New York American Spell, 2001

I / omen What was going on in the New York American Black/red/green helmeted neon night? The elevator door was closing behind us, we were the ones Plunging floor after floor after floor after floor To the abyss—but it was someone else’s face Staring from the screen out at us, someone else’s face Saying something flashing from the teleprompter: Though what the face said was meant to reassure, Down in the abyss the footage kept playing, All of it looping back like children chanting The answers to nonsensical riddles, taunting A classmate who doesn’t know the question: “Because it’s too far to walk” “Time to get a new fence” “A big red rock eater.” And as the images rewound And the face kept talking, the clear night sky Filled up with smoke and the smoke kept puring Itself out into the air like a voice saying something It can’t stop saying, some murky omen Like schoolkids asking: “Why do birds fly south?” “What time is it when an elephant sits on the fence?” “What’s big, red and eats rocks?” 2 / in front of st. vincent’s A woman hugging another woman Who was weeping blocked the sidewalk. Nobody moved for a moment. They were an island caught at the tide turning: Such misery in two human bodies. Then the wearing away of the crowd Moving flowed over them and they Were pulled swiftly along down the sidewalk. 3 / joke Faces powdered with dust and ash, there they were In the fast food place, raucous and wild, splitting The seams of their work clothes, weary to hysteria As they hunched in their booth next to the buffet Under heat lamps reflecting incarnadine Off pastas and vegetable slag. Then the joke Ignited, they quivered on the launch pad, Laughter closed around them, they couldn’t Breathe, it was as if they were staring out From a space capsule porthole and were asking The void an imponderable riddle While orbiting so high up in space That the earth was less than the least hint Of light piercing the smoke-filled, cloudless night. (What was the joke about? Nobody knew.) And then they stopped laughing and stared into their plates, Ash smearing down their faces as they chewed. 4 / spell spoken by suppliant to helios for knowledge from the Greek Magical Papyri Under my tongue is the mud of the Nile, I wear the baboon hide of sacred Keph. Dressed in the god’s power, I am the god, I am Thouth, discoverer of healing drugs, Founder of letters. As god calls on god I summon you to come to me, you Under the earth; arouse yourself for me, Great daimon, you the subterranean, You of the primordial abyss. Unless you tell me what I want to know, What is in the minds of everyone, Egyptians, Greeks, Syrians, Ethiopians, of every race And people, unless I know what has been And what shall be, unless I know their skills And practices and works and lives and names Of them and their fathers and mothers And brothers and friends, even of those now dead, I will pour the blood of the black-faced jackal As an offering in a new-made jar and put it In the fire and burn beneath it what’s left Of the bones of all-praised Osiris, And I will shout in the port of Busiris The secrets of his mysteries, that his body, Drowned, remained in the river three days And three nights, that he, the praised one, Was carried by the river into the sea And surrounded by wave on wave on wave And by mist rising off water through the air. To keep your belly from being eaten by fish, To keep the fish from chewing your flesh with their mouths, To make the fish close their hungry jaws, to keep The fatherless child from being taken From his mother, to keep the pole of the sky From being brought down and the twin towering Mountains from toppling into one, to keep Anoixis From running amok and doing just what she wants, Not god or goddess will give oracles Until I know through and through Just what is in the minds of all human beings, Egyptians, Syrians, Greeks, Ethyopians, of every race And people, so that those who come to me. Their eyes and mine can meet in a level gaze, Neither one or the other higher or lower, And whether they speak or keep silent, I can tell them whatever has happened And is happening and is going to happen To them, and I can tell them their skills And their works and their names and those of their dead, And of every human being who comes to me I will read them as I read a sealed letter And tell them everything truthfully. 5 / from brooklyn bridge Sun shines on the third bridge tower: A garbage scow ploughs the water, Maternal hull pushing is all out beyond The city, pushing it all out so patiently— All you could hear out there this flawless afternoon Is the sound of sand pulverizing newsprint To tatters, paper-pulp ripping crosswise Or lengthwise, shearing off some photo Of maybe a head or maybe an arm. Ridiculous flimsy noble newspaper, Leaping in wind, fluttering, collapsing, Its columns sway and topple into babble: All you’d see if you were out there Is air vanishing into clearer air. 6 / from the plane Pressed against our seats, them released to air, From the little plane windows we peered four thousand feet Down to the ground desert-gray and still, Nothing seeming to be moving on that perfect afternoon, No reminder of why it was we were all looking, Remembering maybe the oh so flimsy Wooden sawhorse police barricades, as the woman In front of me twisted her head back to see It all again, but up there there was nothing to see, Only the reef water feel of transparency Deepening down to a depth where everything Goes dark and nothing moves unless it belongs To that dark, darting in and out or undulating Slowly or cruising unblinking, jaws open or closed. 7 / spell broken by suppliant to helios for protection from the Greek Magical Papyri This is the charm that will protect you, the charm That you must wear: Onto lime wood write With vermilion the secret name, name of The fifty magic letters. Then say the words: “Guard me from every daimon of the air, On the earth and under the earth, guard me From every angel and phantom, every Ghostly visitation and enchantment, Me, your suppliant.” Enclose it in a skin Dyed purple, hang it round your neck and wear it. 8 / roll of film: photographer missing Vines of smoke through latticework of steel Weave the air into a garden of smoke. And in the garden people came and went, People of smoke and people of flesh, the air dressed In ash. What the pictures couldn’t say Was spoken by the smoke: A common language In a tongue of smoke that murmured in every ear Something about what it was they’d been forced To endure: Words spoken in duress, Inconsolable words, words spoken under the earth That rooted in smoke and breathed in the smoke And put forth shoots that twined through the steel, Words plunged through the roof of the garages’ Voids, I-beams twisted; the eye that saw all this Tells and tells again one part of the story Of that day of wandering through the fatal garden, The camera’s eye open and acutely Recording in the foul-smelling air. 9 / lamentation on ur from a Sumerian spell, 2000 B.C. Like molten bronze and iron shed blood pools. Our country’s dead melt into the earth as grease melts in the sun, men whose helmets now lie scattered, men annihilated by the double-bladed axe. Heavy, beyond help, they lie still as a gazelle exhausted in a trap, muzzle in the dust. In home after home, empty doorways frame the absence of mothers and fathers who vanished in the flames remorselessly spreading claiming even frightened children who lay quiet in their mother’s arms, now borne into oblivion, like swimmers swept out to sea by the surging current. May the great barred gate of blackest night again swing shut on silent hinges. Destroyed in its turn, may this disaster too be torn out of mind.