George Oppen (April 24, 1908 – July 7, 1984) was an American poet, best known as one of the members of the Objectivist group of poets. He abandoned poetry in the 1930s for political activism and moved to Mexico in 1950 to avoid the attentions of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He returned to poetry—and to the United States—in 1958, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1969.
IF IT ALL WENT UP IN SMOKE
George Oppen
that smoke
would remain
the forever
savage country poem’s light borrowed
light of the landscape and one’s footprints praise
from distance
in the close
crowd all
that is strange the sources
the wells the poem begins
neither in word
nor meaning but the small
selves haunting
us in the stones and is less
always than that help me I am
of that people the grass
blades touch
and touch in their small
distances the poem
begins
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PSALM
George Oppen
Veritas sequitur …
In the small beauty of the forest
The wild deer bedding down—
That they are there!
Their eyes
Effortless, the soft lips
Nuzzle and the alien small teeth
Tear at the grass
The roots of it
Dangle from their mouths
Scattering earth in the strange woods.
They who are there.
Their paths
Nibbled thru the fields, the leaves that shade them
Hang in the distances
Of sun
The small nouns
Crying faith
In this in which the wild deer
Startle, and stare out.