My hand is upon the stones (conclusion)

Life triumphed over many-weaponed Death. 

Sorrow and toil and the wilderness 

thwarted their stout invasion; 

But with the ship that sailed again went no retreating soul! 

Stubborn, unvanquished, clinging to the skirts of Hope, 

They kept their narrow foothold on the land, 

And the ship sailed home for more. 

With yearlong striving they fought their way into the forest; 

Their axes echoed where I sit, 

a score of miles from the sea. 

Slowly, slowly the wilderness yielded 

To smiling grass-plots and clearings of yellow corn; 

And while the logs of their cabins were still moist 

With odorous sap, they set upon the hill 

The shrine of liberty for man's mind, 

And by it the shrine of liberty for man's soul, 

The school-house and the church.  

The apple-tree by the wall sheds its blossom about me

A shower of petals of light upon darkness. 

From Nature's brimming cup I drink a thousand scents; 

At noon the wizard sun stirs the hot soil under the pines. 

I take the top stone of the wall in my hands 

And the sun in my heart; 

I feel the rippling land extend to right and left, 

Bearing up a receptive surface to my uncertain feet; 

I clamber up the hill and beyond the grassy sweep; 

I encounter a chaos of tumbled rocks. 

Piles of shadow they seem, huddling close to the land. 

Here they are scattered like sheep, 

Or like great birds at rest, 

There a huge block juts from the giant wave of the hill. 

At the foot of the aged pines the maiden's moccasins 

Track the sod like the noiseless sandals of Spring. 

Out of chinks in the wall delicate grasses wave, 

As beauty grew out of the crannies of these hard souls. 

Joyously, gratefully, after their long wrestling 

With the bitter cold and the harsh white winter, 

They heard the step of Spring 

on the edge of melting snow-drifts; 

Gladly, with courage that flashed 

from their life-beaten souls, 

As the fire-sparks fly from the hammered stone, 

They hailed the fragrant arbutus; 

Its sweetness trailed beside the path that they cut through the  forest, 

And they gave it the name of their ship Mayflower.      

Beauty was at their feet, and their eyes beheld it; 

The earth cried out for labor, and they gave it. 

But ever as they saw the budding spring, 

Ever as they cleared the stubborn field, 

Ever as they piled the heavy stones, 

In mystic vision they saw, the eternal spring; 

They raised their hardened hands above the earth, 

And beheld the walls that are not built of stone, 

The portals opened by angels whose garments are of light; 

And beyond the radiant walls of living stones 

They dreamed vast meadows and hills of fadeless green.  

In the old house across the road 

With weather-beaten front, like the furrowed face of an old man, 

The lights are out forever, the windows are broken, 

And the oaken posts are warped; 

The storms beat into the rooms 

as the passion of the world 

Racked and buffeted those who once dwelt in them. 

The psalm and the morning prayer are silent. 

But the walls remain visible witnesses of faith 

That knew no wavering or shadow of turning. 

They have withstood sun and northern blast, 

They have outlasted the unceasing strife 

Of forces leagued to tear them down. 

Under the stars and the clouds, under the summer sun, 

Beaten by rain and wind, covered with tender vines, 

The walls stand symbols of a granite race, 

The measure and translation of olden times.  

In the rough epic of their life, their toil, their creeds, 

Their psalms, their prayers, what stirring tales 

Of days that were their past had they to tell 

Their children to keep the new faith burning? 

.......

Sing of happier themes, O many-voiced epic, 

Sing how the ages, like thrifty husbandmen, 

winnow the creeds of  men, 

And leave only faith and love and truth. 

Sing of the Puritan's nobler nature, 

Fathomless as the forests he felled, 

Irresistible as the winds that blow. 

His trenchant conviction was but the somber bulwark 

Which guarded his pure ideal. 

Resolute by the communion board he stood, 

And after solemn prayer solemnly cancelled 

And abolished the divine right of kings 

And declared the holy rights of man. 

Prophet and toiler, yearning for other worlds, 

yet wise in this; 

Scornful of earthly empire and brooding on death, 

Yet wrestling life out of the wilderness 

And laying stone on stone the foundation 

of a temporal state! 

I see him standing at his cabin-door at eventide 

With dreaming, fearless eyes gazing at sunset hills; 

In his prophetic sight Liberty, like a bride, 

Hasteth to meet her lord, the westward-going man! 

Even as he saw the citadel of Heaven, 

He beheld an earthly state divinely fair and just. 

Mystic and statesman, maker of homes, 

Strengthened by the primal law of toil, 

And schooled by monarch-made injustices, 

He carried the covenant of liberty with fire and sword, 

And laid a rich state on frugality! 

Many republics have sprung into being, 

Full-grown, equipped with theories forged in reason; 

All, all have fallen in a single night; 

But to the wise, fire-hardened Puritan 

Democracy was not a blaze of glory 

To crackle for an hour and be quenched out 

By the first gust that blows across the world. 

I see him standing at his cabin-door, 

And all his dreams are true as when he dreamed them; 

But only shall they be fulfilled if we 

Are mindful of the toil that gave him power, 

Are brave to dare a wilderness of wrong; 

So long shall Nature nourish us and Spring 

Throw riches in the lap of man 

As we beget no wasteful, weak-handed generations, 

But bend us to the fruitful earth in toil. 

Beyond the wall a new-plowed field 

lies steaming in the sun, 

And down the road a merry group of children 

Run toward the village school.

 Hear, O hear!  In the historian walls 

Rises the beat and the tumult of the struggle for freedom. 

Sacred, blood-stained walls, your peaceful front 

Sheltered the fateful fires of Lexington; 

Builded to fence green fields 

and keep the herds at pasture, 

Ye became the frowning breastworks of stern battle; 

Lowly boundaries of the freeman's farm, 

Ye grew the rampart of a land at war; 

And still ye cross the centuries 

Between the ages of monarchs and the age 

When farmers in their fields are kings. 

From the Revolution the young Republic emerged, 

She mounted up as on the wings of the eagle, 

She ran and was not weary, 

and all the children of the world 

Joined her and followed her shining path. 

But ever as she ran, above her lifted head 

Darkened the monster cloud of slavery. 

Hark!  In the walls, amid voices of prayer and of triumph, 

I hear the clank of manacles and the ominous mutterings of bondsmen! 

At Gettysburg, our Golgotha, the sons of the fathers 

Poured their blood to wash out a nation's shame. 

Cleansed by tribulation and atonement, 

The broken nation rose from her knees, 

And with hope reborn in her heart set forth again 

Upon the open road to ideal democracy.  

Sing, walls, in lightning words that 

shall cause the world to  vibrate, 

Of the democracy to come, 

Of the swift, teeming, confident thing! 

We are part of it--the wonder and the terror and the glory! 

Fearless we rush forward to meet the years, 

The years that come flying towards us 

With wings outspread, agleam on the horizon of time!  

O eloquent, sane walls, instinct with a new faith, 

Ye are barbarous, in congruous, 

but great with the greatness of  reality. 

Walls wrought in unfaltering effort, 

Sing of our prosperity, the joyous harvest 

Of the labor of lusty toilers. 

Down through the years comes the ring of their victorious axes: 

"Ye are titans of the forest, but we are stronger; 

Ye are strong with the strength of mighty winds, 

But we strong with the unconquerable strength of souls!" 

Still the young race, unassailable, inviolate, 

Shakes the solitudes with the strokes of creation; 

Doubly strong we renew the valorous days, 

And like a measureless sea we overflow 

The fresh green, benevolent West, 

The buoyant, fruitful West that dares and sings! 

Pure, dew-dripping walls that guard 

The quiet, lovable, fertile fields, 

Sing praises to Him who from the mossy rocks 

Can bid the fountains leap in thirsty lands. 

I walk beside the stones through the young grain, 

Through waves of wheat that billow about my knees. 

The walls contest the onward march of the wheat; 

But the wheat is charged with the life of the world; 

Its force is irresistible; onward it sweeps, 

An engulfing tide, over all the land, 

Till hill and valley, field and plain 

Are flooded with its green felicity! 

Out of the moist earth it has sprung; 

In the gracious amplitudes of her bosom it was nurtured, 

And in it is wrought the miracle of life.  

Sing, prophetic, mystic walls, of the dreams of the builders

Sing in thundering tones that shall thrill us 

To try our dull discontent, our barren wisdom 

Against their propagating, 

unquenchable, questionless visions. 

Sing in renerving refrain of the resolute men, 

Each a Lincoln in his smoldering patience, 

Each a Luther in his fearless faith, 

Who made a breach in the wall of darkness 

And let the hosts of liberty march through.  

Calm, eternal walls, tranquil, mature, 

Which old voices, old songs, old kisses cover, 

As mosses and lichens cover your ancient stones, 

Teach me the secret of your serene repose; 

Tell of the greater things to be, 

When love and wisdom are the only creed, 

And law and right are one. 

Sing that the Lord cometh, the Lord cometh, 

The fountain-head and spring of life! 

Sing, steady, exultant walls, in strains hallowed 

and touched with  fire, 

Sing that the Lord shall build us all together. 

As living stones build us, cemented together. 

May He who knoweth every pleasant thing 

That our sires forewent to teach the peoples law and truth, 

Who counted every stone blessed 

by their consecrated hands, 

Grant that we remain liberty-loving, substantial, elemental, 

And that faith, the rock not fashioned of human hands, 

Be the stability of our triumphant, toiling days.

You may be surprised to learn that his poem, which is entitled 'The Song of the Stone Wall', was written by Helen Keller (1880-1968)  an amazing woman who succeeded in overcoming her total blindness and deafness going on to become a prominent American author, political activist, and lecturer, and whose story is perhaps most well known through the depictions of the play and film 'The Miracle Worker'.

My hand is upon the stones (part two)

I understand the triumph and the truth

Wrought into these walls of rugged stone.

They are a miracle of patient hands,

They are a victory of suffering, a paean of pain;

All pangs of death, all cries of birth,

Are in the mute, moss-covered stones;

They are eloquent to my hands.

O beautiful, blind stones, inarticulate and dumb!

In the deep gloom of their hearts there is a gleam

Of the primeval sun which looked upon them

When they were begotten.

So in the heart of man shines forever

A beam from the everlasting sun of God.

Rude and unresponsive are the stones;

Yet in them divine things lie concealed;

I hear their imprisoned chant:--

"We are fragments of the universe,

Chips of the rock whereon

God laid the foundation of the world:

Out of immemorial chaos He wrought us.

Out of the sun, out of the tempest,

out of the travail of the earth we grew.

We are wonderfully mingled of life and death;

We serve as crypts for innumerable,

unnoticed, tiny forms.

We are manifestations of the Might

That rears the granite hills unto the clouds

And sows the tropic seas with coral isles.

We are shot through and through with hidden color;

A thousand hues are blended in our gray substance.

Sapphire, turquoise, ruby, opal,

Emerald, diamond, amethyst,

are our sisters from the beginning,

And our brothers are iron, lead, zinc,

Copper and silver and gold.

We are the dust of continents past and to come,

We are a deathless frieze carved with man's destiny;

In us is the record sibylline of far events.

We are as old as the world, our birth was before the hills.

We are the cup that holds the sea

And the framework of the peak that parts the sky.

When Chaos shall again return,

And endless Night shall spread her wings upon a rained world,

We alone shall stand up from the shattered earth,

Indestructible, invincible witnesses of God's eternal purpose."

In reflective mood by the wall I wander;

The hoary stones have set my heart astir;

My thoughts take shape and move beside me in the guise

Of the stern men who built the wall in early olden days.

One by one the melancholy phantoms go stepping from me,

And I follow them in and out among the stones.

I think of the days long gone,

Flown like birds beyond the ramparts of the world.

The patient, sturdy men who piled the stones

Have vanished, like the days, beyond the bounds

Of earth and mortal things.

From their humble, steadfast lives has sprung the greatness of my nation.

I am bone of their bone, breath of their breath,

Their courage is in my soul.

The wall is an Iliad of granite: it chants to me

Of pilgrims of the perilous deep,

Of fearless journeyings and old forgotten things.

The blood of grim ancestors warms the fingers

That trace the letters of their story;

My pulses beat in unison with pulses that are stilled;

The fire of their zeal inspires me

In my struggle with darkness and pain.

These embossed books, unobliterated by the tears and laughter of Time,

Are signed with the vital hands of undaunted men.

I love these monoliths, so crudely imprinted

With their stalwart, cleanly, frugal lives.

From my seat among the stones I stretch my hand and touch

My friend the elm, urnlike, lithesome, tall.

Far above the reach of my exploring fingers

Birds are singing and winging joyously

Through leafy billows of green.

The elm-tree's song is wondrous sweet;

The words are the ancientest language of trees--

They tell of how earth and air and light

Are wrought anew to beauty and to fruitfulness.

I feel the glad stirrings under her rough bark;

Her living sap mounts up to bring forth leaves;

Her great limbs thrill beneath the wand of spring.

This wall was builded in our fathers' days--

Valorous days when life was lusty and the land was new.

Resemble the walls the builders, buffeted, stern, and worn.

To us they left the law,

Order, simplicity, obedience,

And the wall is the bond they gave the nation

At its birth of courage and unflinching faith.

Before the epic here inscribed began,

They wrote their course upon a trackless sea.

O, tiny craft, bearing a nation's seed!

Frail shallop, quick with unborn states!

Autumn was mellow in the fatherland when they set sail,

And winter deepened as they neared the West.

Out of the desert sea they came at last,

And their hearts warmed to see that frozen land.

O, first gray dawn that filtered through the dark!

Bleak, glorious birth-hour of our northern states!

They stood upon the shore like new created men;

On barren solitudes of sand they stood,

The conquered sea behind, the unconquered wilderness before.

Some died that year beneath the cruel cold,

And some for heartsick longing and the pang

Of homes remembered and souls torn asunder.

That spring the new-plowed field for bread of life

Bordered the new-dug acre marked for death;

Beside the springing corn they laid in the sweet, dark earth

The young man, strong and free, the maiden fair and trustful,

The little child, and the uncomplaining mother.

Across the meadow, by the ancient pines,

Where I, the child of life that lived that spring,

Drink in the fragrances of the young year,

The field-wall meets one grimly squared and straight.

Beyond it rise the old tombs, gray and restful,

And the upright slates record the generations.

Stiffly aslant before the northern blasts,

Like the steadfast, angular beliefs

Of those whom they commemorate, the headstones stand,

Cemented deep with moss and invisible roots.

The rude inscriptions charged with faith and love,

Graceless as Death himself, yet sweet as Death,

Are half erased by the impartial storms.

As children lisping words which move to laughter

Are themselves poems of unconscious melody,

So the old gravestones with their crabbed muse

Are beautiful for their halting words of faith,

Their groping love that had no gift of song.

But all the broken tragedy of life

And all the yearning mystery of death

Are celebrated in sweet epitaphs of vines and violets.

Close by the wall a peristyle of pines

Sings requiem to all the dead that sleep.

Beyond the village churchyard, still and calm,

Steeped in the sweetness of eternal morn,

The wall runs down in crumbling cadence

Beside the brook which plays

Through the land like a silver harp.

A wind of ancient romance blows across the field,

A sweet disturbance thrills the air;

The silken skirts of Spring go rustling by,

And the earth is astir with joy.

Up the hill, romping and shaking their golden heads,

Come the little children of the wood.

From ecstasy to ecstasy the year mounts upward.

Up from the south come the odor-laden winds,

Angels and ministers of life,

Dropping seeds of fruitfulness Into the bosoms of flowers.

Elusive, alluring secrets hide in wood and hedge

Like the first thoughts of love In the breast of a maiden;

The witchery of love is in rock and tree.

Across the pasture, star-sown with daisies,

I see a young girl--the spirit of spring she seems,

Sister of the winds that run through the rippling daisies.

Sweet and clear her voice calls father and brother,

And one whose name her shy lips will not utter.

But a chorus of leaves and grasses speaks her heart

And tells his name: the birches flutter by the wall;

The wild cherry-tree shakes its plumy head

And whispers his name; the maple

Opens its rosy lips and murmurs his name;

The marsh-marigold sends the rumor

Down the winding stream, and the blue flag

Spread the gossip to the lilies in the lake:

All Nature's eyes and tongues conspire In the unfolding of the tale

That Adam and Eve beneath the blossoming rose-tree

Told each other in the Garden of Eden.

Once more the wind blows from the walls,

And I behold a fair young mother;

She stands at the lilac-shaded door

With her baby at her breast;

She looks across the twilit fields and smiles

And whispers to her child: "Thy father comes!"

(The conclusion to this poem will be posted tomorrow,

with the answer to who the author is.)

My hand is upon the stones

This poem, which I will be posting in its entirety over these first few days of September, focuses primarily on the wonder and meaning of dry stone walls. The author (who surprisingly you will know, and I would therefore like to credit at the end of the poem, rather than give it away now) explores the more nobel attributes of old stone walls and their universal appeal to the senses.

Simple walls of fieldstone, collected and carefully stacked along the borders of farmland which was painstaking cleared so many years ago, walls similar to the ones Robert Frost writes so eloquently of in his poetry, can also be found in parts of Canada too, if you know where to look. Those of us in this country who love dry stone walls, and have felt their inexplicable attraction, will no doubt relate to the essential musing of this poem, even though some of the imagery may seem nationalistic and somewhat idealistic.

I invite you to let your imagination go and see dry stone walls through someone elses eyes, and then perhaps try to guess who the author is.

Please wait until the end and let it be a surprise.

Come walk with me, and I will tell 

What I have read in this scroll of stone; 

I will spell out this writing 

on hill and meadow. 

It is a chronicle wrought by praying workmen, 

The forefathers of our nation-- 

Leagues upon leagues of sealed history 

awaiting an interpreter. 

This is New England's tapestry of stone 

Alive with memories that throb and quiver 

At the core of the ages 

As the prophecies of old 

at the heart of God's Word.  

The walls have many things to tell me, 

And the days are long. I come and listen: 

My hand is upon the stones, and the tale 

I fain would hear Is of the men 

who built the walls, 

And of the God who made the stones 

and the workers.  

With searching feet 

I walk beside the wall; 

I plunge and stumble 

over the fallen stones; 

I follow the windings of the wall 

Over the heaving hill, 

down by the meadow-brook, 

Beyond the scented fields, 

by the marsh where rushes grow. 

On I trudge through pine woods 

fragrant and cool 

And emerge amid clustered pools 

and by rolling acres of rye. 

The wall is builded of field-stones great and small, 

Tumbled about by frost and storm, 

Shaped and polished 

by ice and rain and sun; 

Some flattened, grooved, and chiseled 

By the inscrutable sculpture 

of the weather; 

Some with clefts and rough edges 

harsh to the touch. 

Gracious Time has glorified the wall 

And covered the historian stones 

with a mantle of green. 

Sunbeams flit and waver in the rifts, 

Vanish and reappear, linger and sleep, 

Conquer with radiance the obdurate angles

Filter between the naked rents 

and wind-bleached jags.

Holding On To Time.

The Dry Stone Waller Walling in the Small Town Cemetary

In rising walls I spy a giant coffin

for a late, open casket wake where god

weeps over "wife Jane taken from child"

though, in old maples' roots, nourished by de-

composing caskets' remains, I too spy

"newlyweds who died in honeymoon fire"

re-incarnating into leaves with such view

of Lake Winnipesaukee that they, too,

possibly divine God's grand design in

these brief lives of living on so much light,

and so I celebrate the fallen leaves returning,

in spring, as iris that--peering over

the wall--turn this coffin into a cradle

ever so gently rocking my joy awake.

*First appeared in Poetry East Magazine, Fall, 2007 and in The 2008 Poets'

Guide to New Hampshire

STONE BY STONE, POEMS ABOUT THE ART OF DRYSTONE WALLING

Anyone who has ever been lost in the vast woods of northern New England knows what a blessing it is to happen upon a stone wall, that vestige of work done by human hands a couple of centuries ago. To follow those stones means you'll come out somewhere, that wall in the woods your compass to home.

In this wonderful collection of poems, Dennis Camire leads us, Stone by Stone, from the elemental to the ethereal, from chipmunks to transubstantiation. He is a sure-handed Virgil, as deft with syllables and sounds as the wall builders with stones, on this imaginative journey from the dark woods of our times to the warmth and humor of his hearth.

--Bruce Guernsey, Editor, The Spoon River Poetry Review--

Dennis Camire has created a book of wonders and transformations, making from stones and the work of stone wallers his own marvelous poems. Stone by Stone is nothing less than a beatific vision of work, where maker and material are in harmony, and craft grows out of that fine tuning. Part of the wonder is the way these poems cover such a range of time and knowledge, from the scientific to the mystical, from the long millennia during which stones solidify, break down, disperse, and re-emerge, to the present moment a waller holds one stone in hand and sets it in place. These poems embody mystery, rock-solid and profound. The music they make is sure, and like a fine stone wall these poems reward every moment we spend musing in their presence.

---Betsy Sholl, Maine State Poet Laureate, author of "Rough Cradle," Alice James Books--

To purchase a copy of the chapbook, log-on to www.finishinglinepress.com and

Click “new releases.”

Dennis Camire's poems have appeared in Poerty East Magazine, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Mid-American Review and The 2008 and 2010 Poets' Guide to New Hampshire. Currently he is a bartender, a part-time adjunct instructor at YorkCounty Community College, and the executive director of Maine Poetry Central which curates the Portland Poet Laureate Project and the Minute with the Muse video series which was recently awarded a Maine Humanities Grant. His last chapbook, "Unidentified Flying Odes," was published by Moon Pie Press. To contact him for readings and anything related to literature, email him at bioluminescing@yahoo.com

A chip on the block!

Robert Frost in his poem, Mending Wall, couldn't have said it any better. "Something there is that doesn't love a wall". Some people seem to despise them. They look at them suspiciously like they are going to rise up and fall on top of them. These people generally look the other way when they see one. If they do happen to run into one somewhere, it will more likely be in a car.

This week we have been working in Cobourg Ontario building two lovely dry stone walls on the north and south sides of a residential property. Our client already has a beautiful wall built for him along the front of his property. It is the best looking house on the block. This man is not a tyrant, or a serial killer or a lawyer, but for some reason the neighbors seem to hate him. The new walls we are building are not making his neighbours any happier.

On one side, a Bob Newhart kind of character (without the humour) looks on all day with a deadpan expression. Finally after much blank-stare glaring, and in a rather zombie-like voice, he manages to verbalize his concern that we make sure no stone chips fly off and damage his new windows. They are 20 feet from where we're working! Heck, a lawn mower or a weed-eater is likely to do more damage. Other than that sardonic remark, he just stands and stares at us as we build. No comments. Sometimes he goes off and washes his driveway.

On the north side where we are building the other wall, a lady in her housecoat, who sits all day reading the paper on her screened-in porch, will not allow us to stand on her grass to access the wall we are trying to build. We have to tip-toe along a very narrow strip between the wall and her property with the stones we need to build with. She watches from her porch. Again, no comments, expressionless, nothing. At noon she orders us to stop working while she backs her car out of the driveway. Flying chips might mutilate the vehicle? Not likely. I managed to find only three confetti-size flakes on the driveway from a morning of working near her side.

If we were building fences with noisy power tools, screaming grinders, chain saws and earth pounding compacters, using toxic glues and sealants, and dangerous air hammers, the neighbours would probably love us. Oh wall.