437 Death poems

Sing the mass— light upon me washing words now that I am gone. The sky was a hot, blue sheet the summer breeze fanned out and over the town. I could have lived forever under that sky. Forgetting where I was, I looked left, not right, crossed into a street and stepped in front of the bus that ended me. Will you believe me when I tell you it was beautiful— my left leg turned to uselessness and my right shoe flung some distance down the road? Will you believe me when I tell you I had never been so in love with anyone as I was, then, with everyone I saw? The way an age-worn man held his wife’s shaking arm, supporting the weight that seemed to sing from the heart she clutched. Knowing her eyes embraced the pile that was me, he guided her sacked body through the crowd. And the way one woman began a fast the moment she looked under the wheel. I saw her swear off decadence. I saw her start to pray. You see, I was so beautiful the woman sent to clean the street used words like police tape to keep back a young boy seconds before he rounded the grisly bumper. The woman who cordoned the area feared my memory would fly him through the world on pinions of passion much as, later, the sight of my awful beauty pulled her down to tears when she pooled my blood with water and swiftly, swiftly washed my stains away.

Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too! Her mirth the world required; She bathed it in smiles of glee. But her heart was tired, tired, And now they let her be. Her life was turning, turning, In mazes of heat and sound. But for peace her soul was yearning, And now peace laps her round. Her cabin'd, ample spirit, It flutter'd and fail'd for breath. To-night it doth inherit The vasty hall of death.

Carried her unprotesting out the door. Kicked back the casket-stand. But it can't hold her, That stuff and satin aiming to enfold her, The lid's contrition nor the bolts before. Oh oh. Too much. Too much. Even now, surmise, She rises in the sunshine. There she goes, Back to the bars she knew and the repose In love-rooms and the things in people's eyes. Too vital and too squeaking. Must emerge. Even now she does the snake-hips with a hiss, Slops the bad wine across her shantung, talks Of pregnancy, guitars and bridgework, walks In parks or alleys, comes haply on the verge Of happiness, haply hysterics. Is.

God knows the law of life is death, and you can feel it in your warbler neck, your river-quick high stick wrist at the end of day. But the trophies: a goldfinch tearing up a pink thistle, a magpie dipping her wing tips in a white cloud, an ouzel barreling hip-high upstream with a warning. You wish you had a river. To make a river, it takes some mountains. Some rain to watershed. You wish you had a steady meadow and pink thistles bobbing at the border for your horizons, pale robins bouncing their good postures in the spruce shadows. Instead, the law of life comes for you like three men and a car. In your dreams, you win them over with your dreams: a goldfinch tearing up a pink thistle. A magpie so slow she knows how to keep death at bay, she takes her time with argument and hides her royal blue in black. Shy as a blue grouse, nevertheless God doesn’t forget his green mountains. You wish you had a river.

After it came in like a dark bird Out of the snow, barely whistling The notes father,mother,child, It was hard to say what made us happiest. Seeing the branches where it had learned To stir the air? The air that opened Without fear? Just the branches And us in a room of wild things? Like a shapeless flame, it flew A dozen times around the room. And, in a wink, a dozen more. Into the wall, the window, the door. You said the world turns to parts. You said the parts are cunning spheres. You said you always love the face of sin. You said it’s here, the lips and eyes and skin. Outside the snow deepened With heaves of discontent. Inside, the tremor of our life Flew in and in and in.

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers - Untouched by Morning - and untouched by noon - Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection, Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone - Grand go the Years, In the Crescent above them - Worlds scoop their Arcs - and Firmaments - row - Diadems - drop - And Doges surrender - Soundless as Dots, On a Disk of Snow.

Now he has silver in him. When sometime Death shall boil down unnecessary fat To reach the nub of our identity, When in the run of crime The skull is rifled for the gold in teeth, And chemistry has eaten from the spine Superfluous life and vigor, why then he Will show a richness to be wondered at, And shall be thought a mine Whose claim and stake are stone and floral wreath. The body burns away, and burning gives Light to the eye and moisture to the lip And warmth to our desires, but it burns Whatever body lives Into extinction though it wear a plate Of armor in it: therefore do we thrive In fear of fire, in terror of the ship That carries us to fire. A soldier learns To bear the silver weight Where in his head the fire is most alive.

I

The grave has more power than the eyes of the beloved. An open grave with all its magnets. This weight on the wings. The sky is waiting for an airship. I have the feeling that I haven’t got much life left. Three hours after the celestial attack. Why don’t I respond when I’m being offended? Because my religion doesn’t allow me to. Exterior maps: geography. Interior maps: psychography. And in your hard cathedral I kneel. Mountains pass camels pass like the history of wars in antiquity. Of all the men I am, I can’t find any of them without the control of the intruding eye. Problems. Mysteries that fasten themselves to my chest. All I want is not to see businesses nor gardens nor markets nor eyeglasses nor elevators. In order to serve all radio listeners, without discriminating between social classes, I speak a tongue that fills hearts with the law of communicating clouds. I have my brain or whatever it is full of skull moths. For the world to go on being what it is it must —per force—take another form. True poems are fires. When something cherished burns instead of the fireman I call, rushes forth the incendiary. It says: live, live, live! It is Death.

for Michele (1966-1972) Michele has become another dead little girl. An easy poem. Instant Praxitelean. Instant seventy-five year old photograph of my grandmother when she was a young woman with shadows I imagine were blue around her eyes. The beauty of it. Such guarded sweetness. What a greed of bruised gardenias. Oh Christ, whose name rips silk, I have seen raw cypresses so dark the mind comes to them without color. Dark on the Greek hillside. Dark, volcanic, dry and stone. Where the oldest women of the world are standing dressed in black up in the branches of fig trees in the gorge knocking with as much quickness as their weakness will allow. Weakness which my heart must not confuse with tenderness. And on the other side of the island a woman walks up the path with a burden of leaves on her head, guiding the goats with sounds she makes up, and then makes up again. The other darkness is easy: the men in the dreams who come in together to me with knives. There are so many traps, and many look courageous. The body goes into such raptures of obedience. But the huge stones on the desert resemble nobody’s mother. I remember the snake. After its skin had been cut away, and it was dropped it started to move across the clearing. Making its beautiful waving motion. It was all meat and bone. Pretty soon it was covered with dust. It seemed to know exactly where it wanted to go. Toward any dark trees.