Chimera

I will take your stony heart and give you one of flesh. The wake     sewing shut those white lips and after    when leagues     and all behind to salt fell     the grateful Spaniards prayed It became their habit     to turn eyes     sore away from surfeit     Rashes and abrasions of spring leaf  stem  vine  blossom  aphid & berry stridulant intricate and promiscuous     without the rose or borage or pomegranate embowered in flaunting silks on gauntlet cuffs     No none of that repose their soldier-love required to root 20,000 had died in Ravenna     He survived without mark to show what he knew how fear cramped each man solitary inside himself until the spark that leapt     stinging them on to violence     the grass-fire battle-frenzy the grass that kneels to its burning Then aftermath’s vegetable melee     limbs and bodies But what is not threat in this contagion and panic of green     Whores  wives  saints  sovereigns this beach     that thick-leaved mustardy shrub     Names he thinks     the names keep slipping Swift     intent     armored obdurate as beetles     no one man felt the wound of where like Adam     too late he walked *     *     * The air     flexing     began to bruise green around them the fresh human injury of them     Like flies trapped in a bottle     they didn’t know what to do and carried on doing it while bird     by bird invisible rescinded its song while the sun     a drop of vinegar in milk      curdled the sky Quiet     sumptuous as pain eased by what hand abrupt as that held in the breath exhausted just before the witch confesses Like an executioner     who ropes hair over hand to bend and lengthen the neck for his ax the wind brutalized palm trees     spun men before it loosely as leaves in a stream He linked arms with another Broken wing     Splintering oar     Chainless anchor dragging through darkness thick with sand and water and noise whistles  braying  drums  timbrels & ululations Pressed all night to the porch of the storm his ear mistook the self’s own alienated music     called it sorcery That the fury never ended he would learn walking the eye of its silence After the hurricane the stunned brilliance     like a spell or question he woke into     waking by himself     to himself and naked as a saint     to discover his ship with its ropes  tools  weapons  salves  Spain was the anchored ship now hoisted on planks of sunlight     over the palm-trees sailing out of sight     The boat sick for such mirth made by root  sap  riverbank & squirrel it would return to that green oak it once had been *     *     * In what hour of what night did he know his soul to turn a stranger to him Pilgrim     he will venture forth across uncertain fields Explorer     he will cry out He may be nothing more than a hide rigid with gore & soil to be scoured  pounded  abused by caustics and by iron and     in watered pigeon-shit     kneaded until supple for the hand— but whose     and must the hand continue to wear     or it will toughen again *     *     * Daily he marched his men into corrugations of blue distances dissolving one to another    like promises of gold & corn made by guides snatched from villages As the Spanish found new ways to die     natives loomed     naked on the horizon they looked splendid & violent as idols     Their women & children restored for ransoms of melons or fish Often some chief would repeat his good friend possessed more of each thing they desired     His noble gestures spread like balm     his speech intoxicating but so militant their hunger     his words came entire & legible to their sense as the amber & musk that steamed from these his fine furs *     *     * His dwindling force through swamps & ambush labored     circuitous     stalled like mayflies in their brevity & towarding and never fable  riches  youth  nor rest to take Only the body with its anxious extremeties     eccentric     naked not natural     from which a vein of fascinated shame opened darkly     glittering     smoldering like sea-coal     Every eye interrogated Each inquisitor humiliated by these echoes of himself     his body violating the silence *     *     * Now alone and exposed     approaching he amassed his ocherous archive of blister and of bruise     the old fabulous atlas of faith in blood & smoke redrawn Still even the most exacting map dreams omits & lies brindled with sums & suppositions Every step makes him more wilderness He goes interiorly to trade conches  sea-snails & screw-beans for red-dyed deer-tail tassels and the arrow-makers’ sinew & flint between ragged bands surrounded by enemies     enthralled by visions that command them to bury their sons alive Girls whose marriages would multiply their foes become meat for their dogs Where were the jades  turquoises  zinzibar Where the sacred monsters  cannibals  or kings fielding legions of dog-headed warriors Husbands groaned bucked by pain onto the dirt when wives gave birth & both sexes wept strenuously after any absence     overjoyed to see each other again in no essential changed Had any man traveled farther than he *     *     * Whether time is the ripening of fruit     the dying of fish & the position of stars     or all the king’s clocks ringing his will upon the quarter-hour hunger is the self’s severe eternal god