Josephine Miles

Throwing his life away, He picks at and smells it. Done up. When did I do this up? I date its death to the time someone Said something. Back then. Everything else, all striving, making, Marrying, error, Is this old bird. Pah! He throws it. As the long string lengthens Out of his hand, It begins unwinding The ligaments of his hand.

After her pills the girl slept and counted Pellet on pellet the regress of life. Dead to the world, the world's count yet counted Pellet on pill the antinomies of life. Refused to turn, the way's back, she counted Her several stones across the mire of life. And stones away and sticks away she counted To keep herself out of the country of life. Lost tally. How the sheep return to home Is the story she will retrieve And the only story believe Of one and one the sheep returning home To take the shapes of life, Coming and being counted.

To this man, to his boned shoulders Came the descent of pain. All kinds, Cruel, blind, dear, horrid, hallowed, Rained, again, again. To this small white blind boned face, Wherever it was, Descended The blows of pain, it took as it were blinded, As it were made for this. We were there. We uneasy Did not know if it were. Knew neither The reason nor the man nor whether To share, or to beware.

Simplicity so graven hurts the sense. The monumental and the simple break And the great tablets shatter down in deed. Every year the quick particular jig Of unresolved event moves in the mind, And there's the trick simplicity has to win.

All our roads go nowhere. Maps are curled To keep the pavement definitely On the world. All our footsteps, set to make Metric advance, Lapse into arcs in deference To circumstance. All our journeys nearing Space Skirt it with care, Shying at the distances Present in air. Blithely travel-stained and worn, Erect and sure, All our travels go forth, Making down the roads of Earth Endless detour.

This face had no use for light, took none of it, Grew cavernous against stars, bore into noon A dark of midnight by its own resources. Yet where it lay in sleep, where the pillows held it With the blind plaster over it and the four walls Keeping the night carefully, it was undone. Sixty-watt light, squared to a window frame, Across a well of air, across wind and window Leaped and made shine the dark face in its sleep.

One rat across the floor and quick to floor's a breeze, But two a whisper of a human tongue. One is a breath, two voice; And one a dream, but more are dreamed too long. Two are the portent which we may believe at length, And two the tribe we recognize as true. Two are the total, they saying and they saying, So we must ponder what we are to do. For every scuttle of motion in the corner of the eye Some thought of thought is asked in us indeed, But of two, more: there we have likeness moving, And there knowledge therefore, and therefore creed.

When I think of my kindness which is tentative and quiet And of yours which is intense and free, I am in elaboration of knowledge impatient Of even the patientest immobility. I think of my kind, which is the human fortune To live in the world and make war among its friends, And of my version, which is to be moderately peaceful, And of your version; and must make amends By my slow word to your wish which is mobile, Active and moving in its generous sphere. This is the natural and the supernatural Of humankind of which I grow aware.

So populous the region That from the next region The crowing of children, barking of cars could be heard, So that a continuous linkage Of sounds of living ran In the limber air, District to district, Woodlake to Montclair, Freestone to Smithfield, and one child’s cry Was not concealed from any trade route, Or passer by, Or upstairs island of thought withdrawn, Or basement of submerged magnificence. One crow Welkened the evening sky, Bark blasted the dark, Like an assertion in a time of assent, Or an increase to astonishment. June 1958

This gray board fence turns blue in the evening light And the sycamores reign down upon it their diadems, And blue and green batter in wood and stems The stems of light Their green and golden gems. At once, out of a million years of energy, All turn to flesh,—board, gate, and branch— With that quick sunset wrench Which seems like chance, Out of the fashion of an entropy. If then the flesh is yours, as now it is, I have lost yard, sunset, and all Into a mild greeting, and I call The sunset to your thought, to tell it is Parent apparent to your rich apparel. August 1954