You awoke in the last darkness
before the light poured in.
I’ve redone you by daylight.
Now I can submit you to the arts administrator
and the council of patrons
who could never take your measure.
This time they will love you,
standing on the glass table, fluent and robed at last,
and all your origins countered.
I wrap you in pure white sheets to mail you,
I brush you off my apron,
the charged filings crunch like cinders on the floor.
2
Raise it up there and it will
loom, the gaunt original thing
gristle and membrane of your life
mortared with shells of trilobites
it will hold between the cracks
of lightning, in the deadpan face of before and after
it will stick on up there as you left it
pieced together by starlight
it will hang by the flying buttresses you gave it
—hulk of mist, rafter of air, suspension bridge of mica
helm of sweat and dew—
but you have to raise it up there, you
have a brutal thing to do.
1990
DARKLIGHT
I
Early day.Grey the air.
Grey the boards of the house, the bench,
red the dilated potflower’s petals
blue the sky that will rend through
this fog.
Dark summer’s outer reaches:
thrown husk of a moon
sharpening
in the last dark blue.
I think of your eye
(dark the light
that washes into a deeper dark).
An eye, coming in closer.
Under the lens
lashes and veins grow huge
and huge the tear that washes out the eye,
the tear that clears the eye.
II
When heat leaves the walls at last
and the breeze comes
or seems to come, off water
or off the half-finished moon
her silver roughened by a darkblue rag
this is the ancient hour
between light and dark, work and rest
earthly tracks and star-trails
the last willed act of the day
and the night’s first dream
If you could have this hour
for the last hour of your life.
1988–1990
FINAL NOTATIONS
it will not be simple, it will not be long
it will take little time, it will take all your thought
it will take all your heart, it will take all your breath
it will be short, it will not be simple
it will touch through your ribs, it will take all your heart
it will not be long, it will occupy your thought
as a city is occupied, as a bed is occupied
it will take all your flesh, it will not be simple
You are coming into us who cannot withstand you
you are coming into us who never wanted to withstand you
you are taking parts of us into places never planned
you are going far away with pieces of our lives
it will be short, it will take all your breath
it will not be simple, it will become your will
1991
DARK FIELDS OF
THE REPUBLIC
(1991–1995)
He had come a long way to this blue lawn,
and his dream must have seemed so close that
he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not
know that it was already behind him, some-
where back in that vast obscurity beyond the
city, where the dark fields of the republic
rolled on under the night.
—The Great Gatsby
What Kind of Times
Are These
WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESE
There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows
uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
who disappeared into those shadows.
I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but
don’t be fooled,
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.
I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.
1991
IN THOSE YEARS
In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life and, yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to
But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I
1991
TO THE DAYS
From you I want more than I’ve ever asked,
all of it—the newscasts’ terrible stories
of life in my time, the knowing it’s worse than that,
much worse—the knowing what it means to be lied to.
Fog in the mornings, hunger for clarity,
coffee and bread with sour plum jam.
Numbness of soul in placid neighborhoods.
Lives ticking on as if.
A typewriter’s torrent, suddenly still.
Blue soaking through fog, two dragonflies wheeling.
Acceptable levels of cruelty, steadily rising.
Whatever you bring in your hands, I need to see it.
Suddenly I understand the verb without tenses.
To smell another woman’s hair, to taste her skin.
To know the bodies drifting underwater.
To be human, said Rosa—I can’t teach you that.
A cat drinks from a bowl of marigolds—his moment.
Surely the love of life is never-ending,
the failure of nerve, a charred fuse?
I want more from you than I ever knew to ask.
Wild pink lilies erupting, tasseled stalks of corn
in the Mexican gardens, corn and roses.
Shortening days, strawberry fields in ferment
with tossed-aside, bruised fruit.
1991
MIRACLE ICE CREAM
Miracle’s truck comes down the little avenue,
Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls,
and, yes, you can feel happy
with one piece of your heart.
Take what’s still given: in a room’s rich shadow
a woman’s breasts swinging lightly as she bends.
Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.
Late, you sit weighing the evening news,
fast-food miracles, ghostly revolutions,
the rest of your heart.
1992
RACHEL
There’s a girl born in abrupt August light
far north, a light soon to
be peeled
like an onion, down to nothing. Around her ions are falling
in torrents, glacial eyes are staring, the monster’s body
trapped in the bay goes through its spasms.
What she opens her gray eyes on
is drastic. Even the man and woman gazing
into her unfocused gaze, searching for focus,
are drastic.
It’s the end of a century.
If she gets to grow old, if there’s anything
: anyone to speak, will they say of her,
She grew up to see it, she was our mother, but
she was born one of them?
1992
AMENDS
Nights like this:on the cold apple-bough
a white star, then another
exploding out of the bark:
on the ground, moonlight picking at small stones
as it picks at greater stones, as it rises with the surf
laying its cheek for moments on the sand
as it licks the broken ledge, as it flows up the cliffs,
as it flicks across the tracks
as it unavailing pours into the gash
of the sand-and-gravel quarry
as it leans across the hangared fuselage
of the crop-dusting plane
as it soaks through cracks into the trailers
tremulous with sleep
as it dwells upon the eyelids of the sleepers
as if to make amends
1992
CALLE VISIÓN
1
Not what you thought:just a turn-off
leading downhill not up
narrow, doesn’t waste itself
has a house at the far end
scrub oak and cactus in the yard
some catssome snakes
in the house there is a room
in the room there is a bed
on the bed there is a blanket
that tells the coming of the railroad
under the blanket there are sheets
scrubbed transparent here and there
under the sheets there’s a mattress
the old rough kind, with buttons and ticking
under the mattress is a frame
of rusting ironstill strong
the whole bed smells of soap and rust
the window smells of old tobacco-dust and rain
this is your room
in Calle Visión
if you took the turn-off
it was for you
2
Calle Visiónsand in your teeth
granules of cartilage in your wrists
Calle Visiónfirestorm behind
shuttered eyelidsfire in your foot
Calle Visiónrocking the gates
of your locked bones
Calle Visióndreamnet dropped
over your porous sleep
3
Lodged in the difficult hotel
all help withheld
a place not to live but to die in
not an inn but a hospital
a friend’s love came to me
touched and took me away
in a carlove
of a curmudgeon, a short-fuse
and as he droveeyes on the road
I felt his love
and that was simply the casethe way things were
unstated and apparent
and like the rest of it
clear as a dream
4
Calle Visiónyour heart beats on unbroken
how is this possible
Calle Visiónwounded knee
wounded spinewounded eye
Have you ever worked around metal?
Are there particles under your skin?
Calle Visiónbut your heart is still whole
how is this possible
since what can bewill be taken
when not offered in trust and faith
by the collectors of collectibles
the professors of what-has-been-suffered
The world is falling downhold my hand
It’s a lonely soundhold my hand
Calle Visiónnever forget
the body’s pain
never divide it
5
Ammonia
carbon dioxide
carbon monoxide
methane
hydrogen sulfide
:the gasses that rise from urine and feces
in the pig confinement units known as nurseries
can eat a metal doorknob off in half a year
pig-dander
dust from dry manure
—lung-scar:breath-shortedness an early symptom
And the fire shall try
every man’s work:Calle Visión:
and every woman’s
if you took the turn-off
this is your revelationthis the source
6
The repetitive motions of slaughtering
—fire in wristsin elbows—
the dead birds coming at you along the line
—how you smell them in your sleep—
fire in your wristblood packed
under your fingernailsheavy air
doors padlocked on the outside
—you might steal a chicken—
fire in the chicken factory fire
in the carpal tunnelleaping the frying vats
yellow smoke from soybean oil
and wasted parts and insulating wire
—some fleeing to the freezer some
found “stuck in poses of escape”—
7
You can call on beauty still and it will leap
from all directions
you can write beauty into the cruel file
of things donethings left undonebut
once we were dissimilar
yet unseparatethat’s beautythat’s what you catch
in the newborn’s midnight gaze
the fog that melts the falling stars
the virus from the smashed lianas driven
searching now for us
8
In the roomin the house
in Calle Visión
all you wantis to lie down
alone on your backlet your hands
slide lightly over your hipbones
But she’s there with her remnants her cross-sections
trying to distract you
with her childhood her recipes her
cargo of charred pages her
carved and freckled neck-stones
her crying-out-for-witness her
backward-forward timescapes
her suitcase in Berlin
and the one lost and found
in her island go-and-come
—is she terrified you will forget her?
9
In the black net
of her orange wing
the angry nightblown butterfly
hangs on a piece of lilac in the sun
carried overland like her
from a long way off
She has travelled hard and far
and her interrogation goes:
—Hands dripping with wet earth
head full of shocking dreams
O what have you buried all these years
what have you dug up?
•
This place is alive with the dead and with the living
I have never been alone here
I wear my triple eye as I walk along the road
past, present, future all are at my side
Storm-beaten, tough-winged passenger
there is nothing I have buried that can die
10
On the road there is a house
scrub oak and cactus in the yard
lilac carried overland
from a long way off
in the house there is a bed
on the bed there is a blanket
telling the coming of the railroad
under the mattress there’s a frame
of rusting ironstill strong
the window smells of old tobacco-dust and rain
the window smells of old
tobacco-dust and rain
1992–1993
REVERSION
This woman/the heart of the matter.
This woman flung into solitary by the prayers of her tribe.
This woman waking/reaching for scissors/starting to cut
her hair
Hair long shaven/growing out.
To snip to snip to snip/creak of sharpness meeting itself against
the roughness of her hair.
This woman whose voices drive her into exile.
(Exile, exile.)
Drive her toward the other side.
By train and foot and ship, to the other side.
Other side.Of a narrow sea.