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Poetry || SubmissionsThe Oregon CantoRichard Bear "What this old geezer has endured for us I can't imagine; sunny Italy all that time, and him wading that River Styx in his brain: could you write a poem for fifty years?" Not I, but then I'm only another clerking man knocking out statistics on earnest youth year in, year out, another kind of work. So, occasionally, between a Friday and a Monday, because they've let us out of school, we drones scatter across the landscape, picking up stones and spotting them across smooth water, or stumping up steep paths beneath dark firs, hoping to glimpse something or other from an abandoned fireman's hut. We talk of Ezra Pound, or metaphysical stuff: does God have an anus? or: see the black bark on the older trees here on the south side? Fire ran up to the crest and died out, because heat rises, and the north slope is always dripping wet. Odysseus never slept here; or if he did, then Circe would never have made pigs. Bears she would make, and not stop with his men: behold her masterwork, the Odysseus Bear, wily, mean, rolling logs, tearing up salmonberry patches, going berserk amid devil's club, leaving huckleberry pies all over roads and trails. So if Telemakos worried his men down to the ship, and bent their strong backs to his purpose over the wine-dark seas and foam, reading the skies and the deep, only to hear, this time, from Menelaus, and that woman, nothing of import-- would he not, a hero and son of a hero, range onward then, reach out with his mind and eye, and take in the inland sea at a single pass, wearing out wood and men beneath him? At length when no sign appeared, he would set axe to the world's tree, and build of it a thing wonderful, deep-keeled, tight-clinkered, with a thousand stories writhing in its sail: and rest not till he had found out all the lands, their sorceresses, their pig-men, their island kings, and their dark-eyed daughters of island kings. Last would he come to Oregon to speak to the Siuslaws in their tongue, saying: I seek a mighty man, a man of vision, a man who speaks in silver and gold, whose hand raised grapes and a people from a stony soil, who built a wooden beast with which he threw down towers of stone and a sad old man. They might regard him then as one like themselves, rememberers of Coyote, that madcap, always one step ahead, making the world for a joke. One would lead him to Grass Mountain then, and show him the huckleberry pies. Good luck: he's been here twenty years, scratching his back on the trees-- if that guy wants to go home to his wife you're welcome to him, but we always thought he was more our kind. Why don't you just come on down to the village with us and bake some clams? And then Telemakos would have to think mighty hard to recall his purpose amid so many shades of green. Newfoundland Whiteness enough off that coast to last the summer in chunks of a size to drift among the swells like lost boats rising bottoms up to glimmer then dropping from a coastal watcher's view halfway from here to wherever it is the sky comes down to touch the water, blue on blue or even larger continents of white shot through with green, shouldering breakers with unhurried calm, things for night to break on, or even day. You and I, not having seen such before, go out to frame each other with one in a camera's eye and watch a schooner nosing among the bays scalloped along the fringes of the beast. The little ship goes near, but turns away over and over to run, a cur who knows how strong the behemoth it harries, how final its mere touch. The white rock nothing notes, but wades along, a mindless thing, and yet it knows command: we think of the Titanic, sleeping in its mud, having discharged a cargo on the sea. Mansong Walls, let your blue paint hold rain away from her while she is alone, and do not let snow come to fall upon her hair as she is sleeping. Be warm. Be blessed for her sake. Earth, do not tremble while I am gone. Let those who harvest know the joy of gathering, that there be for her no bitter taste. Be fruitful. Be blessed for her sake. Rose, it will be winter soon, the night already is deep, and darkness covers your leaves too long, and too long. Dig with your roots and find will to live till spring, and build within your heart branch, bud, and bloom; open when her eyes come to you, as they will, loving your red and gold. Be bold. Be blessed for her sake. River, rise in wind-wracked passes, pass though nameless stands of fir and hemlock, cedar, and all the smaller things: bracken, prince's pine, bearberry, blue huckleberry and red, trillium, and pale twinflower. Run through this sleeping city, and bring refreshment to her in the glad morning. Be brightly cold; be blessed for her sake. Orion, seldom seen in our cloud-blanked corner of the world's night: rise up, man! Throw your star-buckled knee over the mountain's rim and with your mighty club and steady eye meet with and vanquish all evil in this street, that she may live unhindered by so much as sadness in a neighbor's face. May it, and you, by all that is or can be holy, be blessed for her sake. Moon: you were full when I went away. The night before, she saw you rising through a wreath of clouds serene beyond confusion. Look, she said, how beautiful! And you were, you always are, and every poet tries to outshine every other in your praise. Yet she only said with that sharp intake of breath that only unfettered wonder knows, how beautiful! Moon, O be blessed for her sake, and watch, that she that so loves you may smile in a dream of rest. Angels! May I speak to you? For I have seen you once. Gather round me, add your strength to mine. Give me the voice of all who have most loved, that I might speak to the four corners of the heavens and with authority: that whatever gods shield love will come and wrap their thought all round her bed as she lies beautifully sleeping, that they too may be blessed for her sake, and yours, and theirs. Poem, which my poor hands have, shaking, wrought as best they could in the hot coals of my intent: come to her when she wakes in spring, and kiss for me each eyelid, then her small mouth, and then her mouth again, lightly, lightly! For I am already blessed for her sake. Richard Bear works in the library at the University of Oregon, USA, and walks, whenever he can, among the mountains of the Cascade Range. His email address is rbear@oregon.uoregon.edu and his Web home page is http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/home.html And, Ariga adds, his site is fascinating, particularly because of his interest in Spenser, and the evolving typography of books. Highly recommended -- Richard Bear Today's Situation
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