Some Trees: Poems Read Free Page A

imagine our rewards.

Pantoum
    Eyes shining without mystery,
    Footprints eager for the past
    Through the vague snow of many clay pipes,
    And what is in store?
    Footprints eager for the past,
    The usual obtuse blanket.
    And what is in store
    For those dearest to the king?
    The usual obtuse blanket
    Of legless regrets and amplifications
    For those dearest to the king.
    Yes, sirs, connoisseurs of oblivion,
    Of legless regrets and amplifications,
    That is why a watchdog is shy.
    Yes, sirs, connoisseurs of oblivion,
    These days are short, brittle; there is only one night.
    That is why a watchdog is shy,
    Why the court, trapped in a silver storm, is dying.
    These days are short, brittle; there is only one night
    And that soon gotten over.
    Why, the court, trapped in a silver storm, is dying!
    Some blunt pretense to safety we have
    And that soon gotten over
    For they must have motion.
    Some blunt pretense to safety we have:
    Eyes shining without mystery
    For they must have motion
    Through the vague snow of many clay pipes.

Grand Abacus
    Perhaps this valley too leads into the head of long-ago days.
    What, if not its commercial and etiolated visage, could break through the meadow wires?
    It placed a chair in the meadow and then went far away.
    People come to visit in summer, they do not think about the head.
    Soldiers come down to see the head. The stick hides from them.
    The heavens say, “Here I am, boys and girls!”
    The stick tries to hide in the noise. The leaves, happy, drift over the dusty meadow.
    “I’d like to see it,” someone said about the head, which has stopped pretending to be a town.
    Look! A ghastly change has come over it. The ears fall off—they are laughing people.
    The skin is perhaps children, they say, “We children,” and are vague near the sea. The eyes—
    Wait! What large raindrops! The eyes—
    Wait, can’t you see them pattering, in the meadow, like a dog?
    The eyes are all glorious! And now the river comes to sweep away the last of us.
    Who knew it, at the beginning of the day?
    It is best to travel like a comet, with the others, though one does not see them.
    How far that bridle flashed! “Hurry up, children!” The birds fly back, they say, “We were lying,
    We do not want to fly away.” But it is already too late. The children have vanished.

The Mythological Poet
I
    The music brought us what it seemed
    We had long desired, but in a form
    So rarefied there was no emptiness
    Of sensation, as if pleasure
    Might persist, like a dear friend
    Walking toward one in a dream.
    It was the toothless murmuring
    Of ancient willows, who kept their trouble
    In a stage of music. Without tumult
    Snow-capped mountains and heart-shaped
    Cathedral windows were contained
    There, until only infinity
    Remained of beauty. Then lighter than the air
    We rose and packed the picnic basket.
    But there is beside us, they said,
    Whom we do not sustain, the world
    Of things, that rages like a virgin
    Next to our silken thoughts. It can
    Be touched, they said. It cannot harm.
    But suddenly their green sides
    Foundered, as if the virgin beat
    Their airy trellis from within.
    Over her furious sighs, a new
    Music, innocent and monstrous
    As the ocean’s bright display of teeth
    Fell on the jousting willows. We
    Are sick, they said. It is a warning
    We were not meant to understand.
II
    The mythological poet, his face
    Fabulous and fastidious, accepts
    Beauty before it arrives. The heavenly
    Moment in the heaviness of arrival
    Deplores him. He is merely
    An ornament, a kind of lewd
    Cloud placed on the horizon.
    Close to the zoo, acquiescing
    To dust, candy, perverts; inserted in
    The panting forest, or openly
    Walking in the great and sullen square
    He has eloped with all music
    And does not care. For isn’t there,
    He says, a final diversion, greater
    Because it can be given, a gift
    Too simple even to be despised?
    And oh beside the roaring
    Centurion of the lion’s hunger
    Might not child and pervert
    Join hands, in