Collected Earlier Poems by Anthony Hecht Read Free Book Online Page B

SONNET
    I recall everything, but more than all,
    Words being nothing now, an ease that ever
    Remembers her to my unfailing fever,
    How she came forward to me, letting fall
    Lamplight upon her dress till every small
    Motion made visible seemed no mere endeavor
    Of body to articulate its offer,
    But more a grace won by the way from all
    Striving in what is difficult, from all
    Losses, so that she moved but to discover
    A practice of the blood, as the gulls hover,
    Winged with their life, above the harbor wall,
    Tracing inflected silence in the tall
    Air with a tilt of mastery and quiver
    Against the light, as the light fell to favor
    Her coming forth; this chiefly I recall.
    It is a part of pride, guiding the hand
    At the piano in the splash and passage
    Of sacred dolphins, making numbers human
    By sheer extravagance that can command
    Pythagorean heavens to spell their message
    Of some unlooked-for peace, out of the common;
    Taking no thought at all that man and woman,
    Lost in the trance of lamplight, felt the presage
    Of the unbidden terror and bone hand
    Of gracelessness, and the unspoken omen
    That yet shall render all, by its first usage,
    Speechless, inept, and totally unmanned.
LA CONDITION BOTANIQUE
                   Romans, rheumatic, gouty, came
        To bathe in Ischian springs where water steamed,
    Puffed and enlarged their bold imperial thoughts, and which
    Later Madame Curie declared to be so rich
        In radioactive content as she deemed
                   Should win them everlasting fame.
                   Scattered throughout their ice and snow
        The Finns have built airtight cabins of log
    Where they may lie, limp and entranced by the sedative purr
    Of steam pipes, or torment themselves with flails of fir
        To stimulate the blood, and swill down grog,
                   Setting the particles aglow.
                   Similarly the Turks, but know
        Nothing of the more delicate thin sweat
    Of plants, breathing their scented oxygen upon
    Brooklyn’s botanical gardens, roofed with glass and run
        So to the pleasure of each leafy pet,
                   Manured, addressed in Latin, so
                   To its thermostatic happiness—
        Spreading its green and innocence to the ground
    Where pipes, like Satan masquerading as the snake,
    Coil and uncoil their frightful liquid length, and make
        Gurglings of love mixed with a rumbling sound
                   Of sharp intestinal distress—
                   So to its pleasure, as I said,
        That each particular vegetable may thrive,
    Early and late, as in the lot first given Man,
    Sans interruption, as when Universal Pan
        Led on the Eternal Spring. The spears of chive,
                   The sensitive plant, showing its dread,
                   The Mexican flytrap, that can knit
        Its quilled jaws pitilessly, and would hurt
    A fly with pleasure, leading Riley’s life in bed
    Of peat moss and of chemicals, and is thoughtfully fed
        Flies for the entrée, flies for the dessert,
                   Fruit flies for fruit, and all of it
                   Administered as by a wife—
        Lilith our lady, patroness of plants,
    Who sings,
Lullay myn lykyng, myn owyn dere derlyng
,
    Madrigals nightly to the spiny stalk in sterling
        Whole notes of admiration and romance—
                   This, then, is what is called The Life.
                   And we, like disinherited heirs,
        Old Adams, can inspect the void estate
    At visiting hours: the unconditional garden spot,
    The effortless innocence preserved, for God knows what,
        And think, as we depart by the toll gate:
                   No one has lived here these five thousand years.
                   Our world