jonathan williams
selected from Blues & Roots / Rue & Bluets,
blues & roots / Rue & Bluets duke university press 1985 2nd printingAn essay on this volume and projective verse. A Valediction For My Father, Ben Williams (1898-1974) all the old things are gone now and the people are different Paint Sign on a Rough Rock, Yonside of Boone Side of Shady Valley BEPREPA REDTO MEETGO D Daddy Bostain, the Moses of the Wing Community Moonshiners, Laments from His Deathbed the Spiritual Estate Of One of His Soul-Saving Neighbors: God bless her pore little ol dried up soul! jest make good kindlin wood for Hell... Three Graffiti in the Vicinity of The Mikado Baptist Church, Deep in Nacoochee Valley bulldogs stamp out dragon fire . PEACHES HEAR . pleeze vot fer lindin Miss Lucy Morgan Shows Me a Photograph Of Mrs. Mary Grindstaff Spinning Wool on the High Wheel Miss Lucy tells that one day a visitor asked Mrs. Grindstaff "What are you doing?" she said "Spinning." the tourist said "Why doesn't it break?" she said "Because I don't let it." the charred heart does not break in Appalachia, they have not let it... the loom hums there Stone Sign By the Temple Congregational Community Church's Resident Theologaster On the Banks of the Tallulah River U NEED JESUS GOOD BUDDY A Week from the Big Pigeon To the Little Tennessee River I. DAVENPORT GAP the tulip poplar is not a poplar it is a magnolia: Liriodendron tulipifera the young grove on the eastern slopes of Mt. Cammerer reminds me of the two huge trees at Monticello, favorites of Mr. Jefferson; and of the Virginia lady quoting Mr. Kennedy: the recent gathering of Nobel Prize Winners at the White House - the most brilliant assemblage in the dining room since Mr. Jefferson dined there alone... a liriodendron wind, a liriodendron mind 2. TRI-CORNER KNOB here the shelter's in a stand of red spruce and balsam fir for dinner: lamb's quarters, cress from the streams on Mt. Guyot, wood sorrel, and cold Argentine beef, chased with tangerine kool-aid 3. COSBY KNOB DeWitt Clinton (besides looking like Lon Chaney on tobacco-tax stamps) comes to the eye in Clintonia borealis - of which fair green lily there are millions on this mountain it is a mantle for fire-cherry, yellow birch, and silver bell 4. FALSE GAP no Schwarzwald stuff keine Waldeinsamkeit, no magic grouse, no Brother's Grimm - just Canadian hemlock, mossed and lichened, like unto maybe Tertiary time... too much for a haiku? you hike it and see 5. LECONTE HIGH-TOP under the rondelay the sun into the wind and rain a winter wren again, again - its song needling the pines 6. SILERS BALD just in front of the round iron john in the beech grove the fresh bear droppings give you something to think about Night Landscape in Nelson County, Kentucky ah, Moon, shine thou as amber in thy charred-keg, hickory sky... still as a still, steep as a horse's face The Lord, Working in Mysterious Ways, at Scaly Mountain married a Dryman and her sister got married to Hays Bryson you probably remember Hays what's happened to Hays I used to like old Hays Hays and his mrs they's chief cook and bottle washer down at the Dillard House Hays' youngest boy Larry had a lump grow up on his wrist they cut it open sent a specimen to Florida you know it was that galloping bone cancer had to take a piece out that long and naturally you have to wonder about it you know it seems like Hays has had more than his fair share of trouble some folks say that life's dumber than a two-dollar dog and I believe it what became of his boy Forrest who had the rheumatic fever I used to like Forrest used to give him books when he was laid up in bed and couldn't get out Forrest well lord why he almost got plumb killed when that car ran over him two or three years back he can do light work but he'll never be right Forrest must have been about 17 when I last saw him he'd had an operation gotten strong he was pitchin' hay into Uncle Iv Owens' barn sweat pouring off his back he had those fine blue eyes and now maybe he's 37 sittin' around a house in Mountain City Georgia thinkin' about his brother's arm... Cobwebbery the best spiders for soup are the ones under stones - ask the man who is one: plain white american (not blue gentian red indian yellow sun black caribbean) hard heart, cold mind's found a home in the ground "a rolling stone, nolens volens, ladles no soup" maw, rip them boards off the side the house and put the soup pot on and plant us some petunias in the carcass of the Chevrolet and let's stay here and rot in the fields and sit still Osiris, from His Cave to Spring: for the Scripture is written: "Plants at One End, Birds at the Other!" houseleek & garlic, hyssop & mouse; hawk & hepatica, hyacinth, finch! crawl, all exits from hibernaculum! Ye Rattle-Snake of the thickness / of the Small / of a lusty Man's Leg........ The Flower-Hunter in the Fields a flame azalea, mayapple, maple, thornapple plantation a white cloud in the eye of a white horse a field of bluets moving below the black suit of William Bartram bluets, or 'Quaker Ladies,' or some say 'Innocence' bluets and the blue of gentians and Philadelphia blue laws! high hills, stone cold sober as October An Aubade from Verlaine's Day (for Alfred Stieglitz) the cloud in my head wide to the edge of the world that level cloud that fills the Valley of the Little Tennessee from Ridgepole to Rabun Bald the laughter of the Lord God Bird Who pecks berries from the dogwood makes these two clouds one, one eye open The Rev. A. Rufus Morgan, In His 93rd Year, On Mount LeConte Rufus, you reckon there's anything in Heaven worth climbing 173 times? To Carve in Wild Cherry For John Jacob Niles 30 dulcimers- one long life and what I said to the one of wild cherry was bend a little, break later where the bamma-gilly and the cow-cumber flower forever in a god's eye out under the sky out under the sky The Whole Scene, In a Two-Hundred-Year-Old Demographic Nutshell a long row to hoe - too wet to plough