properly called a letter we
understand: If
you a minute could you when
said I might however
what if haven’t I loved
—who?
As I remember it, I’d lie
in general alone, after, neither in
want nor—at first—sorry inside
the almost-dark I’d
wake to. The only stirring
the one of last light getting
scattered, as if for
my consideration. All over the room.
CAVALRY
The best views—the ones
from horseback—will be
no longer: surely no one can
fail to see how
the horses, perishing, are
all but done for. Already, though,
the idea of infantry
rears before us—a prospect
we find not without its
portion, more than fair, of
invitation. So much
as well, meanwhile, will go
unchanged: the peculiar,
undistracted
sorrow attached to
bugle call, at sunset, a sorrow
finally that of inquiry
itself, whose modes are two:
to branch,
to cluster,
manifesting itself in
panicles, as of lilacs, the still
remembered stoop we called
bluebells, if blue—if white,
snowdrops, wasn’t
that it,
when we knew no better than
to name the light at dusk
flirtation,
for how it seemed
each night like—
first—going,
then gone forever, and then
came back. It seems less to have
been flirtation—more,
a career spent saying,
perpetually,
farewell, until
who believes it? Even now,
we have only to lift
long enough our
faces, the light
again gives what it
always has to flesh,
a color that makes
briefly forgettable how
the art of casting bronze
is a mostly
lost one.
There seems nothing that is
impossible. Soon, darkness;
we’ll put the horses down,
a mercy. We’ll salvage, find
rest beside their still
good-for-trade
saddles: cool, and
wet, by morning.
TO SPEAK OF IT NOW
Leaving, he conducted his
body as if it were that of a child
Pharaoh, who
understands to a sometimes
dimming,
brightening other times,
degree the possibilities for
great power,
has been told it somewhere
rests finally inside
himself.
How he will use it,
whether he will or won’t
live to do so, neither
the hand, ring-heavy, nor
the head beneath its abbreviated
tower of crown
quite answers.
North of here, in a country he
won’t ever know of,
snow falls like the part
of argument where
all room for argument now
diminishes,
is gone, becomes like
dream that
—did it happen?
Made small
by distance,
through a window,
the people he does not easily yet
call his own
seem the pinchings-off
of clay,
what gets forgiven that it is dirty
by the ease with which it can be
shaped into something beautiful that
also serves.
That he thinks of them, though,
that way, is
less than believable, it is
unlikely still he considers them much
at all.
He is quiet mostly. This
does not mean that if asked to
name, among the world’s most
lovely things,
the second—or if third,
a close one—he
would not know.
The Nile by moonlight.
The Nile with the stars upon it.
THOSE PARTS THAT RESCUE LOOKED LIKE
The usual, pulled, expansive
afternoon—the flattish
light of it less
disclosure, more a stripping from
the field its
I had almost forgotten that definition
requires shadow. I had
been distracted, had found
myself among the ones who would be
persuaded, singing as if
of song were made the ship called Self-
Persuasion: we shall not
want what we do not
miss, we cannot
miss what we don’t
remember …
But if persuasion is
not a ship? if
no persuasion? —I
did not ask. I’d forgotten, almost,
that to want to know a life
entirely is not
the worst thing: obliteration,
for example, is worse—
one familiarity, by another,
getting canceled; or,
inside one, getting
lost, which is
worse still, oblivion,
less to escape from than to
lie not-touching-not-touched-by
beside an agony that
is, to love, as
shadow is to light—as,
to the body, is penetration.
I had forgotten: almost
all of it, the time of year, of
light making of—for hours—the field
a flatness, even
song itself, I
shall not want, I cannot
miss, the notes not
notes any longer but
something ravenous and—in their
flight, as from
parts of sky more
turbulent
toward others, clearer—marking
without marking the crossed, crossed
again field
beneath them, less their shadows,
more what shadow gave, more
everything it darkened.
VIA SACRA
The horse rides easy.
Intermittently,
that I can ride at all, still, can
seem the miracle that everyone
here calls it; that I ride
well—
what words?
Roadside,
the marigolds look for
all the world that
yet is knowable as
if they knew, impossibly, that
in a country not far, not
this one, their
petals are considered worth
gathering first in
shallow bowls, then
whispering a prayer over and just
past.
That I might never be estranged (from
what, though?), might be
instead what is meant, precisely, when
some sing
Spotless;
Immaculate
—others, singing.
The candles they carry
are of beeswax,
from a believing, once, that bees
were virgin-born. They aren’t, but
by that logic, unbleached
let be the linen the veil is made of, whether
purple, violet,
blue—draped across, of every house,
its eastern wall, to show divinity
has hid itself, has
left. It is as if the world were
boat, and God its keel; or the world
is bird—God its breastbone, ourselves
the left-to-our-own-devices
acolytes defining with rods
of willow a boundary we cross
and cross,
a story, a blind man in the crowd and
stepping free. He takes to his eyes
the longing with which our course,
behind, lies strewn, he
is unblinded. First thing he sees: a boy
who stammers; who’s
let his candle fall.
THE USE OF FORCE
Framed by window, the branches
swim in place, they
seem to. No
wonder struggling gets
so often, at first, mistaken
for wild abandon: a very
likeness.
Difference matters,
as in: in you, a permanence
you have known, that
I shall never. As in:
the two of us regarding
equally but differently
the sea,
the sea, in
equal but different parts.
Distinction matters. Distraction
loves us. Attention
must be paid, else we are
happier, yes, but what we were
lies ended— Did I really
think that, ever?
Do I?
A history of forgetting
is not the same as
a habit of it, though
history is not
unconcerned with pattern,
and pattern is to habit
as a kind of twin whose hair,
parted leftside instead of right,
prevents an otherwise
confusion. As between, say,
the man who in crime finds
a taste he gradually, slow, more
and more comes
into; and the man who, like
any criminal
worth admiring, admires
precision, the angle beyond which
the victim’s neck, bent
back, perforce
must break. Hold still, you said. I
did.
The proof is vision.
FIVE
RETURN TO THE LAND OF THE GOLDEN APPLES
Blue wash. The winged horses look
like horses—artless, free
of connotation. They hide
just now their wings,
or they forget, or do not
think to make
much more of a gift
for flight than
of the water viewable
behind them—a sea,
a lake—
which they ignore, pulling
at the record-of-where-a-wind-was,
the now-resist-now-don’t,
and other flowers
whose growth has even
outstripped the grass, the colors
wind as far as the ruined tower, up
even to the room that
crowns it, over the half moss, half
ledge of window, glassless,
into the room, which is small,
not empty: the body,
and a mirror. Inside
the mirror, the body
turning, stopping,
—sometimes the way, in
sudden shadow, will any
animal; sometimes,
as the hero stops
in the gathering light of reputation
he soon must recognize
is his own. The body
inside the mirror, turning,
singing I am the one who forces,
I am the one who stays
to watch,
I am the grit gone somehow
shine, the blow,
the forced thing, opening
—Singing inside the mirror,
to no one, to
itself, the body folding, and
unfolding—as if
map, then shroud—its song.
FLIGHT
If blackness
were every blankness, and not
all colors, if
wings were parts to be lifted
easily from the body, then brought
back home, and the wings
tipped first in yellow,
in red, after,
would any of these make the bird
more yours?
If the bird is native here,
and you are native,
so that seeing it now is not
a first time, seeing,
what happened then, that since
has acted upon memory
as on photographs
will a creek they’ve fallen into,
the water bleeding, making
ghost of now the tree somebody
climbs halfway,
the parked car others take
forever boarding, and the field raveling,
prairie, then sea …
What would be different, wouldn’t
each change equal ruin the way
it does, and the hands that clap
still be your own,
clapping? To watch the bird
undone, undoing—isn’t that it?
FRETWORK
Reports are various—
conflicting also:
many fell,
a few;
like taken cities …
•
Whether or not
to any loss there is weight
assignable,
or a music given
—some play of notes,
slow-trumpeted,
for which to listen
is already to be
too late;
whether forgetting is
or is not proof of
mercy, henceforth let
others say.
•
Is not victory itself
the proof of victory?
•
Little hammer, chasing—onto
unmarked metal—pattern,
decoration,
a name,
a scar upon the face
of history, what
has no face
•
Of briar
and thorn, my bed.
•
—I stand in clover.
RAVAGE
He has made me to know,
in myself, a compassion I have
no use for.
He fairly breaks—as they say—my heart.
He passes into and free of the light,
the light itself
trophaic in its semblance
of taking leave.
Clouds;
late fog:
he has caused me to understand
and record
the difference,
as between the sea when
it seems mostly a delicate, black
negotiation
and the sky at night when it wants
for stars.
Wild bird
at rest
in the very hand to which it once was blur
entirely,
all resistance—
Had I not
called it a thing done with
already, the better part
of pleasure? Did he not find me
lying still
in the part at least I had thought
to keep?
CANOE
The brow of a man who,
when he takes to his own
another’s body, means
somewhere also I would
like to help.
The lake a compass,
the canoe its needle,
ourselves inside
&nb
sp; that—
The way
what’s missing can go
unnoticed beside what’s there,
until we notice: these
were his arms,
now raised, now dropped,
lifting.
Slight pockings,
like the chips that give
historically more character
to marble retrieved
after long burial,
bust of
the emperor Hadrian
in that period just
past the death, on purpose,
of his boy favorite.
Lilies,
lilies.
Watch, he said; and
bringing the paddle
up, vertical, leaving
only the blade submerged
—stilling the blade—
he dragged the water:
we were turning …
Lost,
as a thing
can be, beyond all calling
of it back—none, anymore,
calling—
It seemed related to
what I’d heard
about cars, ice,
steer always
into the skid’s direction—
those lessons where
to have learned means nothing
next to having had
to apply.
I want forgiveness to be as easy as the gestures for it, it
isn’t, is it?
JUSTICE
Nameless, or else
many-named, no matter,
but the dog must come
with an allegiance heightened,
almost, to machine.
I want her lean,
I want her hungry. I want her
ruthless, or not at all.
Mornings,
let her lick the grass dry
of dew, my tired hands,
by night, of the lives
unwittingly, indifferently,
they’ve touched. Oh,
who is heartless?
Ghost-dog. Mirror-dog.
Shadow whose every move is
nothing, nothing without
what casts it.
Let even the most
trained of eyes
find the difference
between us
hard measuring. Of
that which cannot be
had entirely, understand:
I’ll have no part. No
feathers, then—blue,
obvious; nor the yellow
undershaftings, either,
that the otherwise mostly
spatter-and-bronze
flicker shows best
in flight.
No.
Let the dog be
ever memorial to that
precision that makes geometry
more than seem, again,
worth trusting: the gun
—raised, fired—the line
traceable from where hit to
where the bird, broken, falls,
and the dog knowing, already,
where—making
for it … Bring it back.
Give. Only then. Let her