Hayden Carruth

First, the self. Then, the observing self.
The self that acts and the self that watches. This
The starting point, the place where the mind begins,
Whether the mind of an individual or
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Well I have and in fact
more than one and I'll
tell you this too
...

Scrambled eggs and whiskey
in the false-dawn light. Chicago,
a sweet town, bleak, God knows,
but sweet. Sometimes. And
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"Form follows function follows form . . . , etc."

--Dr. J. Anthony Wadlington
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The old man takes a nap
too soon in the morning.
His coffee cup grows cold.
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Both of us had been close
to Joel, and at Joel's death
my friend had gone to the wake
and the memorial service
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Coming home with the last load I ride standing
on the wagon tongue, behind the tractor
in hot exhaust, lank with sweat,
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poem in the ancient mode for you
that was musical and had old words

in it such as would never do in
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It is not music, though one has tried music.
It is not nature, though one has tried
The rose, the bluebird, and the bear.
It is not death, though one has often died.
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You may think it strange, Sam, that I'm writing
a letter in these circumstances. I thought
it strange too--the first time. But there's
a misconception I was laboring under, and you
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Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and

rearing.
One can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever-
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My prayers have been answered, if they were prayers. I live.
I'm alive, and even in rather good health, I believe.
If I'd quit smoking I might live to be a hundred.
Truly this is astonishing, after the poverty and pain,
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lights in the twilight,
lights of Solvay over the expanse of frozen snow-covered
lake,
orange lights of the refineries,
...

The great poems of
our elders in many
tongues we struggled
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Freedom is not to be proved but is rather a postulate
of action. Thus excellent Berdyaev,
who has meant much to me,
although I must shake my head and make a face
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Old guy goes downstairs reeling
and shying at newel and banister
while how his feet once blistered
the treads is what he is recalling,
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Please note well, all you writers, editors, directors
out there: when a phone call is terminated
by the other person you do not, NOT, hear
the buzz of a dial tone. You hear a faint click
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Was I so poor
in those damned days
that I went in the dark
in torn shoes
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So often it has been displayed to us, the hourglass
with its grains of sand drifting down,
not as an object in our world
but as a sign, a symbol, our lives
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Like all his people he felt at home in the forest.
The silence beneath great trees, the dimness there,
The distant high rustling of foliage, the clumps
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