[Murmurs from the earth of this land]

By Muriel Rukeyser 1913–1980 Muriel Rukeyser

Murmurs from the earth of this land, from the caves and craters,

from the bowl of darkness. Down watercourses of our

dragon childhood, where we ran barefoot.

We stand as growing women and men. Murmurs come down

where water has not run for sixty years.

Murmurs from the tulip tree and the catalpa, from the ax of

the stars, from the house on fire, ringing of glass; from

the abandoned iron-black mill.

Stars with voices crying like mountain lions over forgotten

colors.

Blue directions and a horizon, milky around the cities where the

murmurs are deep enough to penetrate deep rock.

Trapping the lightning-bird, trapping the red central roots.

You know the murmurs. They come from your own throat.

You are the bridges to the city and the blazing food-plant green;

The sun of plants speaks in your voice, and the infinite shells of

accretions

A beach of dream before the smoking mirror.

You are close to that surf, and the leaves heated by noon, and

the star-ax, the miner’s glitter walls. The crests of the sea

Are the same strength you wake with, the darkness is the eyes

of children forming for a blaze of sight and soon, soon,

Everywhere, you own silence, who drink from the crater, the

nebula, one another, the changes of the soul.

Muriel Rukeyser, "[Untitled] (”Murmurs from the earth of this land”)" from The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Copyright © 2006 by Muriel Rukeyser. Reprinted by permission of William L. Rukeyser.

Source: The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006)

Biography

Although poet Muriel Rukeyser often provoked a varying critical response to her work, there was never any doubt during her five-decade literary career that a resounding passion was on display. Of her first book, the award-winning collection Theory of Flight, W. R. Benet remarked in the Saturday Review of Literature : "She is a radical politically, but she writes as a poet not a propagandist. When you hold this book in your hand . . .

Continue reading this biography