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Noah
John Rondeau
Reading
written
by Gerald
Schwartz
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Beginning
at 7:00 AM, we climbed throughout the day, and although
I didn't make it to the summit (5 miles in to a 7.5
climb), I genuinely believe we made much of the day.
And Marcy, Sandra's daughter made it to the summit with
her father (who read a wonderful poem titled "There
Ain't No Road Up Marcy") and sister to read poem, including
her own poem about Mt. Marcy! You can't begin to appreciate
how fragile, how vulnerable this place is...it's vegetation,
its animals, its birds, insects...until you climb there
to meet it. But I now know how utterly essential it
is to spread the word: preserving these places is not
a luxury... if it all goes, so do we. Cognizant of how
rugged (for me) the descent would have been, I made
the personal decision not the continue on, so Sandra
and I made a descent to a point on the climb called
"Indian Falls". There (and deeper into the afternoon)
all cleared, presenting staggering vistas of all the
surrounding peaks, Algonquin, among them. There we read
Louise Gluck's poem as well as my own, "Rondeau". It
was a moment of intense sharing, as we read the poems
and shared our deep concerns about the world, the events
of the last year, while using the climb and the mountain
as reality and metaphor, a way of relating who we are
-- our fragilities and strengths -- as a species and
to that world we're apart of. The readings at the Book
House At the Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany were well attended,
partially boosted by an extensive feature/interview
in the city's primary newspaper, The Times Union. I
began, at Sandra's suggestion, by sharing some impressionistic
remarks of the climb, which worked well since it gave
everyone a goof introduction to who we were and why
we were making the climb in the IYM, while detailing
the program's worldwide effort. Then I read L. Gluck's
poem and "Rondeau". I then turned it over to Sandra,
who read excerpts from her book on Marcy, which may
have really put that special, vital place on the map
-- ecologically, socially, historically and politically
-- for the first time in many people's thoughts. But
the best part of the event was still to come: when Sandra
and her daughter, Marcy, read Marcy's poem about the
mountain she has grown up climbing. Bill Weber capped
off the reading with his reading of the poem he read
on the summit. What a wondrous journey! And the Kinship
we all shared over those two days will last a lifetime.
One additional quick personal note: my 4 year old, Caylin,
and her mother climbed a nearby mountain, Mt. Jo, at
the same time, and it enchanted them for a lifetime.
During
his days at his Cold River hermitage Rondeau, who was
uneducated but extremely well-read,
kept
a diary, which contains entries on everything from Classical
music (Rondeau was a violinist) to meditations and observations
on wildlife, especially birds, to the ever-burgeoning
development of his beloved land by "robber-barons" and
their "government shills".Rondeau
wrote passionately (this was his life) about how small
cabins once occupied the heights that he called home,
but how -- in his lifetime-- they became only "a few
cellar holes and tumbled stone walls, remains among
the dense stands of maple, beech, and hemlocks on the
mountains of the north."
Above:
Noah John Rondeau
The
poems were performed by Gerald Schwartz and Faking Trains.
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Gerald
Schwartz studied poetry with Joseph Brodsky and
John Montague and has been published in Jacket, Northeast
Corridor, Flim, Pote Poet, and Verse.
Faking
Trains, formerly Solomons Ramada, have been performing
poetry and music for over a decade (see my resume for
some details). We have played with The Last Poets, Eugene
Chadbourne, Chyene Poet Lance Henson, and many others.
Above:
Faking Trains
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Rondeau
(as
inspired from a reading of the journals of Noah John
Rondeau, Hermit of the Adirondacks)
1.
This light in its live-long
day of play, refuses
my mountain's certainty.
That they will not change--
the whole range of them--
an illumination like snow!
On
this afternoon when
clouds are one
impending gray above all--
light will not obey
either the clouds'
or the rocks' command
keeping distance.
In
shifts and shows
even cloudshadows--
how they transform
the very stones opening
over them--dark wings,
cradling, creasing their
solidity--as if to say:
"I
gather up rocks
out of their world
of things not merely
things, I call dark
wings to be bearers
of light as they sail
off shapes they pall
and, in their wake,
leave brightening snowfall
melting and renewed."
Yet if the light
washes rocks away,
rocks remaining
to tell what is,
and only so, can they
both flow, stay,
and, the mind--
that floating thing,
steady to know itself
in all beyonds
of its certainty,
as here, beneath,
the expanse's deepening
through cloud-rock
ranges of evening sky.
2.
The pines here
are the color
of the day.
They take in
from the changes
of sky, from the slope
of the mountain
each rampant,
each passing shade--
so blue becomes
the color of trees--
as true as
and no more
to be gain said,
than that hint
of red the light
is tendering between
the trunks, only
to deny it:
sun burns now
the whole mountain
black with shadow,
up to the very
crow's nest--each
sparred pine tree:
there these birds
as range and turn
in setting light
rise like spirits
of trees estranged
to have yielded
themselves to single
certain shade and,
as if by welling
from within, darken
towards the darkness
night gifts to us.
3.
We are here because of glaciers
of no return. Ice opened
into fields and furrows, dry
and hard--scarcely a fissure
in it--single directs across
silence, paved from side
to side with white, marbled
arteries between tombs
of civilization buried, set
round with cliffs, seeming
as meaningless as the blue
bounding them. The scene
looms so removed not merely
from the presence of men
it seems a world no man
has known. Even the spirits
chilling these slopes have
perished long since here--
while, fiddle-headed archangels
that banked them up from tombs,
outspread in their shrouds
of brilliant hoarfrost. Too many
winters temper what I
now come to dream and see!
4.
Each day advances
the passing of leaves:
the birches first--
so much of richness here,
color could not
have held beyond that pitch,
yet fallen, frosted, when
October sun sets them
alight once more,
their thousands burn
at first intensity. Yellow
leaves followed by the scarlet
fast and left all bare
except the spruces
whose interior dark
densens their longing greens
against the light.
The Dipper measures out sky
spaces now, stars, unencumbered
pricks my eyes where leaves
on leaves had stalled
it night on night--
first flakes thickening
down the wind--solidifying
the dark, then hiding the sky:
Nobody owns these lands
with only the pull of pole behind!
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5.
Only in flight--as in
a helicopter once--
could I gather at a glance
so much of space and depth
as from this height;
yet flight blurs unbroken
separation of fragile sounds
from solid soundlessness--
the chime of metal
against distant stone,
the crumble and crumble
of devastation, of development--
filters up to me. My steps,
as they echo on these mountains,
make me seem a timid god
whom this activity
seems to placate.
But not for long. Turkey vultures
stretched on air are more gods
than me, and see me from above
as my eyes see the minute
and lumber-heavy trucks
swaying slowly across
sheernesses beneath us, bend
on bend, specks
on an endlessly descending
curve.
6.
Flowers! I say seeing
their tides of purple, yellow,
overflow from the woods
to meet me.
If
I could only fly above
them, I could read
the sprawled, alphabet
of this spread
above whatever food
of earth has fed
their new advance.
Their
scent steeps
the spring air it cools--
a fullness of mien:
they mass down
the wood-bank--a flower army!
If the angels' commands
were visible in our time--
then these might glow--
iridescent shadows!
A splendid beauty!
If they are hued--
silent their cup-mouths
crowding on each stem--
this is all I
have to say so call
and color them.
7.
I cannot tell you
the history of Marcy,
now what you'd
find contained within my faith,
all I can say,
this December afternoon,
is that it rises
early as the last
of the crows are
spying out a way
in semi-darkness
to a darkened nest--
its purple-phosphor burning back
all I know to know
that I am here--
that it is now.
Against the East,
the tautness of its bow--
its peak aims upwards
to my future
and that will soon arrive--
but let it be:
the birds are black
on the illuminated sky--
high enough to read
all the dusk here
by this risen peak
bringing height to spectacle.
Coda:
Final
Song Of Noah John Rondeau, Hermit Mayor Of Cold River
City (Population 1)
I'll keep it simple: let the sky draw itself closed,
taking with it the peaks, the stone walls, the object
of desire. Write my name in ash on the hearth
and the fire will burn all night. I have spent much
time alone, rubbing the shine from stars, raking
the clearing down to colored minerals, contained
clear, glassy grains of quartz--it always allowed
me to dream of boneshine deep inside lost wishes.
There is no moon tonight and the mountains are
mostly memory, an understatement of continental
collisions and rising faith, rock outcroppings set
in spindrift armor below where winds die down
and Flowed lands become rich blue sky chocked full
with yellow-tinged clouds shared with red-shouldered
hawks, ospreys, barred owls and orchard orioles
and crossbills-- to each I smile and make no reply
for my heart is free of care. I've lost seasons
to solitude, memories're like settlers in old photos,
hands crossed, faces just as stern and mouths so
full of longing. They're gone now, like summer
wings and water signs, or places safe for healing.
I've grouped everything in threes and traced
the ground beneath me with ancient dirt and order:
a silent forest of reasons, trunk upon trunk. Finally,
the skies find a new idea for weather: cold, ice
fog in the morning and trees no more than bones.
On Mountain Pond two marsh wrens take short
flight to mark my passing, females, coal-hued,
a quick gaze made sad by the yearn of their twice--
forgotten eyes. It's all true: my world remembers
August the same way darkness comes for my eyes
on nights far from Sing Pines, here in hospital, I
fight to sleep, a winding cloth of cotton flecked
with the silver fire I cling to like the windborne.
Seventy-eight degrees above zero. Nice sunshine
on the hill. I will make a batch of Eternity Tea.
-30-
Gerald
Schwartz
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