Apples from Shinar - Hyam Plutzik Wesleyan Poetry Program

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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 façade:

      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?

      BEWARE, SAUNTERER, OF THIS DESPERADO, A 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.

      THE AIRMAN WHO FLEW OYER 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.

      Over the castle of Warwick frightened birds Are fleeing,

      And on the bridge, faces upturned to a roaring Falcon.

      THE PRIEST EKRANATH

      I who am sanctified—

      Having 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 priests—

      Must 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

      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.

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