[Andrew Frisardi]

I've always loved this one of Francis, which I have on a signed framed broadside back in Boston:

Old Poet

Once again in spring he comes drifting down
Into the summer-tourist traffic lanes--
Half ghost, half natural phenomenon.

And women from glassed decks observe him pass
(As he moves south and they move faster east)
Through telescope, field glass, or opera glass.

His unprogressive progress makes them stare.
A little cool he seems and sinister.
White, utterly white, his bardic beard and hair.

A wanderer so far from his arctic mist,
Mortal and fated and melting as he must--
The wonder is, the wonder is, how long he will persist.

--Robert Francis

[Roger Slater]

I haven't pored over these two threads to make sure no one's posted these, so forgive any duplication. But I just typed out a few of my favorite Francis poems. I'm not sure I agree with the poetry poem, but it's quite fine. And I know some will not agree with "Nothing Is Far," though it speaks for me.


Nothing Is Far

Though I have never caught the word
Of God from any calling bird,
I hear all that the ancients heard.

Though I have seen no deity
Enter or leave a twilit tree,
I see all that the seers see.

A common stone can still reveal
Something not stone, not seen, yet real.
What may a common stone conceal?

Nothing is far that once was near.
Nothing is hid that once was clear.
Nothing was God that is not here.

Here is the bird, the tree, the stone.
Here in the sun I sit alone
Between the known and the unknown.


Glass

Words of a poem should be a glass
But glass so simple-subtle in its shape
Is nothing but the shape of what it holds.

A glass spun for itself is empty,
Brittle, at best Venetian trinket.
Embossed glass hides the poem or its absence.

Words should be looked through, should be windows.
The best word were invisible.
The poem is the thing the poet thinks.

If the impossible were not,
And if the glass, only the glass,
Could be removed, the poem would remain.


I Am Not Flattered

I am not flattered that a bell
About the neck of a peaceful cow
Should be more damning to my ear
Than all the bombing planes of hell
Merely because the bell is near,
Merely because the bell is now,
The bombs too far away to hear.


The Base Stealer

Poised between going on and back, pulled
Both ways taut like a tightrope-walker,
Fingertips pointing the opposites,
Now bouncing tiptoe like a dropped ball
Or a kid skipping rope, come on, come on,
Running a scattering of steps sidewise,
How he teeters, skitters, tingles, teases,
Taunts them, hovers like an ecstatic bird,
He's only flirting, crowd him, crowd him,
Delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate - now!

[Roger Slater]

Originally posted by Alan Sullivan:

Midsummer

Twelve white cattle on the crest,
Milk-white against the chicory skies,
Six gazing south, six gazing west
With the blue distance in their eyes.
Twelve white cattle standing still.
Why should they move? There are no flies
To tease them on this wind-washed hill.
Twelve white cattle utterly at rest.
Why should they graze? They are past grazing.
They have cropped the grass, they have had their fill.
Now they stand gazing, they stand gazing.
Only the tall redtop about their knees
And the white clouds above the hill
Move in the softly moving breeze.
The cattle move not, they are still.

This poem very much reminds me of a poem by Jorge Guillen called "Unos Caballos," which Wilbur has translated as "The Horses." Actually, the Wilbur translation is, in my opinion, less like the Francis poem than is the original Spanish, but it still gives the flavor. The essence of the Guillen poem is to emphasize the stillness of the horses out on the field. In Wilbur's words, "they stand / Immobile under their thick, cumbrous manes . . . . Nothing disturbs them now . . . They fatten like the grass . . . . They grow into a vegetable peace . . . . And with their quiet eyes participate / In heaven's pure serenity . . . . Serene now, superhuman, they crop their field."