Kenyon - The Boat of Quiet Hours

The Boat of Quiet Hours

(1986)

for Perkins

And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, Ill smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,

With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.

John Keats
Endymion , Book I

I

Walking Alone in Late Winter

Evening at a Country Inn

From here I see a single red cloud
impaled on the Town Hall weather vane.

Now the horses are back in their stalls,
and the dogs are nowhere in sight
that made them run and buck
in the brittle morning light.

You laughed only once all day
when the cat ate cucumbers
in Chekhovs story... and now you smoke
and pace the long hallway downstairs.

The cook is roasting meat for the evening meal,
and the smell rises to all the rooms.

Red-faced skiers stamp past you
on their way in; their hunger is Homeric.

I know you are thinking of the accident
of picking the slivered glass from his hair.

Just now a truck loaded with hay
stopped at the village store to get gas.

I wish you would look at the hay
the beautiful sane and solid bales of hay.

At the Town Dump

Sometimes I nod to my neighbor
as he flings lath and plaster or cleared
brush on the swelling pile. Talk
is impossible; the dozer shudders toward us,
flattening everything in its path.

Last March I got stuck in the mud.

Archie Portigue was there, thin
from the cancer that would kill him,
with his yellow pickup, its sides
akimbo from many loads. Archie
pushed as I rocked the car; the clutch
smelled hot; then with finesse
he jumped on the fender.... Saved,

I saw his small body in the rearview mirror
get smaller as he waved.

A boy pokes with a stick at a burnt-out
sofa cushion... He brings the insides
out with clear delight. Near where I stand
the toe of a boot protrudes from the sand.

Today I brought the bug-riddled remains
of my garden. A single ripe tomatolast fruit,
immaculateevaded harvest, and dangles
from a vine. I offer it to oblivion
with the rest of what was mine.

Killing the Plants

That year I discovered the virtues
of plants as companions: they dont
argue, they dont ask for much,
they dont stay out until 3:00 a.m., then
lie to you about where theyve been....

I cant summon the ambition
to repot this grape ivy, or this sad
old cactus, or even to move them out
onto the porch for the summer,
where their lives would certainly
improve. I give them
a grudging dash of waterthats all
they get. I wonder if they suspect

that like Hamlet I rehearse murder
all hours of the day and night,
considering the town dump
and compost pile as possible graves....

The truth is that if I permit them
to live, they will go on giving
alms to the poor: sweet air, miraculous
flowers, the example of persistence.

The Painters

A hot dry day in early fall....

The men have cut the vines
from the shutters, and scraped
the clapboards clean, and now
their heads appear all day
in all the windows...
their arms or shirtless torsos,
or a rainbow-speckled rag
swinging from a belt.

They work in earnest
these are the last warm days.

Flies bump and buzz
between the screens and panes,
torpid from last nights frost:
the brittle months advance...
ruts frozen in the icy drive,
and the deeply black and soundless
nights. But now the painters

lean out from their ladders, squint
against the light, and lay on
the thick white paint.

From the lawn their radio predicts rain,
then cold Canadian air...

One of them works way up
on the dormer peak,
where a few wasps levitate
near the vestige of a nest.

Back from the City

After three days and nights of rich food
and late talk in overheated rooms,
of walks between mounds of garbage
and human forms bedded down for the night
under rags, I come back to my dooryard,
to my own wooden step.

The last red leaves fall to the ground
and frost has blackened the herbs and asters
that grew beside the porch. The air
is still and cool, and the withered grass
lies flat in the field. A nuthatch spirals
down the rough trunk of the tree.

At the Cloisters I indulged in piety

while gazing at a painted lindenwood Pieta

Mary holding her pierced and desiccated son

across her knees; but when a man stepped close

under the tasseled awning of the hotel,

asking for a quarter for someone

down on his luck, I quickly turned my back.

Now I hear tiny bits of bark and moss
break off under the birds beak and claw,
and fall onto already-fallen leaves.

Do you love me? said Christ to his disciple.
Lord, you know
that I love you.

Then feed my sheep.

Deer Season

November, late afternoon. Im driving fast,
only the parking lights on.

A minor infringement of the law....

All along Route 4 men wearing orange
step out of the woods after a day
of hunting, their rifles pointed
toward the ground.

The sky turns red, then
purple in the west, and the luminous
birches lean over the narrow macadam road.

I cross the little bridge

near the pool called The Pork Barrel,

where the best fishing is,

and pass the Fentons farmthe windows

of the milking parlor bright, the great

silver cooling tank beginning to chill the milk.

Ive seen the veal calves drink from pails
in their stalls. Suppose even the ear of wheat
suffers in the mill....

Moving fast in my car at dusk
I plan our evening meal.

November Calf

She calved in the ravine, beside
the green-scummed pond.

Full clouds and mist hung low
it was unseasonably warm. Steam
rose from her head as she pushed
and called; her cries went out
over the still-lush fields.

First came the front feet, then
the blossom-nose, shell-pink
and glistening; and then the broad
forehead, flopping black ears,
and neck.... She worked
until the steaming length of him
rushed out onto the ground, then
turned and licked him with her wide
pink tongue. He lifted up his head
and looked around.

The herd pressed close to see, then
frolicked up the bank, flicking
their tails. It looked like revelry.

The farmer set off for the barn,
swinging in a widening arc
a frayed and knotted scrap of rope.

The Beaver Pool in December

The brook is still open

where the water falls,

but over the deeper pools

clear ice forms; over the dark

shapes of stones, a rotting log,

and amber leaves that clattered down

after the first heavy frost.

Though I wait in the cold
until dusk, and though a sudden
bubble of air rises under the ice,

I see not a single animal.

The beavers thrive somewhere
else, eating the bark of hoarded
saplings. How they struggled
to pull the long branches
over the stiffening bank...

but now they pass without
effort, all through the chilly
water; moving like thoughts
in an unconflicted mind.

Apple Dropping into Deep Early Snow

A jay settled on a branch, making it sway.

The one shriveled fruit that remained
gave way to the deepening drift below.

I happened to see it the moment it fell.

Dusk is eager and comes early. A car
creeps over the hill. Still in the dark I try
to tell if I am numbered with the damned,
who cry, outraged, Lord, when did we see You?

Drink, Eat, Sleep

I never drink from this blue tin cup
speckled with white
without thinking of stars on a clear,
cold nightof Venus blazing low
over the leafless trees; and Canis
great and smalldogs without flesh,
fur, blood, or bone ... dogs made of light,