GEORGE OPPEN’S PSALM OF ATTENTIVENESS 227deer might flee, their eyes no longer effortless, or might quietly admit us. Within
“Psalm” there ’s no knowing which. “Truth follows... ,” but (those three dots
imply) can never quite capture “the being of things.” (plate 15)
From a wholly other time comes a Navajo hunting song with its (translated)
refrain, “Comes the deer to my singing / Comes the deer to my singing.” Oppen
couldn’t own such mutual empathy, or the artist ’s instinctual touch in Lascaux
cave drawings of deer. As Gary Snyder says, “Hunting magic is designed to
bring the game to you—the creature who has heard your song, witnessed your
integrity, and out of compassion comes within your range.” Nor would Oppen
sign on to God ’s majesty in Psalms: “The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds
to calve, and discovereth the forests.”
Would even such tact as Oppen’s, or William Stafford ’s “I place my feet / with
care in such a world,” impinge too much? Is “Psalm” too human-centered in a
time when we need to be letting animal, vegetal, and mineral worlds alone?
If the wild deer will not stay for us, that ’s fair enough. For this moment at
least, a poem helps us “feel that the thing is there and that it ’s quite something
to see.”
Deer.
Photographer unknown. Courtesy John Felstiner.