A Day On The Big Branch Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQR STUVWXVVVYQZWA2UB2VC 2D2E2F2G2VH2I2 DJ2VE2VK2L2E2VM2VVN2 VAO2O2VP2B2Y Q2VO2TR2LO2QO2O2VS2L O2O2VVT2T2 WU2VFVVV2O2O2VW2O2O2 VO2X2Y2R2 XVO2O2VZ2LM2VVLO2Still 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
(1)
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