Sometimes, When I Dare Myself To Read Robinson Jeffers

Photo by Edward Weston, 1929. Click for a better jpeg.

Sometimes, when I dare myself to read Robinson Jeffers, I think, "No no no, what if he's right?" But then I read him again, and think, "No no no, he's right." Either notion appalls me.

Rearmament
by Robinson Jeffers.

These grand and fatal movements toward death: the grandeur of the mass
Makes pity a fool, the tearing pity
For the atoms of the mass, the persons, the victims, makes it seem monstrous
To admire the tragic beauty they build.
It is beautiful as a river flowing or a slowly gathering
Glacier on a high mountain rock-face,
Bound to plow down a forest, or as frost in November,
The gold and flaming death-dance for leaves,
Or a girl in the night of her spent maidenhood, bleeding and kissing.
I would burn my right hand in a slow fire
To change the future... I should do foolishly. The beauty of modern
Man is not in the persons but in the
Disastrous rhythm, the heavy and mobile masses, the dance of the
Dream-led masses down the dark mountain.

-- From
THE SELECTED POETRY OF ROBINSON JEFFERS.
Random House, New York, 1938 (Eighth Printing).

Originally appeared in
SOLSTICE AND OTHER POEMS.
New York: Random House, 1935.