Susan Howe

When I come to view about steadfastness Espousal is as ever Evil never unravels Memory was and will be yet mercy flows Mercies to me and mine Night rainy my family in private and family I know I know short conviction have losses then let me see why To what distance and by what path I thought you would come away _____________ 1 Battered out of Isaiah Prophets stand gazing Formed from earth In sure and certain What can be thought Who go down to hell alive is the theme of this work I walk its broad shield Every sign by itself havoc brood from afar Letting the slip out Glorious in faithfulness Reason never thought saw 2 You already have brine Reason swept all away Disciples are fishermen Go to them for direction Gospel of law Gospel of shadow in the vale of behavior who is the transgressor Far thought for thought nearer one to the other I know and do not know Non attachment dwell on nothing Peace be in this house Only his name and truth 3 Having a great way to go it struck at my life how you conformed to dust I have taken the library Volumes might be written ambiguous signs by name Near nightfall it touches it Nothing can forbear it So fierce and so flaring Sometimes by the seaside all echoes link as air Not I cannot tell what so wanton and so all about 4 Fields have vanished The Mower his hopes Bow broke time loose none but my shadow she to have lived on with the wood-siege nesting in this poem Departed from the body at home of the story I'm free and I'm famished And so to the Irish Patrol sentinel ensign Please feel my arms open 5 The issue of legitimation Identity of the subject Circumcision of a heart driven outside its secret Elysian solitary imagination by doubt but not by sight Fear that forever forever perfect Charity casts out The Canticle is an allegory unchangeable but changeable Fluttering robes of Covetous He is incomprehensible he makes darkness his covert 6 Ages pre-supposed ages the darkness of life out of necessity night being a defense by day the cause and way to it From same to the same These joining together and having allegiance Words are an illusion are vibrations of air Fabricating senselessness He has shattered gates thrown open to himself 7 Though lost I love Love unburied lies No echo newlyfledge Thought but thought the moving cause the execution of it Only for theft's sake even though even perturb the peace But for the hate of it questionless limit unassuaged newlyfledge A counter-Covenant 8 Mysterious as night itself All negligently scenery if Nothing could be seen Sacraments are mysterious Ambiguous in literal meaning the Pentateuch the Angels John all men form a silent man who wrote the author down Sackcloth itself is humility a word prerogatives array Language a wood for thought over the pantomime of thought Words words night unto night 9 Drift of human mortality what is the drift of words Pure thoughts are coupled Turn your face to what told me love grazed here at least mutinous predominant unapparent What is unseen is eternal Judgments are a great deep Confession comes to nought half to be taken half left From communion of wrongdoing doubleness among the nouns I feed and feed upon names 10 Claim foreign order dismantling mortal Begotten possibility plummet fetter seem So coldly systems break Fraught atvantaging Two tell againstself Theme theme heart fury all in mutiny Troubleless or sadder Estranged of all strange Let my soul quell Give my soul ease 11 Antic prelate treason I put on haircloth Clear unutterable Secret but tell What diadem bright Theme theme heart fury Winged knowledge hush Billeted near presage such themes do quell Claim foreign order Plummet fetter seem wild as loveDeath Two tell against self 12 Strange fear of sleep am bafflement gone Bat winged dim dawn herthe midmost wide I did this and I But forever you say Bafflement nether elegy herthe otherwise I Irreconcilable theme keep silent then Strange always strange Estrange that I desire Keep cover come cover 13 Lies are stirring storms I listen spheres from far Whereunder shoreward away you walked here Protector unassuaged asunder thought you walked here Overshadow I listen spheres of stars I draw you close ever so Communion come down and down Quiet place to stop here Who knows ever no one knows to know unlove no forgive _____________ Half thought thought otherwise loveless and sleepless the sea Where you are where I would be half thought thought otherwise Loveless and sleepless the sea

“Crawl in,” said the witch, “and see if it’s hot enough to put the bread in.” —Hansel and Gretel All roads lead to rooms. —Irish Proverb a stark Quake a numb Calm * clutching my Crumbl ejumble among Tombs and in Caves my Dream Vision Oarsman, oarsman, Where have you been? I’ve been to Leafy, I’ve dismembered the Queen. Oarsman, oarsman What did you there? I hid in a cleft, I braided the air. hearing our oars where their freed goatsteps sped and are silent by an extinct river O Babylon when I lay down alert for sliding cataracts where in corridors the print of dancing feet beyond poise I am prey posing in snow-light being of human form clothed in the scales of a fish Count him a magician he controls the storm walked on the sea shouting that he is the Logos of God that he is the Word original and first begotten attended by power upheld by his mother (a very active gesturing baby) what if Simon Peter Jesus himself walked among the cold stone faces shouting NIKA emptyeyed blanksmiling Swiftness divination these false gods their commerce is the cloud so they can learn what is preparing in the sky Artificer of the universe Magician who controls the storm to see you in one spot I count the clouds others count the seasons Dreaming of archipelagos and the desert I have lived through weeks of years I have raked up fallen leaves for winter after winter across an empire of icy light Light of our dark is the fruit of my womb or night falling through the reign of splashes Liquid light that bathes the landscape in my figure Clairvoyant Ireland eras and eras encircled by sea the barrows of my ancestors have spilled their bones across the singing ear in hear or shell as wreck or wrack may be in daring There were giants on the earth in those days feasts then on hill and fort All night the borders of my bed carve paths across my face and I always forget to leave my address frightened by the way that midnight grips my palm and tells me that my lines are slipping out of question Divorce I manumission round with a gentle blow the casting branch my right hand My covenant was garment concealed or mask or matron Proceed with measured step the field and action of the law Like day the tables twelve whip torch and radiate halo Sky brewing coming storm Faraway over the hill when Hell was harrowed and earth was brought to heel how the hills spread away how the walls crumbled deathcolored frozen in time Where was the senate   zone and horizon Where are the people   mountain of light to the east Tell them I sail for the deep sea rest a painless extraction a joyful day bird of passage over all I love Goodbye to all the little fir trees of the future far   off    in    the    dread blindness    I   heard   light eagerly   I   struck   my foot against    a      stone      and raised    a    din    at    the sound    the   blessed    Paul shut   the   door   which   had been   open   and   bolted   it

When I love a thing I want it and I try to get it. Abstraction of the particular from the universal is the entrance into evil. Love, a binding force, is both envy and emulation. HE (the Puritan God) is a realm of mystery and will always remain unknowable, authoritarian, unpredictable. Between revealed will and secret will Love has been torn in two. DUALISM: Pythagoras said that all things were divisible into two genera, good and evil; in the genus of good things he classified all perfect things such as light, males, repose, and so forth, whereas in the genus of evil he classified darkness, females, and so forth. (Thomas Aquinas, “On the Power of God,” p. 84) Promethean aspiration: To be a woman and a Pythagorean. What is the communal vision of poetry if you are curved, odd, indefinite, irregular, feminine. I go in disguise. Soul under stress, thread of connection broken, fusion of love and knowledge broken, visionary energy lost, Dickinson means this to be an ugly verse. First I find myself a Slave, next I understand my slavery, finally I re-discover myself at liberty inside the confines of known necessity. Gun goes on thinking of the violence done to meaning. Gun watches herself watching.

All male Quincys are now dead, excepting one. John Wheelwright, “Gestures to the Dead” 1 Vast oblong space dwindled to one solitary rock. On it I saw a heap of hay impressed with the form of a man. Beleaguered Captain Stork with his cane on some quixotic skirmish. Deserters arrived from Fort Necessity All hope was gone. Howe carrying a white flag of truce went toward the water. 2 An Apostle in white stood on a pavement of scarlet Around him stretched in deep sleep lay the dark forms of warriors. He was turned away gazing on a wide waste. His cry of alarm astonished everyone. 3 A Council of War in battle array after some siege. I ran to them shouting as I ran “Victory!” Night closed in weedy with flies. The Moon slid between moaning pines and tangled vines. 4 Neutrals collected bones or journeyed behind on foot shouting at invisible doors to open. There were guards who approached stealthy as linxes Always fresh footprints in the forest We closed a chasm then trod the ground firm I carried your name like a huge shield. 5 Because dreams were oracles agile as wild-cats we leapt on a raft of ice. Children began a wail of despair we carried them on our shoulders. A wave thrust our raft of ice against a northern shore. An Indian trail led through wood and thicket Light broke on the forest The hostile town was close at hand. We screamed our war-cry and rushed in. 6 It was Him Power of the Clouds Judge of the Dead The sheep on his right The goats on his left And all the angels. But from the book backward on their knees crawled neolithic adventurers known only to themselves. They blazed with artifice no pin, or kernel, or grain too small to pick up. A baby with a broken face lay on the leaves Hannibal—a rough looking man rushed by with a bundle of sticks. “Ah, this is fortunate,” cried Forebear and helped himself to me. 7 God is an animal figure Clearly headless. He bewitches his quarry with ambiguous wounds The wolf or poor ass had only stolen straw. O sullen Silence Nail two sticks together and tell resurrection stories. 8 There on the deck, child in her arms was the girl I had been before She waved then threw her child to me and jumped But she missed the edge and swirled away. I left you in a group of grownup children and went in search wandered sandhills snowy nights calling “Mother, Father” A Dauphin sat down to dine on dust alone in his field of wheat One war-whoop toppled a State. I thought we were in the right country but the mountains were gone. We saw five or six people coming toward us who were savages. Alhough my pen was leaky as a sieve I scribbled “Arm, Arm!” “Ear.” Barked the Moon. We paddled with hands, planks, and a pencil “Listen—The people surrender” I don’t remember the rest but it was beautiful. We were led ashore by Captain Snow “I’ll meet you soon—” he said and vanished in the fog. 9 We cooked trout and perch on forked sticks. Fire crackled in the forest stillness Fire forms stood out against the gloom Ancient trunks with wens and deformities Moss bearded ancients—and thin saplings The strong, the weak, the old, the young— Now and then some sleeper would get up Warm her hands at the fire and listen to the whisper of a leaf or the footfall of an animal I kept my gun-match burning when it rained— 10 Holding hands with my skin I walked the wintry strand. “Tickle yourself with my stroke” ticked the wiseacre clock. The river sang— “Pelucid dark and deep my waters— come and cross me alone.” The final ruins ahead revealed two figures timidly engraved on one another. 11 I built a house that faced the east I never ventured west for fear of murder. Eternity dawned. Solitary watcher of what rose and set I saw only a Golgotha of corpses. 12 Experience teaches the savage revenge an enemy always takes on forerunners who follow. You were a little army of unarmed children— A newborn infant sat in the hollow of my pillow. 13 The house was a model of harmony. Children coiled like hedgehogs or lay on their backs. A doll uttered mysterious oracles “Put on the kettle.” “Get up and go home.” The clock was alive I asked what it ate. “A Cross large enough to crucify us all.” and so on. Blankets congealed into icicles We practiced trips, falls, dives into snowdrifts. With a snowshoe for a shovel I opened the clock and we searched for peace in its deep and private present. Outside, the world swarmed with sorcerers.

The past will overtake alien force our house formed of my mind to enter explorer in a forest of myself for all my learning Solitude quiet and quieter fringe of trees by a river bridges black on the deep the heaving sea a watcher stands to see her ship winging away Thick noises merge in moonlight dark ripples dissolving and defining spheres and snares Place of importance as in the old days stood on the ramparts of the fort the open sea outside alone with water-birds and cattle knee-deep in a stream grove of reeds herons watching from the bank henges whole fields honeycombed with souterrains human bones through the gloom whose sudden mouth surrounded my face a thread of blue around the coast feathery moon eternity swallows up time peaceable as foam O cabbage gardens summer’s elegy sunset survived

II. Conversion I like to be stationary. —Bartleby Who is not a wild Enthusiast in a green meadow furious and fell Arriving on the stage of history I saw madness of the world Stripped of falsification and corruption anthems were singing in Authorem Father and the Father by my words will I be justified Autobiography I saw Legal righteousness makes us servants All good hearers Opposers or despisers Night page torn word missing The family silence gave up the ghost I feared the fall of my child resting quietly with some hopes as a bird before any Election—Vocation— Justification— Cape of Wind wreathe fame out laughing Seated on a cloud Seacret drift seacretly behest the dear She comes to all Guilty all circling Eye window soul body Pride cannot bow Ariadne’s diadem zodiac helmet belt