I
First understand
guns
& their perfection
in our hands
in the hand of a man who is almost a man
a new element
invents him
his firearm
the man with the gun, see
elk: squeeze
bison: squeeze
wolf: squeeze/hawk: squeeze/Indian:
s q u e e z e
and the deer and the antelope...
fall
to the notes of the frontier
at play.
Understand who calls
the next step —
a politician we've invented
named Gunmouth
or an obscure
rapist
who says "Pull off your shoes and pants and lay down on
the bed with your legs spread."
She says, "I'm in
my period man."
He picks his gun up off the resser and says,
"I'll put a period
in your head."
—the power
of the threat
gun plus metaphor
has the desired effect.
Ordinary language?
Understand
no such thing
behind and forehead—
presidential or of the
tenements—
behind which the sounds
of guns and metaphors
gather
squeeze together to
invent a riddling frontier.
"What is it
at deepest play in some
creates for all delight
that lesser ones covert to disasters?"
III
If the measure of a mind
is its cosmos
then the world
of Jones Lazart was ruled
not by moons
but by things like
bales of hay
corrals
miles per hour—
we always said
he drove so well
because he concentrated
so hard his mind never
wandered from the wheel.
What can I tell you about half-
breed ranch-hand Jones Lazart?
A piece of him, namely
French, the rest
of assorted Indian
illiterate, bunkhouse celibate
one brother dragged
to death
by a runaway
another herded sheep
someplace,
that he rarely spoke
grunted when he laughed
loved pepsi-cola and potato chips
of which he could make a meal
had lost most of his teeth by 30.
It seemed
without the place
we gave him
he had no place
his people
having lost
their world
continuously
to newer and newer
people—
"The Man Without a Country" (ha!)
and other things
generally deemed
necessary for well-being
in these parts
(what does that do to the mind?)
He clung
worked hard
fearing greatly to displease
with his occasional fuck-ups,
he was not exactly
a Eumaios type
(O my pick-up driver!)
or defined as such:
it was not for life.
So when the place was sold
Jones's world did change
and so then his mind
(who ever knew it?)
He found work at the Anchor Bar
sweeping, mopping
bought California wine
for lady bar-flies...
V
Recreation: 2
the act
recalled/the act
of its recollection
the act
of recording that recollection
become all one mosaic
one song worth singing:
to remember the walk down
into Pine Coulee
is to remember
walking on air not rocks—
what joy in the mountains
man, what joy there is there
an Achaian daimon
sings out
(in Cascade County now)
what joy there is in the mountains
hear the birdies tell it every day
and how they bear witness
these meadowlarks
their gut song in the trees
and gut sings out of your hand
you fish for trout
crouch, sneak in the cool of the morning
word & shadowless
all gesture
beside the brilliant stream
that is the moment cast in the light
of what?
the day
the memory
rolled off the tongue for today & tomorrow
sung in the mind's ear
& heard anywhere
that moment yields the flower in the seed
light as air
& hard as rock
— ingenium —
the wonderful
engine by which we shape ourselves & the world
anew/
rocks. birds. sorrows. fish.
light. flowers. joys/
to a self-surpassing music
VII
It was midnight & raining
in St. Louis when he arrived
address slip in hand—
a cab & a cop got him there
waking up the Italian grocer
the young Greeks lived over.
After a week they got the foreman
to put him on the line
clamping bedsprings to their frame.
Paid by the piece for dead word
in his hands & depressed
by roommates sick with the clap,
in the spring of '08 OK signed
on a workgang a cousin recruited
& was off for the Hi-Line in Montana,
where he learned housekeeping
in a box car & the gandy dance
which he danced in the tracks across Nebraska,
Arkansas,
& Texas before he was through,
then back to Montana to finish
with the railroad in the round-house.
Once in a cloudburst outside Fort Worth
he ran for cover to a farm complete
with farmer & daughter&
his first "American" friends
eventually asked him to stay
& make a life with them,
but he moved on with the gang
not so restless as more restful
in that society.
Though hunger
there had been: 2 loaves/a can
of sardines for almost 2 weeks
& no help from a countryman,
terrible solitude of disease:
dream-sweats through typhoid
as friends signed on gangs for new lines,
(Onderdonk lying there chilled & cramped
as his outfit moved against rebel lines)
& fear: on the CB & Q outside Kearney
jobless natives threw rocks at their box car all night
—in the morning they all escaped together.
After so many ties tamped & hot
boxes cleaned out, to put down
his roots in Great Falls, to go
into business for himself,
(what did Adam Smith say
about personal interests?)
to marry, to dance, dance
the dance of Isaiah round
the marriage altar thrice
as witness to the prophet's
joy in the first of miracles
w a t e r i n t o w i n e .