History in Bones

Juliana Vice

• Verlag: The Kent State University Press
• Jahr: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781612777726
• Thema: Literature
• Thema: Poetry

Invoking the sacred and the profane, Juliana Gray Vice speaks to the reader with a powerful voice. From spotting geese at a Krispy Kreme to an imagined meeting of Tituba and John Dee, the poetry of History in Bones catechizes the reader with the mundane and the extraordinary."Juliana Vice writes with precision and grace, along with a deep rich humor–as well she might, considering the chaos and violence of the world she writes about. She probes the failures of the fallen world, and the history into which it has fallen, with wisdom and rage, intelligence and sorrow. And she also treats her own wisdom, rage, intelligence, and sorrow with an ironic grain of salt. She is already a writer to contend with."—Andrew Hudgins "[A] remarkable first collection."—Wyatt Prunty

II

BIRD, SMOKE, CRYSTAL, BONE

I.

The last December sunlight falls on these crows,

some four and twenty blackbirds scrabbling on snow,

their muddied beaks devouring crusts I’d left

for robins. Seen this close, through plate glass doors,

they’re huge, as big as cats. The light won’t shine,

reddened, from their black eyes. They bob their heads

obscenely till the chunks of bread go down.

Is there some augury in scavengers

who swerve from their nightly flight across the river

to roost in a Cincinnati graveyard, just

to steal the food of songbirds? Groups of crows

are called murders; rooks, a parliament.

Their cuneiform tracks reveal to the snow

its own defilement, rain that fell so soft

on gravestones, a drowning sailor’s would-be breath,

the other incarnations of waters past.

Will I be able to read them? Ice has glazed

the snow beyond soft powder to gleaming chunks

that crunch and shatter under my boots. The crows

have left behind a feather, its rachis hot—

what bloody story would it tell for me?

Perhaps the truth for bread; perhaps a lie,

being crows. The bread wasn’t mine, this house

not mine. The crows know they owe me nothing.

II.

This book I’ve pulled from a stranger’s shelf,

an old, no doubt expensive leather-bound

on witchcraft, fails to mention New Year’s Eve,

which seems an oversight. It’s understood—

if only in the dour modern sense—

that this night is something magical.

Anticipation charges the air, the news,

and even the owners of this house have flown

to someplace elsewhere, better, to celebrate

in style. Their dog and I have gone through our

routines—just one more icy walk before

we call it a night. And in the meantime, this:

a few portentous hours to fill, to kill,

with pages falling open on their own,

the weight of print and plates and fissured spine

selecting for me passages to read,

a scattered history in bones and ash.

III.

The Romans favored augury, the tales

interpreted from flights of noble birds,

and gently unwound the shrouded blueprints of fate

from bulging entrails of sacrificed bulls.

They called this art haruspicy—each art,

however dark, must have an honest name.

The Druids read the death throes of victims bled

on sacred stones, and then, like Romans, turned

to viscera. Somewhere in those heavy coils,

the Druid and Roman priests divined each other,

the sacred groves destroyed, and Rome supreme—

and yet the Druids fought, their women and men

in holy black and blood-stained robes dead

and dying, their final prophecies fulfilled.

IV.

Such things are never easy. The smoke that curls

from sacred fires doesn’t write itself

in English, won’t spell out a word or name.

We look instead for faces, ashy ghosts

of war or love or fortune. Read them quickly,

before the wind can tear their shapes apart.

V.

Begin with artifacts, protected now

by inch-thick glass and velvet, under guard

at the British Museum. The book describes a slab

of rock, obsidian, and a crystal egg.

From this, take history: Hernán Cortés

at sail from savage Veracruz at last,

the mirror rock among his cargo of gold,

another trinket passed around at court

and later sent to woo the English bitch,

Elizabeth. Through her it came to Dee,

the court astrologer, an earnest man

who recognized his limits. He used

his Aztec magic glass for scrying, gazed

within its polished world until he fo...