Poems -_-

An African Elegy

BY ROBERT DUNCAN

In the groves of Africa from their natural wonder   

the wildebeest, zebra, the okapi, the elephant,   

have enterd the marvelous. No greater marvelous   

know I than the mind’s

natural jungle. The wives of the Congo   

distil there their red and the husbands

hunt lion with spear and paint Death-spore

on their shields, wear his teeth, claws and hair   

on ordinary occasions. There the Swahili   

open his doors, let loose thru the trees   

the tides of Death’s sound and distil

from their leaves the terrible red. He

is the consort of dreams I have seen, heard   

in the orchestral dark

like the barking of dogs.

Death is the dog-headed man zebra striped

and surrounded by silence who walks like a lion,   

who is black. It was his voice crying come back,   

that Virginia Woolf heard, turnd

her fine skull, hounded and haunted, stopt,   

pointed into the scent where

I see her in willows, in fog, at the river of sound   

in the trees. I see her prepare there

to enter Death’s mountains

like a white Afghan hound pass into the forest,   

closed after, let loose in the leaves

with more grace than a hound and more wonder there   

even with flowers wound in her hair, allowing herself   

like Ophelia a last

pastoral gesture of love toward the world.   

          And I see

all our tortures absolved in the fog,

dispersed in Death’s forests, forgotten. I see   

all this gentleness like a hound in the water

float upward and outward beyond my dark hand.

I am waiting this winter for the more complete black-out,   

for the negro armies in the eucalyptus, for the cities   

laid open and the cold in the love-light, for hounds   

women and birds to go back to their forests and leave us   

our solitude.

 

.   .   .

 

Negroes, negroes, all those princes,

holding cups of rhinoceros bone, make

magic with my blood. Where beautiful Marijuana   

towers taller than the eucalyptus, turns

within the lips of night and falls,

falls downward, where as giant Kings we gathered

and devourd her burning hands and feet, O Moonbar   

thee and Clarinet! those talismans

that quickened in their sheltering leaves like thieves,   

those Negroes, all those princes

holding to their mouths like Death

the cups of rhino bone,

were there to burn my hands and feet,

divine the limit of the bone and with their magic   

tie and twist me like a rope. I know

no other continent of Africa more dark than this   

dark continent of my breast.

         And when we are deserted there,

when the rustling electric has passt thru the air,   

once more we begin in the blind and blood throat   

the African catches; and Desdemona, Desdemona   

like a demon wails within our bodies, warns   

against this towering Moor of self and then   

laments her passing from him.

And I cry, Hear!

Hear in the coild and secretive ear

the drums that I hear beat. The Negroes, all those princes   

holding cups of bone and horn, are there in halls   

of blood that I call forests, in the dark   

and shining caverns where

beats heart and pulses brain, in

jungles of my body, there

Othello moves, striped black and white,   

the dog-faced fear. Moves I, I, I,

whom I have seen as black as Orpheus,

pursued deliriously his sound and drownd   

in hunger’s tone, the deepest wilderness.

Then it was I, Death singing,

who bewildered the forest. I thot him

my lover like a hound of great purity

disturbing the shadow and flesh of the jungle.   

This was the beginning of the ending year.

From all of the empty the tortured appear,

and the bird-faced children crawl out of their fathers   

and into that never filld pocket,

the no longer asking but silent, seeing nowhere   

the final sleep.

The halls of Africa we seek in dreams

as barriers of dream against the deep, and seas

disturbd turn back upon their tides

into the rooms deserted at the roots of love.   

There is no end. And how sad then   

is even the Congo. How the tired sirens

come up from the water, not to be toucht   

but to lie on the rocks of the thunder.   

How sad then is even the marvelous!

Robert Duncan, “An African Elegy” from The Years as Catches: First Poems 1939-1946 (Berkeley: Oyez, 1966). Used with the permission of The Estate of Robert Duncan.


Source: The Years as Catches: First Poems 1939-1946 (1966)