872 Life poems

I walked in the house on the flat aspect of the wood I took rectangular instruction of the wood when I walked I turned at the wall and on the flat I moved steadily unimpeded, not tumbling, climbing or short of breath. I walked in ease on the flat. Something electric charged into our account and zinged out of it, pre-instructed and paid for the house. I felt house on my heel then instep and toe. I had a bad foot and I paid to get it fixed so I could walk here. I paid for the house and I paid for the foot that touches it. I paid to be directed rectangularly and down a hall. I curved my body to direct my waste through a hole. I am helped and paying for it. all of me exchanged, housing exchange. I saw us standing up in the world. And we sank into exchange vibrating transparency like a sea nettle afloat in the night sea the edges of the sea-veil tensed slapping above, visible when the wind crevassed and doilied If there is a ceiling to exchange and above it sky I don’t can’t see it and I don’t know why I want it above my house which is crystalline gel edges because the whole world’s disappeared viewed as exchange I broke my arm and the window integrally to exchange. I paid someone to fix me and improve the window, triple-glazing it, and warmer I rebounded       knit in knit up. All parties to the event’s aftermath were paid. Suppose I did not go in pain to hospital, did not visit and revisit for x-rays, left the window smashed and sat here by it, stuck up among the crystalline and cold. I was painful and determined not to play, and with the other unemployed weighed — the ghostship sagged with holes. —So you want to be a thing outside exchange? Drain out the dying bath see what color you are? The coin changed hands identical      with a will to transact.

I was always leaving, I was about to get up and go, I was on my way, not sure where. Somewhere else. Not here. Nothing here was good enough. It would be better there, where I was going. Not sure how or why. The dome I cowered under would be raised, and I would be released into my true life. I would meet there the ones I was destined to meet. They would make an opening for me among the flutes and boulders, and I would be taken up. That this might be a form of death did not occur to me. I only know that something held me back, a doubt, a debt, a face I could not leave behind. When the door fell open, I did not go through.

When everything finally has been wrecked and further shipwrecked, When their most ardent dream has been made hollow and unrecognizable, They will feel inside their limbs the missing shade of blue that lingers Against hills in the cooler hours before dark, and the moss at the foot of the forest When green starts to leave it. What they take into their privacy (half of his embrace, Her violence at play) are shadows of acts which have no farewells in them. Moons unearth them. And when, in their separate dwellings, their bodies Feel the next season come, they no longer have anyone to whom To tell it. Clouds of reverie pass outside the window and a strange emptiness Peers back in. If they love, it is solely to be adored, it is to scatter and gather Themselves like hard seeds in a field made fallow by a fire someone years ago set. In the quiet woods, from the highest trees, there is always something Weightless falling; and he, who must realize that certain losses are irreparable, Tells himself at night, before the darkest mirror, that vision keeps him whole. On the verge of warm and simple sleep they tell themselves certain loves Are like sheets of dark water, or ice forests, or husks of ships. To stop a thing Such as this would be to halve a sound that travels out from a silent person’s Thoughts. The imprint they make on each other’s bodies is worth any pain They may have caused. Quiet falls around them. And when she reaches For him the air greens like underwater light and the well-waters drop. They will see again the shadows of insects. They will touch the bark and feel each age of the tree fly undisturbed Into them. If what is no longer present in them cannot be restored, It can at least be offered. Through long bewildered dusks, stalks grow; Rains fill and pass out of clouds; animals hover at the edges of fields With eyes like black pools. For nothing cannot be transformed; Pleasure and failure feed each other daily. Do not think any breeze, Any grain of light, shall be withheld. All the stars will sail out for them.

1. They make such uncomfortable clank child of earth child of fire These are your tools of the trade difficult when you use them A large trunk with children darting in all directions appears slippery in its sheen adorned with thorns There comes a day in a man's life when the machete he was given early on can cut into small inheritances place them in a large calabash set them aflame spill the ashes behind him to cover his old footsteps the one's he stepped over & over trodden tongue lashing the atlas of littered women over & over every few years 2. Remember at the end of seven days a gift of hoe & machete used at times by your grandfather then again by his son At the end of the seven days remember the whipping song as you with machete & hoe in hand wrote on the earth diagrams signatures that would sprout shelter words won't lead you to obstacle's house Remember when she had a dimpled hammock on each thigh marks from birth from years lying behind diagrams written on her history

There’s just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away. And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone. No, happiness is the uncle you never knew about, who flies a single-engine plane onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes into town, and inquires at every door until he finds you asleep midafternoon as you so often are during the unmerciful hours of your despair. It comes to the monk in his cell. It comes to the woman sweeping the street with a birch broom, to the child whose mother has passed out from drink. It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker, and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night. It even comes to the boulder in the perpetual shade of pine barrens, to rain falling on the open sea, to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

For Barbara Green Happiness. I am not used to this. (There is always something wrong.) Look at it the bright early tree. (I am trying to find out how you fell.) The leaves have already turned. (I want you to see this, how they glow outside the glass.) Morning light strikes differently. For so many years I hardly had time to know such moments. They struck me with such intensity I would have said battered me open. I never understood they were mine. I was panicked. Unhappiness caught up with me all the time. Did you know the speed of light never alters even when you go faster it will be still that much faster than you? (I am thinking that in your fall something momentous occurred.) What I see as beautiful I want you to see too. Next door, the workmen are hammering. Very soon we’ll go to lunch. For some reason this moves me to tears. How life is. (One does not have to explain what occurs. One only need say it has meaning.) Years ago, when I was young I traveled to Italy, took in the great sights. I was in awe, yet I did not understand seeing Masaccio’s frescoes fading like shadows into the walls, this would be the only time nor that I would never forget. Those muted shades are still with me, as possession and longing, and the view too of the square before that church the air, newly spring, that day, all of it. Life, I have finally begun to realize, is real. (All this time you recover from falling will sink indelibly into mind.) The leaves may fall before you are able to see them. Science has recently learned the line of existence is soft and stretches out like a field wind and light shaping the grass energy of sight giving consciousness force. In the meantime we live out our lives. (This morning we talked for so long everything became lucid. How can I say what I see?) At each turning perfection eludes me. One moment is not like another. Last spring the house next door caught fire. There was the smell of gas. We thought both houses would go. I vanished up the hill, went to the house of a friend where we listened for flames and to that aria from Italian opera, was it the one of love, or jealousy, or grief? My house was untouched. Now the one next door is painted, fixed. In place of perfection, the empty hands I turned out to the world are filled. With what? A letter half written, the notes I make on this page, this new feeling about my shoulders of age, that sad child’s story you told me this morning, the workmen’s tools sounding and stopping. What? As time moves through me, does it also move through you? I keep remembering what you said, ways you have of seeing (and that light must have curved with you fall.) This is the paradox of vision: Sharp perception softens our existence in the world. 1986

Happy as something unimportant and free as a thing unimportant. As something no one prizes and which does not prize itself. As something mocked by all and which mocks at their mockery. As laughter without serious reason. As a yell able to outyell itself. Happy as no matter what, as any no matter what. Happy as a dog’s tail.

I always forget the name, delphinium, even though it was the flower the hummingbirds loved best. They came in pairs—sleek, emerald-bright heads, the clockwork machinery of their blurred wings thrumming swift, menacing engines. They slipped their beaks. as if they were swizzle sticks, deep into the blue throat of delphinium and sucked dry the nectar- chilled hearts like goblets full of sweet, frozen daiquiri. I liked to sit on the back porch in the evenings, watching them and eating Spanish peanuts, rolling each nut between thumb and forefinger to rub away the red salty skin like brittle tissue paper, until the meat emerged gleaming, yellow like old ivory, smooth as polished bone. And late August, after exclamations of gold flowers, tiny and bitter, the caragana trees let down their beans to ripen, dry, and rupture— at first there was the soft drum of popcorn, slick with oil, puttering some- where in between seed, heat, and cloud. Then sharp cracks like cap gun or diminutive fireworks, caragana peas catapulting skyward like pellet missiles. Sometimes a meadowlark would lace the night air with its elaborate melody, rippling and sleek as a black satin ribbon. Some- times there would be a falling star. And because this happened in Wyoming, and because this was my parents’ house, and because I’m never happy with anything, at any time, I always wished that I was some- where, anywhere else, but here.

The gregarious dark is shifting when she puts her second drink, the free one, half on the coaster. The tipped wine poised at the brim is the beginning of the bad girl she’ll promise never to be again tomorrow, who can taunt him now to prove he doesn’t love her and never could: her hand slides up his thigh until he tenses— ‘My little prig, don’t you want to fuck me?’ the bad girl she couldn’t be at home, his wife on ice. All he can do is smile back as though she’s made a harmless good-natured joke, and struggle not to look around to see who’s heard, who’s watching. He wants to smash the wine glass in her face so he can know for once exactly what he’s done wrong; but he places it instead back safely on the coaster quickly before she sees. Never cautious enough, he is prepared even if she knocks it over to go down on his hands and knees and wipe it up, kind and forgiving. In all ways careful to acquit himself so that tomorrow when she says she doesn’t deserve him, he’s too good, he can believe her. Tomorrow will be his happy hour. There won’t be anything she wouldn’t do for him.

The happy ones are almost always also vulgar; happiness has a way of thinking that's rushed and has no time to look but keeps on moving, compact and manic, with contempt in passing for the dying: Get on with your life, come on, buck up! Those stilled by pain don't mix with the cheerful, self-assured runners but with those who walk at the same slow pace. If one wheel locks and the other's turning the turning one doesn't stop turning but goes as far as it can, dragging the other in a poor, skewed race until the cart either comes to a halt or falls apart.