Poems 1962-2012 (22 page)

Spirit, invited to leave the body,

to stand exposed a moment,

trembling, as before

your presentation to the divine—

spirit lured out of solitude

by the promise of grace,

how will you ever again believe

the love of another being?

My soul withered and shrank.

The body became for it too large a garment.

And when hope was returned to me

it was another hope entirely.

CONDO

I lived in a tree. The dream specified

pine, as though it thought I needed

prompting to keep mourning. I hate

when your own dreams treat you as stupid.

Inside, it was

my apartment in Plainfield, twenty years ago,

except I'd added a commercial stove.

Deep-rooted

passion for the second floor! Just because

the past is longer than the future

doesn't mean there is no future.

The dream confused them, mistaking

one for the other: repeated

scenes of the gutted house—Vera was there,

talking about the light.

And certainly there was a lot of light, since

there were no walls.

I thought: this is where the bed would be,

where it was in Plainfield.

And deep serenity flooded through me,

such as you feel when the world can't touch you.

Beyond the invisible bed, light

of late summer in the little street,

between flickering ash trees.

Which the dream changed, adding, you could say,

a dimension of hope. It was

a beautiful dream, my life was small and sweet, the world

broadly visible because remote.

The dream showed me how to have it again

by being safe from it. It showed me

sleeping in my old bed, first stars

shining through bare ash trees.

I have been lifted and carried far away

into a luminous city. Is this what having means,

to look down on? Or is this dreaming still?

I was right, wasn't I, choosing

against the ground?

IMMORTAL LOVE

Like a door

the body opened and

the soul looked out.

Timidly at first, then

less timidly

until it was safe.

Then in hunger it ventured.

Then in brazen hunger,

then at the invitation

of any desire.

Promiscuous one, how will you find

god now? How will you

ascertain the divine?

Even in the garden you were told

to live in the body, not

outside it, and suffer in it

if that comes to be necessary.

How will god find you

if you are never in one place

long enough, never

in the home he gave you?

Or do you believe

you have no home, since god

never meant to contain you?

EARTHLY LOVE

Conventions of the time

held them together.

It was a period

(very long) in which

the heart once given freely

was required, as a formal gesture,

to forfeit liberty: a consecration

at once moving and hopelessly doomed.

As to ourselves:

fortunately we diverged

from these requirements,

as I reminded myself

when my life shattered.

So that what we had for so long

was, more or less,

voluntary, alive.

And only long afterward

did I begin to think otherwise.

We are all human—

we protect ourselves

as well as we can

even to the point of denying

clarity, the point

of self-deception. As in

the consecration to which I alluded.

And yet, within this deception,

true happiness occurred.

So that I believe I would

repeat these errors exactly.

Nor does it seem to me

crucial to know

whether or not such happiness

is built on illusion:

it has its own reality.

And in either case, it will end.

EURYDICE

Eurydice went back to hell.

What was difficult

was the travel, which,

on arrival, is forgotten.

Transition

is difficult.

And moving between two worlds

especially so;

the tension is very great.

A passage

filled with regret, with longing,

to which we have, in the world,

some slight access or memory.

Only for a moment

when the dark of the underworld

settled around her again

(gentle, respectful),

only for a moment could

an image of earth's beauty

reach her again, beauty

for which she grieved.

But to live with human faithlessness

is another matter.

CASTILE

Orange blossoms blowing over Castile

children begging for coins

I met my love under an orange tree

or was it an acacia tree

or was he not my love?

I read this, then I dreamed this:

can waking take back what happened to me?

Bells of San Miguel

ringing in the distance

his hair in the shadows blond-white

I dreamed this,

does that mean it didn't happen?

Does it have to happen in the world to be real?

I dreamed everything, the story

became my story:

he lay beside me,

my hand grazed the skin of his shoulder

Mid-day, then early evening:

in the distance, the sound of a train

But it was not the world:

in the world, a thing happens finally, absolutely,

the mind cannot reverse it.

Castile: nuns walking in pairs through the dark garden.

Outside the walls of the Holy Angels

children begging for coins

When I woke I was crying,

has that no reality?

I met my love under an orange tree:

I have forgotten

only the facts, not the inference—

there were children somewhere, crying, begging for coins

I dreamed everything, I gave myself

completely and for all time

And the train returned us

first to Madrid

then to the Basque country

MUTABLE EARTH

Are you healed or do you only think you're healed?

I told myself

from nothing

nothing could be taken away.

But can you love anyone yet?

When I feel safe, I can love.

But will you touch anyone?

I told myself

if I had nothing

the world couldn't touch me.

In the bathtub, I examine my body.

We're supposed to do that.

And your face too?

Your face in the mirror?

I was vigilant: when I touched myself

I didn't feel anything.

Were you safe then?

I was never safe, even when I was most hidden.

Even then I was waiting.

So you couldn't protect yourself?

The absolute

erodes; the boundary, the wall

around the self erodes.

If I was waiting I had been

invaded by time.

But do you think you're free?

I think I recognize the patterns of my nature.

But do you think you're free?

I had nothing

and I was still changed.

Like a costume, my numbness

was taken away. Then

hunger was added.

THE WINGED HORSE

Here is my horse Abstraction,

silver-white, color of the page,

of the unwritten.

Come, Abstraction,

by Will out of Demonic Ambition:

carry me lightly into the regions of the immortal.

I am weary of my other mount,

by Instinct out of Reality,

color of dust, of disappointment,

notwithstanding

the saddle that went with him

and the bronze spurs, the bit

of indestructible metal.

I am weary of the world's gifts, the world's

stipulated limits.

And I am weary of being opposed

and weary of being constantly contradicted by the material, as by

a massive wall where all I say can be

checked up on.

Then come, Abstraction,

take me where you have taken so many others,

far from here, to the void, the star pasture.

Bear me quickly,

Dream out of Blind Hope.

EARTHLY TERROR

I stood at the gate of a rich city.

I had everything the gods required;

I was ready; the burdens

of preparation had been long.

And the moment was the right moment,

the moment assigned to me.

Why were you afraid?

The moment was the right moment;

response must be ready.

On my lips,

the words trembled that were

the right words. Trembled—

and I knew that if I failed to answer

quickly enough, I would be turned away.

THE GOLDEN BOUGH

Even the goddess of love

fights for her children, her vanity

notwithstanding: more than other heroes,

Aeneas flourished; even the road back upward from hell

was simplified. And the sacrifice of love

less painful than for the other heroes.

His mind was clear: even as he endured sacrifice,

he saw its practical purpose. His mind was clear,

and in its clarity, fortified against despair,

even as grief made more human a heart

that might otherwise have seemed immutable. And beauty

ran in his veins: he had no need

for more of it. He conceded to other visions

the worlds of art and science, those paths that lead

only to torment, and instead gathered

the diverse populations of earth

into an empire, a conception

of justice through submission, an intention “to spare the humble

and to crush the proud”: subjective,

necessarily, as judgments necessarily are.

Beauty ran in his veins; he had no need for more of it.

That and his taste for empire:

that much can be verified.

EVENING PRAYERS

I believe my sin

to be entirely common:

the request for help

masking request for favor

and the plea for pity

thinly veiling complaint.

So little at peace in the spring evening,

I pray for strength, for direction,

but I also ask

to survive my illness

(the immediate one)—never mind

anything in the future.

I make this a special point,

this unconcern for the future,

also the courage I will have acquired by then

to meet my suffering alone

but with heightened fortitude.

Tonight, in my unhappiness,

I wonder what qualities this presumes

in the one who listens.

And as the breeze stirs

the leaves of the little birch tree,

I construct a presence

wholly skeptical and wholly tender,

thus incapable of surprise.

I believe my sin is common, therefore

intended; I can feel

the leaves stir, sometimes

with words, sometimes without,

as though the highest form of pity

could be irony.

Bedtime,
they whisper.

Time to begin lying.

RELIC

Where would I be without my sorrow,

sorrow of my beloved's making,

without some sign of him, this song

of all gifts the most lasting?

How would you like to die

while Orpheus was singing?

A long death; all the way to Dis

I heard him.

Torment of earth

Torment of mortal passion—

I think sometimes

too much is asked of us;

I think sometimes

our consolations are the costliest thing.

All the way to Dis

I heard my husband singing,

much as you now hear me.

Perhaps it was better that way,

my love fresh in my head

even at the moment of death.

Not the first response—

that was terror—

but the last.

NEST

A bird was making its nest.

In the dream, I watched it closely:

in my life, I was trying to be

a witness not a theorist.

The place you begin doesn't determine

the place you end: the bird

took what it found in the yard,

its base materials, nervously

scanning the bare yard in early spring;

in debris by the south wall pushing

a few twigs with its beak.

Image

of loneliness: the small creature

coming up with nothing. Then

dry twigs. Carrying, one by one,

the twigs to the hideout.

Which is all it was then.

It took what there was:

the available material. Spirit

wasn't enough.

And then it wove like the first Penelope

but toward a different end.

How did it weave? It weaved,

carefully but hopelessly, the few twigs

with any suppleness, any flexibility,

choosing these over the brittle, the recalcitrant.

Early spring, late desolation.

The bird circled the bare yard making

efforts to survive

on what remained to it.

It had its task:

to imagine the future. Steadily flying around,

patiently bearing small twigs to the solitude

of the exposed tree in the steady coldness

of the outside world.

I had nothing to build with.

It was winter: I couldn't imagine

anything but the past. I couldn't even

imagine the past, if it came to that.

And I didn't know how I came here.