James Galvin

Salt is pity, brooms are fury, The waterclock stands for primordial harmony. The spruce forest, which is said to be Like a cathedral Indicates proliferation of desire. The real meaning of the beginning Will not become clear until later, if ever. Things no longer being what they were, Artifice poses as process, The voice is tinged with melancholy. The teacup, the brass knuckles, and the pearl-handled razor Resist interpretation As if to say That half the wind is in the mind And half in the mind of the wind. Speaking through the character Who comes to faith on his deathbed, The author makes apology For saying things he didn’t mean. Little girl-cousins with ribbons in their hair Confuse him with their names and are carried away By laughter. Thus, The force of love comes from belief, Hate is from lack of doubt.

Well aren't you the harsh necessity, As in what fear is for? It was the summer of You should have been there, Though the last thing I want Anywhere near me is you. Louche and thaumaturgic, You made my faith My foolishness— Easy as lying to trees. Essence of the inessential Is what you are, double rainbow, Extrinsic as blood is to stars, An empire not of death, But inspired by death, Farrago of arid precepts, A few cheap ideas about hope, The eschaton, alterity, All featuring you. What are the chances? Slim to none. But listen here, my fraud, my forger, I could close my eyes at any time. All I have to do is close my eyes.

I A score of years ago I felled a hundred pines to build a house. Two stories, seven rooms in all. I built my love a home. Our daughter was in orbit in the womb. Mountains spun off like the arm of a galaxy into the emptiness our windows framed. "What a view!" our friends exclaimed, and "Sunsets to die for every single night!" 2 Vertigo of solitude, distillate of loneliness for blood, my wife untrue, my daughter flown, I, like a widower or worse, move among the rooms I made. Where once I was not alone, now each closed door is panic, and spaces grow immense with memory, like shadows at dusk. Gone that arrangement of allegiances called family we never really know before it ends. Like love itself, it isn't true till then. I have no family now but remembrences of tiny joys, tinier dramas we used to call our life, like pollen over everything: brightly colored clothespins on the line, a cross-shaped coral earring whose match is lost, books of fairy tales we read aloud at night. I must be dumb as a gunnysack of hammers. Wind still blows through open windows like it always used to do. What did I love that made me believe it would last?

Remember the night you got drunk and shot the roses? You were a perfect stranger, Father, even my bad sister cried. Some other gravity, not death or luck, drew fish out of the sea and started them panting. The fish became a man. The archer’s bow became a violin. I remember the night you searched the sofa for change and wept on the telephone. Some other gravity, not time or entropy, pulled the knife down for centuries. The archers dropped their bows, harmless as pine needles in the snow. The knife became a plow and entered the earth, Father. Later it became a boat and some other things — It isn’t a dream but it takes a long time, for the archer’s bow to become a violin.