Read The Martians Page 38

  Green moss, green sedge. Green.

  Not nature, not culture: just Mars.

  Western sky deep violet,

  Two evening stars, one white one blue:

  Venus, and the Earth.

  VASTITAS BOREALIS

  The red rock and sand are all under water

  that we ourselves pumped out of the ground

  drowning what little we knew at the time

  of this place as it was in the air

  like gas burned off in a welder's fire

  The whole world flicking before us like fire

  tossing its orange flames into the air

  that was not here at the time

  we first stepped out on this ground

  where everything is writ in water

  NIGHT SONG

  The baby cries out

  I get up to check

  He is still asleep

  I go back to bed

  So many hours

  Spent like this

  Awake in the night

  The family asleep

  Wife moves her leg against me

  Wind pours in the south window

  Rumble of distant night train

  Crickets' vibrant electric chorus

  Thoughts pulsing up and down

  Mind ranging here and there

  How many times

  DESOLATION

  Above the dip of the pass float clouds.

  Sunbeams spray the skyline ridge.

  White granite, orange granite,

  Patches of snow. A lake.

  Clustered in rocks,

  Trees. Shadows.

  The lake ripples its

  Chill snow reflections:

  Fish, breaking the surface.

  Blooming circles on the water,

  Why can't the heart grow as fast?

  ANOTHER NIGHT SONG

  Toss and turn in rumpled sheets

  Hot but cold. Small pains

  Smolder in the flesh.

  Gears of the mind half-engaged:

  The years grind jumbled and broken.

  Regret, nostalgia, grief-at-nothing,

  Grief-at-something, worry at this and that,

  Anxiety without cause, confusion,

  The past: remember? remember?

  Shards of painted glass. Memory

  Speaks in a language

  You no longer understand.

  The future you understand too well.

  Pain in the knee, prescient

  Sighs from the wife,

  From the boys in their room—

  With redoubled effort, sleep, sleep!

  SIX THOUGHTS ON THE USES OF ART

  for Pierre-Paul Durastanti and Yves Frèmion

  1. What's in My Pocket

  I remember during my year in Boston

  I was walking alone at sunset by the Charles

  The riverbank all covered with snow

  The trees black spikes against the sky

  The river's surface a glossy sheen

  Cold hand thrust into down jacket pocket

  I felt a book I had left behind

  Title forgotten just a book any book

  But suddenly all I saw was joy

  2. In the Finale of Beethoven's Ninth

  The passage when each section

  of the choir begins to sing

  a different song and the orchestra echoes

  these parts or adds their own in a

  thick fugue during which so many

  melodies are being sung at once they can

  only be grasped as whole sound it always

  occurs to me Beethoven wrote

  this music when he was entirely

  deaf for him it was all just patterns

  on a page he had to imagine the confluence

  of voices singing in his mind he had

  to be a novelist

  3. Reading Emerson's Journal

  “Grief runs off us

  Like water off a duck"

  Ah Waldo Waldo

  If only it were so

  But it is the verso

  Grief seeps in us

  Like a blotter takes ink

  4. The Walkman

  Running to Satyagraha

  I saw a hawk soaring

  and every turn every shift of its wings was

  sung aloud in the sunny air

  5. Dreams Are Real

  The day passes into a book

  For a time we are outside

  Time at sea in an open boat

  Rogue waves hit from nowhere

  Cast into the next reality

  Shackleton saw a wave so big

  He thought it was a cloud

  The boat rolled under and came

  Up in a new world later

  On South Georgia Island

  Sleeping in a cave he leaped

  To his feet shouting and hit

  His head on the roof of the cave

  So hard he almost killed himself

  Dreaming of that wave

  6. Seen While Running

  Four birds in the air fighting

  kestrel

  magpie

  crow

  hawk

  all involved spinning

  in a brief spat overhead

  CROSSING MATHER PASS

  At the turning point of my life

  I hiked toward Mather Pass.

  With every step clouds thickened above

  Until the world was roofed in gray.

  Thunder rolled from west to east

  Like big barrels over a floor

  And as I crossed great Upper Basin

  It began to snow.

  Soon I walked in a white bubble

  Slush piled on every rock.

  Warm and dry in parka and pants

  I felt my life fall away.

  I gave it up. Fly away

  On the wind, drift into slush,

  I'll never go back! I quit!

  Each step up was a step away.

  A convex shattered slope of stone

  Rose into mist. A boulder wall.

  The pass on top, unseen. The trail

  Swept up without a switchback,

  Right to left in a single shot,

  The Muir Trail crew's one touch of art.

  It cost a life: I passed a plaque

  And read the name: my own.

  Then I was in the pass.

  Flakes blew up one side and

  Down the other. In the lee I tried

  To eat but started shivering. Go.

  With easy strides I clumped down

  The white Ss on the northern slope

  Until I saw the Palisade Lakes,

  Far far below. The sun came out.

  White lace on wet gold granite,

  A new world, a new life,

  A new world I'll make it new!

  I passed two hikers setting camp.

  Did you come over in that storm?

  Yes, I said, I left my life on the other side

  And now I'm not afraid.

  NIGHT IN THE MOUNTAINS

  "Or I can say to myself as if I were

  A wanderer being asked where he had been

  Among the hills: 'There was a range of mountains

  Once I loved until I could not breathe.' “

  —THOMAS HORNSBY FERRIL

  1. Camp

  Stream falling over rock:

  Loud music. Night and a candle.

  Halfway through this life:

  It doesn't feel so long.

  Ridges, cliffs, peaks, cols:

  I'll never stop wanting them.

  Ponds, meadows, streams, moss:

  My knees number them.

  Stars outside my tent door:

  All my troubles as far away.

  2. The Ground

  Candleflame, minutes.

  Pine needles, months.

  Branches, years.

  Sand, centuries.

  Pebbles, millennia.

/>   The bedrock, eons.

  Me and broken sticks.

  3. Writing by Straight

  Can't see the words.

  Waterfall a rope of sound,

  Rushing about, pushed by the wind.

  Trees black against the stars.

  Dim blank white page.

  I write on it and see a

  Dim blank white page.

  The story of my life!

  Juniper, tent, rock, dark.

  Wind dying. My heart

  At peace. A Friday night.

  The Big Dipper sits on the mountain.

  My friends lie in their tents.

  My back against the white rock,

  Star bowl spinning overhead:

  Feel the movement and soar away.

  Who knows how many stars there are,

  All those dim ones filling the black

  Until it seems no black is there.

  And then you see the Milky Way.

  The sky should be pure white with stars,

  That's black dust up there blocking the view,

  Carbon just like us! All flung together through space

  In just this way.

  By starlight everything is clear.

  Trees are alive. Rocks are sleeping.

  Waterfalls, so noisy!

  All the rest—

  Quiet as my heart.

  INVISIBLE OWLS

  I remember our night on the ridge

  I had seen a nook some years before

  Flat sand and shrubs in broken granite

  Right on the crest so I thought I could find it

  And you were game for anything

  We hiked up in late afternoon

  Carrying water in our packs

  Up in the shadow of the Crystal Range

  Up shattered granite all patched with grasses

  Until we stepped back into the light

  We found the nook and pitched the tent

  Between two gnarly junipers

  The sun set in the big valley's haze

  The light leaked out of the sky

  We leaned against rock cooking our supper

  And in the last electric blue

  The richest color in all the world

  We jerked at a flash in the air above

  And jerked again as out of the night

  Black shapes dove at both our heads

  In the dark we could barely see them

  Their quick dives made no sound at all

  Too big for bats too quiet for hawks

  We ducked it seemed at an onslaught of owls

  Out hunting in a little pack

  A strange disjunction of the senses

  Wings baffled to damp their noise

  So we heard nothing except the stove

  Yet saw the steep black strobe approaches

  The braking the sharp glides turning away

  Then one came close we sensed the talons

  I picked up the stove and held it aloft

  A Bluet canister with blue flames burning

  Bright in the dark blue expanse of space

  Beyond it black wings flitting away

  We laughed with just a touch of a shiver

  Actually to be considered as food

  Above the stars popped out all over

  Netted in the Milky Way

  And afterimages of blue flame

  Then we lay in our blue tent

  The moon rose and our air turned blue

  A blue still in us

  It will always be with us

  All the color of the twilight sky

  All the time and space we travel

  The years pass so many now

  Falling asleep owls twirl overhead

  I feel the granite under our bodies

  We soar in blue without a sound

  TENZING

  Tenzing did not speak much English

  Hungry food tired rest

  Paragraphs from a power in the land

  Teahouse to teahouse he led us

  Across land scored deep

  Rivers in mountains no end to them

  He arranged our food

  He arranged our sleep

  He showed us the way

  Up the gorge of the Dudh Khosi

  Green leaves leeches everything wet

  Always within the monsoon clouds

  One evening they cleared and there

  Above the peaks above the clouds

  Another range above the world

  We walked up there

  Namche Bazaar perched in space

  Thyangboche Pengboche Pheriche

  Up glacier canyons up their walls

  Over ice and rock to Gorak Shep

  Dead Crow the last teahouse

  Dawn struggle up Kala Pattar

  Sit on the peak necks craned up

  To look at Everest

  Massive slab bright in the sky

  Sargarmatha Chomolungma

  Mother Goddess of the World

  Tenzing pointed at South Col

  Fabled last camp littered with gear

  Terrible stories corpses

  Tenzing had been there four times

  Portering up and down Khumbu Icefall

  The sidewalk over the white abyss

  Where any moment the world could crash

  And end it all a place in other words

  Like any other place we stand

  Beside Tenzing we do not yet know

  The world and the icefall are the same

  We see it in his face's Himalaya

  Gleaming like ice in the sun

  Windy he said South Col very windy

  He was fifty-four

  Later that morning Lisa got sick

  He led her down by the hand

  Offering tea sips of water

  And brought us down to Pheriche

  Helped run the teahouse while Lisa recovered

  Helped the Sherpani who cooked all day

  Led us to the ancient monastery

  Showed us the wall of demon masks

  Took us to Thyangboche in the rain

  Made sure we saw the monks' mandala

  Five men in red sitting and laughing

  Over a circle of colored sands

  Rubbing funnels with sticks

  To free trickles of red green yellow blue

  Intent then a joke and we three

  Sitting with them through a dark rainy day

  We sit there still in some inner space

  He led us back down into the world

  Down to Namche down down to Lukla

  The little airstrip hacked into the wall

  Of the gorge an outpost of everything

  Led us into the Sherpa Co-op at dusk

  Everyone in there watching TV

  Powered by the Honda generator out back

  A video of the Live Aid concert

  Everyone stunned at the sight

  Of Ozzy Osborne chewing up the stage

  Tenzing the man who led us

  Who took care of us who taught us

  Finished eating and crossed the room

  Crouched beside me gestured at the TV

  America? he said

  No I said no that's England

  A REPORT ON THE FIRST RECORDED CASE OF AEROPHACY

  for Terry Bisson

  On my forty-third birthday I was nearly done

  With Mars the drafts were in a shambles

  Beauty in a novel (as in everything) is

  An emergent property emerging

  Late in the process and before that all

  Is chaos and disorder but my hopes

  Were high I felt that it was coming

  Together I wanted the final push to be

  The convergence of everything I wanted

  Unreasonable things I had in my possession

  Some bits of Mars a gram or two of the SNC

  Meteorite that fell on Zagama Nigeria

  In October of 1962 after thirteen milli
on years

  In space little gray chunks of rock

  Mounted in a necklace given to my wife

  I unscrewed the casing took out a chunk

  Climbed onto my roof at sunset

  A clear day crows flying back

  From the fields the coastal range dark

  To the west gilt clouds above it

  The vault still blue the wind fresh

  From the delta and there I was

  On the roofbeam of my house in the middle of

  My life in the open air about to eat a rock

  That if not fraudulent a piece of Jersey

  Was an actual chunk of the next planet out

  It felt odd even in the performance

  I have never been able to explain

  Myself but can only note that in the

  Attempt to imagine Mars I came to see

  Earth more clearly than ever before

  This beautiful world now alive

  With the drama of an everyday sunset

  Black birds sailing east in lines

  Under my feet my home the sun

  Touching the coastal range I put the rock in

  My mouth all went on as before

  No electric shiver that the sunset itself did not

  Provide no speaking in tongues I bit down

  It was too hard to break in my mouth

  Tongued it side to side tasted no taste

  Ran it over my teeth a little rock

  Most of it would pass through me

  But the stomach's fierce acids would

  Surely tear at the surface of the rock

  And some few atoms I hoped would stick

  As carbon incorporated into my bones

  For their seven-year cycle or

  For good perhaps and so I sat

  Digesting Mars and the view the sun

  Ablink through the Berryessa gap

  The wind rising each life has its trajectory

  Up and down in the shimmer of ordinary moments

  Sudden euphoria stab of grief the pattern dustdevil

  Funneling down spiraling up in most

  Exquisite sensitive dependence

  On unknown factors that dusk nothing of the sort

  Happened it was a matter of will a

  Meditative discipline exerted day after