Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IN INTERIMS: OUTLYER, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IN INTERIMS: OUTLYER, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: He halts. He haw. Plummets
Last Line: Aloud and here and now.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Imaginary Conversations; Love; Memory; Nature; Reincarnation; Travel; Transmigration; Pretas; Journeys; Trips


Let us open together the last bud of the future.
- APOLLINAIRE

He Halts. He Haw. Plummets.
The snake in the river is belly-up
diamond head caught in crotch of branch,
length wavering yellow with force of water.
Who strangles as this taste of present?
Numen of walking and sleep, knees of snow
as the shark's backbone is gristle.
And if my sister hadn't died in an auto wreck
and had been taken by the injuns
I would have had something to do:
go into the mountains and get her back.

Miranda, I have proof that when people die
they become birds. And I've lost
my chance to go to sea or become a cowboy.
Age narrows me to this window and its
three-week snow. This is Russia and I a clerk.
Miranda throws herself from the window,
the icon clutched to her breasts,
into the snow, over and over.

A world of ruminants, cloven-hoofed,
sum it: is it less worthless for being "in front"?
There are the others, ignorant of us
to a man: says Johnson of Lowell who
wouldn't come to tea who's he sunbitch
and he know armaments and cattle like
a Renaissance prince knew love & daggers
and faintly knew of Dante, or Cecco.
It is a world that belongs to Kipling.

What will I die with in my hand?
A paintbrush (for houses), an M15
a hammer or ax, a book or gavel a candlestick
tiptoeing upstairs.
What will I hold or will I
be caught with this usual thing
that I want to be my heart but
it is my brain and I turn it
over and over and over.

Only miracles should apply,
we have stones enough -
they steal all the heat and trip
everyone even the wary.
Throw stones away.

And
a tricky way of saying something unnecessary
will not do.

The girl standing outside the bus station
in Muskegon, Michigan, hasn't noticed me.
I doubt she reads poetry or if she did
would like it at all or if she liked it
the affection would be casual and temporary.
She would anyway rather ride a horse
than read a poet, read a comic rather than
ride a poet. Sweetie, fifteen minutes
in that black alley bent over the garbage can
with me in the saddle would make
our affections equal. Let's be fair.

I love my dear daughter
her skin is so warm
and if I don't hurt her
she'll come to great harm.
I love my dog Missy
her skin is so warm,
I love all my friends
their skins are so warm,
my dear mother dead father
live sister dead sister
two brothers
their skins are so warm,
I love my lovely wife
her skin is most warm,
and I love my dear self
my skin is so warm,
I come to great harm.
I come to great harm.

I want to be told a children's story
that will stick.
I'm sorry I can't settle for less.
Some core of final delight.
In the funeral parlor my limbs
are so heavy I can't rise.
This isn't me in this nest of silk
but a relative bearing my face and name.
I still wanted to become a cowboy
or bring peace to the Middle East.
This isn't me. I saw Christ this summer
rising over the Absaroka Range.
Of course I was drunk.
I carry my vices to the wilderness.
That faintly blue person there among
the nasturtiums, among crooning relatives
and weeping wife, however, isn't me.

Where. We are born dead.
Our minds can taste this source
until that other death.
A long rain and we are children
and a long snow,
sleeping children in deep snow.

As in interims all journeys end
in three steps
with a mirrored door, beyond it a closet
and a closet wall.
And he wants to write poems to resurrect god,
to raise all buried things the eye
buries and the heart and brain, to
move wild laughter in the throat of death.

A new ax
a new ax
I'm going to play
with my new ax
sharp blue blade
handle of ash.
Then, exhausted, listen
to my new record, Johnny Cash.
Nine dollars in all,
two lovely things to play with
far better and more lasting
than a nine-dollar whore
or two bottles of whiskey.
A new ax and Johnny Cash
sharp blue blade and handle of ash
O the stream of your blood
runs as black as the coal.

Saw ghosts not faintly or wispish,
loud they were raising on burly arms
at midday, witches' Sunday in full light,
murder in delight, all former dark things
in noonlight, all light things love
we perform at night and fuck as war wounds
rub, and sigh as others sighed, blind
in delight to the world outside the window.

When I began to make false analogies
between animals & humans, then countries,
Russia is like America and America like Russia,
the universe is the world and the world
a university, the teacher is a crayfish,
the poem is a bird and a housefly, a pig
without a poke, a flame and an oilcan,
a woman who never menstruates, a woman
without glands who makes love by generalized
friction; then I went to the country
to think of precision, O the moon
is the width of a woman's thigh.

The Mexican girl about fourteen years old
in the 1923 National Geographic found in the attic
when we thought the chimney was on fire and I stood
on the roof with snow falling looking down into
the black hole where the fire roared at the bottom.
The girl: lying in the Rio Grande in a thin
wet shift, water covering back between breasts
and buttocks but then isolate the buttocks
in the muddy water, two graceful melons from the deep
in the Rio Grande, to ride them up to the river's source
or down to the sea, it wouldn't matter, or I would
carry her like a pack into some fastness like
the Sawtooth Mountains. The melon butter of her
in water, myself in the cloudy brown water
as a fish beneath her.

All falseness flows: you would rust
in jerks, hobbles; they, dewlaps,
sniff eglantine and in mint-cleared voices
not from dark but in puddles over cement,
an inch-deep of watery mud: all falseness
flows; comes now, where should it rest?
Merlin, as Merlin, le cri de Merlin,
whose shores are never watched, as women
have no more than one mouth staring
at the ground; repeat now, from what cloud
or clouds or country, countries in dim sleep,
pure song, mouthless, as if a church buried
beneath the sea -- one bell tower standing
and one bell; staring for whom at ground's length,
elbows in ground, stare at me now: she grows
from the tree half-vine and half-woman
and haunts all my nights, as music can
that uses our tendons as chords, bowels to hurtle
her gifts; myths as Arcturus, Aldebaran
pictured as colored in with blood,
her eyes were bees and in her hair ice
seemed to glisten, drawn up as plants, the snake
wrapped around the crucifix knows, glass knows,
and O song, meal is made of us not even for small gods
who wait in the morning; dark pushes with no
to and fro, over and under, we who serve her
as canticles for who falls deeper, breaks away,
knows praise other than our own: sing.
Merely land and heavily drawn away from the sea
long before us, green has begun, every crevasse, kelp,
bird dung, froth of sea, foam over granite, wet
sea rose and roar of Baltic: who went from continent
to island, as wolves or elk would at night,
sea ice as salted glass, slight lid, mirror over
dark; as O din least of all gods, with pine smell
of dark and animals crossed in winter
with whales butting shores,
dressed without heat in skins; said Christ who came
late, nothing to be found here, lovers of wood
not stone, north goes over and down, farthest from sun,
aloud in distance white wolf, whiter bear
with red mouth; they can eat flesh and nothing else. white winter white snow
black trees green boughs over us
Arctic sun, one wildflower in profusion,
grass is blue, sterile fishless lake in rock
and northern lights shimmering, crackling.
As a child in mourning, mourned for, knows
how short and bittersweet, not less for saying again,
the child singing knows, near death, it is so alive,
brief and sweet, earth scarcely known, small
songs made of her, how large as hawk or tree,
only a stone lives beyond sweet things:
so that the sea raises herself not swallows
but pushed by wind and moon destroys them;
only dark gives light, Apollo, Christ,
only a blue and knotted earth broken by green
as high above gods see us in our sleeping end.
We know no other, curled as we are here,
sleep over earth, tongues, fog, thunder, wars.
Christ raises. Islands from the sea, see people come.
Clear your speech, it is all that we have,
aloud and here and now.





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