Anger is a force you dare not halt.
Think of the hot-blooded stag that vaults
from the brush: Stop it at your peril.
Passion’s natural; nature’s feral.
I miss my sons, their bawdy, roughneck ways.
But time heals all, so everyone says,
and my sorrow is offset by days
with my daughter. She must never know
what happened those many years ago.
Why burden her with that history?
If she knows, she might blame me.
SHE works in the dairy
The cows make obeisance
The air smells of jasmine
The milk tastes of honey
She walks in the fields
The earth shields her footsteps
From all its sharp edges
The snakes and the wasps
Renounce their grim venoms
She sits in the garden
The stones shed their anger
The bees sing like thrushes
The worms stave their hunger
The centipede sleeps
But forces unseen
Are shaping her future
And no one can guess
The secrets they keep
APRIL
In spite of my suspicions, my life here is good.
Still, I do sometimes feel lonely.
The day is filled with chores, hauling wood.
But like so many other only
children, I have found a way to keep
my own company. Each night, before prayers and sleep,
I play a clarsach harp that Father carved for me
from the bole of an ancient hornbeam tree.
My parents say I have unusual talent,
that my music is beyond compare,
but I know that parents everywhere
say things to help their children feel content.
Still, when I play the harp and sing,
I feel as if my soul has sprouted wings.
AND this is the harp
With its bittersweet strings
And its arms carved with wings
That were meant to be angels
But the wood of the hornbeam
Knew the truth of Jack’s heart
It would not surrender
Its grain to his art
It guided his chisel
It flouted his will
Leading his gouge
Not stopping until
The cherubs and seraphs
That Jack had intended
Morphed and amended
Themselves into ravens
Six on the frame
Three on each side
Each beak startled open
Open to chide
Their affrighted creator
Who looked on in wonder
His awe even greater
When he saw what appeared
On the harp’s gleaming sound box
Which he had veneered
With the wood of the birch
A magnificent raven
Aloft on its perch
The carving so skillful
That no human hand
Was behind such perfection
He’d thought to carve angels
Life made a correction
* * *
Jack stared at the image
With fear and dismay
Truth is relentless
Truth finds a way
AND deep in the forest
Six ravens are feeding
Their bird hearts are beating
Their talons are kneading
The earth as they cry
Once we were men
With fists big as boulders
And voices like thunder
We set back our shoulders
And carried our burdens
Proud of our vigor
Our hair thick as forests
That grow on the mountain
Our skin clear as August
Our eyes fine and bright
As the calendar’s stars
Our father betrayed us
We thought that he loved us
Instead he has damned us
To eternal shame
Now we are scavengers
Death’s angry stewards
Dressed always in mourning
Debased and dejected
Without home or name
* * *
We’re not like our brother
We can’t understand him
He does not complain
For all that we’ve lost
Our manhood our futures
Discarded and tossed
On Time’s rotting midden
But he does not sorrow
Although our hearts break
He was always a stranger
Distant opaque
ROBYN
I hear my brothers’ bitter grief—their plans,
their dreams, their young and lusty time all
stolen from them, but without a thief to
prosecute and hang for this alleged
crime. The searing pain impossible to
bear. The biting excavation of each
bone. And now they find thick talons where there
once stood brawny legs. They bemoan the
shallow, rapid breath, and fear the naked,
raw confusion to be one kind of thing
then suddenly another. They find a
feathered, dazed illusion where once their eyes
beheld a loving brother. Forsaken
and misfigured, they feel unfairly cursed.
They cannot see the irony: Our fates
have been reversed. How strange it is that they
now feel so out of place and wrong, while I
in soul and body know I finally
belong. As for our reckless father, when
it comes to me, how can I be
resentful? His anger set me free.
AND these are the hands
Of Jack and Jane’s daughter
The same hands that help
Her mother and father
The same hands that milk
The red cow each morning
The same hands that churn
The cream into butter
The same hands that carry
The wood for the fire
She touches the harp
Her fingers are rivers
Graceful and flowing
Her thumb is a deer
Alive in the clearing
Her muscles are birdsong
Supple and daring
Drawing strange tunings
Hypnotic and fairy
The melodies soaring
The resonance clear
And the thatch finds its meaning
And the young field is greening
And the wild boar’s leaning
Closer to hear
APRIL
Many days, as I go about my chores
my idle mind wanders where it chooses.
It carries me to foreign lands and far-off shores
and helps to pass the time, diverts me and amuses
when restlessness becomes an enemy.
Often, strange impressions come to me,
but one, especially, leaves a residue
of shining truth, and yet it can’t be true.
I am taken by the silly, childish notion
that the harp and I share a common fate.
What that might be I can’t anticipate,
but it fills me with such deep and powerful emotion
that each day I hold the harp more dear,
and always want it next to me. I am uncalm when it’s not near.
BUT the harp cannot mute
The oracular voice
That speaks to her nightly
No rest and no choice
APRIL
Seven. Seven acorns on the ground.
That is how the dream
begins.
Seven. Like the deadly sins.
I look at them, then turn around.
But something makes me look again,
and in their place stand seven men.
Six of them look back at me,
in their eyes, an earnest plea.
But the seventh turns his back.
He will not let me see his face;
silent, steadfast in his place,
he turns a pure and shining black
and rises slowly in the air
to leave me, weeping, standing there.
JANE
It’s true that nothing lasts forever.
April’s not a fool. She’s too clever
for the lie to survive much longer.
Every night her dreams get stronger,
destroying her peace, prolonging her
doubts. I hear her cry out in her sleep
and wonder how much longer I can keep
up with this cruel hypocrisy.
My husband, Jack, says, Wait and see—
she’ll soon be fine. We don’t agree.
I know the time has come to tell her,
but I’m afraid it might compel her
to behave foolishly or rash.
She’s young, and the young are often brash.
How quickly fire becomes ash
when what is safe gainsays what is right.
The night is day and the day is night.
I love my daughter—but all’s askew.
I no longer know what I should do.
JACK
Things are perfect just the way they are.
No point in taking this too far—
these fantastic, silly dreams, I mean.
For girls this age, dreams are routine,
which is why I am not at all keen
on saying more than necessary.
This whole business is temporary.
It’s foolish to anticipate regret.
Nothing bad has happened yet.
But Jane’s a woman, and women fret.
She says our daughter is acting strange.
I have to admit there’s been a change
in her optimistic temperament.
I can see she’s worried, less content.
But is that a reason to invent
some fantasy about what she knows?
Girls are moody; that’s how it goes.
There’s too much drama, too many tears.
Oh, how I wish my boys were here.
WHAT once he cursed
He wishes for
He cannot change
What came before
There are no boys
He has no sons
What’s said is said
What’s done is done
* * *
But each night
In their rookery
In a mountain
Made of glass
Six brawling ravens
Roost together
Foul of mood
And foul of feather
Ill-tempered bitter
Sour glum
They hate the woods
That once they loved
They hate what they’ve
Become
BUT a seventh
Roosts alone
In the mountain
Made of glass
His beak a shining
Onyx moon
His eyes two onyx stars
He thinks about
What’s come to pass
A midnight avatar
ROBYN
Each evening when the setting sun retires,
we find ourselves drawn here to sleep and rest.
An inner voice cajoles and then conspires
to bring us to this glazed, uncommon crest,
a mountain made of glass, its brittle peak
sequestered in the clouds. My brothers, in
jarring voices shrill and loud, say it’s all
part of the curse. They petition every
day for the spell to be reversed, and hope
a mighty wizard’s wand will wave and set
them free. That’s not the case with me. I am
altogether reconciled to
existence in the wild. Yet I cannot
help but ask why we spend our nights
in this stifling place instead of sleeping in
the wildwood, beneath the winking stars.
This mountain is a crystal cell without
guards or iron bars. We are unnaturally
protected, transparently preserved.
But for what I cannot guess. I am
uneasy and unnerved.
AND inside the cottage
April is dreaming
The axe it is steaming
The thatch it is screaming
The horned goat is foaming
The saw has gone roaming
No rest and no peace
In a house built of lies
April awakens
She opens her eyes
APRIL
I was finishing my daily household chores,
my parents with the cattle, as they are every morning.
I had finished the tidying and was sweeping the floor
when suddenly without reason, without any warning,
seven acorns dropped from a corner of the ceiling.
I was quickly overcome with the overwhelming feeling
that something was concealed in the place from which they’d dropped.
Seven acorns. It was as if time had stopped,
as if the dream had bled into my life.
and then, my curiosity and my suspicion both uncurbed,
I cut loose the thatch with my father’s hunting knife.
Between the oaken joists, I found a wooden box.
In it, neatly folded, lay seven young men’s smocks.
AND the dough it breathes
And the saw it swoons
And the cup and the plate
And the knife and the spoon
Huddle together
And sing to the moon
Truth drops
From the ceiling
Sometimes too late
But never too soon
JANE
Should I have thrown them away? Burned
them? Or buried them? Should I have spurned
forever my own sons? I could not.
To know their smocks were near me brought
back their memory, untied the knot
of my grief, comforted my heartache,
quenched a dreadful thirst I could not slake.
Those seven shirts are all that remains.
Destroying them erases, profanes,
the truth that my blood runs in their veins.
She came to me and I told it all—
every detail that I could recall,
the abhorrent and horrendous sight
of seven ravens taking flight,
how this cursed day was her birthright,
how when at last the birds retreated,
she sprang to life and death was cheated.
I cannot say what will happen next:
Truth has unforeseeable effects.
JACK
It’s finally arrived, the dreadful day.
Let me alone. I’ve nothing to say.
APRIL
All of these years they have deceived me.
All of these years lying.
The ones who raised and conceived
me insist that they were only trying
to shield me. But shield me from what?
I want to believe them, but
I know too well they were protecting
themselves, hiding from the link connecting
my birth to my brothers’ vanishing that day.
It wasn’t me, but truth they could not face.
My brothers. Their sons. Gone with no trace.
But
where there’s a will, there is always a way.
I can’t say how or why, but I know it is my destiny
to undo the raven spell and restore our broken family.
AND the sun shuts its eyes
And swallows the light
And April arises
In the blindness of night
And the cottage walls crack
And her small bag is packed
And the harp says Take me
And April is free
Away from her mother
Away from her father
Away from everything
Knowing her name
Away from the chores
The mop and the broom
She steps into darkness
Disappears in the gloom
III
JOURNEY
AND the road is a villain
And the road is a friend
And the road is a story
No beginning no end
And the road is a question
And the road is an answer
And the road will transform you
A sly necromancer
And the road is a melody
And the road is a howl
And the road is a paradox
A grin and a scowl
And the road will not tell
Where it’s been where it leads
And the road is alive
It sings and it bleeds
* * *
Who takes to the road
Can never return
For the road is a fire
All pilgrims will burn
APRIL
Is it days? Or months? Or years? Or weeks
that I have traveled this coarse and rugged thoroughfare?
Crossing cloud-topped mountains, chancing swollen creeks,
I’ve learned that time can be immeasurable as air.
There are moments I forget what I’m searching for,
and the only point is walking—walking, nothing more.
I tell myself momentum is its own reward
and that it’s unimportant what I’m moving toward.
But I know it’s only weariness that’s speaking,
idle thoughts to guard against the pitfall of despair