206

Mother
Our room grows familiar : first light.
            I will miss our furniture when it is gone.
                        The light, though, comes as it will always come.
I have been sober all these hours :
            You will wake and, waiting for me to leave,
                        Go to the cabinet. Go stabilise your heart, dear.
We are all thirsty when we wake.
            In the grate our cigarettes from last night
                        Are dry and blameless. They don't remember us.

The gate was open, and all the lights
            Stepped through. The dome of it was hung
                        With them like great dusty fruit. I held you there,
In the end of the garden far from the house,
            Knowing that you knew my worth to you.
                        The heavens were a factory of stars! Florid nebulae
Wilting from their distant quarters, revenants
            That spoke their meaning to us, each in turn.
                        Our love has always been figured by its formation.
For that, I cannot help but love the night.

            I will go down to the table in the first faint
                        Light and sit quietly, and wait for the day to close.
I will wait for you to come down.
            God loves us with our wounds, like costumes :
                        All seeking some disclosure, all children of a kind.
You will sleep until the evening,
            And come down and not speak, a dark silent shape,
                        Sloping back up the staircase with a bottle in your
Hand as if it were a mountain. Your head bandaged,
            Heavy with loveliness : man's last archetype. Pierrot!
                        Come back to me as I knew you, in our first bloom.

204

Mother
The candle gutters, where I lay my sight.
            Fever, anaesthetic, caution : holocaust!
                        The stars burn like abandoned cars! Nothing will
Hold me now. I am but a colossal framework.
            Lord, dance up with me into the dustbowl heaven,
                        Where we might find a place to be alone together.
I burn, ah! My back, my breasts, my cunt!
            I shake with the want of you : captain, do not
                        Leave me now. My conduit is, for you, facillitation.

I cannot sleep this love into its shell!
            Years pass, as they did in the hour of my birth.
                        Ghosts pass up from the deep, where rockets fall.
Out of the proportions of the dark
            A shape rises, an elongate neck and eyes like oil,
                        The allgod of giraffes. It says : the rain is coming
That will wash your body away.
            It falls back into the atmosphere, as all things
                        Fall, into some other arms : beyond what we see.
The apocalypse comes so slowly tonight.

            I am a body like anything else. Take me in your
                        Arms for a little while, for it is so late and I cannot 
Help what I have been, what I always will be.
            You have been so long away from me, sweetheart.
                        Molten falls, down out of the mouth of heavengate,
Where the race was born and will return!
            These are not tears, you do not pain me how you are.
                        Light projects its form : a spume of fluid into dark.
I have no children of this. May I have
            A little love to light the darkness, this solstice?
                        Come into me where I am the catalyst, O caballero!

203

Father

August, where I knew you once.

            We stood in the evening and the failing light,

                        And I thought how many animals must be dying

At that instant, and how loneliness

            Might be the only constant of this life. I spoke

                        That word, known to all men, and we were there,

Together in that moment. We were

            A power to behold in those early years. Now,

                        My vision is fading : I have no light to harness to.

What father are you seeking, where

            All sound runs out into silence? What end?

                        The mode of all forces. The flower that is only love.

It is a name that proceeds from the feeling of love.

            Love an aspect of will, will an expression of energy.

                        Discrete powers : these partialities of a continuum.

An allsoul that dresses the night in colour.

            For the terms within which the problem may be
                        Elaborated, and thus resolved. For his revelations!

Deathbloom of starchild! Astral ordinance.

            We are children, in our old age.

                        The pollen came off the trees like smoke, and they

Told me your name, and I could

            See that you were very young. You stood

                        Like an ornament, where the light had caught you.

That night we watched Sagittarius pass

            Far over our heads, and we knew that some

                        Catastrophe had taken hold of us, and were afraid.

You prayed for me, and we went to sleep.

            I have not woken since! Now we are children

                        Again, in our old age. Stars fall. Morning is coming.

202

Father
Now, the deluge! All the aspects of my self
            Partake in this emergency. Let there be no
                        Meaning over me, as long as there is a word to say.
I have passed the gate : there is nothing left
            Than a little sound, that is fleeting, and sounds
                        Somewhat like a song, and somewhat like sobbing.
It is a far sound of some loneliness I have
            No part of. My father's body bent over his work:
                        My mother in the hour I was born. The hours pass.

The piano stood before the window, that
            First threshold. The surface on which I place
                        My hand. Subject to its force and what is reciprocal,
The force that subjects my hand to it.
            They are bonded and of a common fluctuation,
                        A commensurate force. The fires of sound and light
And touch and heat, leading us a stumbling way
            Through the periodic dark. Our little life :
                        The spark falls, dims, and is reconsumed. Our fires
That gutter in the tropic wind.

            My lord is a chemical lord : and a sorrow.
                        I stare into the middle of the room, and pour out a
Small measure : the only measure left to me.
            Help me up, my darling! My figure has fallen
                        And left my thoughts behind. My voice fails, heart.
I am a sodden fool, for you : you knew that
            For so many years that is is nothing to you now.
                        What is love, left inarticulate? The piano, a facility
Of mechanism : my father's body in its place.
            What place should I assume? No more than this,
                        That I would live in the articulation of your worth.

201

Father
Coming to our room, from darkness,
            I find our bed empty in the first light from
                        The window, but still showing our form where our
Sleep has left an indentation, and it smells
            Of sleep and your hair. I find I cannot
                        Stand, for the smell is like smoke, and I fall into it,
As one falls from one dream into the next.
            Voices sound in far chambers of the house.
                        This is only a memory : first light. Go down to bed.

Speak, fragility! for the heaventree is blooming.
            There is nothing in this lovely phantasmagoria
                        Devoid of motion, mi esposa. Our passage in space,
A force we cannot feel. Throw your compass
            To the farthest dwindling lights, whose birth
                        We witness that are long dead and fleeing from us.
Nothing motionless will fall within its span.
            There is nothing to hold that does not flow away :
                        Love, the hours of our sleep, our dearest thoughts.
Embers fall through the night air, like rain.

            Such lights, we couldn't speak, and were glad!
                        They fell from our sight like a shell, and faded, and
I could not help myself, I kissed you,
            Where you stood such a small thing in that
                        Darkness, that I was afraid. I thought that if I ever
Lost you, I would be without coordinate,
            And I would never find my way back again.
                        What is it now, to be lost? The embers fall, like rain.
I remember it : I said to you, come with me from
            Here, we have to go away, but you would not go from
                        Where the light fell, saying : its gate is my last word.

200

Mother
Under the hill, where the rain is a flood,
            My child has gone down to bed. The vault
                        Of heaven is crowded : forms of starlight, gouts
Of holy fire that shiver and touch, dark veins
            Of gold and ochre and peach and rose and blue,
                        In bloom, that bind together, like lost thoughts.
God, you hold me in your arms tonight!
            What is the word known to all men? I may not
                        Ask you for your voice again, until I come to you.

In the night of our years a bird sang,
            And I spoke to you to ask if you knew its name,
                        Thrush, you said, and turned away and fell asleep.
There is a thrush of starlight formed above
            Our cradle, above our bed. Its song rattles
                        Through the engineroom of the heavens. Borealis!
In the vast and naked pantomime of lights,
            The music of its rapture takes our form. Love,
                        Have you yet woken? The kingdom has fallen, and
All God's angels have gone down to bed.

            The voice of the thrush has washed away,
                        Under the hill. I speak into the quiet of our room,
Words that may call his body up again.
            Mother, what is the word known to all men?
                        My thrush, I will lie down to sleep that you rise.
The grate, grown ashen, evacuates its fuel.
            My mind is stupid, that cannot let itself be.
                        Where is the body of the man, my old Holofernes?
I he has sufficed too long, and so have I.
            In my memory his eyes smoke like honey :
                        I should be the pale force that will drown his sleep.

199

Mother
My hands trembled like aspen, at the gate
            Of that light. It was our first year. I was younger,
                        Corazon, than you are now. It was the last night.
The house was full of people then, and you
            Were dressed so elegantly, in the fire
                        Of your age, and I could not follow you as you
Went away from me down into the garden,
            Where the noise would die and the warmth
                        Of the house die in music. Our first year. Then.

I would wake you, corazon, if I could.
            Fire is the amnion of your rest. I must not
                        Wake you yet. I have made a lantern in your place,
You will not stir until it has burnt down.
            Something flies in the edge of the wood,
                        Dressed in fire. A dream of life, gone beyond reach.
Halleluja to the night! I sing this broken world
            Through my thoughts. I take these forms into my own,
                        As parts of me to deliver. Where is the ambulance
That would take me home?

            The cataract, the parabola, the pool.
                        One falls into the other : penitents into grace. I fell,
One night many years ago, into you.
            I have not seen you since so long. Above
                        Our heads the forms of past ages reappeared, as if
God had ordained a system of the heavens,
            And dredged the histories for lights. That hush
                        Fell where you held me. I felt you hold your breath.
Electricity in heaven, I thought, how the
            Future captures us! And you held my hand so
                        That the music would go on, and I felt magnificent.

198

Mother

Of what should I construct you, my one

            Substantiative force? I have no ashes to tide

                        The evening's end. The grate is anaesthetic, and

White as if innocent. I have no sadness

            Left to haul your shadows in. No words to

                        Mortgage at your name. You are a sleep to me.

A dull sleep in the afternoon, waking to

            Find the day darker, and that rain had fallen.

                        My father died in his arms on such an afternoon.

How should I conjugate you, where you

            Wash in the dream of your loneliness?

                        I would feel I had lost you, but a wife never loses.

The little interval of night is come : I

            Must love a parabolic form, blent away

                        From me across the fabric of his own personhood.

What creature watches the light but me?

            My lover walks among the stars of the wood,

                        Like the figure of Moses where the waves leap up.

God keep the silent words that fall there.

            Paint me in the ashes of your love!

                        I dance in the forest of ages. Father, are your arms

Open? Are your lungs flowering now
            Like corals from the chest of your skeleton?

                        I was not born to dance alone. You should see the

Fires that live and die each night in my body.

            My husband : your bandage blinds you, and your gin.

                        I have not hidden the bloom of my wound this year.

You would have known that, had you seen me.

            I lie in the history of this night's sleep. Turn to me!

                        Speak the words of love to me and I will let you in.

197

The cuckoo holds its wings
In the rain. They are lucid
As rain in the grey air,
And two. Its tail jolts
Arrhythmically, like a stalled
Pendulum, and droplets bead
And roll to its pale extent,
And they fall. It inclines
Its empty eye, where the all
Of every object tends. Age
Lies on its plumage like water.

A holocaust of cuckoos, tonight,
And every night below freezing
For fifteen thousand years.

The light breaks like a shell,
And the body dances up from it.