David Wagoner: "The Lessons of Water"

The best way to conduct oneself may be observed in the behavior of water. —Tao te ching

When given a place to wait, it fills that place
By taking the shape of what contains it,
Its upper surface poised and level,
Absorbing, accepting what it can as lightly
Or heavily as it does itself. If pressed
Down, it will offer back in all directions
Everything it was given. If chilled, it will shatter
Daylight and whiten to stars, will harden and sharpen
And turn unforseeably dazzling. Neglected,
It will disappear, being transformed and lifted
Into thin air. Or thrown away, it will gather
With other water, which is all one water,
And rise and fall, regather and go on rising
And falling the more quickly its path descends
And the more slowly as it wears that path away,
To be left awhile, to stir for the moon, to wait
For the wind to begin again.



"The Lessons of Water" by David Wagoner. Text as posted on The Paris Review (12/31/2013). 

Art credit: Untitled image of penguins on an Antarctic iceberg, taken by unknown photographer.

Curator's note: I'm so grateful to all of you who have taken my survey. Everybody's feedback matters. Please provide yours before the project ends on January 1.

David Wagoner: "The Silence of the Stars"

When Laurens van der Post one night
      In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
              He couldn't hear the stars
Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him,
      Half-smiling. They examined his face
              To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
      Who plant nothing, who have almost
              Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
      But themselves, led him away
              From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
      And listened. One of them whispered,
              Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
      To disbelieve, but had to answer,
              No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
      Circle of firelight and told him
              They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
      For himself and blamed his ancestors
              For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now. On some clear nights
      When nearby houses have turned off their televisions,
              When the traffic dwindles, when through streets
Are between sirens and the jets overhead
      Are between crossings, when the wind
              Is hanging fire in the fir trees,
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove
      Between calls is regarding his own darkness,
              I look at the stars again as I first did
To school myself in the names of constellations
      And remember my first sense of their terrible distance,
              I can still hear what I thought
At the edge of silence were the inside jokes
      Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic,
              The C above high C of my inner ear, myself
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are:
      My fair share of the music of the spheres
              And clusters of ripening stars,
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods
      Still tending even tone-deaf creatures
              Through their exiles in the desert.

"The Silence of the Stars" by David Wagoner, from Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems (University of Illinois Press, 1999). Text as published in Poetry (December, 1997).

Art credit: "Music of the Spheres 2," fractal print by Scott Bricker.

David Wagoner: "Getting There"

You take a final step and, look, suddenly
You’re there. You’ve arrived
At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
This common ground
Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.

What did you want
To be? You’ll remember soon. You feel like tinder
Under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing
Against the cracked horizon,
Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
In time with your heartbeats.
Like wind etching rock, you’ve made a lasting impression
On the self you were
By having come all this way through all this welter
Under your own power,
Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
Meandering lifeline.

What have you learned so far? You’ll find out later,
Telling it haltingly
Like a dream, that lost traveler’s dream
Under the last hill
Where through the night you’ll take your time out of mind
To unburden yourself
Of elements along elementary paths
By the break of morning.

You’ve earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight
Called Here and Now.
Now, what you make of it means everything,
Means starting over:
The life in your hands is neither here nor there
But getting there,
So you’re standing again and breathing, beginning another
Journey without regret
Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
The end of endings.

"Getting There" by David Wagoner, from Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems. © University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Art credit: Detail from the cover illustration of Susan Taylor Brown's Hugging the Rock, © 2006 by Michael Morgenstern (originally color).

 

David Wagoner: "Lost"

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

"Lost" by David Wagoner, from Collected Poems, 1956-1976 © Indiana University Press, 1976.

Photography credit: "A Grove of Sequoia Trees," by mit19237 (originally color).


 

David Wagoner: "Old Man, Old Man"

Young men, not knowing what to remember,
Come to this hiding place of the moons and years,
To this Old Man. Old Man, they say, where should we go?
Where did you find what you remember? Was it perched in a tree?
Did it hover deep in the white water? Was it covered over
With dead stalks in the grass? Will we taste it
If our mouths have long lain empty?
Will we feel it between our eyes if we face the wind
All night, and turn the color of earth?
If we lie down in the rain, can we remember sunlight?

He answers, I have become the best and worst I dreamed.
When I move my feet, the ground moves under them.
When I lie down, I fit the earth too well.
Stones long underwater will burst in the fire, but stones
Long in the sun and under the dry night
Will ring when you strike them. Or break in two.
There were always many places to beg for answers:
Now the places themselves have come in close to be told.
I have called even my voice in close to whisper with it:
Every secret is as near as your fingers.
If your heart stutters with pain and hope,
Bend forward over it like a man at a small campfire.

"Old Man, Old Man" by David Wagoner, from Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems. © Illinois Poetry Series, 1999.

Image credit: "Wise Old Man," painting by Andrew Judd (originally color).