West Wind (3 page)

then glides back

agitated responsible
climbs again angry

does not look at me.

Halfway to my knees
in the black water
I look up

I cannot stop looking up

how much time has passed
I can hardly see her now

swinging in that blue blaze.

***

There are days when I rise from my desk desolate.
There are days when the field water and the slender grasses
and the wild hawks
have it all over the rest of us

whether or not they make clear sense, ride the beautiful
long spine of grammar, whether or not they rhyme.

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
in the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything—
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker—
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing—
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet—
all of it
happening
beyond all seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

Over
the wide field

the dark deer
went running,

five dogs
screaming

at his flanks,
at his heels,

my own two darlings
among them

lunging and buckling
with desire

as they leaped
for the throat

as they tried
and tried again

to bring him down.
At the lake

the deer
plunged—

I could hear
the green wind

of his breath
tearing

but the long legs
never stopped

till he clambered
up the far shore.

The dogs
moaned and screeched

they flung themselves
on the grass

panting
and steaming.

It took hours
but finally

in the half-drowned light
in the silence

of the summer evening
they woke

from fitful naps,
they stepped

in their old good natures
toward us

look look
into their eyes

bright as planets
under the long lashes

here is such happiness when you speak their names!
here is such unforced love!

here is such shyness such courage!
here is the shining rudimentary soul

here is hope retching, the world as it is
here is the black the red the bottomless pool.

This morning
wind that light-limbed dancer was all
over the sky while
ocean slapped up against
the shore's black-beaked rocks
row after row of waves
humped and fringed and exactly
different from each other and
above them one white gull
whirled slant and fast then
dipped its wings turned
in a soft and descending decision its
leafy feet touched
pale water just beyond
breakage of waves it settled
shook itself opened
its spoony beak cranked
like a pump. Listen!
Here is the white and silky trumpet of nothing.
Here is the beautiful Nothing, body of happy,
meaningless fire, wildfire, shaking the heart.

At Great Pond
the sun, rising,
scrapes his orange breast
on the thick pines,

and down tumble
a few orange feathers into
the dark water.
On the far shore

a white bird is standing
like a white candle—
or a man, in the distance,
in the clasp of some meditation—

while all around me the lilies
are breaking open again
from the black cave
of the night.

Later, I will consider
what I have seen—
what it could signify—
what words of adoration I might

make of it, and to do this
I will go indoors to my desk—
I will sit in my chair—
I will look back

into the lost morning
in which I am moving, now,
like a swimmer,
so smoothly,

so peacefully,
I am almost the lily—
almost the bird vanishing over the water
on its sleeves of light.

If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? Even then? Since we're bound to be something, why not together. Imagine! Two little stones, two fleas under the wing of a gull, flying along through the fog! Or, ten blades of grass. Ten loops of honeysuckle, all flung against each other, at the edge of Race Road! Beach plums! Snowflakes, coasting into the winter woods, making a very small sound, like this

soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

as they marry the dusty bodies of the pitch-pines. Or, rain— that gray light running over the sea, pocking it, lacquering it, coming, all morning and afternoon, from the west wind's youth and abundance and jollity—pinging and jangling down upon the roofs of Provincetown.

You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and heart's little intelligence, and listen to me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks—when you hear that unmistakable pounding—when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming—then row, row for your life toward it.

And the speck of my heart, in my shed of flesh and bone, began to sing out, the way the sun would sing if the sun could sing, if light had a mouth and a tongue, if the sky had a throat, if god wasn't just an idea but shoulders and a spine, gathered from everywhere, even the most distant planets, blazing up. Where am I? Even the rough words come to me now, quick as thistles. Who made your tyrant's body, your thirst, your delving, your gladness? Oh tiger, oh bone-breaker, oh tree on fire! Get away from me. Come closer.

But how did you come burning down like a
wild needle, knowing
just where my heart was?

There are night birds, in the garden below us, singing.
Oh, listen!
For a moment I thought it was
our own bodies.

When the sun goes down
the roses
fling off their red dresses
and put on their black dresses

the wind is coming
over the sandy streets
of the town called moonlight

with his long arms
with his silver mouth
his hands

humorous at first
then serious
then crazy

touching their faces their dark petals
until they begin rising and falling:
the honeyed seizures.

All day they have been busy being roses
gazing responsible over the sand
into the sky into the blue ocean

so now why not
a little comfort
a little rippling pleasure.

***

You there, puddled in lamplight at your midnight desk—
you there, rewriting nature
so anyone can understand it—

what will you say about the roses—
their sighing, their tossing—
and the want of the heart,

and the trill of the heart,
and the burning mouth
of the wind?

We see Bill only occasionally, when we stop by the antique shop that's on the main hot highway to Charlottesville. Usually he's alone—his wife is dead—but sometimes his son will be with him, or idling just outside in the yard. Once M. bought a small glass ship from the boy, it had chips of colored glass for sails and cost two dollars, the boy was greatly pleased.

Today Bill tells us—for a mockingbird has begun to sing— how a friend came during the summer and filled a bowl with fruit from the cherry tree. Then, leaving the bowl on the stoop, he went inside to sit with Bill at the kitchen table. Together Bill and his friend watched the mockingbird come to the bowl, take the cherries one by one, fly back across the yard and drop them under the branches of the tree. When the bowl was empty the bird settled again in the leaves and began to sing vigorously.

At the back of the shop and here and there on the dusty shelves are piled the useless broken things one couldn't ever sell—bits of rusty metal, and odd pieces of china, a cup or a plate with a fraction of its design still clear: a garden, or a span of country bridge leading from one happiness or another, or part of a house. Once Bill told us, almost shyly, how much the boy is coming to resemble his mother. Through the open window we can hear the mockingbird, still young, still lucky, wild beak kissing and chuckling as it flutters and struts along the avenue of song.

The young, tall English poet—soon to die, soon to sail on his small boat into the blue haze and then the storm and then under the gray waves' spinning threshold—went over to Pisa to meet a friend; met him; spent with him a sunny afternoon. I love this poet, which means nothing here or there, but is like a garden in my heart. So my love is a gift to myself. And I think of him, on that July afternoon in Pisa, while his friend Hunt told him stories pithy and humorous, of their friends in England, so that he began to laugh, so that his tall, lean body shook, and his long legs couldn't hold him, and he had to lean up against the building, seized with laughter, abundant and unstoppable; and so he leaned in the wild sun, against the stones of the building, with the tears flying from his eyes—full of foolishness, howling, hanging on to the stones, crawling with laughter, clasping his own body as it began to fly apart in the nonsense, the sweetness, the intelligence, the bright happiness falling, like tiny gold flowers, like the sunlight itself, the lilt of Hunt's voice, on this simple afternoon, with a friend, in Pisa.

And what did you think love would be like? A summer day? The brambles in their places, and the long stretches of mud? Flowers in every field, in every garden, with their soft beaks and their pastel shoulders? On one street after another, the litter ticks in the gutter. In one room after another, the lovers meet, quarrel, sicken, break apart, cry out. One or two leap from windows. Most simply lean, exhausted, their thin arms on the sill. They have done all that they could. The golden eagle, that lives not far from here, has perhaps a thousand tiny feathers flowing from the back of its head, each one shaped like an infinitely small but perfect spear.

Dark is as dark does.

***

Something with the smallest wings shakes itself
from under a thumb of bark.

***

The ocean breathes in its silver jacket.

***

Outside, hanging on the trellis, in the moonlight,
the flowers are opening, each one
as fancy in its unfurl as a difficult thought.

***

So we cross the dark together.

***

Outside: the almost liquid beauty of the flowers.

***

Now the linnets wake.
Now the pearls of their voices are falling
in the morning light.

***

Did we sleep long? Is it this life still, or
is it the next life, already? Are we gone, then?
Are we there?

***

How will we ever know?

Now only the humorous shadows that the moon makes, playing the corners of furniture, flung and dropped clothing, the backs of books, the architecture of electronics, and so on. The bed that level and soft rise is empty. We are gone.

So, say that dreams, possibilities, emotions, while we are gone from the house, take shape. Say there are thirty at least, one to represent each year, and more leaning in the doorway between the slope of the beach and the pale walls of the rooms, just moon-gazing for a moment or two, before they come into that starry garden, our house at night.

Some of those thirty are as awkward as children, romping and gripping. Others have become birds, clouds, trees dipping their heart-shaped leaves, that long song. Here and there a face that won't trans- form—eyes of stone, expressions of pettiness and sulk. And now it is winter, and in the black air the snow is falling in its own sweet leisure, for its own reasons. And now the snow has deepened, and created form: two white ponies. How they gallop in the waves. How they steam, and turn to look for each other. How they love the clouds and the tender, long grass and the horizons and the hills. How they nuzzle, how they nicker, how they reach down, at the unclosable spring in the notch of the pasture, to be replenished.

The cricket did not actually seek the hearth, but the thicket of carpet beneath the refrigerator. The whirring above was company, and from it issued night and day the most prized gift of the gods: warmth. Especially in the evenings the cricket was happy, and sang. Later, in the night, it crept out. There was not a single night when it did not find, sooner or later, a sweet crumb, and a small plump seed of some sort between the floorboards. Thus, it got used to hope. It revised altogether its idea of what the world was like, and of what was going to happen next, or, even, eventually. It thought: how sufficient are these empty rooms! It thought: here I am still, in my black suit, warm and content—and drew a little music from its dark thighs. As though the twilight underneath the refrigerator were the world. As though the winter would never come.

It is midnight, or almost.
Out in the world the wind stretches
bundles back into itself like a hundred
bolts of lace then stretches again