A Day On The Big Branch Poem Rhyme Scheme

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Still half drunk after a night at cards	A
with the grey dawn taking us unaware	B
among our guilty kings and queens we drove	C
far North in the morning winners losers	D
to a stream in the high hills to climb up to a place	E
one of us knew with some vague view	F
of cutting losses or consolidating gains	G
by the old standard appeal to the wilderness	H
the desert the empty places of our exile	I
bringing only the biblical bread and cheese	J
and cigarettes got from a grocer s on the way	K
expecting to drink only the clear cold water	L
among the stones and remember or forget	M
Though no one said anything about atonement	N
there was still some purgatorial idea	O
in all those aching heads and ageing hearts	P
as we climbed the giant stair of the stream	Q
reaching the place around noon	R
	-
It was as promised a wonder with granite walls	S
enclosing ledges long and flat of limestone	T
or rolling of lava within the ledges	U
the water fast and still pouring its yellow light	V
and green over the tilted slabs of the floor	W
blackened at shady corners falling in a foam	X
of crystal to a calm where the waterlight	V
dappled the ledges as they leaned	V
against the sun big blue dragonflies hovered	V
and darted and dipped a wing hovered again	Y
against the low wind moving over the stream	Q
and shook the flakes of light from their clear wings	Z
This surely was it was what we had come for	W
was nature though it looked like art with its	A2
grey fortress walls and laminated benches	U
as in the waiting room of some petrified station	B2
But we believed and what it was we believed	V
made of the place a paradise	C2
for ruined poker players win or lose	D2
who stripped naked and bathed and dried out on the rocks	E2
like gasping trout the water they drank	F2
making them drunk again lit cigarettes and lay back	G2
waiting for nature to say the last word	V
as though the stones were Memnon stones	H2
which caught in a certain light would sing	I2
	-
The silence and even the noise of the waters	D
was silence grew pregnant that is the phrase	J2
grew pregnant but nothing else did	V
The mountains brought forth not a mouse and the rocks	E2
unlike the ones you would expect to find	V
on the slopes of Purgatory or near Helicon	K2
mollified by muses and with a little give to em	L2
were modern American rocks and hard as rocks	E2
Our easy bones groaned our flesh baked	V
on one side and shuddered on the other and each man	M2
thought bitterly about primitive simplicity	V
and decadence and how he had been ruined	V
by civilization and forced by circumstances	N2
to drink and smoke and sit up all night	V
inspecting those perfectly arbitrary cards	A
until he was broken winded as a trout on a rock	O2
and had no use for the doctrines of Jean Jacques	O2
Rousseau and could no longer afford	V
a savagery whether noble or not some	P2
would never batter that battered copy of Walden	B2
again	Y
	-
But all the same	Q2
the water the sunlight and the wind	V
did something even the dragonflies	O2
did something to the minds full of telephone	T
numbers and flushes to the flesh	R2
sweating bourbon on one side and freezing on the other	L
And the rocks the old and tumbling boulders	O2
which formed the giant stair of the stream	Q
induced again some purgatorial ideas	O2
concerning humility concerning patience	O2
and enduring what had to be endured	V
winning and losing and breaking even	S2
ideas of weathering in whatever weather	L
being eroded or broken or ground down into pebbles	O2
by the stream s necessitous and grave currents	O2
But to these ideas did any purgatory	V
respond Only this one that in a world	V
where even the Memnon stones were carved in soap	T2
one might at any rate wash with the soap	T2
	-
After a time we talked about the War	W
about what we had done in the War and how near	U2
some of us had been to being drowned and burned	V
and shot and how many people we knew	F
who had been drowned or burned or shot	V
and would it have been better to have died	V
in the War the peaceful old War where we were young	V2
But the mineral peace or paralysis of those	O2
great stones the moving stillness of the waters	O2
entered our speech the ribs and blood	V
of the earth from which all fables grow	W2
established poetry and truth in us	O2
so that at last one said I shall play cards	O2
until the day I die and another said	V
in bourbon whisky are all the vitamins	O2
and minerals needed to sustain man s life	X2
and still another I shall live on smoke	Y2
until my spirit has been cured of flesh	R2
	-
Climbing downstream again on the way home	X
to the lives we had left empty for a day	V
we noticed as not before how of three bridges	O2
not one had held the stream which in its floods	O2
had twisted the girders splintered the boards hurled	V
boulder on boulder and had broken into rubble	Z2
smashed practically back to nature	L
the massive masonry of span after span	M2
with its indifferent rage this was a sight	V
that sobered us considerably and kept us quiet	V
both during the long drive home and after	L
till it was time to deal the cards	O2

Howard Nemerov

A Day On The Big Branch Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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