Milton by Firelight

By Gary Snyder b. 1930 Gary Snyder

Piute Creek, August 1955

“O hell, what do mine eyes

with grief behold?”

Working with an old

Singlejack miner, who can sense

The vein and cleavage

In the very guts of rock, can

Blast granite, build

Switchbacks that last for years

Under the beat of snow, thaw, mule-hooves.

What use, Milton, a silly story

Of our lost general parents,

eaters of fruit?

The Indian, the chainsaw boy,

And a string of six mules

Came riding down to camp

Hungry for tomatoes and green apples.

Sleeping in saddle-blankets

Under a bright night-sky

Han River slantwise by morning.

Jays squall

Coffee boils

In ten thousand years the Sierras

Will be dry and dead, home of the scorpion.

Ice-scratched slabs and bent trees.

No paradise, no fall,

Only the weathering land

The wheeling sky,

Man, with his Satan

Scouring the chaos of the mind.

Oh Hell!

Fire down

Too dark to read, miles from a road

The bell-mare clangs in the meadow

That packed dirt for a fill-in

Scrambling through loose rocks

On an old trail

All of a summer’s day.

Source: No Nature: New and Selected Poems (1992)

Biography

Gary Snyder began his career in the 1950s as a noted member of the “Beat Generation,” though he has since explored a wide range of social and spiritual matters in both poetry and prose. Snyder’s work blends physical reality and precise observations of nature with inner insight received primarily through the practice of Zen Buddhism. While Snyder has gained attention as a spokesman for the preservation of the natural world and . . .

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