Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 31 -- Poems for Subterranean Sailors
Pulitzer Prize winner Maxine Kumin writes of nature's persistence in ”Why There Will Always Be
Thistle” (2001).
Outlawed in most Northern
states of the Union
still it jumps borders.
Its taproot runs deeper
than underground rivers
and once it's been severed
by breadknife or shovel
-- two popular methods
employed by the desperate --
the bits that remain will
spring up like dragons' teeth
a field full of soldiers
their spines at the ready.
Algimantas Baltakis' "Underground Rivers" is not at all about symbolism. It's an accurate
description.
Alas, these rivers have no names.
No banks have they to shape their frames.
They don't reflect the floating sky,
In gloom by day and night they lie.
A wild sea-mew will never sweep
Across their waters running deep
Nor will a maiden ever chance
To see dawn glow on their expanse.
Yet their dim waters, cool and clear,
Feed wells and fountains far and near.
In summer drought or winter frost
Their patient streams are never lost.
Oppressed by darkness, now and then
The waters try to leave their den.
In dense dark forest look around,
A spring is bubbling from the ground.
Andriana Škunca's "Shadow," on the other hand, could be about anything that haunts us.
Farther away it gushes out of the underground stream,
Following us everywhere.
Constantly tied to some suffering that resides in us
Like a broken staff it leans on.
Here's a twelfth century Japanese verse published in the November 5, 1921, Literary Digest.
The subterranean river takes its rise
And flows unseen beneath the hills.
Like this, my love; and I indeed am sad
Because I may not tell my love.
Charles Pierre Baudelaire's (1821-1867) name has become a byword for literary and artistic
decadence. His "Don Juan aux Enfers" (Don Juan in Hell) centers around a free-thinking
Spanish nobleman who seduces a woman, kills her father and then insults the dead man's statue
before being condemned to hellfire.
When Don Juan reached that underground river,
He paid his death coin passage from those shores.
Charon, gruff in Antisthenes' manner,
Then pulled with vengeful arms on his long oars.
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