Maatstaf. Jaargang 25

[p. 9]

David Ignatow Poems

Brightness as a Poignant Light

I tread the dark and my steps are silent.
I am alone and feel a ghostly joy - wildly
free and yet I do not live absolutely
and forever, but my ghostly joy
is that I am come to light
for some reason known only to the dark,
perhaps to view itself in me.

As I tread the dark,
led by the light of my pulsating mind,
I am faithful to myself: my child.
Still, how can I be happy
to have been born only to return
to my father, the dark, to feel his power
and die?

I take comfort that I am
my father, speaking as a child
against my fatherhood. This
is the silence I hear my heart
beating in, but
not for me.

[p. 10]

From the Observatory

Each step is to and from an object
and does not echo in heaven
or in hell. The earth vibrates
under the heel or from impact
of stone. Many stones fall
from outer space and earth itself
is in flight. It heads out
among the stars that are dead,
dying or afire.

[p. 11]

 

The seasons doubt themselves and give way

 

to one another. The day is doubtful of itself,

 

as is the night; they come, look around, slowly depart.

 

The sun will never be the same.

 

People give birth to people, flourish

 

and then die,

 

and the sun is a flame of doubt

 

warming to our bodies.

[p. 12]

With the Sun's Fire

Are you a horror to yourself?
Do you have eyes peering at you
from within at the back of your skull
as you manage to stay calm, knowing
you are being watched by a stranger?

Be well, I am seated beside you,
planning a day's work. We are contending
with the stuff of stones and stars,
with water, air, with dirt, with food
and the sun's fire.

When I Am Dead

Examine me, I am continuous
from my first memory and have no memory
of birth. Therefore was I never born
and always have been? As told
in my breathing which is never new
or tired?

Face in the mirror

or star hidden in the sun's rays,
you are always there but which am I
and who is the mirror or the hidden star?
Explain me as you are that I may live
in time and die
when I am dead.

[p. 13]

The Two Selves

I existed before my mind realized me
and when I became known to myself
it was with the affection for warmth
beside a radiator.

So you began for me

and I will whisper to your self
to give in, to surrender, to close
in remembrance, and I will give you up
and withdraw into a stone, forever
known to you.

[p. 14]

Paint a Wall

cover the weather stains
and spider webs: who's happy

You who don't exist
I make you
out of my great need
There is no prose for this
no ordered syntax
no carefully measured holy tread
I am falling beyond depth
into oblivion
breathing
I hear breathing
Something must be said
of nothing

I am as queer as the conception of God
I am the god and the heaven
unless I scatter myself
among the animals and furniture
of earth.

[p. 15]

Streets and Bars

The sky makes no sense to me.
What is it saying? Blue? That blue is enough?
The blue of emptiness?

A small cloud trails beneath the sky
as if to make a point
about its own pride in being a body,
white, welcome to the eye.

The cloud drifts out of sight.
In its absence, I will take a walk
beneath the sky, slowly drifting
in and out of streets and bars.

Copyrigt © 1977 by David Ignatow, Jamaica, N.Y.

David Ignatow: Poems - 1948, Decker Press; The Gentle Weight Lifter - 1955, Morris Gallery; Say Pardon - 1962, Westleyan University Press; Figures of the Human - 1964, Wesleyan University Press; Rescue the Dead - 1968, Wesleyan University Press; Earth Hard - 1968, Rapp and Whiting, Ltd; Poems: 1934-69 - 1970, Wesleyan University Press; Selected Poems, edited and with introduction by Robert Bly - 1975, Wesleyan University Press; Facing the Tree - 1975, The Atlantic Monthly Press; Tread the Dark - 1978, The Atlantic Montly Press; prose: The Notebooks of David Ignatow - 1973, Swallow Press.

Bollingen Award, Yale University, 1977.

Other previous awards include The National

Endowment for the Arts; National Institute of Arts and Letters; Shelley Memorial Award; Guggenheim Foundation Award 1965 and 1973; Rockefeller Foundation Award, 1968.