David Biespiel

It is hard even to admit this theory of hats, that to wear The faithless one brimmed tightly over the eyes— The featherless and discreet one, a hat with a secret code That says,To spoil the child is to fatten the serpent— To wear that hat (imperfectly as a crow’s crown) against the sun Is to bear the ruins of the unborn into our hearts— He, shouting at the brunt of trees; She, shifting like a seer to restore them. It is hard to know happiness with a hat like that. Or to forget the pangs sung with such burly impatience, Or to heal the blurred things and soft hurts. Even the blind self becomes a dervish, what with the torsion And the far-off vita nuova like a new virus or virtuoso, What with the tussles and old, pure-lit suppressions. Then to be surprised by joy: Like the last rain of summer, The big, spiraling, wounded animal of rain With no place to turn, drumming the brown grass, Rain falling without meaning, but perfectly faithful, Into the petals of wind and the unopened roots— Such tenderness looked to, like love, but unquestioned. Then some afternoon with the sky lifting off again, She will come to sit on the porch like a dark sparrow And let the sun creep slowly onto her hair And grow old and wonder about the balance of things. And he beside her, sitting, too, distracted in the sun for hours, But all the same, both of them, at last, so much warmer.

After it came in like a dark bird Out of the snow, barely whistling The notes father,mother,child, It was hard to say what made us happiest. Seeing the branches where it had learned To stir the air? The air that opened Without fear? Just the branches And us in a room of wild things? Like a shapeless flame, it flew A dozen times around the room. And, in a wink, a dozen more. Into the wall, the window, the door. You said the world turns to parts. You said the parts are cunning spheres. You said you always love the face of sin. You said it’s here, the lips and eyes and skin. Outside the snow deepened With heaves of discontent. Inside, the tremor of our life Flew in and in and in.

I did not call to the Holy Spirit or whistle My lordy, lordy, Nor hum one scintilla of shame. What hid in the grass Was neither skiver nor savior, neither cheater nor ace. Besides, the doves peering over the gutters have all gone awry. If I’m only a man, born far from a boomer’s shack— Hoarding sawbucks, cherry-picking the hicks like prey, And the wusses, and the Horacian declaimers, and the lucky Grubbers who master heartache and lurk like crooks Among the rich and the rebadged—then I’m a rival devil, Carrying my brag like a brakeman. And the one certainty, That life is to be lost—and no matter the opinion, someone’s Always a fool—has me rubbed inside like a lonely breed With the swill edgy and chic and rough. Who asks: Who needs a cotton-eyed hymn to say what the old shanty By the track has meant to the human story?