Hyam Plutzik

Hyam Plutzik Poems

Their heads grown weary under the weight of Time—
These few hours on the hither side of silence—
The lilac sprigs bend on the bough to perish.
...

A miscellaneous screaming that comes from nowhere
Raises the eyes at last to the moonward-flying
Squadron of wild-geese arcing the spatial cold.
...

Because the red osier dogwood
Is the winter lightning,
The retention of the prime fire
In the naked and forlorn season
When snow is winner
(For he flames quietly above the shivering mouse
In the moldy tunnel,
The eggs of the grasshopper awaiting metamorphosis
Into the lands of hay and the times of the daisy,
The snake contorted in the gravel,
His brain suspended in thought
Over an abyss that summer will fill with murmuring
And frogs make laughable: the cricket-haunted time)—
I, seeing in the still red branches
The stubborn, unflinching fire of that time,
Will not believe the horror at the door, the snow-white worm
Gnawing at the edges of the mind,
The hissing tree when the sleet falls.
For because the red osier dogwood
Is the winter sentinel,
I am certain of the return of the moth
(Who was not destroyed when an August flame licked him),
And the cabbage butterfly, and all the families
Whom the sun fathers, in the cauldron of his mercy.
...

What are they mumbling about me there?
"Here,' they say, "he suffered; here was glad."
Are words clothes or the putting off of clothes?

The scene is as follows: my book is open
On thirty desks; the teacher expounds my life.
Outside the window the Pacific roars like a lion.

Beside which my small words rise and fall.
"In this alliteration a tower crashed."
Are words clothes or the putting off of clothes?

"Here, in the fisherman casting on the water,
He saw the end of the dreamer.
And in that image, death, naked."

Out of my life I fashioned a fistful of words.
When I opened my hand, they flew away.
...

A nation of hayricks spotting the green solace
Of grass,
And thrones of thatch ruling a yellow kingdom
Of barley.
In the green lands, the white nation of sheep.
And the woodlands,
Red, the delicate tribes of roebuck, doe
And fawn.
A senate of steeples guarding the slaty and gabled
Shires,
While aloof the elder houses hold a secret
Sceptre.
To the north, a wall touching two stone-grey reaches
Of water;
A circle of stones; then to the south a chalk-white
Stallion.
To the north, the wireless towers upon the cliff.
Southward
The powerhouse, and monstrous constellations
Of cities.
To the north, the pilgrims along the holy roads
To Walsingham,
And southward, the road to Shottery, shining
With daisies.
Over the castle of Warwick frightened birds
Are fleeing,
And on the bridge, faces upturned to a roaring
Falcon.
...

He will set his camp beside a cold lake

And when the great fish leap to his lure, shout high
To three crows battling a northern wind.

Now when the barren twilight closes its circle
Will fear the yearning ghosts come for his catch
And watch intently trees move in the dark.

Fear as the last fire cringes and sputters,
Heap the branches, strike the reluctant ashes,
Lie down restless, rise when the dawn grays.

Time runs out as the hook lashes the water
Day after day, and as the days wane
Wait still for the wonder.
...

Now the swift rot of the flesh is over.
Now only the slow rot of the bones in the Northern damp.
Even the bones of that tiny foot that brought her doom.

Imagine a land where there is no rain as we know rain.
Not the quick dashing of water to the expectant face,
But the weary ooze of spent drops in the earth.

Imagine the little skeleton lying there—
In the terrible declination of the years—
On the solitary bed, in the crumbling shell of a world.

Amid the monsters with lipless teeth who lie there in wait—
The saurian multitudes who rest in that land—
And the men without eyes who forever glare at the sky.

And the ominous strangers ever entering.
Why are they angry? They keep their arms to themselves.
Comfort themselves in the cold. Whisper no word.

And the black dog has come, but he does not play.
And no one moves but the man who walks in the sky—
A strange man who comes to cut the grass.

Seventeen years....

And already the fair flesh dispersed, the proud form broken.
The glaciers move from the north and the sun is dying.
And into the chasm of Time alone and tiny....

The Man of War sits in the gleaming chair.
Struts through the halls. The Dispencer of Vengeance laughs,
Crying victory! victory! victory! victory!

Victory.
...

You called me a name on such and such a day—
Do you remember?—you were speaking of Bleistein our brother,
The barbarian with the black cigar, and the pockets
Ringing with cash, and the eyes seeking Jerusalem,
Knowing they have been tricked. Come, brother Thomas,
We three must weep together for our exile.

I see the hunted look, the protestation,
The desperate seeking, the reticence and the brashness
Of the giver of laws to the worshippers of calves.
At times you speak as if the words were walls,
But your walls fell with mine to the torch of a Titus.
Come, let us weep together for our exile.

We two, no doubt, could accommodate ourselves:
We've both read Dante and we both dislike Chicago,
And both, you see, can be brutal—but you must bow down
To our brother Bleistein here, with the unaesthetic
Cigar and the somber look. Come, do so quickly,
For we must weep together for our exile.

O you may enwomb yourself in words or the Word
(The Word is a good refuge for people too proud
To swallow the milk of the mild Jesus' teaching),
Or a garden in Hampshire with a magic bird, or an old
Quotation from the Reverend Andrewes, yet someone or
something
(Let us pause to weep together for our exile)

Will stick a needle in your balloon, Thomas.
Is it the shape that you saw upon the stair?
The four knights clanking toward the altar? the hidden
Card in the deck? the sinister man from Nippon?
The hordes on the eastern horizon? Come, brother Burbank,
And let us weep together for our exile.

In the time of sweet sighing you wept bitterly,
And now in the time of weeping you cannot weep.
Will you wait for the peace of the sailor with pearly bones?
Where is the refuge you thought you would find on the island
Where each man lives in his castle? O brother Thomas,
Come let us weep together for our exile.

You drew us first by your scorn, first by your wit;
Later for your own eloquent suffering.
We loved you first for the wicked things you wrote
Of those you acknowledged infinitely gentle.
Wit is the sin that you must expiate.
Bow down to them, and let us weep for our exile.

I see your words wrung out in pain, but never
The true compassion for creatures with you, that Dante
Knew in his nine hells. O eagle! master!
The eagle's ways of pride and scorn will not save
Though the voice cries loud in humility. Thomas, Thomas,
Come, let us pray together for our exile.

You, hypocrite lecteur! mon semblable! mon frère!
...

For instance: y- xa + mx2(a2 + 1) = 0

Coil upon coil, the grave serpent holds
Its implacable strict pose, under a light
Like marble. The artist's damnation, the rat of time,
Cannot gnaw this form, nor event touch it with age.
Before it was, it existed, creating the mind
Which created it, out of itself. It will dissolve
Into itself, though in another language.
Its changes are not in change, nor its times in time.

And the coiled serpent quivering under a light
Crueler than marble, unwinds slowly, altering
Deliberate the great convolutions, a dancer,
A mime on the brilliant stage. The sudden movement,
Swifter than creases of lightning, renews a statue:

There by its skin a snake rears beaten in copper.
It will not acknowledge the incense on your altars,
Nor hear at night in your room the weeping...
...

Seventy-seven betrayers will stand by the road,
And those who love you will be few but stronger.

Seventy-seven betrayers, skilful and various,
But do not fear them: they are unimportant.

You must learn soon, soon, that despite Judas
The great betrayals are impersonal

(Though many would be Judas, having the will
And the capacity, but few the courage).

You must learn soon, soon, that even love
Can be no shield against the abstract demons:

Time, cold and fire, and the law of pain,
The law of things falling, and the law of forgetting.

The messengers, of faces and names known
Or of forms familiar, are innocent.
...

The abrupt appearance of a yellow flower
Out of the perfect nothing, is miraculous.
The sum of Being, being discontinuous,
Must presuppose a God-out-of-the-box
Who makes a primal garden of each garden.
There is no change, but only re-creation
One step ahead. As in the cinema
Upon the screen, all motion is illusory.
So if your mind were keener and could clinch
More than its flitting beachhead in the Permanent,
You'd see a twinkling world flashing and dying
Projected out of a tireless, winking Eye
Opening and closing in immensity—
Creating, with its look, beside all else
Always Adamic passion and innocence
The bloodred apple or the yellow flower.
...

Because they belong to the genus thunder
Trees grow still when their patriarch
Delivers his sign, the livid spark,
And comes himself with a rumble and mutter,

Reminding them of their dignity.
Boom! He empties a bucket of wet
Across their shoulders, but they submit
Till he huffs away. So they are free

With a stirring of limbs to echo him,
A confab of whispers, a hushing and mumming,
Till time comes round again for the thrumming
Harumph of the father to quiet them.
...

The wombed thing
First like a fish
Will become a man
And make a wish

For a peck of apples,
A pint of dream,
And a leaping fish
In a stream.
...

I am troubled by the blank fields, the speechless graves.
Since the names were carved upon wood, there is no word
For the thousand years that shaped this scribbling fist
And the eyes staring at strange places and times
Beyond the veldt dragging to Poland.
Lovers of words make simple peace with death,
At last demanding, to close the door to the cold,
Only Here lies someone.
Here lie no one and no one, your fathers and mothers
...

The star exploding in the body;
The creeping thing, growing in the brain or the bone;
The hectic cannibal, the obscene mouth.

The mouths along the meridian sought him,
Soft as moths, many a moon and sun,
Until one
In a pale fleeing dream caught him.

Waking, he did not know himself undone,
Nor walking, smiling, reading that the news was good,
The star exploding in his blood.
...

I have seen the pageantry of the leaves falling­—
Their sere, brown frames descending brokenly,
Like old men lying down to rest.
I have heard the whisperings of the winds calling—
The young winds—playing with the old men­—
Playing with them, as the sun flows west.

And I have seen the pomp of this earth naked­—
The brown fields standing cold and resolute,
Like strong men waiting for the end.
Then have come the sudden gusts of winds awaked:
The broken pageantry, the leaves upflailed, the trees
Tremor-stricken, the giant branches rent.

And a shiver runs over the remnants of the brown grass—
And there is cessation....
The processional recurs.

I have seen the pageantry.
I have seen the haggard leaves falling.
One by one falling.
...

The limitary nature of a wall
Is partial only, to keep out dogs and insects,
Contain the furniture, exclude the rain.

But space flies through it like a mad commuter.
Rooms are thus always strange, as if you entered
Another by error in the same hotel,

And saw incredulous no known landmarks,
The bed moved, new luggage on the floor,
And a window staring at you from the wrong corner.

And desire goes through a wall as wild geese
Pass and cry over reedy waters. Memory
Knows no walls. They are elementary limits.

Only a fool would cut the sea with a knife,
Or say to a wind: Exceed this line at your peril.
...

As I was fishing off Pondy Point
Between the tides, the sea so still -
Only a whisper against the boat -
No other sound but the scream of a gull,
I heard the voice you will never hear
Filling the crannies of the air.

The doors swung open, the little doors,
The door, the hatch within the brain,
And like the bellowing of ruin
The surf upon a thousand shores
swept through me, and the thunder-noise
Of all the waves of all the seas.

The doors swung shut, the little doors,
The door, the hatch within the ear,
And I was fishing off Pondy Pier,
And all was as it was before,
With only the whisper of the swell
Against the boat, and the cry of a gull.

I draw a sight from tree to tree
Crossing this other from knoll to rock,
To mark the place. Into the sea
My line falls with an empty hook,
Yet fools the world. So day and night
I crouch upon the thwarts and wait.

There is a roaring in the skies
The great globes make, and there is the sound
Of all the atoms whirling round
That one can hear if one is wise -
Wiser than most - if one has heard
The doors, the little doors, swing wide.
...

No one cared for the iron sparrow
That fell from the sky that quiet day
With no bird's voice, a mad beast's bellow.

Sparrow, your wing was a broken scar
As you blundered into the mother-barley.
Sparrow, how many men did you bear?

'Ten good men, pilot and gunner -
Trapped in the whirlpool, held by no hands,
Twisting from truth with curse and prayer.

'Ten good men I bore in my belly -
Not as the mother-barley bears.
Ten good men I returned to her there.'

Thunder rolling over the barley!
Fire swarming high and higher!

Home again to the barley-mother -
Ten good sons, pilot and gunner,
Radioman and bombardier.No one cared for the iron sparrow
That fell from the sky that quiet day
With no bird's voice, a mad beast's bellow.

Sparrow, your wing was a broken scar
As you blundered into the mother-barley.
Sparrow, how many men did you bear?

'Ten good men, pilot and gunner -
Trapped in the whirlpool, held by no hands,
Twisting from truth with curse and prayer.

'Ten good men I bore in my belly -
Not as the mother-barley bears.
Ten good men I returned to her there.'

Thunder rolling over the barley!
Fire swarming high and higher!

Home again to the barley-mother -
Ten good sons, pilot and gunner,
Radioman and bombardier.
...

Hyam Plutzik Biography

Hyam Plutzik (July 13, 1911- January 8, 1962), a Pulitzer prize finalist, was a poet and Professor of English at the University of Rochester. Plutzik was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jewish emigrants from Belarus who arrived in the United States in 1905. During his early childhood years, Plutzik's family bought a farm in Southbury, Connecticut, where Plutzik attended school in a one-room schoolhouse. In Plutzik's home, Yiddish, Russian, and Hebrew were spoken. Plutzik himself did not learn English until he began grammar school at the age of seven. At age twelve, Plutzik moved with his family to Bristol, Connecticut, where his father headed a Jewish community school. There, he had greater access to libraries and became an avid reader. Upon completion of high school in 1928, he won a Holland Scholarship from Trinity College. He majored in English and studied closely with Professor Odell Shepard, who later in 1938 received a Pulitzer for his biography, The Life of Bronson Alcott. In his senior year at Trinity, Plutzik was associate editor of the college's literary magazine, The Trinity Tablet, which printed his short story, "The Golus," and a group of poems, titled "Three Paintings.")

The Best Poem Of Hyam Plutzik

Sprig Of Lilac

Their heads grown weary under the weight of Time—
These few hours on the hither side of silence—
The lilac sprigs bend on the bough to perish.

Though each for its own sake is beautiful,
In each is the greater, the remembered beauty.
Each is exemplar of its ancestors.

Within the flower of the present, uneasy in the wind,
Are the forms of those of the years behind the door.
Their faint aroma touches the edge of the mind.

And the living and the past give to one another.
There is no door between them. They pass freely
Out of themselves; becoming one another.

I see the lilac sprigs bending and withering.
Each year like Adonis they pass through the dumb-show of death,
Waxing and waning on the tree in the brain of a man.

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