The Natural Patriot

[Editor’s note: This week’s entry comes from Johhny Cash.  That’s right, the Man in Black. The song itself is, of course, an old traditional whose author has been lost to us.  The poetry in this piece comes in the prayer of Johnny’s spoken-word introduction. I don’t know if these are his own words, or those of the anonymous cowboy. But they send shivers down my spine every time I hear them. They are written in the plain Christian idiom of his tradition, but they also speak more broadly to the spirit of natural patriotism. Sixth in a series.]

Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie
Traditional, interpreted by Johhny Cash

Lord, I’ve never lived where churches grow.
I loved creation better as it stood
that day you finished it so long ago
and looked upon your work and called it good.
I know that others find you in the light
that sifted down through tinted window panes.
And yet I seem to feel you near tonight
in this dim, quiet starlight on the plains.
I thank you, Lord, that I’m placed so well
that you’ve made my freedom so complete
that I’m no slave to whistle, clock or bell,
nor weak-eyed prisoner of Wall or Street.
Just let me live my life as I’ve begun
and give me work that’s open to the sky.
Make me a partner of the wind and sun
and I won’t ask a life that’s soft or high.
Let me be easy on the man that’s down.
Let me be square and generous with all.
I’m careless sometimes, Lord, when I’m in town
but never let them say I’m mean or small.
Make me as big and open as the plains
and honest as the horse between my knees,
clean as a wind that blows behind the rains,
free as the hawk that circles down the breeze.
Forgive me, Lord, if sometimes I forget –
You know about the reasons that are hid.
You understand the things that gall or fret.
Well, you knew me better than my mother did.
Just keep an eye on all that’s done or said
and right me sometimes when I turn aside.
And guide me on that long, dim trail ahead
that stretches upward toward the great divide.

[Editor’s note: Few have employed the Spanish language so masterfully as Pablo Neruda.  I’ve often felt that an important incentive to improve my own rudimentary Spanish would be the ability to read and appreciate Neruda’s poetry in his native tongue.  For now, alas, I have to be satisfied with the translation of by Alastair Reid, who has been called “Neruda’s most talented and imaginitive English translator”.  This is from Neruda’s poetic autobiography, written in his elder years as he reminisced down his long and eventful life from his remote home on the coast of Chile.  As winter winds down here in Virginia, and I can already see in the woods the subtle wash of red maple buds, I’m waiting for the earth too.]

Oh tierra, esperame
(Oh, Earth, Wait for Me)

Pablo Neruda
from “Isla Negra“

Return me, oh sun,
to my country destiny,
rain of the ancient woods.
Bring me back its aroma, and the swords
falling from the sky,
the solitary peace of pasture and rock,
the damp at the river margins,
the smell of the larch tree,
the wind alive like a heart
beating in the crowded remoteness
of the towering araucaria.

Earth, give me back your pristine gifts,
towers of silence which rose from
the solemnity of their roots.
I want to go back to being what I haven’t been,
to learn to return from such depths
that among all natural things
I may live or not live.  I don’t mind
being one stone more, the dark stone,
the pure stone that the river bears away.

[The photo below shows Neruda’s house at Isla Negra, Chile]

[Editor’s note: This past weekend, driving home from the mountains of West Virginia, I saw groves of sycamores lining the river bottoms and along the creeks running down the hollows.  This poem, by one of the great American poets and communicants with nature, is a worthy tribute to one of the most magnificent trees in our American sylva (also captured beautifully in prose by Donald Culross Peattie — see here), and a telling metaphor for the struggle and triumph of our beleaguered world, and — dare I say it — our souls.]

The Sycamore
Wendell Berry

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

[“Dry Creek Sycamore” painting by Michael Chesley Johnson.]

[Note: Few poets, or others for that matter, have captured the essence of our life in the world as Mary Oliver has.  How will we live in harmony with the earth? There are no easy answers.]

The fish
Mary Oliver

The first fish
I ever caught
would not lie down
quiet in the pail
but flailed and sucked
at the burning
amazement of the air
and died
in the slow pouring off
of rainbows. Later
I opened his body and separated
the flesh from the bones
and ate him: I am the fish, the fish
glitters in me; we are
risen, tangled together, certain to fall
back to the sea. Out of pain,
and pain, and more pain
we feed this feverish plot, we are noursihed
by the mystery.

[Fish print by Lori Hatch]

[Editor’s note: Walt Whitman – a cosmos, of Mannahatta the son –  was the first poet that got through to me.  Back in the day, when I was a young Philistine with no sense of art and the sophomoric sense of superiority characteristic of a certain age, I came across Leaves of Grass, picked it up and started browsing (no pun intended) through this curious and unique work, with its stilted yet proletarian language, its blend of reverence and unabashed physical exuberance. I was soon hooked.  I remember well, shortly afterwards, walking along the autumnal brick paths of the University in Chapel Hill, strewn with sweetgum pods, surrounded by the bodies electric of which the Bard sung, and feeling that I had discovered the door to a new world. Here I offer a sample from an anthemic poem by the original Natural Patriot.]

A song of the rolling earth (Excerpt)
Walt Whitman
[from Leaves of Grass)

I swear the earth shall be complete to him or her who shall be complete,
The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and broken.
I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth,
There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the theory of the earth,
No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account, unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the earth.
I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds love,
It is that which contains itself, which never invites and never refuses.
I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words,
All merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth,
Toward him who sings the songs of the body and of the truths of the earth,
Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch.

[Painting by Thomas Cole, “In the Catskills”, 1837, Metropolitan Museum]

[Editor’s note: There appears to be a growing trend among bloggers featuring some theme on Fridays, which I find an attractive idea. Therefore, on Fridays, the Natural Patriot will be featuring . . . poetry.  Why? Because poetry gets closer to the heart and soul of what we really value in Nature than the science and wonkish policy that we spend so much time discussing, important as that is. This will have to be experimental because, alas, the computer interface has a certain unfortunate dissonance with the spirit of poetry, which is best kindled in a state of slow, quiet reflection foreign to the web.  Nevertheless, it’s the medium of our day.  I can’t guarantee a contribution every week because, well, I have a day job. So here it is, the first installment.  If you like this piece, I highly recommend the book — one of my favorites (which, unfortunately, appears to be out of print).]

Wang Wei lived in the high Tang dynasty period (8th century AD) and is considered one of the greatest of the many great poets from that distinguished period of Chinese history.  This haunting poem (excerpt) seems prophetically to foresee the tragic loss of the once edenic landscape, which will soon be submerged forever behind China’s Three Gorges Dam. The dam has been intensely controversial from the beginning from a variety of environmental, social, and safety perspectives, and has been much in the news lately.

Song of Peach Tree Spring (excerpt)
Wang Wei (699?-761)
[translated by Barnstone, Barnstone, and Xu]
   . . .
   They came here to escape the chaotic world.
   Deathless now, they have no hunger to return.
   Amid these gorges, what do they know of the world?
   In our illusion we see only empty clouds and mountain.
   I don’t know that paradise is hard to find,
   and my heart of dust still longs for home.

   Leaving it all, I can’t guess how many mountains
   and waters lie behind me,
   and am haunted by an obsession to return.
   I was sure I could find my way back, the secret paths again.
   How could I know the mountains and ravines would change?
   I remember only going deep into the hills.
   At times the green river touched cloud forests.
   With spring, peach blossom water is everywhere,
   but I never find that holy source again.