246 Spiritual poems

The man in the yellow hard hat, the one with the mask across his nose and mouth, pulls the lever that turns the great arm of the crane up and over and sideways toward the earth; then the wrecking ball dangles crazily, so delicately, like a silver fob loosened from a waistcoat pocket: shocking to see the dust fly up and the timber sail up, then so slowly down, how the summer air bristles with a hundred splinters and the smallest is a splintered flame, for it takes so many lengthening erratic movements to tear away what stands between the sidewalk and the bell tower, where the pigeons now rise in grand indignant waves at such poor timing, such a deaf ear toward the music; in this way the silence between hand and lever is turned into a ragged and sorely lifted wing: the wrecking ball lurches in a narrowing arc until only the dust resists—the rest comes down, story by story, and is hauled off in flatbed trucks. Meanwhile the pedestrians come and go, now and then glancing at their accurate watches. Gradually, the dust becomes the rose light of autumn. But one evening a woman loses her way as she’s swept into a passing wave of commuters and she looks up toward the perfectly empty rectangle now hanging between the rutted mud and the sky. There along the sides of the adjacent building, like a set for a simple elementary school play, like the gestures of the dead in her children’s faces, she sees the flowered paper of her parents’ bedroom, the pink stripes leading up the stairs to the attic, and the outline of the claw- footed bathtub, font of the lost cathedral of childhood.

Que será,el café of this holy, incorporated place, the wild steam of scorched espresso cakes rising like mirages from the aromatic waste, waving over the coffee-glossed lips of these faces assembled for a standing breakfast of nostalgia, of tastes that swirl with the delicacy of memories in these forty-cent cups of brown sugar histories, in the swirling froth of café-con-leche,que será, what have they seen that they cannot forget— the broad-leaf waves of tabaco and plantains the clay dust of red and nameless mountains, que será, that this morning I too am a speck; I am the brilliant guitar of a tropical morning speaking Spanish and ribboning through potions of waist-high steam and green cane oceans, que será, drums vanishing and returning, the African gods that rule a rhythmic land playing their music:bongó,bembé,conga; que será, that cast the spells of this rumba, this wild birthright, this tropical dance with the palms of this exotic confusion; que será, that I too should be a question, que será, what have I seen, what do I know— culture of café and loss, this place I call home.

"I thought of you as a butterfly tonight," getting to eschatology from a sketchpad, your mom's. And though you write sermons nice and linear you also digress and about-face. The jeroboam trees are dark tonight. Darker in the outage than the stars let the sky be. Partyers all. The abbot told you, "I do not have power, the archbishop does not have power, the pope does not have power. Only God has power." Then it is not a kind of violence to put a photo of the Pope in a luscious hacienda, imperilled by a minature pullbell. Someone admired the hostess's oils. "Yes, it was a surprise when they hired me to teach but they said, 'We can teach an artist to teach but we can't teach a teacher to be an artist.'" "How true," the guests murmured. This was not your mother though artists all say it "comes from somewhere else." When another guest compared the Catholic to the Episcopal service she said, "I think not." In a desert once I almost fell off a cliff. To calm me down a friend told a joke: "Descartes was sitting on a plane. The stewardess said, 'Coffee or tea?' 'I think not,' Descartes said, and vanished." It took a moment to sink in because I thought he said "The cart" as in "beverage cart." Confusion is the only way to get to eschatology from a sketchpad. I'm trying to redeem that abbot. Drawing in the outage. Once you suggest the origins of music lay in the necessity of drowning out the cries of sacrificial victims, I start listening for them—the cries—under my own singing. Scholars resurrect books all the time just by quoting them. When Roman gods popped out of the soil, the Christians looked around wildly. Sculpt the mouth around "sculpture,"ulpt. They reburied them hurriedly, and the earth gulped. The statue of the Commendatore went down with Don Giovanni. Which shall I believe, the unrepentence of the sinkholed Don? Or the statue that converts Leontes by resurrecting his all-forgiving wife? Hermione who's peerless has a likeness; he who won't about-face is not "mocked by art" but brought posthaste to hell, his "shapely seat and heart". . . The moon slips out like a foreign coin from denim: a drachma, an as. Can we redeem it? Cities are places are conversion, you said. But I am citiless. "She ascended to the thrown," you wrote by mistake, of Elizabeth.

After one moment when I bowed my head And the whole world turned over and came upright, And I came out where the old road shone white. I walked the ways and heard what all men said, Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed, Being not unlovable but strange and light; Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite But softly, as men smile about the dead The sages have a hundred maps to give That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree, They rattle reason out through many a sieve That stores the sand and lets the gold go free: And all these things are less than dust to me Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

When for the thorns with which I long, too long, With many a piercing wound, My Saviour’s head have crowned, I seek with garlands to redress that wrong: Through every garden, every mead, I gather flowers (my fruits are only flowers), Dismantling all the fragrant towers That once adorned my shepherdess’s head. And now when I have summed up all my store, Thinking (so I myself deceive) So rich a chaplet thence to weave As never yet the King of Glory wore: Alas, I find the serpent old That, twining in his speckled breast, About the flowers disguised does fold, With wreaths of fame and interest. Ah, foolish man, that wouldst debase with them, And mortal glory, Heaven’s diadem! But Thou who only couldst the serpent tame, Either his slippery knots at once untie; And disentangle all his winding snare; Or shatter too with him my curious frame, And let these wither, so that he may die, Though set with skill and chosen out with care: That they, while Thou on both their spoils dost tread, May crown thy feet, that could not crown thy head.

But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. A strategy of continence, avoidance, mule-headedness, and hope. The next assassin, brush fire, or virus swerves this way, head-on collision; We see it coming and can’t divert — the path too crowded with pilgrims. By the side of the road to Calvary blooms a mustard bush. It never means to do anything but propagate. It sees the centuries winnow themselves in and out, And hears itself appropriated for a parable. It keeps all these things, and ponders them in its heart While casting savior seeds generation after generation.

I met the Bishop on the road And much said he and I. `Those breasts are flat and fallen now Those veins must soon be dry; Live in a heavenly mansion, Not in some foul sty.' `Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,' I cried. 'My friends are gone, but that's a truth Nor grave nor bed denied, Learned in bodily lowliness And in the heart's pride. `A woman can be proud and stiff When on love intent; But Love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement; For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.'

Then there came again and touched me one like the appearance of a man, and he strengthened me—Daniel 10:18 febrile body I woke into: nightsweats, stink of the toil of living: where hands could not bear to approach me, the young man fingered lay upon me, was himself a cool sponge, drew my perspiration to his lips ice-chips he held in his teeth, he pushed small bergs into my mouth caressed the skeletal arms I’ve hidden in long sleeves kissed neck and chest, belly rotten with pudgy organs, thick-set flesh he pressed against me, cock on cock and tongue against tongue saw his reflection in my marshy eyes and did not flinch such weakness held, sustained by this capable stroke, boatswain of my crossing I take the death I’m moored to, announced as a measureless promontory and bob in the river like a bloated corpse, blue lips, vacant gaze I let the water fill my lungs until they rip their festive piñatas because the one who comes to gather me, capricious angel has a voice that affirms me rising when this fever abates For Haines Eason

I cried to men, “I would be crucified!” And they said, “Why should your blood be upon our heads?” And I answered, “How else shall you be exalted except by crucifying madmen?” And they heeded and I was crucified.  And the crucifixion appeased me. And when I was hanged between earth and heaven they lifted up their heads to see me.  And they were exalted, for their heads had never before been lifted. But as they stood looking up at me one called out, “For what art thou seeking to atone?” And another cried, “In what cause dost thou sacrifice thyself?” And a third said, “Thinkest thou with this price to buy world glory?” Then said a fourth, “Behold, how he smiles!  Can such pain be forgiven?” And I answered them all, and said: “Remember only that I smiled.  I do not atone—nor sacrifice—nor wish for glory; and I have nothing to forgive.  I thirsted—and I besought you to give me my blood to drink.  For what is there can quench a madman’s thirst but his own blood?  I was dumb—and I asked wounds of you for mouths.  I was imprisoned in your days and nights—and I sought a door into larger days and nights. And now I go—as others already crucified have gone.  And think not we are weary of crucifixion.  For we must be crucified by larger and yet larger men, between greater earths and greater heavens.”

In Tamalpais is a big crystal. An acquaintance told me the story. A Miwok was giving his grandfather’s medicine bag to the Kroeber Museum in Berkeley. He said this man took him over the mountain Tamalpais, at a certain time in the year. I believe it was about the time of the Winter Solstice, because then the tides are really low. They stopped and gathered a certain plant on the way over the mountain. On their way to the Bolinas Beach clam patch, where there is a big rock way out there. Go out to the rock. Take out of the medicine bag the crystal that matches the crystal in Tamalpais. And if your heart is not true if your heart is not true when you tap the rock in the clam patch a little piece of it will fly off and strike you in the heart and strike you dead. And that’s the first story I ever heard about Bolinas.