WORDSWORTH’S GREEN SPECTACLES

 

 “On the 28th of April I went to Rydal Mount, to pay

my respects to Mr. Wordsworth. His daughters called

in their father, a plain, elderly, white-haired man, and

disfigured by green goggles.” Emerson. “English Traits.”

 

                                  I

 

The Spectacles looked old and out of date;

One lens was yellow and the other blue.

So what the critics said perhaps was true:

The young Romantic withered, and was great

But in the first ideals that he embraced--

Quite sallow in the works of his decline.

And then I wondered how this life of mine

Might seem to those who judged it in a state

Divorced from what the Spirit in me knew:

So I removed my spectacles a while,

Replacing them with Wordsworth’s, and did view

One Nature focused in a flux of Green,

Combining Youth and Age in every scene.

I laughed, and stayed the critics with a smile.

 

                                II

 

From one old civil servant to another,

This calling card I leave upon your door.

Your home a tax collector can afford;

And mine, a lowly clerk’s house, is its brother--

Though not as elegant: I have no other

In which to raise your ashes back to life,

To read alone or out loud to my wife.

I claim equality as Nature’s lover,

And climb the stairs your study to review;

See Windermere across the misty hills;

Your garden of four acres; rocky mews;

The terraces you graded on the slopes;

And Dora’s Field, where you had placed your hopes,

Though now without her golden daffodils.

 

                                III

                           

The Dove sat “brooding on the vast abyss,”

And in its beak an olive branch held out

Two hundred years at Town’s End, on the route

They took that winter’s eve when candles hissed

The frigid darkness into shapes against

The corners of the rooms. Here, words were born

That Coleridge praised and Byron held in scorn;

Here etched in time were common incidents.

The window through which Walter Scott escaped

To breakfast at the Swan Inn, sick of gruel;

The children's’ bedroom, papered with the news:

Epiphanies domestic; counter weights

To Fancy’s and Imagination’s climb

Toward prophetic heights of the Sublime.

 

                                IV

 

The Mind beholds the world that it receives

From out its store of karma from past lives.

Transfigured in this mirror, all things strive

To reconcile themselves with present deeds,

Projecting inward Nature outwardly.

Imagination frees the struggling Mind,

Which mastering its erring senses five,

Pervades the world with Love, and is redeemed.

The Poet read his Bible in this light,

So far as to conceive Man’s fall from Grace

To be his alienation from that Might

Transcending Self and raising Time and Space

In one Apocalypse, through Nature traced

In tasting, touching, smelling, sound and sight.

 

                              V

        

Now what can be the name of “Nature’s God”

But that creative power which conforms

The outer and the inner to its norm,

Transfusing them together in one Word

That comprehends the universe, adored

In all its moral beauty? Headstrong churls

Should not be handed such a priceless pearl;

For them, the stern Archangel’s flaming sword

Must guard the gates of Eden that stand sealed

Within each man until he knows the Law

To be that very Nature which, revealed

In lichen’s grip and scholar’s gravitas,

Surrounds him like miasma or a dawn:

The world his own Imagination yields.

 

                                VI

 

‘Tis Man creates the God who is his Love,

Pervading every creature with it till

Its Providence envelops barren hills

And flooded valleys, clouds that drift above,

The crawling serpent and the brooding dove,

The lioness devouring her prey,

The warrior whose vengeful fury splays

His neighbor’s skull with axe of sharpened stone.

No God exists if not through Love that cares

For every being as its only child,

O’erflowing from the will of One who dares

To contemplate his enemies as friends,

Indifferent to no one; who intends

No more to live by hate and fear beguiled.

 

                                 VII

 

Whatever happened to the Poet’s claim,

In the prospectus of his epic work,

That he would pass beyond the veil and look

Where neither chaos nor Jehovah’s name

Deterred from its ascent the Mind untamed?

That Wanderer whose pious Christian views

Compelled the inspiration of the Muse--

What vision had he into such an aim?

The Worthy Ones who walk the now and here,

See only in their seeing what is seen,

And in their hearing only what they hear;

And so with taste and touch and smell, perceived

Through virtue of cognition. Verily,

All they who truly wander know this Sphere.

 

                                VIII

 

I carried my own burden up the steep

And well worn Coffin Trail, forward in time,

Away from Grasmere’s churchyard; turned aside

Once, to avoid a decomposing sheep

That lay the shadow of Nab Scar beneath.

All dogs attacking livestock, a sign warned,

Would be shot down. Too early by some weeks

For Christmas carols, I spied Rydal Cave,

Then sat upon a stone slab where pallbearers

Would rest their load before they reached the grave.

And lo! Within me the resplendent Mere

Arose: a precious gem that I shall frame

In memory as long as Light remains.

 

                                IX

  

No matter what Optometrist prescribes

What Spectacles for eyes that strain to see,

The world that each man brings to sight with these

Depends upon the Nature of his Mind.

And so your Wordsworth cannot be like mine,

But I must read in him the worth of Words

That from my Inner Ear my Thoughts have heard,

As Ocean’s murmurs through a conch shell wind.

Each man amends his Opus constantly,

For good or ill: Why blame him when he molds

That vessel in a form that will dispense

The Wisdom he has echoed from the Sea,

In terms that his own life and times present?
The Laureate’s true crown is this same goal.

                          

                                 X

 

The throbbing of my head was from the strain

Those artificial lenses gave my sight.

I had to take them off, to get the right

Perspective on the insight I have gained.

For even though one’s vision be quite tame

Compared to what great Genius has wrought,

No substitute is there for what is brought

From one’s own wisdom, even though in pain. 

No spectacles can ever be contrived

That they may not be taken off and cleansed,

Or put back in their cases ‘till the time

One’s Spirit seeks them to reveal its ends.

I take or leave my Master, and so prove

The Nature of his noble solitude.

                  WORLD WAR II

  

The names of states were carved in stone around

   The wall of the Memorial, where posed

Beneath each wreath old men in veteran’s caps

   Embroidered with the companies they served.

One struggled from a wheelchair parked beside

   The state of Maine and stood expectantly

Beneath that word, and someone who passed by

   Said blithely, “Well now, you must be from Maine!”

But one who might have been the soldier’s son

   Replied, “Not really; he’s from Illinois.

He don’t know what it says,” and guided him 

   With tenderness and patience to the state

Where he should pose. The crowd flowed slowly by,

   Like water from the bright Reflecting Pool.

UNITED STATES OF THE ANDROID

 

Through covetous America

Mechanically I wander,

Encoffined in a Dream of glass

And metal, rolling endlessly

Upon the asphalt-clotted stream

That covers up the ruined past.

 

The programs on my windshield bait 

My cravings to accelerate:

I yield unto the showman’s craft

That entertains percentages

And gluts my soul with images

That advertise the Golden Calf.

 

Whatever can be sold and bought

Is packaged to seduce my thoughts:

Arrested in the passing blur

Of pageantry that is sustained

Relentlessly, to numb life’s pain

By means of sweet commercial lure.

 

The captain of this craft am I,

And Freedom is my destiny.

Along these roads I sport and sing,

A representative of all

Who have exchanged their human flaws

For sinless cogs and wires and springs.

 

No need to mourn when I am dead:

The radio inside my head

Will guide me through that valley’s shade.

The wheels of Fate roll ever on;

As for this body, Science strong

Each dying organ shall replace

 

Until I have the jewel won,

And Nature I have overcome,

And artifice controls the void—

A brain of cybernetic lies,

Synapses all computerized:

United States of the Android.

 

AS A DAY IN JUNE

  

The head of a water snake

Bobs through his element,

His dark body oscillating

Underneath the waves.

 

Soon he writhes upon the shore,

Disappearing in the rushes

Gradually, as the river

Slithers from his sinuous form.

 

Meanwhile I stoop with pain

And stumble to my feet,

A paintbrush in my hand—

And wish I were as lithe as he.

 

But Kundalini takes the time

I need to keep my house repaired.

A serpent need not stain a deck

And sacrifice a day in June.

 

         TEMPORARY JOB

  

I rolled the little dog upon her back,

Her limp, sedated body spread to bare

Its vulnerable abdomen— nipples

Never to be suckled—while her head

Flopped over to one side, as though a truck

Had slammed her hard against a garbage can.

Upon the vet’s behest, I shone the light

And put the shiny scalpel to her flesh,

And sliced her down the middle as he watched

His new assistant learn to cut the tubes

And then remove the ovaries. The scene   

Was etched upon my mind against my will;

And my revulsion drew back from each stitch

That hid Man’s treachery from Man’s best friend—

Or so Man thought.

                                The whole world screamed at me

That I should get a job and earn my keep;

For high school was behind me at long last.

My father’s finger pointed at the door—

So here I was, among the working class.

 

The whole thing troubled me. It seemed that I

Was violated somehow, like that dog,

In being ripped untimely from the womb

Of literature and music, and cast out

Upon the streets of life where such as he,

This false friend of the animals, snipped tubes,

While boys like me were shipped to Vietnam—

Another place of gelding and betrayal.

 

I washed the kennels with a mop and hose,

And fed the cats and dogs, and picked up trash

About the parking lot. The whole thing stank.

I couldn’t wait until I turned eighteen,

So I could move to some romantic town

And start to live a life of Poetry.

I hardly knew myself at all.

                                             Three days

Did not go by before I spoke my mind,

And told the doctor that this kind of work

Was not for me; I couldn’t spay a dog—

It seemed against the nature of the world.

I half expected he would yell at me;

Instead he looked me sternly in the eye,

And not without an envious regard.

 

“You know,” he said, “although you are too young

To realize what it means, not everyone

Can say what you have said; can stand and face

The world because of what he thinks is right.

Of course, I don’t agree with you, and yet

There are not many people I have known

Whom I respect—and you are one of them.”

 

He shook my hand; I stammered disavowals.

“Goodbye,” he said sincerely, “and good luck.” 

 

Perplexed and grim, I stood awhile outside

And waited for my father to come by

And pick me up on his way home from work.

I dreaded telling him; and when I did,

He drove along in silent thought, and seemed

To know me better than I knew myself.

 

 

             A. H. WILSON

  

The Farmer is a lover of the Land;

No Farmer he who labors but for gain.

When all the cows are milked, and broken grain

Thrown to the chickens, and the peaches canned,

The fences mended, and the nude sheep stand

Relieved of their wool coats at chilly dawn,

His fancy is to plant a lily pond--

For more than just a Farmer is a Man.

He builds a tiny cabin at that place,

And sets beside it on the sandstone ledge

A painted laborer of fired clay,

Whose shadow will not scare goldfish away.

That all this work is good, he sits to judge

Upon his porch swing, at the close of day.

 

SPRING THAW

 Muddy frozen foot steps

Oozing between banks of snow

Winters recession

Like diseased gums drawn aside

Old teeth drop like icicles