Poems by Randall Jarrell

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Seele Im Raum

It sat between my husband and my children.

A place was set for it—a plate of greens.

It had been there: I had seen it

But not somehow—but this was like a dream—

Not seen it so that I knew I saw it.

It was as if I could not know I saw it

Because I had never once in all my life

Not seen it. It was an eland.

Randall Jarrell

A Man Meets A Woman In The Street

Under the separated leaves of shade

Of the gingko, that old tree

That has existed essentially unchanged

Longer than any other living tree,

I walk behind a woman. Her hair's coarse gold

Is spun from the sunlight that it rides upon.

Women were paid to knit from sweet champagne

Her second skin: it winds and unwinds, winds

Randall Jarrell

Jerome

Each day brings its toad, each night its dragon.

Der heilige Hieronymus—his lion is at the zoo—

Listens, listens. All the long, soft, summer day

Dreams affright his couch, the deep boils like a pot.

As the sun sets, the last patient rises,

Says to him, Father, trembles, turns away.

Often, to the lion, the saint said, Son.

To the man the saint says—but the man is gone.

Randall Jarrell

The Player Piano

I ate pancakes one night in a Pancake House

Run by a lady my age. She was gay.

When I told her that I came from Pasadena

She laughed and said, "I lived in Pasadena

When Fatty Arbuckle drove the El Molino bus."

I felt that I had met someone from home.

No, not Pasadena, Fatty Arbuckle.

Who's that? Oh, something that we had in common

Randall Jarrell

Hope

The spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life.

The week is dealt out like a hand

That children pick up card by card.

One keeps getting the same hand.

One keeps getting the same card.

But twice a day — except on Saturday —

The wheel stops, there is a crack in Time:

With a hiss of soles, a rattle of tin,

Randall Jarrell

The House In The Woods

At the back of the houses there is the wood.

While there is a leaf of summer left, the wood

Makes sounds I can put somewhere in my song,

Has paths I can walk, when I wake, to good

Or evil: to the cage, to the oven, to the House

In the Wood. It is a part of life, or of the story

We make of life. But after the last leaf,

The last light—for each year is leafless,

Randall Jarrell

The Old And The New Masters

About suffering, about adoration, the old masters

Disagree. When someone suffers, no one else eats

Or walks or opens the window—no one breathes

As the sufferers watch the sufferer.

In St. Sebastian Mourned by St. Irene

The flame of one torch is the only light.

All the eyes except the maidservant's (she weeps

And covers them with a cloth) are fixed on the shaft

Randall Jarrell

Next Day

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,

I take a box

And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.

The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical

Food-gathering flocks

Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise

If that is wisdom.

Randall Jarrell

The Woman At The Washington Zoo

The saris go by me from the embassies.

Cloth from the moon. Cloth from another planet.

They look back at the leopard like the leopard.

And I. . . .

this print of mine, that has kept its color

Alive through so many cleanings; this dull null

Navy I wear to work, and wear from work, and so

To my bed, so to my grave, with no

Randall Jarrell

Well Water

What a girl called "the dailiness of life"

(Adding an errand to your errand. Saying,

"Since you're up . . ." Making you a means to

A means to a means to) is well water

Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.

The pump you pump the water from is rusty

And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel

A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny

Randall Jarrell

The Bronze David Of Donatello

A sword in his right hand, a stone in his left hand,

He is naked. Shod and naked. Hatted and naked.

The ribbons of his leaf-wreathed, bronze-brimmed bonnet

Are tasseled; crisped into the folds of frills,

Trills, graces, they lie in separation

Among the curls that lie in separation

Upon the shoulders.

Lightly, as if accustomed,

Randall Jarrell

The Orient Express

One looks from the train

Almost as one looked as a child. In the sunlight

What I see still seems to me plain,

I am safe; but at evening

As the lands darken, a questioning

Precariousness comes over everything.

Once after a day of rain

I lay longing to be cold; after a while

Randall Jarrell