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Holding only a handful of rushlight they pressed deeper into the dark, at a crouch until the great rock chamber flowered around them and they stood in an enormous womb of flickering light and darklight, a place to make a start. Raised hands cast flapping shadows over the sleeker shapes of radiance. They've left the world of weather and panic behind them and gone on in, drawing the dark in their wake, pushing as one pulse to the core of stone. The pigments mixed in big shells are crushed ore, petals and pollens, berries and the binding juices oozed out of chosen barks. The beasts begin to take shape from hands and feather-tufts (soaked in ochre, manganese, madder, mallow white) stroking the live rock, letting slopes and contours mould those forms from chance, coaxing rigid dips and folds and bulges to lend themselves to necks, bellies, swelling haunches, a forehead or a twist of horn, tails and manes curling to a crazy gallop. Intent and human, they attach the mineral, vegetable, animal realms to themselves, inscribing the one unbroken line everything depends on, from that impenetrable centre to the outer intangibles of light and air, even the speed of the horse, the bison's fear, the arc of gentleness that this big-bellied cow arches over its spindling calf, or the lancing dance of death that bristles out of the buck's struck flank. On this one line they leave a beak-headed human figure of sticks and one small, chalky, human hand. We'll never know if they worked in silence like people praying—the way our monks illuminated their own dark ages in cross-hatched rocky cloisters, where they contrived a binding labyrinth of lit affinities to spell out in nature's lace and fable their mindful, blinding sixth sense of a god of shadows—or whether (like birds tracing their great bloodlines over the globe) they kept a constant gossip up of praise, encouragement, complaint. It doesn't matter: we know they went with guttering rushlight into the dark; came to terms with the given world; must have had —as their hands moved steadily by spiderlight—one desire we'd recognise: they would—before going on beyond this border zone, this nowhere that is now here—leave something upright and bright behind them in the dark.

When first the apprizing eye and tongue that muttered (Banished from Eden’s air? Or pride of apes?) Sat clinking flint on flint, as they shattered Snatched with a grin what fell in craftier shapes, The law was move or die. Lively from tigers; Dainty on deer. As weather called the tune. Oxen, we learned, would bear us. So would rivers. And that was science. On the whole a boon. What caveman on a round rock dumped a-grunting Rubbed at a rueful hip, brow darkening why? Or gaped at boulders over gravel shifting Until—a splendor of wheel-thought like sunrise! No wonder: such example in a heaven Revving immaculate gears, and at his feet The planet on her axle greased and even. Put any wheel to earth, and two wheels meet. Athens cut ruts of marble; ivory courses Caromed Apollo’s car of talkative gold. And Donne saw wagon-ways. The horsepower: horse Over the flats of Kansas sail-cars rolled. First planks on querulous ground, then treads of met Steel set edgewise, over stone for ties. A mountain? Sawtooth rail or crank-and-cable Till iron took serene the incredulous rise. Compleat with a nifty moniker,Puffing Billy, Best Friend of Charleston, Wabash Cannonball, Cycloped

There were scruffy local prophets just beyond cannon-range in every hamlet. Door-Hinge Guillem, say, in Lebanon, OH — gets no respect — or Josh the Carpenter, for example, out on a limb in Galilee, RI. Him they tend to snub, until winter cracks the mast off the yacht,& the tub starts to founder petrified in flounder- nets (Ocean’s cold reprimand). Time gets old, echoes grow faint; the statue in the park steps into evening dark, amnesia puts on war-paint. Your icon, buried in the garden sank like a thousand ships into the grass. Those lips still graze my ear, sheep-warden — whispering forgotten words out of a lichen-book. Words of the sea. Look, their wave-trace in the woods — a cedar replica. Her milky kingdom was a salt-spray splinter, Noah’s rudder-stump — her shuddering Shaker-wheel spelled freedom.

Who are these masked birds? Not Robin Hoods, for they live in the open woods. They only deal in stolen goods like berry futures, cedar cones, and sweet, sweet, fruit (but leave the stones). Insects they catch on the fly when swarms of them go buzzing by. No need to worry, moan. or fret. Your valuables they will not get.

Even the wind wants to become a cart pulled by butterflies. I remember madness leaning for the first time on the mind’s pillow. I was talking to my body then and my body was an idea I wrote in red. Red is the sun’s most beautiful throne and all the other colors worship on red rugs. Night is another candle. In every branch, an arm, a message carried in space echoed by the body of the wind. The sun insists on dressing itself in fog when it meets me: Am I being scolded by the light? Oh, my past days— they used to walk in their sleep and I used to lean on them. Love and dreams are two parentheses. Between them I place my body and discover the world. Many times I saw the air fly with two grass feet and the road dance with feet made of air. My wishes are flowers staining my days. I was wounded early, and early I learned that wounds made me. I still follow the child who still walks inside me. Now he stands at a staircase made of light searching for a corner to rest in and to read the face of night again. If the moon were a house, my feet would refuse to touch its doorstep. They are taken by dust carrying me to the air of seasons. I walk, one hand in the air, the other caressing tresses that I imagine. A star is also a pebble in the field of space. He alone who is joined to the horizon can build new roads. A moon, an old man, his seat is night and light is his walking stick. What shall I say to the body I abandoned in the rubble of the house in which I was born? No one can narrate my childhood except those stars that flicker above it and that leave footprints on the evening’s path. My childhood is still being born in the palms of a light whose name I do not know and who names me. Out of that river he made a mirror and asked it about his sorrow. He made rain out of his grief and imitated the clouds. Your childhood is a village. You will never cross its boundaries no matter how far you go. His days are lakes, his memories floating bodies. You who are descending from the mountains of the past, how can you climb them again, and why? Time is a door I cannot open. My magic is worn, my chants asleep. I was born in a village, small and secretive like a womb. I never left it. I love the ocean not the shores.

For Marian Before you, I was living on an island And all around the seas of that lonely coast Cast up their imitation jewels, cast Their fables and enigmas, questioning, sly. I never solved them, or ever even heard, Being perfect in innocence: unconscious of self; Such ignorance of history was all my wealth— A geographer sleeping in the shadow of virgins. But though my maps were made of private countries I was a foreigner in all of them after you had come, For when you spoke, it was with a human tongue And never understood by my land-locked gentry. Then did the sun shake down a million bells And birds bloom on bough in wildest song! Phlegmatic hills went shivering with flame; The chestnut trees were manic at their deepest boles! It is little strange that nature was riven in her frame At this second creation, known to every lover— How we are shaped and shape ourselves in the desires of the other Within the tolerance of human change. Out of the spring’s innocence this revolution, Created on a kiss, announced the second season, The summer of private history, of growth, through whose sweet sessions The trees lift toward the sun, each leaf a revelation. Our bodies, coupled in the moonlight’s album, Proclaimed our love against the outlaw times Whose signature was written in the burning towns. Your face against the night was my medallion. Your coming forth aroused unlikely trumpets In the once-tame heart. They heralded your worth Who are my lodestar, my bright and ultimate North, Marrying all points of my personal compass. This is the love that now invents my fear Which nuzzles me like a puppy each violent day. It is poor comfort that the mind comes, saying: What is one slim girl to the peoples’ wars? Still, my dice are loaded: having had such luck, Having your love, my life would still be whole Though I should die tomorrow. I have lived it all. —And love is never love, that cannot give love up.

Let it not your wonder move, Less your laughter, that I love. Though I now write fifty years, I have had, and have, my peers; Poets, though divine, are men, Some have lov'd as old again. And it is not always face, Clothes, or fortune, gives the grace; Or the feature, or the youth. But the language and the truth, With the ardour and the passion, Gives the lover weight and fashion. If you then will read the story, First prepare you to be sorry That you never knew till now Either whom to love or how; But be glad, as soon with me, When you know that this is she Of whose beauty it was sung; She shall make the old man young, Keep the middle age at stay, And let nothing high decay, Till she be the reason why All the world for love may die.

See the chariot at hand here of Love, Wherein my lady rideth! Each that draws is a swan or a dove, And well the car Love guideth. As she goes, all hearts do duty Unto her beauty; And enamour'd, do wish, so they might But enjoy such a sight, That they still were to run by her side, Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride. Do but look on her eyes, they do light All that Love's world compriseth! Do but look on her hair, it is bright As Love's star when it riseth! Do but mark, her forehead's smoother Than words that soothe her; And from her arched brows, such a grace Sheds itself through the face As alone there triumphs to the life All the gain, all the good, of the elements' strife. Have you seen but a bright lily grow, Before rude hands have touch'd it? Ha' you mark'd but the fall o' the snow Before the soil hath smutch'd it? Ha' you felt the wool o' the beaver? Or swan's down ever? Or have smelt o' the bud o' the briar? Or the nard in the fire? Or have tasted the bag of the bee? Oh so white! Oh so soft! Oh so sweet is she!

First:       Brother, remove the tool marks on your scathed skin, brush your tattoos with nettles, smear bearberry juice in the gashes. Crack open the jail-seed. Second:   Tear away the bars which restrain your lean, spare life. Bend your curves in a knot. Brother, smudge your saw-tooth edges. Third:      Cut red seaweed to conceal your gray cadaver; start wetting your skin down; after scraping, drip your bowels of blood, change into wolf. Fourth:    The savannah sparrow flies north. In speech, smell fine-grained hawthorn. Collapse your voice into bark and howl.

Under the locked grille, the animals are crying. You hear them while you wait and when the bus pulls up, Finally, and you get on. That was many years ago. The cellar is given over to new shopkeepers, one after the other, Who fail and are replaced. Even the selfish brother, The crazed neighbor, the criminal in his cell, face of blue Tattoos, has never allowed a living thing to starve As you have. Who knows this except for you and the laughing African with his flashing gold teeth and padlock key.