The Muriel Rukeyser Living Archive
Engendering lively interdisciplinary conversations about Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyser, from Breaking Open 1973
Wherever we walk we will make Wherever we protest we will go planting Make poems seed grass feed a child growing build a house Whatever we stand against We will stand feeding and seeding Wherever I walk I will make
First published in Breaking Open (1973)
Yes, it is there, the city full of music,
Flute music, sounds of children, voices of poets,
The unknown bird in his long call. The bells of peace.
Essential peace, it sounds across the water
in the long parks where the lovers are walking,
Along the lake with its island and pagoda,
And a boy learning to fish. His father threads the line.
Essential peace, it sounds and it stills. Cockcrow.
It is there, the human place.
On what does it depend, this music, the children's games?
A long tradition of rest? Meditation? What peace is so profound
That it can reach all habitants, all children,
The eyes at worship, the shattered in hospitals?
All voyagers?
Meditation, yes; but within a tension
Of long resistance to all invasion, all seduction of hate.
Generations of holding to resistance; and within this resistance
Fluid change that can respond, that can show the children
A long future of finding, of responsibility; change within
Change and tension of sharing consciousness
Village to city, city to village, person to person entire
With unchanging cockcrow and unchanging endurance
Under the
skies of war.
Published in Houdini (2002)
I love using what I’ve got
Love not being what I’m not—
After a long time of one kind of living,
And it was all right, it was really partly good,
Full of one-sided things,
And disturbing . . . and absorbing . . . almost
Every day . . .
But
Then the new life came along, bringing
The joy of reaching, of stretching, of being
Effective—
This is another place, this is another way,
The ecstasy of a woman detective—
And what I detect, what I really find
Is your body-and-mind and your life and my
Life and
My body-and-mind;
The joy of being me, a detective,
The joy of thinking new, like being
Unbelievably bare,
Finding something of myself that has never
Been aware—
The ecstasy of feeling for what’s there!
Published in Houdini (2002)
It’s like a Tap-Dance Or a new pink Dress, A shit-naive Feeling Saying Yes. Some say Good morning Some say God bless – Some say Possibly Some say Yes. Some say Never Some say Unless It’s stupid and lovely To rush into Yes. What can it mean? It’s just like Life, One thing to You One thing to your Wife. Some go Local Some go Express Some can’t wait To answer Yes. Some complain Of strain and Stress The answer may be No for Yes. Some like Failure Some like Success Some like Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes. Open your Eyes, Dream but don’t guess. Your biggest Surprise Comes after Yes.
Published in Houdini (2002)
When you see a woman riding the air Well, you see a woman playing with fire, A woman made of storm and desire And she loves the whole damn zoo. But you can be sure, whatever I do, That I need my beer and bacon too. I wake every night at 4 A.M. And I tell my dreams to the man who is there, Dreams of animals not like him— A woman who rides on fire and air Loves to dream with the whole damn zoo But I need my beer and bacon too. My dreams ride out from the highest wire Bodies like bubbles of color down there, The feel of people of flesh and fire Streaming toward me along the air— But I make it clear, whatever I do, That I need my beer and bacon too.
Published in Houdini (2002)
There are chains—
There is freedom—
There are keys—
And of these, chains are strong
Freedom’s endless, keys are great
And we
Are the greatest of these,
The greatest
Of these.
There are chains—
There is freedom—
There are keys—
And of these,
There are those I have seen
I have heard
And I know
I have seen
I have heard
And I know—
There are chains—
There is freedom—
There are keys--
And the greatest of these
Can free the world.
Juvenilia, published in The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser (2005)
Eve walked in the Garden of a Sunday morning,
Sunlight was her kirtle and her book a rose—
Where was she going, down the aisle of trees so primly?
No one knows.
Helen in her bower looked into her dressing-glass,
(Although of course the mirror was not invented yet,)
What did she think as she preened herself for Paris?
The songs forget.
Vivien was subtle by the age-old oak tree,
But that Merlin the enchanter was her dupe, I doubt,
What did she do when he loosed the magic bondage?
There are lines left out.
Isolt didn’t worry if she’d make a good impression—
She was lovely in the daytime, she was charming in the dark—
We wonder how she looked when she woke up in the morning—
The answer rests with Mark.
Rapunzel in her tower was a witch—well, a beauty,
She made of her tow-head a long and golden snare;
But the fairy-tales forget what she said to her Prince Charming
The first time he tugged her hair.
Oh, the ladies of the romances were certainly alluring,
—No understanding reader entertains a single doubt—
But there must be more than one who’d be glad to get a glimpse of
Just a few of the lines they left out.
Published in The Gates (1976)
When this hand is gone to earth,
this writing hand and the paper beneath it,
long gone, and the words on the paper forgotten,
and the breath that slowly curls around earth with
its old spoken words
gone into lives unborn and they too gone to earth—
and their memory, memory of any of these gone,
and all who remembered them absorbed in air and dirt,
words, earth, breeze over the oceans, all these now other,
there may as in the past be something left,
some artifact. This pen. Will it tell my? Will it tell our?
This thing made in bright metal by thousand unknown to me,
will it arrive with that unnameable wish to speak a music,
offering something out of all I moved among?
singing for others unknown a long-gone moment in old time sung?
The pen—
will some broken pieces be assembled by women, by guessing men
(or future mutations, beings unnamed by us)—
can these dry pieces join? Again go bright? Speak to you then?