Jean Valentine

People pray to each other. The way I say "you" to someone else, respectfully, intimately, desperately. The way someone says "you" to me, hopefully, expectantly, intensely ... —Huub Oosterhuis You       who I don’t know       I don’t know how to talk to you —What is it like for you there? Here ... well, wanting solitude; and talk; friendship— The uses of solitude. To imagine; to hear. Learning braille. To imagine other solitudes. But they will not be mine; to wait, in the quiet; not to scatter the voices— What are you afraid of? What will happen. All this leaving. And meetings, yes. But death. What happens when you die? “... not scatter the voices,” Drown out. Not make a house, out of my own words. To be quiet in another throat; other eyes; listen for what it is like there. What word. What silence. Allowing. Uncertain: to drift, in the restlessness ... Repose. To run like water— What is it like there, right now? Listen: the crowding of the street; the room. Everyone hunches in against the crowding; holding their breath: against dread. What do you dread? What happens when you die? What do you dread, in this room, now? Not listening. Now. Not watching. Safe inside my own skin. To die, not having listened. Not having asked ... To have scattered life. Yes I know: the thread you have to keep finding, over again, to follow it back to life; I know. Impossible, sometimes.

a labyrinth, as if at its center, god would be there— but at the center, only rose, where rose came from, where rose grows— & us, inside of the lips & lips: the likenesses, the eyes, & the hair, we are born of, fed by, & marry with, only flesh itself, only its passage —out of where?    to where? Then god the mother said to Jim, in a dream, Never mind you, Jim, come rest again on the country porch of my knees.

Coming east we left the animals pelican beaver osprey muskrat and snake their hair and skin and feathers their eyes in the dark: red and green. Your finger drawing my mouth. Blessed are they who remember that what they now have they once longed for.

I lay down under language it left me and I slept —You, the Comforter, came into the room my blood, my mouth all buttoned away— Makers of houses, books, clothes- makers, goodbye—

Child You've boarded me over like a window or a well. Mother It was autumn I couldn't hear the students only the music coming in the window, Se tu m’ami If you love me

In my sleep: Fell at his feet         wanted to eat him right up would have         but even better he talked to me. Did I ask you to? Were those words my blood-sucking too? Now I will have a body again move differently, easier         back to the plan a little house         a woman and a man crossed against yours my soul will show glow through my breastbone: Back down into the kitchen yours Here         I will save you others have failed, even died, but I will save you         you save me         devour me away up Woke up: I can cry but I can't wake up today again         don't answer the door then did         couldn't look at you talk couldn't place the bed in the room, or where the room was when I closed my eyes This is the same old knife         my knife I know it as well as I know my own mouth It will be lying there on the desk if I open my eyes I will know the room very well there will be the little thrown-out globe of blood we left and every molecule of every object here will swell with life. And someone will be at the door.

In prison without being accused or reach your family or have a family            You have conscience heart trouble asthma manic-depressive (we lost the baby) no meds no one no window black water nail-scratched walls your pure face turned away embarrassed you who the earth was for.

The helicopter, a sort of controlled silver leaf dropped lightly into the clearing. The searchlights swung, the little girl, the little girl was crying, her mother, a girl herself, was giving birth, the forest dropped birdseeds of milk. Then the helicopter lifted away, the mother rested. Like him who came to us empty-handed, who came, it seemed, with nothing, Joseph Cornell—          making a shoebox universe to put it all in.

Hurt, hurtful, snake-charmed, struck white together half an hour we tear through the half-dark after some sweet core, under, over gravity, some white shore ... spin, hidden one,spin, trusted to me! laugh sore tooth sucked warm, sweet; sweet wine running cool through new dry shrewd turnings of my soul, opening veins. Gull-feathers beating, beating! Gliding. Still, sidelong eye ... wings beating like words against my eyes. And your eyes— o brother-animal, mild, terrible!—your eyes wait, have been waiting, knowing, unknowable, on that sky shore. A life is waiting. Its webbed hand reached out ... Trust me! truth- telling fish of the sky! your hand beyond my hand, your phosphorous trail broken, lost.

When I first heard you on the phone your voice had to be that '40s wartime voice for it to get under my skin like it did, after seven years asleep. You’re at the beginning of something, you said, and I’m at the end of something; but you didn’t go away, twice-born, three times, coming around, rough cello. Late days I want to drive to your grave, But I don’t belong to it.