Reward in Proportion

There are probably too many images going on in this poem.  I realize that now, but I tried to tie them all together at the end.  They all came to me together,as far as I can tell.  Although the topic is still love and relationships, this is the first of the 'big poems'; filled with image and metaphor at every turn.  They owe a debt to Rich, but also, obviously, to Eliot.  The three footnotes were especially significant to me, as they quoted three of my most important inspirations: the Bible, Adrienne Rich and Albert Camus.  Re-reading this poem now, it is as mysterious to me as it was when I wrote it.  We'll see what your think, Reader. Since I will be away next weekend, at least it is long enough to satisfy until I get back.

The reward is in proportion
to the nature of the quest;
We seek the mark, the place, the pole
where all polar force, all magnetism
is subsumed - is unified.


               i
The Arctic plain before us -
the jagged ice teeth hum
with cold; the snow beneath
the runners of this sled like
brittle sweets - like rock candy in our
                                                         young mouths.
The wind sucks the breath from our lungs,
transmutes into cold like ice itself
before it leaves our mouths.
Dazzling sunlight bores deep inside
our head, illuminates our brains like
the surgeon's piercing instruments (scalpel,
laser beams, various saws and rasps).
Over this wasteland we labor, toward
no particular landmark or camp.  The
compass useless, our heads bowed 
against the wind, we concentrate on
the push and lunge of the sled in
its winding path.  There 
are no warming places ahead.  (No summer days
of lazy susans beside the road - no dust,
no heat.)
This alone - this sterile frozen land -
abides now, for us.  If we are to
survive, we must learn to build
our house, our city, out of ice.
We must begin by hacking out this
crust, or perish.
We must create our  igloos out of snow,
make them 'til the crust cuts our wrists
above our mittens.  Cuts us, and our blood
mingles - pink snow on crystal ground.
It is here in this wilderness
where we have come, by our own
choice or cowardice;
It is here we must now make our camp - pitch our tent*
against the glacial winds.


          ii
You jerk against the harness,
  you proud workhorse,
                                    but not I.
Then I pull and fling myself -
                                           but not you.
The stone boat rests solid on the earth
unmoved by our struggle.
At last, by gees and haws, we
both are brought into line (the
traces jingle, hang lax for a moment.)
Then with snorts of steamy breath in the 
sparkling air, we lean and heave against the yoke.
Urged on by unseen drivers, beyond our blinders,
we strain our deep chest muscles, scrape the
frozen mud with our proud hooves.
The cleats bite against the ice,
force overcomes frozen gravity -
the stone boat jolts free of its trap
  of ice and muck.
We begin the slow pull across the 
field.  Memories of our prancing morning,
unhindered by this load,
curl away like our breath
dancing in the frost air above us.


         iii
"but a spirit can be stunned,
          a battery felt going dead
before the light flickers . . . ." she said**
and you agreed.
I have tried so long to energize
that battery, that cell.  but always
for my own use - "It's in the nature of the
battery to conserve energy for the 
  light.", I thought.
(No, it was neither so trite, nor as complex.)
I am simply the man I am.  A black
hole, yes; drawing (even) light energy
 to my depths.
But also the crackling nebula in your 
quiet space.  I illuminate in my
consumption, create and dissipate my energy
like solar flares, surging radio-magnetism.


          iv
Which leaves the cold and darkness between
the galaxies of light.  The infinite spaces
between the crystal beach of space 
                                                      of night.


"One always finds one's burden again."***


The crunch of ice beneath the explorer's boots
who seek the place where polarity gives 
way to one unifying energy.
The crunch of snow beneath the hooves,
horses drawing endless boats across the sky,
each piled high with lunar nodes.


The unity of image draws its force
  from its source.
The reward is in proportion
to the nature of the quest.

*Allusion to the Gospel of John, 1:14: "And the Word was made flesh, and pitched His tent among us."
** from "The Key", A. Rich 1967
***"The Myth of Sisyphus", A Camus, 1942



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Mountain Pools Like These

The week, another poem about love and difficulty therein.  In preparation for this, I pulled down my slim volume, Letters to a Yong Poet by Rainer Marie Rilke which was my watchword and guide to love and art in those days.  To my surprise, written in the back fly leaf were the words 'desultory fragmentation'!  So maybe this is also a reflection on last week as well?  For this poem, however, I was for looking what Rilke had to say about conventional behavior.  In the Seventh Letter are the key thoughts of Rilke on love and relationships of all the letters.  At one point he talks about how little some people understand love and the importance, literally for the universe of love and relationship. When the going gets tough, we react and every reaction is the same -
" . . . Convention; where people act out of a prematurely fused, turbid communion, every move is convention: every relation to which such entanglement leads has its convention, be it ever so unusual( that is, in the ordinary sense immoral); why, even separation would here be a conventional step, an impersonal chance decision without strength and without fruit."
That idea, and the idea that I could create a better and stronger relationship if I gave myself over to the task, would help determine the decisions that ultimately would change my life.  In the same letter, Rilke would conclude: "And this more human love (that will fulfill itself, infinitely considerate and gentle, and kind and clear in binding and releasing) will resemble that which we are preparing with struggle and toil, the love that consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other."


Mountain Pools Like These


It is in the nature of love, I think,
to flow like rivers - quiet and deep
as Venetian canals slip past baroque cathedrals-
or to crash over boulders like the Colorado,
down gullys and gorges carved of ledge.
(Mountain water takes the breath away.)


If, then, I don't write to you
it is because amid this, our tributary,
there are caresses like streams over stone
and silt, like gurgling brooks.
And there are passions' deep undertow
that lift and move like plates of glass
over your belly
                            and
                                       down your thighs.
And there are icy pools, such as this.

Where mountains in their splendor are moved
by your tear after tear.  I, too, am
shaken by your beauty; these
mountain pools take my breath away.


Day to day - 
                    this day -
metaphor will not contain the poetry
of your kiss and the line of your body
spooned next to mine in bed at night.
There is poetry I cannot write-
joy I feel and take like air and food.
But in these mountain pools,
                                                     my lover,
this heart aches with the cold.
  


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Still Life

Resiliency is the power of a relationship to be broken over and over again and to be remade anew.  How is that possible? Why is it that the alchemy of
some relationships allows the same ingredients to remixed into something new and stronger and some to to dissolve into nothingness?  This poem was written out of fear and despair; fear that I was losing someone and something ineffable but required.  Despair that the loss was of my own doing.  I struck out the last line, wisely, I think. "Your misfortune to have married a wayward poet."  That would have justified behavior that was not art at all, merely base and self-indulgent.

The key phrase that was the genesis of the poem was 'desultory fragmentation' - separation that was random, unplanned, stupid, without focus or purpose.  Like a child dropping a Christmas ball . . . symballein . . .a symbol . . .thrown down together to reveal . . . what?


poetic still live
  desultory
                        fragmentation,
a shattered lump of glass.
No unifying vision of love -
         just your delicate presence
in scattered books    clothes on the floor
in little piles     newspaper clippings       old
birthday cards and letters tied in ribbons.
mutely I stare
      but see only fragments
                                  shards of glass
perilously catching the sunlight
   holding to that which is good
                                              (barely)