sw00050usabys-14.oct.sonnets.19of25

19 of 25                                                       

 1976 Today
                353 bicentennial year sonnets (275-289)

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October: Year-day 275

October, month of changes, touch, change me
who so reluctantly displays his fire
fearing he isn't full enough to be
worth seeing, fearing his truths won't inspire,
fearing what can be harvested from him
it would be better to let rot; to hope
next year his form and substance seem less grim
to his brown eyes than now / more charged as trope;

that imagined rejections he expects
will come/ not come, or if they do, not leave
him shrinking into hardened ground as though
he harbored some disease/ one who inspects
would hastily confirm; so ought to grieve,
waiting for the saw's screech, the masking snow.

(5-29/30-80) . 25+ ?! . (2006-01-23; 2006-12-24)

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*  09.23.06 note:  
Be on the watch for the before-1976 October sonnets.
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October: Year-day 276

While some hearts wither, have acutely dried,
mine moistens, no matter the dust that dunes
in my veins.  Without faith, nothing is tried,
not even the musics portioned in spoons,
not even caryatids holding glory,
not even the movement that sadly wounds.
In each of these sonnets winds of a story
mixed with light and the smell of rain and sounds
sometimes off-key swish, sprint, loll through your rages
and ecstasies.  Take to them if they take
to you.  I write/ out of need and desire;
and as much as I cull from other sages,
each work of mine must carry me or quake;
yet be itself, however/ purged of fire.

(2-9-78; 3-4-78; 4-13-78; 12-24-06)

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October: Year-day 277
(#9 of 15 I removed earlier this year)

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October: Year-day 278

Here's what I wrote when I turned twenty-four,
still unaware:
                     There was I child I knew
Who ran with deer and was admired; yet two
Alone had pierced his silence--two with more
To give than most.  And when the spring was floor
And ceiling coming green, the trio grew,
And time would flow through summer like the coo
Of distant doves, like water trembling shore.

Yet soon, too soon, Earth's children die, and still
The round of flakes and apples sweeping down
From four and twenty boughs to twice my days,
From four and twenty winds of twice my will
Must wither me.  But child, I shall not frown
On those who wonder wonder at my ways.

(1-2-78; 1-16-65)

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October: Year-day 279

Mistakes, regrets, pending dilemmas, death.
Catch yourself/ in the middle of a breath.
On bare twigs balloons pop.  Winds/ squash on walls.
One never knows who a mockingbird calls.
When leaves leave their trees, silence hangs behind.
Our Earth's protected by its cloudy rind.
Nothing's separate as we think it is.
Even a pebble isn't merely His.

Gregory Bateson can mess up your head,
but better that than a vision that's dead.
"Ecology . . . the study of the inter-
action and survival of ideas
and programs . . . in circuits."  Summer, fall, winter,
spring.  The immanence of God.  Released fuzz.

(9-20-77; 2-9-78; 2-10-78; 12-25-06)

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October: Year-day 280

Now, while each delusion and illusion dries,
like those roots in abstract order near my pond
since the bulldozer snapped them at the skies
and axe men sliced them free with glinting wands
from that Chinese elm the children climbed in,
beating its thin, dead branches down; yelling
for fun at  me: now, I come with a grin--
thinking of all that redness and swelling.

Still, never something I thought I might enjoy,
the roots are hard to gather; but since that tree,
always just half alive, has, like a lame boy,
been forced from strength, my need is to be
fearless in removing.  To admire what
I grow is easy; to destroy it, not.

(circa 1965)

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October: Year-day 281

Homer has/ stormed through all.  And so they say:
"Pull down your tents.  Forget it.  Douse your fires.
Why should we fight with shadows?  Why should we stay,
trembling in snow, because we have desires?
Pack up your knapsacks, friends; it is no use.
Why should we cringe from snakes, battle with flies,
or wonder all night if a peg is loose?
Why should we starve: to be syllable-wise?"

Dante and Shakespeare--they felt that storm too.
And did they run from the terrors?  Did they swerve?
Let us keep our fires; keep our tent ropes new.
Words, life, love: if it seems foolish to serve
to some, let them pull down their tents; go then.
He's thundered round our heads, too, and will again.

(circa 1965)

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(Line two in the following is more 
situational thanit is dogmatic.)
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October: Year-day 282

Let others use their minutes as they wish,
but I will keep mine close to what is old;
like Keat's Grecian urn or Yeats's fish,
my minutes shall be crafted:  For if rolled
as on an anvil or as on a wheel--
if hammered and so dented with a shine
or blessed with figures bright that seal
us to the gods--each, heat will refine:

each, whether static in its performance or
animated toward an end and filled
with what half-world people clamor for,
will be set upon a table to build,
to destroy (as imaginations see):
united acts to bear or/ bury me.

(circa 1965)

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October: Year-day 283

Yew-honored soul crags (over life roars, cold
with death, that mock him who runs in a trance
up there as some naked fool come to dance
through the moon) measure their immortal hold
on life by all creative motion's told
Earth's children where a poet's inward glance
ignites inhibitions to topple chance
from their regions of salt and air and fold:
those marginal zones where our Shakespeare roamed
imponderable storms, where Keats employed
their frangible tissues with Merlin powers;
where Frost, calm master of the white and loamed,
gardened a poetry our ears enjoy:
those coasts I praise, into eternal hours.

(circa 1965)

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October: Year-day 284

"Sonnet to Shakespeare"

O master of keys, of treasures, lord,
A billion crowns in praise upon your head.
No, more, since tombs cannot in secrets board
Your play, let Hamlets ever hear the dead.
Did I say dead?  But bones alone must be.
What Prospero could die, though buried deep
His rod?  Yet tempests must on rocks roll sea
To wash the world and round it with a sleep.

O golden globe from whence our day takes life,
Spill warmth, throw light for us; unlock your heart
Forever, so those jewels will soothe this strife
Man bears because his body lacks in art.
   Sing, bard on Avon born, no songs of death,
   But pour your poems pure with each man's breath.

(12/14/62: on a flyleaf of an "ancient"
     Hurst & Co book entitled Shakespeare)

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October: Year-day 285

"To John Keats"

Brave spellstar, child of magic beauty, arc
Eternal of triumphant truth, soft-send
Those lyrical effusions we attend--
Owls who pursue the melancholic lark.
Wand our sweat into dew.  With suns embark,
Renewed Olympian; from night unbend
Men's hearts.  You are th' explorer of his end;
The shepherd's flute that stedfast casements mark.
Far wing soul's satellites, commuters bright;
But yours among the farthest glows, like Ruth,
Desiring only that it loves.  Unstilled, 
Majestic; more than mortal, you are light,
O ageless youth with aged wisdom filled:
In all things Beauty is; in all is Truth.

(1962)

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October: Year-day 286

"What does it matter, friend, how much we dream?
A poet's eyes are neither bulbs nor moons.
They do notgrow, or shine, more than could seem;
or pull the green and dying from lagoons.
And though his ears may hear, his fingers feel,
his tongue may taste, his nose may smell--ist gut--
they do not guide, or teach, or make things real;
his heart, if anything, is bitterroot.
And what does it matter if he stays at home
to nurse a brother lost to blood and phlegm;
a poet dies in every worthy poem:
and travel will not lessen a one of them."

"No, Rome cannot change beauty.  You are right.
Give Tom my best; and John: thank you.  Good night."

(circa 1965)

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October: Year-day 287

What scope I have; what promise yet to prove,
my present dreaming only can surmise:
If I will struggle down a nettled groove
or shake the string to kite a zone of skies,
a dozen years, at least, must make their rings
around the fevered jerking of my pen;
and words must rise from peasants as from kings
to tell me if I live or die, and when.

So in the now--which passes to recall--
I run and swish and stumble like a boy
against the gully on a hill with all
his sparkle burning through his fingertips
and up the curve that holds his diamond joy
until its flight's applauded, or it/ rips.

(circa 1965)

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October: Year-day 288

I journey unexpected, Venus bound
in writing as I do.  The clocks may break
before me, fall, spring seconds away, ground.
I will publish their graves; a galaxy rake
with treble staffs.  Time masters me not!
I play with time, toy of my ever-youth.
I swing it on my wrist, and watch it rot
in snow--end of a relative truth.

Day falters on the plains of coming night,
and nights die weakly when dawns arise
from beds, mightily dressed.  But neither rite
is truth enough for me since solar size
makes no difference.  All-time is truth, but none
shall stop my pen, whose song of will/ has won.

(circa 1965)

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October: Year-day 289

Mysteries of the mind:  Entire designs,
nuances, descriptions are sometimes dropped
unconsciously when a work's set out, stopped
for a while, its time, colors and flexed lines
considered complete: defined and defined.
"A poem is really a kind of machine
for producing the poetic state of mind
by means of words," Valéry has said.  Keen.

The mind is a desert challenging rain.
Joint by joint the syllablesrace and brake,
turn upon each other, hum in the brain;
yet I'm often a shelf for its own sake.
Put on me what you will.  Empty, unfinished,
I'm nonetheless here: rough, but/ undiminished.

(septet: April,1978)
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Brian A. J. Salchert