153 Sorrow and grieving poems

There is a theory of crying that tears are the body’s way of releasing excess elements from the brain. There is a theory of dreaming that each one serves to mend something torn, like cells of new skin lining up to cover a hole. I’m not one to have dreams about flying, but last week we were thirty feet above the bay—this was where we went to discuss things, so that no matter what we decided it was only we two out there, and we’d have to fly back together. I’m not one to have dreams where animals can speak, but last night a weeping mare I’d been told to bridle wanted me to save her. We discussed what was left of her ability to take children for rides—how much trot, how much canter— but I wasn't sure I could do it, having already bridled her and all. I was once very brave. Once I was very brave. I was very brave once. I boarded a plane before dawn. I carried all those heavy bags. I stayed up the whole night before folding the house into duffel bags. I took a curl from the base of your skull and opened the door to the rusty orange wagon and weighed those heavy duffel bags and smiles at the airport official. I boarded a tiny propeller plane and from a tiny window I watched you walk back to the rusty orange station wagon. They say the whole world is warming by imperceptible degrees. I watched the rusty orange wagon go whizzing by.

In you all deaths gather, all the broken glasses, the sere pages, the derangements of thought, they gather in you, guilty of all deaths, incomplete and guilty, in the wake of every mother, in your wake, motionless. They gather there, in your weak hands. The apples of this market are death, these poems retreat into their grammar, in the hotel room, in the hut of what does not join, souls without rest, aged lips, bark ripped from the trunk. They are dead. They gather there. They failed, the operation failed, they failed. The place was motionless, the word obscure. That was the place we agreed on. Goodbye, memory of the sparkling nights, goodbye, big smile, the place was there. To breathe was a darkness shutters had made, a primitive state. Silence and desert were switching positions and we were talking to a lamp. The place was that one. The trolleys rarely passed. Venus was returning to her hut. Out of the warrior throat, episodes broke free. We didn't say anything more. The place was that one. It was there that you were dying.

there is a shipwreck on each side of innuendo, tears gather around the collective shadow of shadows; none clearer than the last unshakable, anatomically inexplicably, never noticed, next time, please sir, more. enshrouded by fear, one hundred years after eleven pages of violent reality testing, when the beginning was the final question, outside the disruption of anything hungry on emptiness, suggesting a response of objections, calling on me to speak in tongues. trying to read the consequential future, apply anything to anything; knowing any application to the current materiality is wretched normality and remote productivity.

I. Dzogbese Lisa has treated me thus It has led me among the sharps of the forest Returning is not possible And going forward is a great difficulty The affairs of this world are like the chameleon feces Into which I have stepped When I clean it cannot go. 1 I am on the world's extreme corner, I am not sitting in the row with the eminent But those who are lucky Sit in the middle and forget I am on the world's extreme corner I can only go beyond and forget. My people, I have been somewhere If I turn here, the rain beats me If I turn there the sun burns me The firewood of this world Is for only those who can take heart That is why not all can gather it. The world is not good for anybody But you are so happy with your fate; Alas! The travelers are back All covered with debt. II. Something has happened to me The things so great that I cannot weep; I have no sons to fire the gun when I die And no daughters to wail when I close my mouth I have wandered on the wilderness The great wilderness men call life The rain has beaten me, And the sharp stumps cut as keen as knives I shall go beyond and rest. I have no kin and no brother, Death has made war upon our house; And Kpeti's great household is no more, Only the broken fence stands; And those who dared not look in his face Have come out as men. How well their pride is with them. Let those gone before take note They have treated their offspring badly. What is the wailing for? Somebody is dead. Agosu himself Alas! A snake has bitten me My right arm is broken, And the tree on which I lean is fallen. Agosi if you go tell them, Tell Nyidevu, Kpeti, and Kove That they have done us evil; Tell them their house is falling And the trees in the fence Have been eaten by termites; That the martels curse them. Ask them why they idle there While we suffer, and eat sand. And the crow and the vulture Hover always above our broken fences And strangers walk over our portion.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

on the 9th of June 1290 Upon a day, came Sorrow in to me, Saying, ‘I’ve come to stay with thee a while’; And I perceived that she had ushered Bile And Pain into my house for company. Wherefore I said, ‘Go forth – away with thee!’ But like a Greek she answered, full of guile, And went on arguing in an easy style. Then, looking, I saw Love come silently, Habited in black raiment, smooth and new, Having a black hat set upon his hair; And certainly the tears he shed were true. So that I asked, ‘What ails thee, trifler?’ Answering, he said: ‘A grief to be gone through; For our own lady’s dying, brother dear.’

(i.m. Charles Leslie Stevenson, 1909-79) This House Which represents you, as my bones do, waits, all pores open, for the stun of snow. Which will come, as it always does, between breaths, between nights of no wind and days of the nulled sun. And has to be welcome. All instinct wants to anticipate faceless fields, a white road drawn through dependent firs, the soldered glare of lakes. Is it wanting you here to want the winter in? I breathe you back into your square house and begin to live here roundly. This year will be between, not in, four seasons. Do you hear already the wet rumble of thaw? Stones. Sky. Streams. Sun. Those might be swallows at the edge of sight returning to last year's nest in the crook of the porchlight. Complaint 'Dear God,' they write, 'that was a selfish winter to lean so long, unfairly on the spring!' And now — this too much greed of seedy summer. Mouths of the flowers unstick themselves and sting the bees with irresistible dust. Iris allow undignified inspection. Plain waste weeds dress up in Queen Anne's lace. Our mist- blue sky clouds heavily with clematis. 'Too much,' they cry, 'too much. Begin again.' The Lord, himself a casualty of weather falls to earth in large hot drops of rain. The dry loam rouses in his scent, and under him — moist, sweet, discriminate — the spring. Thunder. Lightning. He can do anything. Between The wet and weight of this half-born English winter is not the weather of those fragmentary half-true willows that break in the glass of the canal behind our rudder as water arrives in our wake — a travelling arrow of now, of now, of now. Leaves of the water furl back from our prow, and as the pinnate narrow seam of where we are drives through the mirror of where we have to be, alder and willow double crookedly, reverse, assume a power to bud out tentatively in gold and yellow, so it looks as if what should be end of summer — seeds, dead nettles, berries, naked boughs — is really the anxious clouding of first spring. ...'Real' is what water is imagining. Stasis Before the leaves change, light transforms these lucid speaking trees. The heavy drench of August alters, things; its rich and sappy blood relaxes where a thirst ago, no rest released the roots' wet greed or stemmed their mad need to be more. September is the wisest time — neither the unbearable burning word nor the form of it, cooped in its cold ghost. How are they sombre — that unpicked apple, red, undisturbed by its fall; calm of those wasp-bored amethyst plums on the polished table? Body and head easy in amity, a beam between that must, unbalanced, quicken or kill, make new or dead whatever these voices are that hate the dust. The Circle It is imagination's white face remembers snow, its shape, a fluted shell on shoot or flower, its weight, the permanence of winter pitched against the sun's absolute root. All March is shambles, shards. Yet no amber chestnut, Indian, burnished by its tent cuts to a cleaner centre or keeps summer safer in its sleep. Ghost be content. You died in March when white air hurt the maples. Birches knelt under ice. Roads forgot their ways in aisles of frost. There were no petals. Face, white face, you are snow in the green hills. High stones complete your circle where trees start. Granite and ice are colours of the heart.

Do Keara [For Keara] stuaim Ba cheart bhur gcur ó aithne, tá an tír róbheag, teanga níos stuama a chleachtadh nó seasamh siar ón tús. Ach anois thar aon am eile, níl teacht ná dul ón tosach. Ag cóisir daoibh in íoslach tí, thug tú úll dó in áit osclóra. Bíonn dúil agus dúil ann, a shonc féin, ba mheidhreach: Bíonn diúltú agus diúltú ann — No thanks, I’ve read the Bible. cant Wipe your memory: the country’s too small, practice holding your tongue or stand back from the thing. As much as ever now there’s no getting past how she slid with aplomb not a corkscrew but an apple into his palm. There’s come-ons, and come-ons and then some. His comeback was winsome. There’s no thanks, and no-thanks-but-frisky— If that makes me Adam, then you must be ... an chéad phlaic I seile an sciatháin leathair, tá ceimiceán a choisceann an fhuil ar théachtadh: De nádúr an ainmhí é gur luaithe tál ná téarnamh. the first mouthful There’s a chemical in bats’ saliva that stops our blood congealing. The animal in us puts giving before healing. an dara plaic Ba gheall le moladh an dara priocadh: gur chaith tú uait gan chothrom fola crúbáil na hoíche faoi sholas obann: tabhairt na doraidh go glé, dá dtabharfaí the second mouthful Praise be, you thought, when you gave up the ghost. But where’s the glory with no blood lost? The nails of the night beneath a bare bulb: your challenge spotlit. Now take it up. an tríú plaic, nó ath-quoof i Aithníonn sé faoin am seo, an fear i do theannta, nach ligtear as do cheann iad, na cuimhní cinn a roinntear, go mbíodh colúir theachtaireachta aige féin is a athair is go ndéanaidís blaoscanna uibhe a théamh chun gob an éin a neartú. Thug is tugann leat, an taom a bhuail an buachaill, é ag fanacht in oirchill is na blaoscáin á róstadh, gur fhág sé faoin teas rófhada iad— d’aon turas—a chroí ina bhéal aige— le teann spóirt, b’fhéidir, féachaint, dá ainneoin féin, mar a bheadh acu dá bpléascadh blaosc san oigheann air. the third mouthful (quoof: slight return i) Pillow-talker, as you’d be the first to admit, a cat let out of the bag won’t go back in. Now she’s up to speed on how you and your dad used eggshells to harden the beaks of your pigeons, nodding off over them, billing and cooing, waiting for the shells to roast. Once you left them under the heat on purpose, for devilment maybe—come on, come on—curious what might happen if left in too long. an ceathrú plaic nó ath-quoof ii Aithníodh sé thairis— leathchéile na cuilte, nach slogadh gan chogaint í, an chuimhne cinn leathoilte. Súil siar is túisce a bhuaileann an sprioc: an buachaill nach gcodlaíodh nuair ba thrúig oilc an tost. Níorbh fhéidir a shuaimhniú go gcloiseadh fead na traenach: má bhí tiománaí ina dhúiseacht, ní raibh sé ina aonar. the fourth mouthful (quoof: slight return ii) Something else to chew on besides the tales he’s spun: he should recognize, no matter where, his duvet twin. For the boy keeping watch when sleep would be nobler, the place to look may be over his shoulder. Who can’t rest until the train whistle blows: if the driver is out there he can’t be alone. iarfhocal Bhí a fhios aici, an bhean sin, nárbh ionann súil is éisteacht. Is d’admhódh de chogar claon gur fhadaigh tost an béaldath. Sop préacháin a deirtí le bean a chaitheadh fear uaidh, píosa tuí a d’ardaigh an ghaoth nuair nár oir go beacht don éinín. afterword Well she knew that holding an eye isn’t having an ear; and beyond that she knew how silence improves lipstick. A woman a man drops is called a crow’s wisp: something the wind takes when a bird lets it slip. Translated from the Irish

Sorrow like a ceaseless rain Beats upon my heart. People twist and scream in pain, — Dawn will find them still again; This has neither wax nor wane, Neither stop nor start. People dress and go to town; I sit in my chair. All my thoughts are slow and brown: Standing up or sitting down Little matters, or what gown Or what shoes I wear.

—after Gwendolyn Brooks No matter the pull toward brink. No matter the florid, deep sleep awaits. There is a time for everything. Look, just this morning a vulture nodded his red, grizzled head at me, and I looked at him, admiring the sickle of his beak. Then the wind kicked up, and, after arranging that good suit of feathers he up and took off. Just like that. And to boot, there are, on this planet alone, something like two million naturally occurring sweet things, some with names so generous as to kick the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon, stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks at the market. Think of that. The long night, the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah. But look; my niece is running through a field calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel and at the end of my block is a basketball court. I remember. My color's green. I'm spring. —for Walter Aikens