Poetry by Donald Jenkins
Donald Jenkins (1931-2023) was a long-time resident of the Skyline neighborhood. These poems were composed during the period of 1957-66, before his career as a museum curator of Asian art started to absorb a lot of his time. Thanks to his daughter Jennifer for sharing these poems.
Late September
The days are colder now, worn thin. Windfalls
Are thick on the dry ground. It is time to build
A house against mortality. The earth
Is like a plundered hive, and the late drone
Of bees is everywhere. And it is time.
Because the heart is homeless. Man is like
A wind-blown cry, or rain at night. And fall
Wears down to silence. The sound of children’s play
Is like a hundred bells, and yet, too thin,
Too thin. The bells must cease. Perhaps the heart
Stores wisdom as a fruit stores pulp. Perhaps
Regret is honey on the hive of being.
But now the earth shines through. The nights are cold.
It is time to build against mortality.
That Great Raw Land
That great raw land, extinguished now -- I saw
The last of it. And in a few waste creeks
And snag-choked canyons salmon still
Spangle the water. I, however, saw
The last of it, those Indian days of fish
And berry. Life was newer then and flashed
Like sunlight. Death also was everywhere.
Things lived and died in random violence.
In spring the rivers teemed with smelt, and great
Lank flights of geese moved northward. In the night
We heard their passage. In the summers smoke
Darkened the sky for days. The sun was red
And coppery. Charred brands and ash fell from
The sky. And still long rafts of logs moved up
And down the rivers. Sawmill burners glowed.
That land was not exhausted. In its waste
And wreckage yearly the life returned. But now
All that is gone. My generation was the last
To know it. Only the signs remain: a few
Burnt pilings on the river, stump land in
The foothills, floods in the full of the year:
Signs and poor symbols of the dying past.
Fall Butchering
I wish he would have balked, or shown some fear;
It would have seemed less like a sacrifice.
But as it was he simply stood there, trusting --
A thick-skulled ruminant born like all his kind
To be a victim - while our barnyard dogs,
With the keener instincts of the carnivores,
Gathered expectantly around him. In
The end it took a sledge to stun the beast.
He fell at the blows blood trickling from his nose,
His legs kicking spasmodically. Swiftly
The knife searched his throat for the arteries
Eluding it. One twist, a sudden tug,
And they were found: his blood pulsed from the cuts
Then, in that growing pool, he struggled to
Get up, lunging in vain, his legs failing
Beneath him. Snorting, gurgling, as his life
Ebbed from him, he lay sprawled there. And I thought
How long he took in dying, how obstinate,
Beyond all reason, was the life in him.
Later, it took all three of us to hoist
The dead weight of that carcass. We worked fast.
Soon the entrails billowed forth, Swelling, gleaming,
They came in all the colors of the sea
And sky - blue-gray, pale green, purple, even
The delicate, astonishing pale rose
Of dawn. We threw them to the ground. They lay
There steaming in the crisp fall air, losing
Their body heat forever. It was dark
Before we finished. I can still see the bright
Pink lungs, their livid color, as we threw
Them in the pit. Lugging the carcass to
The truck, I wondered at the bulk of all
That life gone cold, the massive heart, the flanks,
The gaping chest. The vital heat we share –
The warmth of generation drawn from womb
And teat - was his also. To feel it cool
Beneath one's hands like that! At least elsewhere
Those coals burn on, banked up in hide and fat
And flesh like his, to flare forth later perhaps –
Oh, may it be - to flare forth later in
A finer consummation, a better rite than this.
Mission (1967)
The tide is high tonight, so that the surf -
Breaking close in against the dunes -- sounds more
Than ever now like distant mortar fire,
Its dull, percussive booming waking the same
Disquiet I have always felt hearing
The sea assault the land. They say this coast
Is dangerous, that rip tides, sudden reefs,
And potholes make it hostile. Certainly
Tonight I find here images enough
To prove that so: driftwood lies strewn like bones,
The leavings of some giant carnivore,
While out at sea a light lurches and bobs,
Lurches and bobs, before it disappears
Entirely. And yet how wrong to call
What simply is, hostile, when only Man,
Become the final predator, is that.
Hostile? The wind from sea is strong tonight,
And loud. Its sound joins with the surf, so it
Is long before I hear, high overhead,
The roar of jets. I guess their mission as
They head due west, moving straight out to sea.
To My Carpenter Forebears
Because I wanted my words to be honest,
As forthright as a driven nail, yet saw
The falseness in them, I have schooled myself
To silence; until now - almost too late –
I see how much has gone unsaid, how much
That needed saying. words can never be
As unequivocal as deeds; and yet
There is a craft, a something workmanlike,
A nicety, that marks their proper use
And gives it authenticity and power.
Even my verse - pure fabrication that
It is - well made can share in that. So I
Am reconciled at last. Dear God, to be
At home again with words; to feel the old
Necessity that drove my poems to
Completion in the past… Not that those years
Were lost: they taught me how to farm and build
And log, to sweat like other men, to take
New pride in what my hands could make. Using
My father's, and his father's, workworn tools,
I earned at last my patrimony, earned
A manhood otherwise not mine. I came
To know another kind of eloquence,
Direct, sparing of words… Oh, let me use
It now, and let my poetry strike home
With such intensity that its every word
Shall ring, shall ring, like a well-driven nail.
The days are colder now, worn thin. Windfalls
Are thick on the dry ground. It is time to build
A house against mortality. The earth
Is like a plundered hive, and the late drone
Of bees is everywhere. And it is time.
Because the heart is homeless. Man is like
A wind-blown cry, or rain at night. And fall
Wears down to silence. The sound of children’s play
Is like a hundred bells, and yet, too thin,
Too thin. The bells must cease. Perhaps the heart
Stores wisdom as a fruit stores pulp. Perhaps
Regret is honey on the hive of being.
But now the earth shines through. The nights are cold.
It is time to build against mortality.
That Great Raw Land
That great raw land, extinguished now -- I saw
The last of it. And in a few waste creeks
And snag-choked canyons salmon still
Spangle the water. I, however, saw
The last of it, those Indian days of fish
And berry. Life was newer then and flashed
Like sunlight. Death also was everywhere.
Things lived and died in random violence.
In spring the rivers teemed with smelt, and great
Lank flights of geese moved northward. In the night
We heard their passage. In the summers smoke
Darkened the sky for days. The sun was red
And coppery. Charred brands and ash fell from
The sky. And still long rafts of logs moved up
And down the rivers. Sawmill burners glowed.
That land was not exhausted. In its waste
And wreckage yearly the life returned. But now
All that is gone. My generation was the last
To know it. Only the signs remain: a few
Burnt pilings on the river, stump land in
The foothills, floods in the full of the year:
Signs and poor symbols of the dying past.
Fall Butchering
I wish he would have balked, or shown some fear;
It would have seemed less like a sacrifice.
But as it was he simply stood there, trusting --
A thick-skulled ruminant born like all his kind
To be a victim - while our barnyard dogs,
With the keener instincts of the carnivores,
Gathered expectantly around him. In
The end it took a sledge to stun the beast.
He fell at the blows blood trickling from his nose,
His legs kicking spasmodically. Swiftly
The knife searched his throat for the arteries
Eluding it. One twist, a sudden tug,
And they were found: his blood pulsed from the cuts
Then, in that growing pool, he struggled to
Get up, lunging in vain, his legs failing
Beneath him. Snorting, gurgling, as his life
Ebbed from him, he lay sprawled there. And I thought
How long he took in dying, how obstinate,
Beyond all reason, was the life in him.
Later, it took all three of us to hoist
The dead weight of that carcass. We worked fast.
Soon the entrails billowed forth, Swelling, gleaming,
They came in all the colors of the sea
And sky - blue-gray, pale green, purple, even
The delicate, astonishing pale rose
Of dawn. We threw them to the ground. They lay
There steaming in the crisp fall air, losing
Their body heat forever. It was dark
Before we finished. I can still see the bright
Pink lungs, their livid color, as we threw
Them in the pit. Lugging the carcass to
The truck, I wondered at the bulk of all
That life gone cold, the massive heart, the flanks,
The gaping chest. The vital heat we share –
The warmth of generation drawn from womb
And teat - was his also. To feel it cool
Beneath one's hands like that! At least elsewhere
Those coals burn on, banked up in hide and fat
And flesh like his, to flare forth later perhaps –
Oh, may it be - to flare forth later in
A finer consummation, a better rite than this.
Mission (1967)
The tide is high tonight, so that the surf -
Breaking close in against the dunes -- sounds more
Than ever now like distant mortar fire,
Its dull, percussive booming waking the same
Disquiet I have always felt hearing
The sea assault the land. They say this coast
Is dangerous, that rip tides, sudden reefs,
And potholes make it hostile. Certainly
Tonight I find here images enough
To prove that so: driftwood lies strewn like bones,
The leavings of some giant carnivore,
While out at sea a light lurches and bobs,
Lurches and bobs, before it disappears
Entirely. And yet how wrong to call
What simply is, hostile, when only Man,
Become the final predator, is that.
Hostile? The wind from sea is strong tonight,
And loud. Its sound joins with the surf, so it
Is long before I hear, high overhead,
The roar of jets. I guess their mission as
They head due west, moving straight out to sea.
To My Carpenter Forebears
Because I wanted my words to be honest,
As forthright as a driven nail, yet saw
The falseness in them, I have schooled myself
To silence; until now - almost too late –
I see how much has gone unsaid, how much
That needed saying. words can never be
As unequivocal as deeds; and yet
There is a craft, a something workmanlike,
A nicety, that marks their proper use
And gives it authenticity and power.
Even my verse - pure fabrication that
It is - well made can share in that. So I
Am reconciled at last. Dear God, to be
At home again with words; to feel the old
Necessity that drove my poems to
Completion in the past… Not that those years
Were lost: they taught me how to farm and build
And log, to sweat like other men, to take
New pride in what my hands could make. Using
My father's, and his father's, workworn tools,
I earned at last my patrimony, earned
A manhood otherwise not mine. I came
To know another kind of eloquence,
Direct, sparing of words… Oh, let me use
It now, and let my poetry strike home
With such intensity that its every word
Shall ring, shall ring, like a well-driven nail.
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