I knew you were listening
perhaps
you heard
life can become so still
the IV drip
before it falls
earth of the body
where a life grows
the stillness between silence
and muteness
the moment desire forcibly
is renamed
grief
the precise space between
those two words
you loved like a conspirator against everything
that has power to defeat us
you led me from the cemetery
your grip was firm
grief is firm
in the cemetery I understood
we keep what belongs to us
V
TO WRITE
because the dead can read
because she thought everyone came home
to find their family taken
because the one closest to her cannot speak
because he drew love into him from each body he entered
because they are keeping her from him
because the last time they met he misunderstood her
absolutely
because a finger can hold a place in a book
because a book rests in a lap
because words are secrets passed one to another on a train
the same train where letters were crammed between slats
to be found by strangers
because they recognize each other over huge distances
because a true word, everywhere, is samizdat
because everything political is personal and not
the other way around
because forgiveness is not about the past but the future
and needs another word
because the true witness of your soul
is sometimes one you’ve scorned
because it is possible to be married to someone who died
many years before we were born
because he painted the intimate objects of their life together
not from observation but from memory; though surrounded
by the teacups, the flowers, the garden, he retreated
to his small room to paint, each object transformed
by love
because words are mirrors that set fire to paper
because every day she risked her life for him
because he remembered this too late
because he was mistaken
because he was certain
because certainty and doubt consume each other like dogs
in a parable
because of a Sunday morning in London
because of a cemetery in Wales
because of a mountain and a river
because he imagined himself an orphan
because an infant cannot carry herself
because of drawings on fax paper
because she sends her SMS with broken thumbs
and an empty battery
because to be heard we do not need a pencil and we do
not even need a tongue and we do not even need a body
because the one who holds the pen, even if it’s too dark to
see the page and even if the ink is his own blood, is free
because an action can never be erased by a word
because we set down what we cannot bear to remember
because we cannot take back what we sang
A SOUL SPREADS ACROSS THE SKY
Did you know they sent me
from you?
said I must not stay
instead of letting you sleep in my arms
they put me in the back seat,
somnambulist,
sack of grain
I listened to them
as if they knew best
they knew nothing
about the heat between souls
the height of the snow-starched mountain
the tongue that sings and
the tongue that holds its words
for the sake of another
had they bound my hands and feet,
had they pressed a gun to my skull,
I would have fought
but they spoke softly
as if they knew and believed
as if I were nothing,
a poet taken from her bed
never heard from again
they think men weep and women cry
they forget how to cleave to love
while the blade cleaves your palm –
that is how a man holds on to his country
and how a woman holds on to everything
they say: fool
let go. but it’s not the wound
that matters, it’s the soul,
the soul that must be heard
not the wound
they turn away
with everything but their eyes
a year later
I sat at a table across from you
you thought I was crying
but I was weeping
I spoke in code, replacing one sadness
with another, as if sadness
could stand in for the soul
every poem is a shade tree
between us we can say
always
THERE WAS A DISTANT SOUND
was it the sea turning around
was it a soul seeking shelter
in the longing of another
was it the breaking of a vow
was it a bird leaving the branch
was it a blessed second chance
was it an arm across a shoulder
was it the moon across the water
was it you my dear lost father
was it a shadow across the snow
was it the whiteness of a page
was it a word that will not fade
was it sunlight across a bed
was it darkness calling for morning
was it a silent understanding
was it the sky growing colder
was it a heart making room
for the one who has not come
was it love inside a lie
was it a child growing older
was it your dreaming breath against my skin
was it the tiny line that shows the path
between the first date and the last
I DREAMED AGAIN
I dreamed again you were alive, and woke
certain it was your voice
it is water don’t ever, you said in the dream,
think I’ve gone
I woke a little more, a moment or two,
then remembered. Memory makes it so. Keeps you
under the trees.
So I did not turn on the lamp
but lay until I felt again your warmth with mine
heard your voice in my hair
I lay there a long time,
forgetting
BEFORE US
will we travel
to the city where
so much happened
before us where once
you asked me and I
couldn’t will we go
to a place where the past
is new tell me
this winter morning
where that past is hiding
YOU MEET THE GAZE OF A FLOWER
you meet the gaze of a flower
130 million years old
across the table
the same hours for you both remaining
stem dividing the water
into light scent-soaked
the flower is giving you
instruction
patiently you listen a son
a falcon reading a hare
hundreds of miles away in the mountain pasture
you meet the gaze of a flower
like a woman’s face
you rest your head
in her lap
ASK ALOUD
To taste the salt of the stars
in the sea. To love another
more than oneself. To know this
is to know everything.
Do you see how the dusk and rain
are one?
Do our bodies come to nothing?
Not how we fall in love,
but how we fail in love.
Ask aloud what comes of us.
My love, do you understand me?
Not surmise. Sunrise.
Ask aloud what comes of us.
VI
ALL WE SAW
the ocean turned our eyes grey
with looking
what did we think
we’d find beyond
that endless looking
what did we believe
would climb over the horizon
in its endless answering
you understand everything
and place your hand there
hand black from the wood fire
hand-black on my skin
heavy oars swivel in their locks
so known by the waves you were
invisible camouflaged
by immensity
you peered from your hiding place
not hidden at all
the fog ringing
from the first moment you had only
we had only to
bend our heads as if reading
the same book open between us
shelter of hills
grey uneven ground of the sea
grey uneven ground
of the sky
from an incalculable height
from the first moment
we were at rest
the way light falls
and where
you are
is where you have
always been,
looking to the edge of paper that torn edge
of sea
draw your breath
on paper
the reflex before sleep
that wakes us again
dear
one
the evening meal
music filling the house
no words
the house sings for us speaks for us
to reach out your hand
that answering grasp
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
at the edge of the sea a cairn
Beverly Berger
1942–2013
Mark Strand
1934–2014
Ellen Seligman
19*4–2016
Leonard Cohen
1934–2016
John Berger
1926–2017
Claire Wilks
1933–2017
Rosalind Michaels
1922–2017
The drawing of poppies is by John Berger, and the aquatint and etching “Sea with Islands, 1998” is by Mark Strand, one of a series of four. These images were gifts, chosen from many drawings made and given, and my grateful thanks to Yves Berger and Jessica Strand for permission to use here.
An earlier version of “Sea of Lanterns” appeared as a limited-edition artist’s book with photographs by Ewa Zebrowksi.
An earlier version of “All We Saw” appeared as a broadside with photographs by Ewa Zebrowski.
An earlier version of “Somewhere Night Is Falling” appeared in The Day of the Mountain: A Book of Sketchbook Drawings by Timothy Neat.
“You Meet the Gaze of a Flower” makes reference to the 130-million-year-old flower – the approximate age of flowering plants.
My very special thanks to Anita Chong, Sam Solecki, Deborah Garrison, Alexandra Pringle, Jim Polk, Heather Sangster, Janet Hansen, Kelly Hill, Andy Vatiliotou, Jeremy Elder. And to Simon McBurney, Janis Freedman Bellow, Rachel Rosenberg, and, as always, Rebecca and Evan.
First published in Great Britain 2017
This electronic edition published in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
© Anne Michaels, 2017
Anne Michaels has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
John Berger’s ‘Poppies’ is reproduced courtesy of Yves Berger
Mark Strand’s ‘Sea with Islands, 1998’ is reproduced courtesy Harlan & Weaver, Inc., New York
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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