The Brief Journey West

By Howard Nemerov 1920–1991 Howard Nemerov

By the dry road the fathers cough and spit,

This is their room. They are the ones who hung

That bloody sun upon the southern wall

And crushed the armored beetle to the floor.

The father’s skin is seamed and dry, the map

Of that wild region where they drained the swamp

And set provision out that they might sit,

Of history the cracked precipitate,

Until the glass be shattered and the sun

Descend to burn the prosperous flesh away

Of the filthy world, so vilely fathered on

The fathers, such black cinders, sitting there.

Old pioneers, what lecheries remain?

When schoolgirls pass, what whispers of their skirts,

Cold gleams of flesh, solicit in your veined

And gemlike eyes the custom of desire?

None now. Their eyes are sunk in ancient flesh,

And the sarcastic triumph of the mind

They now enjoy, letting their lust alone

Who may have kin but have no longer kind.

Neither tomorrow’s monstrous tumor nor

The reformation of the past they wish,

Who hold in silent colloquy the world

A shrivelled apple in the hand of God.

They hang at night their somber flags aloft,

And through the amorous dark pursue their theme

Of common images, that sleep may show

Them done with all disasters but the one.

Howard Nemerov, “The Brief Journey West” from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977). Copyright © 1977 by Howard Nemerov. Reprinted with the permission of Margaret Nemerov.

Source: The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (The University of Chicago Press, 1977)

Biography

Howard Nemerov was a highly acclaimed poet often cited for the range of his capabilities and subject matter, "from the profound to the poignant to the comic," James Billington remarked in his frequently quoted announcement of Nemerov's appointment to the post of United States poet laureate. A distinguished professor at Washington University in St. Louis from 1969 to 1990, Nemerov wrote poetry and fiction that managed to engage . . .

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