Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TAMARACK BLUE, by LEW SARETT Poet's Biography First Line: As any brush-wolf, driven from the hills Last Line: Something in palsied mullein troubles me. Subject(s): Blue (color); Christianity; Wolves | ||||||||
As any brush-wolf, driven from the hills By winter famine, waits upon the edge Of a settlement for cover of the dusk, And enters it by furtive devious route, Cowering among the shadows, freezing taut With every sound, so came the widow Blue In winter-moons to parish Pointe aux Trembles, Doubled to earth beneath her pack of furs, To ply her trade, to barter at the Post. And if she ventured near the village inn, The roustabouts, baring their yellow tusks, Would toss a dry slow leer at her and stone Old Tamarack numb with "Mag, the Indian hag" -- With ribald epithet and jibe and gesture. And when they waxed melodious with rye Pounding their ribs, and knew no way to free The head of steam that hammered in their breasts, Save in a raucous music, they would blare: "She wears for petticoat a gunny-bag" -- Adding, with many ponderous knowing winks, "O Skinflint Blue, with a shin of flint, too!" And thus to the end they thumped their beery song With laughter raw, big-bellied. There were days When the Christian gentlemen of Pointe aux Trembles Would welcome Tamarack with such cataract Of bilious humor that the harried squaw, Bruised by their epithets, with swimming eyes Intent upon the dust, seemed well-nigh gone, Stoned to the earth. There came a stumbling hour When I put an arm around her bag of ribs, And felt her bosom pounding with such fear That had I dared to place my weight of thumb Upon her heart, I could have pressed the life From her as from a fluttering crippled wren Held in my hand. Nor was the widow's perfume Of name and reputation without reason: Penurious, forgetful of her own Hungering flesh, she strangled every coin And hoarded it against some secret need; And slattern she was -- a juiceless crone, more drab To contemplate than venison long-cured By the slow smoke of burning maple logs, And quite as pungent with the wilderness. What with the fight to draw the sap of life From grudging soil, in sun and wind and snow, Twenty-one years of Indian widowhood -- The cycle of labor, the desperate routine -- Will parch a soul and weather any hide To the texture of a withered russet apple. A moon of hauling sap in the sugar-bush, And boiling maple-syrup; a moon for netting Whitefish and smoking them upon the racks; Two moons among the berries, plums, and cherries; A moon in the canberry bog; another moon For harvesting the wild-rice in the ponds; Odd days for trailing moose and jerking meat; And then the snow -- and trap-lines to be strung Among the hills for twenty swampy miles, For minks and martens, otters, beavers, wolves. So steadfast was the bronzed coureuse-de-bois On her yearly round -- like hands upon a clock -- Given the week and weather, I could tell, Uncannily close, what grove of balsam-trees, What jutting rock or lonely waste of swamp Sheltered the widow's shins at night from beat Of rain or snow. And when the spring thaws came, And bread was low, and the pagan stomach lay As flat against her spine as any trout's After a spawning-season, there were nights When Tamarack's ears were sensitive to silver -- Evenings when any lumberjack on drive, Gone rampant with the solitude of winter, And hungry for affection, might persuade The otherwise forlorn and famished widow To join him in a moment of romance. Oh, not without demurring did she yield -- And not without reason: otter pelts are rare, Cranberries buy no silken petticoats, No singing lessons -- for there was Suzie Blue. Whenever Tamarack touched the world in shame Or drudgery or barter, she had for end The wringing of a comfort for her daughter -- As when a cactus pushes down its roots Among the hostile sands for food and moisture, And sends the stream and sparkle of its life Up to a creaming blossom. None of us In parish Pointe-aux-Trembles could fathom why The outcast crucified herself for Suzie. Some said that Suzie Blue was all the kin The starveling had; and others, among the elders, Held that the half-breed daughter carried every Feature of Antoine Blue, who fathered her, As clearly as a tranquil mountain pool Holds on its breast the overhanging sky; And added that the pagan drab was proud That she had crossed to the issue of her flesh The pure white strain, the color of a Frenchman. Whatever the reason, when the voyageur Let out his quart of blood upon the floor After a drunken brawl at Jock McKay's, The widow set herself to live for Suzie, Bustling from crimson dawn to purple dusk, And sometimes in the furtive black of night, Hither and yon, in every wind and weather, Scratching the mulch for morsels of the earth, And salvaging the tender bits -- a grouse With a solitary chick. Of luxuries Wrung from the widow's flesh there was no end: Ribbons and scarfs and laces -- all for Suzie; And four long years at Indian boarding-school; A year at Fort de Bois in business-college, For higher education; and topping all, Three seasons spent in culture of the voice. Oh, such a dream as stirred the widow's heart -- A hope that put a savor in her world, A zest for life! -- a dream of cities thralled By silver music fountaining from Suzie, Cities that flashed upon the velvet night In scrawling fire the name of Suzie Blue; A dream wherein the widow would declare In glory, comfort, rest, her diviends Upon the flesh put in for capital. How clearly I recall the eventful spring When Sue returned from her gilding at the Fort! Old Tamarack was away -- at Lac la Croix Netting for fish -- and could not come to town To welcome her. But when the run of trout Was at an end, she cached her nets and floats And paddled down in time for Corpus Christi. Some circumstance conspired to keep the two Apart until the eucharistic feast -- Perhaps the village-folk who always took A Christian interest in Suzie's moral Welfare. But Thursday found the derelict Stiff on a bench in Mission Sacre Coeur, More taut for the high sweet moment of her life Than quivering catgut strung upon a fiddle -- For Suzie was to sing in Corpus Christi, The pagan was about to claim her own. I'd never seen the squaw in her Sunday-best: Soft doeskin moccasins of corn-flower blue, Patterned with lemon beads and lemon quills; Checkered vermilion gown of calico To hide her flinty shins, her thin flat hips; And umber shawl, drawn tight about her head And anchored at her breast by leather hands -- A dubious madonna of the pines. Somehow the crone had burst her dull cocoon Upon this day, was almost radiant With loveliness, as if, on the new-born Wings of desire, she was about to leave The earth and know the luxury of sunlight. The apologetic eyes, the mien of one Bludgeoned to earth by rancid drollery, Had vanished; on her face there was the look That glorifies a partridge once in life -- When after endless labor, pain, and trouble Rearing her first-born brood, she contemplates Her young ones pattering among the leaves On steady legs, and clucking pridefully She spreads her shining feathers to the wind. And when the widow shot a wisp of smile At me from underneath her umber cowl -- A smile so tremulous, so fragmentary, And yet so shyly confident that all The dawning world this day was exquisite -- A whisk of overture so diffident And yet so palpitant for friendliness -- Somehow the poignant silver of it slipped Between my ribs and touched me at the quick, And I was moved to join her in the pew. Oh, how her eyes, like embers in a breeze, Flared up to life when Father Bruno led Her daughter from the choir, and Suzie set Herself to sing! Suzie was beautiful, Sullenly beautiful with sagging color; Blue was the half-seen valley of her breast; Her blue hair held the dusk; beneath her lids Blue were the cryptic shadows, stealthy blue, Skulking with wraiths that spoke of intimate, Too intimate, communion with the night, The languor of the moon. Beneath the glass Of hot-house culture she had come to fruit, A dusky grape grown redolent with wine, A grape whose velvet-silver bloom reveals The finger-smudge of too many dawdling thumbs. She braced herself and tossed a cataract Of treble notes among the mission rafters, While Sister Mercy followed on the organ. Something distressed me in the melody -- A hint of metal, a subtle dissonance; Perhaps the trouble lay with Sister Mercy, Or else the organ needful of repair; To me there seemed a mellow spirit wanting, As if the chambers of the half-breed's soul -- Like a fiddle-box, unseasoned by the long Slow sun and wind, and weathered too rapidly Beside a comfortable hot-house flame -- Lacked in the power to resonate the tone. But the widow sat beatified, enthralled; To her the cold flat notes were dulcet-clear, As golden in their tones as the slow bronze bell That swung among the girders overhead And echoed in the hills. And Suzie sang, Serene, oblivious of all the world -- Save in a dim far pew a florid white man Whose glance went up her bosom to her lips And inventoried all of Suzie's charms. For him she chanted: for him she lifted up The tawny blue-veined marble of her arm In casual gesture to pat a random lock; For him she shook her perfume on the air -- Bold as a spike deer rutting in October, Drenching its heavy musk upon the wind, And waiting, silhouetted on the moon, Waiting the beat of coming cloven hoofs. When Sue dispatched her final vibrant note In a lingering amen and came to earth, She undulated down the aisle with swash Of silken petticoat, to greet and join Her glorified old mother -- so it seemed. And when she came within the pagan's reach, The widow, bright with tears, and tremulous, Uttered a rivulet of ecstasy As wistful as the wind in autumn boughs, And strove to touch the hand of Sue, half stood To welcome her. The daughter paused, uncertain, The passing of a breath. Haunted her face; The dear dim ghosts of wildwood yesterdays Laid gentle hands upon the half-breed's heart, Struggled to bring her soul to life again. She wavered. Then, conscious of the battery Of parish eyes upon her, the village code Rich with taboos of blue and flinty flesh, And mindful of the gulf between the two Sprung from her Christian culture at the Fort, She gathered up her new-born pride, and froze. With eyes as cold and stony as a pike's, She looked at Tamarack -- as on a vagrant wind; With but the tremor of a lip, a fleeting Hail and farewell, she slipped her flaccid palm From out the pagan's gnarled and weathered hand, And rustled down the room and out the door -- The stranger at her heels, a coyote warm And drooling on the trail of musky deer. The widow held her posture, breathless, stunned; Swayed for a moment, blindly groped her way, And wilted to the bench: as when a mallard, High on a lift of buoyant homing wind, Before a blast of whistling lead careers, Hovers bewildered, and crumpling up its wings, Plummets to earth -- to lie upon the dust A bleeding thing, suffused with anguish, broken. At last she gathered the remnants of her strength; Huddling within her corner, stoic, cold, And burying her head within her cowl, She parried all the gimlet eyes that strove To penetrate the shadows to her mood. And when the cure lifted up his hands And blessed his flock, the derelict went shuffling Along the aisle and vanished in the mist Of Lac La Croix. Some untoward circumstance Stifled my breath -- perhaps the atmosphere, The fetid body-odors in the room. I hurried from the hall to sun-washed air. Bridling my sorrel mare, I found the trail That skirts the mossy banks of Stonybrook, And cantered homeward, to all the kindred-folk That ever wait my coming with high heart: My setter bitch asprawl beside the door, Drowsy, at peace with all the droning flies; The woodchucks, quizzical and palpitant, That venture from their den among the logs To query me for crumbs; the crippled doe, Who, lodging with me, crops my meadow-grass And tramples havoc with my bed of beets, Gloriously confident that I shall never Muster the will to serve her with a notice! -- To all that blessed vagrom company With whom I band myself against the world And all its high concerns and tribulations. Somehow the valley was uncommonly Serene and lovely, following the rain, The mellow benediction of the sun. The beaver-ponds that held upon their glass The clean clear blue of noon, the pebbly brook Meandering its twisted silver rope Through hemlock arches, loitering in pools Clear-hued as brimming morning-glories, placid, Save when a trout would put a slow round kiss Upon the water -- these were beautiful. The rustle of winds among the aspen-trees, The fragrance on the air when my sorrel mount, Loping upon the trail, flung down her hoofs Upon the wintergreen and left it bruised And dripping -- these were very clean and cool. And I was glad for the wild plums crimsoning Among the leaves, and for the frail blue millers Glinting above them -- chips of splintered sky; Glad for the blossoming alfalfa fields Robust with wining sap, and the asters bobbing And chuckling at the whimsies of the breeze; Glad for the far jing-jangling of cattle-bells That summoned to a land of deep wet grass And lazy water, a world of no distress, No pain, no sorrow, a valley of contentment. Until I came upon a mullein-weed Withered and bended almost to the ground Beneath the weight of a raucous purple grackle -- A weed so scrawny of twig, so gnarled, so old, That when I flung a pebble at the bird Heavy upon the bough, the mullein failed To spring its ragged stalk from earth again, The suppleness of life had gone from it. Something in this distressed me, haunted me. Something in mullein, stricken, drooping, doomed -- When I can hear the rustle of a ghost Upon November wind, a ghost that whispers Of chill white nights and brittle stars to come, Of solitude with never a creature sounding Save lowing moose that flounder in the snow, Forlornly rumped against the howling wind -- Something in palsied mullein troubles me. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FOUR MOUNTAIN WOLVES by LESLIE MARMON SILKO BEING AS I WAS, HOW COULD I HELP by ELEANOR WILNER THE WOLF'S POSTSCRIPT TO 'LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD' by AGHA SHAHID ALI THE GOOD GRAY WOLF by MARTHA COLLINS HUNTING SONG, FR. ZAPOLYA by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE WOLVES IN THE ZOO by HOWARD NEMEROV THE WOLVES by JOHN ORLEY ALLEN TATE AMERICAN MYSTIC by DAVID BOTTOMS PAPER ROUTE, NORTHWEST MONTANA by DAVID BOTTOMS FOUR LITTLE FOXES by LEW SARETT |
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