Randall Jarrell Poem Anthology

Jerome

Each day brings its toad, each night its dragon.
Der heilige Hieronymus--his lion is at the zoo--
Listens, listens. All the long, soft, summer day
Dreams affright his couch, the deep boils like a pot.
As the sun sets, the last patient rises,
Says to him, Father, trembles, turns away.

Often, to the lion, the saint said, Son.
To the man the saint says--but the man is gone.
Under a plaque of Gradiva, at gloaming.
The old man boils an egg. When he has eaten
He listens a while. The patients have not stopped.
At midnight, he lies down where his patients lay.

All night the old man whispers to the night.
It listens evenly. The great armored paws
Of its forelegs put together in reflection.
It thinks: Where Ego was, there Id shall be.
The world wrestles with it and is changed into it
And after a long time changes it. The dragon

Listens as the old man says, at dawn: I see
--There is an old man, naked in a desert, by a cliff.
He has set out his books, his hat, his ink, his shears
Among scorpions, toads, the wild beasts of the desert.
I lie beside him--I am a lion.
He kneels listening. He holds in his left hand

The stone with which he beats his breat, and holds
In his right hand, the pen with which he puts
Into his book, the words of the angel:
The angel up into whose face he looks.
But the angel does not speak. He looks into the face
Of the night, and the night says--but the night is gone.

He has slept. . . . At morning, when man's flesh is young
And man's soul thankful for it knows not what,
The air is washed, and smells of boiling coffee,
And the sun lights it. The old man walks placidly
To the grocer's; walks on, under leaves, in light,
To a lynx, a leopard--he has come;

The man holds out a lump of liver to the lion,
And the lion licks the man's hand with his tongue.

Eighth air force

If, in an odd angle of the hutment,

A puppy laps the water from a can

Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving   

Whistles O Paradiso!—shall I say that man   

Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?

The other murderers troop in yawning;   

Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one   

Lies counting missions, lies there sweating   

Till even his heart beats: One; One; One.

O murderers! ... Still, this is how it’s done:

This is a war.... But since these play, before they die,   

Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man,

I did as these have done, but did not die—

I will content the people as I can

And give up these to them: Behold the man!

I have suffered, in a dream, because of him,   

Many things; for this last saviour, man,

I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying?

Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can:   

I find no fault in this just man.

A Man meets a Woman in the Street

Under the separated leaves of shade

Of the gingko, that old tree

That has existed essentially unchanged

Longer than any other living tree,

I walk behind a woman. Her hair's coarse gold

Is spun from the sunlight that it rides upon.

Women were paid to knit from sweet champagne

Her second skin: it winds and unwinds, winds

Up her long legs, delectable haunches,

As she sways, in sunlight, up the gazing aisle.

The shade of the tree that is called maidenhair,

That is not positively known

To exist in a wild state, spots her fair or almost fair

Hair twisted in a French twist; tall or almost tall,

She walks through the air the rain has washed, a clear thing

Moving easily on its high heels, seeming to men

Miraculous . . . Since I can call her, as Swann couldn't

A woman who is my type, I follow with the warmth

Of familiarity, of novelty, this new

Example of the type,

Reminded of how Lorenz's just-hatched goslings

Shook off the last remnants of the egg

And, looking at Lorenz, realized that Lorenz

Was their mother. Quaking, his little family

Followed him everywhere; and when they met a goose,

Their mother, they ran to him afraid.

Imprinted upon me

Is the shape I run to, the sweet strange

Breath-taking contours that breathe to me: "I am yours,   

Be mine!"

             Following this new

Body, somehow familiar, this young shape, somehow old,

For a moment I'm younger, the century is younger.

The living Strauss, his moustache just getting gray,

Is shouting to the players: "Louder!

Louder! I can still hear Madame Schumann-Heink-"

Or else, white, bald, the old man's joyfully

Telling conductors they must play Elektra

Like A Midsummer Night's Dream -like a fairy music;

Proust, dying, is swallowing his iced beer

And changing in proof the death of Bergotte

According to his own experience; Garbo,

A commissar in Paris, is listening attentively

To the voice telling how McGillicuddy me McGillivray,

And McGillivray said to McGillicuddy-no, McGillicuddy

Said to McGillivray-that is, McGillivray...Garbo

Says seriously: "I vish dey'd never met."

As I walk behind this woman I remember

That before I flew here-waked in the forest

At dawn, by the piece called Birds Beginning Day

That, each day, birds play to begin the day-

I wished as men wish: "May this day be different!"

The birds were wishing, as birds wish-over and over,

With a last firmness, intensity, reality-

"May this day be the same!"

                                        Ah, turn to me

And look into my eyes, say: "I am yours,

Be mine!"

             My wish will have come true. And yet

When your eyes meet my eyes, they'll bring into

The weightlessness of my pure wish the weight

Of a human being: someone to help or hurt,

Someone to be good to me, to be good to,

Someone to cry when I am angry

that she doesn't like Elektra, someone to start on Proust with.

A wish, come true, is life. I have my life.

When you turn just slide your eyes across my eyes

And show in a look flickering across your face

As lightly as a leaf's shade, a bird's wing,

That there is no one in the world quite like me,

That if only...If only...

                                    That will be enough.

But I've pretended long enough: I walk faster

And come close, touch with the tip of my finger

The nape of her neck, just where the gold

Hair stops, and the champagne-colored dress begins.

My finger touches her as the gingko's shadow

Touches her.   

                Because, after all, it is my wife

In a new dress from Bergdorf's, walking toward the park.

She cries out, we kiss each other, and walk arm in arm

Through the sunlight that's much too good for New York,

The sunlight of our own house in the forest.

Still, though, the poor things need it...We've no need

To start out on Proust, to ask each other about Strauss.

We first helped each other, hurt each other, years ago.

After so many changes made and joys repeated,

Our first bewildered, transcending recognition

Is pure acceptance.   We can't tell our life

From our wish. Really I began the day

Not with a man's wish: "May this day be different,"

But with the birds' wish: "May this day

Be the same day, the day of my life."

90 North

At home, in my flannel gown, like a bear to its floe,
I clambered to bed; up the globe's impossible sides
I sailed all night—till at last, with my black beard,
My furs and my dogs, I stood at the northern pole.

There in the childish night my companions lay frozen,
The stiff furs knocked at my starveling throat,
And I gave my great sigh: the flakes came huddling,
Were they really my end? In the darkness I turned to my rest.

—Here, the flag snaps in the glare and silence
Of the unbroken ice. I stand here,
The dogs bark, my beard is black, and I stare
At the North Pole . . .
 And now what? Why, go back.

Turn as I please, my step is to the south.
The world—my world spins on this final point
Of cold and wretchedness: all lines, all winds
End in this whirlpool I at last discover.

And it is meaningless. In the child's bed
After the night's voyage, in that warm world
Where people work and suffer for the end
That crowns the pain—in that Cloud-Cuckoo-Land

I reached my North and it had meaning.
Here at the actual pole of my existence,
Where all that I have done is meaningless,
Where I die or live by accident alone—

Where, living or dying, I am still alone;
Here where North, the night, the berg of death
Crowd me out of the ignorant darkness,
I see at last that all the knowledge

I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me—
Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

Next Day

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,

I take a box

And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.

The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical

Food-gathering flocks

Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise

If that is wisdom.

Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves

And the boy takes it to my station wagon,

What I’ve become

Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

When I was young and miserable and pretty

And poor, I’d wish

What all girls wish: to have a husband,

A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish

Is womanish:

That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.

For so many years

I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me

And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,

The eyes of strangers!

And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

Imaginings within my imagining,

I too have taken

The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog

And we start home. Now I am good.

The last mistaken,

Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm

Some soap and water—

It was so long ago, back in some Gay

Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss

My lovely daughter

Away at school, my sons away at school,

My husband away at work—I wish for them.

The dog, the maid,

And I go through the sure unvarying days

At home in them. As I look at my life,

I am afraid

Only that it will change, as I am changing:

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.

It looks at me

From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,

The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look

Of gray discovery

Repeats to me: “You’re old.” That’s all, I’m old.

And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral

I went to yesterday.

My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,

Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body

Were my face and body.

As I think of her and I hear her telling me

How young I seem; I am exceptional;

I think of all I have.

But really no one is exceptional,

No one has anything, I’m anybody,

I stand beside my grave

Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

The Woman at the Washington Zoo

The saris go by me from the embassies.

Cloth from the moon. Cloth from another planet.   

They look back at the leopard like the leopard.

And I....

               this print of mine, that has kept its color   

Alive through so many cleanings; this dull null   

Navy I wear to work, and wear from work, and so   

To my bed, so to my grave, with no

Complaints, no comment: neither from my chief,   

The Deputy Chief Assistant, nor his chief—

Only I complain.... this serviceable

Body that no sunlight dyes, no hand suffuses

But, dome-shadowed, withering among columns,   

Wavy beneath fountains—small, far-off, shining   

In the eyes of animals, these beings trapped   

As I am trapped but not, themselves, the trap,   

Aging, but without knowledge of their age,

Kept safe here, knowing not of death, for death—

Oh, bars of my own body, open, open!

The world goes by my cage and never sees me.   

And there come not to me, as come to these,

The wild beasts, sparrows pecking the llamas’ grain,   

Pigeons settling on the bears’ bread, buzzards   

Tearing the meat the flies have clouded....

                                                                Vulture,   

When you come for the white rat that the foxes left,

Take off the red helmet of your head, the black

Wings that have shadowed me, and step to me as man:

The wild brother at whose feet the white wolves fawn,

To whose hand of power the great lioness

Stalks, purring....

                              You know what I was,

You see what I am: change me, change me!