Outside of Omaha
‘Brasky morning drear and flat
Harvest in and nothing
But wingwhirl of gleaning birds
Over the stubble field.
Grain elevator
Nine miles distant on the march
You say you see the curvature of earth.
I cannot.
Lingering here on the porch
And watching you descend
The pebbled pathway in your Sunday dress –
Lacy collar, heeled and pinching boots –
Me strangled, starched, thinned hair painted flat.
Just as if leaving to that Sabbath prison.
But today we drive the Ford to Omaha,
Where they will freeze our faces for the future.
Now, I would craft some other sort of picture
With what I gathered in my balding box
Starting when I cast myself out to this place
Raised up that little house of sod
We use now for a shed
And wrote to you a wifing letter
(Thinking it was for some good blonde German girl.)
Then came you from the train all changeling small,
Weird of accent, gypsy dark,
Silent and city in origin,
To take up here your houseworks,
Your needlepoint,
Your never-ending hatred of the world.
Your rudeness to neighbors, disregard for pies.
You knit for us a circumscription
We have kept for good.
(Even from the wanted hands of children.)
I would unlid for no-one what’s inside,
Cunning as a little Persian box
Where I lived in lacquer with a girl,
Pictured bent down to the task,
Or arced away and stuck,
Blended to me at the root
with sweat and wanting on her lip,
Then leaning up to hiss into my ear,
And rasp me in that bed a lullaby:
Mother dear, mother heart
unlock the pearls from round my throat,
the Kaiser will come riding here,
and god forbid he want me . . .
Then, we live your ungirling out again,
Clutching me into your cleft,
Bent to take my line.
It was we who turned the century
And laid down winter stores in cloudy jars.
And the ‘Brasky prairie land was right for us,
And knew that its possessors come
To make our parcel of this samey plain
A kind-of-Eden.
Here we reign secure.
God could make Americans
To lay their tubers down in hell,
So long as it was free and to the West.
(So I guess then I’m American, after all)
We keep our secrets:
Us from them, and me from you:
My outlaw Colt a-rusting in a tea-tin,
Smothered in the yard.
Your homeland in the Pale of Settlement,
A little further East
Than you might like to claim.
Go ahead, let Omaha just paint us how it likes:
Plain old crone in a cloche,
Gangle of a man with clotted razor nick
Above the paper-collared throat.
Two laced-up relics,
Made awkward standing still
And wondering what unborn eyes
Will make of them.
I’d still ride my horse to hand you from the train.
One day they will look and think they know
The summing of these worn out folks,
but we will keep our night hours to our selfs.
‘Brasky morning drear and flat
Harvest in and nothing
But wingwhirl of gleaning birds
Over the stubble field.
Grain elevator
Nine miles distant on the march
You say you see the curvature of earth.
I cannot.
Lingering here on the porch
And watching you descend
The pebbled pathway in your Sunday dress –
Lacy collar, heeled and pinching boots –
Me strangled, starched, thinned hair painted flat.
Just as if leaving to that Sabbath prison.
But today we drive the Ford to Omaha,
Where they will freeze our faces for the future.
Now, I would craft some other sort of picture
With what I gathered in my balding box
Starting when I cast myself out to this place
Raised up that little house of sod
We use now for a shed
And wrote to you a wifing letter
(Thinking it was for some good blonde German girl.)
Then came you from the train all changeling small,
Weird of accent, gypsy dark,
Silent and city in origin,
To take up here your houseworks,
Your needlepoint,
Your never-ending hatred of the world.
Your rudeness to neighbors, disregard for pies.
You knit for us a circumscription
We have kept for good.
(Even from the wanted hands of children.)
I would unlid for no-one what’s inside,
Cunning as a little Persian box
Where I lived in lacquer with a girl,
Pictured bent down to the task,
Or arced away and stuck,
Blended to me at the root
with sweat and wanting on her lip,
Then leaning up to hiss into my ear,
And rasp me in that bed a lullaby:
Mother dear, mother heart
unlock the pearls from round my throat,
the Kaiser will come riding here,
and god forbid he want me . . .
Then, we live your ungirling out again,
Clutching me into your cleft,
Bent to take my line.
It was we who turned the century
And laid down winter stores in cloudy jars.
And the ‘Brasky prairie land was right for us,
And knew that its possessors come
To make our parcel of this samey plain
A kind-of-Eden.
Here we reign secure.
God could make Americans
To lay their tubers down in hell,
So long as it was free and to the West.
(So I guess then I’m American, after all)
We keep our secrets:
Us from them, and me from you:
My outlaw Colt a-rusting in a tea-tin,
Smothered in the yard.
Your homeland in the Pale of Settlement,
A little further East
Than you might like to claim.
Go ahead, let Omaha just paint us how it likes:
Plain old crone in a cloche,
Gangle of a man with clotted razor nick
Above the paper-collared throat.
Two laced-up relics,
Made awkward standing still
And wondering what unborn eyes
Will make of them.
I’d still ride my horse to hand you from the train.
One day they will look and think they know
The summing of these worn out folks,
but we will keep our night hours to our selfs.