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Au silence de celle qui laisse rêveur . —René Char By boat to Seurasaari where the small fish were called vendace. A man blew a horn of birchwood toward the nightless sea. Still voice. Fire that is no fire. Ahead years unknown to be lived— Bells from the tower in the all-at-once, then one by one, hours. Outside (so fleetingly) ourselves— In a still mirror, in a blue within where this earthly journey dreaming itself begins, thought into being from the hidden to the end of the visible. Mountains before and behind, heather and lichen, yarrow, gorse, then a sea village of chartreuse fronds. Spent fuel, burnt wind, mute swans. We drove the birch-lined highway from Dresden to Berlin behind armored cars in late afternoon, nineteenth of June, passing the black cloud of a freight truck from Budapest. Through disappearing villages, past horses grazing vanished fields. The year before you died, America went to war again on the other side of the world. This is how the earth becomes, you said, a grotto of skeletons. In the ruins of a station: a soaked bed, broken chairs, a dead coal stove. White weather, chalk and basalt, puffins, fuchsia and history shot through with particles of recognition: this one wetted down with petrol then set alight, that one taking forty rounds, this other found eleven years later in a bog. In the station house, imaginary maps, smoke chased by wind, a registry of arrivals, the logs of ghost ships and a few prison diaries written on tissue paper. Do you remember the blue-leaved lilies? The grotto, the hoarfrost, the frieze? Through the casements of glass hand-blown before the war, a birch tree lets snow drop through its limbs onto other birches. Birch twigs in wind through glass. Who were we then? Such a laughter as morning peeled its light from us! You said the cemeteries were full in a voice like wind plaiting willows—fields in bloom but silent without grasshoppers or bees. What do you want then? You with your neverness, your unknown, your book of things, you with once years ahead to be lived. Your father believes he took you with him, that you are in an urn beside your sleeping mother but I am still writing with your hand, as you stand in your still-there of lighted words. Such is the piano’s sadness and the rifle’s moonlight. Stairwells remember as do doors, but windows do not— do not, upon waking, gaze out a window if you wish to remember your dream An ache of hope that you will come back— the cawing flock is not your coming. Did you float toward Salzburg? A wind in the mustard fields?—or walk instead beside me through the asylum in Krakow? Hours after your death you seemed everywhere at once like the swifts at twilight. Now your moments are clouds in a photograph of swifts. In the hour held open between day and night under the meteor showers of Perseid we held each other for the last time. Dead, you whispered where is the road? There, through the last of the sentences, just there— through the last of the sentences, the road—

Traveler, your footprints are the only road, nothing else. Traveler, there is no road; you make your own path as you walk. As you walk, you make your own road, and when you look back you see the path you will never travel again. Traveler, there is no road; only a ship's wake on the sea.

He finds himself stepping off the bus in some burg he’s already bored with. Picking his teeth for 200 miles—here’s where he spits the toothpick out. Past Holiday Inn the neighborhoods get dark. All-night laundromats where women with circles under their eyes press laundered underwear, warm as bread, against their sinuses. Finally, he’s signing the register at a funeral home where he knows no one, but is mistaken for a long-lost friend of the deceased, for someone who has dislocated his life to make the hazardous journey on a night when the dead man’s own children have avoided him. Once again instinct has taken him where he’s needed; where the unexpected transforms routine into celebration. He kneels before the corpse, striking his forehead against the casket.

Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; she had stiffened already, almost cold. I dragged her off; she was large in the belly. My fingers touching her side brought me the reason— her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, alive, still, never to be born. Beside that mountain road I hesitated. The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights; under the hood purred the steady engine. I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; around our group I could hear the wilderness listen. I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—, then pushed her over the edge into the river.

For you can travel with a screaming red rolling bag and float unnoticed on conveyors, through terminals or you can lug half a moose rack from Maine to Minnesota, carry it like a broken wing through airports as my friend Gro did, and draw only the curious touches of children waiting at gates. But dare to travel with a guitar and invite confessions from strangers in pinstripe suits of garage band summers, invite winks,gotcha smiles, and devil's horns rock on gestures. Invite finger points and winks, the long tongue licks, and the rubberneck glance to check if you are someone famous. To dare to travel with a guitar is to mark yourself charismatic megafauna of the airport terminal. Old friend, what else could I do but carry you? I have stored you in closets, propped you in corners, hunched over you late-nights, staring perplexed at the mysteries of your neck. Body of my body, string of my strings, see how the world began to hum and sing that day at thirteen when I opened the big birthday box.

(To a Man who maintained that the Mausoleum is the Stateliest Possible Manner of Interment) I would be one with the dark, dark earth:— Follow the plough with a yokel tread. I would be part of the Indian corn, Walking the rows with the plumes o'erhead. I would be one with the lavish earth, Eating the bee-stung apples red: Walking where lambs walk on the hills; By oak-grove paths to the pools be led. I would be one with the dark-bright night When sparkling skies and the lightning wed— Walking on with the vicious wind By roads whence even the dogs have fled. I would be one with the sacred earth On to the end, till I sleep with the dead. Terror shall put no spears through me. Peace shall jewel my shroud instead. I shall be one with all pit-black things Finding their lowering threat unsaid: Stars for my pillow there in the gloom,— Oak-roots arching about my head! Stars, like daisies, shall rise through the earth, Acorns fall round my breast that bled. Children shall weave there a flowery chain, Squirrels on acorn-hearts be fed:— Fruit of the traveller-heart of me, Fruit of my harvest-songs long sped: Sweet with the life of my sunburned days When the sheaves were ripe, and the apples red.

I was in Asia Minor in pursuit of distant honor in a suit of finest armor in a forest of pine or planks. I was not lost. Regina (my sextant) stared into the refiner’s flare as evening grew maligner. I was in Kazakhstan collecting rarest poppies. My capstan gave out. I could no more withstand the tides than fall to the rattan mat like Tristan sailing emptily to his mutant island. I was in greater Ghana harvesting marijuana with soul-strafing Tatiana, the local swan—a mortal one, a prize among the fauna. (There should have been a lawn a- gainst her.) You see, I was in Corinth fabricating synth- etic absinthe. I was adamant. The trophy I chased for the ninth night of days was Cynth -ia, succumbing at the plinth. Then to Argentina I set forth with Ekaterina a diminishing ballerina. She pled for fina- steride, having seen a parrot turn bright green u- pon my mythic ocarina. I was in Tel Aviv. Viv- ian (my pigeon) and I were feve -rish from bouts of griev- ous liv- er malaise. We must have been naive -r than a hibernal beave -r, for soon I was in Canada as ever. Had no plan; not a home to hide in, nothing human. Ada (vulgar bird) went wan, bade a screeching goodnight to her one God, a soapstone strap-on. Alone, I ran a do- zen tests: None truer, none sadder.

. . . some days ago I saw the picture of an Angel who, in making the Annunciation, seemed to be trying to chase Mary out of her room with movements showing the sort of attack one might make on some hated enemy; and Mary, as if desperate, seemed to be trying to throw herself out of the window. Do not fall into errors like these. — Leonardo da Vinci It is time to speak of the lies of images, omissions, insertions — imitations of reality, but whose reality, Leonardo? For you she’s in nature — you’ve lavished so much attention on rock formations along your raised horizon varieties of grass in the lawn cloud convocations and the shadow the archangel casts obliterating most of what’s imagined growing there and she, lovely, composed —“ great grace of shadows and of lights is added to the faces of those who sit” beside the darkness of brown plasterwork — her right arm almost deformed, too far forward, reaching out at an impossible angle— FOR WHAT — Botticelli, Campin, van Eyck — for you she’s indoors all decked out in luscious silk and satin, surrounded by finery — tied-back drapery, carved benches, a rug or tiled floor, loggias and archways beyond her wildest ken windows revealing hortus conclusi and winding paths slogging toward the sea And what of all those blues and golds, so rife with wealth in her life there’s only red from madder juice and yellow from kaolin clay and a linen shift all frayed The truth also is a small opening high up on the wall A floor that’s hard-packed dirt And beyond the room, villagers working the fields, donkeys dragging threshing boards over newly harvested wheat AND EVERYWHERE, INSIDE AND OUT,WORLD-MOTHETING DUST For all of you this is an event reduced to a book she cannot read a lily she does not smell a lectern she never owned She might as well comb her hair with a stiletto heel Make of her body a cloud of white tulle Carry a watering can and wear shapely wooden clogs Fake glamour in a black bare-back gown Crouch on the ground flipping coins Pop a pogo stick between her legs and levitate SHE COULD BE ANYONE            ANYWHERE             ANYTIME She could be sitting in her slip, bored, bored to death, the intercom image appearing out of nowhere, announcing a stranger (prima materia, take a deep breath (for divinity to enter the world, your mystery must be experienced Her eyes will go wide, not expecting this Her ears have encountered only silence and the soft moan of a dove (OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO The trees thin The cumulus sky crackles ever so quietly Somewhere a rainbow breaks too loud now too strident He’s gotten in Hail comes in pellets (heavy hitters She will be patient and hear him out though what she really wants is to get back under the covers that are damask, but a lie— (rough-hewn flax is what she’d have) Or she could be blending a batch of myrrh and roses to deodorize the foul stench of the room that opens out not on a vista of budding poplars but on sewage, piles of it come to rot at the side of the road just there, in front of her door where broken planks of wood lean and bleating sheep wait to be herded up the hill But here’s this guy breezing in (Titan, El Greco paint his feet unplanted on the ground (is he preparing for a quick getaway or must he be higher on the picture plane (Tintoretto catches him in mid-flight, a show-off, he (Martini and Crivelli force him to his knees The breeze may be the whisper of something she is in danger of losing (the breeze may be her destiny or his feathers could begin to moult (transaction of feathers, (light as a feather in the face of all that dust she can’t escape or she could cringe at wings, voracious, unfurled, trying to scoop her up, knock her down, drown her in their soft pile, snuff out any NO she stashes in her mind, or the wind could whip his feathers and blow the townsfolk quickly to her side (Today, she knows no one will arrive in time . . . ) Certainly not those people tending their gardens, (as if anyone had topiary trees as Rogier van der Weyden (possibly Memling) shows (read fields of barley and wheat and plows, plenty of plows In his eyes, pools of light map no pollution, only flame In hers, no flecks, no threads mar the cobalt calm until his hail scumbles their surface What is she to make of it Her lids lower Chrysalises, her eyes close on their private dusk (she’s already seen her share of Roman crucifixions (perhaps the future is there and her eyes seek the great above where son and mother will be united (perhaps she conjugates the months— (nine is real— (a number done on her (perhaps she dabbles with using rue to end the thing SHE’S GOT A CHOICE AFTER ALL For the child she will have boundless love For posterity the memory of being For her life no proper translation

It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books— Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

The neighbor calls the Siberian Elm a “weed” tree, demands we hack it down, says the leaves overwhelm his property, the square backyard. He’s collar-and-tie. A weed tree? Branches screen buildings, subway tracks, his patch of yard. We disagree, claim back the sap, heartwood, wild bark. He declares the tree “hazardous.” We shelter under leaf-hoard, crossway for squirrels, branch house for sparrows, jays. The balcony soaks up the shade. Chatter-song drowns out cars below. Sun branches down. Leaves overwhelm. The tree will stay. We tell him “no.” Root deep through pavement,Elm.