The People, Yes Page 20
To a Long Island Sound country mansion he fled and in a scarlet English hunting coat shot pheasants by the hundreds with retainers loading the guns for him and his guests; to Buckingham Palace he flitted, to the African gold coast, to the Riviera, to Biarritz, to nowhere among multiplied nothings, from wife to wife and tweedledum to tweedledee, in car, yacht and plane fleeing from No-man’s land, with a personal service staff of twenty-two when counted, and always from the Lake Shore Drive one blue of water meeting another blue of skyline.
And who are these others?
Why, they are the three tailors of Tooley Street, signing themselves, “We, the people,”
Having an audacity easier to look at than three others, namely, one prime minister, one banker, one munitions maker, in the name of the people letting loose a war.
These others, you may have read, are “the great unwashed,” “the hoi polloi,” they are indicated with gestures:
“The rabble,” “the peepul,” “the mob with its herd instinct in its wild stampede,” “the irresponsible ragtag and bobtail”—
Can they also be the multitude fed by a miracle on loaves and fishes, les misérables in a pit, in a policed abyss of want?
Was it this same miscellany heard the Sermon on the Mount, the Gettysburg Speech, the Armistice Day news when confetti dotted the window-sills and white paper blew in snowdrifts on the city streets?
And in the Gettysburg speech was it written, “of the peepul, by the peepul, and for the peepul”?
When they gather the voices and prints from above what most often do they hear and read?
They are told to go north and south at once, for liberty, to go east and west at once, for liberty.
The advice is pounded in their ears, “Go up, go down, stand where you are, for liberty.”
In one ear comes the clamor, “You are damned if you do,” in the other ear, “You are damned if you don’t.”
And when liberty is all washed up the dictators say:
“You are the greatest people on earth and we shall shoot only as many of you as necessary.”
Out of this mass are shaped
Armies, navies, work gangs, wrecking crews.
Here are the roars to shake walls
and set roofs shuddering,
Hecklers ready with hoots, howls, boos, meeouw,
Bronx cheers, the razzberry, the bum’s rush,
Straw hats by thousands thrown from the bleachers,
Pop bottles by hundreds aimed at an umpire,
The units of the bargain sale crush, the subway jam,
The office building emptying its rush hour stream,
The millions at radio sets for an earful,
The millions turning newspaper pages for an eyeful:
This is the source and the headwater
Of tomorrow’s Niagara of action, monotony, action,
rapids, plungers, whirlpool and mist
of the people and by the people,
a long street and a vast field of faces,
faces across an immeasurable mural,
faces shifting on an incalculable panel,
touched and dented with line and contrast,
potatoes winking at cherry blossoms,
roses here and ashes of roses there,
thomapple branches hung with redhaws,
hickory side by side with moss violets,
the mangelwurzer elbowing the orchid.
Here is a huggermugger becoming
a cloud of witnesses, a juggernaut,
the Mississippi asking the peaks of the Rockies,
“How goes it?”
a hallelujah chorus forever changing its star soloists,
taking pyramid, pagoda and skyscraper in its stride,
having survival elements and gifts in perpetuity,
requiring neither funeral march, memorial nor epitaph.
Why should the continuing generations
who replenish themselves in the everliving earth
need any tall symbol set up to be gazed at
as a sign they are gone, past, through,
when they are here yet,
so massively and chorally here yet
in a multitudinous trampling
of shoes and wheels, hands and tools, having heard:
“The voice of the people is the voice of God,”
having heard, “Be ye comforted for your dreams shall come true on earth by your own works,”
having heard, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
The wheel turns.
The wheel comes to a standstill.
The wheel waits.
The wheel turns.
“Something began me
and it had no beginning:
something will end me
and it has no end.”
The people is a long shadow
trembling around the earth,
stepping out of fog gray into smoke red
and back from smoke red into fog gray
and lost on parallels and meridians
learning by shock and wrangling,
by heartbreak so often and loneliness so raw
the laugh comes at least half true,
“My heart was made to be broken.”
“Man will never write,”
they said before the alphabet came
and man at last began to write.
“Man will never fly,”
they said before the planes and blimps
zoomed and purred in arcs
winding their circles around the globe.
“Man will never make the United States of Europe
nor later yet the United States of the World,
“No, you are going too far when you talk about one
world flag for the great Family of Nations,”
they say that now.
And man the stumbler and finder, goes on,
man the dreamer of deep dreams,
man the shaper and maker,
man the answerer.
The first wheel maker saw a wheel, carried
in his head a wheel, and one day found his
hands shaping a wheel, the first wheel.
The first wagon makers saw a wagon, joined
their hands and out of air, out of what
had lived in their minds, made the first
wagon.
One by one man alone and man joined
has made things with his hands
beginning in the fog wisp of a dim imagining
resulting in a tool, a plan, a working model,
bones joined to breath being alive
in wheels within wheels, ignition, power,
transmission, reciprocals, beyond man alone,
alive only with man joined.
Where to? what next?
Man the toolmaker, tooluser,
son of the burning quests
fixed with roaming forearms,
hands attached to the forearms,
fingers put on those hands,
a thumb to face any finger—
hands cunning with knives, leather, wood,
hands for twisting, weaving, shaping—
Man the flint grinder, iron and bronze welder,
smoothing mud into hut walls,
smoothing reinforced concrete into
bridges, breakwaters, office buildings—
two hands projected into vast claws, giant hammers,
into diggers, haulers, lifters.
The clamps of the big steam shovel? man’s two hands:
the motor hurling man into high air? man’s two hands:
the screws of his skulled head
joining the screws of his hands,
pink convolutions transmitting to white knuckles
waves, signals, buttons, sparks—
man with hands for loving and strangling,
man with the open palm of living handshakes,
man with the closed nails of the fist of combat—
these hands of man—where to? what next?
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The breathing of the earth
may be heard along with
the music of the sea
in their joined belongings.
Consider the ears of a donkey
and the varied languages entering them.
Study the deep-sea squid
and see how he does only what he has to,
how the wild ducks of autumn
come flying in a shifting overhead scroll,
how rats earn a living and survive
and pass on their tough germ plasms
to children who can live where others die.
Mink are spotlessly clean for special reasons.
The face of a goat has profound contemplations.
Only a fish can do the autobiography of a fish.
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An aster, a farewell-summer flower, stays long in the last fall weeks,
Lingers in fence corners where others have shivered and departed.
The whites have mentioned it as the last-rose-of-summer, the red man saying, “It-brings-the-frost.”
Late in the morning and only when sun-warmed does the flower-of-an-hour, the good-night-at-noon, open a while and then close its blossoms.
Even in the noon sun the scarlet pimpernel may shut its petals, as a storm sign, earning its ancient name of wink-a-peep and sometimes called the poor-man’s-weather-glass.
John-go-to-bed-at-noon is the goat’s beard plant shutting itself at twelve o’clock and showing again only when the next day’s sun is out.
One looped vine of the hop-growers is a kiss-me-quick and more than one red flower blooming in rock corners is a love-lies-bleeding or a look-up-and-kiss-me.
The saskatoon is a shadblow looming white in the spring weeks when the shad are up the rivers and spawning,
And hanging its branches with the June berry, the Indian cherry, it is still the saskatoon fed by the melted snows of chinooks.
The toadflax, the ox-eye daisy, the pussy willow, rabbit bells, buffalo clover, swamp candles and wafer ash,
These with the windrose and the rockrose, lady slippers, loosestrife, thomapples, dragon’s blood, old man’s flannel,
And the horse gentian, dog laurel, cat tails, snakeroot, spiderwort, pig weed, sow thistle, skunk cabbage, goose grass, moonseed, poison hemlock,
These with the names on names between horse radish and the autumn-flowering orchid of a lavish harvest moon—
These are a few of the names clocked and pronounced by the people in the moving of the earth from season to season.
The red and white men traded plants and words back and forth.
The Shawnee haw and the Choctaw root, the paw paw, the potato, the cohosh and your choice of the yellow puccoon or white,
A cork elm or a western buckthorn or a burning bush, each a wahoo and all of the wahoo family
These from the tongues of name givers, from a restless name changer, the people.
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The sea only knows the bottom of the ship.
One grain of wheat holds all the stars.
The bosoms of the wise are the tombs of secrets.
When you must, walk as if on egg shells.
It looks good but is it foolproof?
Only a poor fisherman curses the river he fishes in.
I can read your writing but I can’t read your mind.
Threatened men live long.
The glad hand became the icy mitt.
Applause is the beginning of abuse.
If born to be hanged you shall never be drowned.
Life without a friend is death without a witness.
Sleep is the image of death.
Six feet of earth make us all of one size.
The oldest man that ever lived died at last.
The turnip looked big till the pumpkin walked in.
The dime looked different when the dollar arrived.
Who said you are the superintendent?
Spit on your hands and go to work.
Three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.
We won’t see it but our children will
Everything is in the books.
Too many books overload the mind.
Who knows the answers?
Step by step one goes far.
The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
Sow wind and you reap whirlwind.
A hundred years is not much but never is a long while. 246
A good blacksmith likes a snootful of smoke.
Fire is a good servant and a bad master.
You can fight fire with fire.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise.
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Who could live without hope?
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Sayings, sentences, what of them?
Flashes, lullabies, are they worth remembering?
On the babbling tongues of the people have these been kept.
In the basic mulch of human culture are these grown.
Along with myths of rainbow gold where you shovel all you want and take it away,
Along with hopes of a promised land, a homestead farm, and a stake in the country,
Along with prayers for a steady job, a chicken in the pot and two cars in the garage, the life insurance paid, and a home your own.
In sudden flash and in massive chaos
the tunes and cries of the people
rise in the scripts of Bach and Moussorgsky.
The people handle the food you eat, the clothes you wear,
and stick by stick and stone by stone
the houses you live in, roof and walls,
and wheel by wheel, tire by tire,
part by part your assembled car,
and the box car loadings of long and short hauls.
Those who have nothing stand in two pressures.
Either what they once had was taken away
Or they never had more than subsistence.
Long ago an easy category was provided for them:
“They live from hand to mouth,”
Having the name of homy-handed sons of toil.
From these hands howsoever homy, from these sons,
Pours a living cargo of overwhelming plenty
From land and mill into the world markets.
Their pay for this is what is handed them.
Or they take no pay at all if the labor market is glutted,
Losing out on pay if the word is: