Atthis by Gary Snyder

I.

The painful accumulation of our errors
In dry summer, and her loneliness
And that distracted weeping
Of hot endless afternoons
Foretold the famine

Her swimming fondness
Stretched taut in sterile time
Contracted into dusty fractions
And now the crops are failing.

Since my sorcery has failed
My blood must feed the soil.
Let no delirious priest proclaim
A second coming;
these fragments will stay scattered.



2.

Her life blew through my body and away
I see it whirling now, across the stony places.

I lost her softly through my fingers,
Between my ribs in gentle gusts she
Sifted free, polishing the small bones.

The mute, thin framework takes the winds
That blow across the stony places.



3.

"...Still, she reproached all lands,
calling them ungrateful
and unworthy of the gift of corn"

She shall not be mollified
Til men go mad, and trees have died
For no known reason on the heights
And cornfields withered overnight;
Til Elk have groaned with thirst
And flower buds refuse to burst
Til rivers turn the fish to stone
And rocks are heard again to moan:
Until the sun has been re-tied
To Machu Picchu, men who die
Will be but corpses dressed in frocks
Who cannot speak with birds or rocks.



4. Tiger Song

I gnaw the body of delight
Spit the knotted gristle out
Lap the blood left lie by night

O see your joy digested here
Splintering to the bones of life
That torture with their fractured points
Your concupiscence into strife
Your love into a ball of hair
That cuts me worse than any knife



5.

Poorness and the pride we shared
Our mutual vicious natures bared
Made a jungle of a bed
Gnawed and comforted we fled.
It should have birthed a human child,
Instead our intellects ran wild.

My bitter foe, O sterile lover,
Stranded in my brain, you
Are loved, still loved, there
Which is nowhere,and leaves me
Strangled, bound and dangled, yet
Met, yet of most men most free.



6.

You've gone cold, I suppose
In the prosperous East, with a good job,
Your bright mind turned all brain,
Your wild dancing feet and eyes
Held still, fear
Finally running it all
Under some fancy name.
The summer I hitchhiked from New York
In the hottest week of August
Over the desert and into sea-fog
San Francisco and took you
From your Mother's place, and we hiked
Over Tamalpais, caught a ride
to Tomales Bay, and camped under pines.
You remember it now and put it down,
Turning hard. But I know
How clear and kind your love was
At eighteen, how keen your heart and eye,
How you wrote me of your downtown job,
Sandpipers at Stinson Beach, an old
German you met on a lonely hike
With freckles on his back--the sunburn
On your breasts. even then
I had a terrible thought of time,
And age, and the death
Of our dream-like young love.
It began too soon,
Was too strong too soon,
And it's gone.



7.

Love me love, til trees fall flat
their trunks flail down the berries
Til ripe sharp vines crawl through the door
and the air is full of sparrows

I loved you love, in halls and homes
and through the long library;
I loved you in the pine and snow
now I love blackberry



8.

Half-known stars in the dawn sky
Purple Finch at the feed-tray
A broom beat on a back porch,
tea,
My bent legs, love of you.



9. Up the Dosewallips

In the ruins of a CCC shelter
cooking stew,
rain thru the broken shakes
gorge a low roar,
rain and creeks--

A doe in the meadow
hair plastered to steaming flanks
--hoofprints down gullies
wind whipping rain against cliffs

The trail fades in the meadow,
carins at each rise to the pass.
ash-scars, a ring of stone
--we camped here one other summer--

rainsoaked and shivering
knee deep in squaw grass,

two days travel from roads.



Olympic Mountains



10. Seaman's Ditty

I'm wondering where you are now
Married, or mad, or free:
Wherever you are you're likely glad,
But memory troubles me.

We could've had us children,
We could've had a home--
But you thought not, and I thought not,
And these nine years we roam.

Today I worked in the deep dark tanks,
And climbed out to watch the sea:
Gulls and salty waves pass by,
And mountains of Araby.

I've travelled the lonely oceans
And wandered the lonely towns.
I've learned a lot and lost a lot,
And proved the world was round.

Now if we'd stayed together,
There's much we'd never've known--
But dreary books and weary lands
Weigh on me like a stone.



Indian Ocean