A Week of Doodle

Monday

I will now address myself to the problem of writing
A few lines, a very few lines each day
During this winter of waiting and waiting and waiting
For something to say,

So that this special skill by which I live,
This talent of mine with an image, a rhyme and a pen,
Will suffer as little from cold and snow and neglect
As a well-oiled gun,

On the theory that one spring day I’ll get up early,
Walk out with vigor and find on a tree a bill
Announcing that verse is once again in season—
Gridley, fire at will.

Tuesday

This kind of thing (these lines) might be likened to those
Hobbies with hammers and drills
Practiced in all the best basements by men who’d dispose
Of some of a long day’s cache of bills and ills

In the evening. Manual therapy.
Even physicians practice it. It is approved.
The mind is soothed by the hand as the hand pounds a rickety
Chair or table together; violently soothed,

As, in this instance, this unregenerate mind
Seeks to dispose of some of its winter’s reverses
By letting this ink in this pen in this clumsy hand
Make (for this mind) these verses.

Friday

You see how quickly the system has broken down.
Already two days have elapsed since I last entrusted
A line to this journal; already my modest design
Has proved too complex; I’m bested.

This brings me to my point for today. You recall
An essay by Mr. Eliot some time ago
On minor poetry. What is it? he asked, and with all
The solemnity of the Pope said he didn’t know.

I know even less (of course anyone knows even less
Than T.S.), but I think of this journal
As evidence of some weight of a kind of verse
Neither major nor minor but merely (an old kind) doodle.

Saturday

Doodle is waiting raised to a fine art,
Waiting in phone booths for answers, in classrooms for tests.
It is done with but part of the mind, but a pleasant part.
It brightens deserts of notebooks, scrap pads and desks.

It does, in my case, for my work, what others expect
Of courses in writing—how to express and impress;
And improves my condition no end in a different respect
Since, in a pinch, I can sell it for (minor) verse.

But of course it has limits. Even a week seems extravagant
Of just it. So my readers all over the world will (I hope) come to thank
Me for my notable wisdom and judgment
On those days of this week—just two, not counting Sunday—when I
      was blank.

_____________

Spring Again

“If they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?“

—Luke, Chapter 23.

At the end of that lengthy winter, after the snow
Had vanished into the ground, leaving on top
The refuse of a dead season—leaves and stalks
And all possible forms of pastness, withered and brown—
It was hard to be wholly sure
That the land would heave again, and breathe, and proceed
With the vast labor of spring. At least, for an author,
The chance that the annual miracle might not occur,
Though a long one, was worth some attention, since there was always
Some kind of market somewhere for “fantasy fiction.”

He could describe the annual chores—the turning of earth,
The raking, clearing, seeding, planting—based
On the normal and healthy assumption that this year, like last,
Something would come of it all, something green, something edible,
And life with corn and potatoes would go on.
And then he could switch to the faces of men and describe
All the mounting phases of loss—disbelief and fear,
Anger and violence, horror and then at last calm—
As the spring that was not to be spring advanced, and the summer
That never would come
Hovered, a new breed of carrion, in that future
Where robins and bluejays and larks
Should have been, would have been, if only
A valve or a switch or a faucet no one could fix
Had not, after all these years, somehow got clogged.

So ran an author’s thoughts in that season of brown,
Thoughts of a new Jeremiah looking for something
Saleable even as shoots of green began groping
Their way in the dark to the surface of things,
And robins appeared on schedule, and buds swelled.

_____________

An American Takes a Walk

In the middle of this life’s journey
He came, like Dante, on a wood
The notes said stood for error
But in his case stood for good,
Where his art and prowess left him
And left him become a child
To whom the wild seemed milder
Than his old neighborhood.

Had he, with those abandoned
Sons of fatal decrees,
Then been found by a shepherd
And bred up to shepherdese,
Or retrieved, like Dante, by Virgil
And led through circles and seas
To some brighter country beyond
His annotated trees,

He could not have been more cared for.
Nature was all a park.
Such greenness and warmth, such abundance
Made his plight a lark.

How in that Arden could human
Frailty be but glossed?
How in that Eden could Adam
Be really, wholly lost?

_____________

The Line of an American Poet

That American Poet’s future
Is bright because he began
With the know-how of Ford and Chrysler
And the faith of American Can.

He fathomed success’s secret
And stuck to his P’s and Q’s
And urged himself, over and over,
To produce and produce and produce.

His very first verses were cleverly
Built; the market boomed.
Some of the world’s most critical
Consumers looked, and consumed.

Lines off his line became smoother
And smoother as more and more
Know-how came in the window
And verses rolled out the door.

Now everyone in the market
Knows that his new works are sure
To be just what the country has need of:
Poems uniform, safe and pure.

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