Advance Praise for The Book of Endings
Leslie Harrison’s truly marvelous new collection The Book of Endings works constantly at the edge of articulation, at the breakdown of language and thought: “what / remains is one person in a box is a system collapse / is sky holding ground holding stone holding hole / holding hands holding on black hole without end / the earth gave us everything took it back again.” In these hauntingly incantatory lines, the Eucharist is elegiacally holding hands with the expanding and contracting universe, eternity with oblivion and recreation. Love, endurance, and the planet are all empty as a hole and yet, like these poems, solid as stone.
—Andrew Hudgins
The mother has died, the speaker’s hair silvers in the moonlight, and spring, New Englandy as ever, does not come as promised. But “the sky keeps showing off amusing itself” and the cold ground can be worked into “a blanket.” Comfort is at hand in Leslie Harrison’s The Book of Endings, poems of loss that yet offer uplift, music, words whose meaning, once unpacked, bring relief: “The final absence of air cyanosis,” the speaker reminds us, is “from kyanous which is Greek which just means blue.”
—Christine Schutt
AKRON SERIES IN POETRY
Mary Biddinger, Editor
Leslie Harrison, The Book of Endings
Emilia Phillips, Groundspeed
Philip Metres, Pictures at an Exhibition: A Petersburg Album
Jennifer Moore, The Veronica Maneuver
Brittany Cavallaro, Girl-King
Oliver de la Paz, Post Subject: A Fable
John Repp, Fat Jersey Blues
Emilia Phillips, Signaletics
Seth Abramson, Thievery
Steve Kistulentz, Little Black Daydream
Jason Bredle, Carnival
Emily Rosko, Prop Rockery
Alison Pelegrin, Hurricane Party
Matthew Guenette, American Busboy
Joshua Harmon, Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie
David Dodd Lee, Orphan, Indiana
Sarah Perrier, Nothing Fatal
Oliver de la Paz, Requiem for the Orchard
Rachel Dilworth, The Wild Rose Asylum
John Minczeski, A Letter to Serafin
John Gallaher, Map of the Folded World
Heather Derr-Smith, The Bride Minaret
William Greenway, Everywhere at Once
Brian Brodeur, Other Latitudes
Titles published since 2008.
For a complete listing of titles published in the series,
go to www.uakron.edu/uapress/poetry.
Leslie Harrison
The Book
of Endings
Copyright © 2017 by The University of Akron Press
All rights reserved • First Edition 2017 • Manufactured in the United States of America.
All inquiries and permission requests should be addressed to the Publisher,
The University of Akron Press, Akron, Ohio 44325-1703.
21 20 19 18 17 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN: 978-1-629220-63-5 (paper)
ISBN: 978-1-629220-62-8 (cloth)
ISBN: 978-1-629220-64-2 (ePDF)
ISBN: 978-1-629220-65-9 (ePub)
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Harrison, Leslie, 1962– author.
Title: The book of endings / Leslie Harrison.
Description: First edition. | Akron, Ohio : University of Akron Press, 2017. | Series: Akron series in poetry
Identifiers: LCCN 2016026149 (print) | LCCN 2016033470 (ebook) | ISBN 9781629220628 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781629220635 (paperback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781629220642 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781629220659 (ePub)
Classification: LCC PS3608.A78357 A6 2017 (print) | LCC PS3608.A78357 (ebook) DDC 811/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016026149
∞The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).
Cover: Raven Feathers by Mike O’Connell, © 2015. Reproduced with permission. Cover design by Amy Freels.
The Book of Endings was designed and typeset in Garamond with Cooper Hewitt display by Amy Freels. It was printed on sixty-pound natural and bound by Bookmasters of Ashland, Ohio.
Contents
[I keep throwing words at the problem because words]
Left Panel
[December]
[God speaks]
[Summa mathematica]
[I would drive to your grave]
[Imagine]
[There are things you love]
[Pray]
[Take eat]
[The orphan child eats blueberries in Vermont]
[To say]
[Practice]
[Ötzi]
[Coda]
[Wilt thou play with him as with a bird]
Right Panel
[When trees are dead they are]
[Carnation lily lily rose]
[Sisyphus in love]
[Eve]
[Stutter]
[Sirens]
[Parable]
[Charm for a spring storm]
[Landscape with falling birds]
[That]
[Venice]
[The horses]
[Touch me now]
[Was it ice]
[Once]
[Parable]
[Epiphany]
Center Panel
[Actias luna]
[Parable]
[Over]
[This I know]
[What I mean]
[Because in all your life you’ve lived]
[Snowfields]
[Let the blue earth spin]
[Things the realtor will not tell the new owner]
[Salt]
[Dear god I ask]
[Bezoar]
[Wrong]
[Invocation]
[Nest]
Notes
Acknowledgments
Afford yourself what you can carry out.
A coward and a coda share a word.
We get our ugliness from fear.
We get our danger from the lord.
—Heather McHugh
[I keep throwing words at the problem
because words]
To list the day full of ravens and crows is to attempt
meaning as if words could mend themselves the way
the window eventually cures itself of frost I don’t know
how to make anything how to make anything better
the mourning doves on the lines suspect nothing about
the way machines keep throwing voices how objects
contain how the wires conduct silence and spark
to say vessels contain is to attempt again to make
this storm of trees and sky into prophesy is to advocate
for an undivided world unfold the dead hawk’s wing
and ask it about flight ask the killdeer how it came
to equate love with broken love with panic safety
with leading with leading the dangerous on
dear Cassandra the page is funnel pitcher or cloud
into which I keep pouring the trees the listing birds
the way they keep refusing to mean the way I want
to mean anything other than this other than this much
silence the way the page both contains refuses the stain
Left Panel
[December]
That was the year that ice begot ravens singly in pairs and crows
a gathering flock fed well of the damaged trees their desperate fruit
come to trouble what little sleep come to comfort the stoneheavy days
come to this house locked in ice the stacked snow sealed over so cold
&
nbsp; the owls died off from the branches such delicate flowers falling and
falling silent no call and no response I think the bones of birds must
trouble this earth more than most those hollow bore needles fallen
eventually white on white snow and still the cold thickens strange slow
tidal sea pierced above by a different falling the Geminids December’s
bright detritus going down in snowflake fire as if a wake could be
a lovely thing as if broken were just another glittering season
into which you bundle the children into which you carry them to stare
to see a sky quiet and on fire in this winter of no more miracles
in this season of so much beauty such harm
[God speaks]
I laced the world in water water in ice ice in long slow
nights ancient and faintly aglow I gave you this world
gave you who are also mostly water into this world
candled your souls against the ice and the dark matter
against the fields strewn with artifacts and timothy-
grass fields deep with creatures with star-shaped with
star intoxicated flowers I made the heavens and set
them to rain set the moon like a clock passing often
into shadow I filled the least and the greatest places
with secret creatures let you read in stone my own
book of the dead I gave the serpent a tongue so that
you might learn to speak I wanted you to love
like some holy cathedral some architecture of tunnel
gate and teeth I made your bodies gorgeous made you
as arrows and fletched your hearts with his sturdy
circling ribs listen as all my beloved creatures whisper
and call through the sun through snow listen to the wind
coming in listen hard and someone will name the bow
[Summa mathematica]
—The camera is a kind of clock (Barthes)
A house like a photograph isolates contains such a small piece
thin slice of the whole immense place the lens erases with ease
the Alps Thames Taiga your neighbor your neighborhood
how much of even the very local gets excluded by frame
by walls roof and door it is a kind of vanishing an equation
that returns a tiny private remainder a number quite close
to nothing inside the house there is no lake no old groaning oak
no stone or stone marker nor crescent moon of meadow meeting
shore even the approach road is gone each arrival a mystery of
the simple arithmetic of increase in this room in this bed I am
full of babies exactly the way the house returns a nearly null set
which is to say I lost my mother and never became one either
which is to say the stacked albums are small museums they’re
happy set pieces remainders returned from that thing we call
the past the cakes cheerfully going up in flames the trees too
festive and on fire the dead still here and all that will come left out
[I would drive to your grave]
I would drive to your grave but your grave is the crash
the froth foam pebbles small rocks the sand smoothed
soothed each rising each leaving tide you lie in the ocean
the water in the waves your home the stern the back
the wake of a boat those curled white lines of leaving
I would visit your grave but your grave is a single blue
afternoon of passing isles the green and granite shores
I would come to your grave but your grave is the fire
oh mother it is cold tonight and I have no heart
for this burning for the fine sift of ash which is all
that comes back all that comes after I would visit
your house but your things are missing are missing
your touch as your eyes failed I brought you lights
and I would see again that brightness I would drive
to your grave but I am your grave your marker
oh mother I am your stone
[Imagine]
My goals today are modest
attend the sky for signs of failing falling
signs the buildings remain at ease
comfortable abutments guarding against
so much endless space
their blank faces intentionally broken open in windows
such casual such pretty risk
*
The blind wear sunglasses
darkness being one thing
exempt from multiplication
objects in mirrors are often
closer than they appear
what follows
does so in ways both intimate and dangerous
movie stars wear shades
windows without history
forgetting the arc lamp of the past forgetting
recognition
was never a matter for such tiny disguises
*
The sky all day
the sky keeps showing off amusing itself
with the usual bag of tricks
the city stands below stands
in shadow somewhere small switches are thrown
and the stars muscle their way into being
into being seen again
our ancient coming attractions a million years or more
in the making and in the dying in the dying night
we go out into the lighted dark we go over the details
we make extensive notes excuses amends
we never needed
to imagine the past
but still we do
[There are things you love]
There are things you love but they are rarely if ever
the right things your favorite color that mottled dapple
that fleeting purpleyellowblackgreen that exists only inside
a gesture you can’t get over its offer of concealment that
also references danger for years you’ve loved the goose
found at pond edge found at clouded blueblack daybreak
its neck curved back head tucked as if risk as if the dark
were nowhere were nothing to fear but then you saw
feathers like petals like fasteners fallen open fallen
to curl and drift in those shallows whatever befell had
nothing of violence in it rather a quiet fading a still slip
down or away rocked by ripple by wind feathers and flesh
coming undone unmended coming into water such a small
such a slight armada the body given over sanctified
at almost dawn coming finally almost whole almost safe
almost to daybreak and to shore
[Pray]
I test the reality of this slippery day
already easing out of reach
I pick minutes for hours
in the meadow and this does not
help me
the clouds the trees the trees rasp
like ancient crickets
phlegmy in the way that old things
are never really loud
look at the horses
look
at their four fragile knees
kneel later
kneel
kneel when they’ve given you a box
a closet built of dirt its weighty
stone handle
then you can kneel then you can pray
pray for the rest of your life
kneeling
for years
as the meadow appears
and falls under snow pray with a voice
full of dried leaves full of falling water
voice of new
growth new snow
pray
pray as hard as you can to the horses
skittering
startled
away
[Take eat]
Take eat he said for this is my body and we thought
he meant us we who are also drawn to the table
always craving olive mango bread rare flesh and wine
but it is the earth replies by making way by taking in
by each endless indifferent yes shaped like one more
rectilinear hole as if the digging alone could constitute
a form of prayer or arcane mathematics a series of
n-dimensional spaces the volume infinite the collapse
therefore also always ending in infinity ending as a
zero sum game a dimension into which every thing
you ever loved is poured like wine blood like some
kind of sacrament microbes turn fruit potent turn flesh
to sludge then seed in physics momentum and position
define degrees of freedom delete momentum and what
remains is one person in a box is a system collapse
is sky holding ground holding stone holding hole
holding hands holding on black hole without end
the earth gave us everything took it back again
[The orphan child eats blueberries in Vermont]
Jeffrey’s Ledge is full of rising full of convection conversion full
of peculiar geologic detail full of sudden shallows those undersea
hills a vertical face against which the ocean comes in force in tide
in wind a long slow grind toward shore full in summer of whales
come for the krill the fish come with new beings their young
in tow and taking milk what falls in water is never water is ash
is death is flesh sent through the fire to fall a year later like rain
on each slow leviathan is grain by minute grain sunk or gathered
to be carried was this what you wanted most mother wanted of
and for all that remains did you want the long slow travel mournful
song a vast time-lapse failure an extinction colder and more alone
than anything ought to be did you want finally to be carried off
by something other something greater than this dis-ease of failing