20 th c AMERICAN POETRY BY LIANA SAKELLIOU

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) Referring to a Chinese poem, Snyder writes, “’Though the nation is lost, the mountains and rivers remain’. The mountains and rivers remain. That’s the real country” (Real Work, 73).

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) Siwashing It Out Once in Suislaw Forest I slept under rhododendron All night blossoms fell Shivering on a sheet of cardboard Feet stuck in my pack Hands deep in my pockets Barely able to sleep. I remembered when we were in school Sleeping together in a big warm bed We were the youngest lovers When we broke up we were still nineteen Now our friends are married You teach school back east I don’t mind living this way Green hills the long blue beach But sometimes sleeping in the open I think back when I had you.

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) A Spring Night in Shokoku-ji Eight years ago this May We walked under cherry blossoms At night in an orchard in Oregon. All that I wanted then Is forgotten now, but you. Here in the night In a garden of the old capital I feel the trembling ghost of Yugao I remember your cool body Naked under a summer cotton dress.

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) An Autumn Morning in Shokoku-ji Last night watching the Pleiades, Breath smoking in the moonlight, Bitter memory like vomit Choked my throat. I unrolled a sleeping bag On mats on the porch Under thick autumn stars. In dream you appeared (Three times in nine years) Wild, cold, and accusing. I woke shamed angry: The pointless wars of the heart. Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter. The first time I have Ever seen them close.

� GARY SNYDER (1930 -) December at Yase You said, that October, In the tall dry grass by the orchard When you chose to be free, "Again someday, maybe ten years. " After college I saw you One time. You were strange. And I was obsessed with a plan. Now ten years and more have Gone by: I've always known where you were-I might have gone to you Hoping to win your love back. You still are single.

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) I didn't. I thought I must make it alone. I Have done that. Only in dream, like this dawn, Does the grave, awed intensity Of our young love Return to my mind, to my flesh. We had what the others All crave and seek for; We left it behind at nineteen. I feel ancient, as though I had Lived many lives. And may never now know If I am a fool Or have done what my karma demands. �

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) The Earth Poets Who write small poems, Need help from no man. The Air Poets Play out 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 backup

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) 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.

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) Changing Diapers How intelligent he looks! on his back both feet caught in my one hand his glance set sideways, on a giant poster of Geronimo with a Sharp's repeating rifle by his knee. I open, wipe, he doesn't even notice nor do I. Baby legs and knees toes like little peas little wrinkles, good-to-eat, eyes bright, shiny ears chest swelling drawing air, No trouble, friend, you and me and Geronimo are men.

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) � ''Ch'i-shan wu-chin'' (Streams and Mountains Without End) is an ancient Chinese horizontal hand-scroll. � . Ch'i Shan Wu Chin � Clearing the mind and sliding in to that created space, a web of waters steaming over rocks, air misty but not raining, seeing this land from a boat on a lake or a broad slow river, coasting by. The path comes down along a lowland stream slips behind boulders and leafy hardwoods, reappears in a pine grove,

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) no farms around, just tidy cottages and shelters, gateways, rest stops, roofed but unwalled work space, —a warm damp climate; a trail of climbing stairsteps forks upstream. Big ranges lurk behind these rugged little outcrops— these spits of low ground rocky uplifts layered pinnacles aslant, flurries of brushy cliffs receding, � far back and high above, vague peaks. A man hunched over, sitting on a log another stands above him, lifts a staff, a third, with a roll of mats or a lute, looks on; a bit offshore two people in a boat.

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) The trail goes far inland, somewhere back around a bay, lost in distant foothill slopes & back again at a village on the beach, and someone's fishing. Rider and walker cross a bridge above a frothy braided torrent that descends from a flurry of roofs like flowers temples tucked between cliffs, a side trail goes there; a jumble of cliffs above, ridge tops edged with bushes, valley fog below a hazy canyon.

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) A man with a shoulder load leans into the grade. Another horse and a hiker, the trail goes up along cascading streambed no bridge in sight— comes back through chinquapin or liquidambars; another group of travelers. Trail's end at the edge of an inlet below a heavy set of dark rock hills. Two moored boats with basket roofing, a boatman in the bow looks lost in thought. Hills beyond rivers, willows in a swamp, a gentle valley reaching far inland. The watching boat has floated off the page.

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) At the end of the painting the scroll continues on with seals and poems. It tells a further tale: "—Wang Wen-wei saw this at the mayor's house in Ho-tung town, year 1205. Wrote at the end of it, ‘The Fashioner of Things has no original intentions Mountains and rivers are spirit, condensed. ' ‘. . . Who has come up with these miraculous forests and springs? Pale ink on fine white silk. '

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) Later that month someone named Li Hui added, ‘. . . Most people can get along with the noise of dogs and chickens; Everybody cheerful in these peaceful times. But I—why are my tastes so odd? I love the company of streams and boulders. ' T'ien Hsieh of Wei-lo, no date, next wrote, ‘. . . The water holds up the mountains, The mountains go down in the water. . . '

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) In 1332 Chih-shun adds, ‘. . . This is truly a painting worth careful keeping. And it has poem-colophons from the Sung and the Chin dynasties. That it survived dangers of fire and war makes it even rarer. ' In the mid-seventeenth century one Wang To had a look at it: ‘My brother's relative by marriage, Wên-sun, is learned and has good taste. He writes good prose and poetry. My brother brought over this painting of his to show me. . . ' The great Ch'ing dynasty collector Liang Ch'ing-piao owned it, but didn't write on it or cover it with seals. From him it went into the Imperial collection down to the early twentieth century. Chang Ta-ch'ien sold it in 1949. Now it's at the Cleveland Art Museum, which sits on a rise that looks out toward the waters of Lake Erie.

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) Step back and gaze again at the land: it rises and subsides— ravines and cliffs like waves of blowing leaves— stamp the foot, walk with it, clap! turn, the creeks come in, ah! strained through boulders, mountains walking on the water, water ripples every hill. —I walk out of the museum—low gray clouds over the lake— chill March breeze.

GARY SNYDER (1930 -) Old ghost ranges, sunken rivers, come again stand by the wall and tell their tale, walk the path, sit the rains, grind the ink, wet the brushes, unroll the broad white space: lead out and tip the moist black line. Walking on walking, under foot earth turns. Streams and mountains never stay the same.