I am aware of the rattling of their branches,

the lichened channels of their bark, the saps

of the ground flowing upward to their darkness.

Like the afterimage of a light that only by not

looking can be seen, I glimpse the country as it was.

All its beings belong wholly to it. They flourish

in dying as in being born. It is the life of its deaths.

I must end, always, by replacing

our beginning there, ourselves and our blades,

the flowing in of history, putting back what I took away,

trying always with the same pain of foreknowledge

to build all that we have built, but destroy nothing.

My hands weakening, I feel on all sides blindness

growing in the land on its peering bulbous stalks.

I see that my mind is not good enough.

I see that I am eager to own the earth and to own men.

I find in my mouth a bitter taste of money,

a gaping syllable I can neither swallow nor spit out.

I see all that we have ruined in order to have, all

that was owned for a lifetime to be destroyed forever.

Where are the sleeps that escape such dreams?

The Meadow

In the town’s graveyard the oldest plot now frees itself

of sorrow, the myrtle of the graves grown wild. The last

who knew the faces who had these names are dead,

and now the names fade, dumb on the stones, wild

as shadows in the grass, clear to the rabbit and the wren.

Ungrieved, the town’s ancestry fits the earth. They become

a meadow, their alien marble grown native as maple.

Against the War in Vietnam

Believe the automatic righteousness

of whoever holds office. Believe

the officials who see without doubt

that peace is assured by war, freedom

by oppression. The truth preserved by lying

becomes a lie. Believe or die.

In the name of ourselves we ride

at the wheels of our engines,

in the name of Plenty devouring all,

the exhaust of our progress falling

deadly on villages and fields

we do not see. We are prepared

for millions of little deaths.

Where are the quiet plenteous dwellings

we were coming to, the neighborly dwellings?

We see the American freedom defended

with lies, and the lies defended

with blood, the vision of Jefferson

served by the agony of children,

women cowering in holes.

In Memory: Stuart Egnal

A high wooded hill near Florence, an April

afternoon. Below, the valley farms

were still and small, stall and field

hushed in brightness. Around us the woods

woke with sound, and shadows lived

in the air and on the dry leaves. You

were drawing what we saw. Its forms

and lights reached slowly to your page.

We talked, and laughed at what we said.

Fine hours. The sort men dream

of having, and of having had. Today

while I slept I saw it all

again, and words for you came to me