246 Spiritual poems

Like everyone, I wanted my animal to be the hawk. I thought I wanted the strength to eat the eyes first then tear into the fuse box of the chest and soar away. I needed help because I still cowered under the shadow of my father, a man who inspected picture tubes five out of seven nights, who woke to breakfast on burnt roast except the two weeks he’d sleep on a Jersey beach and throw me into the gasoline-sheened waves. I loved him dying indebted not knowing to what, thinking his pension would be enough, released not knowing from what, gumming at something I was afraid to get close enough to hear, afraid of what I was co-signing. So maybe the elephant. The elephant knows when one of its own is suffering up to six miles away. Charges across the desert cognizant of the futility. How can I be forgiven when I don’t know what I need forgiving for? Sometimes the urges are too extreme: to slap on the brakes and scream, to bite the haunch of some passing perfume, so maybe my animal is the tiger. Or shark. Or centipede. But I know I’m smaller than that, filling notebooks with clumsy versions of one plaint, one pheromonal call, clamoring over a crumb that I think is the world, baffled by the splotch of one of my own crushed kind, almost sweet, a sort of tar, following a trail of one or two molecules, leaving a trail of one or two molecules.

I’m religious. As religious as the wind or scissors. It’s an ant, she’s religious, the flowers are red. I don’t want to die. I don’t care if I die now. I’m more religious than the dust in the desert. The mouth of a child is round. My eyes are syrup, dripping cold. Sometimes I think I baked nettles, but I didn’t. Sometimes I think I’m miserable, but I’m not. I’m religious. I will throw a barrel into the river. If bees rushed into my face, I’d scratch at them with my hand and would see again. I don’t get upset. The soul presses like the crowds at the door. When I die, oxen will graze the grass just like this. Houses will glimmer just like this. Translated from the Slovenian

I Fate is cleverer than the king of Babylon. Shadow of yew fall through windows onto the floor of the nave and touch the pillars with tattered shade. You claim the dearest wish of your life is to sink into a soul-freezing situation of horror.  The music of a crash caught in the hollow of a wooded hillside. 2 Grave, questioning sweep—chiefly the weird that arouses our keenest hopes. The garden of dreams contains a summerhouse, hazy period of my growth. There are bodies, not greatly extended, called seas nevertheless, because of their depth and violence. I’ve some little doubt about this ceremony entirely embedded in a cup of grassy hills. 3 Pardon me for loitering. I was sleeping soundly when I was roused by the loud clang of what turned out to be a large brass candlestick, flung against the banister. Unprotected, destitute of the means of self-defense, you hug to yourself the consciousness of vanished beauty. The sea is un- certain, on the main and also along the coast. 4 Strange rooms. Through these experimental years, who can describe beauty in the dead of night? Complain of frivolity or of portraits exactly like ghosts. The waters of the great surrounding sea will completely evaporate when the sun opens the fifth of its seven eyes. Oh yes, I take pleasure in backgrounds, bringing them forward. 5 These are only a few of many legendary details, called from the distant future where each thing has its end, including sea, sun, the eyes. You live in another season—even now I feel acrobatic instincts. Large strange rooms. A silver cup from his household plate, a sky of the same gray tones, a great wilderness of books. 6 When the sea subsides into utter calm, changing clouds caught in its clarity, then fishermen say the sea is thinking about itself. A dark back room, looking down upon a narrow courtyard—waking out of some dreams of specters, bellowing the most frightful shrieks, forgetting only at the sound of somebody’s voice. 7 You light me to bed with your light, and never a night but I am prey to ghostly visions—a tenderness no usual in my family. The lion pauses a certain space of time, amid a sea of divers thoughts, choppy half desires, memoranda of search and hunger, very peculiar ideas of the world.

Prostrating before the golden figure Against disinclination…later in the day… All that remains…the extremely brittle foliage… Abated, the thunder…our golden figure… Her ugly hair held back by a pin…frenzied Rushed down the forested hill that isolates sun Highly explosive, flickering, foiling of your heightening hushed Nick in the blue thing Along negligence Chagrin Of the maidens Bleeds Shackled as sharp complication Being as it were Absorbed into Myth Whiten, whitening Or white on white display That play That combusted On stage Romulus & Remus The Janus figure From Zaire (curtain)

Why are you here? Who have you come for and what would you gain? Where is your fear? Why are you here? You’ve come so near, or so it would seem; you can see the grain in the paper — that’s clear. But why are you here when you could be elsewhere, earning a living or actually learning? Why should we care why you’re here? Is that a tear? Yes, there’s pressure behind the eyes — and there are peers. But why are you here? At times it sears. The pressure and shame and the echoing pain. What do you hear now that you’re here? The air’s so severe. It calls for equipment, which comes at a price. And you’ve volunteered. Why?Are you here? What will you wear? What will you do if it turns out you’ve failed? How will you fare? Why are you here when it could take years to find out — what? It’s all so slippery, and may not cohere. And yet, you’re here    ... Is it what you revere? How deep does that go? How do you know? Do you think you’re a seer? Is that why you’re here? Do you have a good ear? For praise or for verse? Can you handle a curse? Define persevere. Why are you here? It could be a career.

Of all the questions you might want to ask about angels, the only one you ever hear is how many can dance on the head of a pin. No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth or guiding a boy and girl across a rickety wooden bridge. Do they fly through God's body and come out singing? Do they swing like children from the hinges of the spirit world saying their names backwards and forwards? Do they sit alone in little gardens changing colors? What about their sleeping habits, the fabric of their robes, their diet of unfiltered divine light? What goes on inside their luminous heads? Is there a wall these tall presences can look over and see hell? If an angel fell off a cloud, would he leave a hole in a river and would the hole float along endlessly filled with the silent letters of every angelic word? If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume the appearance of the regular mailman and whistle up the driveway reading the postcards? No, the medieval theologians control the court. The only question you ever hear is about the little dance floor on the head of a pin where halos are meant to converge and drift invisibly. It is designed to make us think in millions, billions, to make us run out of numbers and collapse into infinity, but perhaps the answer is simply one: one female angel dancing alone in her stocking feet, a small jazz combo working in the background. She sways like a branch in the wind, her beautiful eyes closed, and the tall thin bassist leans over to glance at his watch because she has been dancing forever, and now it is very late, even for musicians.

There is something men and women living in houses Don’t understand. The old alchemists standing Near their stoves hinted at it a thousand times. Ravens at night hide in an old woman’s shoe. A four-year-old speaks some ancient language. We have lived our own death a thousand times. Each sentence we speak to friends means the opposite As well. Each time we say, “I trust in God,” it means God has already abandoned us a thousand times. Mothers again and again have knelt in church In wartime asking God to protect their sons, And their prayers were refused a thousand times. The baby loon follows the mother’s sleek Body for months. By the end of summer, she Has dipped her head into Rainy Lake a thousand times. Robert, you’ve wasted so much of your life Sitting indoors to write poems. Would you Do that again? I would, a thousand times.

The darkness draws me, kindly angels weep Forlorn beyond receding rings of light, The torrents of the earth’s desires sweep My soul through twilight downward into night. Once more the light grows dim, the vision fades, Myself seems to myself a distant goal, I grope among the bodies’ drowsy shades, Once more the Old Illusion rocks my soul. Once more the Manifold in shadowy streams Of falling waters murmurs in my ears, The One Voice drowns amid the roar of dreams That crowd the narrow pathway of the years. I go to seek the starshine on the,waves, To count the dewdrops on the grassy hill, I go to gather flowers that grow on graves, The world’s wall closes round my prisoned will. Yea, for the sake of the wild western wind The sphered spirit scorns her flame-built throne, Because of primroses, time out of mind, The Lonely turns away from the Alone. Who once has loved the cornfield’s rustling sheaves, Who once has heard the gentle Irish rain Murmur low music in the growing leaves, Though he were god, comes back to earth again. Oh Earth! green wind-swept Eirinn, I would break The tower of my soul’s initiate pride For a gray field and a star-haunted lake, And those wet winds that roam the country side. I who have seen am glad to close my eyes, I who have soared am weary of my wings, I seek no more the secret of the wise, Safe among shadowy, unreal human things. Blind to the gleam of those wild violet rays That burn beyond the rainbow's circle dim, Bound by dark nights and driven by pale days, The sightless slave of Time’s imperious whim; Deaf to the flowing tide of dreams divine That surge outside the closed gates of birth, The rhythms of eternity, too fine To touch with music the dull ears of earth— I go to seek with humble care and toil The dreams I left undreamed, the deeds undone, To sow the seed and break the stubborn soil, Knowing no brightness whiter than the sun. Content in winter if the fire burns clear And cottage walls keep out the creeping damp, Hugging the Old Illusion warm and dear, The Silence and the Wise Book and the Lamp.

Costa Rica I finally find the witch. She is branch- boned, old, with knowing fingers. She says nothing. Walks me to a tall tree, a gourd hanging from a long line of jute. She pulls out a phone, asks me to type a note to my family. I do it, but can’t see how it can be sent from somewhere so deep. She scolds me, says that only tourists think the world can be escaped. The jungle’s green is the wild mind of God. The witch puts the phone into the gourd. Hand-over-hand, she raises this cradle to the top of the holy canopy.

At first she thought the lump in the road was clay thrown up by a trucker’s wheel. Then Beatrice saw the mess of feathers: Six or seven geese stood in the right-of-way, staring at the blood, their black heads rigid above white throats. Unmoved by passing wind or familiar violence, they fixed their gaze on dead flesh and something more, a bird on the wing. It whirled in a thicket of fog that grew up from fields plowed and turned to winter. It joined other spirits exhaled before dawn, creatures that once had crept or flapped or crawled over the land. Beatrice had heard her mother tell of men who passed as spirits. They hid in limestone caves by the river, hooded themselves inside the curved wall, the glistening rock. Then just at dark they appeared, as if they had the power to split the earth open to release them. White-robed, faceless horned heads, they advanced with torches over the water, saying: We are the ghosts of Shiloh and Bull Run fight! Neighbors who watched at the bridge knew each man by his voice or limp or mended boots but said nothing, allowed the marchers to pass on. Then they ran their skinny hounds to hunt other lives down ravines, to save their skins another night from the carrion beetles, spotted with red darker than blood, who wait by the grave for the body’s return to the earth. Some years the men killed scores, treed them in the sweetgums. Watched a man’s face flicker in the purple-black leaves. Then they burned the tree. Smoke from their fires still lay over the land where Beatrice traveled. Out of this cloud the dead of the field spoke to her, voices from the place where some voices never stop: They took my boy down by Sucarnochee Creek. He said, “Gentlemen, what have I done?” They says, “Never mind what you have done. We just want your damned heart.” After they killed him, I built up a little fire and laid out by him all night until the neighbors came in the morning. I was standing there when they killed him, down by Sucarnochee Creek.