Palo Alto: The Marshes, by Robert Hass

For Mariana Richardson (1830-1891)

1
She dreamed along the beaches of this coast.
Here where the tide rides in to desolate
the sluggish margins of the bay,
sea grass sheens copper into distances.
Walking, I recite the hard
explosive names of birds:
egret, killdeer, bittern, tern.
Dull in the wind and early morning light,
the striped shadows of the cattails
twitch like nerves.

2
Mud, roots, old cartridges, and blood.
High overhead, the long silence of geese.

3
"We take no prisoners," John Fremont said
and took California for President Polk.
That was the Bear Flag War.
She watched it from the Mission San Rafael,
named for the archangel (the terrible one)
who gently laid a fish across the eyes
of saintly, miserable Tobias
that he might see.
The eyes of fish. The land
shimmers fearfully.
No archangels here, no ghosts,
and terns rise like seafoam
from the breaking surf.

4
Kit Carson's antique .45 blue,
new as grease. The roar
flings up echoes
row on row of shrieking avocets.
The blood of Francisco de Haro,
Ramon de Haro, Jose de los Reyes Berryessa
runs darkly to the old ooze.

5
The star thistles; erect, surprised,

6
and blooming
violet caterpillar hairs. One
of the de Haros was her lover,
the books don't say which.
They were twins.

7
In California in the early spring
there are pale yellow mornings
when the mist burns slowly into day.
The air stings
like autumn, clarifies
like pain.

8
Well I have dreamed of this coast myself.
Dreamed Mariana, since her father owned the land
where I grew up. I saw her picture once:
a wraith encased in a high-necked black silk
dress so taut about the bones there were hardly ripples
for the light to play in. I knew her eyes
had watched the hills seep blue with lupine after rain,
seen the young peppers, heavy and intent
first rosy drupes and then the acrid fruit,
the ache of spring. Black as her hair
the unreflecting venom of those eyes
is an aftermath I know, like these brackish,
russet pools a strange life feeds in
or the old fury of land grants, maps,
and deeds of trust. A furious dun-
colored mallard knows my kind
and skims across the edges of the marsh
where the dead bass surface
and their flaccis bellies bob.

9
A chill tightens the skin
around my bones. The other California
and its bitter absent ghosts
dance to a stillness in the air:
the Klamath tribe was routed and they disappeared.
Even the dust seemed stunned,
tools on the ground, fishnets.
Fires crackled, smouldering.
No movement but the slow turning
of the smoke, no sound but jays
shrill in the distance and flying further off.
The flicker of lizards, dragonflies.
And beyond the dry flag-woven lodges
a faint persistent slapping.
Carson found ten wagonloads
of fresh-caught salmon, silver
in the sun. The flat eyes stared.
Gills sucked the thin annulling air.
They flopped and shivered,
ten wagonloads. Kit Carson
burned the village to the ground.
They rode some twenty miles that day
and still they saw black smoke
smear the sky above the pines.

10
Here everything seems clear,
firmly etched agaist the pale
smoky sky: sedge, flag, owl's clover,
rotting wharves. A tanker lugs silver
bomb-shaped napalm tins toward
port at Redwood City. Again
my eye performs
the lobotomy of description.
Again, almost with yearning,
I see the malice of her ancient eyes.
The mud flats hiss as the tide turns.
They say she died in Redwood City,
cursing, "the goddamned Anglo-Yankee yoke."

11
The otters are gone from the bay
and I have seen five horses
easy in the grassy marsh
beside three snowy egrets.

Birds cries and the unembittered sun,
wings and the white bodies of birds,
it is morning. Citizens are rising
to murder in their moral dreams.

Final Proposal

(a) For my final project I am going to perform a close interpretation of Robert Hass' poem "Palo Alto: The Marshes". The piece touches on several themes we have discussed in class, including California's history and geography.

(b) I will use Brechin as a main source in my interpretation, along with historical documents that Hass had access to as well.

(c) The poem is dedicated to a woman named Mariana Richardson. I have learned from Brechin that someone named Richardson was a conservationist, but I would like to find our more about this woman and her experiences in California that influenced Hass.

I would also like to say a bit about Robert Hass, his role as our Poet Laureate of the United States and his experience as a California poet.

(d) will come soon

(e) Incorporating everything I want to say into one coherent paper will be challenging. I could write an entire paper on Hass' use of birds in the piece.

Gary Snyder

Without a response to dig out of myself, I am writing more poetry. I am very torn by the idea of leaving the bay area after I graduate to move to Red Bluff up North. I really do think change and great things come from San Francisco and the many intelligent people who dwell in and around the area. I want to be a part of that change, but at the same time I just want to go to the mountains forever and work on my Self. I admire Gary Snyder, who seems to really have the balance between the Self and the world down.

Gary Snyder,
I want to run away
into the Sierras with you,

sit still
and meditate
among the mountains.

I look at the people
of the bay, pushing
a big boulder West

for civilization.
I want to push

but not towards nothing;

there is only ocean there,
I think, and we should not
push things into it anymore.

Gary Snyder, help! I
only want to push my Self
from inside, out.

Titan Dreams

Rob read this aloud in class, but he got a few words wrong (which can totally throw off a poem) so scanned and am reposting it! I never thought about how much the poem ties in with the course until now.