Late January. No birds. No wind.
You look, and your life seems stopped. Perhaps
You died suddenly earlier today. But the thin
Moon says no. The trees say, “It’s been this way
Before, often. It’s cold, but it’s quiet.” We’ve experienced
This before, among the messy Saxons putting back
The hide flap. A voice says: “It’s old. You’ll never
See this again, the way it is now, because
Just today you sensed that someone gave you
Life and said, ‘Stay as long as you like.’”
The snow and the black trees pause, to see if we’re
Ready to re-enter that stillness. “Not yet.”
ISAAC BASHEVIS AND PASTERNAK
Old literary privacies are in danger.
Eudora Welty is eighty, and Hannah Arendt
Is gone. The coelacanth is found more rarely
In the coral off Madagascar. Many of us long
For them. The Kabbalist who sat in Poland,
Eating dry biscuits, the shy painter
Sleeping in his studio, watching the light, in love
With green and orange, who has replaced them?
Is a flavor, once in the water, a gift from fallen
Oak leaves, gone? This water stained with old
Privacies that once stood in barrels from Sicily
To Norway—tell me where I can find it.
PEOPLE LIKE US
For James Wright
There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can’t remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and people
Who love God but can’t remember where
He was when they went to sleep. It’s
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time
To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he’s lonely, and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,
You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul,
And greatness has a defender, and even in death you’re safe.
A CHRISTMAS POEM
Christmas is a place, like Jackson Hole. We all agree
To meet there once a year. It has water, and grass for horses;
All the fur traders can come in. We visited the place
As children, but we never heard the good stories.
Those stories only get told in the big tents, late
At night, when a trapper who has been caught
In his own trap, held down in icy water, talks, and a man
With a ponytail and a limp comes in from the edge of the fire.
As children, we knew there was more to it—
Why some men got drunk on Christmas Eve
Wasn’t explained, nor why we were so often
Near tears or why the stars came down so close,
Why so much was lost. Those men and women
Who had died in wars for a thousand years,
Did they come that night? Is that why the Christmas tree
Trembled just before we opened the presents?
There was something about angels. Angels we have
Heard on high Sweetly singing o’er the plains.
The angels were certain. But we were not
Certain if our family tonight was worthy.
READING SILENCE IN THE SNOWY FIELDS
A word I love comes—snow; then fencepost
And dust and grass and night and barn door,
Also lightpole and cottonwood, but seldom you.
That’s how the words flowed when I was thirty,
Or even forty. It’s as if some furtive men said,
“This word you is not right. It would lead you
To imagine closeness. We know that
Won’t happen. We have your best interests in mind.”
The bitter ones—the old ones—lived
Inside the Shirley Temple creamers of blue glass
That stood on our kitchen table; they blessed us,
We thought, along with the County Extension Agent,
The movies, and the Philip Morris Mystery Theater.
Some mornings I close my ears to these voices—
I abandon all the blue glass in the world to them—
Then I too speak this beautiful word you.
WORDS THE DREAMER SPOKE TO MY FATHER IN MAINE
Ocean light as we wake reminds us how dark
Our old house is. That’s home. Like Hamlet,
One visit to Wittenberg is enough, and we’ll soon be
Back in crazy Denmark. I dreamt I stood
In a machine shop; my dead father stands beside me.
We talk, but his eyes remain on my chest.
I say to him for the first time: “Oh look at me
When we talk.” I could see cubbyholes
With dark tools, and a rough floor stained with oil.
Clotted windows, cobwebs, a black vise.
But sunlight outside our windows speaks of ocean
Light, bone light, Labrador light, prairie light.
It’s the same light that glints off swords, and shines
From Idaho rivers some days, and from the thin
Face just before death. I say to my father,
“We could be there if we could lift our eyes.”
VISITING SAND ISLAND
Somebody showed off and tried to tell the truth
And drank wine and went to bed. Someone
Woke in the night and wanted his children
To walk in the grass on this island under the stars.
Someone was lucky. Someone had eyes and found
Stars. Someone had feet and found grass.
Someone loved thought, and knew things to learn.
Someone could turn in the river and go up or down.
Someone thought he was unlucky, thought he didn’t try
To tell the truth. Someone thought his head was dark.
Someone tried to feel as bad as others did; someone
Flapped along the ground to draw the fox to him.
Tell him, friends, that the nest is now gone;
Tell him the little twigs are all dispersed.
Tell him all he has to do is walk under stars.
Tell him the fox has long since eaten his dinner.
A POEM FOR GIAMBATTISTA VICO WRITTEN BY THE PACIFIC
A rephrasing of Vico:
All cultures go through three stages.
Culture moves from the sacred world to the
aristocratic realm to the democratic place,
and back again.
1
We were sitting there, badly blessed, and brooding
On aristocracies near the trouserless ocean.
We knew we were pure prose; the ocean stretched
Out, blown by wind, but we remained where we were.
The sand shifted; all of us walked on flat boards.
We were no one in particular, in our messy lives.
We tended to stay who we were. Our minds stay in this
Particular room with Nils and Judy and Tom.
If death is the mother of fashion, we don’t mind.
I am myself; I am what is around me.
Pinecones fall and stick where they fall.
That is what it’s like when we are born
Not from wind or spirit, but from things.
2
Spirit moves where it moves; that is what
People are like who are born of the Spirit.
For in high air there burns a furious spirit.
It rises out of ground like Milton’s mind
&
nbsp; That meets all furies high above the sea.
It wants to rise. “If music be the food of love,
Play on.” So notes, inspired not by our toes
But by th’inspired intellect, take us
Out of the dark soul-house, upward through turns
And spiral stairs, fighting the darken’d air.
The Spirit carries us, and in our minds
We know if we are high or not. It is
Something like this for those still in the Spirit.
3
The wind blows where it likes: that is what
Everyone is like who is born from the wind.
Oh now it’s getting serious. We want to be those
Born from the wind that blows along the plains
And over the sea where no one has a home.
And that Upsetting Rabbi, didn’t he say:
“Take nothing with you, no blanket, no bread.
When evening comes, sleep wherever you are.
And if the owners say no, shake out the dust
From your sandals; leave the dust on their doorstep.”
Don’t hope for what will never come. Give up hope,
Dear friends, the joists of life are laid on the winds.
FOR RUTH
There’s a graceful way of doing things. Birch branches
Curve slightly upward; or the wind brings a few
Snowflakes down, and then joins the night;
Or you leave me a sprig of chervil and no more.
Each morning we have this new chance. We can walk
A few steps behind the others down the mountain;
We can enter a conversation as if we were blessed,
Not insisting on our old way of gaining pity.
There’s a way you have of knowing what another
May need ahead of time, before the party
Begins, as smoke sometimes disappears
Downward among branches. And I’ve learned
From you this new way of letting a poem be.
A CONVERSATION WITH A MOUSE
One day a mouse called to me from his curly nest:
“How do you sleep? I love curliness.”
“Well, I like to be stretched out—I like the bones to be
All lined up. I like to see my toes way off over there.”
“I suppose that’s one way,” he said, “but I don’t like it.
The planets don’t act that way—nor the Milky Way.”
What could I say? You know you’re near the end
Of the century when a sleepy mouse brings in the Milky Way.
THE
NIGHT
ABRAHAM
CALLED
TO THE
STARS
(2001)
I
THE NIGHT ABRAHAM CALLED TO THE STARS
Do you remember the night Abraham first saw
The stars? He cried to Saturn: “You are my Lord!”
How happy he was! When he saw the Dawn Star,
He cried, “You are my Lord!” How destroyed he was
When he watched them set. Friends, he is like us:
We take as our Lord the stars that go down.
We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.
We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel
The dirt flying out from behind our back claws.
And no one can convince us that mud is not
Beautiful. It is our badger soul that thinks so.
We are ready to spend the rest of our life
Walking with muddy shoes in the wet fields.
We resemble exiles in the kingdom of the serpent.
We stand in the onion fields looking up at the night.
My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping
Abandoned woman by night. Friend, tell me what to do,
Since I am a man in love with the setting stars.
THE WILDEBEEST
Once more the murky world is becoming confused. Oh
The essence of Reason’s House is confusion,
So this development is like the owl becoming owlish.
Arithmetic has failed to bring order to our sorrow.
Newton is not guilty, because the man who
Invents the knife is not responsible for the murder.
Bees, abandoned by their Queen, clump
Together in the dusty light of the hemlocks.
Even programmers don’t know when she will return.
The Herd Girl and the Shepherd Boy spend all year
In spring the lovers receive one night together.
The wildebeest leaps into the river spread-legged
Among the crocodiles; and the wolf packs are sad
Chasing the caribou endlessly over the steppes.
The beaver make their dens over and over. Grandmother
After grandmother dies, and nothing changes.
The Moses of the beaver does not see the Promised Land.
JEREZ AT EASTER
Please tell me why the lamb is in love with the wolf
And why the child’s finger calls the hammer down
And why at dusk Alexander walks toward his enemies.
Tell me why the gazelle grazes so close to the lion
And why the rat makes up games on the snake’s tail
And why the student bends his head when he’s attacked.
One meadow in the redwoods can contain a thousand ferns.
By this we deduce we are living in the serpent’s home.
Each curly fern is his tongue unfolding.
The poet makes a meadow from each leaf.
Each curve of language turns into a lamb’s ear,
Because a genius is a child in the house of suffering.
None of us is free from a certain bend in the knee.
The caws from the oak-bound ravens in the trees
Around our house guide Alexander toward the night.
The old man’s voice breaks as he sings at Easter.
In between the clapping, there’s always a voice breaking.
Last night in Jerez some people lived, some people died.
GIORDANO BRUNO AND THE MUDDY FOOTPRINT
Furry demons come to the door offering separations.
The crane’s foot in the mud is the map of our life.
That sucking sound of the farm boot is the planet’s cry.
Curly hair guards the opening to the womb.
Because there is heaven inside the womb, we will not allow
Our eyes to turn away from a single black hair.
There is so much glory in the great hooves
Of the stag that Tristan tracks through the glen,
And so much fear in the naked footprint near the river.
It’s all right to praise the raven’s dark feet,
And the crows settling down at dusk in the oak,
For setting stars always predict the stars that rise.
The web in the morning speaks of the origin of all dew.
The lovers look at each other’s bodies so carefully,
And they need no more, and see all India there.
What relaxes us comes from God. It was when
He first saw the print of the sparrow’s foot in the mud
That Giordano Bruno knew that the world was on fire.
MOSES’ CRADLE
The Pharaoh’s wives touch the mud with their toes.
You and I float in Moses’ cradle. Dear friends, you and I
Are parted by a thin skin from the ignorance of the Nile.
Ghosts compose themselves from ground mist.
Friends, our souls are moist. “Dry souls are best.”
Plotinus thought so, but he was nursing at eleven.
Some children hear the thin words spoken by the dead.
Men piece out secrets hidden in prime numbers.
Women report what Eternity has told them to say.
Our cradle, like Moses�
��, is porous to the Nile.
You and I will never have one whole day of light.
At three o’clock, a wall will creak, or a hare will die.
Beauty has reached us drenched in birth blood.
As our eyes open, bright blood splashes on the floor.
The baby’s descent gives us a taste for war.
Some souls remember well, climb so high
They are remembered forever. But Macbeth fell
A thousand miles when the feathers touched his face.
THE DEAD OF SHILOH
“A drowsy numbness pains my sense.” Keats heard
The nightingale cry out from the place of war.
It was the thud of the buffalo-killer’s gun.
The slant soul loves to play cards in the serpent’s house.
The crow arrived only yesterday on Noah’s boat
With the mud of Abraham’s earth between his toes.