[MacArthur]

(I spent the afternoon copying this out for a poetry reading on Tuesday, and it seemed a shame not to share it on Mastery. Because it was for my use, I removed the Initial Caps...because they always trip me up! I am too lazy to restore them.

Since accidentally stumbling over this a couple of years ago, I have admired the piece. Merrill may not of thought much of it, as he doesn't appear to have re-printed it frequently. Who knows? VERY clever mix of four- and five-beat lines.)

Poem of Summer's End

The morning of the equinox
begins with brassy clouds and cocks.
All the inn's shutters clatter wide
upon fair Umbria. Twitching at my side
you burrow in sleep like a red fox.

Mostly these weeks we toss all night, we touch
by accident. The heat! The food!
Groggily aware of spots that itch
I curse the tiny creatures which
have flecked our mended sheets with blood.

At noon in a high wind, to bell and song,
upon the shoulders of the throng,
the gilt bronze image of St. So-and-So
heaves precipitously along.
Worship has worn his every toe,

neverheless the foot, thrust forward, dips
again, again, into its doom of lips
and tears, a vortex of black shawls,
garlic, frankinscense, Popery, festivals
held at the moon's eclipse,

as in their trance the faithful pass
on to piazza and cafe.
We go deliberately the other way
through the town gates, lie down in grass.
But the wind howls, the sky turns color-of-clay.

The time for love-making is done.
A far off sulphur-pale facade
gleams and goes out. It is though by one
flash of lightning all things made
had glimpsed their maker's heart, read and obeyed.

Back on our bed of iron and lace
we listen to the loud rain fracture space,
and let at first each other's hair
be lost in gloom, then lips, then the whole face.
If either speaks the other does not hear.

For a decade love has rained down
on our two hearts, instructing them
in a strange bareness, that of weathered stone.
Thinking how bare our hearts have grown
I do not know if I feel pride or shame.

The time has passed to go and eat.
Has it? I do not know. A beam of light
reveals you calm but strangely white.
A final drop of rain clicks in the street.
Somewhere a clock strikes. It is not too late

to set out dazed, sit side by side
in the one decent restaurant.
The handsome boy who has already tried
to interest you (and been half-gratified)
helps us to think of what we want.

I do not know - have I ever known? -
unless concealed in the next town,
in the next image blind with use, a clue,
a worn path, points the long way round back to
the springs we started out from. Sun

weaker each sunrise reddens that slow maze
so freely entered. Now come days
when lover and beloved know
the love in what they are and where they go.

Each learns to read at length the other's gaze.

James Merrill

[This message has been edited by MacArthur (edited August 05, 2004).]

[Gail White]

Thanks for the poem. I love Merrill - his "Book of Ephraim" is a great favorite of mine - and this is a
poem I had not read before.

I also love Italy, and was delighted to read his impressions
of Umbria, the religious procession, even the bedbugs. Some
things never change.

So thank you again-

[Janet Kenny]

Thanks MacArthur.

I didn't know this poet. I love this one. I must investigate further.
Janet

[Andrew Frisardi]

Hi MacArthur,

I couldn't resist this one, since I live in Umbria and Merrill is an interesting poet. I liked a lot of things in this poem--"shutters clatter," "loud rain in fractured space," and the rhymes are often surprising and rich (Merrill was a great rhymer). The description of the procession struck me as contrived and condescending, however. "Popery" plays no part in the processions I've seen! It's all a lot more pagan than that. And the term is usually disparaging. There's a saying in Italy, to the effect that there's one religion in Rome, another elsewhere. In any case, thanks very much for posting this poem.

All the best,
Andrew F.

[Janet Kenny]

Andrew:
The description of the procession struck me as contrived and condescending, however. "Popery" plays no part in the processions I've seen! It's all a lot more pagan than that. And the term is usually disparaging. There's a saying in Italy, to the effect that there's one religion in Rome, another elsewhere.
Absolutely. I think it's in Pavia that the god Pan is incorporated in a carved frieze on a monastery. Belli's sonnets give the lie to the hold of the church on the Roman working class, and most Italians I know explain the Italian relationship with the church as more cultural than religious.
Janet

[Andrew Frisardi]

Janet--That's what I hear too. I like this rhyme about it:

A Rome si fa la fede
e fuori ci si crede.

The history of Christianity in Italy is complex indeed! My feeling about Merrill's observations was that they said more about him than about the scene, which of course we all do at times but it seemed to me a real flaw in the poem.

Thanks for the benvenuto at your Keats poem.

A presto,
Andrew

[Janet Kenny]

Andrew,
haha
A fuori ci si fede
nessuno qui la crede.
Orvieto ha il duomo
che basta per un uomo.
(sorry about the Italiese)

Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited September 01, 2004).]

[Margaret Moore]

MacA

Many thanks for posting this. Have only in recent months become aware of Merrill's accomplishments. Several examples of his work have been quoted on other threads here.
One of my favourites is the blackly comic ballad 'The Summer People' which is far too long to reproduce in full here. I offer a few early stanzas as a taster.

The summer people

"et l'hiver resterait la saison intellectuelle creatrice."Mallarme (sorry about omitted accents).

On our New England coast was once
A village white and neat
With Greek Revival houses,
Sailboats, a fishing fleet,

Two churches and two liquor stores,
An Inn, a Gourmet Shoppe,
A library, a pharmacy,
Trains passed but did not stop.

Gold Street was rich in neon,
Main Street in rustling trees
Unouched as yet by hurricanes
And the Dutch elm disease.

On Main the summer people
Took deep-throated ease -
A leaf turned red, to town they'd head.
On Gold lived the Poruguese

Whose forebears had manned whalers.
Two years from the Azores
Saw you with ten gold dollars
Upon these fabled shores.

Feet still pace the whaler's deck
At the Caustic (Me.) Museum.
A small stuffed whale hangs overhead
As in the head a dream.

Slowly the fleet was shrinking.
The good-sized fish were few.
Town meetings closed and opened
With the question what to do.

Each year when manufacturers
Of chemicals and glues
Bid to pollute the harbor
It took longer to refuse ...'

Do read on if you get the chance!
Margaret.

[Katy Evans-Bush]

I was looking through some old threads and have decided to revive this one. Merrill is a big hero of mine, for his grace and fleetness of foot, his camp wry take. Of course he could well afford to be camp and wry, but I think he was something really special.


The Kimono


When I returned from lovers' lane
My hair was white as snow.
Joy, incomprehension, pain
I'd seen like seasons come and go.
How I got home again,
Frozen half dead, perhaps you know.

You hide a smile and quote a text:
Desires unsatisfied
Persist from one life to the next.
Hearths we strip ourselves beside
Long, long ago were x'ed
On blueprints of "consuming pride".

Times out of mind, the bubble-gleam
To our charred level drew
April back. A sudden beam...
— Keep talking while I change into
The pattern of a stream
Bordered with rushes white on blue.


Many of his greatest poems are just too long to post up here. The amazing "Lost in Translation" is worth reading but pages and pages too long to type in. It was Michael Donaghy who introduced me to Merrill, with "The Broken Home", a series of sonnets about his childhood and his parents, and I thought: what is this richness and detail, and how can he know so much about me? I think Merrill, though often accused of archness and even shallowness (!!), has a gift for what is emotionally true.

Here's one of them:


When my parents were younger this was a popular act:
A veiled woman would leap from an electric, wine-dark car
To the steps of no matter what — the Senate or the Ritz Bar —
And bodily, at newsreel speed, attack

No matter whom — Al Smith or José María Sert
Or Clemenceau — veins standing out on her throat
As she yelled War mongerer! Pig! Give us the vote!,
And would have to be hauled away in her hobble skirt.

What had the man done? Oh, made history.
Her business (he had implied) was giving birth,
Tending the house, mending the socks.

Always that same old story —
Father Time and Mother Earth,
A marriage on the rocks.

Here's another one I love to bits:


Charles on Fire


Another evening we sprawled about discussing
Appearances. And it was the consensus
That while uncommon physical good looks
Continued to launch one, as before, in life
(Among its vaporous eddies and false claims),
Still, as one of us said into his beard,
"Without your intellectual and spiritual
Values, man, you are sunk." No one but squared
The shoulders of their own unlovliness.
Long-suffering Charles, having cooked and served the meal,
Now brought out little tumblers finely etched
He filled with amber liquor and then passed.
"Say," said the same young man, "in Paris, France,
They do it this way" — bounding to his feet
And touching a lit match to our host's full glass.
A blue flame, gentle, beautiful, came, went
Above the surface. In a hush that fell
We heard the vessel crack. The contents drained
As who should step down from a crystal coach.
Steward of spirits, Charles's glistening hand
All at once gloved itself in eeriness.
The moment passed. He made two quick sweeps and
Was flesh again. "It couldn't matter less,"
He said, but with a shocked, unconscious glance
Into the mirror. Finding nothing changed,
He filled a fresh glass and sank down among us.


KEB

[Christine Robins]

I love this comment on the vicissitudes of long-term love relationships. Note the clever rhyme scheme.

A Renewal

Having used every subterfuge
To shake you, lies, fatigue, or even that of passion,
Now I see no way but a clean break.
I add that I am willing to bear the guilt.

You nod assent. Autumn turns windy, huge,
A clear vase of dry leaves vibrating on and on.
We sit, watching. When I next speak
Love buries itself in me, up to the hilt.

--James Merrill