river

When old Noah stared across the floods,
Sky and water melted into one
Looking-glass of shifting tides and sun.

Mountain-tops were few: the ship was foul:
All the morn old Noah marvelled greatly
At this weltering world that shone so stately,
Drowning deep the rivers and the plains.
Through the stillness came a rippling breeze;
Noah sighed, remembering the green trees.

Clear along the morning stooped a bird,—
Lit beside him with a blossomed sprig.
Earth was saved; and Noah danced a jig.

Darkness like midnight from the sobbing woods
Clamours with dismal tidings of the rain
Roaring as rivers breaking loose in floods
To spread and foam and deluge all the plain
The cotter listens at his door again
Half doubting whether it be floods or wind
And through the thickening darkness looks affraid
Thinking of roads that travel has to find
Through night's black depths in danger's garb arrayed
And the loud glabber round the flaze soon stops
When hushed to silence by a lifted hand

SEE how the speckled sky burns like a pigeon's throat,
Jewelled with embers of opal and peridote.


See the white river that flashes and scintillates,
Curved like a tusk from the mouth of the city-gates.


Hark, from the minaret, how the muezzin's call
Floats like a battle-flag over the city wall.


From trellised balconies, languid and luminous
Faces gleam, veiled in a splendour voluminous.


Leisurely elephants wind through the winding lanes,

after Juan Ramon


A child wakens in a cold apartment.
The windows are frosted. Outside he hears
words rising from the streets, words he cannot
understand, and then the semis gear down
for the traffic light on Houston. He sleeps
again and dreams of another city
on a high hill above a wide river
bathed in sunlight, and the dream is his life
as he will live it twenty years from now.
No, no, you say, dreams do not work that way,
they function otherwise. Perhaps in the world

Numb, stiff, broken by no sleep,
I keep night watch. Looking for
signs to quiet fear, I creep
closer to his bed and hear
his breath come and go, holding
my own as if my own were
all I paid. Nothing I bring,
say, or do has meaning here.

Outside, ice crusts on river
and pond; wild hare come to my
door pacified by torture.
No less ignorant than they
of what grips and why, I am
moved to prayer, the quaint gestures
which ennoble beyond shame
only the mute listener.

GOD girt her about with the surges
And winds of the masterless deep,
Whose tumult uprouses and urges
Quick billows to sparkle and leap;
He filled from the life of their motion
Her nostrils with breath of the sea,
And gave her afar in the ocean
A citadel free.

Her never the fever-mist shrouding,
Nor drought of the desert may blight,
Nor pall of dun smoke overclouding
Vast cities of clamorous night,
But the voice of abundance of waters,

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset

I've known rivers:

I.

Bleak was the pathway and barren the mountain,
As the traveller passed on his wearisome way,
Sealed by the frost was each murmuring fountain,
And the sun shone through mist with a blood-coloured ray.
But neither the road nor the danger together,
Could alter his purpose, nor yet the rough weather;
So on went the wayfarer through the thick heather,
Till he came to the cave where the dread witches stay.


II.

Hewn from the rock was that cavern so dreary,

I -- A Pleasant Afternoon

for Michael Brownstein and Dick Gallup


One day 3 poets and 60 ears sat under a green-striped Chau-
tauqua tent in Aurora
listening to Black spirituals, tapping their feet, appreciating
words singing by in mountain winds
on a pleasant sunny day of rest -- the wild wind blew thru
blue Heavens
filled with fluffy clouds stretched from Central City to Rocky
Flats, Plutonium sizzled in its secret bed,

Art thou abroad on this stormy night
on thy journey of love, my friend?
The sky groans like one in despair.

I have no sleep tonight.
Ever and again I open my door and look out on
the darkness, my friend!

I can see nothing before me.
I wonder where lies thy path!

By what dim shore of the ink-black river,
by what far edge of the frowning forest,
through what mazy depth of gloom art thou threading
thy course to come to me, my friend?