Jorie Graham

All this was written on the next day’s list. On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots, pale but effective, and the long stern of the necessary, the sum of events, built-up its tiniest cathedral ... (Or is it the sum of what takes place?) If I lean down, to whisper, to them, down into their gravitational field, there where they head busily on into the woods, laying the gifts out one by one, onto the path, hoping to be on the air, hoping to please the children— (and some gifts overwrapped and some not wrapped at all)—if I stir the wintered ground-leaves up from the paths, nimbly, into a sheet of sun, into an escape-route-width of sun, mildly gelatinous where wet, though mostly crisp, fluffing them up a bit, and up, as if to choke the singularity of sun with this jubilation of manyness, all through and round these passers-by— just leaves, nothing that can vaporize into a thought, no, a burning-bush’s worth of spidery, up-ratcheting, tender-cling leaves, oh if—the list gripped hard by the left hand of one, the busyness buried so deep into the puffed-up greenish mind of one, the hurried mind hovering over its rankings, the heart—there at the core of the drafting leaves—wet and warm at the zero of the bright mock-stairwaying-up of the posthumous leaves—the heart, formulating its alleyways of discovery, fussing about the integrity of the whole, the heart trying to make time and place seem small, sliding its slim tears into the deep wallet of each new event on the list then checking it off—oh the satisfaction—each check a small kiss, an echo of the previous one, off off it goes the dry high-ceilinged obligation, checked-off by the fingertips, by the small gust called done that swipes the unfinishable’s gold hem aside, revealing what might have been, peeling away what should ... There are flowerpots at their feet. There is fortune-telling in the air they breathe. It filters in with its flashlight-beam, its holy-water-tinted air, down into the open eyes, the lampblack open mouth. Oh listen to these words I’m spitting out for you. My distance from you makes them louder. Are we all waiting for the phone to ring? Who should it be? What fountain is expected to thrash forth mysteries of morning joy? What quail-like giant tail of promises, pleiades, psalters, plane-trees, what parapets petalling-forth the invisible into the world of things, turning the list into its spatial form at last, into its archival many-headed, many-legged colony.... Oh look at you. What is it you hold back? What piece of time is it the list won’t cover?   You down there, in the theater of operations—you, throat of the world—so diacritical— (are we all waiting for the phone to ring?)— (what will you say? are you home? are you expected soon?)— oh wanderer back from break, all your attention focused —as if the thinking were an oar, this ship the last of some original fleet, the captains gone but some of us who saw the plan drawn out still here—who saw the thinking clot-up in the bodies of the greater men, who saw them sit in silence while the voices in the other room lit up with passion, itchings, dreams of landings, while the solitary ones, heads in their hands, so still, the idea barely forming at the base of that stillness, the idea like a homesickness starting just to fold and pleat and knot itself out of the manyness—the plan—before it’s thought, before it’s a done deal or the name-you’re-known-by— the men of x, the outcomes of y—before— the mind still gripped hard by the hands that would hold the skull even stiller if they could, that nothing distract, that nothing but the possible be let to filter through— the possible and then the finely filamented hope, the filigree, without the distractions of wonder— oh tiny golden spore just filtering in to touch the good idea, which taking-form begins to twist, coursing for bottom-footing, palpating for edge-hold, limit, now finally about to rise, about to go into the other room—and yet not having done so yet, not yet—the intake—before the credo, before the plan— right at the homesickness—before this list you hold in your exhausted hand. Oh put it down.

& sea swell, hiss of   incomprehensible flat: distance: blue long-fingered ocean and its nothing else: nothing in the above visible except water: water and always the white self-destroying bloom of   wavebreak &, upclose roil, & here, on what’s left of   land, ticking of   stays against empty flagpoles, low tide, free day, nothing being memorialized here today — memories float, yes, over the place but not memories any of   us now among the living possess — open your hands — let go the scrap metal with the laughter — let go the upstairs neighbor you did not protect — they took him away — let go how frightened you knew he was all along while you went on with your day — your day overflowing with time and place — they came and got him — there are manners for every kind of event — he stopped reading and looked up when they came in — didn’t anyone tell you you would never feel at home — that there is a form of   slavery in everything — and when was it in   your admittedly short life you were permitted to believe that this lasted forever — remove   your   hands from your pockets — take out that laundry list, that receipt for everything you pawned last night — decide whom to blame — stick to your story — exclude expectation of   heavenly reward — exclude the milk of human kindness — poisoned from the start — yes — who ever expected that to be the mistake — with all the murderers and miracle workers — with the hovering spidery fairy tales — kites, angels, missiles, evening papers, yellow stars — clouds — those were houses that are his eyes — those were lives that are his eyes — those are families, those are privacies, those are details — those are reparation agreements, summary judgments, those are multiplications on the face of   the earth that are — those are the forests, the coal seams, the carbon sinks that are his — as they turn into carbon sources — his — and the festering wounds that are — and the granary that burned — and the quick blow administered to make it painless, so- called — his eyes his   yes   his blows his seed’s first insertion into this our only soil — &   the flower, the cut flower in my bouquet here, made from the walk we took this morning, aimless, as if   free, where you asked me to marry you, &   the loaf   of barley, millet and wheat I was able, as a matter of course, to bring to the table, fresh- baked, in life.

You. You at the door a crumpled thing when I open surprised.Sing, you hiss.Prosecute, sentence, waving your thin not-arms like dollar bills, your bewildering moldy skin — one or two of you are you, are you a god now, bony, wing-beaten down, smaller than ever, not dead as you should be but not alive either as you indicate mumbling almost falling in on your clawed feet —I still have desire— you float — at my small door — me inside — me inside life. Are you newborn now, I ask. Are you remnant. Why.Why are there moneylenders you say swatting me away when I ask can I help, growing more crumbled, but more than just cloth — all feather, burlap, beak, fingergrip, all edge and cling. A thing not formed or not divided yet. Pre-conception. Just at the threshold. Almost falling in your uneven crouching. Your chest a pulsation. A languishment that will not die. What is die. Now there is not blood on the earth anymore. We disappear. We pixilate. Races or places, is it. Which? Remember what it was to carry your load? Your you. That weight. Wondrous it was. At intervals light-struck. Silence and then the cutting of water, sleeping audible, thrown about by breath, keeping a sharp lookout — here’s where free choice vanished, here rights, here the real meaning of the word — (you choose) — consequence, capital, commodity, con- sumption. Community? Come here says time. Just try to find it, the here. Such a good game to keep you occupied for now. The rest of the now. It’s going to be a long time. Why are you here.What are they lending you. How can it be loaned. What is a loan. The changers. Who gets to keep it. No one gets to keep it. No one. None of it. What is it. The money changers. What can you change it into. What else do you want the things to become. But it won’t stay still as currency either. It will be changed again. Shape-shifting and all the other tiny adjustments. Currency manipulation — feel it — all those other hands on it, each with its own need, having held it — grasped, changed, folded, tucked, handed — oh look it becomes virtual — the fingerprint is lifted off, its little stain — no one’s need is on it any- more. It’s clean. It has never been, and never again will be, touched. The looping ledger of the fingerprint’s wish. I signed my name to this.Did you. In the hush. At the center. Among the closed shutters at the height of the day I signed. I clenched the pen and then my dream. It flowed. No one is ever at home. I don’t know why. Had been told to live by any means possible. Did. Beyond, the sea. You could feel this period coming to an end. All of it. A bomb went off, legs went off, means went off, blew off, like gossamer — nothing stalled — you couldn’t get it to stall — seemed painted-on but it was not, was sleeping, reality finally was sleeping — so deeply — you couldn’t wake it up again, you couldn’t wake yourself again — it rained — time sputtered now and then like a regurgitation of space. It’s a jail, light says, but it looks like just being lost, full of the things we needed to learn, us ready to step up and offer our lungs, intake and out,change me we say. We want to be identified, written-in, collected. Worth me up. Give me my true value ... But still I have to bring this to you in these words, cracked glaze all over it, little holes over it, belief drilled through, self, that boutique, gone under, such dark windows, history arrested ... History arrested. How is that possible. It flowed. It flowed without us, us on it if we could catch a ride sometimes. How do you live in this end. I look at you. You have been through. Your war is done. I try to squint it in. Do you really want to begin again. Is that why you’re here. I feel I could count your fingers, each hair left on you, each thread of skin, each crease. Four or five times you cast a glance on us. But then it’s done. Your passing by us now a buzzing of flies. You stand at the window and the song begins. We don’t know what to do with it, the moon, that monster, the fame and the thirst, the night out there a shirt rolled up to reveal what dusk had hid — a murky heart, a love that would never be replaced. But they are still there on the steps — the money changers. The steps of evening rise. They want you to exchange. That is the sacrament. Why does he keep throwing them out. Day after day. Forever. Listen to me, you say, you are going off into thought, it is not a real road. Take yourself off the road. He is and is not but he is. And you are always in the holy place. Because just being in it makes it holy. Uphold it. Linger. Be eternal for this instant. Lodge in. I cannot say in what. Have spent a lifetime saying in. In flow, in promise, rich, in haste experiment crowd season in bias gnawing at hope invisible in time standing in it confounded tongue in my mouth about to curl up, speak, promise, taste promise, laugh at the ignorance, cherish ignorance — don’t leave — this is where I’ve arrived — don’t slip away, the reverse of the watching and waiting is finally here, wasn’t mine, wasn’t me speaking either. Not anymore. This is that dream. The darling of failure. No identification. All impending and then the now strikes. It is unbreakable. It is. You must believe me. I want to be here and also there where you receive this but I can’t. That’s the whole story. I will never know what is there to know. You will not be changed. You must believe.

Then the cicadas again like kindling that won’t take. The struck match of some utopia we no longer remember the terms of— the rules. What was it was going to be abolished, what restored? Behind them the foghorn in the harbor, the hoarse announcements of unhurried arrivals, the spidery virgin-shrieks of gulls, a sideways sound, a slippery utterly ash-free delinquency and then the subaqueous pasturings       inexhaustible phosphorous handwritings the frothings of their own excitements now erase, depth wrestling with the current-corridors of depth ... But here, up on the hill, in town, the clusterings of dwellings in balconied crystal-formation, the cadaverous swallowings of the dream of reason gone, hot fingerprints where thoughts laid out these streets, these braceletings of park and government—a hospital—a dirt-bike run— here, we stand in our hysteria with our hands in our pockets, quiet, at the end of day, looking out, theories stationary, while the freight, the crazy wick, once more slides down— marionette-like its being lowered in— marionette-strung our outwaiting its bloody translation ... Utopia: remember the sensation of direction we loved, how it tunneled forwardly for us, and us so feudal in its wake— speckling of diamond-dust as I think of it now, that being carried forward by the notion of human perfectibility—like a pasture imposed on the rising vibrancy of endless diamond-dust ... And how we would comply, some day. How we were built to fit and comply— as handwriting fits to the form of its passion, no, to the form of its passionate bearer’s fingerprintable i.d., or, no, to the handkerchief she brings now to her haunted face, lifting the sunglasses to wipe away the theory—or is it the tears?—the freight now all in her right hand, in the oceanic place we’d pull up through her wrist—we’d siphon right up— marionette with her leavening of mother-of-pearl— how she wants to be legible, how the light streaking her shades now grows vermilion, which she would capture of course, because that, she has heard, from the rumorous diamond-dust, is what is required, as also her spirit—now that it has been swallowed like a lustrous hailstone by her unquenchable body—suggests—the zero at the heart of the christened bonfire—oh little grimace, kiss, solo at the heart—growing refined, tiny missionary, in your brightskirted host, scorched comprehension—because that is what’s required, her putting down now the sunset onto that page, as an expression of her deepest undertowing sentiment, which spidery gestures, tongued-over the molecular whiteness, squared out and stretched and made to resemble emptiness, will take down the smoldering in the terms of her passion —sunglasses on the table, telephone ringing— and be carried across the tongue-tied ocean, through dusk, right through it, over prisons, over tiny clapboard houses to which the bartender returns, exhausted, after work, over flare-ups of civil strife, skeletons rotting in the arms of skeletons, the foliage all round them gleaming, the green belly-up god we thought we’d seen the last of, shuddering his sleep off, first fruit hanging ripe—oh bright red zero— right there within reach, that he too may be nourished, you know this of course, what has awakened which we thought we’d extinguished, us still standing here sword in hand, hand extended, frail, over the limpid surface of the lake-like page, the sleep-like page, now folded and gently driven into its envelope, for the tiny journey, over offices, over sacrifices, to its particular address, at the heart of the metropolis, where someone else is waiting, hailstone at the core, and the heat is too great, friend, the passion in its envelope, doors slamming, traffic backing-up, the populace not really abandoned, not really, just very tired on its long red errancy down the freeways in the dusklight towards the little town on the hill—the crystal-formation?— how long ago was it we said that? do you remember?— and now that you’ve remembered—and the distance we’ve traveled—and where we were, then—and how little we’ve found—aren’t we tired? aren’t we going to close the elaborate folder which holds the papers in their cocoon of possibility, the folder so pretty with its massive rose-blooms, oh perpetual bloom, dread fatigue, and drowsiness like leavening I feel—

Look she said this is not the distance we wanted to stay at—We wanted to get close, very close. But what is the way in again? And is it too late? She could hear the actions rushing past—but they are on another track. And in the silence, or whatever it is that follows, there was still the buzzing: motes, spores, aftereffects and whatnot recalled the morning after. Then the thickness you can’t get past called waiting. Then the you, whoever you are, peering down to see if it’s done yet. Then just the look on things being looked-at. Then just the look of things being seen.