The Cloud Corporation

by Timothy Donnelly

  downward through the air through what we have come to call

  swimming. Though the rule states clearly that every guest

  must be greeted with courtesy, with heads bowed in utmost

  humility and care, the arrival of a ship by way of air proves

  no less incompatible with convention than a sense of urgency

  proves palpable even from my parapet. But it’s impossible

  to tell if, when the monks grab our hero, they do so in rowdy

  welcome, or to pry him away from the too-prized anchor, or away

  from the miracle they’ve mistaken for the devil’s snare. Stop,

  he says as they drag him to the earth, you are drowning me.

  Again, amid struggle: You are drowning me. Then kill the lights.

  Centuries afterwards, visiting the site where these events

  came to pass, walking the grounds, I think what I remember

  most is a feeling of being apart from them, the great loneliness

  which seems to be one’s lesson. In the herb garden, I look up

  and realize the window I sat at wasn’t far away at all. I think

  they were all just ignoring me, or angry at me for making them

  self-conscious about what they were trying to sleep through.

  As I leave the theater, its unlit halls wind in no direction I can see.

  Then I see there are no halls, it’s all just one big empty space.

  Then, in the darkness, the voice again. And it says I control this.

  MONTEZUMA TO HIS MAGICIANS

  If they are gods, if they have

  divinity in them, then why

  when we lay at their feet

  garlands of quetzal feathers

  and gold coins do they leap

  upon the gold as dazzled

  monkeys might and tread

  on sacred plumage like dust?

  DREAM OF ARABIAN HILLBILLIES

  Salutations from the all-encompassing

  arms of a hammered millionaire!

  I send a blessing of watches over your body

  and a messenger to your folks

  sanctifying them in a long crude eruption.

  May you journey in the security

  of a huge American truck. May your enemies come

  to wither in front of this truck

  allowing you and your kinfolk to occupy

  the avenue of personal interests

  privately and in full style for 60,000 years.

  Talk about divine measures!

  All enemy forces threatening your basic

  philosophy of life demand a helpin’

  of grievous medicine: it is no longer possible

  to press letters of forgiveness

  loaded with soft words and in diplomatic

  style into their hands when clearly

  in their hearts they would strip you of such

  incredible resources: money out

  back in important places, a wicked grip

  on the situation, pools of lost time

  and no little grace . . . but who can push the enemy

  underground with hospitality?

  No one. Gain control of circumstances by

  taking some. Repel with mischief

  raised to the utmost power, one forbidden

  behavior after another, from pure

  dissociation from the feelings and prides

  of your forefathers to aggression

  against the infrastructures of the sea and sky.

  Spell serious danger to their being,

  y’all—only half your hoard is remaining.

  I address you now with a big torch

  of guidance handed over to me by the stars

  above Texas. It is unacceptable

  to assist the enemy in your dispossession.

  Be not bitten by the same snake

  twice. The first explosion inspired

  the devil, and the second a gathering

  of military leaders who talk to you through such

  fast-moving light, one day today

  is tomorrow’s fear commercial, thank you

  very much. The money you pay

  out for loving this world will all come back

  for the money you have left, saying

  “To express hate and anger is a moral gesture

  to the future.” I did not just say that.

  Time to be enshrined in the sanctities

  of pleasure, not dragged through the streets

  of the bubblin’ in your head that is

  the persistence of news agencies.

  Time to liberate that head from the whole

  world’s behind and listen for a pen

  to spell the words of your foes’ humiliation.

  Why not paradise before as well as

  after death, kept at a beautiful 72 degrees

  and with nothing between you

  and all the privileges heapin’ so high

  a neck is pinched just signing up for them?

  Terrorizing the snake for twisting filthy

  text to your house is a human duty.

  Let your good black shoes witness you push

  hard into the red dust of the battle

  burning your intestines like a pagan tea.

  Cleanse the road to your destiny

  of all idolaters and claim what they be droppin’

  for your booty. Take no captives—

  or maybe one or two, should they surrender

  wealth, drink, hearts and selves

  to your supremacy without hesitation.

  Paradise’s nearness isn’t getting any

  better. May you not cave in and weep deep. May wolves

  not eat your wings. May your life

  not be a lifelong movie of your life

  but a steadfast becoming other than that

  which you are: a slave to the power

  fiddling among hills of fed clouds and shaken

  into wonderment like a shot horse barely

  gathering will to lay down with it, y’hear?

  CHAPTER FOR BEING TRANSFORMED INTO A LOTUS

  The comparison only went so far: the suffering

  from which we had come to expect so much

  remained mere suffering; the swamp due south

  to which we had thought to compare it in our youth

  stayed water choked in excess life, its voices

  thoughtlessly forcing the same plump syllables

  across the distance into windows furred with night.

  But here in the room where we sit thinking that

  if suffering had to enter our house, it should have

  been the kind that sang, or else the kind from which

  small shapes would zoom and circle the light

  hanging in the middle of the room like a thought

  whose fifteen petals open and whose opening we become

  custodian to, here in the lotus of half-sleep, I am

  beginning to forget where a comparison falls short.

  ANTEPENULTIMATE CONFLICT WITH SELF

  1

  The times the thought of being pulled apart from

  you comes as a relief have come now to outnumber

  those it startles me like light from a hurricane

  lamp left burning unattended dangerously near

  the curtains of the theater we both attend and are.

  The fire of it spasms up the tall glass chimney

  like little air pockets we’ve watched trudge down

  loops in hospital tubing—disarmed, but quietly.

  When I have made in our manhood some large noise

  to spook off harm, harm has only found us faster.

  Saying one should distract it as the other escapes

  to an agreed-on spot where we can reconnoiter

  after, like under the alder where the jackdaw builds

  its nest of surplus playbills. They shred them up

  like that
as a matter of procedure. They intend no

  particular disrespect to you or your production.

  None taken. Glad to hear it. Because I thought I saw

  a darkness drift across your face that I associate

  with umbrage. Not even close. If I were you I wouldn’t

  flatter myself. And yet, turning things around, this

  darkness you speak of, it must have drifted across

  your own face at least as much as mine. Admittedly, yes.

  So why not leave me out of it? I’ve been trying to do

  just that. Looks to me like you haven’t been going

  about it right. That makes two of us, then. Not quite.

  Leaving the burning theater behind one begins to

  ease into a new perspective. The stairway leads to

  a doorway, the doorway to an alleyway, the alleyway

  to another door, more stairs, another amber room

  where one can forget again, its window overlooking

  a car lot emptied of its cars. The stark lines recall

  what was and will be there, but isn’t now or anymore.

  The scent of juniper or cat piss. A knock at the door.

  A look around the room before opening to confirm this

  isn’t the one we’ve been, only half in fear, dreaming.

  2

  After calculation, I’ve let you in. Seated at the table

  in cold beneath the window, we try to remember each

  example of the condition we’re after, namely that of

  a multitude at work in unison. You say alder branches

  blown in the wind. I say the warp and weft of waves

  on an open bay. You say activity near beehives. I say

  heavy snowfall. You say a flock of birds tilting mid-flight

  and I say some performances we turn to long enough

  to forget what we can never have, not without shedding

  either or both of us. As if one had to clear out room

  for a discovery that doesn’t come so much as splinter

  into the shag. We are down on our hands and knees

  trawling gold acrylic pile. We are old here already.

  To have rehearsed this almost infinitely hasn’t helped

  move things along. On the contrary. The whole idea

  of perfection, evidently our aim, seems to have done

  less to guide us away from missteps than to make them

  even sharper, more palpable, and in several respects

  downright impossible to avoid. (All the pressing in of

  what we’ll never have reminds us of how thoroughly

  bereft we are, even of a hope of one day not wanting.)

  You ought to put an end to this. (What pierces my hand

  pierces yours, stops us into focus strong enough only

  to drive off gauzy voices urging more harm for the quiet

  that comes after.) You ought to have put an end to it

  first. Shown a little courtesy. (Light dim as light can be

  and still be thought light flosses the cleft between poorly

  drawn curtains.) You shouldn’t have followed me here.

  You made it impossible not to. Took you long enough

  to say it though. Some things go without. Without? Without

  saying altogether. They sit unsaid in a lost auditorium,

  muttering into night. I think they should be heard. I think

  I can hear them now. As from behind a wall, or within it.

  We have that gift. Yes, and each other. Also sticktoitiveness.

  But it’s gifts like these that always get one into trouble.

  HIS APOLOGIA

  As I press my ear against

  earth or any surface

  come to think of it I hear

  the glissando of falling in

  forgottenness then

  worse—as, for example,

  somewhere in Nebraska,

  lodged in the throat

  of an abandoned mineshaft

  shut with a concrete

  slab in the fall, warmed

  by the gradual advance

  of sun, a colony of dormant

  bats awakens one

  quiver at a time, steadily

  congesting the air with

  vibration, opening

  the thin leather fold of the

  wings Linnaeus knew bore

  much less resemblance to

  a bird’s than to the quick

  human hands held over a mouth

  red with attempt

  to cry out in danger or

  those that have penned us

  in the din into which

  we at once unhinge—and from

  which I can never tear

  myself away without

  what I agree to call irritability.

  TO HIS DETRIMENT

  Your wisdom is in never wearing me down entirely.

  The way you leave me just enough to build upon, no more:

  a pair of human hands to reach and push away with;

  tightened chestfuls of remembrance; an alarum in my ear

  which means I am awake now, means I am alive:

  again despite appearances, again as though the day

  had some contraption up its sleeve, another devilish design

  time unfastens by degrees, almost teasingly in fact,

  so that somewhere over lunch, as the whole becomes

  discernible through the parts I’m given access to, I end up

  wishing it upon myself: I wish it right up to the neck

  but never any higher. Leave me will enough and strength,

  I will never wish it higher! Frazzled aureate, the early

  morning splits open like upholstery, a John-of-Patmos chintz.

  I commend it all for happening, no matter what it is:

  mint condition of a fountain, mindless under thunderclaps

  and all these empty days, days crashing into phrases,

  dawn conniption in the trees. The mere fact the fabric

  of the air undoes itself intoxicates, that weariness before

  having borne any burden, you leave me little choice:

  I have to admire it; I drop my magazine. But as fertility

  in domestic animals and plants was once held to decrease

  in inverse ratio to food supply, I worry that my own

  productivity might suffer in accordance with my appetite

  for atmospheric disturbance, and I turn from the window

  hungry for accomplishment, recalling the industry

  exhibited once by a bone-pale spider, how it mended its web

  in the rococo of an antique lectern, utterly immune

  to the fluttering above it—a perfect miniature of tidiness!

  Regarding miniatures, I notice several near at hand:

  three of which I cherish, another which I recognize but lack

  significant attachment to, a fifth which I renounce,

  a sixth which you have placed here simply to disarm me,

  and a seventh which belongs not to the category

  of the miniature per se, but rather to that of the play of light on water.

  My impulse to destroy all seven of the miniatures,

  including those I cherish, including light on water,

  I now understand as a passion for remembering

  how delicate they are, and it need not find expression.

  As I have come to understand it, tidiness is a form

  of knowledge concerning the fine placement of things,

  reminiscent of mosaics, or of the slow holy work

  of rearranging a living space to find out what it means.

  Hope is both product of and fuel for these machines,

  and while you leave me little, you grant me near enough

  to travel abroad in search of much more, a cache

  perhaps mismanaged by those whose whole approach

  undermines mine, and if
I am not now that force

  which only yesterday moved heavy furniture, my purpose

  still precedes me: to journey forth by day, absorbing

  hope from all passersby; to know the world’s big backslap

  unhampered by the steam of this or any downpour.

  Farewell mirror where I tremble, farewell funny door

  I bolt behind me—these are the unstoppable footsteps

  whose return will herald such renaissance, I see no reason

  to forestall it: a pivot, and I’m home again at last!

  Dear detriment, see me through this victory. It is almost too rich.

  There will be drink in this ceremony. We will prove such music.

  What transport, markets, and livestock we have missed

  we will enumerate, and somewhere in the adding, experience.

  Time and again I have been this person we are gathered

  here to celebrate, you’d think I would get used to it.

  This pair of human hands to reach and push away with,

  small wonder they are mine: I know just what to do with them.

  Certain whitespace surrounds our sentences at first,

  but with the whiskey things take off. In my dizziness to see

  your wisdom clearly it grounds me. We need each other.

  Without me you would cease to be yourself. Without you

  I would be unthinkable. You ask me to comment on my triumph,

  on rivers meandering across continents, on the imponderable

  seas which receive these waters without remuneration,

  but you make it sound so tedious! In the ultimate eloquent

  gesture I reach out for small comforts, everyday items:

  an unread book, urban water, any refreshment, but my touch

  dissolves them. No other way to put it. I reach for them

  and then they just aren’t there. I try not to make too much of it.

  Always it ends like this, in diminuendo, a heaving down.

  I’d never do anything to hurt the miniatures, you know that.

  I sense a change about to last, a shadow inching inward

  toward the center of the pool, but then that old alarum

  in my ear starts in again, a stillness fills the room. Evidently

  my purpose is to maintain it. Now and then I shift somewhat

  back and forth to throw the too-perfect stillness into relief.

  But this is more than just maintenance. This is enhancement.

  CHAPTER FOR KINDLING A TORCH