James Wright

They did the deed of darkness In their own mid-light. He plucked a gray field mouse Suddenly in the wind. The small dead fly alive Helplessly in his beak, His cold pride, helpless. All she receives is life. They are terrified. They touch. Life is too much. She flies away sorrowing. Sorrowing, she goes alone. Then her small falcon, gone. Will not rise here again. Smaller than she, he goes Claw beneath claw beneath Needles and leaning boughs, While she, the lovelier Of these brief differing two, Floats away sorrowing, Tall as my love for you, And almost lonelier. Delighted in the delighting, I love you in mid-air, I love myself the ground. The great wings sing nothing Lightly. Lightly fall.

The night’s drifts Pile up below me and behind my back, Slide down the hill, rise again, and build Eerie little dunes on the roof of the house. In the valley below me, Miles between me and the town of St.-Jeannet, The road lamps glow. They are so cold, they might as well be dark. Trucks and cars Cough and drone down there between the golden Coffins of greenhouses, the startled squawk Of a rooster claws heavily across A grove, and drowns. The gumming snarl of some grouchy dog sounds, And a man bitterly shifts his broken gears. True night still hangs on, Mist cluttered with a racket of its own. Now on the mountainside, A little way downhill among turning rocks, A square takes form in the side of a dim wall. I hear a bucket rattle or something, tinny, No other stirring behind the dim face Of the goatherd’s house. I imagine His goats are still sleeping, dreaming Of the fresh roses Beyond the walls of the greenhouse below them And of lettuce leaves opening in Tunisia. I turn, and somehow Impossibly hovering in the air over everything, The Mediterranean, nearer to the moon Than this mountain is, Shines. A voice clearly Tells me to snap out of it. Galway Mutters out of the house and up the stone stairs To start the motor. The moon and the stars Suddenly flicker out, and the whole mountain Appears, pale as a shell. Look, the sea has not fallen and broken Our heads. How can I feel so warm Here in the dead center of January? I can Scarcely believe it, and yet I have to, this is The only life I have. I get up from the stone. My body mumbles something unseemly And follows me. Now we are all sitting here strangely On top of the sunlight.

From an epigram by Plato When I was a boy, a relative Asked for me a job At the Weeks Cemetery. Think of all I could Have raised that summer, That money, and me Living at home, Fattening and getting Ready to live my life Out on my knees, humming, Kneading up docks And sumac from Those flawless clerks-at-court, those beautiful Grocers and judges, the polished Dead of whom we make So much. I could have stayed there with them. Cheap, too. Imagine, never To have turned Wholly away from the classic Cold, the hill, so laid Out, measure by seemly measure clipped And mown by old man Albright The sexton. That would have been a hell of A way to make a living. Thank you, no. I am going to take my last nourishment Of measure from a dark blue Ripple on swell on ripple that makes Its own garlands. My dead are the secret wine jars Of Tyrian commercial travelers. Their happiness is a lost beginning, their graves Drift in and out of the Mediterranean. One of these days The immortals, clinging to a beam of sunlight Under water, delighted by delicate crustaceans, Will dance up thirty-foot walls of radiance, And waken, The sea shining on their shoulders, the fresh Wine in their arms. Their ships have drifted away. They are stars and snowflakes floating down Into your hands, love.

It is all right. All they do Is go in by dividing One rib from another. I wouldn’t Lie to you. It hurts Like nothing I know. All they do Is burn their way in with a wire. It forks in and out a little like the tongue Of that frightened garter snake we caught At Cloverfield, you and me, Jenny So long ago. I would lie to you If I could. But the only way I can get you to come up Out of the suckhole, the south face Of the Powhatan pit, is to tell you What you know: You come up after dark, you poise alone With me on the shore. I lead you back to this world. Three lady doctors in Wheeling open Their offices at night. I don’t have to call them, they are always there. But they only have to put the knife once Under your breast. Then they hang their contraption. And you bear it. It’s awkward a while. Still, it lets you Walk about on tiptoe if you don’t Jiggle the needle. It might stab your heart, you see. The blade hangs in your lung and the tube Keeps it draining. That way they only have to stab you Once. Oh Jenny. I wish to God I had made this world, this scurvy And disastrous place. I Didn’t, I can’t bear it Either, I don’t blame you, sleeping down there Face down in the unbelievable silk of spring, Muse of black sand, Alone. I don’t blame you, I know The place where you lie. I admit everything. But look at me. How can I live without you? Come up to me, love, Out of the river, or I will Come down to you.

Eugen Boissevain died in the autumn of 1949. I had wondered already, at the time of our visit, what would happen to Edna [Millay] if he should die first. —Edmund Wilson 1 She cleaned house, and then lay down long On the long stair. On one of those cold white wings That the strange fowl provide for us like one hillside of the sea, That cautery of snow that blinds us, Pitiless light, One winter afternoon Fair near the place where she sank down with one wing broken, Three friends and I were caught Stalk still in the light. Five of the lights. Why should they care for our eyes? Five deer stood there. They looked back, a good minute. They knew us, all right: Four chemical accidents of horror pausing Between one suicide or another On the passing wing Of an angel that cared no more for our biology, our pity, and our pain Than we care. Why should any mere multitude of the angels care To lay one blind white plume down On this outermost limit of something that is probably no more Than an aphid, An aphid which is one of the angels whose wings toss the black pears Of tears down on the secret shores Of the seas in the corner Of a poet’s closed eye. Why should five deer Gaze back at us? They gazed back at us. Afraid, and yet they stood there, More alive than we four, in their terror, In their good time. We had a dog. We could have got other dogs. Two or three dogs could have taken turns running and dragging down Those fleet lights, whose tails must look as mysterious as the Stars in Los Angeles. We are men. It doesn’t even satisfy us To kill one another. We are a smear of obscenity On the lake whose only peace Is a hole where the moon Abandoned us, that poor Girl who can’t leave us alone. If I were the moon I would shrink into a sand grain In the corner of the poet’s eye, While there’s still room. We are men. We are capable of anything. We could have killed every one of those deer. The very moon of lovers tore herself with the agony of a wounded tigress Out of our side. We can kill anything. We can kill our own bodies. Those deer on the hillside have no idea what in hell We are except murderers. They know that much, and don’t think They don’t. Man’s heart is the rotten yolk of a blacksnake egg Corroding, as it is just born, in a pile of dead Horse dung. I have no use for the human creature. He subtly extracts pain awake in his own kind. I am born one, out of an accidental hump of chemistry. I have no use. 2 But We didn’t set dogs on the deer, Even though we know, As well as you know, We could have got away with it, Because Who cares? 3 Boissevain, who was he? Was he human? I doubt it, From what I know Of men. Who was he, Hobbling with his dry eyes Along in the rain? I think he must have fallen down like the plumes of new snow, I think he must have fallen into the grass, I think he Must surely have grown around Her wings, gathering and being gathered, Leaf, string, anything she could use To build her still home of songs Within sound of water. 4 By God, come to that, I would have married her too, If I’d got the chance, and she’d let me. Think of that. Being alive with a girl Who could turn into a laurel tree Whenever she felt like it. Think of that. 5 Outside my window just now I can hear a small waterfall rippling antiphonally down over The stones of my poem.

Ach, in den Armen hab ich sie alle verloren, du nur, du wirst immer wieder geboren .... —Rilke, Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge The twilight falls; I soften the dusting feathers, And clean again. The house has lain and moldered for three days. The windows smeared with rain, the curtains torn, The mice come in, The kitchen blown with cold. I keep the house, and say no words. It is true I am as twisted as the cactus That gnarls and turns beside the milky light, That cuts the fingers easily and means nothing, For all the pain that shoots along the hand. I dust the feathers down the yellow thorns, I light the stove. The gas curls round the iron fretwork. the flame Floats above the lace, And bounces like a dancer stayed on air. Fire does not rest on iron, it drifts like a blue blossom And catches on my breath; Coiling, spinning, the blue foam of the gas fire Writhes like a naked girl; Turns up its face, like her. She came to me in rain. I did not know her, I did not know my name After she left to bed her children down, To phone her husband they were gone asleep. And she, lying, a pure fire, in the feathers, Dancing above the ironwork of her bed, Roaring, and singeing nothing. She had not wound her arms about me then, She had not dared. I only took her coat, and smiled to hear How she had left her purse and her umbrella In the theater, how she was sopping cold With the fall rain; and mine was the one light In the neighborhood. She came to my gas fire And lay before it, sprawled, her pure bare shoulders Folded in a doze, a clear, cold curve of stone. I only leaned above the hair, Turned back the quilt, arranged the feet, the arms, And kissed the sleeping shoulder, lightly, like the rain; And when she woke to wear her weathered clothes, I sent her home. She floated, a blue blossom, over the street. And when she came again, It was not long before she turned to me, And let her shawl slide down her neck and shoulder, Let her hair fall. And when she came again, It did not rain. Her husband came to pluck her like an apple, As the drunken farmer lurches against the tree, Grips the green globe not long beyond its bloom, And tears the skin, brutally, out of the bark, Leaves the whole bough broken, The orchard torn with many footprints, The fence swung wide On a raw hinge. And now it is said of me That my love is nothing because I have borne no children, Or because I have fathered none; That I twisted the twig in my hands And cut the blossom free too soon from the seed; That I lay across the fire, And snuffed it dead sooner than draft or rain. But I have turned away, and drawn myself Upright to walk along the room alone. Across the dark the spines of cactus plants Remind me how I go—aloof, obscure, Indifferent to the words the children chalk Against my house and down the garden walls. They cannot tear the garden out of me, Nor smear my love with names. Love is a cliff, A clear, cold curve of stone, mottled by stars, smirched by the morning, carved by the dark sea Till stars and dawn and waves can slash no more, Till the rock’s heart is found and shaped again. I keep the house and say no words, the evening Falls like a petal down the shawl of trees. I light the fire and see the blossom dance On air alone; I will not douse that flame, That searing flower; I will burn in it. I will not banish love to empty rain. For I know that I am asked to hate myself For their sweet sake Who sow the world with child. I am given to burn on the dark fire they make With their sly voices. But I have burned already down to bone. There is a fire that burns beyond the names Of sludge and filth of which this world is made. Agony sears the dark flesh of the body, And lifts me higher than the smoke, to rise Above the earth, above the sacrifice; Until my soul flares outward like a blue Blossom of gas fire dancing in mid-air: Free of the body’s work of twisted iron.

Near the dry river’s water-mark we found Your brother Minnegan, Flopped like a fish against the muddy ground. Beany, the kid whose yellow hair turns green, Told me to find you, even in the rain, And tell you he was drowned. I hid behind the chassis on the bank, The wreck of someone’s Ford: I was afraid to come and wake you drunk: You told me once the waking up was hard, The daylight beating at you like a board. Blood in my stomach sank. Beside, you told him never to go out Along the river-side Drinking and singing, clattering about. You might have thrown a rock at me and cried I was to blame, I let him fall in the road And pitch down on his side. Well, I’ll get hell enough when I get home For coming up this far, Leaving the note, and running as I came. I’ll go and tell my father where you are. You’d better go find Minnegan before Policemen hear and come. Beany went home, and I got sick and ran, You old son of a bitch. You better hurry down to Minnegan; He’s drunk or dying now, I don’t know which, Rolled in the roots and garbage like a fish, The poor old man.

to John Logan 1 I wonder how many old men last winter Hungry and frightened by namelessness prowled The Mississippi shore Lashed blind by the wind, dreaming Of suicide in the river. The police remove their cadavers by daybreak And turn them in somewhere. Where? How does the city keep lists of its fathers Who have no names? By Nicollet Island I gaze down at the dark water So beautifully slow. And I wish my brothers good luck And a warm grave. 2 The Chippewa young men Stab one another shrieking Jesus Christ. Split-lipped homosexuals limp in terror of assault. High school backfields search under benches Near the Post Office. Their faces are the rich Raw bacon without eyes. The Walker Art Center crowd stare At the Guthrie Theater. 3 Tall Negro girls from Chicago Listen to light songs. They know when the supposed patron Is a plainclothesman. A cop’s palm Is a roach dangling down the scorched fangs Of a light bulb. The soul of a cop’s eyes Is an eternity of Sunday daybreak in the suburbs Of Juárez, Mexico. 4 The legless beggars are gone, carried away By white birds. The Artificial Limbs Exchange is gutted And sown with lime. The whalebone crutches and hand-me-down trusses Huddle together dreaming in a desolation Of dry groins. I think of poor men astonished to waken Exposed in broad daylight by the blade Of a strange plough. 5 All over the walls of comb cells Automobiles perfumed and blindered Consent with a mutter of high good humor To take their two naps a day. Without sound windows glide back Into dusk. The sockets of a thousand blind bee graves tier upon tier Tower not quite toppling. There are men in this city who labor dawn after dawn To sell me my death. 6 But I could not bear To allow my poor brother my body to die In Minneapolis. The old man Walt Whitman our countryman Is now in America our country Dead. But he was not buried in Minneapolis At least. And no more may I be Please God. 7 I want to be lifted up By some great white bird unknown to the police, And soar for a thousand miles and be carefully hidden Modest and golden as one last corn grain, Stored with the secrets of the wheat and the mysterious lives Of the unnamed poor.

Varus, varus, gib mir meine Legionen wieder Quick on my feet in those Novembers of my loneliness, I tossed a short pass, Almost the instant I got the ball, right over the head Of Barrel Terry before he knocked me cold. When I woke, I found myself crying out Latin conjugations, and the new snow falling At the edge of a green field. Lemoyne Crone had caught the pass, while I lay Unconscious and raging Alone with the fire ghost of Catullus, the contemptuous graces tossing Garlands and hendecasyllabics over the head Of Cornelius Nepos the mastodon, The huge volume. At the edges of Southeast Asia this afternoon The quarterbacks and the lines are beginning to fall, A spring snow, And terrified young men Quick on their feet Lob one another’s skulls across Wings of strange birds that are burning Themselves alive.

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, Asleep on the black trunk, Blowing like a leaf in green shadow. Down the ravine behind the empty house, The cowbells follow one another Into the distances of the afternoon. To my right, In a field of sunlight between two pines, The droppings of last year’s horses Blaze up into golden stones. I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on. A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. I have wasted my life.