POETRY & PROSE
Shown here: Some of Milly's poetry as she wrote it, by hand on a scrap of paper, or by way of typewriter.
4/24/45
The small soul
knowing no largeness
wanting
wanting so
respectability
the nods of neighbors
trousers pressed
and the smell and odor of it
clean
immaculate
untouched by living
by bawdy living
or just living.
Horizon bound
by the framed diploma
the shouting diploma
shouting its llb’s(?) and
letters long since lost of sense.
Wanting money
but gentlemen do not grab
gentlemen reach,
asking please
and saying thank you.
Oh the bitterness of the pill
Oh modern day Hamlet’s
greatness in your petty struggle
only his wavering and weighing.
Wanting
to possess
of the worldly and material goods
but with unsoiled fingers
what only soiled fingers clutch for
wanting it all proper
with propriety
within the letter of the law
and respectability.
Oh how your clean smell
nauseates—
smell devoid of the odor of living.
How enter
save as your observer
matching your puny struggle
against the largeness of the living
against the healthy earth of smells—
fecund breathing—
power—
dynamo
of life
till you become
obliterate
sinking
sinking away
into your feeble kickings
leaving my horizon free again
to look on
To create.
5/27/45
The earth does not know herself,
It is man
showered in her rains,
her fields,
her rocks
Where one would most deny
man could be,
who shows unto the earth
her fruitfulness.
The earth does not know joy
or hunger
or mean-ness.
Only knows the qualities
of her
that man mirrors,
only knows her full length
when man has measured it
and foresees secrets
greater than one would dream
but herself does not know these secrets
til man,
so small against her
yet how great,
has mined them
and polished them,
like jewels each secret,
like jewels shining
each saying to man
How far you have come!
I do not venture to say
the earth would not be there
without man.
The earth will always be there—
beyond man.
But without him
she will be asleep,
in heavy sleep slumbering
waiting again for man
to bring her into her own.
Lip Service
In ruined gardens of our cities
with words alone
he sit and play a sensual seduction,
suspended in a dream of building.
Inert
our words are barren.
Reality bursts outside and
splits
the dreaming self into
a dual blur of action
and intent.
Lips that speak and speak only,
Lips that open in the churches
and in the halls,
words that are sound and sound only
Echo in the ruins
and fall without noise
without substance.
___
I hear the sea’s wind and the plain’s wind,
caught and crying, lost around the tower,
carrying me far with her unleashed wildness.
I feel your hand
and the rain dripping down the gutter
and the Old Mill fog.
How here?
Small, shut, the room.
___
Man’s Hope
Mind is a many-faceted mirror
sparkling and reflecting,
Now the sun’s rays,
now a brooding darkness
absorbing and projecting.
Fast, fast the days rush
fear driven, hope driven,
Rivers, mountains,
and desires tumbling
in a fast kaleidoscope.
O save me, save me!
And up from the whirl’s
unordered profusion
is flung the hope,
the perfect gift given—
Undiscriminating birth.
1965
My son
it is a long weaning.
Search wide the latitudes.
Before you find home again
You must leave us sharply
forget us
Hero make yourself now
out of dust.
Our loving glance strangles
a looping umbilical;
it is you must cast yourself free.
Too much love is a quicksand,
reach out for brambles and thorn
Prick life alive in foraging forays.
Mount wild horses, thunderstorms.
Write your own scenario
of hungers and last
hold strong the pulsing vein,
your selfhood.
Unhurried I must hurry
with the illusion of eternity before me
dismiss the moment's practicalities
and curling into infancy permit the dream
begin to spin
pretending all the myths and heroes
all the pretty princesses from my forest,
enchanted, stately dance
And only then, a screen erected
between reality and me
can I focus on the grasses green
which green will be as long as the earth
will turn it summer's face enchanted by the sun
Only then, feeling I will last as long as grass
can I charitably examine every whorl and curl
with infinite curiosity and amazement at
nature's chance design.
Only then can it seem important that
I gather the movement of the bare branches
into a dancing roundalay
to register that I am I
and before I die
am a designed, designing eye.
Bamboo brush pointed, ready
I practice marks on the margins
of my existence
not ready always not ready
to pull that perfect paper
from the drawer
where it has hidden possibly blank and velvet
some master stroke not yet conjured or believed
4/10/80
How
glue the fragments,
form into pot again
what spinning from a center
grew between the practiced potters' hands,
wet with liquefying clay:
each pot a starter,
fresh like bread,
seamless, sealed by fire
fed by alchemy and fever,
till the glowing cone had dipped, expired.
Unused
the furnace cracks,
the pots fill with rain, with ice, explode:
the fragments shatter.
Shards grind underfoot.
The ornaments, the line, are dust:
one breathe and they disperse, dry dandelion.
What marker can recall
that ignorant and darling vigor
that thrust into the enchanted clay
to polish lustrously by fire
with airy celadon, dark sapphire?
I cannot find the grave to wring my hands.
The sky shed tears that form
along the shallow streams
new banks.
To be artist
is to fill ones space
oneself the center;
the moon the EARTH
a prop for the ballooning ego
which inflates to tangent horizons.
Stretched fingers touch the crosses
to points where planets sensually form
mysterious signals in a blackened sky:
no height too distant, no beam
beyond catch, capture and
return to the artists center.
1970
Singer, lover, seeker, teacher, creator.
This was Mois, this is Moi,
because when you have been that joyful creation
which justifies the being of our species,
when you have spent your days as Moi did spend his days:
singing, loving, seeking, teaching, creating -
you have been touched and entered so many lives
you have become a river and immaterial and part
of the ongoing process, the ultimate mystery which
none of us can fathom, but only approach in metaphor.
We here all share that splendid good fortune
to have been part of Moi and he part of us
and that makes us a unique company
a company of courage which challenges the proofs
we sometimes see that man is a lowly beast selfish and exploiting
and aggressive.
Moi is our reminder of what man can be and is:
a singer, a lover, a seeker, a teacher, a creator.
If I were able now I would sing as I heard Moi so often sing
in his dark baritone one of those lovely peasant songs
which evoke the large Ukrainian spaces where he was a boy.
Tutshki .... tutshki punavisli .... napole lok tuman,
tsevuseti zadumelstya ...... skazhi name otaman. I cannot
sing it, but I hear it and will hear it forever.
Death hovers over us, over
all the pretty dishes,
the calendar, affections, affectations.
Hear the wings
See the vapor trail, disappearing here.
to become another's reality.
Forgetting it's the sky's imminent return,
again we begin to plan the future,
leaving the living until tomorrow.
What would I do if I knew
the silver ship came turning to me,
ticket in hand, my clothes unpacked,
the drawers littered with unfinished
fragments and beginnings?
Partings unsaid, what would I say?
As you were leaving, unthinking, unseeing,
I would ask you: Stay,
and we would walk quiet
in the quiet afternoon,
where each autumnal stirring stirs us too;
the last leaves, the migrant birds,
the decaying sweetness of frost bitten flowers,
the pall of milky smoke sent by wet leaves
burning at the gutters of the town.
I would leave the laundry and the dishes,
the unkempt beds, and hugging and afternoon,
spin each sound and sight and smell
into the finest gossamer contentment.
If I saw the ship coming, and for me,
I would declare Holyday,
and taking no time to turn things
right or draw a legacy,
I would leave the marketing, the
meditating, plans,
and step out onto frosted grass
and blow my breath to see the way it blows,
and say, Don't hurry so!
Let me slowly draw you, clear,
to hold beyond the vision of my eye
each subtle plane and nuanced line,
busy with life I had too little time to see.