246 Mythology poems

Smaller than pollen-grain, smaller than seed Of bitter berry red— Do not look for the small, The door has no size at all. Some of sorrow have made a well And deep have seen In daylight far stars glimmer pale In a nether heaven. April 1963

I. When his dogs leapt on Actaeon, he cried (did he cry out?)—He flung his arm to command, they tore his hand from the wrist stump, tore guts from his belly through the tunic, ripped the cry from his throat. That’s how we know a god, when the facts leap at the tenderest innards, and we know the god is what we can’t change. You stood over me as I woke, I opened my eyes, I saw that I’d seen and that it was too late: the seeing of you in the doorway with weak electric light fanning behind you in the hall, and my room and narrow pallet steeped in shadow were what I couldn’t change, and distantly I wanted you, and, as distantly, I heard the dogs, baying. II. And yet the fountain spends itself, and it is in the clear light of its losing that we seem to take delight: you dipped your hand in its running braid to sprinkle my forehead, my lips. Garden deities observed us: three nymphs with moss staining their haunches, a pug-nosed faun. The wound in water closed perfectly around your gesture, erasing it, so that only the glimmer, swiftly drying, on my face recalled our interruption of the faultless, cold, passionate, perpetual idea of the stream’s descent— which, unlike ours, would always be renewed. III. I kissed a flame, what did I expect. Those days, you painted in fire. Tangerine, gold: one would have had to be a pilgrim to walk through that wall of molten glass. And purification could be conceived, if not attained, only after many years, in autumn, in a fire greater than yours, though menstrual blood still tinged the threshold and our ex-votos were sordid—scraps of blistered flesh taped to kitsch prayer cards—and neither of us knew the object of this exercise, except having, inadvertently, each of us, burned we recognized the smell of wood smoke, the slow swirl flakes of wood ash make in heavy air; and we were ready, each in a private way, to make the gifts the season required. Mine was the scene of my young self in your arms, eyes in your eyes, clutched in the effort to give each other away—when I glimpsed behind your pleasure, fear; behind fear, anger; and knew in a bolt some gifts conceal a greater gift. I have kept it. Now I am ready to give it back into darker flame in this season of goldenrod, the ardent weed, and Queen Anne’s lace in its mantilla of ash. And yet, how lumpishly, how stupidly I stand. How much that is human will never burn. IV. And if you should answer? I listened, years before I knew you, to the whine of wind through the high stony pastures above my childhood village; I breathed lavender and thyme and burned my bare legs on nettles, scraped them on thistles, and rubbed the sore skin till it reddened all the more. When we walked the uplands together, you burned your hand and I kissed the crimsoning nettle-rash. “We are the Lords of need,” you said Hafiz said, and I believed you, and we were. In the rugs of your country, carmine is crushed from insects, cochineal; saffron gold is boiled from crocus stamens; and indigo of heaven and fountain pools is soaked, hours upon hours, from indigo leaves. “Like the angel Harut,” you said, “We are in the calamity of love-desire.” The angel is chained by neck and knees, head down, in the pit of Babel for falling in love. Your carpets told a different story: scarlet and saffron blush as in Paradise, and God reveals himself in wine, flame, tulips, and the light in a mortal eye. All night you held me, sleepless, on my childhood cot in the stone house; all night the wind seethed through crags and twisted olive trees, high on the scents of thyme and goat droppings. “All night,” Hafiz sang, “I hope the breeze of dawn will cherish the lovers.” But the breeze of dawn is the angel of death. You are in your far landscape now, I am in mine: the wind complains and I can’t understand the words. And if you should answer? You, ten years away, in a different wind. “We are in the calamity,” Hafiz sang. “But tell the tale of the minstrel and of wine, and leave time alone. Time is a mystery no skill will solve.” We should thread words like pearls, you said, and the grateful sky would scatter the Pleiades upon us though we couldn’t see, and that was long ago. V. The carpet is not a story. It is a place, garden of crisscrossed pathways, labyrinth, fountain, pool, and stream. As though the fabric had ripped at the vanishing point at the top of the street of ashen façades and slate-sloped roofs, you stepped through the gap, out of your own world. I had already lost my world. We met in a torn design which we tore further, pulling the tall warp, thread wrapped tightly around our fingers until it bit the flesh and the rue de Lille unravelled. I know about design: it’s my job, arranging other people’s letters in star charts that phosphoresce in the dark between the closed covers of books. You knew about design from the holes blown through your country. We spoke in a language of no country on earth. You moved slowly, in shadow, teaching the shadows to echo my name. You ripped my shirt at the neck. Was it The Beloved I held, holding you? Down the middle of the carpet the river weaves a thousand gray glimmers into the deeper green. The river knows about mourning; that’s its job. How many years has it practiced? With such fleet fingers. A man woke me at dawn this morning, sobbing and cursing in the street, reeling from sidewalk to gutter and back again. On my long gray street, the rue de Lille, where I still live.

Sing now the heavy furniture of the fall, the journey’s ending. Strong Aeneas bears deep on his shoulders all the dark wood chairs and tables of destruction. Bruising, blunt, they force his feet on up the war-scraped hills past raped dead temples. All Achilles kills litters the trail of sofa legs with other endings of houses. Further up, gods sit changing their own upholsteries of deceit, ordaining shelves and benches as the goal of his dim voyage. Sometimes arrows drawn on chair backs point the way they must go on, signs that some corridor of destiny is reserving him a threshold. Aeneas weeps at wind or passion, but steadfastly keeps carrying battered merchandise marked ROME in one direction, pondering it all.

(FROM THE NORSE TONGUE) Now the storm begins to lower, (Haste, the loom of Hell prepare.) Iron-sleet of arrowy shower Hurtles in the darken'd air. Glitt'ring lances are the loom, Where the dusky warp we strain, Weaving many a soldier's doom, Orkney's woe, and Randver's bane. See the grisly texture grow, ('Tis of human entrails made,) And the weights, that play below, Each a gasping warrior's head. Shafts for shuttles, dipt in gore, Shoot the trembling cords along. Sword, that once a monarch bore, Keep the tissue close and strong. Mista black, terrific maid, Sangrida, and Hilda see, Join the wayward work to aid: Tis the woof of victory. Ere the ruddy sun be set, Pikes must shiver, javelins sing, Blade with clatt'ring buckler meet, Hauberk crash, and helmet ring. (Weave the crimson web of war) Let us go, and let us fly, Where our friends the conflict share, Where they triumph, where they die. As the paths of fate we tread, Wading thro' th' ensanguin'd field: Gondula, and Geira, spread O'er the youthful king your shield. We the reins to slaughter give, Ours to kill, and ours to spare: Spite of danger he shall live. (Weave the crimson web of war.) They, whom once the desert-beach Pent within its bleak domain, Soon their ample sway shall stretch O'er the plenty of the plain. Low the dauntless earl is laid Gor'd with many a gaping wound: Fate demands a nobler head; Soon a king shall bite the ground. Long his loss shall Erin weep, Ne'er again his likeness see; Long her strains in sorrow steep, Strains of immortality. Horror covers all the heath, Clouds of carnage blot the sun. Sisters, weave the web of death; Sisters, cease, the work is done. Hail the task, and hail the hands! Songs of joy and triumph sing! Joy to the victorious bands; Triumph to the younger king. Mortal, thou that hear'st the tale, Learn the tenor of our song. Scotland thro' each winding vale Far and wide the notes prolong. Sisters, hence with spurs of speed: Each her thund'ring falchion wield; Each bestride her sable steed. Hurry, hurry to the field.

Food in the underworld, the Death King In his seedy, green nightgown Holding up flowers. The warden of the underworld In her plastic, pink Wheelchair Serving silver trays of Shit and death and black Gelatinous. Birth, the music Reminds me and Will not stop When I turn it off, A warped music box Trapped inside. I repeat what I cannot bear: Chronic repetition. This poem is its own Language. It marks the mind Like a missing memory Marks the body. Then it Changes, makes it invisible. Back form the edge of what Becomes.

They found you under twenty feet of loose ash — one vowel solo in an archipelago of strung-out vowels and doting volcanoes — Isole Eolie— O hoop of exhilaration, O sigh of relief softening your votive mouth if not blowing off steam at the crater rim, crystalizing sulfur, poring over tomes, the trade winds and furies that fan through your realm, O citizen-king, O sonorous persona weaned on fumes and that old itinerant intonation — air your woes all over again.

Nothing is known about Helen but her voice Strange glittering sparks Lighting no fires but what is reechoed Rechorded, set on the icy sea. All history is one, as all the North Pole is one Magnetic, music to play with, ice That has had to do with vision And each one of us, naked. Partners. Naked. *       *       * Helen: A Revision ZEUS: It is to be assumed that I do not exist while most people in the vision assume that I do exist. This is to be one of the extents of meaning between the players and the audience. I have to talk like this because I am the lord of both kinds of sky—and I don't mean your sky and their sky because they are signs, I mean the bright sky and the burning sky. I have no intention of showing you my limits. The players in this poem are players. They have taken their parts not to deceive you [or me for that matter] but because they have been paid in love or coin to be players. I have known for a long time that there is not a fourth wall in a play. I am called Zeus and I know this. THERSITES: [Running out on the construction of the stage.] The fourth wall is not as important as you think it is. ZEUS: [Disturbed but carrying it off like a good Master of Ceremonial.] Thersites is involuntary. [He puts his arm around him.] I could not play a part if I were not a player. THERSITES: Reveal yourself to me and don't pretend that there are people watching you. I am alone on the stage with you. Tell me the plot of the play. ZEUS: [Standing away.] Don't try to talk if you don't have to. You must admit there is no audience. Everything is done for you. THERSITES: Stop repeating yourself. You old motherfucker. Your skies are bad enough. [He looks to the ground.] A parody is better than a pun. ZEUS: I do not understand your language. [They are silent together for a moment and then the curtain drops.] *       *       * And if he dies on this road throw wild blackberries at his ghost And if he doesn't, and he won't, hope the cost Hope the cost. And the tenor of the what meets the why at the edge Like a backwards image of each terror's lodge Each terror's lodge. And if he cries put his heart out with a lantern's goat Where they say all passages to pay the debt The lighted yet. *       *       * The focus sing Is not their business. Their backs lay By not altogether being there. Here and there in swamps and villages. How doth the silly crocodile Amuse the Muse *       *       * And in the skyey march of flesh That boundary line where no body is Preserve us, lord, from aches and harms And bring my death. Both air and water rattle there And mud and fire Preserve us, lord, from what would share a shroud and bring my death. A vagrant bird flies to the glossy limbs The battlefield has harms. The trees have half Their branches shot away. Preserve us, lord From hair and mud and flesh.

Was Helen stronger than Achilles even "as the arrows fell"? That could not be, but he recognised in her some power other than her legendary beauty. He could name Helena, but the other he could not name; she was a lure, a light, an intimate flame, a secret kept even from his slaves, the elect, the innermost hierarchy; only Helena could be named and she was a public scandal in any case, a cause of shame to Agamemnon and Menelaus; it was not that she was beautiful, true, she stood on the Walls, taut and indifferent as the arrows fell; it was not that she was beautiful, there were others, in spite of the legend, as gracious, as tall; it was not that she was beautiful, but he stared and stared across the charred wood and the smouldering flame, till his eyes cleared and the smoke drifted away.

You must do battle with Eros       I am more worried about space, pressed for details collapsed in chaos with my sword holding up the sky the girl said. They cared not for love lying ever that they loved But I your leader wounded in gender and bleeding for Eros fought it away from my true beginning as now. Always climbing that hill in several ways. One goes past the Baptist Church and through the ugly trees, houses I only visualize in dreams you have no right to pursue me to my origins man as bipolar as the one candidate, forgettable as the other. We once lived in a postwar barracks blue heated by a black stove of assumptions Eros a youth admits no equal; Aphrodite the slut; Chaos is whom I admire that keeps forgetting love in favor of this terrible mixity I am for example ... these poems. Out of the pre-beginning a different beauty. They want you to confess something like in church, that a man will save you. But I am your leader savior and poet I am your general out of the desert thee most ardent void precursor of love Eros approaches again not the man but quality sculpted genitals arush with the words of unreason: I will never die. Which I is I if I can remain chaotic I’ll tell you who you are that you’ve never anticipated, but know the only one. Without a thing. To be is not to have; nor to belong; nor to have been born. You are not the child of earth. Beauty still thy name.

For Rachel Right shoulder aching with day-long butchery, Left shoulder numb with dints clanged on the shield, The hero is fouled with blood, his own and others’, First slick, then sticky, then caked, starting to mat His beard—the armor deadweight all around him; His teeth grit and rattle with every jolt Of bronze-rimmed wheels behind the shit-flecked horses. But when he glimpses the mountains, the distant snow, A blankness swoons upon him, and he hears Nothing but the white vowels of the wind Brushing through stands of spears like conifers While a banner slips its staff and hangs in the blue Like a kestrel or a contrail. The hero’s death, The prize, elusive quarry of his life, Stands stock-still in her cloven tracks in snow And turns, one ear tuned to the creek’s far bank, One dished towards him. Her unstartled gaze Beads on him like a sniper’s sights, until At the clean report of a cracking poplar branch, She leaps away like luck, over rapid water, And snowfall scrims the scene like a mist of tears, Like a migraine, like sweat or blood streaming into your eyes.