The bulk of it
In air

Is what they wanted. Compassion
Above the doors, the doorways

Mary the woman and the others
The lesser
are dreams on the structure. But that a stone
Supports another

That the stones
Stand where the masons locked them

Above the farmland
Above the will

Because a hundred generations
Back of them and to another people

The world cried out above the mountain

from The Materials (1962)

****************************************

PSALM

Veritas sequitur...

In the small beauty of the forest
The wild deer bedding down—
That they are there!

        Their eyes
Effortless, the soft lips
Nuzzle and the alien small teeth
Tear at the grass

        The roots of it
Dangle from their mouths
Scattering earth in the strange woods.
They who are there.

        Their paths
Nibbled thru the fields, the leaves that shade them
Hang in the distances
Of sun

        The small nouns
Crying faith
In this in which the wild deer
Startle, and stare out.

from This in Which (1965) New Directions, NY (1965), p. 20

George Oppen (1908-1984), New Collected Poems
(Edited by Michael Davidson),
New Directions, NY, 2002, pp. 77, 99