437 Death poems

Since we nail wings to the dead, she calls ravens from the sky to inspect our work. “For flight,” they say, “first remove their boots.” She leans in, inspects a fresh hex behind my eyes, takes my feet and lays them on the fire, to burn it out, roots first. We’re the last, babička and me. We’ve survived on chance and bread baked from the last store of grain. And as we’re out of both, we will die soon. They are gathering in the well. We disrobe. She hums whilst I nail her wings, she tells me a tale, her last gift — “This dark stain, passed kiss to kiss-stained fevered mouth, blights love, is pulsed by death-watch beetle’s tick, timing our decay. They know this. They wait by water, gulping despair. The ravens keep watch, they say the contagion’s here, they promise to take us first.” Her tale done, we go winged and naked to the well. We hear them climbing the walls, caterwauling, but ravens are swift, and swoop.

Back of the church the busy forsythias bow and scrape to May and all these blessed stones stiff in their careful finery of words; the mess of markers makes me go and browse. Somehow the blocks of slate and marble hate to be cut and carved to the dimensions of Mary Monday’s age and her virtues. At heart they hurt to be made literate and they are rebelling, fast as they can, shedding an edge, a letter, as they go —a year, a part of a skull, a bone— it hurts them to stand so long for this kind of death not theirs. Fast as they can they are leaning away from their duty and look down longing for the warm sod. The prides and fears they stand witness to, the ladies and gents, are only whimsy now. They cease to reflect that wary pride the flesh beneath them took in lying down. To the last date line and death’s-head-stare, the legend reads, “There! I’ve done it!” But these are only beginning, the blocks of shale forget their lines letting the sunlight and rain divide and subdivide their veins and bone. They do not care, they only feel an unnatural heaviness, tottering so in the hot light. They long to be off and away, they toss and jibe in the sun; a whole regatta of black sails, they are sailing away over the lumpy green yard of time, and never coming about for home until they capsize turned turtle by boys from Central Square. Tired of holding—they are tired of holding up; their always-leaning makes me hold my tongue and sit with them awhile. We heave our shoulders, or our shadows, on the mounds, while under the hills, memorials more fine lie lip to paper lip and keep their impossible word.

1 I stare at a faint spinning disc in the black endlessly ready to pounce. 2 I actually say, "I'm so sick of zombies!" 3 Viral relics in the genome? Genes that switch themselves off and on, unthinking but coordinated? 4 Zombie surfeit Half-off zombie. The best zombie imitation. Invisible zombie hand

By the blue taper's trembling light, No more I waste the wakeful night, Intent with endless view to pore The schoolmen and the sages o'er: Their books from wisdom widely stray, Or point at best the longest way. I'll seek a readier path, and go Where wisdom's surely taught below. How deep yon azure dyes the sky, Where orbs of gold unnumbered lie, While through their ranks in silver pride The nether crescent seems to glide. The slumb'ring breeze forgets to breathe, The lake is smooth and clear beneath, Where once again the spangled show Descends to meet our eyes below. The grounds, which on the right aspire, In dimness from the view retire: The left presents a place of graves, Whose wall the silent water laves. That steeple guides thy doubtful sight Among the livid gleams of night. There pass, with melancholy state, By all the solemn heaps of fate, And think, as softly-sad you tread Above the venerable dead, "Time was, like thee they life possessed, And time shall be, that thou shalt rest." Those graves, with bending osier bound, That nameless heave the crumpled ground, Quick to the glancing thought disclose Where Toil and Poverty repose. The flat smooth stones that bear a name, The chisel's slender help to fame (Which ere our set of friends decay Their frequent steps may wear away), A middle race of mortals own, Men, half ambitious, all unknown. The marble tombs that rise on high, Whose dead in vaulted arches lie, Whose pillars swell with sculptured stones, Arms, angels, epitaphs and bones, These (all the poor remains of state) Adorn the rich, or praise the great; Who, while on earth in fame they live, Are senseless of the fame they give. Ha! while I gaze, pale Cynthia fades, The bursting earth unveils the shades! All slow and wan, and wrapped with shrouds, They rise in visionary crowds, And all with sober accent cry, "Think, mortal, what it is to die." Now from yon black and fun'ral yew, That bathes the charnel-house with dew, Methinks I hear a voice begin (Ye ravens, cease your croaking din, Ye tolling clocks, no time resound O'er the long lake and midnight ground); It sends a peal of hollow groans, Thus speaking from among the bones. "When men my scythe and darts supply, How great a King of Fears am I! They view me like the last of things: They make, and then they dread, my stings. Fools! if you less provoked your fears, No more my spectre-form appears. Death's but a path that must be trod, If man would ever pass to God; A port of calms, a state of ease From the rough rage of swelling seas. "Why then thy flowing sable stoles, Deep pendant cypress, mourning poles, Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds, Long palls, drawn hearses, covered steeds, And plumes of black, that, as they tread, Nod o'er the scutcheons of the dead? "Nor can the parted body know, Nor wants the soul, these forms of woe. As men who long in prison dwell, With lamps that glimmer round the cell, Whene'er their suffering years are run, Spring forth to greet the glitt'ring sun: Such joy, though far transcending sense, Have pious souls at parting hence. On earth, and in the body placed, A few, and evil, years they waste; But when their chains are cast aside, See the glad scene unfolding wide, Clap the glad wing, and tow'r away, And mingle with the blaze of day."

mIEKAL aND often incorporates alien scripts into his work. These can be undecipherable writing systems of history, scripts unfamiliar to most people, and scripts invented by him or others. He uses these to allow us to see written language with new eyes, to appreciate its visual forms, and to face the process of searching for meaning in a foreign textscape. His "mi'kmaq book of the dead" combines seemingly recognizable characters with apparently pictographic ones, encouraging us to pick out a meaning we will never quite find on our own.—Geof Huth More About Visual Poetry >>

The miller's wife had waited long, The tea was cold, the fire was dead; And there might yet be nothing wrong In how he went and what he said: "There are no millers any more," Was all that she had heard him say; And he had lingered at the door So long that it seemed yesterday. Sick with a fear that had no form She knew that she was there at last; And in the mill there was a warm And mealy fragrance of the past. What else there was would only seem To say again what he had meant; And what was hanging from a beam Would not have heeded where she went. And if she thought it followed her, She may have reasoned in the dark That one way of the few there were Would hide her and would leave no mark: Black water, smooth above the weir Like starry velvet in the night, Though ruffled once, would soon appear The same as ever to the sight.

This may sound queer, but in 1985 I held the delicate hands of Dan White: I prepared him for burial; by then, Harvey Milk was made monument—no, myth—by the years since he was shot. I remember when Harvey was shot: twenty, and I knew I was queer. Those were the years, Levi’s and leather jackets holding hands on Castro Street, cheering for Harvey Milk— elected on the same day as Dan White. I often wonder about Supervisor White, who fatally shot Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk, who was one of us, a Castro queer. May 21, 1979: a jury hands down the sentence, seven years— in truth, five years— for ex-cop, ex-fireman Dan White, for the blood on his hands; when he confessed that he had shot the mayor and the queer, a few men in blue cheered. And Harvey Milk? Why cry over spilled milk, some wondered, semi-privately, for years— it meant “one less queer.” The jurors turned to White. If just the mayor had been shot, Dan might have had trouble on his hands— but the twelve who held his life in their hands maybe didn’t mind the death of Harvey Milk; maybe, the second murder offered him a shot at serving only a few years. In the end, he committed suicide, this Dan White. And he was made presentable by a queer.

Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal, There where the vines cling crimson on the wall, And in the twilight wait for what will come. The leaves will whisper there of her, and some, Like flying words, will strike you as they fall; But go, and if you listen she will call. Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal— Luke Havergal. No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies To rift the fiery night that’s in your eyes; But there, where western glooms are gathering, The dark will end the dark, if anything: God slays Himself with every leaf that flies, And hell is more than half of paradise. No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies— In eastern skies. Out of a grave I come to tell you this, Out of a grave I come to quench the kiss That flames upon your forehead with a glow That blinds you to the way that you must go. Yes, there is yet one way to where she is, Bitter, but one that faith may never miss. Out of a grave I come to tell you this— To tell you this. There is the western gate, Luke Havergal, There are the crimson leaves upon the wall. Go, for the winds are tearing them away,— Nor think to riddle the dead words they say, Nor any more to feel them as they fall; But go, and if you trust her she will call. There is the western gate, Luke Havergal— Luke Havergal.

The old Russian spits up a plum fruit of the rasping sound he has stored in his throat all these lonely years made in fact lonely by his wife who left him, God knows without knowing how to cook for himself. He examines the plum notes its purplish consistency almost the color and shape of her buttocks whose circulation was bad which is why he himself wears a beret: black, good wool, certainly warm enough the times he remembers. He shoots the plum to the ground like a child whose confidence is a game of marbles whose flick of a thumb is a smile inside his mouth knowing what he knows will happen. But his wife, Marthe does not spill out when the plum breaks open. Instead, it is a younger self alive and waving just the size he remembers himself to have been. The old Russian puts him onto his finger like a parakeet and sits him on the shelf with the pictures. For the rest of his days he nags himself constantly into a half-sleep surprised by this turn of events.

She always got mad at him every time he came home in the middle of the morning with his pant legs wet. She knew he had fallen in the ditch again. His legs were not strong enough to be straddling ditches. He was too old to be walking over temporary dikes. She wished he didn’t do that, but sometimes he had to. She sometimes imagined him falling over backward in one of the irrigation ditches, his head hitting hard cement, his body slowly sinking into the water. Water that was only three feet deep. A harmless three feet of water, where children played, and ladies sometimes sat and dipped their feet, especially on hot summer evening. She knew he would drown, she knew it was bound to happen sometime. As far as the eye could see, flat, green fields appearing to end at the foot of distant mountains. Mountains, a reminder of what the fields once looked like. Fields saturated with water pulled from its secret storage place beneath the earth’s surface. We are called “the people of the cotton fields” because of the labor our families did. For us there was no reservation, no Housing & Urban Development, no tribal support. We were a people segregated in row houses all lined up along the roads of our labor. It is a muggy summer evening. My father, my sister, and I sit on the east side of the house finding shade against the still-hot setting sun. The change from brilliant white sun to blue and gold sunset and finally, to warm darkness, a change we anticipate for brief relief. On this evening the anticipation is shattered. A boy comes to the house. He gestures for my father to come to him, out of our hearing. With what the boy says to him my father moves quickly. As quickly as his stiff back and legs can move him. Back and legs broken and fused from when he was a cowboy. He rushes by, throwing the kitchen door open, grabbing his hat. He gets into his truck and drives away. We pay him no mind other than for the fact that he is rushing. A second later my mother comes out of the house and with a single motion pulls her apron off. In a tone I recognize as signifying something is wrong, she instructs us to come with her. She starts in the direction of a cotton field a few hundred yards from our house. My sister and I walk beside her. Saying nothing. Her hands wring the towel she carries with her. This towel, a multipurpose kind of thing. Women carry it to fan themselves, to wipe sweat, to cover their heads and eyes from the sunlight, to shoo away kids, dogs, flies. I remember once a student of mine, out of habit, brought her towel with her to summer school at the university. Whenever we see each other on campus during a summer session we always laugh about it. We continue to walk, stepping over the ends of rows of cotton. Rows of cotton my family and I know well. In early summer we walk the rows to thin out the growth, and later we walk to chop the weeds somehow immune to chemicals. And in the winter, at least before the machinery, we pick the cotton from their stalks. Now I can’t begin to imagine how many miles we have all walked, up and back, up and back along these rows. We walk alongside her. The setting sun maintains a continuous pounding on our backs, the humidity from the damp fields is warm, it rests on our shoulders like tired, sweaty arms. She heads toward the irrigation ditch. The ditch is dirt, not cement, it is wide, muddy, and slippery. The water is shallow. I see my father’s truck pulling up on the opposite side. In the front seat there are women, and in the back, men. The men wedge their feet in between plastic and aluminum irrigation pipes, mud-caked shovels, boots, and hoes. Equipment in the back of his truck all for the purposes of working fields. I remember the hoe he carried. It was big, with a blade that held an edge well and got the work done. I recall purchasing a hoe for my home and being particularly unsatisfied with the craftsmanship. “They call this a hoe?” I said to my husband. It had a skinny neck, and no blade to speak of. The handle was too thin, causing blisters. Once in awhile I look around for the type of hoe my father carried. I found one once, but didn’t have money to buy it. In slow motion, weighed down by the heat, the women begin to slide across the bench of the pickup truck. They slowly step out of the cab, appearing as a single long strand of woman, emerging. In cautious unison they walk toward the edge of the ditch. My mother, as if connected to them by an invisible string, is pulled toward them from the opposite side. Their movement is dreamlike. They peer into the muddy water. And as if with a shared nervous system, their hands motion the towel each is carrying, motion it to just above their eyes, covering their faces. With a single vocal act they release from their depths a hard, deep, mournful wail. This sound breaks the wave of bright summer light above the green cotton fields.