From there on out.
We peer also from the flat
Slant sand, west from estuary-glitter,
From the reed-beds bending inland
At dawn as we do, to the high-ground hard-hurdling
Power of the down-mountain torrent: at a blue-ridged glance
From the ocean, we see all we have
Is unified as a quilt: the long leaves of the short tree,
The tough churchly feathers, dance rice-like this side of
The far-out wave-break's lounging
Curved insolent long sparking thorn, and
The gull's involving balance, his sweeping-through shuttle-run
Downwind; his tapestry-move
Is laid on our shoulders, where the unspilled dead
Are riding, wild with flowers, collision-colors
At the hairline, tended, sufficient, dead-level with us
From now on out.
What visions to us from all this lived
Humidity? What insights from blue haze alone? From kudzu?
From snake-vine? From the native dog-sized deer
Page 39
From island to island floating, their head-bones
Eternal and formal,
Collisionless? We are standing mainly on blends
Of sand, red-rooted, in dark
Near-fever air, and there is a certain weaving
At our backs, like a gull's over-the-shoulder
Peel-off downwind. Assuming those wings, we keep gazing
From goat-grass to the high
Shifts, splits, and barreling
Alcohol of the rocks, all the way from minnows flashing whole
The bright brittle shallows, waiting for our momentum
From here on out.
It is true, we like our air warm
And wild, and the bark of our trees
Overlapping backward and upward
Stoutly, the shocks of tough leaves counter-
balancing, with a flicker of lostness. Beside the dead,
The straw-sucking marsh, we have stood where every blade
Of eelgrass thrilled like a hand-line
For the huge bass hanging in the shade
Of the sunken bush, and have heard the unstuffed moss
Hiss like a laundry-iron. This point between
The baskets and the tree is where we best
Are, and would be: our soil, our soul,
Our sail, our black horizon simmering like a mainspring,
Our rocky water falling like a mountain
Ledge-to-ledge naturally headlong,
Unstoppable, and our momentum
In place, overcoming, coming over us
And from us
from now on out.
Page 40
Vessels
When the sound of forest leaves is like the sleep-talk
Of half-brothers; when it trembles shorts itself out
Between branches, and is like light that does not cost
Itself any light let me turn: turn right thén,
Right as it happens and say: I crave wandering
And giving: I crave
My own blood, that makes the body
Of the lover in my arms give up
On the great sparking vault of her form,
when I think instead
Of my real brother, who talks like no leaf
Or no half,
and of the road he will be on
As my body drops off
And the step he takes from me
Comes kicking,
and he feels the starry head that has hovered
Above him all his life
come down on his, like mine
Exactly,
or near enough.
Page 41
Sleepers
There is a sound you can make, as if someone asked you
To sing between oar strokes, or as though
Your birth-cry came back, and you put it into sails
Over water,
or without vocal cords, like a torso,
Said what it meant, regardless. That is the voice
For sleepers; find it
Use it and you can join them, that assault-force
Without a muscle, fighting for space
To lift in planned rows over graveyards
Like full battalions. Not one can give you the location
Of his stump-stillness, or even one
Of his edges; none knows where his body will end,
Or what it is stamped with
This moment: agate,
Nova-burst earthworm
Owl feather.
Sound off, sleepers,
Headless singers. One.
One, two: Sound off.
Not knowing where your tombs
Already lie, assemble, sail through
The lifted spaces, unburied.
Page 42
Meadow Bridge
There might be working some kind of throwaway
Meditation on Being, just
From what I am looking at
Right here. I can't tell, myself. But it may already have happened
When I batted my eye
a new fix
Of sun lined out, squaring off: a fresh
Steel bridge,
exactly true
To a crosscut of starkness
And silver.
Tell me: why do I want
To put over it, the right hand drawing
Inexhaustibly drawing
out of the left, a vibration
Of threads? This also, beholders,
Is a fact: gauze
Burns off,
keeps coming: the bridge breaks through anything
I can pull from my hand. No matter how I brim, there is
No softening.
Field, what hope?
Page 43
Tomb Stone
This place named you,
And what business I have here
Is what I think it is
And only that. I must ask you, though, not to fall
Any farther,
and to forgive me
For coming here, as I keep doing,
as I have done
For a while in a vertical body
That breathes the rectangular solitude
Risen over you. I want time to tell the others
Not to come, for I understand
Now, that deep enough
In death, the earth becomes
Absolute earth. Hold all there is: hold on
And forgive, while I tell them * as I tell
Myself where I stand: Don't let a breast
Echo, because of a foot.
Pass, human step.
Page 44
To Be Done in Winter
in memoriam, T. C.
What you hold,
Don't drink it all. Throw what you have left of it
Out, and stand. Where the drink went away
Rejoice that your fingers are burning
Like hammered snow.
He makes no sound: the cold flurries, and he comes all the way
Back into life; in the mind
There is no decay. Imagine him
As to behold him, for if you fail
To remember, he lies without
What his body was.
His short shadow
Is on you. Bring him in, now, with tools
And elements. Behold him
With your arms: encircle him,
Bring him in with the forge and the crystal,
With the spark-pounding cold.
Page 45
Moon Flock
No, don't ask me to give you
What happened in my head when the dark felt
It should change: when the black ploughblade
Went through and dissolved. That was bad enough,
But if you want to understand
Frustration, look up while the moon, which is nothing
&nb
sp; But a wild white world,
Struggles overhead: fights to grow wings
For its creatures but cannot get
Creatures to have them. It is known: nothing can be put
Up on a wind with no air;
No wing can lift from stones
Lighter than earth-stones, where a man could leap
Leap till he's nearly forever
Overhead: overhead floating.
No wings,
In all that lightness. You want to understand:
All right. You don't have to look up, but can look straight
Straight
Straight out out over the night sea
As it comes in. Do that.
Do it and think of your death, too, as a white world
Struggling for wings. Then
All the water your eyesight will hold
While it can, will not be lost
Page 46
And neither will the moon
As it strains and does nothing
But quiver
when the whole earth places you
Underfoot
as though suspended
For good. You deserve it. Yóu should be
That moon flock; and not, as you wíll be,
A moveless man floating in the earth
As though overhead, where it is not
Possible to wave your arms
At something, or at nothing: at a white world
Or at your mother, or at the ocean
In shock, that I told you about, all insanity
And necessity when it sees you, and is right at you
Coming
hair-tearing
Hair-tearing and coming.
Page 47
Snow Thickets
Helplessly besieging: it is dim,
Unity wavering
Wavering on us, the land in cancelling flak. From inside, you and I
Are watching gravity come down
In monotonous awe
each flake a part
Of it, or not. With no blinking, we do
As the snow does
eyes burning thorns hooding our tongues
Being born: we watch, under the bush
Being bound, those all-whites yearning
For anvil-points, for contact,
still holding
The airborne embattlement:
Offered and cutthroat lost
Very great winning hand
Down-dealt to the upthrust.
Page 48
Expanses
Enjoyable clouds, and a man comes;
It's true, he's alive, but from this distance
No one could tell he is breathing.
You want to be sure he knows, though,
Not to confuse the sea
With any kind of heart: never to mix blood with something
As free as foam. The color white is wing, water, cloud;
It is best as sail.
Sail.
Drawn always off, off the sea
To the chopped soft road, your look
Goes willingly yonder, to and through
The far friendly mountain
then
Back over earth level-jawed shoulder-energy widening
From water, everywhere there is land,
Brother: boundless,
Earthbound, trouble-free, and all you want
Joy like short grass.
Page 49
DOUBLE-TONGUE:
COLLABORATIONS AND REWRITES
Page 51
Lakes of Värmland
with André Frénaud
Under the terrible north-light north-sea
Light blue: severe smile of a warrior who sleeps in chain-mail
Like a child: sleeps for the many, in water turned to brass
By the dumped cannon of Charles the Twelfth
leave them at their level,
O Sweden, like the ultimate weapons,
Like the last war-dead
steeped in the angles of your just light
A single pine tree standing for my heart, I wish to gather near them
Anything that grows; myrtle, this stuff could be,
Or bilberry; whatever.
Page 52
Form
with André Frénaud
I
Pull out the pissed-on clinkers,
Rake down the ashes of my bed, and come in
And let's do it, as cold as we can get,
Calving into the void like glaciers
Into the green Northern Sea. Give me a cliff-shudder
When you're finishing, before you split off
Unheard, almost booming: cliff-shudder child-shudder
That ends it. We have been here before, as you know.
Page 53
II
We have been here again, humped-up and splintering
Like ice-junk: here it has happened
But we missed it, and dead birds from many migrations
Float eye-up between us,
between bergs, Carrara-piles
Where we chopped and hacked, shattering glass, searching jaggedly
For the radiant nude ice-sculpture
That never showed never shaped itself free
Of us was never anything
But chip-chaff and gentian-blue zero
and, as before,
The glorious being we froze together
To bring forth, that we chiseled toward closer and closer,
Whinging and ringing, weeping
For discovery: that together we have annihilated
But not found, is now no more
Than our two hostile cadavers, together.
Page 54
Heads
with Lucien Becker
I
There is no longer any reason to confuse
My breath with the room's. Sleep empties the pillow;
The world looks into various windows
Where human beings are unfinished,
Like blueprints; no substance has come.
Meadow-saffron dries, tenses. Morning pulverizes it
With a single vague foot, heavy as with
All the sleepless eyelids that there are.
The wellsprings are gray as the sky;
The smoky wind, a wind for headless people,
Flees with the thousands of voices
That solitude waits for, like tide-slack.
Above the roofs everything is empty;
Light cannot get all the way up
To where it was, stalled in dim lamp-bulbs
And bottles drunk dry to hold it down.
Page 55
II
Beyond the sill the day has started and quit.
The sheet has cut off my head; my mirror's
Still deep with the whole night
And the road has made great progress
Into the wall. A fly goes all around
In a big balance. I used to lie here, darling,
With unimproved light: I took it from your brow
To mine, a glimmer over well-springs,
Not zoned, not floor-planned for death.
But a building you can see through is rising:
They are settling and dressing the stones
That pain from everywhere, so long as human,