chris

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So far chris has created 50 blog entries.

The Road

Originally published in U.S. 1 (1938) These are roads to take when you think of your country and interested bring down the maps again, phoning the statistician, asking the dear friend, reading the papers with morning inquiry. Or when you sit at the wheel and your small light chooses gas gauge and clock; and the headlights indicate future of road, your wish pursuing past the junction, the fork, the suburban station, well-travelled six-lane highway planned for safety. Past your tall central city's influence, outside its body: traffic, penumbral crowds, are centers removed and strong, fighting for good reason. These roads [...]

2018-12-07T19:58:17+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Wake Island

Originally published in 1942 1 PROOF OF AMERICA! A fire on the sea, a tower of flame rising, flame falling out of the sky, a wave of flame like a great sea-wave breaking over this fighting island in its rain of wounds— fighting until the flames grew tall, fighting while waves broke and the enemy landed on each wave; fighting as if they were the fist of the world and they had a world to save. * * * Their backs to the immense cloud-melting sea empty of help, and the enemy eyes were close, and deadly close; they saw [...]

2018-12-07T19:57:38+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

One Soldier

Originally published in Beast in View (1944) When I think of him, midnight Opens about me, and I am more alone; But then the poems flower from the bone.— You came to me bearing the truth in your two hands; I sit and look down at my hand like an astonished Fortune-teller, seeing the mortal flesh. Your wish was strong the first day of the war For it had been strong before, and then we knew All that I had to be, you had to do. Once when you stood before me, kisses rose About my lips; poems at my [...]

2018-12-07T19:56:30+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Water Night

Originally published in The Green Wave (1948) The sky behind the farthest shore Is darker than I go to sleep. Blackness of water, the crater at the core, The many blacknesses begin to gleam. Rivers of darkness bind me to this land While overhead the moon goes far to shine, And now nothing nobody is my own. The motion of streams glitters before my eyes: Sources and entrances, they lie no more, Now darkly keep, now flow now bright Until all wandering end, a hand Shine, and the leadings homeward of delight Seem to begin my deepest sleep To make [...]

2018-12-07T19:55:46+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Ballad of Orange and Grape

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973) After you finish your work after you do your day after you've read your reading after you've written your say — you go down the street to the hot dog stand, one block down and across the way. On a blistering afternoon in East Harlem in the twentieth century. Most of the windows are boarded up, the rats run out of a sack — sticking out of the crummy garage one shiny long Cadillac; at the glass door of the drug-addiction center, a man who'd like to break your back. But here's a brown [...]

2018-12-07T19:48:04+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Searching/Not Searching

Originally published in Breaking Open (1973) Responsibility is to use the power to respond. after Robert Duncan 1 What kind of woman goes searching and searching? Among the furrows of dark April, along the sea-beach, in the faces of children, in what they could not tell; in the pages of centuries— for what man? for what magic? In corridors under the earth, in castles of the North, among the blackened minders, among the old I have gone searching. The island-woman told me, against the glitter of sun on the stalks and leaves of a London hospital. I searched for that [...]

2018-12-07T19:46:02+00:00December 7, 2018|Long Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

Islands

Originally published in The Gates (1976) O for God's sakethey are connectedunderneath They look at each otheracross the glittering seasome keep a low profile Some are cliffsThe bathers thinkislands are separate like them   © Muriel Rukeyser

2019-01-28T16:00:08+00:00December 7, 2018|Poetry, Writings|0 Comments

The Outer Banks

Originally published in The Speed of Darkness (1968) 1 Horizon of islands shifting Sea-light flame on my voice burn in me Light flows from the water from sands islands of this horizon The sea comes toward me across the sea. The sand moves over the sand in waves between the guardians of this landscape the great commemorative statue on one hand —the first flight of man, outside of dream, seen as stone wing and stainless steel— and at the other hand banded black-and-white, climbing the spiral lighthouse. 2 Floor over ocean, avalanche on the flat beach. Pouring. Indians holding branches [...]

2018-12-07T19:43:38+00:00December 7, 2018|Long Poetry, Writings|0 Comments
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