Carl Rakosi - "Hygieia, Of Perspective"
HYGIEIA, OF PERSPECTIVE
BY CARL RAKOSI
AIE!
There's the greenwood fern
and the open woods
and the smell of hay
and the eye of a frog
and a fern signature
left in a coal
and there is fern
by analogy,
a most ancient weed.
"IN THY SLEEP/LITTLE SORROWS SIT AND WEEP"
In the night
a little crow
whose wing was broken
lay on the ground
and cried out.
Strigidae
the owl
protector of grain
heard
and glided
soundless
nearby to a low branch.
Straight ahead he looked
like a man
engraved
as on an
ancient
measuring cup
or seated at
the knee
of Michelangelo's Night
waiting
motionless
erect.
Not two weeks old
the crow slept.
An hour passed.
A feather stirred.
instantly the great
head swivelled
and the bird of prey
leaped,
spearing
and carried off the body
to a distant tree stump.
Again he waited
listening.
The implacable beak
then grasped it
by the head
and gulped it down.
Three times
he swallowed,
spitting out
the crow bones,
fur and feathers.
Then the great bird
silent
on Egyptian tombs
blinked
preened
and hooted.
TIME TO KILL
a man and his dog
what fun
chasing twigs
into the water!
Young girls bicycle by
in pairs and plaid shorts
a wind so soft
one's whole
back tingles
with cilia
a gentle lake
the sun boils
at the center,
radiates the zone
for man
and lays
a healing pad
across his nape
an airplane small and flat
as a paper model
roars behind
the Virgilian scene
an old man
tips his straw hat
down to shade
his eyes,
pulls up his fishline
and moves on
to a new spot
the poor small
wood louse
crawls along
the bark ridge
for his life
JIG, YOU WINE BUMS
bite the hard cool
apple of the air!
The season of muscatel has come
when the squirrel runs
up the tree fornicating
and the deer bolts
and man reaches
for his calking gun
and paint brush
and the middle aged hiker
throws his shoulders back.
Look at him go!
This is lavender and rose
time in drawers
when the sun is cooler but more blinding
and the maple leaves distil its light
into a cheerful red liqueur.
Now, wine bums,
the winter is long.
Elixir falls from the air
and even the misanthrope
's eye twinkles
in the commonplace.
POEM
The ants came
to investigate
the dead
bull snake,
nibbled
at the viscera
and hurried off
with full mouths
waving wfld
antenae.
Moths alighted,
beetles swarmed,
flies buzzed
in the stomach.
Three crows
tugged and tore
and flew off
to their oak tree
with the skin.
In every house
men, women and children
were chewing beef
Who was it said
"The wonder of the world
is its comprehensibility"?
YADDO
From the hammer blow
of the great pump
I came to this lake,
ripples running
as a multitude at me
transverse and small,
and underneath,
the gliding over moss.
Sitting, over it, a boulder,
knuckled bulk
mottled and piled up,
transfixed in space,
a coma,
sculpture its nymph,
This I saw
before I knew I was looking.
Then a splash.
is it possible a fish can leap
clear out of water,
flashing,
mouth open,
and stay in the air,
then backflop
and disappear softly with a dragonfly?
Then two, three, further down.
I stayed.
The middle distance held me.
There hygieia was,
of perspective,
and could not be without shade;
and light
weightless
as the gentle powder
before it has materialized,
yet clear, the cutting edge
of a diamond.
But the little yellow-bellied birds
were not here,
chirring,
They have their own mythos
in the pine woods.
Hush persisted, heavy
as of a poem
about to come into the imagination,
but nothing came.
"A pleasant stream
irregular in shape
with wooded banks,"
but why so pleasant?
"Ité !"
I heard.
Or did I call?
This is a small stream.
it must be one
of those minor deities
or nymphs, one of many
able to charm stones and wild beasts
and to enter the red berries
of the honysokle.
Shapely she was,
transcendent as the conception of her
in the high intensity of that voice,
the italics and the exclamation mark,
and the listener shivered.
"Ité !"
a voice in him, from an older poet,
forgotten........ origin forgotten. . . . . . .
calling out into a myth
to be with a nymph, just the two of them
in that medium,
both timeless,
calling to her
as if she were real
and he had to call,
by this time
as in a poem a strain of myth himself.
Dark woods.
Deep inside.
a clearing
with light
as in a bowl/
because
of the darkness
lovely.
Further on
a gorge
and far down
at the bottom
a tiny stream/
grace issues
from the eye.
As if framed.
Small boys
fishing under a sign:
NO ONE ALLOWED BEYOND THIS GATE.
Eye me:
wary.
The first to get a nibble.
Protected by a special providence
or else the bass love them.
Fish die.
Without compunction.
Strange!
The soundless order.
Not one
of the noble
biosphere,
the bleeders.
All skeletal.
The eyes
tell nothing.
That must be it!
no soul there.
Enters humanity
throug my eyes.
Darkness
on the water.
Dense green
moss below.
Thick branches
overhanging
Whittier's bare
foot boy.
No, he's too healthy
Behind me
a hawthorn bush.
Hawthorn! a cloying
word
even to Coleridge,
but not to Middle English.
No one here
but my eyes.
A long breath.
Torpor.
Liquifies.
Limbs vibrate.
tingle/
the true physical.
Lakes being
timeless,
yet in time.
I have lost
my identity.
The light
makes me
invent nymphs...
and hang on
exclamation marks...
and call to them
and they call back.
Must be
how myths arose,
the distant
luminous ones,
motionless
as in eternity.
ZZZZZ
nasturtium petals alight:
20 watts of tangerine
shaded by green
leaf
a meticulous parasol
by Hokusai
the orangy alpha
and the green omega
of the bee's world.
THE AVOCADO PIT
a complete earth
hard as stone
the size of a plum
Pompeian red,
darkened and faded
like an old Roman mural
from the bath house
of Menander,
golden brown
with delicate veins
as if the earth
had cracked with age
or we were looking
at the rivers
from a satellite.
Copyright © 1986 by Callman Rawley.
From The Collected Poems of Carl Rakosi,
published by The National Poetry Foundation.
Light and Dust Mobile Anthology of Poetry.