Thomas Cole: View from Mt. Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts,
after a Thunderstorm (The Oxbow), 1836. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Lines Composed on Mount Holyoke
a Few Miles Above the Oxbow of the Connecticut River, 2006
For Herbert Lehnert
by Douglas Milburn
Page 1 of 8
1.
Mount Holyoke! The trail is well-marked, here
splashes of paint, still, there bare scraps of
trimetric shawls (how often did she
come tripping up these heights?). Squint and
see eastward hard
on the edge of watery
otherness stands our
deal old Herm still stiffly
waiting for one big Moby you-know-
what. And way off
over yonder in the haze the Great
American Fool cavorts on though
hardly anyone ever laughs they
take him all so serious, now, Huck.
Squint again! And try your best to
imagine that unlikely
pair, Hank and Waldo, wandering this way
too, hardly paying
attention
so lost in
plotting a
transcendental
future through this
once-virgin
wilderness. O! I
see them all and
trust
still
their fading
voices:
No tyrant can
ever stand long
outside these
|
ramparts sloping
massively
up to gates of Eden,
shut but
never lost,
never locked.
Geography is destiny,
a book writ long a-
go and whether
the gabfest gobblers
down D.C.-way do
ever learn
to read it
matters not one
whittler’s shaving.
Tramp, tramp! the
boys and girls are
marching once a-
gain in these old
footprints, Nike-shaped,
boot-shaped, shoe-shaped,
moccasin too, and bare foot
still visible there and
there and there all
over this summit
towering above
all Ameri-
can dreamers and
nightmarists then and
still and now and
evermore.
Amen.continue >> |
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