THE DEER TRAIL

From my small cottage, deep
in woods so dense that light
is lost, I hacked out, step

by step, a pathway straight
into uncertainty.
It took me years. I thought

by force I’d blaze a way
to rove and come back home
and in the effort I

might master at least some
mysteries of the place.
I had no certain aim.

Truly my urge was less
and more: I had a need.
Some woodsmen who lived close

to my expanse of sod,
having keen tools and skill,
aided me when they could.

But I had planned it all.
I sought no partners. Much
strength is required to fell

a giant dying birch,
all to extend a path
that then will only reach

ten feet through undergrowth
beyond the previous mark.
And when you shear a swath

of brush where branches fork,
they tangle, stab, and scrape
you everywhere. The work

exhausts. You can’t give up
or lose sight of your planned
direction. Saws can rip

into your flesh. The honed
ax gleams with danger. More
than once I felt the wind

of death stir in my hair.
Along the way I spied
traces of tawny fur

caught on a thorn, and blood
dotting the fallen leaves.
But now and then I strayed

from the defile that moves
through granite walls and towers
of oak, to where sun paves

the rock, and sky acquires
an unaccustomed glow
refracted through the layers

of mist and cloud that lie
over the forest with
the waning of the day,

and my quixotic path
became a trickster’s maze.
Years of such labor both

tired me and gave some ease
when, deep in the woods, I came
upon a new trail. Was

this a device of some
intruding neighbor who,
confused or on a whim,

had thrust his own way through
protected land? A glance
corrected me. I saw

abundant evidence
of deer. Scat on the ground
and dirt with clear hoof-prints

had marked the spoor. Beyond
my path it traced a ridge
that led down to a pond

with cress along its edge
and mushrooms clustering
among the foliage.

Rising from there along
a sheer escarpment where
small curling ferns had sprung

up among pine and fir,
the deer trail opened out
on a vast reservoir

of dappled moss, sunlit
and undulant, all green
and yielding underfoot.

I stood there, quite alone
and yet surrounded by
fantastic spirits, kin

of my pathless ecstasy.
Silence enveloped all
the woods. The far-away

sounds of motors grew still
and I, godless and awed,
humbled, stumbled and fell.

There on the moss-deep bed
stretching through pine and oak
under sky without cloud,

I relearned how to walk
and, facing steep rock and thorn,
turned and made my way back.

           *  *  *
Whatever a man might learn
from so much solitude
runs like a strand of yarn

along the path I made
through wilderness to reach,
finally, the village road.

But I have been too much
in my own company.
Those who could only watch

my slow advance now stray
onto the trodden trail
or venture out with me,

sometimes with chains to pull
trees from the path, sometimes
only to watch until

light in the forest dims
and sky turns violet.
Slowly the way becomes

familiar as regret,
and we retrace our steps,
struck inarticulate.

Then, after a moment’s lapse,
with jovial wit one says,
“You realized your hopes –

you have achieved a blaze
of glory!” And I recall
how once, for no clear cause,

I grew weak-kneed and fell
on the thick moss. Though I
have traced their fleeting trail

through mysteries, I see
that even here there are
a thousand ways I may

pursue the elusive deer
as they retreat beyond
our human register,

yet doubt that I shall find
all I have left behind.

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                                                                                             ____________

THE WEB

A thousand strands of tensile gauze
held in a net of filament,
it sways and bounces in the breeze
as if kept whole by accident.

At its midpoint the spider clings
and tosses with the weather’s whim,
bedizened in the sticky rings
of toil to snare the seraphim.

Hunger is long, but life depends
on stern endurance, patient lust.
He scurries when his quarry lands
and seizes heaven as he must.

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                                                                                             ____________

THE THINKER

O’Reilly lies abed awake.
The world, alluring, lies opaque.
He knows its parts, not why they move.
He has some guesses he can’t prove.

A fly disturbs his sense of calm
and artfully eludes his palm.
He’s helpless to unfold its plan;
a fly’s a mystery to a man.

His mind sees patterns everywhere,
elusive figures in the air,
a deconstructed how and why
in random dartings of the fly.

They must be part of some great whole
that lies just wide of his control.
Perhaps a theoretic twist
will help explain why they exist.

He thinks when he can say “because”
he’ll gain a glimpse of nature’s laws.
Surely there’s nothing on this sphere
he cannot reverse-engineer.

But theory’s still a mystery.
Why can O’Reilly never see?
To pin a fly with word on word
impugns the observer as absurd.

What would it mean to understand?
Make houseflies hop to your command?
Create one similar but new?
Avoid it when it flies at you?

Might human-wrought intelligence
with artificial elegance
contrive to imitate the creature
and turn the bug into a feature?

The mind’s a fly that darts and swerves,
spurred by percussions in the nerves,
as restless and persistent as
the improvising hand of jazz.

Men make their store of knowledge dense
by piling up experience,
and when in scores of years they die . . .
they feed descendants of the fly.

In human beings ideas are rife,
surpassing thoughtless insect life,
so they aspire with all due speed
(but scant success) to vanquish need.

And those who made society
a marvel of complexity
have come to see it’s now too late
to solve the problems they create.

As hard-learned truth accumulates,
the questioner who contemplates
feels wisdom settle on the brow.
O’Reilly swats it anyhow.

Whoever views the scene concludes
that understanding still eludes
the thinker with the cheek to try
to pit his wit against a fly.

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SELF/SYLPH

The self’s a butterfly. The poem’s a pin,
the page a board for the display I’ve planned.
But self’s a shadow; just as I begin,
colors dissolve and flutter from my hand.

THE POET'S ECSTASY

The air above is lively with balloons
tied by thinnest threads
to objects here below.
Some are loose and lightly hover
near heartbreak, random memories,
or nights from long ago.
Beautiful they are, and grander
than the world of every day.

Oh, I would pass my life among
those splendid colorful confections
and I’d blend them into new
patterns that I hope
against experience
might rearrange the earthly things
they’re lightly tethered to.

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MAGGIE AND FAITH

Come summer, heartening as sunny days,
Maggie was there, with Jimmy by her side
to join the family outings and to raise
a glass to toast the sweetness of the bride.
But Faith was ill that year and never came,
and after that ...nothing was quite the same.

ON LETITIA'S TOES

Wherever my Letitia goes
she is preceded by her toes.
And as the wise observer knows,
on every toe a toenail grows.

It grows without impedance till
it overfills the shoe, and still
torments her like a hedgehog’s quill.
Then will she have it trimmed? She will.

And so Letitia, lover, friend,
finding it difficult to bend,
requests I intervene to end
a soreness that a blade can mend.

With fetching faith does she surrender
toes exquisite, soft and tender
to offices she prays I’ll render
although she knows my skills are slender.

Then I, with eyes precise and keen,
address the toe with my machine,
intending to produce a clean
division at the golden mean.

O brave campaigns that go awry!
O roads too often traveled by!
O blades that close when flesh is nigh!
Letitia shrieks! (A crystal cry.)

Now gentler than the poppy’s dust
and softer than a zephyr’s gust
yet urgent as a satyr’s lust,
I pant to save her fainting trust.

With mien morose and melancholic
and stratagems near-diabolic,
I ward off curses vitriolic
while feigning virtues apostolic.

Again I face the trembling digit
and force my fingers not to fidget,
maneuv’ring all the while the widget
to make that giant nail a midget.

While she endeavors not to flinch,
I promise her it will not pinch,
and with a superhuman clinch
curtail the nail by half an inch.

One down. Now only nine toes left
to be of excess claws bereft
by moves so intricate and deft
her feet will celebrate the theft.

Ascending the chromatic scale,
I conquer each successive nail.
Resistance is of no avail.
At last Letitia can exhale.

So lovers, let us celebrate
collusion to abbreviate
mad outgrowths, and our not-too-late
avoidance of a tragic fate.

Set free at last, Letitia springs
through woods, past streams and fairy rings,
and overleaps all earthly things
as if her toes had sprouted wings.

TWO BY RAINER MARIA RILKE
                 from the Book of Hours

    TRANSLATED BY JAN SCHREIBER

                          1

As the watchman in the vineyards
from his cottage waits for light,
in your hands, Lord, I’m the cottage,
and the night, Lord, of your night.

Vineyard, meadow, apple orchard
never skipping spring’s new twigs,
figtree that in marble-hardened
earth still bears a hundred figs:

Fragrance is flowing from your branches.
You do not ask who wakes or dreams.
Your depths, dissolved in sap, are rising
past me in quiet, fearless streams.

                            1

Wie der Wächter in den Weingeländen
seine Hütte hat und wacht,
bin ich Hütte, Herr, in deinen Händen
und bin Nacht, o Herr, von deiner Nacht.

Weinberg, Weide, alter Apfelgarten,
Acker, der kein Frühjahr überschlägt;
Feigenbaum, der auch in marmorharten
Grunde hundert Früchte trägt:

Duft geht aus aus deinen runden Zweigen.
Und du fragst nicht, ob ich wachsam sei;
furchtlos, aufgelöst in Säften steigen
deine Tiefe still an mir vorbei.

                              2

These must be mountains I pass through alone,
embedded in hard veins like so much ore,
and I’m so deep I see no end in store,
no distance either; everything is near
and all the nearness solid stone.

I am not yet a master of my pain,
so this great darkness only makes me small;
but if you are, grow heavy and break in:
that your whole hand upon me may befall
and I on you with cries I can’t restrain.

                               2

Vielleicht, daß ich durch schwere Berge gehe 
in harten Adern, wie ein Erz allein; 
und bin so tief, daß ich kein Ende sehe 
und keine Ferne: alles wurde Nähe 
und alle Nähe wurde Stein.

Ich bin ja noch kein Wissender im Wehe, – 
so macht mich dieses große Dunkel klein; 
bist Du es aber: mach dich schwer, brich ein: 
daß deine ganze Hand an mir geschehe 
und ich an dir mit meinem ganzen Schrein.

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