1630 Nature poems

I’ve been thinking about the anatomy of the egg, about the two interior membranes, the yolk held in place by the chalazae, gases moving through the semipermeable shell. A curious phrase,the anatomy of the egg, as if an egg were a body, which it is, as if the egg could be broken then mended, which, depending on your faith, broken yes, but mended? Well. Best to start again, with a new body, voided from a warmer one, brooded and turned. Better to begin as if some small-handed animal hadn’t knocked you against a rock, licked clean the rich yolk and left the albumen to dry in the sun — as if a hinged jaw hadn’t swallowed you whole. What I wanted: a practice that reassured that what was cracked could be mended or, at least, suspended so that it could not spread. But now I wonder: better to be the egg or scaled mandible? The small hand or the flies, bottle black and green, spilling their bile onto whatever’s left, sweeping the interior, drinking it clean? I think,something might have grown there, though I know it was always meant to be eaten, it was always meant to spoil.

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart Of the townland; green and heavy headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies, But best of all was the warm thick slobber Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied Specks to range on window sills at home, On shelves at school, and wait and watch until The fattening dots burst, into nimble Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how The daddy frog was called a bullfrog And how he croaked and how the mammy frog Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too For they were yellow in the sun and brown In rain. Then one hot day when fields were rank With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges To a coarse croaking that I had not heard Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus. Right down the dam gross bellied frogs were cocked On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped: The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting. I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

This plot of ground facing the waters of this inlet is dedicated to the living presence of Emily Dickinson Wellcome who was born in England; married; lost her husband and with her five year old son sailed for New York in a two-master; was driven to the Azores; ran adrift on Fire Island shoal, met her second husband in a Brooklyn boarding house, went with him to Puerto Rico bore three more children, lost her second husband, lived hard for eight years in St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed the oldest son to New York, lost her daughter, lost her "baby," seized the two boys of the oldest son by the second marriage mothered them—they being motherless—fought for them against the other grandmother and the aunts, brought them here summer after summer, defended herself here against thieves, storms, sun, fire, against flies, against girls that came smelling about, against drought, against weeds, storm-tides, neighbors, weasels that stole her chickens, against the weakness of her own hands, against the growing strength of the boys, against wind, against the stones, against trespassers, against rents, against her own mind. She grubbed this earth with her own hands, domineered over this grass plot, blackguarded her oldest son into buying it, lived here fifteen years, attained a final loneliness and— If you can bring nothing to this place but your carcass, keep out.

1 I keep placing my hands over my face, the fingertips just resting on the place where I feel my eyebrows and the fine end of a bone. My eyes are covered with the blood of my hands, my palms hold my jaws. I do this at dinner. My daughter asks Are you all right? and by a common miracle when I smile she knows I am. 2 I ask her what she will do after we eat. Sleep she tells me. But I will clean the deer skull, wash it. 3 You gave me this skull in the woods told me to bring it clean and tell the story I had told you before, about how the deer had come to me, and I said I would. 4 And I put this skull on an old newspaper, pulled the lower part of the jaws free, touched it first carefully, as if it would fall apart in my hands, the bone paper- thin, and then I saw I could scrub, so brushed the surface with steel and my fingers and more and more this surface became familiar to me. 5 I wanted to see the lines of it what it would be if it had been polished by the wind, the water, and my hands, these agents making the skull more itself. Slowly I was not afraid at all and my fingers went into the deepest holes of this thing, not afraid for myself or it, feeling suddenly as if cleaning this small fragment of earth away from the crevices inside was like loving. 6 But it was when I touched the place where the eyes were that I knew this was the shell of the deer that had lived here, this was this deer and not this deer, her home and now empty of her, but not empty of her, I knew also, not empty of her, as my hands trembled. 7 And in that instant remembered you had been in that body of that deer dying, what does it feel like to be a deer dying, the death consumes you like birth, you are nowhere else but in the center. 8 Remembering those gentle deer that watched me as I wept, or the deer that leapt as if out of my mind, when I saw speaking there in that green place the authority of the heart and the deer of the woods where my feet stood, stared at me until I whispered to her and cried at her presence. 9 And when I cleaned the skull I washed myself and sat my body half out of the water and put my hands again over my face, my fingers edging the bone over my eyes, and I thought how good this feels and this is a gesture you make. 10 Tell this story of the deer’s skull you asked quietly and so I came in my own time to put these words carefully here slowly listing each motion on this thin paper as fragile and as tough as knowledge. 1978

First there is the wind but not like the familiar wind but long and without lapses or falling away or surges of air as is usual but rather like the persistent pressure of a river or a running tide. This wind is from the other side and has an odor unlike the odor of the winds with us but like time if time had odor and were cold and carried a bitter and sharp taste like rust on the taste of snow or the fragrance of thunder. When the air has this taste of time the frontiers are not far from us. Then too there are the animals. There are always animals under the small trees. They belong neither to our side nor to theirs but are wild and because they are animals of such kind that wildness is unfamiliar in them as the horse for example or the goat and often sheep and dogs and like creatures their wandering there is strange and even terrifying signaling as it does the violation of custom and the subversion of order. There are also the unnatural lovers the distortion of images the penetration of mirrors and the inarticulate meanings of the dreams. The dreams are in turmoil like a squall of birds. Finally there is the evasion of those with whom we have come. It is at the frontiers that the companions desert us—that the girl returns to the old country that we are alone.

Such green, such green, this apple-, pea- and celadon, this emerald and pine and lime unsheathed to make a miser weep, to make his puny bunions shrink; these seas and seas of peony, these showy tons of rose to urge a musted monk disrobe, an eremitic nun unfold; such breathy, breathy moth and wasp, such gleeful, greedy bee to bid the bully hearts of cops and bosses sob, to tell a stubby root unstub, a rusted hinge unrust, the slug unsalt; to stir the fusted lungs to brim, the skin to sting, the dormant, tinning tongue to singe and hymn.

This morning, between two branches of a tree Beside the door, epeira once again Has spun and signed his tapestry and trap. I test his early-warning system and It works, he scrambles forth in sable with The yellow hieroglyph that no one knows The meaning of. And I remember now How yesterday at dusk the nighthawks came Back as they do about this time each year, Grey squadrons with the slashes white on wings Cruising for bugs beneath the bellied cloud. Now soon the monarchs will be drifting south, And then the geese will go, and then one day The little garden birds will not be here. See how many leaves already have Withered and turned; a few have fallen, too. Change is continuous on the seamless web, Yet moments come like this one, when you feel Upon your heart a signal to attend The definite announcement of an end Where one thing ceases and another starts; When like the spider waiting on the web You know the intricate dependencies Spreading in secret through the fabric vast Of heaven and earth, sending their messages Ciphered in chemistry to all the kinds, The whisper down the bloodstream: it is time.

The cities dissolve, and the earth is a cart loaded with dust Only poetry knows how to pair itself to this space. No road to this house, a siege, and his house is graveyard. From a distance, above his house a perplexed moon dangles from threads of dust. I said: this is the way home, he said: No you can’t pass, and aimed his bullet at me. Very well then, friends and their homes in all of Beirut’s are my companions. Road for blood now— Blood about which a boy talked whispered to his friends: nothing remains in the sky now except holes called “stars.” The city’s voice was too tender, even the winds would not tune its strings— The city’s face beamed like a child arranging his dreams for nightfall bidding the morning to sit beside him on his chair. They found people in bags: a person                                                 without a head a person                                                 without hands, or tongue a person                                                 choked to death and the rest had no shapes and no names. —Are you mad? Please don’t write about these things. A page in a book bombs mirror themselves inside of it prophecies and dust-proverbs mirror themselves inside of it cloisters mirror themselves inside of it, a carpet made of the alphabet disentangles thread by thread falls on the face of the city, slipping out of the needles of memory. A murderer in the city’s air, swimming through its wound— its wound is a fall that trembled to its name—to the hemorrhage of its name and all that surrounds us— houses left their walls behind and I am no longer I. Maybe there will come a time in which you’ll accept to live deaf and mute, maybe they’ll allow you to mumble: death and life resurrection and peace unto you. From the wine of the palms to the quiet of the desert . . . et cetera from a morning that smuggles its own intestines and sleeps on the corpses of the rebels . . . et cetera from streets, to trucks from soldiers, armies . . . et cetera from the shadows of men and women . . . et cetera from bombs hidden in the prayers of monotheists and infidels . . . et cetera from iron that oozes iron and bleeds flesh . . . et cetera from fields that long for wheat, and grass and working hands . . . et cetera from forts that wall our bodies and heap darkness upon us . . . et cetera from legends of the dead who pronounce life, who steer our life . . . et cetera from talk that is slaughter           and slaughter         and slitters of throats . . . et cetera from darkness to darkness to darkness I breathe, touch my body, search for myself and for you, and for him, and for the others and I hang my death between my face and this hemorrhage of talk . . . et cetera You will see— say his name say you drew his face reach out your hand toward him or smile or say I was happy once or say I was sad once you will see: there is no country there. Murder has changed the city’s shape—this stone is a child’s head— and this smoke is exhaled from human lungs. Each thing recites its exile . . .                a sea of blood—and what do you expect on these mornings except their arteries set to sail into the darkness, into the tidal wave of slaughter? Stay up with her, don’t let up— she sits death in her embrace and turns over her days tattered sheets of paper. Guard the last pictures of her topography— she is tossing and turning in the sand in an ocean of sparks— on her bodies are the spots of human moans. Seed after seed are cast into our earth— fields feeding on our legends, guard the secret of these bloods. I am talking about a flavor to the seasons and a flash of lightning in the sky. Tower Square—(an engraving whispers its secrets to bombed-out bridges . . . ) Tower Square—(a memory seeks its shape among dust and fire . . . ) Tower Square—(an open desert chosen by winds and vomited  . . . by them . . . ) Tower Square—(It’s magical to see corpses move/their limbs in one alleyway, and their ghosts in another/and to hear their sighs . . . ) Tower Square—(West and East and gallows are set up— martyrs, commands . . . ) Tower Square—(a throng of caravans: myrrh and gum Arabica and musk and spices that launch the festival . . . ) Tower Square—(let go of time . . . in the name of place) —Corpses or destruction, is this the face of Beirut? —and this a bell, or a scream? —A friend? —You? Welcome. Did you travel? Have you returned? What’s new with you? —A neighbor got killed . . . / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A game / —Your dice are on a streak. —Oh, just a coincidence / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Layers of darkness and talk dragging more talk.

When with the skin you do acknowledge drought, The dry in the voice, the lightness of feet, the fine Flake of the heat at every level line; When with the hand you learn to touch without Surprise the spine for the leaf, the prickled petal, The stone scorched in the shine, and the wood brittle; Then where the pipe drips and the fronds sprout And the foot-square forest of clover blooms in sand, You will lean and watch, but never touch with your hand. September 1934

For six nights now the cries have sounded in the pasture: coyote voices fluting across the greening rise to the east where the deer have almost ceased to pass now that the developers have carved up yet another section, filled another space with spars and studs, concrete, runoff. Five years ago you saw two spotted fawns rise for the first time from brome where brick mailboxes will stand; only three years past came great horned owls who raised two squeaking, downy owlets that perished in the traffic, skimming too low across the road behind some swift, more fortunate cottontail. It was on an August afternoon that you drove in, curling down our long gravel drive past pasture and creek, that you saw, flickering at the edge of your sight, three mounted Indians, motionless in the paused breeze, who vanished when you turned your head. We have felt the presence on this land of others, of some who paused here, some who passed, who have left in the thick clay shards and splinters of themselves that we dig up, turn up with spade and tine when we garden or bury our animals; their voices whisper on moonless nights in the back pasture hollow where the horses snort and nicker, wary with alarm.