LANDS END

This is the farthest West, the journey's dead wall,
The sea at last, which stays all going forward,
This shore, permits but pacing back and forth
By these sheer cliffs, where perches the mateless eagle,
Where far below the eternal tides are dark.

There is no turning back to Springtime pastures,
Nor rambles in the hills, nor happy idling
In villages, nor rapture days in cities,
Nor fellowship with hands that reached this shore
In former days, and vanished into air.
Strength is still left to face these walls of granite,
And say the little that remains is little,
Accept the prison rocks that bar retracing
The meadow lands of summer winds and suns.
Here the sea drifts, and here there is a murmur
Of zephyrs in invisible sails, the whisper
Of waves that wash a hull concealed by mists.
But he who has marched hither, never shrinking,
And labored as a gleaner in harvest seasons,
May walk this shore with unaffrighted will.

Why see a country again that underfed
The heart's deep hunger, never quenched its longing,
Even though this shore is not a destination,
Is not a haven, but a bourne, a Lands End,
An eminence for scanning the horizon,
Strangling the breast, and tighter drawing in,
Making the visible sky an universe
Poor for the famished heart, which ever grows
Larger with understanding and with longing
As life shrinks down and narrows along the way,
And leaves the soul through losses so much the greater?

But there's a gravity in the coercing sky
Which pulls the spirit, and breaks its pride and freedom,
And says, "Surrender, cease the futile fight,
Fling peace in union with the one, forsake
The many of gleaming lures and false reports.
Come to me and no longer will I recede.
It is not the horizon that has diminished,
It is yourself grown shriveled, having starved.
No longer strive, resist, feed on yourself,
Be separate, but rest on me and live,
Not in estrangement, but by me sustained."

Year after year ingestion gathered
Into itself the roar of Time, the madness,
The tumult of humanity, the world of grief.
Now these must counterpoint this sea and listen,
As to a shell, the burdens of stilled music,
And match them with the dirges of the deep.

LETTER TO AN OLD UNCLE

Those were the days when we hitched Len and Katie
To the carriage, and set off for festivals
At Rock Creek and Concord,
Returning by moonlight when the night air
Was sweet with the scent of clover and hay.
All life was easy and happy, without anxiety.
Now there are the American cities of greed and hate,
Where men push about like frightened cattle
In fear being shipped to the slaughter house.
We had no idea then of the cities to be,
No real appreciation of the good America
That was preparing to vanish away.

At noon time we sat in the hall-way of the barn
With Fred Wilkie, and later with Bill Schultz,
Who were plowing corn or harvesting.
At the dinner table I sneezed like a chicken
Making Wilkie choke with laughter,
While I giggled until grandfather stopped me.
Grandmother was keeping house, and milking her cows,
And feeding her chickens.
All this was hard work, but we were happy,
We were at peace.

Across the land were the green fields,
And houses of good people, like Georgie Kirby.
You let me use your spy-glass,
And I saw through it the distant barns,
The swallows flying about the eaves,
And the sandy slopes of the Mason County Hills.
I made wind mills and kites,
And lay whole afternoons in the west pasture
Watching my kite circle with the buzzards.
I carved my name on the jam of the doors
There in the carpenter shop;
I hunted squirrels with you in Hatfield's Timber.
You had a hawk one time,
And we brought him home before he died,
And I caged him in a coop that I made.
But every few days we came back home from the hunt
With squirrels whose skins we tanned
For thongs and laces.
What suppers we had there in the kitchen
Of strawberries and cream, milk and corn bread.
I can smell the sassafras tea now that we had,
And see grandmother at the sink
Washing dishes as she talked to us.

There was the times we went with Billy Paris
And his wife Emily. I remember one time particularly:
We went to some little stream and fished for cats,
For crappies. The sky was deep blue,
The clouds high up and white,

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The meadow larks sang, the long wind blew,
The grass of the prairie ran in waves,
How happy we were!
And again we camped on the Sangamon
When at night a storm blew our tent away,
And we huddled under the wagon bed,
Terrified by lightning, thunder and wind.

There are many things that I remember:
Drives to the store at Atterberry,
Visits at night to a fiddler in the woods,
Through the misty darkness, hearing the whipperwill,
And the owls.
How many mornings I woke hearing the roosters crowing from afar,
And then nearer, all as the sun came up over Shipley's Hill.
We raced horses in the lane of Billy Paris,
We rode horses to the neighbors and to Oakford.
Sometimes we met with Henry Houghton,
And you two talked long, while I squirmed
Wanting to go on where we were going.

Often I hastened, sometimes walking from Atterberry
When I left the train which had brought me from Lewistown.
Then it was, if April time, that I saw strips of water in the fields,
Which mirrored the clouds. The frogs were singing,
Crows were flying, and all around were strips of forest,
And here and there old farm houses, and before me
The long road leading to grandfather's.
When I got as far as Houghton's I saw the house,
And my heart almost beat out of my breast.
For then I began to remember the smell of old leather
In the work house, and the smell of the musty room
Near the dining room. And soon I saw the orchard,
The tangled blackberry vines, the fence and the stile,
And beyond Houghton's Woods,
And again the school house on Shipley's Hill,
And the corn crib near it.
I have seen nothing since more beautiful than all this.
I have heard no music sweeter than the chuckle of wagons
Loaded with corn, going to Atterberry.

I could live all this over again.
If I could find you I would come to you.
Again we should hitch up Len and Katie
And drive over the hills to the river.

April 3 1939.