Sunday, October 3, 2021

Revisited / "There's Orion!"



"... What is real but compassion as we're moved from birth to death? ..."




*


Kenneth Rexroth took a walk with his young daughter and wrote this poem, which was a favorite of my mother and became a favorite of mine.

“A Sword In A Cloud Of Light”
By Kenneth Rexroth

Your hand in mine, we walk out
To watch the Christmas Eve crowds
On Fillmore Street, the Negro
District. The night is thick with
Frost. The people hurry, wreathed
In their smoky breaths. Before
The shop windows the children
Jump up and down with spangled
Eyes. Santa Clauses ring bells.
Cars stall and honk. Street cars clang.
Loud speakers on the lampposts
Sing carols, on juke boxes
In the bars Louis Armstrong
Plays White Christmas. In the joints
The girls strip and grind and bump
To Jingle Bells. Overhead
The neon signs scribble and
Erase and scribble again
Messages of avarice,
Joy, fear, hygiene, and the proud
Names of the middle classes.
The moon beams like a pudding.
We stop at the main corner
And look up, diagonally
Across, at the rising moon,
And the solemn, orderly
Vast winter constellations.
You say, “There’s Orion!”
The most beautiful object
Either of us will ever
Know in the world or in life
Stands in the moonlit empty
Heavens, over the swarming
Men, women, and children, black
And white, joyous and greedy,
Evil and good, buyer and
Seller, master and victim,
Like some immense theorem,
Which, if once solved would forever
Solve the mystery and pain
Under the bells and spangles.
There he is, the man of the
Night Before Christmas, spread out
On the sky like a true god
In whom it would only be
Necessary to believe
A little. I am fifty
And you are five. It would do
No good to say this and it
May do no good to write it.
Believe in Orion. Believe
In the night, the moon, the crowded
Earth. Believe in Christmas and
Birthdays and Easter rabbits.
Believe in all those fugitive
Compounds of nature, all doomed
To waste away and go out.
Always be true to these things.
They are all there is. Never
Give up this savage religion
For the blood-drenched civilized
Abstractions of the rascals
Who live by killing you and me.

*The Poetry Center Digital Archive is a Project of The Poetry Center at San Francisco State University.

The first thing I saw on my 72nd birthday was Orion.  I woke up at 3 a.m., as I usually do, and walked from my bedroom to my porch which looks out to the east.  The sky was extraordinarily clear, revealing Orion, the Pleiades, and a crescent moon.  Such a generous gift.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Such a beautiful poem and a moment of seeing Orion. Yes, believe in this.
I love that you reminded me of the song Rexroth's Daughter. I chose that name when I first started blogging.
What a wonderful birthday you had.

37paddington said...

Happy birthday! Thanks for sharing that beautiful poem.

Joared said...

Lovely sentiments!