West Topsham

In prologue let me plainly say

I shall not ever come to that discretion where

I do not rage to think I grow decrepit,

bursten-bellied, bald and toothless,

thick of hearing, tremulous of leg, dry

and rough-barked as a hemlock slab, the soft rot

setting in and all my wheezy dreams the tunnelling

of beetles in a raspy bark. For now

I am fleshed at smaller sports, and grow in time

into the mineral thick fell of earth; Vermont

hairy with violets, roses, lilies and like

minions and darlings of the spring, meantime

working wonders, rousing astonishments. And

being a humble man, I at the same time acknowledge

my miscreate: the nightshades, cabbages and fleaworts

of my plot, though always I try to turn my back and scorn

upon the inkhorn term and speak as is most commonly

received with smile and wink and approbative nod,

not overfine nor at the same time reckless

of the phrase, nor ever ugly, turdy, tut-mouthed,

but always joyous at the goosey brain,

the woolpack of the solid cloud, a crowd, a heap,

a troop, a plume of trees, grass, gulls and rabbits,

in the end, no doubt, a vulgar prattle: but the planet

swells and bulges and protrudes beyond my eyes’ aversions,

and tottery, fuddled, always I give up, I am not understood,

or wrongly, out of some general assumption of my innocence.

This much I wish to say, my nonesuch, nosegay

native sweet, in someway plainer, this is my letter to you,

and out of most severe purpose: the bee,

the honey stalk, the whole keep of the house

endanger me: the perspectives of the clapboard, the steep

falls of the lawn, the razory apices of ridges,

and the abdominous curves of the meadow into the far

trees. There are ponds below the house, and water runs.

The road crosses the water, and the road

diminishes to the reach of the next farm, and the farm

beyond that, and two miles bearing right or left

somewhere runs Highway 25. I have found my way

with difficulty, I am confused, halfway I have suffered

a failure of vital powers, a swoon, have been

smirked at by the natives, and misdirected. Fitting,

for I always dream of the painless redemption, the return

from fiasco and tumultuous journey to the transcendentally

serene lawns of a transcendentally white house

with columns of oak trees and iron deer and the

affectionate greeting of One who has these many years

waited in full patience, without complaint,

for me to come in bleeding, dusty and deliquescent

from the fields, the blade in my thigh, or blinded,

the victim of fire or ravenous birds, the lovely blood

on my cheek like tears, one-limbed, a bullet

in my heart, my hands, my head cut off and the dark

pulses of my blood diminishing. Yet never a reproach

for my criminal self-negligence, my careless japeries

and clumsy flounderings: instead, my brow is wiped, my

wounds attended to, blood let, leeches applied: I heal,

I grow strong, I can set forth again renewed, valiant,

sturdy, full of high spirits, lively, gay, spruce

in looks, a reveler, a merry prankster, dimpled

in the cheek from smiling, perfect Pilgrim, fit

for the chemistry of the Resurrection. Yet

I am of wild and changeful moods. I am perhaps worthy

of being stoned, sometimes. I lie hid and lurk in wait

for the giggling girleries and leap out and shout

and scatter them like chickens from the boot to the safe

and flying four winds. I am easy and fluent

in the telling of lies, and let it be said that I roar

and sing scurrilous songs in base places, and shall no doubt

for this little vain merriment find a sorrowful reckoning

in the end. Still, my noises please me, and what

this wretched poet overmuch desires, he easily believes.

It is his conventional cowardice, it makes him

immortally glad. But then he always grows morose

(that is in his favor), he repents, lances his soul, thinks

of the willows and the columned porch and the wind

melliloquent about the chimneys, and you

from where he sits now at the far end

of this small porch of a Federal farmhouse

in this very and summery Vermont.

I look down the pitches of the lawn:

fireflies make small explosions among the grass stems,

and I think that to walk down that slant of lawn

to the black waters of the brook at the dark join

of the cleft would be like dying, and that if I die

I will never pardon time. I think my words

will echo only in my own mind forever, to what purpose

I do not know I see a firefly trapped inside the screen.

I have no name for any of this; I know it clearly

in the same way I know the dead cry of the starlings

in the eaves, the smell of after rain, the warm

air holding in the hollows of the roads. For this

there is no name. The holding mind is likewise

without name. That is the final thought,

it is the disorder, the reason

for all this. The clouds

begin to reach up Blood Mountain,

and I am sitting on a farmhouse porch,

and there are trees, and it is late and I am dreaming

that I dream I stare down into a fouled well and see

the white legbones of a deer and the water’s surface

matte with loose hair, the green stink welling

and bellying from the fertile sump up and flowing

outwards in a fountaining current of vines and melons

and leaves and the knotgrass lawns blossoming with gilliflowers,

shoulder-high, cloud-high, the sun finally smothering

in grass, and then in the entire silence of this

growth the grasses thickening, darkening, becoming clouds,

reaching up from the ridges. And all night

there is rain. I dream that when I awaken

it is a shining milky day, four roosters

are crowing in the yard and geese

dabble in the green soft muds of the ditches.

This is the literal surface, and for all

the extravagance of what has gone before

I now repent, and make an image:

All of Vermont each night blazes

with fireflies, the comet is a faint

green phosphorescence to the North, the catalpas

blossom and each noon the sunlight hardens, and the sky

is a clear ground, and I can look from my open doorway

into dry and fiery yards. You see, I draw back always,

I cannot be understood. O I wud slepe all the swete

darkemans, nor ever speke! It was as if I had forgotten

to see the steep lawns suddenly erupt in tiny lights,

it was as if my fingers burned green and blazed

with crushed fireflies; and, as usual, no deer appeared.

The strict edges of the meadow held nothing.

When I drive home, my carlights sweep

the road before me. I override

the long shadows of the pebbles and grasses, and the sky

grows long clouds. I drive into the soft explosions

of lightning far to the West, at the end of the confusing road

where I will sleep and awaken and sleep again. My hands

in the dashboard lights are glowing softly green. This whole

journey is before me. I know

I am touched with the phosphors

of self-love. The light

knows it is light. A great

red moon rides wedged in a crevice of clouds,

and I come up the widening road

as if it is the driveway to your house.

Copyright Credit: John Engels, “West Topsham” from Weather-Fear: New and Selected Poems (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1983). Copyright © 1983 by John Engels. Used with the permission of the author.

Source: Weather-Fear: New and Selected Poems 1958-1982 (1983)