341 Grief poems

Dark days when I awaken so I slump back to the swamp of his armpit, a whit from the arachnid he inked to the stump that’s left. So close to the vestige of it, the danger he’s a reliquary of: tattooed noose to venerate the fist of a slug buried still in his butt above a white cross for the men he didn’t miss. If only I could strip off the black map I sleep against and be his liniment, gloss over the explosion, the mishap phantom he feels in a forearm itch. He won’t leave the long tale his tattoos read for me, so I amend the story.

for my son The way a tired Chippewa woman Who’s lost a child gathers up black feathers, Black quills & leaves That she wraps & swaddles in a little bale, a shag Cocoon she carries with her & speaks to always As if it were the child, Until she knows the soul has grown fat & clever, That the child can find its own way at last; Well, I go everywhere Picking the dust out of the dust, scraping the breezes Up off the floor, & gather them into a doll Of you, to touch at the nape of the neck, to slip Under my shirt like a rag—the way Another man’s wallet rides above his heart. As you Cry out, as if calling to a father you conjure In the paling light, the voice rises, instead, in me. Nothing stops it, the crying. Not the clove of moon, Not the woman raking my back with her words. Our letters Close. Sometimes, you ask About the world; sometimes, I answer back. Nights Return you to me for a while, as sleep returns sleep To a landscape ravaged & familiar. The dark watermark of your absence, a hush.

You marched into the gray eyes of dawn feeling older than the bones that held their ground like grazing, aged cattle waiting, eyes closed to the wind, on a winter, slaughter morning. You searched through the fog for a sign, but there was no sun to burn the way, no burst of rainbow bridge to keep you from the cattle call.

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes— They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems; Even the dearest that I loved the best Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest. I long for scenes where man hath never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

I am learning to abandon the world before it can abandon me. Already I have given up the moon and snow, closing my shades against the claims of white. And the world has taken my father, my friends. I have given up melodic lines of hills, moving to a flat, tuneless landscape. And every night I give my body up limb by limb, working upwards across bone, towards the heart. But morning comes with small reprieves of coffee and birdsong. A tree outside the window which was simply shadow moments ago takes back its branches twig by leafy twig. And as I take my body back the sun lays its warm muzzle on my lap as if to make amends.

I am the only being whose doom No tongue would ask, no eye would mourn; I never caused a thought of gloom, A smile of joy, since I was born. In secret pleasure, secret tears, This changeful life has slipped away, As friendless after eighteen years, As lone as on my natal day. There have been times I cannot hide, There have been times when this was drear, When my sad soul forgot its pride And longed for one to love me here. But those were in the early glow Of feelings since subdued by care; And they have died so long ago, I hardly now believe they were. First melted off the hope of youth, Then fancy’s rainbow fast withdrew; And then experience told me truth In mortal bosoms never grew. ’Twas grief enough to think mankind All hollow, servile, insincere; But worse to trust to my own mind And find the same corruption there

I never wish to sing again as I used to, when two new eyes could always stain the sea, of tangent worlds, indolent as callows, and the clock went backward for a skip, to rise, to set. Some will twine grass to fit in a thimble, some will carve bread to mend a craggy wall, some in the slantest midnight cry for sleep. When the pitch-owl swallows the moon, what welt will show it? Sighing helps nothing, raspberries raw and green, in the form of a heart imperfectly divided. A wave grows sharper close to the shore. Some own words like strips of scape and summon. It is possible to suffer even in the sun. And race the steep noon to its highest, hoary gate. Stares drop under the sky; silence of a windslap; and a scar drifts out of air to stand whistling: She who listens poorly will always be calling. She who sounds silence drowns with the dumb. She who cuts her hands off must drink with her tongue.

I tell you that I see her still At the dark entrance of the hall. One gas lamp burning near her shoulder Shone also from her other side Where hung the long inaccurate glass Whose pictures were as troubled water. An immense shadow had its hand Between us on the floor, and seemed To hump the knuckles nervously, A giant crab readying to walk, Or a blanket moving in its sleep. You will remember, with a smile Instructed by movies to reminisce, How strict her corsets must have been, How the huge arrangements of her hair Would certainly betray the least Impassionate displacement there. It was no rig for dallying, And maybe only marriage could Derange that queenly scaffolding— As when a great ship, coming home, Coasts in the harbor, dropping sail And loosing all the tackle that had laced Her in the long lanes .... I know We need not draw this figure out. But all that whalebone came from whales. And all the whales lived in the sea, In calm beneath the troubled glass, Until the needle drew their blood. I see her standing in the hall, Where the mirror’s lashed to blood and foam, And the black flukes of agony Beat at the air till the light blows out.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, O what black hours we have spent This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went! And more must, in yet longer light's delay. With witness I speak this. But where I say Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent To dearest him that lives alas! away. I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me; Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse. Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see The lost are like this, and their scourge to be As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

What words or harder gift does the light require of me carving from the dark this difficult tree? What place or farther peace do I almost see emerging from the night and heart of me? The sky whitens, goes on and on. Fields wrinkle into rows of cotton, go on and on. Night like a fling of crows disperses and is gone. What song, what home, what calm or one clarity can I not quite come to, never quite see: this field, this sky, this tree.