Dark Wild Realm Read online

  "As far as the eye could see," though

  few cared to look, was across the valley

  to the other mountain, whose ridge

  stood gaffed with broadcast towers, bright

  harpoons quivering out our songs.

  "Oh, wouldn't it be nice," the Beach Boys

  harmonized. And it was. Sometimes I saw

  the Milky Way invade the grid,Andromeda,

  Draco, and great Betelgeuse bridging

  the avenues and lanes, filling up acres

  of vast parking lots. Sometimes I stared

  powerfully into space where glowworms

  of matter spun in pinwheels of gas.

  What does it mean to be alive?

  a voice asked. What does it mean

  to have a voice speaking from inside?

  Once I found a cockpit canopy from

  a fighter jet in my neighbor's yard,

  where it had fallen from the sky.

  No one ever claimed it, such a large,

  specific, useless thing, like the shoe

  a giant leaves behind, like a mountain

  from childhood—missing or pulverized—

  it leaves a shape that once you see it

  overwhelms the mind or makes a cloud

  that is the shape of what the mountain was,

  the sea floor covered with the sea.

  "Oh, wouldn't it be nice," I used to sing,

  and the mountains all around me answered,

  but not the question I had asked.

  SINGING, 5 A.M.

  Yesterday when it began,

  I think I laughed myself awake—

  so perfect, and clear, so pre-recorded,

  so much the birds of the neighborhood

  doing what they're supposed to do.

  And you waking next but not laughing,

  not at all, not even aware yet

  of how loud the morning was becoming.

  But when I turned wanting to face you

  and brushed your hip, we came alive

  to the air—or the air enlivened us.

  Well, it was dark. Neither of us could see,

  though we were laughing,

  which is what astonishment did to us,

  even before we felt grateful

  or dissatisfied, even before we knew

  we'd been waiting—awake or asleep—for the birds,

  so early and for what?

  OUT OF WHOLE CLOTH

  In the mirror above the sink

  an open mouth sings

  and a shower curtain breathes.

  They're the elected delegates,

  the weave and pattern,

  of your own arabesque,

  what fills the vessel

  when the vessel's ready to be filled.

  Water run over hands, and hands:

  a cat's cradle,

  a darn's cicatrix—a star

  of the night's mending.

  This is the shadow you put on,

  the gown of torn sleep,

  zippered and sleeveless, shawl

  or towel, skin of your mother

  or father that surrounds you

  in the hours remaining.

  THEIR WEIGHT

  Swallows, phoebes, flycatchers,

  chickadees, warblers,

  and some terns and sparrows

  are less than an ounce,

  and are so little of water,

  more hollow than bone,

  though of substance

  in boughs and leaves,

  where they perch and fly,

  for how little they want

  of what matters, bright

  and unmistakable—aspiring,

  disappearing—not of who they are

  but of what.

  MINE OWN JOHN CLARE

  He was the first person I knew who spoke to God

  and to whom God replied. And he was the first person I knew

  who had written the great works of whomever you might

  name—

  mine own T. S. Eliot—though he affected no accent

  and wore a shrunken Grateful Dead T-shirt.

  It was not only madness that possessed him;

  he had convictions and discernments, fine and fierce—

  he rode a tricycle, small as it was,

  back and forth from Pangaea to the End of the World

  with a stop at the San Andreas Fault, where he lifted it,

  wheels spinning, over the crack that runs to the center of the

  earth,

  meaning he had circled all night in an empty parking lot

  until his brother tracked him down and took him home.

  He had moods and passions: months corresponding

  with Germaine Greer and the articles he wrote for Rolling Stone

  that appeared confoundedly under bylines not his own.

  Once he spoke of walking three days from the northern high

  country

  to the southern valleys, and toward the end, lost, hungry, he heard

  a voice telling him to eat the grass. Grass contains

  the secret whisperings of love, he said. But you had to crop

  the tips of the blades and you had to be on your knees

  with your head bowed and your eyes closed, and your lips made

  the bitter taste sweet. Sometimes when he talked like this

  he was also crying, because, he explained, the grass contains wild

  onion

  and other truthful pungencies God requires me to eat.

  And sometimes— look at me! —he'd put his face so close to

  mine

  I no longer saw him but the parts that he contained: pores

  and blemishes, the cheek's sharp contours, and his eyes,

  dark, filmy patches, watery with years of homelessness ahead

  but alive, fierce, and, as I pulled away, unforgiving.

  ELEGY FOR A LONG-DEAD FRIEND

  Last night when you appeared,

  you brought the sacks of shoes

  and folded clothes that stood

  waiting in your garage

  for someone else to remove

  the day you died.

  Because you were laid out

  at the coroner's when I arrived

  you couldn't know what I saw:

  boots and sneakers, sandals

  jammed in grocery bags, shirts

  and pants no longer stylish.

  Months before, what was it

  you said? "Don't come around

  here again." So why these visits?

  Why the burden of this evidence?

  And silent as you are,

  does your presence mean forgiveness?

  There was also, you should know,

  a flat tire that gave your car

  a slouched, defeated look.

  I saw it before I saw the discards.

  In Dante's hell the souls

  spend their time repaying themselves

  with their own sins. He witnessed

  their anguish but was rarely moved,

  and Virgil never. Next time

  you visit, bring that tire,

  wear it like a necklace,

  and we'll set it on fire.

  A WINTER FEEDING

  After two days of snow,

  sun, and then dozens

  of robins landing in

  the column-high trunk

  of an oak shorn of limbs

  but sheathed in vines—

  and then a ravaging

  of something unseen

  that the leaves hide.

  And that's how it felt

  to have made the cold

  surface of perfection

  reflect the mind's

  starving and brilliant

  hunger, and then have

  the world feed you

  not only its remnants

  of green but what

  of winter light and coldness

 
; clings as magnificence—

  hollowed, truncated—

  stilled by its own death,

  undevoured, before

  it calls down

  the frenzied wings,

  the starving beaks,

  the ferrous breasts.

  SPELUNKER

  And you like a tongue

  in the mouth of another

  and you like a tongue

  like a root given back

  to the lips, to the petals

  and stem of the flower.

  And you a flower, a vine

  squeezed through the attic,

  white leaf and red foot,

  splayed ear—a hand scraping

  a rock. And there at the bottom,

  the shore and the river,

  the sky far above,

  and you in the current,

  in the lap and rush

  of the dark, your head

  bright with its lamp,

  its light full of tremor.

  THE MESSENGER

  from Euripides' Medea

  The moment your sons with their father

  entered his bride's house, all of us,

  who once served you and who mourned

  your fate, were heartened. A shout went up—

  you and Jason had called a truce.

  This was like music to our ears. Suddenly

  we wanted to kiss the children, touch their

  lovely hair. Overwhelmed by happiness,

  I followed them inside the princess's chambers.

  We understood: she's the woman we must serve

  instead of you.

  At first she saw only Jason,

  but when the children came into view,

  she veiled her eyes and turned away.

  Impatient with this display,

  your husband scolded her, saying:

  "Look at us. Don't revile your friends.

  Your job is to love those your husband loves.

  They've brought gifts. Accept them graciously

  and for my sake ask your father to release

  these children from their exile."

  The gifts astonished her with their beauty.

  She agreed to what her husband asked.

  So eager was she to wear the treasures,

  even before Jason and the boys had reached

  the road, she put on the colorful dress,

  set the gold crown on her head,

  and in a bright mirror arranged her hair.

  She laughed with pleasure at the beautiful

  but lifeless image. Then, as if the gifts

  had cast a spell, she stood up, traipsing

  through her rooms, giddy with the feel of the gown,

  twirling so she could see repeatedly

  her shapely feet and pointed toes.

  But quickly her face changed color. She staggered,

  legs trembling, almost collapsing

  before she reached a chair. One of the older, wiser

  servants believed some wrathful god possessed her

  and so cried out in prayer to Pan,

  until she saw the mouth foaming,

  eyes wild and rolling and skin leached of blood.

  Then the prayers turned shrill with horror

  and we servants raced to find Creon and Jason to tell them the terrible news,

  filling the house with the sound

  of our panicked feet.

  All of this happened in less time

  than a sprinter takes to run the dash,

  and quicker still was the way the princess

  woke from her horrifying trance, eyes

  wider than before, screaming

  in anguish. For now a second torture

  racked her. The gold crown exploded

  in a fiery ring over her head, while

  the delicate gown, brought by your sons,

  ate into her sweet flesh. Consumed by flames,

  she stood and ran, shaking her head

  as if to throw the fire off, but the crown tangled

  tighter in her hair and the blaze roared higher

  as she fell to the floor and rolled

  in the unquenchable flames.

  Only her father could have known

  who she was. The eyes had melted.

  The face no more a face, while flaming blood

  leaking from her head fueled the blaze.

  But worse was how the flesh like tallow

  or pitch sloughed off her bones.

  All of this because the viperous poison

  had locked her in its invisible jaws.

  Schooled by what we'd witnessed, none of us

  would touch the body, but her father

  rushed to her side, not knowing what he'd find.

  Nothing could prepare him for his daughter's

  corpse. Misery broke from his voice.

  He embraced and kissed her, lamenting,

  "Unhappy child, murdered so shamefully,

  why do the gods torture an old man like me?

  Daughter, let me die with you."

  But when his sobbing ceased

  and old Creon wanted to rise, he found

  he was woven to the fatal dress, stitched

  to it like ivy to laurel, unable,

  even as he wrestled furiously,

  to free himself. The living father

  who felt his flesh ripping from his bones

  could not match the strength of his dead daughter,

  and so he gave up and died, a victim

  of her hideous fortune. Together now they lie

  an old man and his daughter. Who wouldn't weep?

  As for you, Medea, and your fate,

  hear my silence. From it will come your punishment,

  swift and sure. As for our brief lives, I've learned

  once more we are mere shadows. No longer

  do I fear to say the truth: fine words

  and clever plans breed folly.

  No man can count on his happiness.

  Some have luck and fortune on their side

  but never happiness.

  A LINE FROM ROBERT DESNOS USED TO COMMEMORATE GEORGE "SONNY" TOOK-THE-SHIELD, FORT BELKNAP, MONTANA

  I have dreamed of you so much, you are the headless hawk

  I found in a field, upturned

  like a plow blade of feathers.

  "Pick me up," you said, "so I might roost

  as if I were the hawk."

  I have dreamed of you so much,

  a tree grew where I stood,

  and grass rose up in flames

  as if the hawk had sown a fire

  from which its head appeared.

  "Pick me up," it said.

  I have dreamed of you so much

  that now there is no dream,

  no field or tree or fire,

  only you roosting in the air.

  "Pick me up," I say, "so I might roost

  as if the world consumed my head."

  BIGGAR, SCOTLAND, SEPTEMBER 1976

  Our visit to MacDiarmid ended

  with him drunk and asleep

  at the end of an afternoon

  in the cool, south-facing croft

  and with his wife enraged

  at our filling his glass

  he held out begging

  whenever she left the room,

  yet how charming she'd been

  about the Cornish and Welsh,

  though not so charming

  about the rest, while MacDiarmid

  kept returning to the subject

  of basalts—the ones on the Scottish

  coast that matched ones in Canada.

  But that was after he'd told us

  about his trip to China with Greene

  in the forties or fifties,

  booze-fueled but still something

  that had never lost its scent

  as a dream. This man of science,

  this communist, beautiful

  in a s
tarched white shirt,

  who'd been propped up for us

  in a chair, one hand cupping

  an ear, the other clutching

  a handkerchief, and his eyes

  alive at the sight of your hair.

  MEDEA'S OLDEST SON

  I loved the sound of running water,

  a fountain in winter, moss on the steps.

  I'd gather pebbles from the courtyard

  and drop them in the sacred well

  to watch their colors change.

  Time's portion was so small to me,

  like the riffle of a current.

  Water led me to her:

  the way it moved with her anger,

  also her love. My father kept a plan

  inside his head. Its shape was like

  the trellis where the birds nested.