Two Complete Science-Adventure Books #5, Spring 1952

cover illustration by Allen Anderson

“Anaximander Powell” was a pseudonym for Hyam Plutzik

Sources: [1][2][3]

I am troubled by the blank fields, the speechless graves. Since the names were carved upon wood, there is no word for the thousand years that shaped this scribbling fist and the eyes staring at strange places and times beyond the veldt dragging to Poland. Lovers of words make simple peace with death, at last demanding, to close the door to the cold, only Here Lies Someone. Here lie no one and no one, your fathers and mothers.

Hyam Plutzik, After Looking into a Book Belonging to My Great-Grandfather, Eli Eliakim Plutzik.

On Hearing That My Poems Were Being Studied in a Distant Place by Hyam Plutzik

What are they mumbling about me there? “Here," they say, “he suffered; here was glad.” Are words clothes or the putting off of clothes?

The scene is as follows: my book is open On thirty desks; the teacher expounds my life. Outside the window the Pacific roars like a lion.

Beside which my small words rise and fall. “In this alliteration a tower crashed.” Are words clothes or the putting off of clothes?

“Here, in the fisherman casting on the water, He saw the end of the dreamer. And in that image, death, naked.”

Out of my life I fashioned a fistful of words. When I opened my hand, they flew away.

Mateo Cerezo 1645 St. Thomas of Villanueva Distributing Alms, oil on canvas, Louvre

To My Daughter

Hyam Plutzik

Seventy-seven betrayers will stand by the road, And those who love you will be few but stronger.

Seventy-seven betrayers, skilful and various, But do not fear them: they are unimportant.

You must learn soon, soon, that despite Judas The great betrayals are impersonal

(Though many would be Judas, having the will And the capacity, but few the courage).

You must learn soon, soon, that even love Can be no shield against the abstract demons:

Time, cold and fire, and the law of pain, The law of things falling, and the law of forgetting.

The messengers, of faces and names known Or of forms familiar, are innocent.

Seventy-seven betrayers will stand by the road, And those who love you will be few but stronger. Seventy-seven betrayers, skilful and various, But do not fear them: they are unimportant. You must learn soon, soon, that despite Judas The great betrayals are impersonal (Though many would be Judas, having the will And the capacity, but few the courage). You must learn soon, soon, that even love Can be no shield against the abstract demons: Time, cold and fire, and the law of pain, The law of things falling, and the law of forgetting. The messengers, of faces and names known Or of forms familiar, are innocent.

Hyam Plutzik, “To my Daughter”

You must learn soon, soon, that even love Can be no shield against the abstract demons: Time, cold and fire, and the law of pain, The law of things falling, and the law of forgetting.

Hyam Plutzik, from “To My Daughter”

Today’s Poem

The Geese --Hyam Plutzik

A miscellaneous screaming that comes from nowhere Raises the eyes at last to the moonward-flying Squadron of wild-geese arcing the spatial cold.

Beyond the hunter’s gun or the will’s range They press southward, toward the secret marshes Where the appointed gunmen mark the crossing

Of flight and moment. There is no force stronger (In the sweep of the monomaniac passion, time) Than the will toward destiny, which is death.

Value the intermediate splendor of birds.

109 | 365: Sprig of Lilac - Hyam Plutzik

Their heads grown weary under the weight of Time— These few hours on the hither side of silence— The lilac sprigs bend on the bough to perish. Though each for its own sake is beautiful, In each is the greater, the remembered beauty. Each is exemplar of its ancestors. Within the flower of the present, uneasy in the wind, Are the forms of those of the years behind the door. Their faint aroma touches the edge of the mind. And the living and the past give to one another. There is no door between them. They pass freely Out of themselves; becoming one another. I see the lilac sprigs bending and withering. Each year like Adonis they pass through the dumb-show of death, Waxing and waning on the tree in the brain of a man.

“To My Daughter” - Hyam Plutzik

Seventy-seven betrayers will stand by the road, And those who love you will be few but stronger.

Seventy-seven betrayers, skilful and various, But do not fear them: they are unimportant.

You must learn soon, soon, that despite Judas The great betrayals are impersonal

(Though many would be Judas, having the will And the capacity, but few the courage).

You must learn soon, soon, that even love Can be no shield against the abstract demons:

Time, cold and fire, and the law of pain, The law of things falling, and the law of forgetting.

The messengers, of faces and names known Or of forms familiar, are innocent.

To My Daughter by Hyam Plutzik

Seventy-seven betrayers will stand by the road, And those who love you will be few but stronger.

Seventy-seven betrayers, skilful and various, But do not fear them: they are unimportant.

You must learn soon, soon, that despite Judas The great betrayals are impersonal

(Though many would be Judas, having the will And the capacity, but few the courage).

You must learn soon, soon, that even love Can be no shield against the abstract demons:

Time, cold and fire, and the law of pain, The law of things falling, and the law of forgetting.

The messengers, of faces and names known Or of forms familiar, are innocent.

Matti Fischer - The Daughters of Man

On Hearing That My Poems Were Being Studied in A Distant Place by Hyam Plutzik

What are they mumbling about me there? “Here," they say, “he suffered; here was glad.” Are words clothes or the putting off of clothes?

The scene is as follows: my book is open On thirty desks; the teacher expounds my life. Outside the window the Pacific roars like a lion.

Beside which my small words rise and fall. “In this alliteration a tower crashed.” Are words clothes or the putting off of clothes?

“Here, in the fisherman casting on the water, He saw the end of the dreamer. And in that image, death, naked.”

Out of my life I fashioned a fistful of words. When I opened my hand, they flew away.

Today’s Poem

The Airman Who Flew Over Shakespeare’s England --Hyam Plutzik

A nation of hayricks spotting the green solace Of grass, And thrones of thatch ruling a yellow kingdom Of barley. In the green lands, the white nation of sheep. And the woodlands, Red, the delicate tribes of roebuck, doe And fawn. A senate of steeples guarding the slaty and gabled Shires, While aloof the elder houses hold a secret Sceptre. To the north, a wall touching two stone-grey reaches Of water; A circle of stones; then to the south a chalk-white Stallion. To the north, the wireless towers upon the cliff. Southward The powerhouse, and monstrous constellations Of cities. To the north, the pilgrims along the holy roads To Walsingham, And southward, the road to Shottery, shining With daisies. Over the castle of Warwick frightened birds Are fleeing, And on the bridge, faces upturned to a roaring Falcon.

And hell for the ripe summer, The large-bellied bees' murmur, And the inward pounding hammer.

“Harlowe Young, by Hyam Plutzik, in Aspects of Proteus

“My Sister,” Hyam Plutzik

Now the swift rot of the flesh is over. Now only the slow rot of the bones in the Northern damp. Even the bones of that tiny foot that brought her doom.

Imagine a land where there is no rain as we know rain. Not the quick dashing of water to the expectant face, But the weary ooze of spent drops in the earth.

Imagine the little skeleton lying there— In the terrible declination of the years— On the solitary bed, in the crumbling shell of a world.

Amid the monsters with lipless teeth who lie there in wait— The saurian multitudes who rest in that land— And the men without eyes who forever glare at the sky.

And the ominous strangers ever entering. Why are they angry? They keep their arms to themselves. Comfort themselves in the cold. Whisper no word.

And the black dog has come, but he does not play. And no one moves but the man who walks in the sky— A strange man who comes to cut the grass.

Seventeen years....

And already the fair flesh dispersed, the proud form broken. The glaciers move from the north and the sun is dying. And into the chasm of Time alone and tiny....

The Man of War sits in the gleaming chair. Struts through the halls. The Dispencer of Vengeance laughs, Crying victory! victory! victory! victory!

Victory.

An Equation For instance: y-xa+mx2(a2+i)=o Coil upon coil, the grave serpent holds Its implacable strict pose, under a light Like marble. The artist's damnation, the rat of time, Cannot gnaw this form, nor event touch it with age. Before it was, it existed, creating the mind Which created it, out of itself. It will dissolve Into itself, though in another language. Its changes are not in change, nor its times in time. And the coiled serpent quivering under a light Crueler than marble, unwinds slowly, altering Deliberate the great convolutions, a dancer, A mime on the brilliant stage. The sudden movement, Swifter than creases of lightning, renews a statue: There by its skin a snake rears beaten in copper. It will not acknowledge the incense on your altars, Nor hear at night in your room the weeping...

Hyam Plutzik, "An Equation"

An Equation by Hyam Plutzik

For instance: y– xa + mx2(a2 + 1) = 0

Coil upon coil, the grave serpent holds Its implacable strict pose, under a light Like marble. The artist’s damnation, the rat of time, Cannot gnaw this form, nor event touch it with age. Before it was, it existed, creating the mind Which created it, out of itself. It will dissolve Into itself, though in another language. Its changes are not in change, nor its times in time.

And the coiled serpent quivering under a light Crueler than marble, unwinds slowly, altering Deliberate the great convolutions, a dancer, A mime on the brilliant stage. The sudden movement, Swifter than creases of lightning, renews a statue:

There by its skin a snake rears beaten in copper. It will not acknowledge the incense on your altars, Nor hear at night in your room the weeping...

Jasper Johns 2013 Regrets, charcoal, watercolor, and pastel on paper, MoMA