William Stafford’s poetry came to my attention at a time when I was reading and translating Brecht, Hermlin and other DDR (East Germany) poets and novelists. The unassuming, but not simple, thoughts of poems to be read softly appealed to me as I read the 1983 edition of Smoke’s Way: Poems fom Limitd Editions 1968 -1981.
Here are three of them.
West of Here
The road goes down. It stops at the sea.
The sea goes on. It stops at the sky.
The sky goes on.
At the end of the road – picnickers,
rocks. We stand and look out:
Another sky where this one ends?
And another sea?
And a world, and a road?
And what about you?
And what about me?
At An Interval We Talk
An owl call – round, globed as the moon –
floats from the night though the open window
and brushes my face with the whole world
outside our home.
The woods flow back. The years I’ve had
have floated away. Without a sound
I turn my face and its hunger for the world,
here: today.
Smoke
Smoke’s way’s a good way – find,
or be rebuffed and gone:
a day and a day, the whole world home.
Smoke? Into the mountains I guess
a long time ago. Once here, yes,
everywhere. Say anything? No.
I saw Smoke, slow traveler, reluctant
but sure. Hesitant sometimes, yes,
because that’s the way things are.
Smoke never doubts though:
some new move will appear.
Wherever you are, there is another door.
east of the fog 