Ben Belitt
Ben Belitt Poems
...at the still point, there the dance is.
—T. S. Eliot
The errand into the maze,
Emblem, the heel's blow upon space,
...
Rise, cleanly trust, divided star,
And spend that delicate fraud upon the night—
A lover's instance moving mindful air
To make its peace in dedicated light
...
for Jean Brockway
When the walkers-on-water went under,
the bog-walkers came out of the barberry
thickets, booted in gum to their hips,
...
The orange-peelers of Mérida, in the wrought-
iron midday, come with mechanical skewers
and live oranges, to straddle the paths
on caissons of bicycle wheels
...
Whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
—Genesis
When the Deluge had passed,
into my head, by twos, came the creeping things,
...
They splay at a bend of the road, rifles slung, the
shadows minimal, their hands tugging their slings by
the upper swivel to ease the routine of the march.
...
When this warm scribe, my hand, is in the grave.
—John Keats
1.
You are here
...
When last we came this pleasant way
The hedgerows blossomed, high and hard,
And blue with shade the violets lay
In every cherry-lightened yard.
...
Bringing "only what is needed—essential
toilet articles" in a paper bag,
dressed as for dying, one sees the dying plainly.
...
Ben Belitt Biography
Ben Belitt (May 2, 1911 - August 17, 2003) was an American poet and translator. Besides writing poetry, he also translated several books of poetry by Pablo Neruda and Federico García Lorca from Spanish to English. Belitt was born in New York City. He was educated at the University of Virginia, receiving a B.A. in 1932 and an M.A. in 1934, and he was a doctoral student at that university from 1934 to 1936. By the early 1940s he had taken up an appointment at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, where he remained for the rest of his life. A bachelor, he became a good friend of the dancer (and fellow teacher at Bennington) Bill Bales, of his wife, the actress Jo Van Fleet, and of their son, Michael Bales, and regularly spent the important holidays of the year with this family at Bennington or in New York City. Belitt was the author of eight books of poems; his complete poems, This Scribe, My Hand, was published in 1998 by Louisiana State University Press. He wrote two books of essays and over thirteen books of translations. He taught for many decades at Bennington College. After retiring from Bennington College, he continued to live in North Bennington and held the position of Professor Emeritus of Language and Literature at the college. He died in Bennington on August 17, 2003, at the age of 92 and was buried in Manchester, Vermont. His papers are held by the University of Virginia.)
The Best Poem Of Ben Belitt
Dance Piece
...at the still point, there the dance is.
—T. S. Eliot
The errand into the maze,
Emblem, the heel's blow upon space,
Speak of the need and order the dancer's will.
But the dance is still.
For a surmise of rest, over the flight of the dial,
Between shock of the fall, shock of repose,
The flesh in its time delivered itself to the trial,
And rose.
Suffrance: the lapse, the pause,
Were the will of the dance—
The movement-to-be, charmed from the shifts of the chance,
Intent on its cause.
And the terrible gift
Of the gaze, blind on its zenith, the wreath
Of the throat, the body's unwearied uplift,
Unmaking and making its death,
Were ripeness, and theme for return:
Were rest, in the durance of matter:
The sleep of the musing Begetter
And the poise in the urn.
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