Susan Stewartking of the hill
What looked like a statue held a shove. Even so, it was hard not to want to run full throttle straight into the arms, the very harm of it. Some thought the figure at the top was of another kin or kind, that only blind force would send him over. Others swore he would give or bend, that something like love was standing there and could be swayed to reason or sweetness--a considered push might do him in. The view from below was blocked by distance, and the relentless glare of the sun. So human to feel the dominion of the sun as a yoke, to learn that radiance will shove a gaze back to the ground. The reason for submission disappears: it's just a fact of the here below-- like thinking there's a harmless form of harm. Time and again, the figure on the hill swore he would never relent, that it was his want or whim to stay there, impervious to love and hate. Our path was made straight by that stubbornness--just a final push we thought. But we were blind to the possibilities, and to what was waiting at the top. Once we began the game, it seemed impossible to stop caring and turn to something else. The sun was so hot, the voices drew us on, the blind will of a crowd bore down. Our mothers saw the harm in it and called us back; our fathers swore we couldn't go. The old ones had felt the shove and pull of it themselves, but forgot the way a want grows to desire. The path was straight, as clear as day--with a push they tried to lead us on to reason. But we were caught in a world far below that place where thought grows light as light and love. There were flowers in the meadow: buttercups and love- lies bleeding; milkweed pods with down bursting from their tops; daisies by whose petals lovers swore to love forever; and thorns left beneath the leafy blind of the thistles. Beauty was a mask for harm and everything under the sun had the power to draw us, or just the same, push us away. Does the weed, too, feel the deep want of replacement, the need to go straight for the root, then draw it out from below there in the dark earth's hush--over and over? Why look for a human reason When nature has a reason of its own? The saint said the love of a neighbor is really love for love itself, the soul reaches out to the good; in the blind acceptance of those about her, she makes a final push toward the divine. Souls hover about and above one another, in the want of connection, a promise foresworn, and, for a time, they set all forms of harm aside. It's vital, this straight- forward link between them, as necessary as sun- light or water. In such a world, the top has no added value; the place to be is here below. The thinker, too, looked below the surface--to the master's power and the servant's reason. It was the master who was blind to history. Once he resisted the push toward death, nothing else could harm him; by then no more want could arise. The servant swore he couldn't care less, giving reality a shove. But the truth of his work stood there in the sun- light, steady as need and the love of craft. The master won, though it turned out the top was a dead end, leading straight To oblivion. No one can escape the straight- forward claims of the makers, the rule of the here below; the king stands at the pleasure of those who swore to go on and on with the game. He tells himself it's love that keeps them swarming, there in the sun and rain, elbowing and shoving for a closer look. But he knows that what they want is the tooth and nail of him, that the push and prop of his image can occupy the top for just a while. There behind the blind, waiting, the assassin has his reason-- though it's never just his own. And the worst harm Comes from the innocents who never see the harm at all. The crooked made straight, the mad the font of reason, the prophets at last gone blind. The bloated carp rose to the top of the stream and the rowers pushed them down again with a shove; the fishermen swore with the sun in their eyes that, below the dam, the wheel of the mill still turned: what you want Is what you get, they said. And what we wanted was to find the meadow--and everyone unharmed. The farmers came running for the top, frantic and clanging with shovel and ax, cockamamie, heedless, straight through the gardens, scattering the love- nests of the larks and plovers. They swore they would push away the past. Their reason was impatience swirling there below their intention. Father or son, son and father; either way, they were blind To the particulars and all in all blind to consequence. To stop too soon is to want to stop wanting. The hunters have their cunning reason and go about their work by stealth. Straight as their arrows, they aim for death, though love is what closes the distance. Show the trophy high on the wall, swear to the courage of the soldiers and sailors--the top of the mast, pushed deep in the dirt, flies a flag that declares the end of harm. But the orphans lie sleeping in the meadow below and will rise up in fury with the sun. In the end, love, it's only one or two standing there beneath the sun surrounded by silence. The blind light blanketing the hill retreats and returns, oblivious. Love turns the world and brings it ill or harm. We guessed there'd be plenty and then empty straits and both would set the whirligigging top a-spin. We didn't need a better reason than that to join the push of generations. The aching want for the future drove us on, then shoved us back to the past. All the while, the meadow waited below. Within the locket, it's the image our hearts wore. We had promised, we swore and crossed our hearts. In that sun- dappled wood, all faith was blind. The little boat rolled through the straits and inlets, intent, unswerving, toward home. No other reason was necessary. Now here below in the something ever-after, I've had at the top of my thoughts a thought of love, the shape it had before it turned to harm. And what I've wanted to do is return to the source, the first push before the fulcrum's shove. The trail to the top of the hill meandered. A lark hovered, shadowing the clover below, and the hunter's blind was in the end abandoned. Everything that seemed worth wanting could slowly flower, like a weed, into harm. Still, the mind can straighten its own path; the reason has a nature sworn to truth. A final push is waiting; its patience is a synonym for love. The king was an idol. There's only the daylight glinting there beneath the sun.
Susan Stewart's most recent books of criticism are Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, which won the Christian Gauss Award for Literary Criticism in 2003 from Phi Beta Kappa, and The Open Studio: Essays on Art and Aesthetics, a collection of her writings on contemporary art. Her most recent books of poetry are Columbarium, which won the 2003 National Book Critics Circle award, and The Forest. She is a former MacArthur Fellow and teaches at Princeton.
