Murder

1. Language must suffice. Years ago, under a sweet June sky stung with stars and swept back by black leaves barely rustling, a beautiful woman nearly killed me. Listen, she said, and turned her lovely face to the stars, the wild sky.... 2. No. No: years ago, under a sweet, June sky strung with stars and swept back by black leaves barely rustling, under this sky broad, bright, all rung around with rustling elders—or intoxicating willows, or oaks, I forget— under this sky, a beautiful woman killed me, nearly. I say beautiful. You had to see her. Listen, she said, and turned a lovely shell of her ear to the swirl of stars and the moon smudged as a wingtip in one tree, not far. 3. Yes: she scraped my back bloody against a rough trunk. Yes: she flung back her lovely face and her hair, holding me down, and the tree shook slowly, as in a mild, persistent laugh or wind, and the moon high in that black tree swung to and fro ... there were millions of stars up where she stared past us, and one moon, I think. 4. Excuse me. My friend, who loves poetry truly, says too much nature taints my work. Yes. Yes. Yes. Too many birds, stars— too much rain, too much grass— so many wild, bowing limbs howling or groaning into the natural night ... and he might be right. Even here. That is, if tree were a tree. That is, if star or moon or even beautiful woman craning the shell of her ear were what they were. They are, I think, not. No: and a poem about nature contains anything but. 5. When they descended to us, they were a cloud of stars sweeping lightly. They sang to us urgently about our lives, they touched us with a hundred thousand hair-soft, small legs— and held down by such hungers, we let them cover us, this beautiful woman, this me, who couldn’t move, who were stung—do you hear?— who were stung again, were covered that quickly, crying to each other to fly away! 6. ... I just can’t erase the exquisite, weeping language of the wasps, nor her face in starlight and so tranquil under that false, papery, bobbing moon just minutes before, saying listen, listen, nor then the weight of her whole natural body pinning down mine until we both cried out for fear, and pain, and still couldn’t move. 7. Language must suffice. First, it doesn’t. Then, of course, it does.Listen, listen. What do you hear? This nearly killed me. I’ll never know why she didn’t just whisper Here they come, warn Move! cry They’ll kill us! Yes:I will save you ... Yes:I love you too much to watch you suffer! But it’s all I recall, or now need. And, anyway, I loved her, she was so beautiful. And that is what I have had to say before it’s too late, before they have killed me, before they have killed you, too, or before we have all become something else entirely, which is to say before we are only language.