On a street without light, in a place I would not leave,
I left the windows open to hear the
drone of cars
on the highway
three winding miles below.
Two miles down in the other direction
the bell from a gray, stone church
tolled each hour.
At noon its
congested hymn struggled to uplift me.
When I moved to the valley the sound did not carry.
I no longer measured time with the
tools and percussion
of drum, hammer,
anvil, or stirrup.
I measured it with stamen, pistil, bees, and wind,
then closed the windows; these difficult, temporal imbalances
could not survive
the valley of their making. *
Makes me think of Iris Murdoch. I love this idea of the survival and making with which it ends. Favorite line: I measured it with stamen, pistil, bees, and wind,
ReplyDelete* paying homage to Wilbur in the last two lines.
ReplyDeleteI love "congested hymn" and the rhythmic beauty of "percussion / of drum, hammer, anvil, or stirrup" - the last word here, startlingly dissonant an image (cowboy, horses, etc.). I, too, like the "stame, pistil, bees, and wind' line, though the last two homage-lines feels too easy, d.Bully, as if you went to the abstract for simple closure . . . I don't know. Earlier, the lines, "on the highway three winding miles below. / Two miles down in the other direction" - confuse the speaker's location. Maybe the word "down" is dissonant with the image of ascent? Great sounds throughout.
DeleteI will consider your suggestions. I'm ok with the the "down" section, but I'll look at the last two lines. The original version was longer and the title was a line from an Auden poem, so it was bookended differently. I think the poem might be about the fact that sometimes the closer you get to something the less you know.
DeleteJoel always seems to point out my favorite lines before I do. But I also like "When I moved to the valley the sound did not carry." It has that sonnet-like sense of stark transition. And I dig the way the poem seems to carry multiple meanings to "anemophily": the initial description of the bees and wind, the poet drifting thru the poem's geography on wind and sound, the poem itself carrying the seed of meaning to the reader. Very cool.
ReplyDelete"I would not leave / I left"
ReplyDelete