the ingenious

lives the winds

squall from the grazing

ranches’ wandering

fences young workmen’s

loneliness on the structures has touched

and touched the heavy tools tools

in our hands in the clamorous

country birth-

light savage

light of the landscape magic

page the magic

infants speak

Source: New Collected Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2002)