![]()
HOUSE OF POURED-OUT WATERS
For Parry and for Whit ā
For my mother
Do the bones cast out their fire?
āTheodore Roethke, āThe Lost Sonā
![]()
1
TO BREAK THE SPELL IS TO INVITE CHAOS INTO THE UNIVERSE
It would be easier
if I did not existā
but I did. It would be
easier if there were
nothing left, but there isā
mementos weeded down to
how to miss the out-juttings
below the cliff, ocean
behind all the doors and windows.
Ocean,āand the watery sky.
On the cliff-face the swallow
is making her home of mud and feathers.
Out of mud and feathers
she makes a home.
Earth or music?
The music as the earth: just so:
The horizon beyond the horizonā.
THE FUTURE
As a child, who you were
was located in the futureā
right? Now where is
your existence. In
there were dogsā
then we buried them?
Berries, so we put them
in jars? There were
guns, so we fired them
at one another, or didnātā.
Just as the scene was predicted?
Just as the act was forewritten?
RATHER
Rather, we must begin
way before here. To believe
is not so easy. Paragraph
after paragraph of rain
was the right thing.
There are children standing
like numb pigeons
in every paragraphā
just watching us.
See, they were not bees at all.
Insteadāwe are responsible for them.
We said, sunlit passages
we canāt describe, we said,
blackout. We said,
put out the fiasco.
They said, we are the fiasco.
We never said children once.
They stood in the heavy downpour,
paragraph after paragraph,
their true mittens hanging from their sleevesā
little red embassies.
AND ALL THESE THINGS ARE SO
If the trees are alive
and I am alive,
if the trees are blazing,
and the seagullāflying
between the grass and sunā
makes a shadow,
if the sky startles me,
if my soul is listening, waiting
for something to fly
from the bony cage of my handsā
then how can it be,
how can it be, that when I raise them
and make the motions of blossoming
they are empty?
LACK, THE OWL
Look early, look late.
Look up to fateā
magnify the moment.
Get the gist of itā
magnify the gist of it.ā
Where the owl complains.
The owl in the night, complaining.
Who said he speaks to you?
Who said he speaks into night?
Who said he complains.
Define an act of betrayal?
Define an act of faith.
Magnify the moment.
Too much like a wing?
Too much like a shadow?
Too much like fate.ā
Exercise the owl sound.
Repel doubt.
Too early. Too late.
THE WORLD
remaining central, there is
some knowledge we do not
debate: a child is born
to his body the day he is
born, for example, or
the skyās felt time
seems like mourning:
the grasshoppers are anonymous
to the anonymous, the birds
are always at attendance.
There comes a moment
when you see as the crow sees:
the body as slaughterhouse,
as beggarāin the long grass, kneeling.
BUT WHAT IF, AS IS
often the case, it takes
months, years even, for that
specific tree to finish
falling, and furthermore
all during that t...
