{"id":58,"date":"2010-11-19T18:19:52","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T23:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/?p=58"},"modified":"2010-11-19T18:19:52","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T23:19:52","slug":"a-quartet-of-poems-by-weldon-kees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/2010\/58\/poems\/a-quartet-of-poems-by-weldon-kees\/","title":{"rendered":"A Quartet of Poems by Weldon Kees"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Speakers<\/strong><\/p>\n

“A equals X,” says Mister One.
\n“A equals B,” says Mister Two.
\n“A equals nothing under the sun
\nBut A,” says Mister Three. A few
\nApplaud; some wipe their eyes;
\nSome linger in the shade to see
\nOne and Two in neat disguise
\nDecapitating Mister Three.<\/p>\n

“This age is not entirely bad.”
\nIt’s bad enough, God knows, but you
\nShould know Elizabethans had
\nSweeneys and Mrs. Porters too.
\nThe past goes down and disappears,
\nThe present stumbles home to bed,
\nThe future stretches out in years
\nThat no one knows, and you’ll be dead.<\/p>\n

A Distance from the Sea<\/strong><\/p>\n

To Ernest Brace<\/p>\n

And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was
\nabout to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto
\nme, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and
\nwrite them not. \u2014REVELATIONS, x, 4.<\/em><\/p>\n

That raft we rigged up, under the water,
\nWas just the item: when he walked,
\nWith his robes blowing, dark against the sky,
\nIt was as though the unsubstantial waves held up
\nHis slender and inviolate feet. The gulls flew over,
\nDropping, crying alone; thin ragged lengths of cloud
\nDrifted in bars across the sun. There on the shore
\nThe crowd\u2019s response was instantaneous. He
\nHandled it well, I thought\u2014the gait, the tilt of the head, just right.
\nLong streaks of light were blinding on the waves.
\nAnd then we knew our work well worth the time:
\nThe days of sawing, fitting, all those nails,
\nThe tiresome rehearsals, considerations of execution.
\nBut if you want a miracle, you have to work for it,
\nLay your plans carefully and keep one jump
\nAhead of the crowd. To report a miracle
\nIs a pleasure unalloyed; but staging one requires
\nTact, imagination, a special knack for the job
\nNot everyone possesses. A miracle<\/em>, in fact, means work<\/em>.
\n\u2014And now there are those who have come saying
\nThat miracles were not what we were after. But what else
\nIs there? What other hope does life hold out
\nBut the miraculous, the skilled and patient
\nExecution, the teamwork, all the pain and worry every miracle involves?<\/p>\n

Visionaries tossing in their beds, haunted and racked
\nBy questions of Messiahship and eschatology,
\nAre like the mist rising at nightfall, and come,
\nPerhaps to even less. Grave supernaturalists, devoted worshippers
\nExperience the ecstasy (such as it is), but not
\nOur ecstasy. It was our making. Yet sometimes
\nWhen the torrent of that time
\nComes pouring back, I wonder at our courage
\nAnd our enterprise. It was as though the world
\nHad been one darkening, abandoned hall
\nWhere rows of unlit candles stood; and we
\nNot out of love, so much, or hope, or even worship, but
\nOut of the fear of death, came with our lights
\nAnd watched the candles, one by one, take fire, flames
\nAgainst the long night of our fear. We thought
\nThat we could never die. Now I am less convinced.
\n\u2014The traveller on the plain makes out the mountains
\nAt a distance; then he loses sight. His way
\nWinds through the valleys; then, at a sudden turning of a path,
\nThe peaks stand nakedly before him: they are something else
\nThan what he saw below. I think now of the raft
\n(For me, somehow, the summit of the whole experience)
\nAnd all the expectations of that day, but also of the cave
\nWe stocked with bread, the secret meetings
\nIn the hills, the fake assassins hired for the last pursuit,
\nThe careful staging of the cures, the bribed officials,
\nThe angels\u2019 garments, tailored faultlessly,
\nThe medicines administered behind the stone,
\nThat ultimate cloud, so perfect, and so opportune.
\nWho managed all that blood I never knew.<\/p>\n

The days get longer. It was a long time ago.
\nAnd I have come to that point in the turning of the path
\nWhere peaks are infinite\u2014horn-shaped and scaly, choked with
\n thorns.
\n But even here, I know our work was worth the cost.
\n What we have brought to pass, no one can take away.
\n Life offers up no miracles, unfortunately, and needs assistance.
\n Nothing will be the same as once it was,
\n I tell myself.\u2014It\u2019s dark here on the peak, and keeps on getting
\n darker.
\n It seems I am experiencing a kind of ecstasy.
\n Was it sunlight on the waves that day? The night comes down.
\n And now the water seems remote, unreal, and perhaps it is.<\/p>\n

Interregnum<\/strong><\/p>\n

Butcher the evil millionaire, peasant,
\nAnd leave him stinking in the square.
\nTorture the chancellor. Leave the ambassador
\nStrung by his thumbs from the pleasant
\nEmbassy wall, where the vines were.
\nThen drill your hogs and sons for another war.<\/p>\n

Fire on the screaming crowd, ambassador,
\nSick chancellor, brave millionaire,
\nAnd name them by the name that is your name.
\nGive privilege to the wound, and maim
\nThe last resister. Poison the air
\nAnd mew for peace, for order, and for war.<\/p>\n

View with alarm, participant, observer,
\nBuried in medals from the time before.
\nWhisper, then believe and serve and die
\nAnd drape fresh bunting on the hemisphere
\nFrom here to India. This is the world you buy
\nWhen the wind blows fresh for war.<\/p>\n

Hide in the dark alone, objector;
\nAsk a grenade what you are living for,
\nOr drink this knowledge from the mud.
\nTo an abyss more terrible than war
\nDescend and tunnel toward a barrier
\nAway from anything that moves with blood.<\/p>\n

End of the Library<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the coal
\nGave out, we began
\nBurning the books, one by one;
\nFirst the set
\nOf Bulwer-Lytton
\nAnd then the Walter Scott.
\nThey gave a lot of warmth.
\nToward the end, in
\nFebruary, flames
\nConsumed the Greek
\nTragedians and Baudelaire,
\nProust, Robert Burton
\nAnd the Po-Chu-i. Ice
\nThickened on the sills.
\nMore for the sake of the cat,
\nWe said, than for ourselves,
\nWho huddled, shivering,
\nAgainst the stove
\nAll winter long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Speakers “A equals X,” says Mister One. “A equals B,” says Mister Two. “A equals nothing under the sun But A,” says Mister Three. A few Applaud; some wipe their eyes; Some linger in the shade to see One and Two in neat disguise Decapitating Mister Three. “This age is not entirely bad.” It’s […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/59"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}