Apples from Shinar [Special ed] 9780819571670, 0819571679, 9780819571687, 0819571687

Citation preview

APPLES

FROM

SHINAR

(

taWESLEYAN

POETRY CLASSICS~

)

APPLES FROM SHINAR A Book of Poems by HYAM PLUTZIK SPECIAL EDITION

K i t h r l J t ~ ~ i L ' ~ l %b\'l l l l t r i11d Scott hir.\tatl

WESLEYAN

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

M I U D I , E T O ~ N ,COSP\-ECTICUT

Wesleyan University Press Middletown CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress Poems © 1950, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1958, 1959 Estate of Ryam Plutzik Preface of 2011 edition © 2011 Estate of Ryam Plutzik Afterword by David Scott Kastan © 2011 Wesleyan University Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications in which some of these poems first appeared: Accent, The American Scholar, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Epoch, Fifteen Modern American Poets by George P. Elliott, Furioso, The Hopkins Review, New World Writing No.8, Prairie Schooner, Saturday Review, The Sewanee Review, The Transatlantic Review, and Yale Review. Library of Congress Control Number: 2011924376 ISBN 978-0-8195-7167-0 5 4 321

TO

THE

MEMORY

OF

MY

FATHER

CONTENTS PREFACE

IX

BECAUSE THE RED OSIER DOGWOOD

3

THE DREAM ABOUT OUR MASTER

4

TO MY DAUGHTER

5

I AM DISQUIETED

6

AS THE GREAT HORSE

7

IF CAUSALITY IS IMPOSSIBLE

9

THE OLD WAR

10

THE PREMONITION

11

JIM DESTERLAND

12

AFTER LOOKING INTO A BOOK

14

THE GEESE

15

THE MYTHOS OF SAMUEL HUNTSMAN

16

BEWARE, SAUNTERER

17

THE AIRMAN WHO FLEW OVER

18

THE PRIEST EKRANATH

20

I IMAGINED A PAINTER

23

THE BASS

24

THE IMPORTANCE OF POETRY

25

WINTER, NEVER MIND WHERE

26

THE ZERO THAT IS ALL

27

FOR T.S.E. ONLY

28

A NEW EXPLANATION OF THE QUIETUDE

30

PORTRAIT

31

REQUIEM FOR EDWARD CARRIGH

32

AND IN THE 51sT YEAR

33

MAN AND TREE

34

OF OBJECTS CONSIDERED AS FORTRESSES

35

A PHILOSOPHER ON A MOUNTAIN

36

TRIO FOR TWO VOICES AND A WOODWIND

37

THE MYTHOS OF THE MAN FROM ENOCH

39

THE MILKMAN

40

THE LAST FISHERMAN

41

THE SHEPHERD (from

Horatio)

AFTERWORD BY DAVID SCOTT KASTAN

42

61

PREFACE

A recent traveler in Granada, remembering the gaiety that had greeted him on an earlier visit, wondered why the place seemed so sad. The answer came to him at last: "This was a city that had killed its poet." He was talking, of course, of the great Federico Garcia Lorca, murdered by Franco's bullies during the Spanish Civil War. But are there not many cities and many places that kill their poets? Places nearer home than Granada and the Albaicin? The poets, true, are humbler than Lorca (for such genius is a seed as rare as a roc's egg), and the deaths are less brutal, more subtle, more civilized. Against us, luckily, there are no squads on the lookout. There is no conspiracy against us, unless it is a conspiracy of indifference. But there are more powerful things in the modern world (and people who are the slaves of things, and people who are things) that move against poetry like an intractable enemy, all the more horrible because unconscious. They would kill the poet-that is, make him stop writing poetry. We must stay alive, must write then, write as excellently as we can. And if out of our labors and agonies there appears, along with our more moderate triumphs, even one speck of the final distillate, the eternal stuff pure and radiant as a drop of uranium, we

[ ix ]

are justified. For history, which does not lie, has proven that our product, if understood and used as it ought to be, is more powerful for the conservation of man than any mere material metal can be for his destruction. HYAM PLUTZIK

writing for the Rochester Poetry Society, October 1950

[ .r ]

APPLES

FROM

SHINAR

BECAUSE THE RED

OSIER DOGWOOD

Because the red osier dogwood Is the winter lightning, The retention of the prime fire In the naked and forlorn season When snow is winner (For he flames quietly above the shivering mouse In the moldy tunnel, The eggs of the grasshopper awaiting metamorphosis Into the lands of hay and the times of the daisy, The snake contorted in the gravel, His brain suspended in thought Over an abyss that summer will fill with murmuring And frogs make laughable: the cricket-haunted time)I, seeing in the still red branches The stubborn, unflinching fire of that time, Will not believe the horror at the door, the snow-white worm Gnawing at the edges of the mind, The hissing tree when the sleet falls. For because the red osier dogwood Is the winter sentinel, I am certain of the return of the moth (Who was not destroyed when an August flame licked him), And the cabbage butterfly, and all the families Whom the sun fathers, in the cauldron of his mercy.

[3]

THE DREAM

ABOUT OUR MASTER,

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

This midnight dream whispered to me: Be s'loift as a runner, take the lane Into the green mystery Beyond the farm and haystack at Stone. You leave tomorrow, not to return. Hands that were fastened in a vise, A useless body, rooted feet, While time like a bell thundered the loss, Witnessed the closing of the gate. Thus sleep and waking both betrayed. I had one glimpse: In a close of shadow There rose the form of a manor-house, And in a corner a curtained window. All was lost in a well of trees, Yet I knew for certain this was the place. If the hound of air, the ropes of shade, And the gate between that is no gate, Had not so held me and delayed These cowardly limbs of bone and blood, I would have met him as he lived!

[4]

TO MY DA UGHTER

Seventy-seven betrayers will stand by the road, And those who love you will be few but stronger. Seventy-seven betrayers, skilful and various, But do not fear them: they are unimportant. You must learn soon, soon, that despite Judas The great betrayals are impersonal (Though many would be Judas, having the will And the capacity, but few the courage). You must learn soon, soon, that even love Can be no shield against the abstract demons: Time, cold and fire, and the law of pain, The law of things falling, and the law of forgetting. The messengers, of faces and names known Or of forms familiar, are innocent.

[5]

I

AM

DISQUIETED SEE MANY

WHEN

I

HILLS

I am disquieted when I see many hills, As one who looks down on the backs of tremendous cattle, Shoulder to shoulder, munching in silence the grass In a timeless region. Where time is not, event and breath are nothing, Yet we who are lost in time, growing and fading In the shadow of majesty, cannot but dumbly yearn For its stronger oblivion. Reject this archaic craving to be a herdsman Of the immortals. Until they trample you down Be still the herdsman's boy among these giants And the ridges of laurel.

[6]

AS

THE

GREAT

ON

THE

HORSE ROTS HILL

As the great horse rots on the hill till the stars wink through his ribs; As the genera of horses become silent, the thunder of the hooves receding in the silence; As the tree shrivels in the wind of time, as the wind Time dries the locust treeThus you prepare the future for me and my loved ones. I have been in many towns and seen innumerable houses, also rocks, trees, people, stars and insects. Thieves, like ants, are making off with them, taking them to your old ant-hill. Thus you prepare the future for me and my loved ones. What spider made the machine of many threads? The threads run from time's instants to all the atoms of the universe. In each instant a wheel turns in your head, threads go taut, and one of a quintillion atoms is transmuted. Thus you prepare the future for me and my loved ones. I observe the ordained explosions on the paper as I write, The pinpoints of flame in the wood on the table, and on the wall (Like a battlefield at night, or a field where fireflies flicker) . My hand, too, scintillates like a strange fish; Fires punctuate the faces on the road; A pox, a fever, burns in the tissues of the hills. Thus you prepare the future for me and my loved ones.

[7]

As the great horse is transmuted on the hill Till the stars wink through his skull; As the stars become husk and radiance; As the locust tree is changed by the wind Time; As the wind Time too will lapse, will blow from another quarterThus you prepare the future for me and my loved ones.

[8]

IF CAUSALITY

IS

IMPOSSIBLE,

GENESIS IS RECURRENT

The abrupt appearance of a yellow flower Out of the perfect nothing, is miraculous. The sum of Being, being discontinuous, Must presuppose a God-out-of-the-box Who makes a primal garden of each garden. There is no change, but only re-creation One step ahead. As in the cinema Upon the screen, all motion is illusory. So if your mind were keener and could clinch More than its flitting beachhead in the Permanent, You'd see a twinkling world flashing and dying Projected out of a tireless, winking Eye Opening and closing in immensityCreating, with Its look, beside all else Always Adamic passion and innocence, The bloodred apple or the yellow flower.

[9]

THE OLD WAR

Noone cared for the iron sparrow That fell from the sky that quiet day With no bird's voice, a mad beast's bellow. Sparrow, your wing was a broken scar As you blundered into the mother-barley. Sparrow, how many men did you bear? "Ten good men, pilot and gunnerTrapped in the whirlpool, held by no hands, Twisting from truth with curse and prayer. "Ten good men I bore in my bellyNot as the mother-barley bears. Ten good men I returned to her there."

Thunder rolling over the barley! Fire swarming high and higher! Home again to the barley-motherTen good sons, pilot and gunner, Radioman and bombardier.

[10]

THE

PREMONITION

Trying to imagine a poem of the future, I saw a nameless jewel lying Lurid on a table of black velvet. Light winked there like eyes half-lidded, Raying the dark with signals, Lunar, mineral, maddening As that white night-flower herself, And with her delusive chastity. Then one said: "I am the poet of the damned. My eyes are seared with the darkness that you willed me. This jewel is my heart, which I no longer need."

[11]

JIM DESTERLAND

As I was fishing off Pondy Point Between the tides, the sea so stillOnly a whisper against the boatNo other sound but the scream of a gull, I heard the voice you will never hear Filling the crannies of the air. The doors swung open, the little doors, The door, the hatch within the brain, And like the bellowing of ruin The surf upon the thousand shores Swept through me, and the thunder-noise Of all the waves of all the seas. The doors swung shut, the little doors, The door, the hatch within the ear, And I was fishing off Pondy Pier, And all was as it was before, With only the whisper of the swell Against the boat, and the cry of a gull. I draw a sight from tree to tree Crossing this other from knoll to rock, To mark the place. Into the sea My line falls with an empty hook, Yet fools the world. So day and night I crouch upon the thwarts and wait. There is a roaring in the skies The great globes make, and there is the sound Of all the atoms whirling round

[1~]

That one can hear if one is wise-Wiser than most-if one has heard The doors, the little doors, swing wide.

[13]

AFTER LOOKING INTO A BELONGING TO MY

BOOK

GREAT-GRANDFATHER,

ELI ELIAKIM

PLUTZIK

I am troubled by the blank fields, the speechless graves. Since the names were carved upon wood, there is no word For the thousand years that shaped this scribbling fist And the eyes staring at strange places and times Beyond the veldt dragging to Poland. Lovers of words make simple peace with death, At last demanding, to close the door to the cold, Only Here lies someone. Here lie no one and no one, your fathers and mothers.

[i·n

THE

GEESE

A miscellaneous screaming that comes from nowhere Raises the eyes at last to the moonward-flying Squadron of wild-geese arcing the spatial cold. Beyond the hunter's gun or the will's range They press southward, toward the secret marshes Where the appointed gunmen mark the crossing Of flight and moment. There is no force stronger (In the sweep of the monomaniac passion, time) Than the will toward destiny, which is death. Value the intermediate splendor of birds.

[15]

THE MYTHOS

OF SAMUEL HUNTSMAN

If I should round the corner quicklyOr suddenly turn my headI know I'd catch them preparing the scene, Painting a tree or hanging the moon, Arranging houses and streets exactly In the desperate game which is God's.

For I have seen through their plausible liesThat of a uniform world, And cities existing beyond these hills, Or on rain-wet pampas ferocious bulls, A logic of morrows and yesterdays Or real seeds under this field. The surface is thin as a gilding of oil Upon an enormous lake Deep as infinity, void as a gas, On which they plant the lying rose To delude the sniffing child or the fool. But me they cannot expect To wink forever, never to turn And look at their empty stage Of space starless and planetless Where they swarm to cover some nakedness, A ravaged fruit tree perhaps, some sin That calls to me to judge. One question has to be wrestled down Before I smash this fa9ade: Are they worlds, these other men, Thomas or Roger, Like me, with their plague of conjurers Or but lesser dolls in the scene of one Who will deal alone with God?

[16]

BEWARE, DESPERADO,

A

SAUNTERER, OF THIS MR.

BONES,

A

BAD

ACTOR

Saunterer on this autumn track That edges the garden, brown with brown, Along by the hickory tree remember To avoid the place where the dead rat lies. Else how will you breathe untainted the sweet Rot of the indolent cucumber, Apple-smell, stubble-reek, pumpkin-vinegar? Someone is taking all the parts In this season's performance-ha! leaping the footlights Where your beating blood is most gay with his masking, Marks your time too with his ticking bomb.

[17 ]

THE AIRMAN WHO FLEW OVER SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND

A nation of hayricks spotting the green solace Of grass, And thrones of thatch ruling a yellow kingdom Of barley. In the green lands, the white nation of sheep. And the woodlands, Red, the delicate tribes of roebuck, doe And fawn. A senate of steeples guarding the slaty and gabled Shires, While aloof the elder houses hold a secret Sceptre.

To the north, a wall touching two stone-grey reaches Of water; A circle of stones; then to the south a chalk-white Stallion. To the north, the wireless towers upon the cliff. Southward The powerhouse, and monstrous constellations Of cities. To the north, the pilgrims along the holy roads To Walsingham, And southward, the road to Shottery, shining With daisies. [18]

Over the castle of Warwick frightened birds Are fleeing, And on the bridge, faces upturned to a roaring Falcon.

[19 ]

THE PRIEST EKRAN ATH

I who am sanctifiedRaving lain with the holy harlots at Askelon On the roof of the great temple under her visage Who graces with splendor the night in the god-filled sky: Mother, rich-wombed mistress, whose thighs are forever Rising and falling like the tides in the roadstead of Gath, To strike with fear the arid and impotent damned And assure the fruit of field and man and animal With Adonis and her chosen, fortunate priestsMust tell you of these barbarians from the mountains, From the anarchic hills come to destroy us, Recent siftings out of the east and south. They call her the White One or the White Lady But do not worship her nor any mother-goddess. I have seen them on the high days in Askelon When the harlots dance naked through the gala streets For the joy of Adonis and the blessed thirst of the loins Turn away angry, cursing these holy bodies, Crying, "Let them be stoned and their evil wombs ripped up." They hate delight. They have but a lone god And he is their enemy. I met a certain one: Sly as a jackal yet arrogant as a lion, Rough-bearded, out of the desert, desperate With his private phantoms, his eyes like an animal's (Fearful, and darting here and there, yet ready To spring and rend), his hair and garments filthy With the rot of caves, his skin flayed red by scorpions. Though his nights are writhings of fire, he will not clasp The salvation of sweet flesh, but for sustenance [~O]

Communes with this impossible imageless demon, Stuff of a barren race, who has tainted him With a sickness I cannot fathom, an evil spirit Like the guilt which dogs a murderer. So always He looks behind him, before, and within himself, And the voice he hears becomes this maniacal thundering On our sunlit streets and before our gleaming temples. What I saw in the eyes of this vagrant (one of a tribe Cultureless, without iron, art, or altar) Was the whole world made somber, and man lonely In a proud empty heaven like a hell, Estranged from the field and the beast and his own body And kin to the mothering earth only in death. I cannot break this knot, but I know he thoughtAnd I thought too in the wizardry of that momentOur sunwashed cities despicable and meaningless, Our splendid artistic productions abominable, Our majestic pantheon foul as a kennel, The harbor jostling with keen ships and mariners From the farthest ocean, trivial as a sigh. And joy unimportant too. The dignity of sorrow Was the only blessing under the cloud of his god. I say these are faces of stone no years can weather. They scheme to take your ease. Listen, you nations: They will lure you from your spontaneous ecstasies And positive possessions, and with themselves, Carry you forth on arduous pilgrimages Whose only triumph can be a bitter knowledge Out of the suffering they make our worth. They see the desert in the growing leaf: [931]

That is their sickness. The sky will be darker then; The White Lady of splendid thighs and bosom Without a seedsman or a harvester, A pallid virgin; and the lands beneath Dark with this god and people. I who am wise Through the sacred harlots' embraces know the syllables (Ah, they are powerful and barbarous!) Of the secret incantation that gives them strength. Hear how they thunder! Listen: I ssachar Levi simon reuben judah dan Zebulun asher naphtali menassah ephraim.

[22]

I

IMAGINED A

PAINTER

PAINTING SUCH A

WORLD

Like successive layers of leaf that dwindle the sunlight Are the overlapping cumulative shadows Projected by things, which huddle in them darkly Within the greater shadow: suffering. Breaching the shores of matter a swell of shadows Destroys all sanctions of formal separateness; And objects, transposed of vesture, take doubtful values Like hulks vaguely discerned under the tides. What inner or outer flames may shine are random In the one, shadowed sea where all things melt, While through all, the superior dark, the subjective night Encloses and bathes the universe.

[933]

THE BASS

To whom do the bass pay homage, Leaping to break the dimness Of the reedy, dawn-gray water? I heard the rare message From Sirius and Capella, The Dog-Star and the Goat, Whom I saw as I rode to this water Over the empty streets And the houses cold with dream. They have paled into the sunlight That whitens the upper air, But they say still: "Come, "We are the great fireflies, Sweeter than soft minnows. Take us before we fade." And the shape with the whispering lure, The dark shape with the net, Draws them to that shore.

[924]

THE IMPORTANCE OF POETRY, OR THE COMING FORTH FROM

ETERNITY INTO

TIME

Beyond the image of the willow There is a willow no man knows Or watches with corruptible eyes. Deep in a field where no man goes N or bird flies The willow fronts an empty road. The bird hovers in other skies: World where only these wings exist. And elsewhere, alone, upon an abyss, The man is marching down a road.

As the rays of the sun are drawn together By a curved glass and rekindled to fire So, to the poppies life and death, So does desire Draw them and bend them and bind them so, So the noise of the wings can at last be heard And the willow-image do grace to a bird And the ghost on the roadway give them word Not for forever, only a day.

[~5]

WINTER,

NEVER MIND WHERE

The illusion is one of flatness: the sky Has no depth, is a sheet of tin Upon which the blackened branches and twigs Are corroded, burnt in By a strong acid: Hang there, outside the squares of paneWork of a gruff but extraordinary artist, Who has done good things in pastels too, In summer scenes, leaf-stuff And the placid Nuances of snow. Since, as we know, Genius is superior to praise or blame, He will not mind if I suggest: "Fewer cold subj ects please (they do not please!). Really, your leafy stuff, Sir, is best."

[~6]

THE ZERO THAT IS ALL

If these lesser things are subsumed within the GoodThese corrupt shapes: desk, mirror or treeThe falsely transliterated, strangely planed Creatures of eyesight and the sentient bones (Themselves in the web of the spider), then all times Are poses of the one actor, Time: he Who is ape of eternity, and the acorn neglected among leaves Encircles, now in this very heartbeat, a forest Of oaks that have no horizon; and the still white egg On the tablecloth in the hush of morning is turbulent With the cackle of a universe of chickens; And still it is hot noon on the sea Tethys Where the protoplasmic slime begets Aphrodite Whose belly is history till the moon falls And the last spore flames like Andromeda.

[~7]

FOR T.S.E.

ONLY

You called me a name on such and such a dayDo you remember ?-you were speaking of Bleistein our brother, The barbarian with the black cigar, and the pockets Ringing with cash, and the eyes seeking Jerusalem, Knowing they have been tricked. Come, brother Thomas, We three must weep together for our exile. I see the hunted look, the protestation, The desperate seeking, the reticence and the brashness Of the giver of laws to the worshippers of calves. At times you speak as if the words were walls, But your walls fell with mine to the torch of a Titus. Come, let us weep together for our exile. We two, no doubt, could accommodate ourselves: We've both read Dante and we both dislike Chicago, And both, you see, can be brutal-but you must bow down To our brother Bleistein here, with the unaesthetic Cigar and the somber look. Come, do so quickly, For we must weep together for our exile.

o you may enwomb yourself in words or the Word (The Word is a good refuge for people too proud To swallow the milk of the mild Jesus' teaching), Or a garden in Hampshire with a magic bird, or an old Quotation from the Reverend Andrewes, yet someone or something (Let us pause to weep together for our exile) Will stick a needle in your balloon, Thomas. Is it the shape that you saw upon the stair? The four knights clanking toward the altar? the hidden [~8]

Card in the deck? the sinister man from Nippon? The hordes on the eastern horizon? Come, brother Burbank, And let Uft weep together for our exile.

In the time of sweet sighing you wept bitterly, And now in the time of weeping you cannot weep. Will you wait for the peace of the sailor with pearly bones? Where is the refuge you thought you would find on the island Where each man lives in his castle? 0 brother Thomas, Come let us weep together for our exile. You drew us first by your scorn, first by your wit; Later for your own eloquent suffering. We loved you first for the wicked things you wrote Of those you acknowledged infinitely gentle. Wit is the sin that you must expiate. Bow down to them, and let us weep for our exile. I see your words wrung out in pain, but never The true compassion for creatures with you, that Dante Knew in his nine hells. 0 eagle! master! The eagle's ways of pride and scorn will not save Though the voice cries loud in humility. Thomas, Thomas, Come, let us pray together for our exile. You, hypocrite lecteur! mon semblable! mon frere!

[~9]

A

NEW E XP LAN A T ION

QUIETUDE AND

0 F

THE

TALKATIVENESS

OF TREES

Because they belong to the genus thunder Trees grow still when their patriarch Delivers his sign, the livid spark, And comes himself with a rumble and mutter, Reminding them of their dignity. Boom! He empties a bucket of wet Across their shoulders, but they submit Till he huffs away. So they are free With a stirring of limbs to echo him, A confab of whispers, a hushing and mumming, Till time comes round again for the thrumming Harumph of the father to quiet them.

[30]

PORTRAIT

Notice with what careful nonchalance He tries to be a Jew casually, To ignore the monster, the mountainA few thousand years of history. Of course he personally remembers nothing, And the world has forgotten the older objectionsThe new ones not being socially acceptable: Hangdogs, hiding in the privies and alleys of the mind. It is agreed That he of all men has gained the right to his soul (Though like the others he no longer believes in one). He lives in his own house under his oak. He stands by his car, shod in decently-grained leather. He is smiling. His hair is peacefully in place. His suit is carefully pressed; his cravat harmonious.

Whose father, it is whispered, stubbornly cried old clothes and bric-a-brac, He of all men might yet be master of self, all selfposseSSIOn, Were it not (how gauche and incredible!) for the one illfitting garmentThe historical oversight in the antique wardrobeThe shirt, the borrowed shirt, The Greek shirt. Notice how even when at ease he is somehow anxious, Like a horse who whiffs smoke somewhere nearby faintly. Notice with what nonchalance, The magazine in his hand and the casual cigarette to his lips, He wears a shirt by N essus.

[31]

REQUIEM FOR EDWARD CARRIGH

The sudden translation to the bottom of the hill, To be with the dull stones and the sterile earth After the bitter climbing of forty-four years. You who postponed the quiet amenities, The lazy conversation after lunch, The cigarette in mid-afternoon, the daydream When a certain wind came to your window Out of that young, beautiful sea, the Atlantic. Night. Nighttime in the earth. The body settles patiently into eternity. Time moves, yes, but like glacial ice. The tireless eyes stare out of the sky, answering nothing, And the silence is august and terrible. While we were lost in our petty commerce Of coming and going (that day a barking dog annoyed us, A buzzing insect, a lagging clock) You suddenly left your house, your city and your country, Traveling in the night, few knowing, To fight with a dark archangel in a desert. Already there is no one to call to. The body of Edward is not Edward, Nor the ashes of Gregory Gregory. Alexander is no longer Alexander in the earth. Nothing can be done but something can be said at least.

[393]

AND IN THE

51

S1' YEAR OF THAT CENTURY,

WHILE MY BROTHER CRIED IN THE TRENCH, WHILE MY ENEMY GLARED FROM THE CAVE

This star is only an augury of the morning, Gift-bearer of another day. A wind has brought the musk of thirty fields, Each like a coin of silver under that sky. Precious, the soundless breathing of wife and children In a house on a field lit by the morning star.

[33]

MAN AND TREE

Having won through, you and I regard each other Remembering in our bones the interminable snow and the ache of an iron frost, You with your buds like velvet, tasting the atmosphere Which I too breathe, incredulous and lustful, And I, desperate to halt a running moment, Casting lariats of nothing at an arch and graceful fawn. When your leaves are the size of a mouse's ears, they say, The trout hunger for self-destruction. Ah, time is the fawn that comes down to those waters. They see her eyes as she drinks, and leap to her. How silent she flits now below your branches, Being already in tomorrow. When your leaves grow to the size of a fox's ears She will be in the field with the fox and mouse. A haunter of the margins of forests, she will be seen By the man driving a fine team of horses And those who pass by in cars in midsummer. But no one will pause, for they have no time. She cannot reach your leaves, but she will return When they are ready to fall to her. Her feet will rustle among them, and I shall be waiting. But she will already be in yesterday.

[34]

OF OBJECTS CONSIDERED AS FORTRESSES IN A

BALEFUL SPACE

I and the other intruders, The oak and stone my brothers, Stare at one another Upon the plain of nothing. As if to ask what wonder By willing or by blunder Could lead to this encounter Upon the plain of nothing. (As if to ask what meeting Could overmatch the wonder Of opaque hostile Being Emergent out of nothing.) The nothing is a glitter Wicked, a frosty water, Upon which no words scatter, Not hallo, sob or laughter. Upon their petty islands The something and the something, Knowing or blank, in silence Await the will of nothing. One, one, and one, Mysteries of the moon, And the always never-guests, None, none.

[35]

A PHILOSOPHER ON A MOUNTAIN IN SCYTHIA

We shall come hack at last to the Lord Snow After the Lord Fire is quenched at last. His gray, antique mantle will cover neatly The eyeballs' nightmare of hue and diversity. White will be black when the Lord Snow is master, Under his coat completing the last reduction. Lord, the wound that the Lord Fire branded Hot as a heart, deep as seventy years, Heal, the touch of whose mild fingers is peace. A vista of vague flakes like a fmmed star-field Falling in unison to ztnity.

[36]

TRIO FOR TWO VOICES AND A WOODWIND

You for whom the waters of no spring are sweet: Consider, in their respective empires, vegetal and animal, Men and trees, bearers of the sceptre. Laughing, our leafy Caesar might shrug, "A pusillanimous cousin!" (as we would refer To a ring-tailed monkey or an indiscreet baboon)Or, "an oversized, ambulatory mandrake," Or better, "a carrot, defective, cloven." Man, however, must sooner or later lecture: "A tree is a river system, Continental, a lovely schema against a background Of sky brightness and earth green and brownness: Tiny dark runnels, myriad yet distinct, starting up there in the light, Becoming rivulets, always traveling inward as if drawn by hunger, Becoming brooks, creeks, tributary rivers, And the one great river flowing into a planet. The tree is the antecedent symbolism. A man must always be part of the tree of the living; A tree, of no man, of itself only. What, tell me, feeds on pure air and energy? And what, as in the beginning, on the bitter fruit of a tree?" Excellently done, Professor.And you whose tears drip poison into the well: No longer will you be restless when the belief they offer you-

[37]

As, under the very noses of the archangels, The oldest story has secretly winked itHas a tree as its god or prophet. The animals with nimble forefeet, hitherto the only voluble observers, Have long been biased. There are no bears, swans or heroes among the constellationsOnly, throughout all space, branches budded with fire, From which, in an ether where never a wind shivers, Sift and sink the burning flower-flakes of time (Breathgiver, incendiary, refiner of the sorrowful metal That rises, walks and sings like a man; Whitener, when the flakes are ashes, Of philosophical skulls in a valley.)

[38]

THE MYTHOS

OF THE MAN

FROM

ENOCH

Faintly against the stars, From the northmost march to the Crab, I see the undulant outlines Of the vast, ameboid Spirit. Foggy grains of fire Light the tortuous paths Within the hungry hands, Brain, body and feet. Time is already victim And at only the farthest milestone Is there space pure as water Upon a delectable mountain. I cannot reach those ranges. Hours become a lifetime As I linger at each crossroads Waiting the blow on the cheek. God is brutish life! God is the living ether! Within these strange entrails We must build our beautiful houses.

[39]

THE MILKMAN

The milkman walks with mysterious movements, Translating will to energyTo the crunch of his feet on crystalline waterWhile the bad angels mutter. A white ghost in an opaque body Passing slowly over the snow, And a telltale fume on the frozen air To spite the princes of terror.

One night they will knock on the milkman's door, Their boots crunch hard on the front-porch floor. One-two, open the door. You are the thief of the secret flame, The forbidden bread, the terrible N arne. Return what is left; go back where you came. One-two, the slam of a door. A woman crying: Who is there? And voices mumbling beyond the stair.

Is there a fume in the frozen sky To spell that someone has been by, Under the sun and over the snow?

[4 0 ]

THE LAST :FISHERMAN

He will set his camp beside a cold lake And when the great fish leap to his lure, shout high To three crows battling a northern wind. Now when the barren twilight closes its circle Will fear the yearning ghosts come for his catch And watch intently trees move in the dark. Fear as the last fire cringes and sputters, Heap the branches, strike the reluctant ashes, Lie down restless, rise when the dawn grays. Time runs out as the hook lashes the water Day after day, and as the days wane Wait still for the wonder.

[4 1 ]

THE SHEPHERD

(from "Horatio") [Horatio has spent his life defending the memory of Hamlet, the friend of his youth. Now an old man, he sits in his study and writes of his latest experience.] Even if time permits me further breath Beyond these fading four and eighty years, This is the last circuit of my lands. The roads are harsh to an old body. It is simpler To listen to a strong-eyed servant reading A letter brought by a brawny courier Whose arm will not shake though he lifts our heaviest tankard Full to the brim, into the river of sun That pours through the eastern window of our kitchens, And then, with a loud chuckle, gulps her down. I have been thinking of a smaller drinkOne sip of a strong poison, I might have drunk. Among the eternal torments prepared for such In the infamous pit, one at least would be lacking (Whispering like the fiend, morning and evening) : "If Moses is dead, how then will Aaron speak?" From Bern, bailiff of my farthest seignory (This promontory, the desolate uttermost horn Of Danish ground, goading the mad Baltic) Two days ago, in casual talk, I heard Of confused tales told in this district, By hill shepherds, touching Hamlet my friend. We went together, mounted at first, and then Our horses left behind in a hidden gully,

Afoot the final hours, hearing once The howl of a wolf, so up a craggy incline, Climbing into a range of rock-gnarled grassland Not far from the sea. There, playing at homeless beggars, Father and son, our clothes well-picked for the part, We came at the time of the first star to a campfire Where, at the mouth of a cave, some shepherds waited While one of their number tended a spitted lamb Whose fragrance tingled the air. We ate and drank And I fell asleep. The hand of Bern the bailiff Shook hard my shoulder. I opened my eyes. The constellations Hung huge in their vastness. An urgent, small, cracked VOIce, Garrulous, croaked a crooked track through the silence About a hero, a dragon, a prince's daughter, And suchlike nonsense. Propped upon an elbow I saw that I was one of a listening circle Of ten or a dozen shadows, around an ember (The remains of a campfire) that gleamed like a sly Cyclops. One said: "Did you hear him? The wolf's been talking agam. And the Bear is keener and huger tonight than ever Up in the sky, and his cousins the weasel and fox, Whipped by the smell of our meat, rustle the grass. See that gleam by the bush. Pile on a log. (May our dogs with the aid of God guard well our fold.) And down below, the sea-surf's been furious. So give us the tale of the madman."

[4 3 ]

And the story-teller Cackling: "Ah, he gnashes his teeth on the rocks!" "Who?" I cried. "Is grandfather then awake? Good. Why, that devil, the prince Ambleth of course. He grinds his teeth on the shore to make the flour (Or so they say, ha ha!) to fill his stomach. Give me a leg of that meat. Ah, good, in faith!"Listen. In the sorrowful time of the old dusk Before the sun of Christ gave light to the world There lived in Denmark two brothers, Fang and Hunger. Hunger was king but Fang envied his place, And desired too, being lusty, the Queen Gertha Because of her yellow hair and her green eyes (This was like barley, those the hue of the sea). Now once, while Hunger was gone to fight the Polack, Fang to Gertha acknowledged his fierce lust And found it returned, so that, while Hunger was absent They lay together often in the royal bedchamber To which Fang could come by a secret door, known only To a mum and snickering cuckquean of the Queen's, A witch with a squinty face. But soon thereafter, Yet following duly Hunger's return from the war, So none suspected the mischief between the sheets, Gertha grew big in the belly with a son, Who, when the time was come, to the banging of bells, The shooting of cannon and the ringing of numerous flagons, Was named Prince Ambleth, and who, as the years went on,

[44]

Grew up to manhood. Meanwhile Fang and the Queen, Whenever occasion offered, resumed their embraces; And meanwhile Fang waited for Hunger's death Patiently, year after year, praying to Satan The god of the country. Often he thought to kill him By a knife, a dagger, poison poured in his soup, A twisted rope, an arrow from the green wood, Or the hands of a hired strangler (who could be silenced) But always he drew back. But when Hunger suddenly, Breathing the grace of God from a wandering priest, Gave up his demons and the abominable mysteries Of worship under the oak (that our wise men tell us Our fathers practised), and acknowledged the sweetness of Christ And changing his foul name (named for a devil Who lives in a gut) called himself, meekly, Humble, And converted his people also-then could Fang Endure it no longer, but with the aid of the Queen And an old and crafty courtier, Polonio, He plotted his brother's death. They came upon Humble Once as he sat in an arbor within his garden Toward evening, dreaming of good. Three times they touched him, While the great cape of Polonio covered his face And throttled his cries, with delicate poisoned daggers That drew no blood, and would have left him lying (Having already spread a careful rumor Of a poison adder seen underneath the building) To be found by a servant, and the news so spread abroad. But Fang when he stood above his enemy dead (Polonio and the Queen having fled at once) In terrible rage slashed at the helpless corpse

[4 5 ]

And when he saw the blood, grew desperate, Dragged off the body in secret, quartered it, And threw the shaking parts into the sewer Which quickly bore them down to the sea. And there A wolf, a fox, a weasel, a fish and an eagle, Magical creatures of Fang, already waitedAttracted by his powerful thought-and snatched Each a portion of Humble's ruined body And fled, each to his hole, or eyrie, or cavern To hide his loot. So Fang now ruled as King While Humble, report said, had been taken away By a powerful oaken god whom he had dishonored And who now returned for worship-'which he would receIve From the newly crowned King, Fang the Gentle, And his new-wed queen, Gertha. All-hail to Satan!' " The shepherd crossed himself. The fire winked. The sea screamed on the beach. "But listen, my brothers. On a certain midnight, Prince Ambleth, walking the ramparts With a bosom friend, Honorio, sleepless in grief For the man he thought his father, suddenly saw The woebegone ghost of this Humble, who, wailing, cried out: " 'My son Ambleth, strike down your father's murderer!' "And Ambleth: 'Ah, is it so? Tell me his name And I shall darken his eyes within this hour, As the Lord God Omnipotent is my witness, Whether he be in Denmark, Thule, or Hell!'

[46]

"And the ghost, quietly: 'Seek but in Denmark and Thule. As for the other, do you not see the ash That darkens my ghostly gown? The name of my murderer I do not know, my son. Asleep in my arbor I woke to this deeper sleep with a cloak or cloth Over my face, while the steel bit deep in my body. But I thought in that slight moment before my spirit Was rapt away and set by the far-off wicket With shadowy others in judgment, I thought I heard The hoarse, muttered curse of my brother Fang. Ah, but beware you kill an innocent man, Else I will have the sin of Cain on my head To drag me further downward into the pitAnd you a like damnation. Be certain, then strike. Thereafter gather together the torn pieces Of my earthly body, that five strange animalsA wolf, a fox, a weasel, a fish and an eagleHave hidden within their hole or eyrie or cavern And bury me with the fit Christian rites If you would have my torments below endurable And my arm strong for a battle that I must fight Upon the flame-tipped grass of the spiritual plain, Soon or late, in the shadow the future watches "So Ambleth swore revenge and burial And so, after that night in the court and street, Distracted, numb, with red-shot, half-closed eyes He stared into people's faces, seeking a secretAnd most at Fang, who in turn quickly suspecting Ambleth's suspicion, would, sitting upon his throne Turn on the prince in the midst of official affairs

[47]

A lingering halting glance, while his nostrils quivered As he whiffed the smell of danger. This, Ambleth saw And fearing the stifling cloth over his face And the stab in the dark, which King Humble got, decided That the game of madness would suit him best. He wiped Snivel and smut on his features, wore a purple mitten Or a chamberpot for a hat, and sometimes while singing A lullaby or reciting tick-tack-toe Would piss from an upper chamber of the castle Upon the unfortunate dogs and cats of the place-" As the speaker paused, a whinnying laugh arose From the shadowy circle, and from time to time was resumed. "But Fang, uneasy, still not wholly certain If the Prince Ambleth's madness was real or feigned Decided to test him, and advised thereto by his cronies Lured our Ambleth one night down to the beach Where a certain wench, Olivia, willing and able, Waited for him. To the spies, if he lay with her That would be witness his mind was sane enough To know a right good thing when it came his way, Whereas if he should spurn the fine occasion He'd be as crazy as any man yet was-" A snicker rose beyond the fire. "But Ambleth, Just as he prepared to do the trick, Was warned by his cunning friend, Honorio, By means of a firefly with a painted straw

[48]

Stuck up its arse, that something was amiss. Quickly with violent strength he dragged Olivia, Avoiding pursuers, into the heavy wood Where, in fear, she broke away. Meanwhile the Queen, Catching a hint of some plot that touched her son And afraid for his life, rushed, all desperate Down to the shore, blundering and crying In the maze of trees, rocks and cruel brambles Where Ambleth sought Olivia. In the utter dark, While the raging ocean below covered all sound, Ambleth seized his mother and ravished her (Unknowing, of course) and, done with this nameless deed, Clapped in her hand a golden medallion That he ripped from around his neck, and howled in her ear Over a lucky lull of the roaring waves: " 'Here are your wages, whore! which ought to keep you Till you frolic with someone else tomorrow night. Say nothing, or I will arrange to have you locked In that nunnery, Earth, where there's no more tumbling and tossing. Do you understand?' "He stumbled away in the dark And soon was lost among tree-trunks, bushes and boulders. Once he fell in a thorn-filled ditch, and once Preparing to take a step he saw of a sudden Before his feet, reflecting the cold ray Of a rotting log, a pool which went from him Into the darkness as if it meant to reach The end of the world. He turned, and watched affrighted

[49]

Two burning eyes, green as a eat's, appearing And disappearing, as if approaching him Down by the water-and of a height, seemingly, To indicate some beast. With his two arms, Turning he grasped a tree that rose beside him So large in size he could not circle it, But the shaggy bark gave him handhold and foothold And grunting a broken oath he clambered up To a low branch, where, sitting breathless a while, He thought he heard in another lull of the surf A muttering voice somewhere below. With care And feeling his way, he unexpectedly found A safe, broad, comfortable perch, where he lay back pantmg . . . "He opened his eyes. The air glittered like gold While huge from the quarter sky into his face A full moon shone, and as he watched, a spot Darkened its disk, grew larger, became at last A great black bird flying toward him With outstretched wings, till the whole planet was covered, Yet the strong light from behind outlined the bird. At last, as the upper edge of the moon reappeared, One instant within it a cruel beak was limned And the disk was clear again. In the opposite sky A faintness hinted that night was nearing its end. Among the trees, the silent ocean shone. Where was the surf? Had the tide then reached its full? He turned in his place and over the edge of his branch Looked down at the dark pool of his night's adventure, As it lay in the moonlight, calm and deep and wide. [50]

A sudden gigantic fin thrust through the surface And sank, and the water writhed a little after. He heard a muttering voice, and there below him, In a smooth moon drenched clearing among the treetrunks, A red roebuck with ripped throat and sides Lay on the ground. Nearby a fox sat grinning, Sniffed, and said with an impatient whine: " 'Where are they then? I will not wait much longer. By Magog! there is enough for all-' " 'Be patient Or you'll regret it!' whistled a beast, a weasel Till then unnoticed, down by the water's edge, Whose fur glistened sleek like a wet stone. "The fox went up and hungrily nuzzled the deer But turned at an unheard hint from the forest. A wolf, Huge and gray and with head held high, entered And looked behind him. To a battering of wings An eagle swooped from the upper dark, whose eyes Followed the gaze of the wolf, the fox and the weasel, And the look too of the fish, who had silently thrust His snout from the water, and watched with bulging eyeballs. Out of the dark, Fang came forward scowling, Bowed and was bowed to. Together, making a circle Around the bleeding deer, they lifted their heads In a low, howling prayer to some fiend, Then fell to the feast with beak and claw and handWith due morsels thrown to the maw in the poolTill the feast was done and the platter clean as grass. [51 ]

"At which King Fang, wiping his mouth, laughed: 'He suspects nothing, being so bedlam mad That even the prickings of lust leave him untouched. The castle whispers with laughter at this simpleton Who dragged a willing leman into the woodsFor what? To gambol about in some childish game, (All this she told us.) So I am safe, my sons, To empty this scabbard for building of the age (Already begun, foretold in the prophecies) Of whoredom, the axe and the sword, the wind and the wolf. Keep well your charge; hell only knows what tricks He may try there in the dubious place where he thirsts For that sacrament, that holy water, to quench The heat that makes him unquiet, the little flame That keeps him from perfection; what emissaries, Whether from there or here, and of sly strength Or wearing the form of weakness, he may send To lure you away from your watch, or, when you falter, Pierce you with his steel. In my days of breath, His body unsanctified and separate Within the powerful keeping of each of you Renders him helpless as a wisp of vapor To stand athwart my business. And at my dying, In the continuing struggle through eternity So much, my brothers, as the parts of his ruined form Are divided and unblest, so far I win. And in the final encounter face to faceThe occasion is certain, the outcome unknown, the time Nameless, soon or late-in the last meeting, With all to gain or lose in a single thrust, Some of his strength must still be in your keeping [5~]

If you would not have his brightness blind my eyes And confuse my hand. Yet if he should press me still, Could I not sweetly murmur into his ear A secret about himself, or of some he thought Part of himself, that would shake his arm and shield? Go now. Relieve your henchmen, and do not sleep.' "They went away: the fox, the weasel, the wolf. The eagle flew off, the fish sank in the pool. And as Fang stood there a moment in thought, Ambleth Leaped from the tree shouting; most skilfully Lit on the springy earth; fell; rose And grappled with Fang, who had turned in alarm Unable to draw his sword-they were so close together (Ambleth himself having no weapon at all). They toppled, their hands reached for the throat of each other. A savage tussle, and they lay for a long time quiet, A long long time, then one of them shaking stood up And saw the aimless limbs of the man he had strangled And the wide eyes, and heard nearby a sighing, Small, faint, like a muffled sob, which came (He was sure it had been in his ears a long time back) From the pool, where the head of the great fish was straining Against the shore, and the round inhuman eyes Stared without meaning. Bracing his feet in haste He heaved the dead man up by his hair and beard And whirling around as if he wielded a scythe Flung him from him into the dark water, Where he sank, and the evil maw of the fish also.

[53]

And the water was quiet. The sword in its jeweled scabbard, Undone in the fighting, lay on the ground. He buckled it on, and drawing the weapon high Ran through the trees in the dew-wet paths of dawn Toward the crowing of cocks. From a leaning boulder That troubled his path a shape leaped for his face. He ducked and, fading sideways, slashed with his sword, And the weasel lay on the ground, his open mouth Asking no mercy as his life-blood throbbed away. A hurried yapping came from somewhere behind, And a howling that ever grew louder; he came to the highroad; Knew his position; ran past the creaking wagons Of farmers going to market; arrived at last At the Castle Elsinore, where the guards, in astonishment, Saluted and gave him entrance. Past frightened courtiers He ran to the Queen's apartments, beat on the door With his sword still bloody, and wrenching open the knob Entered. The Queen sat in her chair by the fire Attended by a maid, a squinting witch, Whom he ordered out with a look, which the Queen seconded. "She spoke in a low voice but her eyes were screaming. 'What do you want, Ambleth, my son?' "And Ambleth, Husky, intense, 'I have killed the murderer.' " 'Who? Of whom?' " 'Fang, who murdered my father

[54]

"And her eyes grew glazed in her bruised face, and the scream Entered her mouth and: 'Fool! Fang was your father! Him I lay with on the night you were conceivedAnd often before and after . . ' "Ambleth stood rooted, His weapon frozen in air. And: 'Why do you wait, Since your sword is out ?-' "Ambleth's arm dropped down. She leaned forward and grasped the arms of her chair. " 'Fang was your father, and Humble was a cuckold, And I-I was with Fang when we threw the cloak Over his sleeping face, to stifle his cries While we stabbed him . . .' "She rose, and Ambleth backed away. And quietly, as her hand came up from the table: 'Oh, since you turn to leave, better take this. H you should choose, perchance, to amuse yourself Tonight with some woman, you might give her this as a wage. Warn her, of course, to say nothing, lest you might arrange To have her locked in that gentle nunnery, Earth, Where there's no more tumbling and tossing.' "She let the medallion Drop to the floor, and with bruised cheek averted Whipped up the little dagger from the table, Thrust deep, and fell. And Ambleth cried aloud. But the clock on the wall ticked louder than his cry

[55]

And the hands whirled like the spokes of a wheel. He ran Through the halls of Elsinore screaming-and screaming, down To the sad ocean, where he felt the tides heaving, While overhead the sun whisked through the sky Light as a child's ball. He saw, looking behind, The wood and the world, where the fox and the wolf still hid And, somewhere, the den of the weasel without a bar. A tower of seven heavens hung on his head Within which a proud bird could track and hide. But the mountains were settling and crumbling, and his heart tolled Loud as the clock in his dead mother's chamber. Holding at ready the weapon of Fang, he strode With eyes open into the dark waves." And the story-teller, listening, leaned forward To the firelit faces bent toward the sea. "He gnashes his teeth on the shore when the quest grows desperate, Would gulp the ocean, curl his lips round the world, Swallow the sky, to still the maddening multitude Of hounds and crickets, with their round whirling faces That creak and tick and yell from each blade of grass, Each drop of the sea, sand-grain, or bubble of air, Beast and fish and man and tree. Sometimes, Seeing the sun wane in the hand of God He flings himself toward the Evening Star Or prowls the abysses behind the throne of Saturn. Once at heaven's gate near the house of the Unicorn [56]

He found, new-wet with blood, a small bird's feathers And heard the whirring of cruel wings, but the night Confused his search and he sank down weeping Into the sea." The voice faded and lapsed And a hissing stick in the fire filled the silence. The sea was silent when the cackling voice concluded. Soon after, I and my bailiff took our leave, For the dawn was coming. We followed our old path, Retrieved our horses, and with hardly a word to each other Returned to this castle Forstness where I write. If I thought at all, it was only to dwell slightly On the story-teller's later question: "Old man, What do you say to our tale?" While Bern watched me With a small smile, I whispered something at last: "Do you recall that your Ambleth had a friend, Honorio, with whom he saw the ghost, And who, as you tell it, warned him of the trap Set by the King-well, I was this Honorio" They fell into an ecstasy of laughter. And another said, poking a stick in the fire: "There is one point that has ever puzzled me About this tale. How is it that the madman, When treed over the pool, was not detected By the beasts below? A weasel's got a nose Can whiff a fat goose at a hundred furlongs, With the wind at his back, I'll vouch."

[57]

And said another: "What of Reynard? H e can smell his lady in heat A t ten mile." "Ho ho !" another chimed. "So Ambleth smelled like a vixen or a bitch? I thought there was something odd about the fellow." "And what of an eagle?" another interposed. "Though he hangs u p there no bigger than a dot H e can smell you out the mole beneath the leaf-" "He sees 'em!" another answered. "His eyes are keener T h a n a bailiff's or a-" "How comes it then H e failed, as he flew by, to see Ambleth" "And what of the fish? Fishes can smell-" "Not so !" T h e old man raised his hand. "Hush now, my sons. These were, remember, magical animals Whose senses differ-" "And what of the crickets and dogs? I had a lively bitch one time that barked With the very chirp of a cricket-" Like a cricket yourself

...

9)

"Bah, you chirp

We left them grumbling there While I, on the final lap, resumed the words Which I write here in the study at Forstness, after The earlier parts of the story written down In these past years, as the heart makes its summation, With a lucky mind to help that forgets nothing Of faces and voices at least-and too much of words.

[59]

AFTERWORD DAVID

SCOTT

KASTAN

Even as a young man, Hyam Plutzik was fully aware of "The artist's damnation, the rat of time" ("An Equation," 1949) that would "gnaw" at reputations, even at life itself. That ugly and unsparing rat took Plutzik's life before his fifty-first birthday, and indeed has too hungrily gnawed away at a reputation once vibrant and that now deserves to be firmly re-established. In the 1950s Plutzik was clearly recognized as among the generation of poets claiming the mantle of Frost and Jeffers, Stevens and MacLeish. In 1956, fourteen of his poems appeared in a volume entitled Fifteen Modern American Poets, surrounded by the work of contemporaries including Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, Theodore Roethke, Muriel Rukeyser, Delmore Schwartz, and Richard Wilbur. In 1959, Wesleyan University Press published his Apples from Shinar, along with volumes by Barbara Howes, Louis Simpson, and James Wright, as the first four publications in its newly established poetry series. A few years later, Thorn Gunn and Ted Hughes chose Plutzik to stand with Edgar Bowers, Howard Nemerov, Simpson, and William Stafford in their anthology Five American Poets, designed

[61]

to introduce the best of mid-century American poetry to a British audience. This might begin a romantic tale: of the young poet of great promise who didn't live long enough fully to develop his gift. But that wasn't Plutzik's fate. It is true that he died too young. But his gift did develop, indeed developed early, and the rat of time should not be allowed the last bite. Plutzik is a significant American poet, and his poem Horatio is one of the genuinely original and important American long poems. Time is Plutzik's subject, "the monomaniac passion, time" ("The Geese"), and in his carefully measured poetry, precise but never precious, he wins his victory over it. His is, in many regards, a familiar twentieth-century American success story. Born in Brooklyn in 1911 to Russian Jewish immigrants, he grew up speaking mainly Yiddish at home, not learning English until he began grammar school. He attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, on a scholarship, majoring in English. Mter graduation, he went on to Yale for graduate work. In his first year he won the Yale Poetry Prize (for a poem, "The Three," which he wrote, he later said with some embarrassment, "without half trying"). Plutzik left Yale after two years, taking a variety of jobs to support his poetry writing, which he soon recognized as a calling, demanding the full attention of his heart and mind. In 1940 he returned to Yale to finish his M.A., again winning the Poetry Prize (this time for "Death at the Purple Rim"). Soon after the attack at Pearl Harbor, like so many Americans, he enlisted in the armed forces, spending most of the war stationed in England as a lieutenant in the Army Air

[62]

Corps. During the war he met and married Tanya Roth, and when the war ended, he accepted a teaching position at the University of Rochester, where he taught until his death in 1962. But as Auden wrote, "A shilling life will give you all the facts." Plutzik's personal history explains too little about what matters. What is visible in Plutzik's biography is largely stereotypical, even his premature death; what might give insight is for the most part idiosyncratic and unrecoverable. Certainly his Jewishness determined some of what he saw, but little of what he wrote-of how he wrote. He recognized before many others the conventional and, precisely because conventional, repellent antisemitism of Eliot: ''You called me a name on such and such a day-/Do you remember?-you were speaking of Bleistein our brother, IThe barbarian with the black cigar, and the pockets/Ringing with cash" ("For T.S.E. Only"). And yet he recognized as well the difficulty of assimilation: "Notice with what careful nonchalance/He tries to be a Jew casually,lTo ignore the monster, the mountain-I A few thousand years of history" ("Portrait"). But however much he refused to "ignore" that "monster," he was not a Jewish poet, but a gifted poet who happened to be born Jewish. No more was he a war poet, though certainly his experience of the Second World War affected him deeply. "Hoist the bomb carefully into the belly I Of this great monster," he addresses the ground crew at an airbase in England: "and do not look too closely I At the work of your hands as you thread the fuse," all while musing:

[63]

Was there not a time when you turned aside to avoid Crushing a beetle or marring a spider's web? Well, man grows wiser and older-and wickeder too. "BOMBER BASE,"

1949

This seems to me one of the finest Second World War poems (arguably better, because less mannered and more ambivalent, than Richard Eberhart's "Fury of Aerial Bombardment"), but the achievement of the poem, no less than that of "For T.S.E. Only" or "Portrait," is a function of something that cannot be explained by his biography. The war was an accident of history, and of his history, to which his art gave shape and moral significance. Nor was he in any meaningful sense a "Fifties" poet, as a recent study names him, for though the majority of his writing was limited to the 1950s, that, of course, was a function of disease rather than desire; and while he could not escape the intellectual, social, and aesthetic concerns that swirled about him, his own writing determinedly resisted the fashions of thought or technique that produced the recognizable Cold War poetic gestures, now devalued as a weak moment of creativity trapped between the robust poetic energies of modernism and postmodernism. If he indeed fits the paradigm of "the new young poetprofessors" who assumed academic positions after the war, his poetry is less agreeable and more forbiddingand foreboding-than the short, charming, filigreed lyrics that makf~ up most of what was published and most of what is anthulogized today. Plutzik's poetry takes root, as it must, in his own history,

[64]

but it rises above it. His life records will not explain his distinctive temperament and the almost lapidary craftsmanship that it demanded. His art insists on seeing the world clearly and whole, without either cynicism or sentimentality. "Obsessed," as he says, "by the moral sense we call form," his hard-won verse is willing both to sorrow and rejoice in a world in which "Air is our element, but dust our strength" ("Trade-Talk," 1949). Always there is this doubleness: "Only a poem would give us this strange odor/Of death and the rose together" ("A Letter to Someone at Mt. Palomar," 1949). Always there is the knowledge that reality must be experienced in its totality: "Only a fool would cut the sea with a knife,lOr say to a wind: Exceed this line at your peril" ("Divisibility," 1949). What the poet does-what this poet does-is give us the clarity and the courage to experience this reality; his poems provide what Kenneth Burke called "equipment for living." His poems are not confessional; they refuse the emotional exhibitionism that has become the dominant contemporary poetic gesture. They are modest and restrained, even meditative, the record of his emotional and moral engagement with the world-and the means for our own. They are personal, no doubt, but what is at stake is never the personality of the poet but the exactness of the poet's vision, even if it is a vision only of the doubts and confusions that living in time gives rise to. The Poetic Process is lonely but theatrical, Improvisation before an empty house With the dread that prompter and stagehands will stay away.

[65]

The problem is always one of self-projection. Burbage must die while he wears Hamlet's beard; But also, strangely, when the tragedy is his own. To be, then, passionately impersonal Yet nourish the self, is the poetic dilemma. "THE POETIC PROCESS,"

1949

Plutzik is "passionately impersonal," poetically inhabiting a salutary midpoint between Eliot's passionless "impersonality" and the passionate self-absorption of many contemporary poets, as he enters and illuminates the often-frightening alleyways of experience, determined neither to shrink from what lurks there nor to pretend the alley is empty. He knows too well, as he says in the poem "To My Daughter," that You must learn soon, soon, that even love Can be no shield against the abstract demons: Time, cold and fire, and the law of pain. The law of things falling, and the law offorgetting.

The reiterated "soon" gives resigned voice to the recognition that the "abstract demons" will inevitably have their day, but the proffered knowledge-and the generosity of the accompanying belief that "The messengers, of faces and names known/Or of forms familiar, are innocent"turns what could be despair into a muted triumph of spirit, nourishing "the self," both his and our own. It is, however, in the long poem Horatio that Plutzik succeeds most remarkably. Published in 1961 (and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize that year), Horatio had oc-

[66 ]

cupied Plutzik for fifteen years, its earliest lines written during the war. Two excerpts had been published in the 1956 anthology Fifteen Modern American Poets, but the completed poem is a tour de force of poetic energy and moral imagination, "half wound, half wisecrack," in J. D. McClatchy's phrase from another context, which might crystallize this poem's delicate balance of comic invention and heartbreak. Plutzik audaciously writes a sequel to Hamlet, imagining a Horatio who as an honored counselor serves ten Danish kings, from "the first and second Fortinbras" to "the present King, Alexander," but whose real loyalty is always to Hamlet and to his wish that Horatio stay alive to rescue the Prince's reputation from history's inevitable misjudgments about his role in the unsettling events that end Shakespeare's play. Shakespeare had long figured in Plutzik's imagination, as certainly he must in any English-speaking poet's. An early poem is titled "The Airman Who Flew over Shakespeare's England," with Shakespeare as both the silent voice and singular guarantee of a capacious humanity that war threatens from within and without, just as he is in another early poem beginning, "I have read in the book of the butcher boy, William of Avon,lOf the deathless thyme," with the latent pun activated by its title's parenthetical addition, "(In Time of War)." But Horatio is a sustained engagement with Shakespeare's Hamlet, at once a brilliant reading of the play (as well as of the play's readings) and a no less brilliant meditation on history and responsibility, Shakespeare's themes made distinctively Plutzik's own. Written in three long sections, the poem chronicles

[ 67]

Horatio's failed efforts to redeem Hamlet's "hurt honor and name," the theme of his failure to tell Hamlet's story balanced by Plutzik's own brilliant telling. Initially Horatio is certain that his firsthand knowledge of the events can correct the wild rumors that have circulated about the Prince, but the poem's fundamental irony is that he never gives full voice to (or finds sympathetic ear for) his understanding of what has taken place, any more than he does in Shakespeare's play. History escapes its actors and witnesses. At an inn, Horatio meets a stableman eager to tell him about "the witless Hamlet who murdered his father last year," but when Horatio insists that this is untrue ("'Believe me,' I cried, 'I am Horatio,lFriend of the dear Prince Hamlet-"') the ignorant ostler remains unpersuaded and unpersuadable, unwilling even to accept the identity of his informant: "A pleasant lie! I know you. You're a scholar/Going to study Pluto and Harris Tuttle/ At Wittenberg." The real Horatio, the ostler insists, "passed through our town this very weeki (Though I did not see him)-a smooth and ample man." The truth has no purchase, indeed is of no real interest to anyone. In Wittenberg, Horatio visits his old Professor Faustus (still, we are told, a few years before his damning bargain with the devil), and though the doctor claims interest in the story of Hamlet, he finds Horatio's insistence "That Hamlet was justified" shallow and irrelevant. ''You speak like a sophomore, in petty terms," interrupts Faustus, who is, like some proto-Heideggerian, interested mainly in the ghost and Yorick's skull as images of spirit and matter, and in history only as a parable of his own metaphysical concerns. Off next to Paris where, at an el-

[68 ]

egant cocktail party, Horatio is introduced to Monsieur de Pattes, the popular author of a "gory" history of the Danish Prince, as someone "Who knew the very Hamlet of your story"; but Horatio's presence is met only with a "stony stare" from the Frenchman and the supercilious query: "Have you read my book?" And the polite, "I am afraid not," generates merely a curt, "Well, you should have," as the Frenchman turns aside to grab a "pickled prawn" from the passing hors d'oeuvres tray. Once back in Denmark, Horatio fares no better with his task, but the situational comedy begins to give way to something darker. Summoned to a meeting with the prime minister, Horatio is not so subtly warned off his "strange and dangerous infatuation/With the memory of that mad old Prince Hamlet" and reminded that nothing Horatio knows will stand up in court: "the only man who 'heard' the ghostly palaver/Was he who stood, or hoped, to profit the most/By his capable Uncle's death." The truth is irrelevant; the truth is dangerous. History's job is only to present the past "in a way that is best for Denmark/ And so (to skip some of the schoolmen's logic)/Is true, if truth there is." And the conversation, with its unmistakable if unspoken menace, is brought to an end with a smooth, "But how we babble on, eh, old fellow," as Horatio is deftly shown the door, no more able here than in any of the earlier episodes to revise the misrepresentations of Hamlet and redeem his reputation. In the poem's second section, Horatio learns of another version of the events he has lived through, now circulating among the "hill shepherds" living on the outskirts of his estate. His history has there been recast as myth, re-

[69]

moved to "the sorrowful time of the old dusk/Before the sun of Christ gave light to the world" and repopulated with characters whose actions and names (Ambleth, Fang, and Gerta) often recall the Jutland prehistory that indirectly provided Shakespeare with the source of his play. In the shepherds' legend, the avenging Prince strangles his uncle and casts his body into the sea, discovers from his mother, just before she kills herself, that his murderous uncle was in fact his father, the man with whom she had long been having an affair, and then, in his guilt and grief, drowns himself, sinking "weeping/Into the sea." All before the legend reaches the transformations that give the story its meaning. First Ambleth turns into various animal shapes before he "rises .. .lHugely upon the air" to enter "the mansion of the High God." But, characteristically for Plutzik, eternity offers no comfort, only the inescapability of history in God's enduring present. As Ambleth gazes over "the endless plain of flickering grass," he "springs from the battlements, and sinks,! A shooting star to the lonely beach of the sea / Below the fortress Elsinore," where once again "he enters the dark waves." Horatio's knowledge of what actually happened cannot correct this mythologized version of Hamlet's story any more than it could the ignorant, abstracted, self-satisfied, or cynical distortions presented in the poem's first part. He tries of course to demystify the legend: "Do you recall," he eagerly asks the shepherds, "that your Ambleth had a friend/Honorio, with whom he saw the ghost,! And who, as you tell it, warned him of the trap/Set by the King-well, I was this Honorio." But the shepherds think

[70]

this only a fine joke, immediately falling "into an ecstasy of laughter." Their liege lord Horatio cannot be Honorio, any more than the mythic Ambleth could be some historical person inhabiting a world anything like the one they live in or someone whom any contemporary might have befriended. By the end, an aged Horatio belatedly accepts that his experience of events is irrelevant to their meanings, that history is not assured "merely because it happened," and that he has therefore failed his friend, the Prince who had asked of him only "to report me and my cause aright" (Hamlet, 5.2.315). "A friend one time gave me a task to dol And I did not do it," he says with resignation. And it is his failure, and history's failure, that is the poem's plangent subject, a failure no less inevitable than it is bitter, and redeemable only in and by imagination, which is the consolation Horatio bravely offers. In the final section, Horatio discovers "the heartbreaking sorrow," in Milan Kundera's words, "of a promise that cannot be realized." He wrestles with his failure, trying, at first, to escape his own judgment. He knows that he will never fulfill the charge of his friend, but now considers whether it could have been done at all. What he has slowly, so very slowly, learned about history (the pace itself part of what is there to be learned) reveals the impossibility of his commission, leading him to wonder, "was there some other task/Hidden within the words and shape of this/That should have drawn my purpose?" Temporarily he consoles himself with the possibility that Hamlet made his demand not from self-concern but selflessly, only to keep Horatio from the suicide he desired:

[ 7J]

"There was but one appeal! Could stay my will: a final cry for succor,lThat I be guardian of your honor and name." But though he tries to convince himself of Hamlet's secret purpose, Horatio finally cannot escape the knowledge of his betrayal of his friend, recognizing that in the very voicing of this alternative understanding of Hamlet's charge he has become not the guardian of Hamlet's name but a collaborator in its wounding-and all that remains is to try to forgive himself for his failure, seeking "the solace of the night air," and at least imagining a "fugitive grace" in the heard song of a lark and in the moonlit sight of a "broad-antlered" stag. But this is almost literally a whistling in the dark. The final section IS called "The Lark at Heaven's Gate," a quotation from Shakespeare's Cymbeline, but the lark that sings in Shakespeare's song sings at dawn, as "Phoebus 'gins arise" (2.3.21); here the bird sings at midnight and the stag returns to the shadows. Plutzik claims no easy victories, even from-especially from-the familiar symbolic gestures of high modernist poetry. Those too will be subjected to Plutzik's unsentimental, often austere, vision, which always prefers the compromises of time, with its cycles of "growing and fading," so tellingly ordered ("A Philosopher in the Mountain"), to the absolutes of eternity, however limpid and enduring. These are not what make us human, or what allow us to discover our humanity. In the title of an early poem, "The Importance of Poetry, or the Coming Forth from Eternity into Time," Plutzik admits his commitment. Another poet would find the importance of poetry in its intimations of immortality. For Plutzik the importance is not that it is the place where the temporal reveals the eternal but where the [72]

eternal gives way to the temporal. Intimations of mortality are what he seeks, though they are all too easy to find, peeking through the rents in our dreams and desires. He is willing to stipulate that "Beyond the image of the willow/There is a willow no man knows/Or watches with corruptible eyes." But that Platonic willow hardly matters to him. It is only in time that "the willow-image" may "do grace to a bird." Here is the "fugitive grace" from which Horatio's heart might "take its ease," though it is a grace that will last "Not for forever, but only a day." That may be all the grace that either Horatio or we can get. But illuminated in Plutzik's poised and purposeful poems, that is grace enough.

[ 73]

Hyam Plutzik. poet and English professor a t the University of Rochester, was born July 13. 1911. in Brooklyn, New York. He was the son of Russian Jewish emigrants, who arrived in the United States in 1905. Plutzik graduated from Trinity College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1932. He continued his study of literature and poetry with a two-year fellowship from Trinity College to Yale University Graduate School. Throughout his career. Plutzik published poems in journals and magazines such a s Poetry. Yale Reuiew, A n -

tioch Review, Kenyon Review, Sewanee Reuieu~.Prairie Schooner, Accent, and The Nation. In 1950 he received for Aspects of Proteus one of six awards given by the Ameri-

can Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1951 he shared the California Borestone Mountain Poetry Award with Rolfe Humphries, and in 1959 he received the University of Rochester's Lillian P. Fairchild Award for Apples from Shinar. Plutzik died of cancer on January 8. 1962, a t the age of fifty. He was survived by his wife. Tanya Roth Plutzik. and their four children. Since his death. his poems have been included in many anthologies. such as Five American Poets (1963), The Voice That Is Great Within U s (1970), Beginnings i n Poetry (1973), and Voices within the Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets (1980). In 1987 H y a m Plutzik: The Collected Poems was published b y BOA Editions.

David Scott Kastan is the George M. Bodman Professor of English at Yale University and one of the most widely read of American literary scholars. He is the editor of T h e Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature (2005) and the author of Shakespeare and the Book (2001).