Tracy K. Smith

for the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters One of the women greeted me. I love you, she said. She didn't Know me, but I believed her, And a terrible new ache Rolled over in my chest, Like in a room where the drapes Have been swept back. I love you, I love you, as she continued Down the hall past other strangers, Each feeling pierced suddenly By pillars of heavy light. I love you, throughout The performance, in every Handclap, every stomp. I love you in the rusted iron Chains someone was made To drag until love let them be Unclasped and left empty In the center of the ring. I love you in the water Where they pretended to wade, Singing that old blood-deep song That dragged us to those banks And cast us in. I love you, The angles of it scraping at Each throat, shouldering past The swirling dust motes In those beams of light That whatever we now knew We could let ourselves feel, knew To climb. O Woods—O Dogs O Tree—O Gun—O Girl, run O Miraculous Many Gone— O Lord—O Lord—O Lord— Is this love the trouble you promised?

The first track still almost swings. High hat and snare, even A few bars of sax the stratosphere will singe-out soon enough. Synthesized strings. Then something like cellophane Breaking in as if snagged to a shoe. Crinkle and drag. White noise, Black noise. What must be voices bob up, then drop, like metal shavings In molasses. So much for us. So much for the flags we bored Into planets dry as chalk, for the tin cans we filled with fire And rode like cowboys into all we tried to tame. Listen: The dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming, Marbled with static like gristly meat. A chorus of engines churns. Silence taunts: a dare. Everything that disappears Disappears as if returning somewhere.

5pm on the nose. They open their mouths And it rolls out: high, shrill and metallic. First the boy, then his sister. Occasionally, They both let loose at once, and I think Of putting on my shoes to go up and see Whether it is merely an experiment Their parents have been conducting Upon the good crystal, which must surely Lie shattered to dust on the floor. Maybe the mother is still proud Of the four pink lungs she nursed To such might. Perhaps, if they hit The magic decibel, the whole building Will lift-off, and we'll ride to glory Like Elijah. If this is it—if this is what Their cries are cocked toward—let the sky Pass from blue, to red, to molten gold, To black. Let the heaven we inherit approach. Whether it is our dead in Old Testament robes, Or a door opening onto the roiling infinity of space. Whether it will bend down to greet us like a father, Or swallow us like a furnace. I'm ready To meet what refuses to let us keep anything For long. What teases us with blessings, Bends us with grief. Wizard, thief, the great Wind rushing to knock our mirrors to the floor, To sweep our short lives clean. How mean Our racket seems beside it. My stereo on shuffle. The neighbor chopping onions through a wall. All of it just a hiccough against what may never Come for us. And the kids upstairs still at it, Screaming like the Dawn of Man, as if something They have no name for has begun to insist Upon being born.

Why and by whose power were you sent? What do you see that you may wish to steal? Why this dancing? Why do your dark bodies Drink up all the light? What are you demanding That we feel? Have you stolen something? Then What is that leaping in your chest? What is The nature of your mission? Do you seek To offer a confession? Have you anything to do With others brought by us to harm? Then Why are you afraid? And why do you invade Our night, hands raised, eyes wide, mute As ghosts? Is there something you wish to confess? Is this some enigmatic type of test? What if we Fail? How and to whom do we address our appeal?

You flinch. Something flickers, not fleeing your face. My Heart hammers at the ceiling, telling my tongue To turn it down. Too late. The something climbs, leaps, is Falling now across us like the prank of an icy, brainy Lord. I chose the wrong word. I am wrong for not choosing Merely to smile, to pull you toward me and away from What you think of as that other me, who wanders lost among ... Among whom? The many? The rare? I wish you didn’t care. I watch you watching her. Her very shadow is a rage That trashes the rooms of your eyes. Do you claim surprise At what she wants, the poor girl, pelted with despair, Who flits from grief to grief? Isn’t it you she seeks? And If you blame her, know that she blames you for choosing Not her, but me. Love is never fair. But do we — should we — care?

There will be no edges, but curves. Clean lines pointing only forward. History, with its hard spine & dog-eared Corners, will be replaced with nuance, Just like the dinosaurs gave way To mounds and mounds of ice. Women will still be women, but The distinction will be empty. Sex, Having outlived every threat, will gratify Only the mind, which is where it will exist. For kicks, we'll dance for ourselves Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs. The oldest among us will recognize that glow— But the word sun will have been re-assigned To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device Found in households and nursing homes. And yes, we'll live to be much older, thanks To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged, Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift In the haze of space, which will be, once And for all, scrutable and safe.

We were made to understand it would be Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge, Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful Dream. The worst of us having taken over And broken the rest utterly down. A long age Passed. When at last we knew how little Would survive us—how little we had mended Or built that was not now lost—something Large and old awoke. And then our singing Brought on a different manner of weather. Then animals long believed gone crept down From trees. We took new stock of one another. We wept to be reminded of such color.

1. We like to think of it as parallel to what we know, Only bigger. One man against the authorities. Or one man against a city of zombies. One man Who is not, in fact, a man, sent to understand The caravan of men now chasing him like red ants Let loose down the pants of America. Man on the run. Man with a ship to catch, a payload to drop, This message going out to all of space.. . . Though Maybe it’s more like life below the sea: silent, Buoyant, bizarrely benign. Relics Of an outmoded design. Some like to imagine A cosmic mother watching through a spray of stars, Mouthing yes,yes as we toddle toward the light, Biting her lip if we teeter at some ledge. Longing To sweep us to her breast, she hopes for the best While the father storms through adjacent rooms Ranting with the force of Kingdom Come, Not caring anymore what might snap us in its jaw. Sometimes,  what I see is a library in a rural community. All the tall shelves in the big open room. And the pencils In a cup at Circulation, gnawed on by the entire population. The books have lived here all along, belonging For weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence Of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face, A pair of eyes. The most remarkable lies. 2. Charlton Heston is waiting to be let in. He asked once politely. A second time with force from the diaphragm. The third time, He did it like Moses: arms raised high, face an apocryphal white. Shirt crisp, suit trim, he stoops a little coming in, Then grows tall. He scans the room. He stands until I gesture, Then he sits. Birds commence their evening chatter. Someone fires Charcoals out below. He’ll take a whiskey if I have it. Water if I don’t. I ask him to start from the beginning, but he goes only halfway back. That was the future once, he says.Before the world went upside down. Hero, survivor, God’s right hand man, I know he sees the blank Surface of the moon where I see a language built from brick and bone. He sits straight in his seat, takes a long, slow high-thespian breath, Then lets it go.For all I know, I was the last true man on this earth. And: May I smoke? The voices outside soften. Planes jet past heading off or back. Someone cries that she does not want to go to bed. Footsteps overhead. A fountain in the neighbor’s yard babbles to itself, and the night air Lifts the sound indoors.It was another time, he says, picking up again. We were pioneers. Will you fight to stay alive here, riding the earth Toward God-knows-where? I think of Atlantis buried under ice, gone One day from sight, the shore from which it rose now glacial and stark. Our eyes adjust to the dark. 3. Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone, That the others have come and gone—a momentary blip— When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic, Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding, Setting solid feet down on planets everywhere, Bowing to the great stars that command, pitching stones At whatever are their moons. They live wondering If they are the only ones, knowing only the wish to know, And the great black distance they—we—flicker in. Maybe the dead know, their eyes widening at last, Seeing the high beams of a million galaxies flick on At twilight. Hearing the engines flare, the horns Not letting up, the frenzy of being. I want to be One notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial. Wide open, so everything floods in at once. And sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time, Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke. So that I might be sitting now beside my father As he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe For the first time in the winter of 1959. 4. In those last scenes of Kubrick’s 2001 When Dave is whisked into the center of space, Which unfurls in an aurora of orgasmic light Before opening wide, like a jungle orchid For a love-struck bee, then goes liquid, Paint-in-water, and then gauze wafting out and off, Before, finally, the night tide, luminescent And vague, swirls in, and on and on. . . . In those last scenes, as he floats Above Jupiter’s vast canyons and seas, Over the lava strewn plains and mountains Packed in ice, that whole time, he doesn’t blink. In his little ship, blind to what he rides, whisked Across the wide-screen of unparcelled time, Who knows what blazes through his mind? Is it still his life he moves through, or does That end at the end of what he can name? On set, it’s shot after shot till Kubrick is happy, Then the costumes go back on their racks And the great gleaming set goes black. 5. When my father worked on the Hubble Telescope, he said They operated like surgeons: scrubbed and sheathed In papery green, the room a clean cold, a bright white. He’d read Larry Niven at home, and drink scotch on the rocks, His eyes exhausted and pink. These were the Reagan years, When we lived with our finger on The Button and struggled To view our enemies as children. My father spent whole seasons Bowing before the oracle-eye, hungry for what it would find. His face lit-up whenever anyone asked, and his arms would rise As if he were weightless, perfectly at ease in the never-ending Night of space. On the ground, we tied postcards to balloons For peace. Prince Charles married Lady Di. Rock Hudson died. We learned new words for things. The decade changed. The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe. The second time, The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is— So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.

1. Falmouth, Massachusetts, 1972 Oak table, knotted legs, the chirp And scrape of tines to mouth. Four children, four engines Of want. That music. What did your hand mean to smooth Across the casket of your belly? What echoed there, if not me—tiny body Afloat, akimbo, awake or at rest? Every night you fed the others Bread leavened with the grains Of your own want. How Could you stand me near you, In you, jump and kick tricking The heart, when what you prayed for Was my father’s shadow, your name In his dangerous script, an envelope Smelling of gun-powder, bay rum, Someone to wrestle, sing to, question, Climb? 2. Interstate 101 South, California, 1981 Remember the radio, the Coca-Cola sign Phosphorescent to the left, bridge After bridge, as though our lives were Engineered simply to go? And so we went Into those few quiet hours Alone together in the dark, my arm On the rest beside yours, our lights Pricking at fog, tugging us patiently Forward like a needle through gauze. Night held us like a house. Sometimes an old song Would fill the car like a ghost. 3. Leroy, Alabama, 2005 There’s still a pond behind your mother’s old house, Still a stable with horses, a tractor rusted and stuck Like a trophy in mud. And the red house you might Have thrown stones at still stands on stilts up the dirt road. A girl from the next town over rides in to lend us Her colt, cries when one of us kicks it with spurs. Her father wants to buy her a trailer, let her try her luck In the shows. They stay for dinner under the tent Your brother put up for the Fourth. Firebugs flare And vanish. I am trying to let go of something. My heart cluttered with names that mean nothing. Our racket races out to the darkest part of the night. The woods catch it and send it back. 4. But let’s say you’re alive again— Your hands are long and tell your age. You hold them there, twirling a bent straw, And my reflection watches, hollow-faced, Not trying to hide. The waiters make it seem Like Cairo. Back and forth shouting That sharp language. And for the first time I tell you everything. No shame In my secrets, shoddy as laundry. I have praised your God For the blessing of the body, snuck From pleasure to pleasure, lying for it, Holding it like a coin or a key in my fist. I know now you’ve known all along. I won’t change. I want to give Everything away. To wander forever. Here is a pot of tea. Let’s share it Slowly, like sisters.

But sometimes I forget where I am, Imagine myself inside that life again. Recalcitrant mornings. Sun perhaps, Or more likely colorless light Filtering its way through shapeless cloud. And when I begin to believe I haven’t left, The rest comes back. Our couch. My smoke Climbing the walls while the hours fall. Straining against the noise of traffic, music, Anything alive, to catch your key in the door. And that scamper of feeling in my chest, As if the day, the night, wherever it is I am by then, has been only a whir Of something other than waiting. We hear so much about what love feels like. Right now, today, with the rain outside, And leaves that want as much as I do to believe In May, in seasons that come when called, It’s impossible not to want To walk into the next room and let you Run your hands down the sides of my legs, Knowing perfectly well what they know.