Sophie Cabot Black

Maybe the light from a small window Tucked at the utmost eave of the barn Could be misunderstood; if only I had pulled In by the other way or not looked up Against such darkness. The animal I brought Into this no longer mine, the task Each day was to confine enough, from harm Or from each other as night loosens Over the assemblage. But in the pasture One wrong step was taken. And those who remain Are weary, heads low, torment nowhere To be seen, not even in the illumination Of men who have come to help, Who behind the double doors keep watch By the body so it does not become Anything for those who scavenge, to follow back The acts of blood right up to the locked stall And light where each shaft lands precisely again Through the again. The horse was in the snow, The rock was underfoot; all the unknowables Made whole and apparent by one who stumbled.

Day and night, the lake dreams of sky. A privacy as old as the mountains And her up there, stuck among peaks. The whole eye Fastened on hawk, gatherings of cloud or stars, So little trespass. An airplane once Crossed her brow; she searched but could not find A face. Having lived with such strict beauty She comes to know how the sun is nothing But itself and the path it throws; the moon A riddled stone. If only a hand Would tremble along her cheek, would disturb. Even the elk Pass by, drawn to the spill of creeks below— How she cannot help abundance, even as it leaves Her, as it sings all the way down the mountain.

How many times I have provided For your death; the apple turned one way Then the other, an arrangement made, The softer ground. To hold your head As if this mattered, to say what I think Essential into your ear, To watch the eye look everywhere to find What it does not know it looks for. To fasten you down in the one place Where no one can say anything more, Being nothing else but breath leaving, While the man with the needle stands by Until the signal of how it is time. To believe I know what will happen next; to leave the hill As the body stiffens; to pass each blossom Of blood in the snow as if I understood All I was capable of.

As for her, the circumstances must be ordinary And so the return. Door unlocked. The path mowed Right to the oiled gate; the pasture Cleared of stone and alder. All untouched Enough to enter. The man or woman Off down the valley or working above Treeline. No other sound but a few strays Hurrying through the dusk as if the end Will begin, certain and with nothing More to say. She does not know she does not know. Having come back to find her kind And none being left she took herself up Into a tree unclear what to do next save only Sing the song she wanted sung back to her.

Beyond is a brightness I am not equal to Yet what I see Turns into what I want, And to bring nothing but this body To pass through The one thing between Myself and what I crave, Almost done, the world a ruin Of leaves, winter at the throat, My song over and over until So familiar I can do What I am about to do While you who rise from the table And walk from room to room Will remember only the sound Of what cast herself through All that glass, instead of the song That was sung until finally You would ask to know more.