David St. John

If there is any dwelling place for the spirits of the just; as the wise believe, noble souls do not perish with the body, rest thou in peace ... —Tacitus Who keeps the owl’s breath? Whose eyes desire? Why do the stars rhyme? Where does The flush cargo sail? Why does the daybook close? So sleep and do not sleep. The opaque stroke lost across the mirror, The clamp turned. The polished nails begin the curl into your palms. The opal hammock of rain falls out of its cloud. I name you,Gloat-of- The-stalks, drowse-my-embers, old-lily-bum. No matter how well a man sucks praise in the end He sucks earth. Go ahead, step Out into that promised, rasp gratitude of night. Seeds and nerves.Seeds And nerves. I’ll be waiting for you, in some Obscure and clarifying light; I will say, Look, there is a ghost ice on the land. If the page of marble bleeds in the yellow grass, If the moon-charts glow useless and cold, If the grains of the lamp outlast you, as they must— As the tide of black gloss, the marls, and nectar rise I will understand. Here are my gifts:smudges of bud, A blame of lime. Everything you remember crowds Away. Stubble memory, The wallpaper peeling its leaves. Fog. Fog In the attic; this pod of black milk. Anymore, Only a road like August approaches. Sometimes the drawers of the earth close; Sometimes our stories keep on and on. So listen— Leave no address. Fold your clothes into a little Island. Kiss the hinges goodbye. Sand the fire. Bitch About time. Hymn away this reliquary fever. How the sun stands crossing itself in the cut glass. How the jonquils and bare orchards fill each morning In mist. The branches in the distance stiffen, Again. The city of stars pales. In my fires the cinders rise like black angels; The trunks of the olives twist once towards the world. Once. I will walk out into the day.

They are so like Us, frozen in a bald passion Or absent Gaze, like the cows whose lashes Sag beneath their frail sacks of ice. Your eyes are white with fever, a long Sickness. When you are asleep, Dreaming of another country, the wheat’s Pale surface sliding In the wind, you are walking in every breath Away from me. I gave you a stone doll, Its face a dry apple, wizened, yet untroubled. It taught us the arrogance of silence, How stone and God reward us, how dolls give us Nothing. Look at your cane, Look how even the touch that wears it away Draws up a shine, as the handle Gives to the hand. As a girl, you boiled Your dolls, to keep them clean, presentable; You’d stir them in enormous pots, As the arms and legs bent to those incredible Postures you preferred, not that ordinary, human Pose. How would you like me?— Leaning back, reading aloud from a delirious Book. Or sprawled across your bed, As if I’d been tossed off a high building Into the street, A lesson from a young government to its people. When you are asleep, walking the fields of another Country, a series of shadows slowly falling Away, marking a way, The sky leaning like a curious girl above a new Sister, your face a doll’s deliberate Ache of white, you walk along that grove of madness, Where your mother waits. Hungry, very still. When you are asleep, dreaming of another country, This is the country.