David Ferry

He, who had been the one to whom I had Recited my poems and then he wrote them down With his faithful scribal hand for which already He was well known and had been justly praised, Demetrius has died. He lived to be Fifteen years old, and after that four summers. Even the Caesars had heard how good he was. When he fell sick and I knew he was going to die, I didn’t want him to descend to where The Stygian shades are, still a slave, and so I relinquished my ownership of him to his sickness. Deserving by my deed to have gotten well, He knew what I had done and was grateful for it, Calling me his patron, falling free, Down to those waters that are waiting there.

She came into my view as vivid as Somebody on a screen in a movie seen, Elegant in the focus of my eye. Birdboned. Quick and light. Not wearing pajamas. The little run resembling playfulness. Calling out something, screaming something or other As if her little mouth was fervently singing, As if you couldn’t hear what the words could be, Because of the singing. I had her in my sight. Other people were there, wearing pajamas, Streaming out of some hideyhole or other Into the way that that was how I saw them. The trees of the kind that grew there establish the place. We know that way the story of what it was.

They said, my saints, my slogan-sayers sang, Be good, my child, in spite of all alarm. They stood, my fathers, tall in a row and said, Be good, be brave, you shall not come to harm. I heard them in my sleep and muttering dream, And murmuring cried, How shall I wake to this? They said, my poets, singers of my song, We cannot tell, since all we tell you is But history, we speak but of the dead. And of the dead they said such history (Their beards were blazing with the truth of it) As made of much of me a mystery.

They said, my saints, my slogan-sayers sang, Be good, my child, in spite of all alarm. They stood, my fathers, tall in a row and said, Be good, be brave, you shall not come to harm. I heard them in my sleep and muttering dream, And murmuring cried, How shall I wake to this? They said, my poets, singers of my song, We cannot tell, since all we tell you is But history, we speak but of the dead. And of the dead they said such history (Their beards were blazing with the truth of it) As made of much of me a mystery.

At the supper for street people The young man who goes about all muffled up from harm, With whatever he has found, newspaper pages Carefully folded to make a weirdly festive Hat or hood, down almost over his eyes. Everything carefully arranged to make him other. The paper-covered razor blade in his mouth, Or the bit of wood, like carrying a message. A fantasy so clever, outwitting itself, That it became what it was he was, and so He was what it was. The long loose shirt too big For him, the pantaloons too big for him Loose like the pantaloons of the circus clown, Some kind of jacket too big, he got it somewhere. His burden slept dreaming everywhere upon him. As if his whole body and the clothes he wore dreamed Of his condition and the dream came true. His clothes slept on him as if they were his lover.

Alone in the library room, even when others Are there in the room, alone, except for themselves: There is the illusion of peace; the air in the room Is stilled; there are reading lights on the tables, Looking as if they're reading, looking as if They're studying the text, and understanding, Shedding light on what the words are saying; But under their steady imbecile gaze the page Is blank, patiently waiting not to be blank. The page is blank until the mind that reads Crosses the black river, seeking the Queen Of the Underworld, Persephone, where she sits By the side of the one who brought her there from Enna, Hades the mute, the deaf, king of the dead letter; She is clothed in the beautiful garment of our thousand Misunderstandings of the sacred text.

You lie in our bed as if an orchard were over us. You are what’s fallen from those fatal boughs. Where will we go when they send us away from here?

The unclean spirits cry out in the body Or mind of the guest Ellen in a loud voice Torment me not, and in the fury of her unclean Hands beating the air in some kind of unending torment— Nobody witnessing could possibly know the event That cast upon her the spell of this enchantment. Almost all the guests are under some kind of enchantment: Of being poor day after day in the same body; Of being witness still to some obscene event; Of listening all the time to somebody’s voice Whispering in the ear things divine or unclean, In the quotidian of unending torment. One has to keep thinking there was some source of torment, Something that happened someplace else, unclean. One has to keep talking in a reasonable voice About things done, say, by a father’s body To or upon the body of Ellen, in enchantment Helpless, still by the unforgotten event Enchanted, still in the old forgotten event A prisoner of love, filthy Ellen in her torment, Guest Ellen in the dining hall in her body, Hands beating the air in her enchantment, Sitting alone, gabbling in her garbled voice The narrative of the spirits of the unclean. She is wholly the possessed one of the unclean. Maybe the spirits came from the river. The enchantment Entered her, maybe, in the Northeast Kingdom. The torment, A thing of the waters, gratuitous event, Came up out of the waters and entered her body And lived in her in torment and cried out in her voice. It speaks itself over and over again in her voice, Cursing maybe or not a familiar obscene event Or only the pure event of original enchantment From the birth of the river waters, the pure unclean Rising from the source of things, in a figure of torment Seeking out Ellen, finding its home in her poor body. Her body witness is, so also is her voice, Of torment coming from unknown event; Unclean is the nature and name of the enchantment.

The unclean spirits cry out in the body Or mind of the guest Ellen in a loud voice Torment me not, and in the fury of her unclean Hands beating the air in some kind of unending torment— Nobody witnessing could possibly know the event That cast upon her the spell of this enchantment. Almost all the guests are under some kind of enchantment: Of being poor day after day in the same body; Of being witness still to some obscene event; Of listening all the time to somebody’s voice Whispering in the ear things divine or unclean, In the quotidian of unending torment. One has to keep thinking there was some source of torment, Something that happened someplace else, unclean. One has to keep talking in a reasonable voice About things done, say, by a father’s body To or upon the body of Ellen, in enchantment Helpless, still by the unforgotten event Enchanted, still in the old forgotten event A prisoner of love, filthy Ellen in her torment, Guest Ellen in the dining hall in her body, Hands beating the air in her enchantment, Sitting alone, gabbling in her garbled voice The narrative of the spirits of the unclean. She is wholly the possessed one of the unclean. Maybe the spirits came from the river. The enchantment Entered her, maybe, in the Northeast Kingdom. The torment, A thing of the waters, gratuitous event, Came up out of the waters and entered her body And lived in her in torment and cried out in her voice. It speaks itself over and over again in her voice, Cursing maybe or not a familiar obscene event Or only the pure event of original enchantment From the birth of the river waters, the pure unclean Rising from the source of things, in a figure of torment Seeking out Ellen, finding its home in her poor body. Her body witness is, so also is her voice, Of torment coming from unknown event; Unclean is the nature and name of the enchantment.

Lying in bed and waiting to find out Whatever is going to happen: the window shade Making its slightest sound as the night wind, Outside, in the night, breathes quietly on it; It is parental hovering over the infantile; Something like that; it is like being a baby, And over the sleep of the baby there is a father, Or mother, breathing, hovering; the streetlight light In the nighttime branches breathing quietly too; Altering; realtering; it is the body breathing; The crib of knowing: something about what the day Will bring; and something about what the night will hold, Safely, at least for the rest of the night, I pray.