Symphony No.3, in D Minor

Thousands lavishing, thousands starving;       
intrigues, war, flatteries, envyings,
    
hypocrisies, lying vanities, hollow amusements,
       
exhaustion, dissipation, death—and giddiness
       
and laughter, from the first scene to the last.
      
—Samuel Palmer, 1858

I. Pan Awakes: Summer Marches In
 
 
               Pan’s
               spring rain
               “drives his victims
               out to the animals
               with whom they become
               as one”—
 
               pain and paeans,
               hung in the mouth,
 
               to be sung
              
 
               II. What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me
 
 
               June 6, 1857, Thoreau in his Journal:
 
               A year is made up of a certain series
               and number of sensations and thoughts
               which have their language in nature…
 
               Now I am ice, now
               I am sorrel.
 
              
               Or, Clare, 1840, Epping Forest:
 
               I found the poems in the fields
               And only wrote them down
 
               and
 
               The book I love is everywhere
               And not in idle words
 
               John, claritas tell us the words are not idle,
               the syllables are able
               to turn plantains into quatrains,
              tune raceme to cyme, panicle and umbel to
              form corollas in light clusters of tones…
 
               Sam Palmer hit it:
               “Milton, by one epithet
               draws an oak of the largest girth I ever saw,
               ‘Pine and monumental oak’:
               I have just been trying to draw a large one in
               Lullingstone; but the poet’s tree is huger than
               any in the park.”
 
               Muse in a meadow, compose in
               a mind!
 
 
               III. What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me
 
 
               Harris’s Sparrow—
 
               103 species seen
               by the Georgia Ornithological Society
               in Rabun Gap,
 
               including Harris’s Sparrow, with its
               black crown, face, and bib encircling
               a pink bill
 
 
               It was, I think, the third sighting
               in Georgia, and I should have been there
               instead of reading Clare, listening to
               catbirds and worrying about
               Turdus migratorious that flew
               directly into the Volkswagen and
               bounced into a ditch
 
 
               Friend Robin, I cannot figure it, if I’d
               been going 40 you might be
               whistling in some grass.
 
               10 tepid people got 10 stale letters
               one day earlier,
               I cannot be happy
               about that.
 
 
               IV. What the Night Tells Me
 
 
               the dark drones on
               in the southern wheat fields
               and the hop flowers
               open before the sun’s
               beckoning
 
 
               the end
               is ripeness, the wind
               rises,
               and the dawn says
               yes
 
 
               YES! it says
               “yes”
 
 
 
               V. What the Morning Bells Tell Me
 
 
               Sounds, and sweet aires
               that give delight
               and hurt not—
 
               that, let
               Shakespeare’s
               delectation
               bear us
 
 
 
               VI. What Love Tells Me
 
 
 
               Anton Bruckner counts the 877th leaf
               on a linden tree in the countryside near Wien
               and prays:
 
               Dear God, Sweet Jesus,
               Save Us, Save Us…
 
               the Light in the Grass,
               the Wind on the Hill,
 
               are in my head,
               the world cannot be heard
 
 
               Leaves obliterate
               my  heart,
 
               we touch each other
               far apart…
 
 
               Let us count
               into
               the Darkness
 
 
Copyright Credit: Jonathan Williams, "Symphony No. 3, In D Minor" from Jubilant Thicket: New & Selected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by Jonathan Williams.  Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press.
Source: Jubilant Thicket: New & Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2005)