An Annie Dillard Reader

by Annie Dillard

  like a gong—that in humid Haitian forests are trees,

  hard trees, not holes in air, not nothing, no Haiti,

  no zone for trees nor time for wood to grow:

  reality rounds his mind like rings in a tree.

  Love is the factor, love is the type, and the poem.

  Is love a trick, to make him commonplace?

  He wishes, cool in his windy rooms. He thinks:

  of all earth’s shapes, her coils, rays, and nets,

  mahogany I love, this sunburnt red,

  this close-grained, scented slab, my fellow creature.

  He knows he can’t feed on the wood he loves, and he won’t.

  But desire walks on lean legs down halls of his sleep,

  desire to drink and sup at mahogany’s mass.

  His wishes weight his belly. Love holds him here,

  love nails him to the world, this windy wood,

  as to a cross. Oh, this lanky, sunburnt cross!

  Is he sympathetic? Do you care?

  And you, sir: perhaps you wish to feed

  on your bright-eyed daughter, on your baseball glove,

  on your outboard motor’s pattern in the water.

  Some love weights your walking in the world;

  Some love molds you heavier than air.

  Look at the world, where vegetation spreads

  and peoples air with weights of green desire.

  Crosses grow as trees and grasses everywhere,

  writing in wood and leaf and flower and spore,

  marking the map, “Some man loved here;

  and one loved something here; and here; and here.”

  1971

  FOUR FOUND POEMS

  Poems seldom require explanation, but these do. I did not write a word of them. Other hands composed the poems’ lines—the poems’ sentences. These are found poems. They differ, however, from what we usually think of as found poems. Instead of presenting whole texts as “found,” these poems derive from sentences of broken text. The poems are original as poems; their themes and their orderings are invented. Their sentences are not. Their sentences come from the books named; I lifted them. Sometimes I dropped extra words; I never added a word. (There is a forthcoming book of such, Mornings Like This.)

  Dash It

  —MIKHAIL, PRISHVIN, NATURE’S DIARY, 1925, TRANS. L. NAVROZOV

  How wonderfully it was all arranged that each

  Of us had not too long to live. This is one

  Of the main snags—the shortness of the day.

  The whole wood was whispering, “Dash it, dash it…”

  What joy—to walk along that path! The snow

  Was so fragrant in the sun! What a fish!

  Whenever I think of death, the same stupid

  Question arises: “What’s to be done?”

  As for myself, I can only speak of what

  Made me marvel when I saw it for the first time.

  I remember my own youth when I was in love.

  I remember a puddle rippling, the insects aroused.

  I remember our own springtime when my lady told me:

  You have taken my best. And then I remember

  How many evenings I have waited, how much

  I have been through for this one evening on earth.

  1993

  I Am Trying to Get at Something Utterly Heart-Broken.

  —V. VAN GOGH, LETTERS, 1873-1890, ED. I. STONE, TRANS. JOHANNA VAN GOGH

  I

  At the end of the road is a small cottage,

  And over it all the blue sky.

  I am trying to get at something utterly heart-broken.

  The flying birds, the smoking chimneys,

  And that figure loitering below in the yard—

  If we do not learn from this, then from what shall we

  learn?

  The miners go home in the white snow at twilight.

  These people are quite black. Their houses are small.

  The time for making dark studies is short.

  A patch of brown heath through which a white

  Path leads, and sky just delicately tinged,

  Yet somewhat passionately brushed.

  We who try our best to live, why do we not live more?

  II

  The branches of poplars and willows rigid like wire.

  It may be true that there is no God here,

  But there must be one not far off.

  A studio with a cradle, a baby’s high chair.

  Those colors which have no name

  Are the real foundation of everything.

  What I want is more beautiful huts far away on the heath.

  If we are tired, isn’t it then because

  We have already walked a long way?

  The cart with the white horse brings

  a wounded man home from the mines.

  Bistre and bitumen, well applied,

  Make the colouring ripe and mellow and generous.

  III

  A ploughed field with clods of violet earth;

  Over all a yellow sky with a yellow sun.

  So there is every moment something that moves one

  intensely.

  A bluish-grey line of trees with a few roofs.

  I simply could not restrain myself or keep

  My hands off it or allow myself to rest.

  A mother with her child, in the shadow

  Of a large tree against the dune.

  To say how many green-greys there are is impossible.

  I love so much, so very much, the effect

  Of yellow leaves against green trunks.

  This is not a thing that I have sought,

  But it has come across my path and I have seized it.

  1993

  An Acquaintance in the Heavens

  —MARTHA EVANS MARTIN, WHO SEEMED LONELY IN THE FRIENDLY

  STARS, 1907, REV. DONALD HOWARD MENZEL, 1964

  A window in my bedroom opens towards

  The northeast. Many times I have suddenly

  Opened my eyes in the night. Betelgeuse

  Pushes its red face up over the horizon.

  One begins in February to watch the handle

  Of the Dipper, so clearly pointing to something

  Important just below the horizon.

  It has pulled into the view the steady

  Shining face of Arcturus. The hawks

  And crows are among the high trees.

  There comes a soft June evening. The blue

  Jays have become stealthy. One walks

  To the end of the porch and looks for Altair.

  Orion: We watch for it in October.

  One jewel after another emerges

  From the storehouse below the horizon until

  The whole splendid figure is before us.

  We remember then that the juncos

  Came that day and we heard them.

  The birds have ceased to sing and are seeking

  Shadows. Fomalhaut the lonely:

  When the days are growing shorter, some evening,

  Just after dark, one sees it, trailing

  Over the small arc of its circle

  With no companion near it, and no need.

  1993

  The Sign of Your Father

  —E. HENNECKE, NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA, VOL. I, ED. WILHELM

  SCHNEEMELCHER, ENGLISH TRANS. ED. BY R. MCL. WILSON, 1963

  I

  (The grain of wheat)…

  Place shut in…

  It was laid beneath and invisible…

  Its wealth imponderable?

  And as they were in perplexity

  At his strange question, Jesus

  On his way came (to the) bank

  Of the (riv)er Jordan,

  Stretched out (hi)s right

  Hand, (fill)ed it with…

  And sowed…on the…

  And then…water…And…

  Before (their eyes),

  Brought fruit…much


  To the jo(y?)…

  Jesus said: “Become

  Passers-by.”

  He said: “Lord, there are many

  Around the cistern, but

  Nobody in the cistern.”

  And we said to him, “O Lord,

  Are you speaking again

  In parables to us?” And he said

  To us, “Do not be grieved…”

  II

  (His) disciples ask him (and s)ay:

  How should we fas(t and how

  Should we pr)ay and how (…

  …) and what should we observe

  (Of the traditions?) Jesus says (…..

  …..) do not (…..

  …..) truth (…..

  …..) hidden (…..

  “This saying has been handed down

  In a particularly sorry condition.”

  They all wondered and were afraid.

  The Redeemer smiled

  And spake to them: Of what

  Are you thinking, or about what

  Are you at a loss, or

  what are you seeking?

  If they ask you: “What

  Is the sign of your Father in you?”

  You say to them: “It is a movement

  And a rest. .”

  1976

  THE BOOK OF LUKE

  IT IS A FAULT OF infinity to be too small to find. It is a fault of eternity to be crowded out by time. Before our eyes we see an unbroken sheath of colors. We live over a bulk of things. We walk amid a congeries of colored things that part before our steps to reveal more colored things. Above us hurtle more things, which fill the universe. There is no crack. Unbreakable seas lie flush on their beds. Under the Greenland icecap lies not so much as a bubble. Mountains and hills, lakes, deserts, forests, and plains fully occupy their continents. Where, then, is the gap through which eternity streams? In holes at the roots of forest cedars I find spiders and chips. I have rolled plenty of stones away, to no avail. Under the lily pads on the lake are flatworms and lake water. Materials wrap us seamlessly; time propels us ceaselessly. Muffled and bound we pitch forward from one filled hour to the next, from one filled landscape or house to the next. No rift between one note of the chorus and the next opens on infinity. No spear of eternity interposes itself between work and lunch.

  And this is what we love: this human-scented skull, the sheen on the skin of a face, this exhilarating game, this crowded feast, these shifting mountains, the dense water and its piercing lights. It is our lives we love, our times, our generation, our pursuits. And are we called to forsake these vivid and palpable goods for an idea of which we experience not one trace? Am I to believe eternity outranks my child’s finger?

  The idea of infinity is that it is bigger, infinitely bigger, than our universe, which floats, held, upon it, as a leaf might float on a shoreless sea. The idea of eternity is that it bears time in its side like a hole. You believe it. Surely it is an idea suited for minds deranged by solitude, people who run gibbering from caves, who rave on mountaintops, who forgot to sleep and starved.

  Let us rest the material view and consider, just consider, that the weft of materials admits of a very few, faint, unlikely gaps. People are, after all, still disappearing, still roping robes on themselves, still braving the work of prayer, insisting they hear something, even fighting and still dying for it. The impulse to a spiritual view persists, and the evidence of that view’s power among historical forces and among contemporary ideas persists, and the claim of reasoning men and women that they know God from experience persists.

  “A young atheist cannot be too careful of his reading,” C. S. Lewis observed with amusement. Any book on any subject—a book by a writer the young atheist least suspects of apostasy—may abruptly and unabashedly reveal its author’s theist conviction. It may quote the Bible—that fetish of Grandma’s—as if it possessed real authority. The young atheist reels—is he crazy, or is everyone else?

  This Bible, this ubiquitous, persistent black chunk of a bestseller, is a chink—often the only chink—through which winds howl. It is a singularity, a black hole into which our rich and multiple world strays and vanishes. We crack open its pages at our peril. Many educated, urbane, and flourishing experts in every aspect of business, culture, and science have felt pulled by this anachronistic, semibarbaric mass of antique laws and fabulous tales from far away; they entered its queer, strait gates and were lost. Eyes open, heads high, in full possession of their critical minds, they obeyed the high, inaudible whistle, and let the gates close behind them.

  Respectable parents who love their children leave this absolutely respectable book lying about, as a possible safeguard against, say, drugs; alas, it is the book that kidnaps the children, and hooks them.

  But he…said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbor?

  And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves….

  And he said unto him, Who is my neighbor?

  But a certain Samaritan…came where he was….

  And went to him, and bound up his wounds…and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

  And he said unto him, Which now, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?

  And he said unto him, Who Is my neighbor?

  And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves.

  Who IS my neighbor?

  Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.

  This and similar fragments of biblical language played in my mind like a record on which the needle has stuck, moved at the root of my tongue, and sounded deep in my ears without surcease. Who IS my neighbor?

  Every July for four years, my sister and I trotted off to Presbyterian church camp. It was cheap, wholesome, and nearby. There we were happy, loose with other children under pines. If our parents had known how pious and low-church this camp was, they would have yanked us. We memorized Bible chapters, sang rollicking hymns around the clock, held nightly devotions with extemporaneous prayers, and filed out of the woods to chapel twice on Sunday dressed in white shorts. The faith-filled theology there was only half a step out of a tent; you could still smell the sawdust.

  I had a head for religious ideas. They were the first ideas I ever encountered. They made other ideas seem mean.

  For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? And lose his own soul? Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Arise, take up thy bed, and walk.

  Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.

  The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.

  Every summer we memorized these things at camp. Every Sunday, at home in Pittsburgh, we heard these things in Sunday school. Every Thursday we studied these things, and memorized them, too (strictly as literature, they said), at our private school. I had miles of Bible in memory: some perforce, but most by hap, like the words to songs. There was no corner of my brain where you could not find, among the files of clothing labels and heaps of rocks and minerals, among the swarms of protozoans and shelves of novels, whole tapes and snarls and reels of Bible. I wrote poems in deliberate imitation of its sounds, those repeated feminine endings followed by thumps, or those long hard beats followed by softness. Selah.

  The Bible’s was an unlikely, movie-set world alongside our world. Light-shot and translucent in the pallid Sunday-school watercolors on the walls, stormy and opaque in the dense and staggering texts they read us placidly, sweet-mouthed and earnest, week after week, this world interleaved our waking world like dream.

  I saw Jesus in wat
ercolor, framed, on the walls. We Sunday-school children sat in a circle and said dimly with Samuel, “Here am I.” Jesus was thin as a veil of tinted water; he was awash. Bearded men lay indolent about him in pastel robes, and shepherd boys, and hooded women with clear, round faces. The River Jordan, the Sea of Galilee—it was all watercolor; I could see the paper through it. The southern sun, the Asian sun, bleached the color from thick village walls, from people’s limbs and eyes. These pastel illustrations were as exotic, and as peculiar to children’s sentimental educations, as watercolor depictions of lions and giraffes.

  We studied the Gospel of Luke. In that world, people had time on their hands. Simon Peter, James, and John dropped their nets and quit their two boats full of fresh fish: “And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him.” They had time to gather at the side of the lake and hear harsh words. They had time to stand for the Sermon on the Mount and the sermon on the plain. A multitude followed Jesus and the twelve into a desert place belonging to the city of Bethsaida. The day wore away while Jesus spoke to them of the Kingdom of God; then he had his disciples feed them—“about five thousand men”—on five loaves of bread and two fishes, which Jesus blessed and broke, looking up to heaven.

  Luke’s is the most reasoned, calm, plausible, and orderly Gospel. It does not claim divinity for Christ, but a glorious messiahship; Jesus is the holy teacher who shows the way; he leads Israel and all the world back to a prayerful acknowledgment of the fatherhood of the one God. The coming of Jesus, attended by signs from heaven, does not interrupt the sacred history of Israel; it fulfills it. But Luke’s Gospel is calm and plausible only compared to the swirling bewilderments of Mark and the intergalactic leapings of John. All of the Gospels are unprecedented, unequaled, singular texts. Coming at Luke from our world, we stagger and balk. Luke is a piece torn from wildness. It is a blur of power, violent in its theological and narrative heat, abrupt and inexplicable. It shatters and jolts. Its grand-scale, vivid, and shifting tableaux call all in doubt.