The Rime of the Carpenter

SEVEN skies from anything
But mountains crunching mountains in
Until there was no sky at all,
I hugged a socket of canyon wall;

And far below, no wider than
A banjo string, a river ran,
Yet even deep down there so far
From goat or noon or calendar
I saw a pinch of dark I felt
Must be a place where a man had dwelt,
But whether hovel, cave, or shack
I had to know ere I turned back;
So back I zigzagged, up, around,
To find some way of getting clown,
Yet now, the deeper down I went,
The higher climbed my discontent
With what my peeping, prying mind
Could find or hope or loathe to find.

I inched my muscle and my bone
Down ten black million years of stone
Until I reached the blindest pit
The undercutting river split.

And what l saw when I could see
Was a house of logs in front of me
Thai seemed, the more I stared at it,
Like a naked bride upon a bed:

The logs were beaver-silver, square,
No living thing but me was here,
Yet she was here with lips and face
That changed the canyon into lace
And curved the thunder-stammer of
The terrible river into love.

I turned to the river and counted ten,
Then stared at the silver logs again;
I asked how log chain, axe, and bar
Could fashion eye and breasts so fair,
And golden hair to seem so much
Like a house of logs a man could touch:
Great blocks of pine laid flat as brick

With passionate arithmetic
Undressing them, so smooth my eye
Walked up them like a butterfly,
And I smelled a rainbow of river glint
Like a hover of wet wild rose and mini.

Who built this house, I asked, why built
In a canyon cave of mica sill?

Every lintel was stroked and rolled
As if the adze and drawknife held
Some lingering influence as far
From clumsy tools as the evening star,
. . . every naked tenon clasped
In pitch as if a man had gasped
Some utter senseless ecstasy
To feel it lit so perfectly.

An olive hawk flew overhead.

“That’s a hawk,” the canyon said,
“This is granite, there’s no sky,
This is a house two stories high.
The house is old and weathered white.
At noon these junipers are night
Except there where the lightning stung
One tree and left one shadow sprung;
There’s nothing here, there’s nothing human
Here but you, there is no woman.”

But I thought of the dugouts lone men build
In the blackest canyons of the world
No higher than a man can shove
A plug of grass to sod a roof;
The ridgepole bellies and he’ll crouch
The seasons dripping down his couch
Until his bed’s a fungus bier;
But nothing like that happened here . . .

Skid and snub and spike and lever,
How could muscle work such timber?

The trees are burning through my hands.
My fingers cannot hold the rope,
There will be moonlight on your hair,
There will be moonlight on your throat.

I could almost hear and be that man,
I could stretch my hand and feel the span
Of caliper thumb to little finger
Racing over the rough green timber
As if to feel its beauty were

To touch the living soul of her,
Whatever far-off luminous dream
She may and must have been to him.

Yet he was alone, I know he was,
Working with hook and chain and truss,
Swinging his axe like a pendulum
Against the day when she must come.
I could hear the whipsaw make a love song,
I could hear the jack plane make a love song.
And I could hear him feel her voice
Echoing back when he made a choice
Between one bit to drill for a peg,
And another bit to drill for a peg,
Then see him watch her lovely face
Blessing him as he whirled the brace,
Jealous of every twig and blade
And lonely sound the canyon made.

A camp bird came so close to me
That I could look him in the eye,
Was there a bird today, my lover?
Where you were, did some bird fly over?

Yet I know this natural woman never
Came to love him by this river,
I know but for the circumstance
That changed these logs into a lens
I might have never seen her face
Nor felt the canyon turn to lace.

For deep in our confessed lust
For God in bits of thunder-gust
We feel, but darkly understand
The instrument within the hand
By which the woman . . .
Or the ape of blowing grass
In basket shape
Begins to be
And being is
More further than all mysteries:

And be there ashes, politics,
Wars recited, candle-licks,
Kings impending, pant hers gutted,
Treasure ebbing, psalms rebutted,
All is far
far sorrowing
Away . . .
away from everything
When a man’s heart cries: I make it so
Because I love you, love you so.