Peter Viereck

ACT I (oak to willow)

It's I, your gnarled accuser, here to scold. What REALLY do you know of earth and sky? Which different raindrops can you classify? How many kinds of dung identify? From too much staring at the shapes of winds, You're blinder than a stump to honest mold, Gall, mildew, all true tree-reality. Mad bird-cursed shaker of obstreperous crest, Listening as if to song yet bare of nest, Roost only of mist from whom all wings take wing: Even our God, the Weather, you deny; You blossom when you feel like blossoming, In a blasphemingly eternal spring. We have a word for such un-treelike stunts. We call them SABOTAGE. Since well-meant hints Have failed, permit the frankness of the old; The grove agrees it's time you're told: Your chance of passing next week's Woodlore Test Is—bear it oakly—not the best. You know the price! The beaver-foreman claims He needs just one more trunk to mend his dams.

ACT II (willow to oak)

Mad? No, I'm madness maddened (—into truth). When groves are mute, when outward wings are south, Hear—can't you hear?—the humming in my sap, Cascades more lyrical than any lark. Your "test"? The holy winds—for love of me Whose blindness dreams them into visibility— Will test your trunk with choice typhoons; They'll stretch you with a little thunderclap Before the foreman's tedious cuspid zeal. (thunder offstage; crash; willow solo) Such zephyrs are the moods we willows feel. The velvet bells of willowdom can peal Earthquakes far-off to match my faintest sigh. All far-off passions vibrate through my bark:— From outside through?, from inside through?, am I The echo or the strummer of earth's tunes?

ACT III

(spotlight on willow's soliloquy; in background, beavers in over-alls drag away storm-felled oak; stage floor as planetary globe; arched blue leaf overhead as sky)

Alone less sure of answers than at war. Mere echo (—strummer?), mad (—or wild with truth?), By contours of the winds lured far too far, I'm left behind when even God flies south (If "God" means all the climate I ignore). Alone with hints of hints. The world's a burr I'm stuck to. Dropping. Quick!, grow meanings back. Back, back; drop upward. Certainty's a rock Too lichen-slippery for a root's attack. There's one blue leaf: big mask;—it mocks, but I'll Know answers when it falls; can wait; meanwhile, To show mere sky I'm not its servitor, I'm burnt by snow and drunk on drouth And serve the inner Weather of my core.

Will no one watch me? Look!, I'll dance on thread Or hold my breath for cameras till I burst. Step close, please; see, I'll pick your pockets first And shine—like truth?, like lies?—and then drop dead. Pathfinder, poacher, voodoo god, and quack: My names, unending as an almanac, Spin round me like a madman's spelling-bee. I am the prodigal who won't come back;

Phobic of wheels, I'll hide beneath the sea.

The sea! What beast existences I'll choose! At first I'll curl in wombs of shells and doze For years and years in tepid, crooning dark. I'll urge Obsession on: an eel, I'll swim To every far Sargasso of my whim. When I hear bathers laugh, I'll be a shark.

A flame-scaled trout, I'll shimmer through your nets— Like lies?, like truth?—and gasp on fatal sands. Trailed fawning by lascivious lean-ribbed cats, What child will scoop me up, what pudgy hands?

Because you made me glad, I was the net. "Why do you haunt me?" asked the midnight lake. "To fish," I said, "that rounded fire. Am not afraid to fall."

No, though that halo moved and moved and moved, It could not hide from me for all its slyness. (Beneath the waters warningly Moon's Icaruses sprawl.)

High watchers glowed their pity on the lake: "To wear mere mirrored circle like a crown, Is it for this the young men drown?" But I, being net, must haul.

Before you made me glad, I feared such splashing; Futile invoker then: "Dive me-ward, moon." But now it's I who dive defiant Cold curves like a ball.

The lake sang out in grace-notes scrawled by stars. I was the net, and all my strands were glad. I pulled the moon out of the water; It wasn't heavy at all.

Through nights of slanting rain Marchers are planting pain; Gardeners in boots Plant tender seeds of mines Where the dimmed flashlight shines, Nursing the wire-vines, Hiding the roots.

Boys in green raincoats scamper Where grass will soon be damper When ripeness murders. How fast the seeds grow high! Blossoming, towards the sky Pain's gaudy petals fly, White with red borders.

If blossoms could blossom One petal of petals To whom all other blooms are As leaves are to flowers, It would be to the others As you are, my daughter, To all other daughters Whom songs are adoring. For what am I here for If not to make love-songs Of all the world's beauty Whose birthday we share?

If purest of fragrances Brewed a quintessence Too delicate-lonely To ever be breathed, It would be to the others As you are, my daughter, To all other daughters Whom songs are encircling. For what am I here for If not to weave lassoes Of song for the lonely To tug them to love?

Say yes to the breezes. If any dishevels One curl of a ringlet, I'll know and be with you. The grace-notes that feather The wing-beats of longing Are lead till they heal with Their singing your crying. For what is a song for If not to smooth ringlets Of daughters too hurt by The prose of the world?

When storms replace breezes, No hurt can have healing. Then the love I now sing you Can pillow your fading. For what am I here for If not to link fingers With daughters whose wistfulness Worlds never answer? For what is a song for If not to stretch hands out To signal the falling, "You're never alone"?

When the Camp says: "Dig graves now, We're coming to shoot you," I'll help with your shovel —(I'll know and be with you)— To give you more seconds To look up from digging To look at the sun while I pillow the sand out. For what is love here for If not to smooth ditches For all the world's daughters Whose dying we share?

One crunch of fangs is all the thanks I'd get, Were I to join the waltz behind their bars. I tried to look away; but shan't forget This circus dance of sixteen mangy bears.

Their jowls, like good sports in a comic paper, Grin their Indignity. Explore that word. Your "injured and insulted," here they caper. I wish I really thought they were absurd.

And do you think so, snout-chained soul of man, You audience whose paws erupt that rumpus? You middle-aged and grouchy, gypped of fun. You growlers all, inelegantly pompous.

And tell me, do they sleepdance, just like—you? Nightly do they keep step, the whole sixteen, When on the roof their plumpness teeters through The canvas of the carnival-canteen?

Beneath the roof, their Chainer is carousing. If he but guessed what bear-hugs overhead Flatten the moon they fly to when they're drowsing! . . . Suppose they crash? Who shrives bears when they're dead?

Shall cats and curs, that cringed to watch them lope, Now dice to divvy and lug home their fat? If I'm around, I'll put a stop to that. I'll honor gaucheness anywhere I find it

And the deep sadness of a shaggy hope.

This was the Easter when it rained so little That all the olive groves were grimed with dust Along the road. The sapless twigs were brittle, Ceding, like wires yielding glint to rust,

Their hoard of stored up sun and all their greenness— Except one crest, whose brightness drained its root. Here clay had pushed beyond all clay's uncleanness And then, exhausted, withered without fruit.

Brittle echoed kiss that quickened our Ebbing cycle, see what you set stirring! Drowsy album stretching, snapshots whirring, Each face just as flat as book-pressed flower.

Every face we once as photo fondled, Wakes in three dimensions and is singing. Now we know how dozing clay was kindled By one warm Was of Word inthebeginning.