"As far as the eye could see," though
few cared to look, was across the valley
to the other mountain, whose ridge
stood gaffed with broadcast towers, bright
harpoons quivering out our songs.
"Oh, wouldn't it be nice," the Beach Boys
harmonized. And it was. Sometimes I saw
the Milky Way invade the grid,Andromeda,
Draco, and great Betelgeuse bridging
the avenues and lanes, filling up acres
of vast parking lots. Sometimes I stared
powerfully into space where glowworms
of matter spun in pinwheels of gas.
What does it mean to be alive?
a voice asked. What does it mean
to have a voice speaking from inside?
Once I found a cockpit canopy from
a fighter jet in my neighbor's yard,
where it had fallen from the sky.
No one ever claimed it, such a large,
specific, useless thing, like the shoe
a giant leaves behind, like a mountain
from childhood—missing or pulverized—
it leaves a shape that once you see it
overwhelms the mind or makes a cloud
that is the shape of what the mountain was,
the sea floor covered with the sea.
"Oh, wouldn't it be nice," I used to sing,
and the mountains all around me answered,
but not the question I had asked.
SINGING, 5 A.M.
Yesterday when it began,
I think I laughed myself awake—
so perfect, and clear, so pre-recorded,
so much the birds of the neighborhood
doing what they're supposed to do.
And you waking next but not laughing,
not at all, not even aware yet
of how loud the morning was becoming.
But when I turned wanting to face you
and brushed your hip, we came alive
to the air—or the air enlivened us.
Well, it was dark. Neither of us could see,
though we were laughing,
which is what astonishment did to us,
even before we felt grateful
or dissatisfied, even before we knew
we'd been waiting—awake or asleep—for the birds,
so early and for what?
OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH
In the mirror above the sink
an open mouth sings
and a shower curtain breathes.
They're the elected delegates,
the weave and pattern,
of your own arabesque,
what fills the vessel
when the vessel's ready to be filled.
Water run over hands, and hands:
a cat's cradle,
a darn's cicatrix—a star
of the night's mending.
This is the shadow you put on,
the gown of torn sleep,
zippered and sleeveless, shawl
or towel, skin of your mother
or father that surrounds you
in the hours remaining.
THEIR WEIGHT
Swallows, phoebes, flycatchers,
chickadees, warblers,
and some terns and sparrows
are less than an ounce,
and are so little of water,
more hollow than bone,
though of substance
in boughs and leaves,
where they perch and fly,
for how little they want
of what matters, bright
and unmistakable—aspiring,
disappearing—not of who they are
but of what.
MINE OWN JOHN CLARE
He was the first person I knew who spoke to God
and to whom God replied. And he was the first person I knew
who had written the great works of whomever you might
name—
mine own T. S. Eliot—though he affected no accent
and wore a shrunken Grateful Dead T-shirt.
It was not only madness that possessed him;
he had convictions and discernments, fine and fierce—
he rode a tricycle, small as it was,
back and forth from Pangaea to the End of the World
with a stop at the San Andreas Fault, where he lifted it,
wheels spinning, over the crack that runs to the center of the
earth,
meaning he had circled all night in an empty parking lot
until his brother tracked him down and took him home.
He had moods and passions: months corresponding
with Germaine Greer and the articles he wrote for Rolling Stone
that appeared confoundedly under bylines not his own.
Once he spoke of walking three days from the northern high
country
to the southern valleys, and toward the end, lost, hungry, he heard
a voice telling him to eat the grass. Grass contains
the secret whisperings of love, he said. But you had to crop
the tips of the blades and you had to be on your knees
with your head bowed and your eyes closed, and your lips made
the bitter taste sweet. Sometimes when he talked like this
he was also crying, because, he explained, the grass contains wild
onion
and other truthful pungencies God requires me to eat.
And sometimes— look at me! —he'd put his face so close to
mine
I no longer saw him but the parts that he contained: pores
and blemishes, the cheek's sharp contours, and his eyes,
dark, filmy patches, watery with years of homelessness ahead
but alive, fierce, and, as I pulled away, unforgiving.
ELEGY FOR A LONG-DEAD FRIEND
Last night when you appeared,
you brought the sacks of shoes
and folded clothes that stood
waiting in your garage
for someone else to remove
the day you died.
Because you were laid out
at the coroner's when I arrived
you couldn't know what I saw:
boots and sneakers, sandals
jammed in grocery bags, shirts
and pants no longer stylish.
Months before, what was it
you said? "Don't come around
here again." So why these visits?
Why the burden of this evidence?
And silent as you are,
does your presence mean forgiveness?
There was also, you should know,
a flat tire that gave your car
a slouched, defeated look.
I saw it before I saw the discards.
In Dante's hell the souls
spend their time repaying themselves
with their own sins. He witnessed
their anguish but was rarely moved,
and Virgil never. Next time
you visit, bring that tire,
wear it like a necklace,
and we'll set it on fire.
A WINTER FEEDING
After two days of snow,
sun, and then dozens
of robins landing in
the column-high trunk
of an oak shorn of limbs
but sheathed in vines—
and then a ravaging
of something unseen
that the leaves hide.
And that's how it felt
to have made the cold
surface of perfection
reflect the mind's
starving and brilliant
hunger, and then have
the world feed you
not only its remnants
of green but what
of winter light and coldness
; clings as magnificence—
hollowed, truncated—
stilled by its own death,
undevoured, before
it calls down
the frenzied wings,
the starving beaks,
the ferrous breasts.
SPELUNKER
And you like a tongue
in the mouth of another
and you like a tongue
like a root given back
to the lips, to the petals
and stem of the flower.
And you a flower, a vine
squeezed through the attic,
white leaf and red foot,
splayed ear—a hand scraping
a rock. And there at the bottom,
the shore and the river,
the sky far above,
and you in the current,
in the lap and rush
of the dark, your head
bright with its lamp,
its light full of tremor.
THE MESSENGER
from Euripides' Medea
The moment your sons with their father
entered his bride's house, all of us,
who once served you and who mourned
your fate, were heartened. A shout went up—
you and Jason had called a truce.
This was like music to our ears. Suddenly
we wanted to kiss the children, touch their
lovely hair. Overwhelmed by happiness,
I followed them inside the princess's chambers.
We understood: she's the woman we must serve
instead of you.
At first she saw only Jason,
but when the children came into view,
she veiled her eyes and turned away.
Impatient with this display,
your husband scolded her, saying:
"Look at us. Don't revile your friends.
Your job is to love those your husband loves.
They've brought gifts. Accept them graciously
and for my sake ask your father to release
these children from their exile."
The gifts astonished her with their beauty.
She agreed to what her husband asked.
So eager was she to wear the treasures,
even before Jason and the boys had reached
the road, she put on the colorful dress,
set the gold crown on her head,
and in a bright mirror arranged her hair.
She laughed with pleasure at the beautiful
but lifeless image. Then, as if the gifts
had cast a spell, she stood up, traipsing
through her rooms, giddy with the feel of the gown,
twirling so she could see repeatedly
her shapely feet and pointed toes.
But quickly her face changed color. She staggered,
legs trembling, almost collapsing
before she reached a chair. One of the older, wiser
servants believed some wrathful god possessed her
and so cried out in prayer to Pan,
until she saw the mouth foaming,
eyes wild and rolling and skin leached of blood.
Then the prayers turned shrill with horror
and we servants raced to find Creon and Jason to tell them the terrible news,
filling the house with the sound
of our panicked feet.
All of this happened in less time
than a sprinter takes to run the dash,
and quicker still was the way the princess
woke from her horrifying trance, eyes
wider than before, screaming
in anguish. For now a second torture
racked her. The gold crown exploded
in a fiery ring over her head, while
the delicate gown, brought by your sons,
ate into her sweet flesh. Consumed by flames,
she stood and ran, shaking her head
as if to throw the fire off, but the crown tangled
tighter in her hair and the blaze roared higher
as she fell to the floor and rolled
in the unquenchable flames.
Only her father could have known
who she was. The eyes had melted.
The face no more a face, while flaming blood
leaking from her head fueled the blaze.
But worse was how the flesh like tallow
or pitch sloughed off her bones.
All of this because the viperous poison
had locked her in its invisible jaws.
Schooled by what we'd witnessed, none of us
would touch the body, but her father
rushed to her side, not knowing what he'd find.
Nothing could prepare him for his daughter's
corpse. Misery broke from his voice.
He embraced and kissed her, lamenting,
"Unhappy child, murdered so shamefully,
why do the gods torture an old man like me?
Daughter, let me die with you."
But when his sobbing ceased
and old Creon wanted to rise, he found
he was woven to the fatal dress, stitched
to it like ivy to laurel, unable,
even as he wrestled furiously,
to free himself. The living father
who felt his flesh ripping from his bones
could not match the strength of his dead daughter,
and so he gave up and died, a victim
of her hideous fortune. Together now they lie
an old man and his daughter. Who wouldn't weep?
As for you, Medea, and your fate,
hear my silence. From it will come your punishment,
swift and sure. As for our brief lives, I've learned
once more we are mere shadows. No longer
do I fear to say the truth: fine words
and clever plans breed folly.
No man can count on his happiness.
Some have luck and fortune on their side
but never happiness.
A LINE FROM ROBERT DESNOS USED TO COMMEMORATE GEORGE "SONNY" TOOK-THE-SHIELD, FORT BELKNAP, MONTANA
I have dreamed of you so much, you are the headless hawk
I found in a field, upturned
like a plow blade of feathers.
"Pick me up," you said, "so I might roost
as if I were the hawk."
I have dreamed of you so much,
a tree grew where I stood,
and grass rose up in flames
as if the hawk had sown a fire
from which its head appeared.
"Pick me up," it said.
I have dreamed of you so much
that now there is no dream,
no field or tree or fire,
only you roosting in the air.
"Pick me up," I say, "so I might roost
as if the world consumed my head."
BIGGAR, SCOTLAND, SEPTEMBER 1976
Our visit to MacDiarmid ended
with him drunk and asleep
at the end of an afternoon
in the cool, south-facing croft
and with his wife enraged
at our filling his glass
he held out begging
whenever she left the room,
yet how charming she'd been
about the Cornish and Welsh,
though not so charming
about the rest, while MacDiarmid
kept returning to the subject
of basalts—the ones on the Scottish
coast that matched ones in Canada.
But that was after he'd told us
about his trip to China with Greene
in the forties or fifties,
booze-fueled but still something
that had never lost its scent
as a dream. This man of science,
this communist, beautiful
in a s
tarched white shirt,
who'd been propped up for us
in a chair, one hand cupping
an ear, the other clutching
a handkerchief, and his eyes
alive at the sight of your hair.
MEDEA'S OLDEST SON
I loved the sound of running water,
a fountain in winter, moss on the steps.
I'd gather pebbles from the courtyard
and drop them in the sacred well
to watch their colors change.
Time's portion was so small to me,
like the riffle of a current.
Water led me to her:
the way it moved with her anger,
also her love. My father kept a plan
inside his head. Its shape was like
the trellis where the birds nested.
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