Dumbarton Oaks

I thirsted for American elegance:

Bronze double doors upon the Empire State,

The Super Chief in brown maroon and grey;

Surely you find it in the Peacock Room

that Whistler built for Leyland in the Freer,

The staircases and glass of Great Lakes cities,

Or double-breasted overcoats in films.-

Even a milkshake served in stainless steel.

If we had kept the eyes of Henry James!

The Boston he gave us was ungenerous,

And he spent all his moral American wit

Upon a Europe painted like a whore.

If we had kept the eyes of T. S. Eliot

Saint Louis might have earned its Forest Park,

Its grand parabola. And Frank Lloyd Wright

Might have withstood the officers of de Stijl.

A hot breeze blows on the Urn Terrace from

The rose garden below. The tearoses

Blow with a lemony or pearlike fragrance

But they are muted by the noble dark

Of box hedges smelling of coffee grounds,

Nicotiana, or the sweat of gods;

A breeze that blows from Central Washington,

The domes and obelisk of Ground Zero.

This place might be hypnotic, terrifying,

If there were not lightnesses and gasps

Of simple air; for instance an allée

Of elms named for romantic Mélisande

That flutters shadows out of Childe Hassam

Upon a sloping meadow and a walk

Of brick half overgrown with tiny stars;

And dancing like a double crown of green

The lime-grove ellipse measuring the hours

In light shade lit by forty silver boles.-

A 747 takes off from Washington.

A giant luna moth sleeps on a tree.

As the roar fades the trickling comes back

And the ancient stereo buzz of the cicadas.

The trickling. Discovered, a chilly arbor,

Water discoloring a mosaic sheaf.

That immense trunk is a wisteria.

It has cracked the stone. A great garden is

A widening of temporal horizons

To press upon the mind the contraries

Of growth, decay, and stillness all in one.

Reaping is sowing. Quod sereris metes.

That wheatshock-whalespout?-economic wealth?-

It's on the Threadneedle dome-is repeated everywhere:

In pebbles under clear flowing shallows

-A mushroom cloud or cornucopia-

In inlaid woods, with grains of red and silver;

Patterned out in knots and carved in stone.

A boat of fruits and riches, there, is borne

Along by tortoises of stone. The proverb,

Here, has a great grip of wrist and insists

That good things come to him who waits. They do.

That cruelty-you might, you think, if trapped

Within the mazes of the box and yew

Lie down to sleep and be asphyxiated

By those delphic fumes-is taken up

In a heartless mosaic of Actaeon.

Diana, being a goddess, must be rich;

If one of mortal kind should see her stepping

From her tennis shorts, the dogs will get him;

Likewise, the swimming pool's closed to the public.

Dumbarton Oaks is cold war history,

The ground of a lost diplomatic battle:

Now the United Nations is a mob of mouths,

Addicts of welfare, the global pit of greed;

My cripple friend was mugged in Rock Creek Park.

Did the American elegance die

Because it was too simple and too cruel?

All I know is production's beautiful.

Under the pale green crabapples recline

Two women-college girls no doubt-and both

Are lovely blonde, and one's voluptuous,

Heavy and perfect like a Rubens woman.

They are both reading and quite unaware,

Upon the apple-slope, of my rude stare.

You magic ladies, shaded by your hair,

Fed by the American cornucopia,

At home here on this Sunday afternoon,

Your knees tucked under you, your blouses loose,

Forgetful of all political concern,

And grieved by only mulberries and bees:

You are the American elegance.

There is perfection of the human hour.

The sundial is transcended by the flower.