Upon Taking Hold
ROBERT DUNCAN
the world as we reach stretches,
a hand in sight.
Thumb, Mountain, Tidelands of Liners,
the heart and head lines,
the palmist said -- stars,
shattering from Moon
to
slumbering Venus.
Mt Tamalpais.
Cezanne restored the destroyed mountain.
And the hand in the painting
comes up from its illusions
--a man shaped to the world's fate
stretches upon his face
to wear the given mask.
Shaking himself from his wars,
a ready dog.
It is to grasp or to measure
a hand's breadth,
this hand--mine
as I write --
dares its contradictions,
comes to rest,
tenses, shakes, seizes or is seized by the mind:
mind, hand, eye,
moves over the keys. It is the exercise.
The poetry -- now -- a gesture,
a lifting of sentence as the wind lifts,
palm outward in address,
fingers
exactly
curld
--it is a fact--
the words not to be altered.
Is there another altar than the fact we make,
the form, fate, future dared
desired in the act?
Words can drop as my hand drops (hawk
on wing
waits
weight and
drops
to conquer inarticulate love
leaving articulate
the actual mountain.
This is the bunch of ranunculus,
rose, butter, orange crowfoot
profuse bouquet in its white china pitcher;
this is the hookd rug workd in rich color
the red, blue, ochre,
violet, emerald, azure,
the black, pink, rose,
oyster white, the orange . . .
this is the orange measurement of the lines
as I design them.
The joys of the household are fates that command us.
