{"id":5876,"date":"2010-03-04T08:50:05","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T08:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5876"},"modified":"2011-05-14T21:54:35","modified_gmt":"2011-05-14T21:54:35","slug":"hamatreya-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5876","title":{"rendered":"Hamatreya II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Emerson begins his poem <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vcu.edu\/engweb\/transcendentalism\/authors\/emerson\/poems\/hamatreya.html\">&#8220;Hamatreya&#8221;<\/a> with a list of names: Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, and the other founders of Concord, Mass. They speak, telling how they made the land theirs, divided it into parcels, and left it to their heirs.<\/p>\n<p>In the second stanza, the earth laughs as these men try to transform her. The narrator says, &#8220;The hot owner sees not Death, who adds \/ Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.&#8221; The earth then sings in her own voice: &#8220;Mine and yours; \/ Mine, not yours, Earth endures.&#8221; When her song is done, the narrator remarks, &#8220;I was no longer brave; \/ My avarice cooled \/ Like lust in the chill of the grave.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That is how Emerson ends. Sixteen decades later, we live not far from Concord. The earth says,<\/p>\n<p>Ralph Waldo is dead, turned to grit and mud.<br \/>\nEight more generations have wriggled out,<br \/>\nCried, drunk, grown, worked, shrunk, died since his voice stopped.<br \/>\nTo me: a few smooth circuits round the sun.<br \/>\nI&#8217;ll still be turning when they all are gone,<br \/>\nWhen something new crawls on my skin, and then<br \/>\nWhen nothing stirs, and dawn means plain white light<br \/>\nOn silent stone.<br \/>\nBut they do swarm on me.<br \/>\nTheir houses are like dust, but thick dust now.<br \/>\nMy hills are hard to notice from their car<br \/>\nWindows as they fly down tarmac ribbons,<br \/>\nBurning carbon they draw from inside me.<br \/>\nI whose motion is endless, effortless<br \/>\nSalute their grim, relentless harvesting.<br \/>\nWhat are they to me? Just some of my mass,<br \/>\nQuivering briefly on my dry surface.<br \/>\nYet when I ask what they are, what I am,<br \/>\nWhat each is for, I find I use their words.<br \/>\nThey taught me my Concord was beautiful,<br \/>\nIts misty lowlands and its pale green hills.<br \/>\nIf they asphyxiate or cook themselves,<br \/>\nWho will remember the Concord they found?<br \/>\nI am no longer brave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Emerson begins his poem &#8220;Hamatreya&#8221; with a list of names: Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, and the other founders of Concord, Mass. They speak, telling how they made the land theirs, divided it into parcels, and left it to their heirs. In the second stanza, the earth laughs as these men try to transform her. The narrator [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-verse-and-worse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6185,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5876\/revisions\/6185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}