November 15, 2020

Waking Early Sunday Morning
By: Robert Lowell (August 5, 1965)

O to break loose, like the chinook

salmon jumping and falling back,

nosing up to the impossible

stone and bone-crushing waterfall—
raw-jawed, weak-fleshed there, stopped by ten 5

steps of the roaring ladder, and then

to clear the top on the last try,

alive enough to spawn and die.

Stop, back off. The salmon breaks

water, and now my body wakes 10

to feel the unpolluted joy

and criminal leisure of a boy—

no rainbow smashing a dry fly

in the white run is free as I,

here squatting like a dragon on 15

time’s hoard before the day’s begun!

Fierce, fireless mind, running downhill.

Look up and see the harbor fill:

business as usual in eclipse

goes down to the sea in ships— 20

wake of refuse, dacron rope,

bound for Bermuda or Good Hope,

all bright before the morning watch

the wine-dark hulls of yawl and ketch.

I watch a glass of water wet
 25
with a fine fuzz of icy sweat,

silvery colors touched with sky,

serene in their neutrality—
yet if I shift, or change my mood,

I see some object made of wood,
 30
background behind it of brown grain,

to darken it, but not to stain.

O that the spirit could remain

tinged but untarnished by its strain! 35

Better dressed and stacking birch,

or lost with the Faithful at Church—
anywhere, but somewhere else!

And now the new electric bells,

clearly chiming, “Faith of our fathers,” 40
and now the congregation gathers.

O Bible chopped and crucified

in hymns we hear but do not read,

none of the milder subtleties

of grace or art will sweeten these 45

stiff quatrains shoveled out four-square—
they sing of peace, and preach despair;

yet they gave darkness some control,

and left a loophole for the soul.

When will we see Him face to face? 50

Each day, He shines through darker glass.

In this small town where everything

is known, I see His vanishing

emblems, His white spire and flag—
pole sticking out above the fog,
 55
like old white china doorknobs, sad,

slight, useless things to calm the mad.

Hammering military splendor,

top-heavy Goliath in full armor—
little redemption in the mass 60

liquidations of their brass,

elephant and phalanx moving

with the times and still improving,

when that kingdom hit the crash:

a million foreskins stacked like trash ... 65

Sing softer! But what if a new

diminuendo brings no true

tenderness, only restlessness,

excess, the hunger for success,

sanity or self-deception
 70
fixed and kicked by reckless caution,

while we listen to the bells—
anywhere, but somewhere else!

O to break loose. All life's grandeur 75

is something with a girl in summer ...

elated as the President

girdled by his establishment

this Sunday morning, free to chaff

his own thoughts with his bear-cuffed staff, 80

swimming nude, unbuttoned, sick

of his ghost-written rhetoric!

No weekends for the gods now. Wars

flicker, earth licks its open sores,

fresh breakage, fresh promotions, chance 85

assassinations, no advance.

Only man thinning out his kind

sounds through the Sabbath noon, the blind

swipe of the pruner and his knife

busy about the tree of life ... 90

Pity the planet, all joy gone

from this sweet volcanic cone;

peace to our children when they fall

in small war on the heels of small

war—until the end of time
 95
to police the earth, a ghost

orbiting forever lost

in our monotonous sublime.