(Anonymous Photo)
FIVE POEMS ABOUT POETY
—George Oppen (1908-1984)
1
THE GESTURE
The question is: how does one hold an apple
Who likes apples
And how does one handle
Filth? The question is
How does one hold something
In the mind which he intends
To grasp and how does the salesman
Hold a bauble he intends
To sell? The question is
When will there not be a hundred
Poets who mistake that gesture
For a style.
2
THE LITTLE HOLE
The little hole in the eye
Williams called it, the little hole
Has exposed us naked
To the world
And will not close.
Blankly the world
Looks in
And we compose
Colors
And the sense
Of home
And there are those
In it so violent
And so alone
They cannot rest.
3
THAT LAND
Sing like a bird at the open
Sky, but no bird
Is a man—
Like the grip
Of the Roman hand
On his shoulder, the certainties
Of place
And of time
Held him, I think
With the pain and the casual horror
Of the iron and may have left
No hope of doubt
Whereas we have won doubt
From the iron itself
And hope in death. So that
If a man lived forever he would outlive
Hope. I imagine open sky
Over Gethsemane,
Surely it was this sky.
4
PAROUSIA
Impossible to doubt the world: it can be seen
And because it is irrevocable
It cannot be understood, and I believe that fact is lethal
And man may find his catastrophe,
His Millennium of obsession.
air moving,
a stone on a stone,
something balanced momentarily, in time might the lion
Lie down in the forest, less fierce
And solitary
Than the world, the walls
Of whose future may stand forever.
5
FROM VIRGIL
I, says the buzzard,
I—
Mind
Has evolved
Too long
If ‘life is a search
For advantage.’
‘At whose behest
Does the mind think?’ Art
Also is not good
For us
Unless like the fool
Persisting
In his folly
It may rescue us
As only the true
Might rescue us, gathered
In the smallest corners
Of man’s triumph. Parve puer . . . ‘Begin,
O small boy,
To be born;
On whom his parents have not smiled
No god thinks worthy of his table,
No goddess of her bed’
______________________
—Medusa
For more about George Oppen, go to www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/george-oppen/. To hear his reading of this poem, go to www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238468/.
—George Oppen (1908-1984)
1
THE GESTURE
The question is: how does one hold an apple
Who likes apples
And how does one handle
Filth? The question is
How does one hold something
In the mind which he intends
To grasp and how does the salesman
Hold a bauble he intends
To sell? The question is
When will there not be a hundred
Poets who mistake that gesture
For a style.
2
THE LITTLE HOLE
The little hole in the eye
Williams called it, the little hole
Has exposed us naked
To the world
And will not close.
Blankly the world
Looks in
And we compose
Colors
And the sense
Of home
And there are those
In it so violent
And so alone
They cannot rest.
3
THAT LAND
Sing like a bird at the open
Sky, but no bird
Is a man—
Like the grip
Of the Roman hand
On his shoulder, the certainties
Of place
And of time
Held him, I think
With the pain and the casual horror
Of the iron and may have left
No hope of doubt
Whereas we have won doubt
From the iron itself
And hope in death. So that
If a man lived forever he would outlive
Hope. I imagine open sky
Over Gethsemane,
Surely it was this sky.
4
PAROUSIA
Impossible to doubt the world: it can be seen
And because it is irrevocable
It cannot be understood, and I believe that fact is lethal
And man may find his catastrophe,
His Millennium of obsession.
air moving,
a stone on a stone,
something balanced momentarily, in time might the lion
Lie down in the forest, less fierce
And solitary
Than the world, the walls
Of whose future may stand forever.
5
FROM VIRGIL
I, says the buzzard,
I—
Mind
Has evolved
Too long
If ‘life is a search
For advantage.’
‘At whose behest
Does the mind think?’ Art
Also is not good
For us
Unless like the fool
Persisting
In his folly
It may rescue us
As only the true
Might rescue us, gathered
In the smallest corners
Of man’s triumph. Parve puer . . . ‘Begin,
O small boy,
To be born;
On whom his parents have not smiled
No god thinks worthy of his table,
No goddess of her bed’
______________________
—Medusa
For more about George Oppen, go to www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/george-oppen/. To hear his reading of this poem, go to www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238468/.