Galway Kinnell

1 In the evening haze darkening on the hills, purple of the eternal, a last bird crosses over, ‘flop flop,’ adoring only the instant. 2 Nine years ago, in a plane that rumbled all night above the Atlantic, I could see, lit up by lightning bolts jumping out of it, a thunderhead formed like the face of my brother, looking down on blue, lightning-flashed moments of the Atlantic. 3 He used to tell me, “What good is the day? On some hill of despair the bonfire you kindle can light the great sky— though it’s true, of course, to make it burn you have to throw yourself in ...” 4 Wind tears itself hollow in the eaves of these ruins, ghost-flute of snowdrifts that build out there in the dark: upside-down ravines into which night sweeps our cast wings, our ink-spattered feathers. 5 I listen. I hear nothing. Only the cow, the cow of such hollowness, mooing down the bones. 6 Is that a rooster? He thrashes in the snow for a grain. Finds it. Rips it into flames. Flaps. Crows. Flames bursting out of his brow. 7 How many nights must it take one such as me to learn that we aren’t, after all, made from that bird that flies out of its ashes, that for us as we go up in flames, our one work is to open ourselves, to be the flames?

For I can snore like a bullhorn or play loud music or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman and Fergus will only sink deeper into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash, but let there be that heavy breathing or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house and he will wrench himself awake and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together, after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies, familiar touch of the long-married, and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens, the neck opening so small he has to screw them on— and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep, his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child. In the half darkness we look at each other and smile and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body— this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making, sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake, this blessing love gives again into our arms.