Dan Beachy-Quick

Record no oiled tongue, diary— Note my lantern bruises the low Clouds with light the evening We talked. Almonds in a bowl; She ate none. I did Not bid her remove her dark Gloves as sometime before she had done. Her dress not so clean as before. A last brand not rescued to flame— No billow but breath, and breath Too short a line to twine Our hands in marriage: I left A last time. Her in widow’s silk— My lantern clothed in morning Dawns on this road so late tonight The white birches I believe, I believe I could have loved Her, her white wrists White the birch trees by lantern bared, Black gloves pulled off at night Become the night . . . . Do you hear? That pulse? The deer wander Between her hands, glean fallen Seed at hand, bed down in fallen Needles and grass. Those green discs Afloat in the night are their eyes Caught in lantern light. Can it be So many wake the forest glows With sight? See and am seen. A pulse At the stump is breath and rest And breath again. Infinite In store the game of this land. Note the plumage of the turkey. Note the thick meat at breast. Sap: syrup. Pine: plank. A copse Of wood is cord for furnace. A copse Is cottage, too. The owl in the hollow Tree screeches because I am too close To truth. Note the almond Tree overmuch with fruit. The almond Pressed is oil sweet. The almond bit Is a smoky meat that leaves—note it: The tongue bathed in oil.

Posterity, this me is Now— Record this Now.Virginia, 1705 Not always settled. I am settled Over history’s yellow pages, blank Pages, must I write my old dark Thoughts: Does time mask or unmask Mind? This sweet almond now In my mouth as in their mouths Then, sweet in its rind, but silent I think: I am blood at oak, my hand A blood petal unfurled over oak, My desk, my wooded den, a pistil, A pen. Believe me: I speak honest And true. First. Economy ravishing and jealous In woods, the virgin woods. Sap is sweet so sap quarrels On the tongue. What is worth Worth? Sap sweet so sap ambers; In the virgin woods none can cut The profit from the tongue. Amber Gold so gold whispers at the edge Of each, our minds. The Natives Wear skins on skin; the women Bare their breasts and do not Blush. Was she a King’s daughter? She walked below the branches; The sun thin in silken lines The sated spiders left. Her brothers Showed us what seeds to sow. Glass beads contain light, a miracle To trade. Her skin a syrup Tone, the beads gold against her Wrist glowed. Midnight her crown Of hair plaited with one strand Of gold, thin as day’s edge when dusk Both dulls and hones that glow. “We’ll barter it.” Her brother feels Cheated when we offer a bolt Less of wool than he asks. Write it Down. Profit in black ink. They close Their eyes, quick as bark blinks Down dark on axe’s silver bite, When the deal is done. The ledger’s Honest, “I am a liar. Be aware.” Then. Pluck the withered gold at hand, The pumpkin leaves yellow, Sere and dust. Neglect the acre. Let the green aphids multiply And suck. We teethed our vision: A yellow sort of isinglass dust, Sunlit in silt, under the water Of our stream. The squash blossom Closed its eye; we squinted to see Beneath the stream. That summer We fed our hearts on dust. We grew Dust in gardens. We grew rich Until the gold sheen disclosed It was but gilded dust. We lived Some time on mussel, crab, berry, Those fruits of the wild earth. No one Spoke the word “starving.” We were Forced to be content with what fell Just in our mouths. Earlier Than First. Thought in the forest speaks A wooden chorus. My own voice Multiplied the almond by the pine. Roanoke,1588. Repaired the houses Now grown up with weeds. We make wooden houses. How quiet One voice, mumbling verses out The wilderness, by the fire In the corner. Bibles clothed in skin As the Natives come clothed.Exodus A comfort: to be chosen, safe, God spoke in smoke by day, in light By night. A manna faith—of manna. When Mr. White arrived, late August 1590,

To make beauty out of pain, it damns the eyes— No, dams the eyes. See how they overflow? No damns them, damns them, and so they cry. What shape can I swallow to make me whole? Baby’s bird-shaped block, blue-painted wood That fits in the bird-hole of the painted wood box? The skeleton leaf? The skeleton key? Loud Knock when the shape won’t unlock any locks. I hear it through the static in the baby’s room When the monitor clicks on and off, sound Of sea-ice cracking against the jagged sea-rocks, Laughing gull in the gale. What is it dives down Past sight, down there dark with the other blocks? It can’t be seen, only heard. A kind of curse, This kind curse. Forgive me. Blessing that hurts.

The field blank in snow. But I mean this page. Now print mars the surface to make surface Seen. Sheen only error brings. Perfect rage So the sun rises. Rage is your slow practice That makes of every day another day In whose gathering promise the shy sparrows Shiver instead of sing. I want to go away. See these footsteps? These black shapes in the snow? If there is a word for them, it’s no word I know.Pursuit?, no.Proof?, no. Don’t call it fear. Could I cross this white sheet if I were coward, Edge to edge, margin to margin, never Referring to anything outside itself?— Stop that. Stop pointing to the photo on the shelf.

Must I, in this question I am asking, include myself Asking it? Must I include my face— My face that I cannot see—through which I speak This question about my eyes, about the field Of vision, in which my hands press down these letters Unattached to my arms? The sunlight Comes in the window and lights up my hands As they work. The world is not being kind But there is the sensation of kindness. There is an appeal to a rule when we realize a term Behaves uncomfortably. God falls down Into grammar and says

morning green through ivy leaves resuscitated on window let us also breathe our own breath and the birds their blood in arrows settle into nest from migration the cloud of their song woke me // stormed in me // a waterfall in the thrush’s call // a star flick ering in the sparrows we are not the woods if we whisper the woods quietly to ourselves we witness our hands walking into the forest we are two rooms who think alone // unless my ear saw the cardinal my eye heard the scarlet tanager I could not show it to you yesterday it existed as I exist now to you or the water pipit bobbing at burble of creek to one musical strand it heard and was harmony of and I saw from my distance the web we step through to enter woods: spider sews one point to branch and leaps where wind carries sews one point of silk to fern and leaps to where wind carries until the web in logic sees the plank in pine do you see the house already built the oak desk I think at the dark cherry night stand for your closed book by the bed we keep a light to turn off do you hear our whole house swaying in the wind those birds are not crying out in fear those birds are singing nuptials outside our house already built in the green canopy the quoin of air illumined always as it illumines let us be truer fact asleep below love a-leap // no cornerstone no cement save song do you hear above us the river strong in leaves the rubble wind flows over and is not wind river the rubblesource the river ripples over to sing us and the silken nest weighs the beech branch down in horror the multi tude breathing in a single lung and one cocoon countless in turns the transparent ever winging itself past hunger glows as we glow is woven of one single thread and no love thinks separate the weaver from the wing I say now I love you with the worm in my mouth spinning my words into your ear and your listening volumes pupa in the elm’s crotch and oak knot do you hear as I hear the old sins blossom from diaries and become the faith leaves live upon we eat not ink but the light that burns in the blank page so ink can more unselfish sing so the wounded deer leaps highest so heart quickens my hand cocooned in your hand to become each one half a wing of luna moth waiting in woods for night’s blossom the moon in borrowed light through dark unfathomed the dead star’s light still lights on leaf a finite edge we loathe the bounded and nowhere witness a cosmos in fetters the woods lit by the lantern blown out our eyes by bright stars no longer thinking love is bright our woods and us some star’s thought so the wild iris angles up in sun so sun is all stars and us the worm whose hunger sated in leaf again becomes hunger insatiable not for fact // this world in which nothing in the eye the instant dead stars cast out countless shrouds morning’s bright pall // Venus ascends ceaseless and wary the weak light one upon the other throws each moon waxing to each moon of the other’s face in full caught not in gazing at light we are what light gazes on lumen ensouling love so sigh so spiders feast by night so whippoorwills cry “poor will” so bobolinks wear the morning sun behind their heads unseen so light divides in two the star light sprang from and sews together again that star in us your sweet moan moon your linger languor your tongue on your lips not to speak so the moon glows on your lips in me the jack in pulpit blooms by night so I bloom so I give me to you so the appletree in flower proves not fruit but the sun in the mouth of the worm who grammars these woods into this world whose song is

No reverie begs “light” in the blind eye. Reverie says: dig this depth-of-blank Deeper. Dig deeper With the Whale below the white-capped waves— A twitch of his tail, a twitch of his white tail Birthed from ocean-bed the wave That broke calm water into each cracked plank Of the harpooner’s boat, made that man sway, And cast him on the spear his arm meant to cast At you. Beneath the sun’s evil weight Men burn nightwards but never darken Past night. There’s always the moon’s hook On still water to deny them. But Whale, you dive down Until the ocean’s ground begs you solid, “Stop.” Whale, you do not stop. You beat your head against the jagged rocks. Blind in depths so dark light itself is blind, You knock your head against the rocks to see And scratch the god-itch from your thoughts. Flame is jealous of flame, once lit, it ever Reaches higher. You wait, match-tip, White Whale. I see how you wait in silence for silence To say:write it in, tell me who I am now.

The lightning struck him and left a scar. The wind stopped blowing and the wheat stood up. Self-tensed self, who is this I that says I ? I had a scar in the shape of  lightning That split in half when I opened my mouth. The sun  just a circle of  heat in the sky Throwing absence in the shape of clouds Down on the field. Another life placed In the middle of  the life I called my own. A lesser god commanded the front: return. A little god knocked about in the germ. The third person put me outside my own sphere. A small god chanting lightning in the synapse. Wind blows the wheat down. He calls it prayer.

Before the God-bullied hull, call me— Before the God-bullied hull buckles, before The red flag unfurled on water bucks and drowns, Before the sky-hawk dives down, before The nail drives through the sky-hawk’s red-wing— Call me the nail driven through the wing And call me the wing driven through. A board On water is buoyant, I know: I cling to wood— A dictionary buckles and drowns. I know I do not drown: I’m abridged, afloat, call me— Sir, when my book arrives, when each page You’ve untied lets go the breath it held That was my breath, then my breath will not be mine— I think you’ll know. I know when doors open I mean to keep closed: study-door, desk-drawer. My wife found the key I hid beneath the fern. My pens she did not touch. She did not touch The hundred pages I left blank to fill other days. She took the cracked compass I keep for luck (the needle’s sharp, but stuck), took my green-glass Ink-pot, and centering the compass on my desk, Poured out each dark drop of ink unitl ink Seeped through cracked glass and left the compass Ink-full. The gold needle loosened, floated: a line. Bent back, I am taking you inside my head Turning back. Ahab bent The needle that refused North back to a magnet’s tow— Did, Ahab did, after The needle’s faith answered our question:No. How do you point at a horizon? Ask me. I know. Needle out your arm: close eyes: And turn in a circle. Inscribe a zero on the wood-deck— The Equator on zero latitudes lies. That is the truth, I know Sir, what name that bay a last page carves Out of no shore:ice? glacier? greenland? strand, shoal-of-white-sand? an artic-calm?

Peace fell on the dim lands a sort of abstraction The metronome counted one petal after another So the petals fell as or in some music This song needs no breath just an apparition With a mouth open and eyes and eyes The wet smear of eyes beneath pink Petals in excess of the window frame’s bright Yellow square and yes spring gathers right now The moisture from my breath up into clouds Whose downpour makes of the plum tree in blossom A diminishing crowd for which the natural symbol Refuses to exist a plain blue gem on a pin Faces glowing within the stone like flowers Within the stone like flaws the mind turns inward Turns inward its tangle of wet black boughs A knot pulled tight so tight it ceases to be A knot yes I’ll say it a knot that becomes angelic Another example everywhere seen of the angelic Gears toothless and without cogs a sort of mist That turns the other gear by drifting through it As just now through my eye drifts that storm Battered tree whose broken-petal pocked bark Asks of me a question my mouth can’t speak Like a river that dives underground just there There where the animals thirst the most A desert fox say or say a toad or let’s speak more simply About a plum which bursts through its own explosion Into being and hangs there so ponderously As if as if not concerned with innocence or Gravity or other acute angles as they evaporate Into this poem O no am I speaking again again about dim lands these dim dim lands of of peace