w-s-merwin.txt

Ballad of John Cable and Three Gentlemen


He that had come that morning,   
One after the other, 
Over seven hills, 
Each of a new color, 

Came now by the last tree,   
By the red-colored valley,   
To a gray river 
Wide as the sea. 

There at the shingle 
A listing wherry 
Awash with dark water;   
What should it carry? 

There on the shelving,   
Three dark gentlemen.   
Might they direct him?   
Three gentlemen. 

“Cable, friend John, John Cable,”   
When they saw him they said,   
“Come and be company 
As far as the far side.” 

“Come follow the feet,” they said,   
“Of your family, 
Of your old father 
That came already this way.” 

But Cable said, “First I must go   
Once to my sister again; 
What will she do come spring   
And no man on her garden? 

She will say ‘Weeds are alive   
From here to the Stream of Friday;   
I grieve for my brother’s plowing,’ 
Then break and cry.” 

“Lose no sleep,” they said, “for that fallow:   
She will say before summer, 
‘I can get me a daylong man, 
Do better than a brother.’ ” 

Cable said, “I think of my wife:   
Dearly she needs consoling;   
I must go back for a little 
For fear she die of grieving.” 

“Cable,” they said, “John Cable,   
Ask no such wild favor; 
Still, if you fear she die soon,   
The boat might wait for her.” 

But Cable said, “I remember:   
Out of charity let me 
Go shore up my poorly mother,   
Cries all afternoon.” 

They said, “She is old and far,   
Far and rheumy with years,   
And, if you like, we shall take   
No note of her tears.” 

But Cable said, “I am neither   
Your hired man nor maid,   
Your dog nor shadow 
Nor your ape to be led.” 

He said, “I must go back: 
Once I heard someone say 
That the hollow Stream of Friday   
Is a rank place to lie; 

And this word, now I remember,   
Makes me sorry: have you   
Thought of my own body   
I was always good to? 

The frame that was my devotion   
And my blessing was, 
The straight bole whose limbs   
Were long as stories— 

Now, poor thing, left in the dirt   
By the Stream of Friday 
Might not remember me 
Half tenderly.” 

They let him nurse no worry; 
They said, “We give you our word:   
Poor thing is made of patience;   
Will not say a word.” 

“Cable, friend John, John Cable,”   
After this they said, 
“Come with no company 
To the far side. 

To a populous place, 
A dense city 
That shall not be changed   
Before much sorrow dry.” 

Over shaking water 
Toward the feet of his father,   
Leaving the hills’ color 
And his poorly mother 

And his wife at grieving   
And his sister’s fallow   
And his body lying   
In the rank hollow, 

Now Cable is carried   
On the dark river;   
Nor even a shadow   
Followed him over. 

On the wide river   
Gray as the sea 
Flags of white water   
Are his company.


Bread


for Wendell Berry
Each face in the street is a slice of bread   
wandering on 
searching 

somewhere in the light the true hunger   
appears to be passing them by   
they clutch 

have they forgotten the pale caves 
they dreamed of hiding in 
their own caves 
full of the waiting of their footprints 
hung with the hollow marks of their groping   
full of their sleep and their hiding 

have they forgotten the ragged tunnels 
they dreamed of following in out of the light   
to hear step after step 

the heart of bread 
to be sustained by its dark breath   
and emerge 

to find themselves alone   
before a wheat field 
raising its radiance to the moon


Far Company


At times now from some margin of the day
 I can hear birds of another country
 not the whole song but a brief phrase of it
 out of a music that I may have heard
 once in a moment I appear to have
 forgotten for the most part that full day
 no sight of which I can remember now
 though it must have been where my eyes were then
 that knew it as the present while I thought
 of somewhere else without noticing that
 singing when it was there and still went on
 whether or not I noticed now it falls
 silent when I listen and leaves the day
 and flies before it to be heard again
 somewhere ahead when I have forgotten


For a Coming Extinction


Gray whale 
Now that we are sending you to The End 
That great god 
Tell him 
That we who follow you invented forgiveness 
And forgive nothing 

I write as though you could understand 
And I could say it 
One must always pretend something 
Among the dying 
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks 
Empty of you 
Tell him that we were made 
On another day 
The bewilderment will diminish like an echo 

Winding along your inner mountains 
Unheard by us 
And find its way out 
Leaving behind it the future 
Dead 
And ours 

When you will not see again 
The whale calves trying the light 
Consider what you will find in the black garden 
And its court 
The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas 
The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless 
And foreordaining as stars 
Our sacrifices 

Join your word to theirs 
Tell him 
That it is we who are important


For the Anniversary of My Death


Every year without knowing it I have passed the day   
When the last fires will wave to me 
And the silence will set out 
Tireless traveler 
Like the beam of a lightless star 

Then I will no longer 
Find myself in life as in a strange garment 
Surprised at the earth 
And the love of one woman 
And the shamelessness of men 
As today writing after three days of rain 
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease 
And bowing not knowing to what


Fox Sleep


On a road through the mountains with a friend many years ago
      I came to a curve on a slope where a clear stream 
flowed down flashing across dark rocks through its own
      echoes that could neither be caught nor forgotten 
it was the turning of autumn and already
      the mornings were cold with ragged clouds in the hollows
long after sunrise but the pasture sagging like a roof 
      the glassy water and flickering yellow leaves
in the few poplars and knotted plum trees were held up
      in a handful of sunlight that made the slates on the silent
mill by the stream glisten white above their ruin
      and a few relics of the life before had been arranged
in front of the open mill house to wait
      pale in the daylight out on the open mountain
after whatever they had been made for was over
      the dew was drying on them and there were few who took that road
who might buy one of them and take it away somewhere 
      to be unusual to be the only one
to become unknown a wooden bed stood there on rocks
      a cradle the color of dust a cracked oil jar iron pots 
wooden wheels iron wheels stone wheels the tall box of a clock
      and among them a ring of white stone the size of an 
embrace set into another of the same size
      an iron spike rising from the ring where the wooden
handle had fitted that turned it in its days as a hand mill 
      you could see if you looked closely that the top ring
that turned in the other had been carved long before in the form 
      of a fox lying nose in tail seeming to be
asleep the features worn almost away where it
      had gone around and around grinding grain and salt 
to go into the dark and to go on and remember

      * * *

What I thought I had left I kept finding again
      but when I went looking for what I thought I remembered
as anyone could have foretold it was not there
      when I went away looking for what I had to do 
I found that I was living where I was a stranger
      but when I retraced my steps the familiar vision
turned opaque and all surface and in the wrong places
      and the places where I had been a stranger appeared to me 
to be where I had been at home called by name and answering
      getting ready to go away and going away

      * * *

Every time they assembled and he spoke to them
      about waking there was an old man who stood listening 
and left before the others until one day the old man stayed
      and Who are you he asked the old man
and the old man answered I am not a man
      many lives ago I stood where you are standing
and they assembled in front of me and I spoke to them 
      about waking until one day one of them asked me
When someone has wakened to what is really there 
      is that person free of the chain of consequences
and I answered yes and with that I turned into a fox
      and I have been a fox for five hundred lives
and now I have come to ask you to say what will 
      free me from the body of a fox please tell me
when someone has wakened to what is really there 
      is that person free of the chain of consequences
and this time the answer was That person sees it as it is 
      then the old man said Thank you for waking me
you have set me free of the body of the fox
      which you will find on the other side of the mountain
I ask you to bury it please as one of your own 
      that evening he announced a funeral service
for one of them but they said nobody has died
      then he led them to the other side of the mountain
and a cave where they found a fox’s body
      and he told them the story and they buried the fox 
as one of them but later one of them asked
      what if he had given the right answer every time

      * * *

Once again I was there and once again I was leaving 
      and again it seemed as though nothing had changed
even while it was all changing but this time
      was a time of ending this time the long marriage was over
the orbits were flying apart it was autumn again 
      sunlight tawny in the fields where the shadows
each day grew longer and the still afternoons
      ripened the distance until the sun went down
across the valley and the full moon rose out of the trees
      it was the time of year when I was born and that evening
I went to see friends for the last time and I came back 
      after midnight along the road white with the moon
I was crossing the bars of shadow and seeing ahead of me 
      the wide silent valley full of silver light
and there just at the corner of the land that I had
      come back to so many times and now was leaving 
at the foot of the wall built of pale stone I saw the body
      stretched in the grass and it was a fox a vixen 
just dead with no sign of how it had come to happen
      no blood the long fur warm in the dewy grass 
nothing broken or lost or torn or unfinished
      I carried her home to bury her in the garden
in the morning of the clear autumn that she had left 
      and to stand afterward in the turning daylight

      * * *

There are the yellow beads of the stonecrops and the twisted flags 
      of dried irises knuckled into the hollows
of moss and rubbly limestone on the waves of the low wall
      the ivy has climbed along them where the weasel ran 
the light has kindled to gold the late leaves of the cherry tree
      over the lane by the house chimney there is the roof 
and the window looking out over the garden
      summer and winter there is the field below the house
there is the broad valley far below them all with the curves 
      of the river a strand of sky threaded through it
and the notes of bells rising out of it faint as smoke
      and there beyond the valley above the rim of the wall
the line of mountains I recognize like a line of writing
      that has come back when I had thought it was forgotten


Good People


From the kindness of my parents   
I suppose it was that I held   
that belief about suffering   

imagining that if only   
it could come to the attention   
of any person with normal   
feelings certainly anyone   
literate who might have gone   

to college they would comprehend   
pain when it went on before them   
and would do something about it   
whenever they saw it happen   
in the time of pain the present   
they would try to stop the bleeding   
for example with their own hands   

but it escapes their attention   
or there may be reasons for it   
the victims under the blankets   
the meat counters the maimed children   
the animals the animals   
staring from the end of the world


Hearing


Back when it took all day to come up 
from the curving broad ponds on the plains 
where the green-winged jaçanas ran on the lily pads 

easing past tracks at the mouths of gorges 
crossing villages silted in hollows 
in the foothills 
each with its lime-washed church by the baked square   
of red earth and its 
talkers eating fruit under trees 

turning a corner and catching 
sight at last of inky forests far above 
steep as faces 
with the clouds stroking them and the glimmering   
airy valleys opening out of them 

waterfalls still roared from the folds   
of the mountain 
white and thundering and spray drifted   
around us swirling into the broad leaves   
and the waiting boughs 

once I took a tin cup and climbed 
the sluiced rocks and mossy branches beside   
one of the high falls 
looking up step by step into 
the green sky from which rain was falling 
when I looked back from a ledge there were only   
dripping leaves below me 
and flowers 

beside me the hissing 
cataract plunged into the trees 
holding on I moved closer 
left foot on a rock in the water 
right foot on a rock in deeper water   
at the edge of the fall 
then from under the weight of my right foot   
came a voice like a small bell singing   
over and over one clear treble   
syllable 

I could feel it move 
I could feel it ring in my foot in my skin   
everywhere 
in my ears in my hair 
I could feel it in my tongue and in the hand   
holding the cup 
as long as I stood there it went on 
without changing 

when I moved the cup 
still it went on 
when I filled the cup 
in the falling column 
still it went on 
when I drank it rang in my eyes 
through the thunder curtain 

when I filled the cup again   
when I raised my foot   
still it went on 
and all the way down   
from wet rock to wet rock   
green branch to green branch 
it came with me 

until I stood 
looking up and we drank 
the light water 
and when we went on we could 
still hear the sound 
as far as the next turn on the way over


I Live Up Here


I live up here
And a little bit to the left
And I go down only
 
For the accidents and then
Never a moment too soon
 
Just the same it's a life it's plenty
 
The stairs the petals she loves me
Every time
Nothing has changed
 
Oh down there down there
Every time
The glass knights lie by their gloves of blood
 
In the pans of the scales the helmets
Brim over with water
It's perfectly fair
 
The pavements are dealt out the dice
Every moment arrive somewhere
 
You can hear the hearses getting lost in lungs
Their bells stalling
And then silence comes with the plate and I
Give what I can
 
Feeling It's worth it
 
For I see
What my votes the mice are accomplishing
And I know I'm free
 
This is how I live
Up here and simply
 
Others do otherwise
Maybe


Identity


When Hans Hofmann became a hedgehog
somewhere in a Germany that has
vanished with its forests and hedgerows
Shakespeare would have been a young actor
starting out in a country that was
only a word to Hans who had learned
from those who had painted animals
only from hearing tales about them
without ever setting eyes on them
or from corpses with the lingering
light mute and deathly still forever
held fast in the fur or the feathers
hanging or lying on a table
and he had learned from others who had
arranged the corpses of animals
as though they were still alive in full
flight or on their way but this hedgehog
was there in the same life as his own
looking around at him with his brush
of camel hair and his stretched parchment
of sheepskin as he turned to each sharp
particular quill and every black
whisker on the long live snout and those
flat clawed feet made only for trundling
and for feeling along the dark undersides
of stones and as Hans took them in he
turned into the Hans that we would see

In the Winter of My Thirty-Eighth Year


It sounds unconvincing to say When I was young
Though I have long wondered what it would be like
To be me now
No older at all it seems from here
As far from myself as ever

Walking in fog and rain and seeing nothing
I imagine all the clocks have died in the night
Now no one is looking I could choose my age
It would be younger I suppose so I am older
It is there at hand I could take it
Except for the things I think I would do differently
They keep coming between they are what I am
They have taught me little I did not know when I was young

There is nothing wrong with my age now probably
It is how I have come to it
Like a thing I kept putting off as I did my youth

There is nothing the matter with speech
Just because it lent itself
To my uses

Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars
It is my emptiness among them
While they drift farther away in the invisible morning


In Time


The night the world was going to end
when we heard those explosions not far away
and the loudspeakers telling us
about the vast fires on the backwater
consuming undisclosed remnants
and warning us over and over
to stay indoors and make no signals
you stood at the open window
the light of one candle back in the room
we put on high boots to be ready 
for wherever we might have to go
and we got out the oysters and sat
at the small table feeding them
to each other first with the fork
then from our mouths to each other
until there were none and we stood up
and started to dance without music
slowly we danced around and around
in circles and after a while we hummed
when the world was about to end
all those years all those nights ago


Memorandum


Save these words for a while because
of something they remind you of
although you cannot remember
what that is a sense that is part
dust and part the light of morning

you were about to say a name
and it is not there I forget
them too I am learning to pray
to Perdita to whom I said
nothing at the time and now she
cannot hear me as far as I
know but the day goes on looking

the names often change more slowly
than the meanings whole families
grow up in them and then are gone
into the anonymous sky
oh Perdita does the hope go on
after the names are forgotten

and is the pain of the past done
when the calling has stopped and those
betrayals so long repeated
that they are taken for granted
as the shepherd does with the sheep


Native Trees


Neither my father nor my mother knew   
the names of the trees   
where I was born 
what is that 
I asked and my 
father and mother did not 
hear they did not look where I pointed   
surfaces of furniture held   
the attention of their fingers   
and across the room they could watch 
walls they had forgotten   
where there were no questions   
no voices and no shade 

Were there trees 
where they were children   
where I had not been   
I asked 
were there trees in those places 
where my father and my mother were born   
and in that time did 
my father and my mother see them 
and when they said yes it meant 
they did not remember 
What were they I asked what were they   
but both my father and my mother 
said they never knew


Night Singing


Long after Ovid’s story of Philomela
      has gone out of fashion and after the testimonials
of Hafiz and Keats have been smothered in comment
      and droned dead in schools and after Eliot has gone home
from the Sacred Heart and Ransom has spat and consigned
      to human youth what he reduced to fairy numbers
after the name has become slightly embarrassing
      and dried skins have yielded their details and tapes have been
slowed and analyzed and there is nothing at all
      for me to say one nightingale is singing
nearby in the oaks where I can see nothing but darkness
      and can only listen and ride out on the long note’s
invisible beam that wells up and bursts from its
      unknown star on on on never returning
never the same never caught while through the small leaves
      of May the starlight glitters from its own journeys
once in the ancestry of this song my mother visited here
      lightning struck the locomotive in the mountains
it had never happened before and there were so many
      things to tell that she had just seen and would never
have imagined now a field away I hear another
      voice beginning and on the slope there is a third
not echoing but varying after the lives
      after the goodbyes after the faces and the light
after the recognitions and the touching and tears
      those voices go on rising if I knew I would hear
in the last dark that singing I know how I would listen


Separation


Your absence has gone through me   
Like thread through a needle. 
Everything I do is stitched with its color.


Sire


Here comes the shadow not looking where it is going,   
And the whole night will fall; it is time. 
Here comes the little wind which the hour 
Drags with it everywhere like an empty wagon through leaves.   
Here comes my ignorance shuffling after them 
Asking them what they are doing. 

Standing still, I can hear my footsteps   
Come up behind me and go on 
Ahead of me and come up behind me and 
With different keys clinking in the pockets, 
And still I do not move. Here comes 
The white-haired thistle seed stumbling past through the branches   
Like a paper lantern carried by a blind man. 
I believe it is the lost wisdom of my grandfather 
Whose ways were his own and who died before I could ask. 

Forerunner, I would like to say, silent pilot,   
Little dry death, future, 
Your indirections are as strange to me 
As my own. I know so little that anything   
You might tell me would be a revelation. 

Sir, I would like to say, 
It is hard to think of the good woman   
Presenting you with children, like cakes,   
Granting you the eye of her needle,   
Standing in doorways, flinging after you   
Little endearments, like rocks, or her silence   
Like a whole Sunday of bells. Instead, tell me:   
Which of my many incomprehensions 
Did you bequeath me, and where did they take you? Standing 
In the shoes of indecision, I hear them   
Come up behind me and go on ahead of me 
Wearing boots, on crutches, barefoot, they could never 
Get together on any door-sill or destination— 
The one with the assortment of smiles, the one   
Jailed in himself like a forest, the one who comes 
Back at evening drunk with despair and turns 
Into the wrong night as though he owned it—oh small 
Deaf disappearance in the dusk, in which of their shoes 
Will I find myself tomorrow?


Small Woman on Swallow Street


Four feet up, under the bruise-blue 
Fingered hat-felt, the eyes begin. The sly brim   
Slips over the sky, street after street, and nobody   
Knows, to stop it. It will cover 
The whole world, if there is time. Fifty years’   
Start in gray the eyes have; you will never   
Catch up to where they are, too clever   
And always walking, the legs not long but   
The boots big with wide smiles of darkness   
Going round and round at their tops, climbing.   
They are almost to the knees already, where   
There should have been ankles to stop them.   
So must keep walking all the time, hurry, for   
The black sea is down where the toes are   
And swallows and swallows all. A big coat 
Can help save you. But eyes push you down; never   
Meet eyes. There are hands in hands, and love   
Follows its furs into shut doors; who 
Shall be killed first? Do not look up there: 
The wind is blowing the building-tops, and a hand   
Is sneaking the whole sky another way, but   
It will not escape. Do not look up. God is   
On High. He can see you. You will die.


Some Last Questions


What is the head 
                         a. Ash   
What are the eyes 
                         a. The wells have fallen in and have   
                              Inhabitants 
What are the feet 
                         a. Thumbs left after the auction 
No what are the feet 
                         a. Under them the impossible road is moving   
                              Down which the broken necked mice push   
                              Balls of blood with their noses 
What is the tongue 
                         a. The black coat that fell off the wall 
                              With sleeves trying to say something 
What are the hands 
                         a. Paid 
No what are the hands 
                         a. Climbing back down the museum wall 
                              To their ancestors the extinct shrews that will   
                              Have left a message 
What is the silence 
                        a. As though it had a right to more 
Who are the compatriots 
                        a. They make the stars of bone


Song of Three Smiles


Let me call a ghost,   
Love, so it be little:   
In December we took 
No thought for the weather. 

Whom now shall I thank   
For this wealth of water?   
Your heart loves harbors   
Where I am a stranger. 

Where was it we lay 
Needing no other 
Twelve days and twelve nights   
In each other’s eyes? 

Or was it at Babel 
And the days too small   
We spoke our own tongue   
Needing no other? 

If a seed grow green   
Set a stone upon it   
That it learn thereby   
Holy charity. 

If you must smile 
Always on that other, 
Cut me from ear to ear   
And we all smile together.


St Vincent’s


Thinking of rain clouds that rose over the city   
on the first day of the year 

in the same month 
I consider that I have lived daily and with 

eyes open and ears to hear 
these years across from St Vincent’s Hospital   
above whose roof those clouds rose 

its bricks by day a French red under 
cross facing south 
blown-up neo-classic facades the tall 
dark openings between columns at 
the dawn of history   
exploded into many windows 
in a mortised face 

inside it the ambulances have unloaded 
after sirens’ howling nearer through traffic on   
Seventh Avenue long 
ago I learned not to hear them 
even when the sirens stop 

they turn to back in 
few passers-by stay to look   
and neither do I 

at night two long blue 
windows and one short one on the top floor   
burn all night 
many nights when most of the others are out   
on what floor do they have 
anything 

I have seen the building drift moonlit through geraniums   
late at night when trucks were few 
moon just past the full 
upper windows parts of the sky 
as long as I looked 
I watched it at Christmas and New Year 
early in the morning I have seen the nurses ray out through   
arterial streets 
in the evening have noticed internes blocks away 
on doorsteps one foot in the door 

I have come upon the men in gloves taking out   
the garbage at all hours   
piling up mountains of 
plastic bags white strata with green intermingled and 
black 
I have seen one pile 
catch fire and studied the cloud 
at the ends of the jets of the hoses 
the fire engines as near as that 
red beacons and 
machine-throb heard by the whole body 
I have noticed molded containers stacked outside   
a delivery entrance on Twelfth Street 
whether meals from a meal factory made up with those   
mummified for long journeys by plane 
or specimens for laboratory 
examination sealed at the prescribed temperatures   
either way closed delivery 

and approached faces staring from above   
crutches or tubular clamps 
out for tentative walks 
have paused for turtling wheel-chairs 
heard visitors talking in wind on each corner   
while the lights changed and 
hot dogs were handed over at the curb   
in the middle of afternoon 
mustard ketchup onions and relish 
and police smelling of ether and laundry   
were going back 

and I have known them all less than the papers of our days   
smoke rises from the chimneys do they have an incinerator 
what for 
how warm do they believe they have to maintain the air 
in there 
several of the windows appear   
to be made of tin 
but it may be the light reflected 

I have imagined bees coming and going 
on those sills though I have never seen them 

who was St Vincent


Star


All the way north on the train the sun   
followed me followed me without moving   
still the sun of that other morning 
when we had gone over Come on over   
men at the screen door said to my father   
You have to see this it’s an ape bring   
the little boy bring the boy along 

so he brought me along to the field 
of dry grass hissing behind the houses   
in the heat that morning and there was   
nothing else back there but the empty day   
above the grass waving as far away 
as I could see and the sight burned my eyes   
white birds were flying off beyond us 

and a raised floor of boards like a house   
with no house on it part way out there   
was shining by itself a color 
of shadow and the voices of the men 
were smaller in the field as we walked on   
something was standing out there on the floor   
the men kept saying Come on over 

it’s on a chain and my father said 
to me Don’t get too close I saw it was   
staring down at each of our faces 
one after the other as though it might   
catch sight of something in one of them 
that it remembered I stood watching its eyes   
as they turned away from each of us


Thanks


Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is





The Animals


All these years behind windows 
With blind crosses sweeping the tables 

And myself tracking over empty ground   
Animals I never saw 

I with no voice 

Remembering names to invent for them   
Will any come back will one 

Saying yes 

Saying look carefully yes   
We will meet again


The Asians Dying


When the forests have been destroyed their darkness remains   
The ash the great walker follows the possessors 
Forever 
Nothing they will come to is real 
Nor for long 
Over the watercourses 
Like ducks in the time of the ducks 
The ghosts of the villages trail in the sky 
Making a new twilight 

Rain falls into the open eyes of the dead   
Again again with its pointless sound 
When the moon finds them they are the color of everything 

The nights disappear like bruises but nothing is healed   
The dead go away like bruises 
The blood vanishes into the poisoned farmlands   
Pain the horizon 
Remains 
Overhead the seasons rock 
They are paper bells 
Calling to nothing living 

The possessors move everywhere under Death their star   
Like columns of smoke they advance into the shadows   
Like thin flames with no light 
They with no past 
And fire their only future


The Burnt Child


Matches among other things that were not allowed   
never would be 
lying high in a cool blue box 
that opened in other hands and there they all were   
bodies clean and smooth blue heads white crowns   
white sandpaper on the sides of the box scoring   
fire after fire gone before 

I could hear the scratch and flare   
when they were over 
and catch the smell of the striking 
I knew what the match would feel like   
lighting 
when I was very young 

a fire engine came and parked 
in the shadow of the big poplar tree 
on Fourth Street one night 
keeping its engine running 
pumping oxygen to the old woman 
in the basement 
when she died the red lights went on burning


The Nails


I gave you sorrow to hang on your wall
Like a calendar in one color.
I wear a torn place on my sleeve.
It isn't as simple as that.
 
Between no place of mine and no place of yours
You'd have thought I'd know the way by now
Just from thinking it over.
Oh I know
I've no excuse to be stuck here turning
Like a mirror on a string,
Except it's hardly credible how
It all keeps changing.
Loss has a wider choice of directions
Than the other thing.
 
As if I had a system
I shuffle among the lies
Turning them over, if only
I could be sure what I'd lost.
I uncover my footprints, I
Poke them till the eyes open.
They don't recall what it looked like.
When was I using it last?
Was it like a ring or a light
Or the autumn pond
Which chokes and glitters but
Grows colder?
It could be all in the mind.  Anyway
Nothing seems to bring it back to me.
 
And I've been to see
Your hands as trees borne away on a flood,
The same film over and over,
And an old one at that, shattering its account
To the last of the digits, and nothing
And the blank end.
 
The lightning has shown me the scars of the future.
 
I've had a long look at someone
Alone like a key in a lock
Without what it takes to turn.
 
It isn't as simple as that.
 
Winter will think back to your lit harvest
For which there is no help, and the seed
Of eloquence will open its wings
When you are gone.
But at this moment
When the nails are kissing the fingers good-bye
And my only
Chance is bleeding from me,
When my one chance is bleeding,
For speaking either truth or comfort
I have no more tongue than a wound.


The Night of the Shirts


Oh pile of white shirts who is coming 
to breathe in your shapes to carry your numbers   
to appear 
what hearts 
are moving toward their garments here 
their days 
what troubles beating between arms 

you look upward through 
each other saying nothing has happened   
and it has gone away and is sleeping   
having told the same story 
and we exist from within 
eyes of the gods 

you lie on your backs 
and the wounds are not made   
the blood has not heard 
the boat has not turned to stone   
and the dark wires to the bulb 
are full of the voice of the unborn


The River of Bees


In a dream I returned to the river of bees   
Five orange trees by the bridge and 
Beside two mills my house 
Into whose courtyard a blindman followed   
The goats and stood singing 
Of what was older 

Soon it will be fifteen years 

He was old he will have fallen into his eyes 

I took my eyes 
A long way to the calendars 
Room after room asking how shall I live 

One of the ends is made of streets   
One man processions carry through it   
Empty bottles their 
Image of hope 
It was offered to me by name 

Once once and once 
In the same city I was born   
Asking what shall I say 

He will have fallen into his mouth   
Men think they are better than grass 

I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay 

He was old he is not real nothing is real   
Nor the noise of death drawing water 

We are the echo of the future 

On the door it says what to do to survive   
But we were not born to survive   
Only to live


The Way to the River


The way to the river leads past the names of   
Ash the sleeves the wreaths of hinges   
Through the song of the bandage vendor 

I lay your name by my voice   
As I go 

The way to the river leads past the late 
Doors and the games of the children born looking backwards   
They play that they are broken glass 
The numbers wait in the halls and the clouds 
Call 
From windows 
They play that they are old they are putting the horizon   
Into baskets they are escaping they are 
Hiding 

I step over the sleepers the fires the calendars   
My voice turns to you 

I go past the juggler’s condemned building the hollow   
Windows gallery 
Of invisible presidents the same motion in them all   
In a parked cab by the sealed wall the hats are playing   
Sort of poker with somebody’s 

Old snapshots game I don’t understand they lose   
The rivers one 
After the other I begin to know where I am   
I am home 

Be here the flies from the house of the mapmaker   
Walk on our letters I can tell 
And the days hang medals between us 
I have lit our room with a glove of yours be   
Here I turn 
To your name and the hour remembers 
Its one word 
Now 

Be here what can we 
Do for the dead the footsteps full of money   
I offer you what I have my 
Poverty 

To the city of wires I have brought home a handful 
Of water I walk slowly 
In front of me they are building the empty 
Ages I see them reflected not for long 
Be here I am no longer ashamed of time it is too brief its hands   
Have no names 
I have passed it I know 

         Oh Necessity you with the face you with   
         All the faces

To Luck


In the cards and at the bend in the road   
we never saw you   
in the womb and in the crossfire   
in the numbers   
whatever you had your hand in   
which was everything   
we were told never to put   
our faith in you   
to bow to you humbly after all   
because in the end there was nothing   
else we could do   
but not to believe in you   

still we might coax you with pebbles   
kept warm in the hand   
or coins or the relics   
of vanished animals   
observances rituals   
not binding upon you   
who make no promises   
we might do such things only   
not to neglect you   
and risk your disfavor   
oh you who are never the same   
who are secret as the day when it comes   
you whom we explain   
as often as we can   
without understanding


To the Blank Spaces


For longer than by now I can believe 
I assumed that you had nothing to do 
with each other I thought you had arrived 
                  whenever that had been 

more solitary than single snowflakes 
with no acquaintance or understanding 
running among you guiding your footsteps 
                  somewhere ahead of me 

in your own time oh white lakes on the maps 
that I copied and gaps on the paper 
for the names that were to appear in them 
                  sometimes a doorway or 

window sometimes an eye sometimes waking 
without knowing the place in the whole night 
I might have guessed from the order in which 
                  you turned up before me 

and from the way I kept looking at you 
as though I recognized something in you 
that you were all words out of one language 
                  tracks of the same creature


To the Consolations of Philosophy


Thank you but 
not just at the moment 

I know you will say 
I have said that before 
I know you have been 
there all along somewhere 
in another time zone 

I studied once 
those beautiful instructions 
when I was young and 
far from here 
they seemed distant then 
they seem distant now 
from everything I remember 

I hope they stayed with you 
when the noose started to tighten 
and you could say no more 
and after wisdom 
and the days of iron 
the eyes started from your head 

I know the words 
must have been set down 
partly for yourself 
unjustly condemned after 
a good life 

I know the design 
of the world is beyond 
our comprehension 
thank you 
but grief is selfish and in 
the present when 
the stars do not seem to move 
I was not listening 

I know it is not 
sensible to expect 
fortune to grant her 
gifts forever 
I know


To the Light of September


When you are already here 
you appear to be only 
a name that tells of you 
whether you are present or not 

and for now it seems as though 
you are still summer 
still the high familiar 
endless summer 
yet with a glint 
of bronze in the chill mornings 
and the late yellow petals 
of the mullein fluttering 
on the stalks that lean 
over their broken 
shadows across the cracked ground 

but they all know 
that you have come 
the seed heads of the sage 
the whispering birds 
with nowhere to hide you 
to keep you for later 

you 
who fly with them 

you who are neither 
before nor after 
you who arrive 
with blue plums 
that have fallen through the night 

perfect in the dew


To the New Year


With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible



Vixen


Comet of stillness princess of what is over
       high note held without trembling without voice without sound
aura of complete darkness keeper of the kept secrets
       of the destroyed stories the escaped dreams the sentences
never caught in words warden of where the river went
       touch of its surface sibyl of the extinguished
window onto the hidden place and the other time
       at the foot of the wall by the road patient without waiting
in the full moonlight of autumn at the hour when I was born
       you no longer go out like a flame at the sight of me
you are still warmer than the moonlight gleaming on you
       even now you are unharmed even now perfect
as you have always been now when your light paws are running
       on the breathless night on the bridge with one end I remember you
when I have heard you the soles of my feet have made answer
       when I have seen you I have waked and slipped from the calendars
from the creeds of difference and the contradictions
       that were my life and all the crumbling fabrications
as long as it lasted until something that we were
       had ended when you are no longer anything
let me catch sight of you again going over the wall
       and before the garden is extinct and the woods are figures
guttering on a screen let my words find their own
       places in the silence after the animals


Little Soul


Little soul little stray 
little drifter 
now where will you stay 
all pale and all alone 
after the way 
you used to make fun of things