Facing into It

for Larry Levis So it is here, then, after so long, and after all— as the light turns in the leaves in the old golden way of fall, as the small beasts dig to the place at the roots where survival waits, cowardly crouching in the dark, as the branches begin to stretch into winter, freed of their cheerful burden of green, then it comes home, the flea-ridden bitch of desolation, a thin dog with its ribs exposed like a lesson in mathematics, in subtraction; it comes home, to find its bowl empty—then the numberless things for which to be grateful dissolve like the steam from a fire just doused with water on a day of overcast grays, lined by a cold slanting rain— it is October, that season when Death goes public, costumed, when the talking heads on the TV screen float up smiling at the terrible news, their skin alight with the same strange glow fish give off when they have been dead a week or more, as the gas company adds odor for warning that the lines may be leaking, the sweet smell of disaster hanging, invisible, in the air, a moment before you strike the match— it is then, brother, that I think of you, of your Caravaggio, of the head of Goliath swung by its hair, wearing the artist’s own weary expression, exhausted of everything but its desire for that beautiful David he used to be; and I think of all the boys walking the streets each carrying the severed head of the man he will become—and the way I bear it is to think of you, grinning, riding high in the cart leaving the scene, a pair of huge horses hauling the wagon, a fine mist rising from their damp shoulders, unconcerned with what hangs, nailed to the museum walls—luckily the fall of Icarus has nothing to do with them, nor the ruined Goliath who fell like a forest, nor the wretched Salomes with their blood-splattered platters, nor the huge stone griffins sobbing at the gates to Valhalla as the litters are carried past ... the dark eyes of the horses are opaque with wisdom, their hoofs strike the pavements with such a musical decision, the derisive curl of their lips is so like the mysterious smile on the angel at Chartres, on Kuan Yin, on the dolphin, as they pull the cart safe through the blizzards of Main Street, the snow slowly swallowing the signs though the crossing light beckons— a soft glowing green like some spectral Eden in the blank white swirl of the storm. The stallion neighs once, sends a warm cloud of breath into the snow-filled air, and the mare isn’t scared yet—at least she’s still pulling. There’s a barn out there somewhere, as they plow through the light’s yellow aura of caution, its warm glow foretelling what hides in the storm: a stall full of gold, where the soul— that magician—can wallow and winter in straw.