The Day Time Began (McCarthy)
The Day Time Began, by Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005)
Our days were yellow and green
we marked the seasons with respect,
but spring was ours. We were shoots
and sprouts, and greenings,
We heard the first word
that fish were running in the creek.
Secretive we went with men into sheds
for torches and tridents
for nets and traps.
We shared the wildness of that week,
in men and fish. First fruits
after the winter. Dried meat gone,
the pork barrel holding only brine.
Bank clerks came out in skins,
teachers in loin clouts [clothes]
while game wardens drove in darkened cars,
watching the vagrant flares
beside the fish mad streams, or crouched
at home to see who came and went,
holding their peace
surprised by violence.
We were spendthrift of time
A day was not too much to spend
to find a willow right for a whistle
to blow the greenest sound the world
had ever heard.
Another day to search the oak and hickory thickets,
geometry and experience run togetehr
to choose the fork, fit
for a sling.
Whole days long we pursued the spotted frogs
and dared the curse of newts and toads.
New Adams, unhurried, pure, we checked the names
given by the old.
Some things we found well titled
blood-root for sight
skunks for smell
crab apples for taste
yarrow for sound
mallow for touch.
Some we found named ill, too little or too much
or in a foreign tongue.
These we challenged with new names.
Space was our preoccupation,
infinity, not eternity our concern.
We were strong bent on counting,
the railroad ties, so many to a mile,
the telephone poles, the cars that passed,
marking our growth against door frames.
The sky was a kite,
I flew it on a string,
winding it in to see its blue, again
to count the whirling swallows,
and read the patterned scroll of blackbirds turning
to check the marking of the hawk,
and then letting it out to the end
of the last pinched inch of
string, in the vise of thumb and finger.
One day the string broke,
the kite flew over the shoulder of the world,
but reluctantly, reaching back in great lunges
as lost kites do, or as a girl running
in a reversed movie, as at each arched step, the earth
set free, leaps forward, catching her farther back
the treadmill doubly betraying,
Remote and more remote.
Now I lie on a west facing hill in October
the dragging string having circled the world, the universe,
crosses my hand in the grass. I do not grasp it,
it brushes my closed eyes, I do not open.
That world is no longer mine, but for remembrance
Space ended then, and time began.
NOTE:
In addition to being a poet, Eugene McCarthy was a Minnesota Senator from 1959 to 1971, but should not be confused with Joseph McCarthy, who was from Wisconsin and responsible for the House Un-American Activities Committee and its communist witch-hunt in the ’50s.