02-01-2022, 09:53 AM
This isn't a song I love,
but I got the book today
and this is the first poem in the book,
or was,
it's been ripped out.
I
Against the burly air I strode,
Where the tight ocean heaves its load,
Crying the miracles of God.
And first I brought the sea to bear
Upon the dead weight of the land;
And the waves flourished at my prayer,
The rivers spawned their sand.
And where the streams were salt and full,
The tough pig-headed salmon strove,
Curbing the ebb and the tide’s pull
To reach the steady hills above.
II
The second day I stood and saw
The osprey plunge with triggered claw,
Feathering blood along the shore,
To lay the living sinew bare.
III
And I renounced, on the fourth day,
This fierce and unregenerate clay,
Building as a huge myth for man
The watery Leviathan,
And made the glove-winged albatross
Scour the ashes of the sea
Where Capricorn and Zero cross,
A brooding immortality—
Such as the charméd phoenix has
In the unwithering tree.
IV
The phoenix burns as cold as frost;
And, like a legendary ghost
The phantom-bird goes wild and lost,
Upon pointless ocean tossed.
So, the fifth day, I turned again
To flesh and blood and the blood’s pain.
V
On the sixth day, as I rode
In haste about the works of God,
With spurs I plucked the horse’s blood.
By blood we live, the hot, the cold
To ravage and redeem the world:
There is no bloodless myth will hold.
And by Christ’s blood are men made free
Though in close shrouds their bodies lie
Under the rough pelt of the sea;
Though Earth has rolled beneath her weight
The bones that cannot bear the light.
I currently like playing this game of clashing highly intentionally learned and allusive poets like Geoffrey Hill and Jay Wright with no-less well-read, but exploding, spontaneous Romantic type poets like Victor Hugo and Friedrich Holderlin. Not types, peoples.
And I'm adding more Thomas Hardy to the mix. The cruel man.
but I got the book today
and this is the first poem in the book,
or was,
it's been ripped out.
I
Against the burly air I strode,
Where the tight ocean heaves its load,
Crying the miracles of God.
And first I brought the sea to bear
Upon the dead weight of the land;
And the waves flourished at my prayer,
The rivers spawned their sand.
And where the streams were salt and full,
The tough pig-headed salmon strove,
Curbing the ebb and the tide’s pull
To reach the steady hills above.
II
The second day I stood and saw
The osprey plunge with triggered claw,
Feathering blood along the shore,
To lay the living sinew bare.
III
And I renounced, on the fourth day,
This fierce and unregenerate clay,
Building as a huge myth for man
The watery Leviathan,
And made the glove-winged albatross
Scour the ashes of the sea
Where Capricorn and Zero cross,
A brooding immortality—
Such as the charméd phoenix has
In the unwithering tree.
IV
The phoenix burns as cold as frost;
And, like a legendary ghost
The phantom-bird goes wild and lost,
Upon pointless ocean tossed.
So, the fifth day, I turned again
To flesh and blood and the blood’s pain.
V
On the sixth day, as I rode
In haste about the works of God,
With spurs I plucked the horse’s blood.
By blood we live, the hot, the cold
To ravage and redeem the world:
There is no bloodless myth will hold.
And by Christ’s blood are men made free
Though in close shrouds their bodies lie
Under the rough pelt of the sea;
Though Earth has rolled beneath her weight
The bones that cannot bear the light.
I currently like playing this game of clashing highly intentionally learned and allusive poets like Geoffrey Hill and Jay Wright with no-less well-read, but exploding, spontaneous Romantic type poets like Victor Hugo and Friedrich Holderlin. Not types, peoples.
And I'm adding more Thomas Hardy to the mix. The cruel man.