Charles Wright

Darkened by time, the masters, like our memories, mix And mismatch, and settle about our lawn furniture, like air Without a meaning, like air in its clear nothingness. What can we say to either of them? How can they be so dark and so clear at the same time? They ruffle our hair, they ruffle the leaves of the August trees. Then stop, abruptly as wind. The flies come back, and the heat— what can we say to them? Nothing is endless but the sky. The flies come back, and the afternoon Teeters a bit on its green edges, then settles like dead weight Next to our memories, and the pale hems of the masters’ gowns. ________ Those who look for the Lord will cry out in praise of him. Perhaps. And perhaps not— dust and ashes though we are, Some will go wordlessly, some Will listen their way in with their mouths Where pain puts them, an inch-and-a-half above the floor. And some will revile him out of love and deep disdain. The gates of mercy, like an eclipse, darken our undersides. Rows of gravestones stay our steps, August humidity Bright as auras around our bodies. And some will utter the words, speaking in fear and tongues, Hating their garments splotched by the flesh. These are the lucky ones, the shelved ones, the twice-erased. ________ Dante and John Chrysostom Might find this afternoon a sidereal roadmap, A pilgrim’s way ... You might too Under the prejaundiced outline of the quarter moon, Clouds sculling downsky like a narrative for whatever comes, What hasn’t happened to happen yet Still lurking behind the stars, 31 August 1995 ... The afterlife of insects, space graffiti, white holes In the landscape, such things, such avenues, lead to dust And handle our hurt with ease. Sky blue, blue of infinity, blue waters above the earth: Why do the great stories always exist in the past? ________ The unexamined life’s no different from the examined life— Unanswerable questions, small talk, Unprovable theorems, long-abandoned arguments— You’ve got to write it all down. Landscape or waterscape, light-length on evergreen, dark sidebar Of evening, you’ve got to write it down. Memory’s handkerchief, death’s dream and automobile, God’s sleep, you’ve still got to write it down, Moon half-empty, moon half-full, Night starless and egoless, night blood-black and prayer-black, Spider at work between the hedges, Last bird call, toad in a damp place, tree frog in a dry ... ________ We go to our graves with secondary affections, Second-hand satisfaction, half-souled, star charts demagnetized. We go in our best suits. The birds are flying. Clouds pass. Sure we’re cold and untouchable, but we harbor no ill will. No tooth tuned to resentment’s fork, we’re out of here, and sweet meat. Calligraphers of the disembodied, God’s word-wards, What letters will we illuminate? Above us, the atmosphere, The nothing that’s nowhere, signs on, and waits for our beck and call. Above us, the great constellations sidle and wince, The letters undarken and come forth, Your X and my X. The letters undarken and they come forth. ________ Eluders of memory, nocturnal sleep of the greenhouse, Spirit of slides and silences, Invisible Hand, Witness and walk on. Lords of the discontinuous, lords of the little gestures, Succor my shift and save me ... All afternoon the rain has rained down in the mind, And in the gardens and dwarf orchard. All afternoon The lexicon of late summer has turned its pages Under the rain, abstracting the necessary word. Autumn’s upon us. The rain fills our narrow beds. Description’s an element, like air or water. That’s the word.

The generator hums like a distant ding an sich. It's early evening, and time, like the dog it is, is hungry for food, And will be fed, don't doubt it, will be fed, my small one. The forest begins to gather its silences in. The meadow regroups and hunkers down for its cleft feet. Something is wringing the rag of sunlight inexorably out and hanging. Something is making the reeds bend and cover their heads. Something is licking the shadows up, And stringing the blank spaces along, filling them in. Something is inching its way into our hearts, scratching its blue nails against the wall there. Should we let it in? Should we greet it as it deserves, Hands on our ears, mouths open? Or should we bring it a chair to sit on, and offer it meat? Should we turn on the radio, should we clap our hands and dance The Something Dance, the welcoming Something Dance? I think we should, love, I think we should.

Sunday, September Sunday ... Outdoors, Like an early page from The Appalachian Book of the Dead, Sunlight lavishes brilliance on every surface, Doves settle, surreptitious angels, on tree limb and box branch, A crow calls, deep in its own darkness, Something like water ticks on Just there, beyond the horizon, just there, steady clock ... Go in fear of abstractions ... Well, possibly. Meanwhile, They are the strata our bodies rise through, the sere veins Our skins rub off on. For instance, whatever enlightenment there might be Housels compassion and affection, those two tributaries That river above our lives, Whose waters we sense the sense of late at night, and later still. Uneasy, suburbanized, I drift from the lawn chair to the back porch to the dwarf orchard Testing the grass and border garden. A stillness, as in the passageways of Paradise, Bell jars the afternoon. Leaves, like ex votos, hang hard and shine Under the endlessness of heaven. Such skeletal altars, such vacant sanctuary. It always amazes me How landscape recalibrates the stations of the dead, How what we see jacks up the odd quotient of what we don’t see, How God’s breath reconstitutes our walking up and walking down. First glimpse of autumn, stretched tight and snicked, a bad face lift, Flicks in and flicks out, a virtual reality. Time to begin the long division.