1630 Nature poems

Woman, place your soothing hands upon my brow, Your hands softer than fur. Above us balance the palm trees, barely rustling In the night breeze. Not even a lullaby. Let the rhythmic silence cradle us. Listen to its song. Hear the beat of our dark blood, Hear the deep pulse of Africa in the mist of lost villages. Now sets the weary moon upon its slack seabed Now the bursts of laughter quiet down, and even the storyteller Nods his head like a child on his mother’s back The dancers’ feet grow heavy, and heavy, too, Come the alternating voices of singers. Now the stars appear and the Night dreams Leaning on that hill of clouds, dressed in its long, milky pagne. The roofs of the huts shine tenderly. What are they saying So secretly to the stars? Inside, the fire dies out In the closeness of sour and sweet smells. Woman, light the clear-oil lamp. Let the Ancestors Speak around us as parents do when the children are in bed. Let us listen to the voices of the Elissa Elders. Exiled like us They did not want to die, or lose the flow of their semen in the sands. Let me hear, a gleam of friendly souls visits the smoke-filled hut, My head upon your breast as warm as tasty dang streaming from the fire, Let me breathe the odor of our Dead, let me gather And speak with their living voices, let me learn to live Before plunging deeper than the diver Into the great depths of sleep.

Night is a cistern. Owls sing. Refugees tread meadow roads with the loud rustling of endless grief. Who are you, walking in this worried crowd. And who will you become, who will you be when day returns, and ordinary greetings circle round. Night is a cistern. The last pairs dance at a country ball. High waves cry from the sea, the wind rocks pines. An unknown hand draws the dawn’s first stroke. Lamps fade, a motor chokes. Before us, life’s path, and instants of astronomy.

The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me, And I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow; The storm is fast descending, And yet I cannot go. Clouds beyond clouds above me, Wastes beyond wastes below; But nothing drear can move me; I will not, cannot go.

Did you know there were hundreds of little night moths crowded against the window pane to catch a glimmer of light? It was the scent of a strange perfume, from fallen cocoons, sticky sincerity that made them flee. In this world of protected ruins, in this circular world where people tell and re-tell the same stories, in this world where people forgot that the dyke wouldn't be massive enough to hold back the sea swell; in this world where each and every one would flee in panic in the end; even the old lady sold spun silver birds while she whispered... The tiny, translucent and elegant night moths like freshly picked pumpkin seeds crowded in the corner of that half-open window clinging to the cold glass, light eager, while the vapor filled the room reaching the nostrils of colleagues who didn't recognize each other but intertwining their fingers, waited for someone else's words to atone and explain and bestow meaning to words.

February 3rd The sea with no waves we recognize, with no stations on its route, only water and moon, night after night! My thought goes back to the land, someone else’s land, belonging to the one going through it on trains at night, through the same place at the same hour as before . . . Remote mother, sleeping earth, powerful and faithful arms, the same quiet lap for all —tomb of eternal life with the same decorations freshened— earth, mother, always true to yourself, waiting for the sad gaze of the wandering eyes! My thought goes back to the land, —the olive groves at sunrise— outlined sharply in the white or golden or yellow moonlight, that look forward to the coming back of those humans who are neither its slaves nor its masters, but who love it anyway . . .

I saw within the shadows of the yard the shed and saw the snow upon its roof— an oblong glowing in the moonlit night. I could not rest or close my eyes, although I knew that I must rise early next morning and begin my work again, and begin my work again. That day was lost—that month as well; and year and year for all that I can tell.

Rise, cleanly trust, divided star, And spend that delicate fraud upon the night— A lover’s instance moving mindful air To make its peace in dedicated light Whose look is charnel. Lusters, intent and blind, Give darkness downward with a glow like sheaves— A gleaner’s pittance withered in the bind That keeps the summer godhead of the leaves And bends tremendous evening under it, Doubles its theft within a lonely course Till eye and eye repeat the counterfeit And shape the replenishing mercy at its source. All else were ravage: a demon-gaze of terror: The emblem blackened in the living head, The eye, the image, and the image-bearer Struck to an awe with smiling on the dead. Therefore that bounty which, however false, Tenders survival, and is purely given, And lends the viewless prisms at its pulse To make an easy legendry in heaven. Restore that grace! Indeed, the look is grace That deals this desert providence in air And lifts a deathshead, burning, into place To serve a lover’s faith. Rise, carrion star.

1. deathbed There is a word that is not water, has nothing to do with heat or light, is unrelated to any one pain though the torn body tears itself further trying to speak it. There is a sound beyond all the sounds that I have made, the needs that one by one I've tried to name. It burns clear in the eyes searching mine, the lips beginning to bleed again, her hand squeezing my hand, pleading and pleading that I understand. 2. living will All afternoon in the afterlife of little things that love, or pain, or need could not let go of I hunt for the will that will let me let you go. I am distracted and slow— all the grainy faces in old photographs, letters from the dead, deeds to places that are only air, some bright nowhere of broad fields and sunlight that was my idea of heaven one long afternoon of clouds and steady rain when you sat and explained where a garden was, a well, excited by it, the hell ahead of you just a brief tightness at your heart. Outside in the yard, crickets start, cry here and here and here, night's thousand shadows growing tall. And now I have it, formal, final. I touch each keepsake like a wall. 3. going In the hard light and hum of the room to which I've come to stay, I watch the clock, and wait, and hour by hour begin to disappear. Movements, mutterings: the brain darkens like a landscape. Pain in the pale arterial hills flashes and vanishes, takes with it one whole year. Cotton and killdeer, a cloud looks down, something's happened in the wellhouse, someone runs through tall trees, breathe and breathe, is it my hand you hold? The fever climbs. You grow cold, then warm, now cold again, a hive of nerves in the skin. Some glimmer breaks through and I bend whispering as fear like a wind shakes you, I'm right here, I'm right here... Midnight, moonlight gauzing the walls, the iron and umber of intensive care: I watch as it swells and falls the puttied scar at your heart, and read each beat and falter on a screen and match my breathing to the breathing of a machine to know this time as it passes, each moment as it goes— until, early, you shudder and quieten, blood gases begin to rapidly rise and somewhere behind your eyes I fall in fragments away: a child surprised at his play, encroached upon by air, a shattered man near dawn, something about the way he holds so still, his hair.

The backyard apple tree gets sad so soon, takes on a used-up, feather-duster look within a week. The ivy’s spring reconnaissance campaign sends red feelers out and up and down to find the sun. Ivy from last summer clogs the pool, brewing a loamy, wormy, tea-leaf mulch soft to the touch and rank with interface of rut and rot. The month after the month they say is cruel is and is not.

A mayfly flies In May or June. Its life is over Far too soon. A day or two To dance, To fly— Hello Hello Good-bye Good-bye.