So I promised an upward facing compost poem in counter to a sad East. Here, I think’s, it. First the compost heap —
Up I say to mad friends and now stop ∙ stay
seated ∙ turn round ∙ spot the ash river a sad
king thought to face at a right angle and be wed
to war in these rockscape hills ∙ to each angel
comes a kind of rest ∙ a Hell no lucent woman
or man may be other to ∙ so I own that inmost
forge where in woods a road runs to an island
And then the worm work —
GLEAN
No man island.
At each weed angle
dew be angel.
In hell-wrought
urn, in these ash even,
a kind of May.
Allusion too of course is composting. None of them here were deliberate, and that they showed up spontaneous, is the clearest sign of my over-education any could wish for. Donne in line 1. Dogen in lines 2 and 3. Cleanth Brooks in lines 4 and 5. Argh! Well but I still like it.
Postscript Sept. 30. And, line 6, William Carlos Williams’s “Locust Tree in Flower,” which I taught just today, on which, something soon, very soon, very very soon.
the art of compost 