The Book of Endings

Leslie Harrison

• Publisher: University of Akron Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781629220659
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Poésie

Short-listed for the 2017 National Book Award for Poetry The poems in The Book of Endings try to make sense of, or at least come to some kind of reckoning with absence - the death of the author's mother, the absence of the beloved, the absence of an accountable god, cicadas, the dead stars arriving, the dead moon aglow in the night sky.

Right Panel

[When trees are dead they are]

When trees are dead they are wood straight-grained

solid flesh when we die we are of what use what matter

no shelter is built of our bones of our going such small pieces

taken instead into soil lair into ground wind sand salt or sea

the world barely remade in our unfastening these bodies

so ill-suited to use better suited to waste to want to hunger

the way our minds attach themselves with claw and teeth

to such thin things as hope to having met one man once again

and once again to having invented desire that terrible bludgeon

that blade so rare to desire the essential simple things

rice for the table blanket for the bed we want hands instead

we want whatever we meant by love the bodies’ tectonic

collision friction the frisson of touch subsumed subducted

in the plates the wine the meal we are all so practiced

at falling at coming slowly coming both apart and undone

skin by limb by falling we gather trees plant them deep

for love oh love marry me instead to the forest marry

me please to the fencepost the mast the table or the rack

[Carnation lily lily rose]

The trees drop wilting petals this confetti pink and red

lilac and rose as pollen too drifts and falls turns every

puddle urinous the drunken bees swerve through

the ruined afternoon and you keep asking me to believe

keep calling me an optimist but how can I count on this

count each happy family by their shuttered windows their

thoroughly locked doors how can I count smoke as evidence

of warmth of fire count on the way desire drunk on pollen

drunk on the season staggers and stings count on the way

strangers keep wanting to touch my hair make a wish you say

make a wish but the planets careen on through constellations

disrupting the given stories then changing them back again

black holes open and close like the beaks of baby birds

ravenous and crashing from their nests their naked skin

the cold pink of furled petals how is it that the world keeps

coming to this these long spring afternoons how can I count

them as evidence of anything oh love you think I wanted this

I never wanted this I didn’t know how to want any of this

[Sisyphus in love]

At first it was the stone the rough stubble skin of it the call

and response the stone’s going its perpetual coming back

the insistence of the fact of it shaping each piece of his body

muscle bone rough hands their slow curve toward its weight

the way it wanted the way it wanted him never farther away

than the length of his arm the cheek to cheek dance the way

he wore its dust and scent breathed it in and then it was the hill

the way he cut his name his story over time the furze worn

in tracks how it defined his being a tipped horizon the sky

obscured the way it wore each cloud the world’s difficult

weather as jewel and costume the myriad ways it refused

to move be moved seduced or yield he loved it most for that

and then it was the song those lovely small waves that flutter

felt against the ear his skin that it could also sometimes be

like this those pulsing waves such fine such slight adjustments

it took his breath tuned turned his ear to hear and overhear

those notes upon his shore his skin and then it was the stone again

[Eve]

If the angels came there would be no kindness they are

after all also without mercy pity they are warriors soldiers

of wing beak and sword they are griffins of the lord endlessly

taking sides come unto all of this world to do his bidding

he has no interest in rescue how obvious that has become he has

no interest in the seed its vanishing its chance random choice

of fate either ground cradled or ground down in the bird’s

churning belly seed is food is blood is muscle is waiting

to become flesh its own or someone else’s seed is always

fuel in the metabolic fire the apple a womb encounters

her teeth she taught herself to eat god taught her to bleed

[Stutter]

I said love because it came closest said leave

because you did we do this peeling off each

from each each from suddenly other said

come back but meant don’t go I said dead

and meant every one of those instances of

vanishment how the dead swim away from us

in time their tide their closed wooden boats

I said tide but tide was never right said tide

because we have no word for that kind of

unforgiving away I said tether when I meant

anchor when I meant stay but when I said stay

one thing I meant was against confusion

against yet another loss I meant two-faced

Janus January’s god of fallen gates of trying

to look both ways and when I said farewell

I meant again don’t go but it was too late I was

here in the hall this tunnel full of mirrors glass

and strange made-up faces and when I thought

funhouse I meant its opposite I meant this

rusty carnival town the men so sad they paint

their smiles in place they paint their faces

white paint their eyes wide and full of crying

[Sirens]

I’m not Penelope married to faith married to waiting

bound in fine soft strands of silk dyed and stretched

in my world longing has teeth and fins has a taste

for blood longing is a room built entirely of knives

all edges facing in all points afire and also somehow

held to the vessel in my world sirens are the town criers

saying something’s happened and maybe to you saying

someone got too close to danger s...