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Here where the wind is always north-north-east
My poem "Zeitgeber" has been accepted by Mythic Delirium. In celebration, I am posting some words that do not belong to me. For the last few nights, I have been reading Louis Untermeyer's Modern American and British Poetry (1942), which belonged to my grandmother; I never took a formal course in poetry that wasn't in another language, but I don't know how I missed some of these pieces. When she was alive and the book was upstairs in my grandparents' house in Maine, it was the first place I read H.D. Here and there are her annotations in pencil and blue ink, which is now fading out to rust.
Week-End by the Sea (Edgar Lee Masters)
I.
Far off the sea is gray and still as the sky,
Great waves roar to the shore like conch shells water-groined.
With a flapping coat I step, brace back as the wind drags by;
No ship as far as the seam where the sea and the sky are joined.
I am watched from the hotel, I think. Who faces the cold?
Why does he walk alone? 'Tis a bitter day.
But I trade dreams with the sea, for the sea is old,
And knows the dreams of a heart whose dreams are gray.
Two apple trees alone in the waste on a sandy ledge,
Grappled and woven together with sprouts in a blackened mesh,
They are dead almost at the roots, but nourish the sedge;
They are dead and at truce, like souls of outlived flesh.
I have startled a gull to flight. I thought him a wave:
White of his wings seemed foam, breast hued like the sand-hued roll.
When a part of the sea takes wing you would think that the grave
Of dead days might release to the heights a soul.
II.
I slept as the day was ending: scarlet and gilt
Behind the Japan screen of shrubs and trees.
I awoke to the scabbard of night and the starry hilt
Of the sunken sun, to the old unease.
Sleeping, a void in my heart is awake:
Waking, there is the moon and the wind's moan.
I would I were as the sea that can break
Over the rocks, indifferent and alone.
III.
I have climbed to the little burial plot of the lost
In wrecks at sea. West of me lies the town.
Below are the apple trees, pulling each other down.
Children are romping to school, ruddy from frost.
How the wind grieves around these weedy wisps,
And shakes them like a dog, sniffing from patch to patch.
I try the battered gate, lift up the latch,
And enter where the grass like a thistle lisps.
Lost at sea! Nothing thought out or planned!
What need? Thought enough in a moment that battles a wave!
What words tell more? And where is the hand to grave
Words that tell so much for the lost on land?
The Gravedigger (Bliss Carman)
Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old,
And well his work is done.
With an equal grave for lord and knave,
He buries them every one.
Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,
He makes for the nearest shore;
And God, who sent him a thousand ship,
Will send him a thousand more;
But some he'll save for a bleaching grave,
And shoulder them in to shore,—
Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,
Shoulder them in to shore.
Oh, the ships of Greece and the ships of Tyre
Went out, and where are they?
In the port they made, they are delayed
With the ships of yesterday.
He followed the ships of England far,
As the ships of long ago;
And the ships of France they led him a dance,
But he laid them all arow.
Oh, a loafing, idle lubber to him
Is the sexton of the town;
For sure and swift, with a guiding lift,
He shovels the dead men down.
But though he delves so fierce and grim,
His honest graves are wide,
As well they know who sleep below
The dredge of the deepest tide.
Oh, he works with a rollicking stave at lip,
And loud is the chorus skirled;
With the burly rote of his rumbling throat
He batters it down the world.
He learned it once in his father's house,
Where the ballads of eld were sung;
And merry enough is the burden rough,
But no man knows the tongue.
Oh, fair, they say, was his bride to see,
And wilful she must have been,
That she could bide at his gruesome side
When the first red dawn came in.
And sweet, they say, is her kiss to those
She greets to his border home;
And softer than sleep her hand's first sweep
That beckons, and they come.
Oh, crooked is he, but strong enough
To handle the tallest mast;
From the royal barque to the slaver dark,
He buries them all at last.
Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,
He makes for the nearest shore;
And God, who sent him a thousand ship,
Will send him a thousand more;
But some he'll save for a bleaching grave,
And shoulder them in to shore,—
Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,
Shoulder them in to shore.
Meeting-House Hill (Amy Lowell)
I must be mad, or very tired,
When the curve of a blue bay beyond a railroad track
Is shrill and sweet to me like the sudden springing of a tune,
And the sight of a white church above the thin trees in a city square
Amazes my eyes as though it were the Parthenon.
Clear, reticent, superbly final,
With the pillars of its portico refined to a cautious elegance,
It dominates the weak trees,
And the shot of its spire
Is cool, and candid,
Rising into an unresisting sky.
Strange meeting-house
Pausing a moment upon a squalid hill-top.
I watch the spire sweeping the sky,
I am dizzy with the movement of the sky;
I might be watching a mast
With its royals set full
Straining before a two-reef breeze.
I might be sighting a tea-clipper,
Tacking into the blue bay,
Just back from Canton
With her hold full of green and blue porcelain
And a Chinese coolie leaning over the rail
Gazing at the white spire
With dull, sea-spent eyes.
Week-End by the Sea (Edgar Lee Masters)
I.
Far off the sea is gray and still as the sky,
Great waves roar to the shore like conch shells water-groined.
With a flapping coat I step, brace back as the wind drags by;
No ship as far as the seam where the sea and the sky are joined.
I am watched from the hotel, I think. Who faces the cold?
Why does he walk alone? 'Tis a bitter day.
But I trade dreams with the sea, for the sea is old,
And knows the dreams of a heart whose dreams are gray.
Two apple trees alone in the waste on a sandy ledge,
Grappled and woven together with sprouts in a blackened mesh,
They are dead almost at the roots, but nourish the sedge;
They are dead and at truce, like souls of outlived flesh.
I have startled a gull to flight. I thought him a wave:
White of his wings seemed foam, breast hued like the sand-hued roll.
When a part of the sea takes wing you would think that the grave
Of dead days might release to the heights a soul.
II.
I slept as the day was ending: scarlet and gilt
Behind the Japan screen of shrubs and trees.
I awoke to the scabbard of night and the starry hilt
Of the sunken sun, to the old unease.
Sleeping, a void in my heart is awake:
Waking, there is the moon and the wind's moan.
I would I were as the sea that can break
Over the rocks, indifferent and alone.
III.
I have climbed to the little burial plot of the lost
In wrecks at sea. West of me lies the town.
Below are the apple trees, pulling each other down.
Children are romping to school, ruddy from frost.
How the wind grieves around these weedy wisps,
And shakes them like a dog, sniffing from patch to patch.
I try the battered gate, lift up the latch,
And enter where the grass like a thistle lisps.
Lost at sea! Nothing thought out or planned!
What need? Thought enough in a moment that battles a wave!
What words tell more? And where is the hand to grave
Words that tell so much for the lost on land?
The Gravedigger (Bliss Carman)
Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old,
And well his work is done.
With an equal grave for lord and knave,
He buries them every one.
Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,
He makes for the nearest shore;
And God, who sent him a thousand ship,
Will send him a thousand more;
But some he'll save for a bleaching grave,
And shoulder them in to shore,—
Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,
Shoulder them in to shore.
Oh, the ships of Greece and the ships of Tyre
Went out, and where are they?
In the port they made, they are delayed
With the ships of yesterday.
He followed the ships of England far,
As the ships of long ago;
And the ships of France they led him a dance,
But he laid them all arow.
Oh, a loafing, idle lubber to him
Is the sexton of the town;
For sure and swift, with a guiding lift,
He shovels the dead men down.
But though he delves so fierce and grim,
His honest graves are wide,
As well they know who sleep below
The dredge of the deepest tide.
Oh, he works with a rollicking stave at lip,
And loud is the chorus skirled;
With the burly rote of his rumbling throat
He batters it down the world.
He learned it once in his father's house,
Where the ballads of eld were sung;
And merry enough is the burden rough,
But no man knows the tongue.
Oh, fair, they say, was his bride to see,
And wilful she must have been,
That she could bide at his gruesome side
When the first red dawn came in.
And sweet, they say, is her kiss to those
She greets to his border home;
And softer than sleep her hand's first sweep
That beckons, and they come.
Oh, crooked is he, but strong enough
To handle the tallest mast;
From the royal barque to the slaver dark,
He buries them all at last.
Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,
He makes for the nearest shore;
And God, who sent him a thousand ship,
Will send him a thousand more;
But some he'll save for a bleaching grave,
And shoulder them in to shore,—
Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,
Shoulder them in to shore.
Meeting-House Hill (Amy Lowell)
I must be mad, or very tired,
When the curve of a blue bay beyond a railroad track
Is shrill and sweet to me like the sudden springing of a tune,
And the sight of a white church above the thin trees in a city square
Amazes my eyes as though it were the Parthenon.
Clear, reticent, superbly final,
With the pillars of its portico refined to a cautious elegance,
It dominates the weak trees,
And the shot of its spire
Is cool, and candid,
Rising into an unresisting sky.
Strange meeting-house
Pausing a moment upon a squalid hill-top.
I watch the spire sweeping the sky,
I am dizzy with the movement of the sky;
I might be watching a mast
With its royals set full
Straining before a two-reef breeze.
I might be sighting a tea-clipper,
Tacking into the blue bay,
Just back from Canton
With her hold full of green and blue porcelain
And a Chinese coolie leaning over the rail
Gazing at the white spire
With dull, sea-spent eyes.
no subject
I know! Where has that poem been all my life?
The Amy Lowell poem reminds me of your work.
I'm honored. Again, somehow I went all these years without knowing she existed. Clearly, I need to read even more.
Congratulations on the acceptance of "Zeitgeiber"!
Thank you!
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no subject
Thank you!
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I've a bad feeling that I'll feel very stupid, later, having said this, but who is H.D.?
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H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) is an Imagist poet whose work I love; she is the only person I have ever read who sounds like archaic Greek lyric in English. She is probably most famous for Trilogy, three linked cycles of modernist poetry—The Walls Do Not Fall (1944), Tribute to the Angels (1945), The Flowering of the Rod (1946)—written in response to the Blitz, but I like her work at all stages. I highly recommend.
no subject
How the wind grieves around these weedy wisps,
And shakes them like a dog, sniffing from patch to patch.
But also, back in the first verse--"I have startled a gull to flight: I thought him a wave"
Once I startled something or things in the woods; I saw something that looked, improbably, like seagulls rising and falling and rising and falling as they disappeared. Then I realized I was seeing the tails of white-tailed deer. I hadn't registered the deer at all, just their tails, which looked like seagulls.
So, I can just imagine startling a seagull and thinking him a wave.
no subject
It's the one I love. The others caught me; this one made me hungry. It should be sentimental: instead it's otherworldly.
Once I startled something or things in the woods; I saw something that looked, improbably, like seagulls rising and falling and rising and falling as they disappeared. Then I realized I was seeing the tails of white-tailed deer. I hadn't registered the deer at all, just their tails, which looked like seagulls.
That's wonderful.
So, I can just imagine startling a seagull and thinking him a wave.
Yes. Things change shape even as you see them. And sometimes they might be both.
no subject