Raster. Jaargang 6

[p. 25]

Gary Snyder

As for Poets

As for Poets,
The Earth Poets,
Who write small poems,
Need help from no man.

*

The Air Poets
Play on the swiftest gales
And sometimes loll in the eddies.
Poem after poem
Curling back on the same thrust.

*

At fifty below
Fuel oil won't flow
And propane stays in the tank.
Fire poets
Burn at absolute zero
Fossil love pumped back up.

*

[p. 26]

 

The first

 

Water poet

 

Stayed down six years.

 

He was covered with seaweed.

 

The life in his poem

 

Left millions of tiny

 

Different tracks

 

Criss-crossing through the mud.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

With the Sun and Moon

 

In his belly,

 

The Space Poet,

 

Sleeps.

 

No end to the sky -

 

But his poems,

 

Like wild geese,

 

Fly off the edge.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

A Mind Poet

 

Stays in the house.

 

The house is empty

 

And it has no walls.

 

The poem

 

Is seen from all sides,

 

Everywhere, At once.

[p. 27]

By Frazier Creek Falls

Standing up on lifted, folded rock
looking out and down -

The creek falls to a far valley.
hills beyond that
facing, half-forested, dry
- clear sky
strong wind in the
stiff glittering needle clusters
of the pine - their brown
round trunk bodies
straight, still;
rustling trembling limbs and twigs

listen.

This living flowing land
is all there is, forever

We are it
it sings through us

We can live on this Earth
without clothes or tools!

[p. 28]

Source

To be in
to the land
where croppt-out rock
can hardly see
the swiftly passing trees

Manzanita clans
cluster up and fan out on their soils
in streaks and sweeps
with birds and woodrats underneath

And clay swale keeps wet,
free of trees, the bunch-grass
like no Spaniard ever came

I hear no news

Cloud finger dragons dance and
tremble down the ridge
and spit and spiral snow then pull in
quivering, on the sawtooth spine

Clears up, and all the stars.
the tree leaves catch
some extra tiny source
all the wide night

Up here
out back drink deep
that black light.