I was listening this afternoon to Ives' Thanksgiving from his Holidays
Symphony when I remembered this poem that I wrote on an incredibly cold
Thanksgiving in the mountains west of Northampton Massachussets in I think
1976. I almost never write anything apt for an occasion, so I thought I'd
pass this along.
A MEDITATION ON CHARLES IVES
In 1926 Ives bought the house at 164 East 74th Street, which was their New
York home for the rest of his life, with the music room on the top floor.
Not long after they'd moved
in--as
Harmony recalled--"he came downstairs
one day with tears in his eyes, and said he couldn't seem to compose
anymore--nothingwent well, nothing sounded right." From then on he revised
and got old sketches in shape.
John
Kirkpatrick, in Charles E.
Ives, Memos
It's easy to be indignant about what neglect did to him
to guess what twenty years of singing with no one listening
like what Williams said who also
almost died of exhaustion that you die
for lack of it until one day he comes downstairs
broken
by the strain of affirming
while the country hardens around you
even the leaves stiffening in polluted sunlight
another war and another
men who hate their lives thrown at each other for a moment's transcendence
and an ideal patriotism
that you constantly fought back to an earlier version of
to the 44 who had survived the first winter and the first harvest
hardly a village a remnant a community
of scarecrows,
and the leaves fall and you bury the dead
ice cases the graveyard
the forest empty
not even Indians. You plant corn you kill birds the leaves
for a moment the flesh of the world, radiant. You pluck your harvest
the leaves die you huddle by the fire and praise the warmth.
After that
America as the place for the pure choice
is over the primitive church
as always the only church.
They were dropped
in a howling wilderness? The whole city howls around you.
You have to stuff your ears to make music.
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