Poetry for Janus Agri Altar

Janus (1992)

By Robert Dana

Not two-faced,

but two faces.

alter and icon.

Not just blade,

but both edges.

Cutting down

or cutting up.

East or West.

North or South.

Nothing cleanly

simple’s simple.

Doubleness (1992)

By Ann Struthers

Doubleness

of this blade, like the plow,

symbol of Iowa,

that tore the prairie, the share that breaks

the binds: liberates soil’s richness,

opens passages for the breath

of agriculture; builds barns, silos,

grain elevators, feedlots, hog confinements;

the other side of the share

cuts off buffalo, Native Peoples,

plows under oceans of prairie lilies,

the red and gold prairie grasses

all the creatures that lived

in there beneficent shadows.

The wild sacrificed

to the tame, the unexpected to the usual,

meandering path of the fox and coyote

to geometric squares

of the surveyor. This is the instrument

for making straight when everyone knows

the crooked is more beautiful.

Janus Agri-Alter (1992)

By Mary Swander

Look forward, back, forward, back.

Look out. Look up and down again,

my face, my face, a blade, a plow.

I watch to keep the furrow straight.

I rip the sod, drain the slough.

I plant the seed, the pod, the chaff and grain.

For these are prime:

first hour of the day, the month, the year,

first rain of spring, frost of fall.

Root hair, root cap, peduncle and peg,

ground turned under, alter of flower and grass.

Big stem, blue stem, violet, sweet william,

I dig the worm. I split the skin.

I see the sea, the dirt, the floor,

swing open the gates, the heavy doors.

For in the beginning is the end,

and the end is smooth, real, polished steel.

For in the beginning is the end

when all returns to dust, to rust,

to one more happy meal.

To one more cell, one more leaf and stalk,

I call look up, look out, look forward, back,

to celebrate our sumptuous plate,

to mourn our prairie lost to corn.

Thieves (1992)

By Ann Struthers

This double bronze is also

double brass when Michael Carey

and Neil Bowers one winter afternoon rub

their gloves across its striations, pluck music

from its hollows.

Tap its sounding boards for gongs, cymbals, kettle drums.

Their rhythms resound in this Agronomy Quadrant,

poets making themselves heard, stealing art

from musicians and sculptors. (Poets are

the finest thieves in the world. Paris

pickpockets are amateurs compared

to the most common poet.)

I have stolen the music from Michael

and Neal, which they stole from the sculptors,

Beverly Pepper, which she stole from John Deere,

and the inventor of the snow plows, the inventor of Roman gods,

and a few others.

I have stolen two or three minutes from your left wrist.

intend to steal more if I can. Buy I have given you

something, too. Put your fingertips in your right

pocket’s cave. Even if you can’t find it now,

it’s there, waiting for you to recognize it,

something changeable and unchanging,

metaphor, music, instrumentation.