Toward the Gulf Part 4

We're sick so much. But then no human soul Could be more sweet when one of us is sick.

We run to colds, have measles, mumps, our throats Are weak, the doctor says. If rooms were warmer, And clothes were warmer, food more regular, And sleep more regular, it might be different.

Then there's the well. You fear the water.

He laughs at you, we children drink the water, Though it tastes bitter, shows white particles: It may be shreds of rats drowned in the well.

The village has no drainage, blights and mildews Get in our throats. I spend a certain spring Bent over, yellow, coughing blood at times, Sick to somnambulistic sense of things.

You blame him for the well, that's just one thing.

You seem to differ about everything-- You seem to hate each other--when you quarrel We cry, take sides, sometimes are whipped For taking sides.

Our broken school days lose us clues, Some lesson has been missed, the final meaning And wholeness of the grammar are disturbed-- That shall not be made up in all our life.

The children, save a few, are not our friends, Some taunt us with your quarrels.

We learn great secrets scrawled in signs or words Of foulness on the fences. So it is An American village, in a great Republic, Where men are free, where therefore goodness, wisdom Must have their way!

We reach the budding age.

Sweet aches are in our b.r.e.a.s.t.s: Is it spring, or G.o.d, or music, is it you?

I am all tenderness for you at times, Then hate myself for feeling so, my flesh Crawls by an instinct from you. You repel me Sometimes with an insidious smile, a look.

What are these phantasies I have? They breed Strange hatred for you, even while I feel My soul's home is with you, must be with you To find my soul's rest. ...

I must go back a little. At ten years I play with Paula.

I plait her crowns of flowers, carry her books, Defend her, watch her, choose her in the games.

You overhear us under the oak tree Calling her doll our child. You catch my coat And draw me in the house.

When I resist you whip me cruelly.

To think of whipping me at such time, And mix the shame of smarting legs and back With love of Paula!

So I lose Paula.

I am a man at last.

I now can master what you are and see What you have been. You cannot rout me now, Or put me in the wrong. Out of old wounds, Remembrance of your baffling days, I take great strength and show you Where you have been untruthful, where a hater, Where narrow, bitter, growing in on self, Where you neglected us, Where you heaped fast destruction on our father-- For now I know that you devoured his soul, And that no soul that you could not devour Could have its peace with you.

You've dwindled to a quiet word like this: "You are unfilial." Which means at last That I have conquered you, at least it means That you could not devour me.

Yet am I blind to you? Let me confess You are the world's whole cycle in yourself: You can be summer rich and luminous; You can be autumn, mellow, mystical; You can be winter with a cheerful hearth; You can be March, bitter, bright and hard, Pouring sharp sleet, and showering cutting hail; You can be April of the flying cloud, And intermittent sun and musical air.

I am not you while being you, While finding in myself so much of you.

It tears my other self, which is not you.

My tragedy is this: I do not love you.

Your tragedy is this: my other self Which triumphs over you, you hate at heart.

Your solace is you have no faith in me.

All quiet now, no March days with you now, Only the soft coals slumbering in your face, I saw you totter over a ravine!

Your eyes averted, watching steps, A light of resignation on your brow.

Your thin-spun hair all gray, blown by the wind Which swayed the blossomed cherry trees, Bent last year's reeds, Shook early dandelions, and tossed a bird That left a branch with song-- I saw you totter over a ravine!

What were you at the start?

What soul dissatisfaction, sense of wrong, Of being thwarted, stung you?

What was your shrinking of the flesh; What fear of being soiled, misunderstood, What wrath for loneliness which constant hope Saw turned to fine companions.h.i.+p; What in your marriage, what in seeing me, The fruit of marriage, recreated traits Of face or spirit which you loathed; What in your father and your mother, And in the chromosomes from which you grew, By what mitosis could result at last In you, in issues of such moment, In our dissevered beings, In what the world will take from me In children, in events?

All quiet now, no March days with you now, Only the soft coals slumbering in your face, I saw you totter over a ravine, And back of you the Furies!

JOHNNY APPLESEED

When the air of October is sweet and cold as the wine of apples Hanging ungathered in frosted orchards along the Grand River, I take the road that winds by the resting fields and wander From Eastmanville to Nunica down to the Villa Crossing.

I look for old men to talk with, men as old as the orchards, Men to tell me of ancient days, of those who built and planted, Lichen gray, branch broken, bent and sighing, Hobbling for warmth in the sun and for places to sit and smoke.

For there is a legend here, a tale of the croaking old ones That Johnny Appleseed came here, planted some orchards around here, When nothing was here but the pine trees, oaks and the beeches, And nothing was here but the marshes, lake and the river.

Peter Van Zylen is ninety and this he tells me: My father talked with Johnny Appleseed there on the hill-side, There by the road on the way to Fruitport, saw him Clearing pines and oaks for a place for an apple orchard.

Peter Van Zylen says: He got that name from the people For carrying apple-seed with him and planting orchards All the way from Ohio, through Indiana across here, Planting orchards, they say, as far as Illinois.

Johnny Appleseed said, so my father told me: I go to a place forgotten, the orchards will thrive and be here For children to come, who will gather and eat hereafter.

And few will know who planted, and none will understand.

I laugh, said Johnny Appleseed: Some fellow buys this timber Five years, perhaps from to-day, begins to clear for barley.

And here in the midst of the timber is hidden an apple orchard.

How did it come here? Lord! Who was it here before me?

Yes, I was here before him, to make these places of wors.h.i.+p, Labor and laughter and gain in the late October.

Why did I do it, eh? Some folks say I am crazy.

Where do my labors end? Far west, G.o.d only knows!

Said Johnny Appleseed there on the hill-side: Listen!

Beware the deceit of nurseries, sellers of seeds of the apple.

Think! You labor for years in trees not worth the raising.

You planted what you knew not, bitter or sour for sweet.

No luck more bitter than poor seed, but one as bitter: The planting of perfect seed in soil that feeds and fails, Nourishes for a little, and then goes spent forever.

Look to your seed, he said, and remember the soil.

And after that is the fight: the foe curled up at the root, The scale that crumples and deadens, the moth in the blossoms Becoming a life that coils at the core of a thing of beauty: You bite your apple, a worm is crushed on your tongue!

And it's every bit the truth, said Peter Van Zylen.

So many things love an apple as well as ourselves.

A man must fight for the thing he loves, to possess it: Apples, freedom, heaven, said Peter Van Zylen.

THE LOOM

My brother, the G.o.d, and I grow sick Of heaven's heights.

We plunge to the valley to hear the tick Of days and nights.

We walk and loiter around the Loom To see, if we may, The Hand that smashes the beam in the gloon To the shuttle's play; Who grows the wool, who cards and spins, Who clips and ties; For the storied weave of the Gobelins, Who draughts and dyes.

But whether you stand or walk around You shall but hear A murmuring life, as it were the sound Of bees or a sphere.

No Hand is seen, but still you may feel A pulse in the thread, And thought in every lever and wheel Where the shuttle sped, Dripping the colors, as crushed and urged-- Is it cochineal?-- Shot from the shuttle, woven and merged A tale to reveal.

Woven and wound in a bolt and dried As it were a plan.

Closer I looked at the thread and cried The thread is man!