The Tongues We Speak

I have arrived here after taking many steps Over the kitchen floors of friends and through their lives. The dun-colored hills have been good to me And the gold rivers. I have loved chrysantheumums, and children: I have been grandmother to some. In one pocket I have hidden chocolates from you And knives. Speaking my real thoughts to no one In bars and at lecterns I have told the truth Fairly often, but hardly ever to myself. I have not cried out against the crimes of my country But I have protected myself, I have watched from a safe corner The rape of mountains, the eagle’s reckless plunge. Ever since high school I have waved goodbye to history: I have assisted you to grow In all ways that were convenient to me. What is a block vote against steam shovels? My current events teacher was a fine man But his moral precepts were a put-up job and I followed them. Well-dressed, in my new Adidas At every gathering I investigated my psyche with friends And they investigated theirs with me. But whenever Trouble came in the front door I ran out the back And fell into the pit of my bones. Escaped from those burning buildings, the past, What balance can any of us hope for? I was comparing lipsticks The day Nagasaki vanished. The day Solzhenitsyn disappeared into the Gulag I was attending a cocktail party. Perhaps there are only ashes in my handbag. A man at the corner of Broadway and Forty-Second Street Tried to sweep me into a trash barrel and I almost agreed. Already the dried blood was sifting along my wrists. Already my own hands Were tightening around my throat But Sorrow saved me, Sorrow gave me an image Of bombs like human tears watering the world’s gardens. How could I not answer? Since then I have been planting words In every windowbox, poking them to grow up. What’s God, That he should be mindful of me? Sometimes I feel like wood Waiting for someone to peel me. Indeed I have been lukewarm At heart, which is all that matters. Of tiny bread-colored atoms, Equal fragments equally dispersed That love each other and are never hungry. What have I ever ignited That warmed anyone? I have not followed the rivers. Dangerous as a pine needle Packed in among others, in the dense multitudes And dry timbers of the West I am afraid of greed, The rich taste of it, the anger Hidden in my pockets. Columns of smoke on the horizon, Pillars of green fire. But I have arrived here somehow, Neither have I stopped talking. Numberless are the kitchens I have sat in, Chewing my fingers, trying to say something, Anything, so that the daughters of men should see As many sides of themselves as possible. Word after word my footprints Have stumbled across deserts. How should I escape them? They keep following after me. A little wind stirs itself, Whisks across my eyelids, And I know what it is before I say it: What if the world really articulates itself In the socket of a human knee? God save me From the swamps of hubris but it may be, it may be. Before the idea, the impulse. I feel it moving in me, it is there Arthritic but still powerful, a seizure Delicate as grasshoppers, a light Gathering in the skull. Between thumb and forefinger And the ballbearing joints of the tongue In soft, glottal convulsions Out of no alien skies But out of the mind’s muscle The hieroglyph figures rise. The little histories of words Cannot be eaten. I know it, you know it And the children... But the images we make are our own. In the cool caves of the intellect The twisted roots of them lead us Backwards and then forwards. If only we could understand What’s in our pockets is for everyone! I have a dictionary in one hand, a mirror. Strangers look at themselves in it, Tracing the expressions they use From one family to the next They comfort themselves, murmuring The tongues we speak are a blizzard Of words like warm wool flying: In the shy conjugal rites Of verb, consonant, vowel, In the dark mucosal flesh lining The prismed underside of the skin Each one is a spark sheared From the veined fleece of the spirit Of the looking-glass body we live in. It is the one I have been cherishing, The one all of us speak from, For the world as we know it moves Necessarily by steps. Breath, pulse beat, ten digital stops. At the foot of the mountains I look up. Does God Lift up His hand to cover them? Blinded by tears like rain My bones turn granite, the spine of the hills congeals them. Where is the eye of the storm, Or where is the center of my seeing? The wind of my breath is a hurricane: I am locked inside myself. Painfully, up the bald stepladder I climb, But sometimes the light in my head goes on More like the sun than a match. Just as they said in Arabia There’s a huge pantalooned angel swelling Inside the body’s glass jar. The white-haired thread of steam From the teakettle on the range whistles And sharpens itself into a voice Bodiless as history, invisible But still whispering in ears That keep trying to hear it. It is as if midgets were bellowing their names Down sets of cardboard cylinders. But we have not disappeared Yet. My friends, we have said many things to each other In new combinations, seed upon seed exploding And blossoming in kitchen gardens. I confess I am ashamed of myself: I have not tried hard enough to understand Or listen to you speak. But the Word is mindful of itself And always has been. Littering every street In the sly eyes of tin cans, Drops of water in the gutter The world looks back at us From every known language: Yoruba, Hebrew, Chinese, Arrogant English, the subject Subjecting all to its desires, Even the softer tongues, romantic Self-reflexive, done to As we would be done by, Whatever life we cultivate Out of the animal moans of childhood It is all wheat fields, all grass Growing and being grown. With poisoned bread in my pockets, or gumdrops, Or armies like Myrmidons rising What I say is true For a time only, thank God, If I have only arrived anywhere it is to look Carefully, at all I thought I knew. In living rivers of speech The reflections I make are my own And yet not: Though the old growth rings are hidden from us And the echoing tomorrows of the acorn, The warm currents of the senses Are a two-way street, my friends: The palms of our hands are crisscrossed With as many intersections as a leaf.