17 March 2010

Robert Duncan

[from Robert Duncan's Selected Poems: Revised and Enlarged, ed. Robert J. Bertholf, New Directions, 1997]


The Song of the Borderguard

The man with his lion under the shed of wars
sheds his belief as if he shed tears.
The sound of words waits —
a barbarian host at the borderline of sense.

The enamord guards desert their posts
harkening to the lion-smell of a poem
that rings in their ears.

       — Dreams, a certain guard said —
            were never designd so
            to re-arrange an empire.

            Along about six o’clock I take out my guitar
            and sing to a lion
            who sleeps like a line of poetry
            in the shed of wars.

The man shedding his belief
knows that the lion is not asleep,
does not dream, is never asleep,
is a wide-awake poem
waiting like a lover for the disrobing of the guard;
the beautiful boundaries of the empire
naked, rapt round in the smell of a lion.

(The barbarians have passt over the significant phrase)

       — When I was asleep,
            a certain guard says,
       a man shed his clothes as if he shed tears
       and appeard as a lonely lion
       waiting for a song under the shed-roof of wars.

I sang the song that he waited to hear,
I, the Prize-Winner, the Poet-Acclaimed.

Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, I sang,
believe, believe, believe, believe.
The shed of wars is splendid as the sky,
houses our waiting like a pure song
housing in its words the lion-smell
         of the beloved disrobed.

I sang: believe, believe, believe.

          I the guard because of my guitar
believe. I am the certain guard,
certain of the Beloved, certain of the Lion,
certain of the Empire. I with my guitar.
Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, I sing.
I, the Prize-Winner, the Poet on Guard.

The borderlines of sense in the morning light
are naked as a line of poetry in a war.

3 comments:

  1. I like "the certain guard", the progressions in usage (shed, shed-roof), the nouns that are both visible/visual and not. A shimmering or blurring at the border...? Clarity and not. Nakedness or not?

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  2. Yes, I like the blurring, too -- "lion/line" and the polysemy of "certain." I don't have an overall sense of the poem yet, still reading

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  3. The lion leads one down the path. The full meaning of this poem has not revealed itself to me, but I love the immediacy; lioness of the approach.

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