Averill Curdy

Until wolf-light I will count my sheep, Adumbrated, uncomedic, as they are. One is perdu, two, qualm, three Is sprawl, four, too late, Night is already a thirsty county in Texas, Salt flat and unremitting Blacktop dry as my mouth, And your elastic vowels, my genial, My electric ghost, my Radio’s lonely station. Because the spectacle Of suffering corrupts us, all punishments Are now executive, offstage. Most presume you a fable: Echoes of approaching bootheels That harry labyrinths of concrete corridors, Or hooded in burlap. We are convicted As we are also pardoned: He cherished His lawn, or afterwards he covered The victim’s face. You make no judgments Yourself. Only in bursal tones, Tactful as the file box That shows, if opened, the neon, pleading heart Of Jesus wrapped in barbed wire, You perform penalties others have scripted, so Untroubled by so many. How long I have listened to you For news of the opal distances,

Never the bark and abalone mask cracked by storms of a mastering god, never the gods’ favored glamour, never the pelagic messenger bearing orchards in its beak, never allegory, not wisdom or valor or cunning, much less hunger demanding vigilance, industry, invention, or the instinct to claim some small rise above the plain and from there to assert the song of another day ending; lentil brown, uncounted, overlooked in the clamorous public of the flock so unlikely to be noticed here by arrivals, faces shining with oils of their many miles, where it hops and scratches below the baggage carousel and lights too high, too bright for any real illumination, looking more like a fumbled punch line than a stowaway whose revelation recalls how lightly we once traveled.

For Audrey Richardson Curdy (1931–1986) It was 1986 , when currencies to be changed Into multiple-launch-surface, anti-tank missiles Swarmed through numbered bank accounts Like Ovid’s seething knotted seed of frog-slime, Which not seldome attracted by the sun falls In little frogs with the rain; when it also rained Radionuclides, strontium, caesium,

The cheap dropped ceiling jumped like a pot-lid boiling when our upstairs neighbor chased his girl that winter. Falling out of summer’s skimpy tops she’d want our phone. Her plush lips creased. Not exactly blonde, but luteous , we thought, pleased the right word was there for that shade of slightly slutty mermaid. Wincing, we’d hear him punch along the floor on crutch- es, a giant bat trying to mince a mayfly. Sex and Violence you called them; Blondie with Dagwood on crystal meth, I’d tell our friends over dinners stewed in noise. Even his truck cowed. Black, smoked glass, outsized wheels flaunted like chrome knuckles we shrank from, ducked, afraid we’d find her later, knocking at our door. Some nights we waited through like captured prey. To you I’d turn in bed, saying the furtive words against your back, I love ... You’d stroke my hair, or hip, all our years the same flip crack, I do , too .

George Sandys (1578–1644), translator of Ovid’s Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologized, and Represented in Figures, and resident treasurer of the Virginia Company for its settlement at Jamestown (1621–1624). i. a long voyage , 1621 I left you where you are: A humming late summer afternoon & mottled by shade a man reading a letter Becomes the image of a man reading That I am forgetting. This page is small yet stout enough To bear me whole upon it to you All the way in London. I may expand Myself at leisure then fold it tight, A sanctuary; Like our vessel christened The George, My letter is another ark to preserve me: George. No midnight is so private as the sea’s: Timbers breathe, a loose rope snaps,& as the wind Shoves you behind then slaps your face, Seeing nothing, nothing to be seen, you feel Unhoused, evicted from time. But tonight, my love, my lamp is feathered, shy, Herald of the next ransack & assail. Behold the storm petrel! gray wick-threaded throat Burning the oil secreted, an amber musk Of uncompassed seas & the solitary hunt, Of error & sign,& That delirium—which turned Our ship’s boy to mowing fields of Atlantic salt. Like windrows he dropped the waves. Until gaffed, pulled like a sleeve Through himself, He will live, tongue-bit, torn. To return likely to a stool set on the shale Where he can mend nets skirted by braggarts Who have never traveled farther Than the smoke dribbling from their chimneys. I try never to imagine drowning. Noisy urgent inefficiencies above, waves Pummeling, sky shredding,& the body Anchored only in its just longing for air. The tighter death’s embrace, the more languorous The moment. So this boy suffered Some vast charity of sight. He was what he saw, an adam. Now he may be adamant & stain & distance; & also that small satin interruption Of terror—the instant breath’s Orphaned by self’s perishing through poetry. Like Daphne his voice is forfeit for the song, But we do not grieve for Daphne. My bird-light gutters. Its call had sounded Like dry wood giving up a nail. What is this your wound that you must follow it? For you I had no answer; consider only the reveries Of the carpet navigator in his room. Listening To collisions of wave & star outside his tower, Rock-rapt, icebound, with a mind by dread & ceremony & the dozen arts of courtesy Girded, he invented those ideal earths in latitudes Unstrung that I now trespass— After I had translated two books To the pouring of seas & clamor of sailors I began to brood long on landlessness, Coming to believe it my sovereign, my home, When on the flat horizon of weeks at noon the flaw: A color merely, private, ethereal, collecting Heft in the warp of time. Days Before we quailed at the barbed illegible pelt Of forest, I wrecked, forlorn upon its savor, Sweet damage of apples Fermenting in rain-soaked hay, Giving way to something ranker— I tasted it at dinner lying on my tongue. I am His Majesty’s servant as my god made me; I am also my damps & exaltations; I am afraid. Heaven & hell enlisted their geographers, A map has opened the soul’s five hinges,& Persian With expectance how often have I feasted On departure. London, Naples, Marriage, Damascus, now your dear person. So much flowing through me My sight has silted dark my mouth. I beg All the many tongues your wonder cabinet holds —Dolphin, mockingbird, Muscovy bear—to tell This arrival, so unforeseen, disorderly As my hope you will not forget who I was,& am, Unwildered, unwestered, constant, returning. Bless you where you are,& where you would be When you are there,& bring you thither. My love, What may never not be strange? What, This morning, will wake & make me new. ii. winter 1621 It begins like a legend told to a fretful child: It was, it was, and it was not. It begins As if with symptoms of that sweat I hear, so late (oh not Thank God too late), you were spared: A little blush along the throat. A restlessness. Then the silkworm’s casement, tapering & pale as the egg of a chimney-swift, Which we will convert to cloth To cover the naked Indian. A bobbin, Which dropped in my tisane would ravel the maelstrom Of silk. Spindle of whirlwind, spoonful Of follow. The thread’s stained scalding mile Pours out my glass tempered in our kiln, As each new settler is also seasoned In this furnace, our new-found land. (As the man drowning believes he digests The mild water, as the damned marry flame & yet blister, so do I know myself Grasped by change at the stroke of change.) Hold this glass up to your eye & through Its pebbled horizon you may spy your room, See its ire of surfaces sore with chairs. Green grass green grace... Would that I could account this world one Where nothing is lost only exchanged. Without coppice, park, romancely glade, Or commanding vantage, Woods press on us; they fester, & they watch. To the northeast white spruce, Phalanxes of fledging pinions, clamp Root to granite & hoard What they glean off salt-fog, sea-spray,& stone. From ewers of willow-oaks darkness steams. At breakfast I have pinched the plantlets Insinuated by a maple’s winged seed overnight; It unclasps twin leaves, pale hands Loosening the soil of my rest, They never empty of their solicitations. I find no empires here, no apostles or emeralds. Instead, all things a-broil with an awful begetting & my hours unsettled by some new show Of riotous & mystical imagination. Though we might wish to wedge us barnacle-tight To shore’s edge, our foundation raised On marshland recalls this irritable fact— The estuary, a nursery of strange devices, Throws off new forms so promiscuously I wonder how the world holds any more shape Than a dream? From my hand at night (my light A little oil in a dish or a rush taper smoking Not so different from his), flower Ovid’s fantastic shapes, shadows Of an old empire’s former splendor Now perjured by Virginia’s clay & leaf & sand Turned to the king’s profit as iron, silk,& glass. Belief is possible at night, solitary, firelit. Then, I can believe in Ovid’s centaurs, Or at death that he was met by a three-headed dog. I can believe in your letters, which never come. It is for you that I persist In translating fresh birdsong, like this bunting’s Comecomecome wherewherewhere All together      down the hill. (Where did they go, who went before us? Starved trove: scatter of blue beads & a name Grafted to that bald acre. Roanoke. There is my terror & my tale: to go west Under this eternity of nameless trees.) And what will you make of this Humble hieroglyphic of nature I forward to you? Nocturnal, double-wombed, variously called Monkey Fox; Frosted, Or Short-headed, or Indolent. Let this Leafy-Eared Rat-Tailed Shuffler The naturals call Possoun Join your zoo’s other fantasies & with the Little Military Learnéd Horse Enjoy its dish of ale. Its fur is durable; Its flesh wholesome, white,& pleasant. With one hand I can reach for A medicine man’s last breath caught in a vial Or a hummingbird, stuffed With arsenic & leaves & looking Like a fine jeweled dagger aimed at my heart, With the other hand I brush away The web spun in a fox skull’s whitened socket While a wild turkey glowers from its corner Like a small dyspeptic dragon. My cullings do not quite master my closet. When I imagine myself returned to the smells & noise of London, from my stiff knee Sands grinding as I walk, no marvels Except those which the mirror surprises in all of us, The swan-white wing at my temple, I do not know what to hope for: That you do not see me, or that you do, But as though I were pinned under glass. At my windowsill a quince widens A jaundiced eye into the dark where are Real nettles beneath the words & invincible red Root of the madder. As long as any image of this world Sticks in my soul, I remain— iii. spring 1622

You lean disconsolate on your stool, Sullen and certain As minor royalty rusticated to this Unhelpful climate of solvents, gaskets, pliers, and bolts. Because they are new and manifold and useful You feel their whispers against you. The staunch Resistance of objects. How can I tell you O my soul, To exhaust the realm of the possible when Ever the light Is uncongenial as February and your hand unlovely? Like a dog nearly annihilated by nerves And boredom chewing her paw to sore, red velvet, You’ve torn your nails so far flesh swells Closed around each bed like an eyeless socket. That you should be making such small change! Fingers inarticulate as moles nudge a debris Of dimes not thick enough to hide The candy-colored butterfly flaring Across the tender, veined delta of your hand Heralding indelibly the eviction Of this vulgar flesh Or the one word needled in black, knuckle-Gothic

After the trumpets, after the incense There were nights insomnia fathered gods I then rejected as too angry or distracted, Or whose appetite for submission revealed Their own lack of faith.Say our names, All synonyms for trust.

I will take your stony heart and give you one of flesh. The wake     sewing shut those white lips and after    when leagues     and all behind to salt fell     the grateful Spaniards prayed It became their habit     to turn eyes     sore away from surfeit     Rashes and abrasions of spring leaf  stem  vine  blossom  aphid & berry stridulant intricate and promiscuous     without the rose or borage or pomegranate embowered in flaunting silks on gauntlet cuffs     No none of that repose their soldier-love required to root 20,000 had died in Ravenna     He survived without mark to show what he knew how fear cramped each man solitary inside himself until the spark that leapt     stinging them on to violence     the grass-fire battle-frenzy the grass that kneels to its burning Then aftermath’s vegetable melee     limbs and bodies But what is not threat in this contagion and panic of green     Whores  wives  saints  sovereigns this beach     that thick-leaved mustardy shrub     Names he thinks     the names keep slipping Swift     intent     armored obdurate as beetles     no one man felt the wound of where like Adam     too late he walked *     *     * The air     flexing     began to bruise green around them the fresh human injury of them     Like flies trapped in a bottle     they didn’t know what to do and carried on doing it while bird     by bird invisible rescinded its song while the sun     a drop of vinegar in milk      curdled the sky Quiet     sumptuous as pain eased by what hand abrupt as that held in the breath exhausted just before the witch confesses Like an executioner     who ropes hair over hand to bend and lengthen the neck for his ax the wind brutalized palm trees     spun men before it loosely as leaves in a stream He linked arms with another Broken wing     Splintering oar     Chainless anchor dragging through darkness thick with sand and water and noise whistles  braying  drums  timbrels & ululations Pressed all night to the porch of the storm his ear mistook the self’s own alienated music     called it sorcery That the fury never ended he would learn walking the eye of its silence After the hurricane the stunned brilliance     like a spell or question he woke into     waking by himself     to himself and naked as a saint     to discover his ship with its ropes  tools  weapons  salves  Spain was the anchored ship now hoisted on planks of sunlight     over the palm-trees sailing out of sight     The boat sick for such mirth made by root  sap  riverbank & squirrel it would return to that green oak it once had been *     *     * In what hour of what night did he know his soul to turn a stranger to him Pilgrim     he will venture forth across uncertain fields Explorer     he will cry out He may be nothing more than a hide rigid with gore & soil to be scoured  pounded  abused by caustics and by iron and     in watered pigeon-shit     kneaded until supple for the hand— but whose     and must the hand continue to wear     or it will toughen again *     *     * Daily he marched his men into corrugations of blue distances dissolving one to another    like promises of gold & corn made by guides snatched from villages As the Spanish found new ways to die     natives loomed     naked on the horizon they looked splendid & violent as idols     Their women & children restored for ransoms of melons or fish Often some chief would repeat his good friend possessed more of each thing they desired     His noble gestures spread like balm     his speech intoxicating but so militant their hunger     his words came entire & legible to their sense as the amber & musk that steamed from these his fine furs *     *     * His dwindling force through swamps & ambush labored     circuitous     stalled like mayflies in their brevity & towarding and never fable  riches  youth  nor rest to take Only the body with its anxious extremeties     eccentric     naked not natural     from which a vein of fascinated shame opened darkly     glittering     smoldering like sea-coal     Every eye interrogated Each inquisitor humiliated by these echoes of himself     his body violating the silence *     *     * Now alone and exposed     approaching he amassed his ocherous archive of blister and of bruise     the old fabulous atlas of faith in blood & smoke redrawn Still even the most exacting map dreams omits & lies brindled with sums & suppositions Every step makes him more wilderness He goes interiorly to trade conches  sea-snails & screw-beans for red-dyed deer-tail tassels and the arrow-makers’ sinew & flint between ragged bands surrounded by enemies     enthralled by visions that command them to bury their sons alive Girls whose marriages would multiply their foes become meat for their dogs Where were the jades  turquoises  zinzibar Where the sacred monsters  cannibals  or kings fielding legions of dog-headed warriors Husbands groaned bucked by pain onto the dirt when wives gave birth & both sexes wept strenuously after any absence     overjoyed to see each other again in no essential changed Had any man traveled farther than he *     *     * Whether time is the ripening of fruit     the dying of fish & the position of stars     or all the king’s clocks ringing his will upon the quarter-hour hunger is the self’s severe eternal god

L’ange Anatomique, by Jacques-Fabien Gautier Dagoty, 1746 Unfastened avidly from each ivory button of her spine, the voluntary muscles open virtuosities of red: Cinnabar the mutagen, and carmine from cochineal born between fog and frost, so many little deaths Buddhists refuse to wear robes soaked in its thousands. Sunsets of other centuries fade in galleries to ash. Red is fugitive: As the voice, the blow of gravity along a nerve opening to an ache the body can’t unhouse: As the carnation suffusing cheek and haunch like saucers from the king’s porcelain rinsed in candlelight. Gratuitous as the curl, the urn-shaped torso, the pensive, brimming gaze of pretty post-coital thought she half-turns over one excavated shoulder. As if to see herself in a mirror’s savage theater as elegy to the attempt to fill an exhausted form, to learn again the old ordeals of wound and hand and eye. To find the source of burning.