David Wagoner

To the students of anatomy at Indiana University That gaunt old man came first, his hair as white As your scoured tables. Maybe you’ll recollect him By the scars of steelmill burns on the backs of his hands, On the nape of his neck, on his arms and sinewy legs, And her by the enduring innocence Of her face, as open to all of you in death As it would have been in life: she would memorize Your names and ages and pastimes and hometowns If she could, but she can’t now, so remember her. They believed in doctors, listened to their advice, And followed it faithfully. You should treat them One last time as they would have treated you. They had been kind to others all their lives And believed in being useful. Remember somewhere Their son is trying hard to believe you’ll learn As much as possible from them, as he did, And will do your best to learn politely and truly. They gave away the gift of those useful bodies Against his wish. (They had their own ways Of doing everything, always.) If you’re not certain Which ones are theirs, be gentle to everybody.

That child was dangerous. That just-born Newly washed and silent baby Wrapped in deerskin and held warm Against the side of its mother could understand The language of birds and animals Even when asleep. It knew why Bluejay Was scolding the bushes, what Hawk was explaining To the wind on the cliffside, what Bittern had found out While standing alone in marsh grass. It knew What the screams of Fox and the whistling of Otter Were telling the forest. That child knew The language of Fire As it gnawed at sticks like Beaver And what Water said all day and all night At the creek's mouth. As its small fingers Closed around Stone, it held what Stone was saying. It knew what Bear Mother whispered to herself Under the snow. It could not tell Anyone what it knew. It would laugh Or cry out or startle or suddenly stare At nothing, but had no way To repeat what it was hearing, what it wanted most Not to remember. It had no way to know Why it would fall under a spell And lie still as if not breathing, Having grown afraid Of what it could understand. That child would learn To sit and crawl and stand and begin Putting one foot forward and following it With the other, would learn to put one word It could barely remember slightly ahead Of the other and then walk and speak And finally run and chatter, And all the Tillamook would know that child Had forgotten everything and at last could listen Only to people and was safe now.

He approaches her, trailing his whole fortune, Perfectly cocksure, and suddenly spreads The huge fan of his tail for her amazement. Each turquoise and purple, black-horned, walleyed quill Comes quivering forward, an amphitheatric shell For his most fortunate audience: her alone. He plumes himself. He shakes his brassily gold Wings and rump in a dance, lifting his claws Stiff-legged under the great bulge of his breast. And she strolls calmly away, pecking and pausing, Not watching him, astonished to discover All these seeds spread just for her in the dirt.

Right after the bomb, even before the ceiling And walls and floor are rearranging You and themselves into a different world, You must hold still, must wait for them To settle down in unpredictable ways, To bring their wars, shuddering, To an end, and only then should you begin Numbly to feel what freedom may be left To your feet or knees, to your elbows Or clenched fingers. Where you used to walk Or lean or lie down or fix your attention At a whim or stomp your foot Or slump in a chair, you'll find a new Architecturally unsound floor-plan To contend with, if you can move At all. Now you may remember others Who were somewhere near you before This breakdown of circumstances. Caught by surprise Like you, they may be waiting separately At their own levels, inside their own portions Of your incoherent flat. They may be thinking Of you, as you are of them, and wondering Whether some common passageway, no matter How crooked or narrow, might still exist Between you, through which you might share the absence Of food and water and the cold comfort Of daylight. They may be expecting you To arrive at any moment, to crawl through dust And fire to their rescue as they find their bodies Growing more stiff, assuming even more Unusual attitudes at every turn Of a second hand, at every sound Of a bell or an alarm, at every pounding Of a door or a heart, so if you can't reach them Now and they can't reach you, remember, please Remember, whatever you say, Whatever you hear or keep to yourself, whatever You scream or whisper, will need to make Some kind of sense, perhaps for days and days.

They’re tipping their battered derbies and striding forward In step for a change, chipper, self-assured, Their cardboard suitcases labeled Guest of Steerage. They’ve just arrived at the boot camp Of the good old French Foreign Legion Which they’ve chosen as their slice of life Instead of drowning themselves. Once again They’re about to become their own mothers and fathers And their own unknowable children Who will rehearse sad laughter and mock tears, Will frown with completely unsuccessful Concentration, and will practice the amazement Of suddenly understanding everything That baffles them and will go on baffling them While they pretend they’re only one reel away From belonging in the world. Their arrival Will mark a new beginning of meaningless Hostilities with a slaphappy ending. In a moment, They’ll hear music, and as if they’d known all along This was what they’d come for, they’ll put down The mops and buckets given them as charms With which to cleanse the Sahara and move their feet With a calm, sure, delicate disregard For all close-order drill and begin dancing.

I've watched his eyelids sag, spring open Vaguely and gradually go sliding Shut again, fly up With a kind of drunken surprise, then wobble Peacefully together to send him Home from one school early. Soon his lashes Flutter in REM sleep. I suppose he's dreaming What all of us kings and poets and peasants Have dreamed: of not making the grade, Of draining the inexhaustible horn cup Of the cerebral cortex where ganglions Are ganging up on us with more connections Than atoms in heaven, but coming up once more Empty. I see a clear stillness Settle over his face, a calming of the surface Of water when the wind dies. Somewhere Down there, he's taking another course Whose resonance (let's hope) resembles The muttered thunder, the gutter bowling, the lightning Of minor minions of Thor, the groans and gurgling Of feral lovers and preliterate Mowglis, the songs Of shamans whistled through bird bones. A worried neighbor Gives him the elbow, and he shudders Awake, recollects himself, brings back His hands from aboriginal outposts, Takes in new light, reorganizes his shoes, Stands up in them at the buzzer, barely recalls His books and notebooks, meets my eyes And wonders what to say and whether to say it, Then keeps it to himself as today's lesson.

Out of the nursery and into the garden where it rooted and survived its first hard winter, then a few years of freedom while it blossomed, put out its first tentative branches, withstood the insects and the poisons for insects, developed strange ideas about its height and suffered the pruning of its quirks and clutters, its self-indulgent thrusts and the infighting of stems at cross purposes year after year.  Each April it forgot why it couldn’t do what it had to do, and always after blossoms, fruit, and leaf-fall, was shown once more what simply couldn’t happen. Its oldest branches now, the survivors carved by knife blades, rain, and wind, are sending shoots straight up, blood red, into the light again.