Wolfman and Dracula,
The Mummy and the Fly
Are playing poker on an oil drum
In a warehouse on the sly.
There’s just one naked light bulb there.
It dangles from a string
Like a killer in a noose the night
They hang him at Sing-Sing.
“Where’s Frankenstein?” Says Wolfman.
“He’d better show his face.”
“Keep your shirt on,” laughs the Mummy
As he deals himself an ace.
“He’s a dead man!” snarls the Wolfman
And cracks himself a beer.
Count Dracula the pretty boy
Primps in an empty mirror.
The Fly is crawling on the ceiling
To the annoyance of his friends.
The Wolfman growls: “You filthy cheat!
Quit looking at our hands!”
“Next time we do it my way, see?”
Wolf chomps on his cigar.
“Relax,” says Mummy through his gauze.
“That sounded like his car.”
It wasn’t Frank or a pizza boy—
The heat stood just outside
With silver bullets, garlic spray,
Some papers for the Fly.
“What’d I tell you?” Wolfman howled.
“That Frank’s a dirty rat!”—
The coppers cuffed his hairy paws.
The man-beast snarled and spat.
The Vampire bared his fangs, but he
Was looking pretty scared.
The Mummy came unwound. The Fly
Just rubbed his hands and stared.
And now the place is empty,
The light swings to and fro,
The cards lie scattered on the drum
And Frank’s in Mexico.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
SWEET CHERIZE
Your drinking was your ruin, sweet Cherize.
Scent of a rose beguiled the evening air.
I was so jealous of your cruel disease,
But the moon loved your raven-colored hair.
Scent of a rose beguiled the evening air.
Cherize, today suspects, tomorrow knows,
But the moon loved your raven-colored hair.
Does Sleeping Beauty wake up in her clothes,
Cherize? Today suspects, tomorrow knows.
My heart is puzzled when I think of love.
Does Sleeping Beauty wake up in her clothes?
It floods your life and it is not enough.
My heart is puzzled when I think of love.
The prompter fed me histrionic lines.
It floods your life and it is not enough,
I should have known, I should have read the signs.
The prompter fed me histrionic lines.
I scattered roses on your bed that night.
I should have known, I should have read the signs.
You lay beneath the roses, pink and white.
I scatter roses on your bed tonight.
I hated how self-pitying you could be.
You lie beneath the roses, pink and white.
How could you choose cheap vintage over me?
I hated how self-pitying you could be.
I love the moon-rose, pale rose of regret.
How could you choose cheap vintage over me?
Scent of an evening… How could I forget!
I love the moon-rose, pale rose of regret.
I was so jealous of your cruel disease.
Scent of an evening—how could I forget
Your drinking was your ruin, sweet Cherize?
Scent of a rose beguiled the evening air.
I was so jealous of your cruel disease,
But the moon loved your raven-colored hair.
Scent of a rose beguiled the evening air.
Cherize, today suspects, tomorrow knows,
But the moon loved your raven-colored hair.
Does Sleeping Beauty wake up in her clothes,
Cherize? Today suspects, tomorrow knows.
My heart is puzzled when I think of love.
Does Sleeping Beauty wake up in her clothes?
It floods your life and it is not enough.
My heart is puzzled when I think of love.
The prompter fed me histrionic lines.
It floods your life and it is not enough,
I should have known, I should have read the signs.
The prompter fed me histrionic lines.
I scattered roses on your bed that night.
I should have known, I should have read the signs.
You lay beneath the roses, pink and white.
I scatter roses on your bed tonight.
I hated how self-pitying you could be.
You lie beneath the roses, pink and white.
How could you choose cheap vintage over me?
I hated how self-pitying you could be.
I love the moon-rose, pale rose of regret.
How could you choose cheap vintage over me?
Scent of an evening… How could I forget!
I love the moon-rose, pale rose of regret.
I was so jealous of your cruel disease.
Scent of an evening—how could I forget
Your drinking was your ruin, sweet Cherize?
ANGEL AND SHADOW
When the Angel posts his shadow to the ground
It rubs the contours like the floor of a temple:
Soodling roads, notch of a valley, trees—
Thick broccoli florets—the River S.
It swoops over mountains and sees
Checkerboard pasturage all around,
Quickens to run with the horses and stipple
The shimmer and shine on their backs as they race.
You’re walking along, a black robe crosses your path,
Is spirited out of sight as suddenly
As a tablecloth pulled out from underneath
The china… Wipe your eyes. Look: Everything’s
In place, but it’s not the same place.
You’ve seen the shadow of the wings,
Not the wings. And the dead would be
Swept to their feet if they saw his face.
The sheer length of the shadow of the Angel
Is monstrous, utterly harmless. It’s the angle
Of sundown that gives him what he needs, strength
To flex the shadow over his shoulder, far
Into near. Down from the skies
It extends like a gaunt finger
Over fearsome geographies
To touch a tear, to cool its warmth.
Sometimes he loses himself in the Northern Lights,
Fiery scarves and banners swirl around him
As he goes—he falls up, up till he floats
To where the darkness casts the stars. His high-
Flown gestures fade in the rinse
Of space—not clear, not fully random—
Faintly marked in a shuffle of photons.
Terror widens in his eye.
What on earth does the Angel have to give?
When has he coaxed blood back into our wounds?
He ogles, in his glide, our jack-knifed shapes,
He wrings his beautiful hands for the car crash, drapes
Our tiny grieving-scenes
With mourner’s clothes—O Angel, where
Do you live? When will you dive
Into the shadow and be there?
It rubs the contours like the floor of a temple:
Soodling roads, notch of a valley, trees—
Thick broccoli florets—the River S.
It swoops over mountains and sees
Checkerboard pasturage all around,
Quickens to run with the horses and stipple
The shimmer and shine on their backs as they race.
You’re walking along, a black robe crosses your path,
Is spirited out of sight as suddenly
As a tablecloth pulled out from underneath
The china… Wipe your eyes. Look: Everything’s
In place, but it’s not the same place.
You’ve seen the shadow of the wings,
Not the wings. And the dead would be
Swept to their feet if they saw his face.
The sheer length of the shadow of the Angel
Is monstrous, utterly harmless. It’s the angle
Of sundown that gives him what he needs, strength
To flex the shadow over his shoulder, far
Into near. Down from the skies
It extends like a gaunt finger
Over fearsome geographies
To touch a tear, to cool its warmth.
Sometimes he loses himself in the Northern Lights,
Fiery scarves and banners swirl around him
As he goes—he falls up, up till he floats
To where the darkness casts the stars. His high-
Flown gestures fade in the rinse
Of space—not clear, not fully random—
Faintly marked in a shuffle of photons.
Terror widens in his eye.
What on earth does the Angel have to give?
When has he coaxed blood back into our wounds?
He ogles, in his glide, our jack-knifed shapes,
He wrings his beautiful hands for the car crash, drapes
Our tiny grieving-scenes
With mourner’s clothes—O Angel, where
Do you live? When will you dive
Into the shadow and be there?
MY FATHER THE TREE
1.
There it stood
In the garden,
Calm and robust,
Patiently muscling
Water into sap,
Light into air,
When along comes the axe man
And lops off the top,
Planes it
With a crooked bevel
Into a shape
To churn the world to pity with its torque—
And take into its side
The crackling fork
Of the devil.
2.
Is the Carpenter made of wood?
Is this the primitive rood
That hoists
The Man-God
Up to ridicule
And prayer?
Ghostly muscles
Raised
These scantlings,
This rotting timber
Into effectual
Crucifix.
He speaks
Through the floorboards,
His bones are the joists,
The doorframes, the rafters,
His eyes the windowpanes
Shining as he talks.
It is you,
Poor Kinder,
Who join these orphaned planks
Into a shape
That supports
The injured Man who heals.
3.
I dreamed I sawed
An angel’s body in half—
A sleeping angel
Who felt no pain
As wood
Is proof against pain.
I watched the age-rings
Of the angel-tree
Motionlessly ripple
Out from the pith.
I saw the wrong-
Rubbed grain
Of the Sorrowing Man
And the naked worm
Working in and out.
Golden crumbs
Flaked
From the hot tooth.
I thought of scurf,
Brown needles
On the forest floor
And part of me swept
The magic dust
Under a rug
And part of me buried
The splinters
In a hole
I had dug
In the garden.
And part of me wept.
4.
Autumn came,
It was cold
And I shivered.
I thought of the worm
Chewing a last crumbling
Sliver.
There was an ache
In my bones
And I remembered my father the tree.
5.
I pitied you,
O man
Of driftwood.
I saw in you
The tears
Of Petroushka,
The Charlatan’s
Living kindling
Heaped broken-legged
On the ground
At the Shrove-Tide fair.
And the appalled revelers
Stood around and stared—
The pig the goat
The helpless muzzled bear
Stood over the broken
Buckled
Boy
And his ghost shook
A fist from the roof:
Why did you stuff me full of breath?
*
To this day
The Charlatan’s limbs
Are cold.
His heart is filled
With sawdust
And the stars have fallen
From his hat
Like little Lucifers.
Dead angels litter the forest floor.
6.
Abraham,
You came out of Ur
And dreamed.
You dreamed your spine
Branched sevenfold
Into the sky.
For every branch
That scraped
Heaven’s underbelly
A serpent
Grappled an angel
To the mud.
The branches
Will never
Stop climbing,
You said, O father Abraham,
And fell away
Among your leaves.
7.
Forgive me
I am deaf
I am numb
My father is Abraham
I will perish
On a heap of sticks
In a fire
In the hallways
In the open air
In the forests
In the mountains
I shall die
In the streets
In the faith
Of my fathers
I shall die
Forgive me
Forgive me
I shall die
Like the worm
That splits the rock
I shall perish
In the woods
In the rivers
By the still waters
I shall perish
In the sky
In the faith
Of my fathers
Forgive me
Forgive me
I shall die
Forgive me
Nothing will ever be the same.
There it stood
In the garden,
Calm and robust,
Patiently muscling
Water into sap,
Light into air,
When along comes the axe man
And lops off the top,
Planes it
With a crooked bevel
Into a shape
To churn the world to pity with its torque—
And take into its side
The crackling fork
Of the devil.
2.
Is the Carpenter made of wood?
Is this the primitive rood
That hoists
The Man-God
Up to ridicule
And prayer?
Ghostly muscles
Raised
These scantlings,
This rotting timber
Into effectual
Crucifix.
He speaks
Through the floorboards,
His bones are the joists,
The doorframes, the rafters,
His eyes the windowpanes
Shining as he talks.
It is you,
Poor Kinder,
Who join these orphaned planks
Into a shape
That supports
The injured Man who heals.
3.
I dreamed I sawed
An angel’s body in half—
A sleeping angel
Who felt no pain
As wood
Is proof against pain.
I watched the age-rings
Of the angel-tree
Motionlessly ripple
Out from the pith.
I saw the wrong-
Rubbed grain
Of the Sorrowing Man
And the naked worm
Working in and out.
Golden crumbs
Flaked
From the hot tooth.
I thought of scurf,
Brown needles
On the forest floor
And part of me swept
The magic dust
Under a rug
And part of me buried
The splinters
In a hole
I had dug
In the garden.
And part of me wept.
4.
Autumn came,
It was cold
And I shivered.
I thought of the worm
Chewing a last crumbling
Sliver.
There was an ache
In my bones
And I remembered my father the tree.
5.
I pitied you,
O man
Of driftwood.
I saw in you
The tears
Of Petroushka,
The Charlatan’s
Living kindling
Heaped broken-legged
On the ground
At the Shrove-Tide fair.
And the appalled revelers
Stood around and stared—
The pig the goat
The helpless muzzled bear
Stood over the broken
Buckled
Boy
And his ghost shook
A fist from the roof:
Why did you stuff me full of breath?
*
To this day
The Charlatan’s limbs
Are cold.
His heart is filled
With sawdust
And the stars have fallen
From his hat
Like little Lucifers.
Dead angels litter the forest floor.
6.
Abraham,
You came out of Ur
And dreamed.
You dreamed your spine
Branched sevenfold
Into the sky.
For every branch
That scraped
Heaven’s underbelly
A serpent
Grappled an angel
To the mud.
The branches
Will never
Stop climbing,
You said, O father Abraham,
And fell away
Among your leaves.
7.
Forgive me
I am deaf
I am numb
My father is Abraham
I will perish
On a heap of sticks
In a fire
In the hallways
In the open air
In the forests
In the mountains
I shall die
In the streets
In the faith
Of my fathers
I shall die
Forgive me
Forgive me
I shall die
Like the worm
That splits the rock
I shall perish
In the woods
In the rivers
By the still waters
I shall perish
In the sky
In the faith
Of my fathers
Forgive me
Forgive me
I shall die
Forgive me
Nothing will ever be the same.
THE WATERS ROSE AND LIGHT DESCENDED
The waters rose
And light descended.
Clouds shook out
Their sheets of rain.
Darkness passed over
The face of the deep
And the deep underwater
And the waters on high.
*
The halcyon
Flops on the mudflats.
Mouths of fish
Work open and shut.
*
To reach us it crossed
How many horizons?
Was this the fury foretold,
Crouched in its moment, waiting?
Small as the glint
In my father’s eyes.
*
The scum has risen
And floats on the surface,
Flaunting its shimmer
At the lowering sun.
The sky is upended: bottom feeders
Have the run of Heaven.
Down from the rafters
Small-mouth angels jeer.
*
Where is my father?
How could this happen?
Where is the kindness
That shone on the waters?
Where is the likeness
I saw in the mirrors?
*
There was a flood.
Then a flood. And again a flood.
When the last one receded
How could the scattered
Be bribed once again
To gather together
In twos and threes,
Stick figures sighted
Picking their way
Down the stinking streets?
*
I parted my mother’s hair
Like the blackness of the waters.
I thought to see
A weeping face, harrowed
Like fields in the flood’s wake—
A fist unclosing.
*
Where are you, father?
Can you see me?
Don’t look at the black umbrellas
Bobbing on the water.
*
I parted your hair
And thought your eyes
Knew me—for they fixed
Me with a glare.
When you said nothing,
Mother, you meant
I don’t know you
Who is he
You opened your mouth
And slapped your knees.
*
They put the ancient baby
In its womb.
The wooden womb
Floated on the waters—
On the wide waters
Wandered away—
Wandered
Among stars.
And light descended.
Clouds shook out
Their sheets of rain.
Darkness passed over
The face of the deep
And the deep underwater
And the waters on high.
*
The halcyon
Flops on the mudflats.
Mouths of fish
Work open and shut.
*
To reach us it crossed
How many horizons?
Was this the fury foretold,
Crouched in its moment, waiting?
Small as the glint
In my father’s eyes.
*
The scum has risen
And floats on the surface,
Flaunting its shimmer
At the lowering sun.
The sky is upended: bottom feeders
Have the run of Heaven.
Down from the rafters
Small-mouth angels jeer.
*
Where is my father?
How could this happen?
Where is the kindness
That shone on the waters?
Where is the likeness
I saw in the mirrors?
*
There was a flood.
Then a flood. And again a flood.
When the last one receded
How could the scattered
Be bribed once again
To gather together
In twos and threes,
Stick figures sighted
Picking their way
Down the stinking streets?
*
I parted my mother’s hair
Like the blackness of the waters.
I thought to see
A weeping face, harrowed
Like fields in the flood’s wake—
A fist unclosing.
*
Where are you, father?
Can you see me?
Don’t look at the black umbrellas
Bobbing on the water.
*
I parted your hair
And thought your eyes
Knew me—for they fixed
Me with a glare.
When you said nothing,
Mother, you meant
I don’t know you
Who is he
You opened your mouth
And slapped your knees.
*
They put the ancient baby
In its womb.
The wooden womb
Floated on the waters—
On the wide waters
Wandered away—
Wandered
Among stars.
ANGEL CROW
In the high reaches combing the sky,
Wind in his feathers whistling by,
Stillness in motion, Angel Crow
Brushes his shadow over the snow.
Where is he flying? Which of us knows?
Storm clouds gather, a dark wind blows.
Swift through the rise and dip of his wings,
Swift through the marrow and air of his bones,
Swift through the honeycombed haunt of the marrow,
The wind goes whistling—the dark wind moans.
Wind in his feathers whistling by,
Stillness in motion, Angel Crow
Brushes his shadow over the snow.
Where is he flying? Which of us knows?
Storm clouds gather, a dark wind blows.
Swift through the rise and dip of his wings,
Swift through the marrow and air of his bones,
Swift through the honeycombed haunt of the marrow,
The wind goes whistling—the dark wind moans.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
NAMES OF THE BONE
Sin-Lequi-Uninni, the world’s first author
* * *
The bones connected by joints are at once
a unitary whole and not a unitary whole.
--Heraclitus
1.
The immortal scribe
In the palace library,
The Akkadian scholar
Of ancient Sumerian,
Whose eyes were weak,
His vision troubled
By second sight,
Read once again of Ur’s destruction
And the politics of gods,
And his eyes grew weary
And his heart hungered
For the darkness
That in Sumerian
Sounds like bread.
Let darkness
Be my bread,
Prayed the scholar
Alone in torchlight
As the night
Grew vast
Inside him.
In the lap
Of knowledge
Lies this ignorant sleep.
2.
In my dreams I walk the world,
Sleeping Giant,
Picking through your bones.
They float, separate/connected,
Like parts of an exploded
Diagram of bones. They sprawl beyond
The span of my vision,
O Giant full of bones
With my name in your mouth.
Monstrous, but so small at the metacarpal tips
Only a shape
Upheld on a fountain of breath—
A name’s ghostly canopy—
Shelters you
From the idiot wind.
In this we trust: the stubborn
Smoke of our idioms—cloud-sculpture
Of words: Ruach. Rauch.
3.
Let vision grasp
How the bones of the living
Are connected to the bones of the dead—
Grasp how bone
Connects
The living and the dead.
German knochen, gnarled as a Grünewald.
Greek osteon, cool as Parian marble:
Connected.
Hawaiian iwi, light as the honeycreeper’s wing.
The Crow nation’s jubilant hu-re:
Connected.
Asthi, Sanskrit sandscript.
KRS of the glittering tomb, Pharaoh’s curse:
Connected.
Hebrew etzem and Assyrian etsemtu,
Wind-blown bones of the desert:
Connected.
O vocative mouth of the bone,
Voice and vowel
Connected!
4.
Breath in the bone: marrow and air…
Bones in water—
Dispersed or hurled…
Fire in the bone—Jeremiah-fire…
O earth, marked through and through
With our marrow!
Coupled to the scatter
Of galaxies,
Joined to the distance
Between things
Increasing and increasing
Forever and ever amen…
5.
Vast orchestra
Of drums
And flutes
Scared into sacred music
By the winds:
I am listening.
I hear stag thigh.
Red-crowned crane bone.
Eagle ulna.
I hear the whale-bone’s tremolo,
Rippling buoyancy
Of oil that feeds the light.
Nepalese bone flute—monks
Carved it from a human femur:
It whistles and I listen.
I listen to this ghost of a tune
Haunted
By the breath that awakens it—
One half painted red,
Dipped in the lust and anger
Of Illusion as a hand is dyed in blood,
The other half a blank
No-color, nothingness,
Nirvana… And I listen.
Scooped-out bone,
Tunneled through the marrow,
Haunted by the song of itself,
Terror and awe
Of ancient winters
Quivering at the lips,
Mouth of a cave issuing
Cinder and smoke of lament,
Breath filling
The slender tunnel
Of a tibia,
Filling the cave with its song,
Music composed
Of the emptiness echoing inside it,
Space echoing with that burden,
Notches in bone
Carved by firelight… On the walls,
Magic bison startled
Into shape and color. Shadows
Of dancers leaping over flames…
Listen. See.
6.
And I awoke embattled
On all sides
By hopes and fears
Passing from hunger
To hunger
And heat to cold
In this vibrant
Torment of a world
Where you tossed my bones
Like thinking dice.
O novice-god,
Child-god
Of Heraclitus:
How recklessly
You wagered me!
7.
The elephant mother’s trunk
Stretches
Over her baby’s corpse
Like a crosier—
Patiently fails
To coax it to live.
The angels gasp
As she flexes
The ignorant muscle of Religion:
Love’s anger,
Scaring
Flies.
8.
My soul, O sacred whore,
Have you not prostituted yourself
To every god that ever was?
9.
Last night I could not remember
The Sumerian word
For bone. This morning
I dug it out from under the ruins
Of a ziggurat buried deep in my memory:
Gir-paddra.
10.
I wrote a twelfth tablet
For Gilgamesh,
The Great Cycle.
This was to be the happy ending:
Enkidu returns from the world below.
But the word I wrote means wraith.
Not Enkidu: the white smoke of his spirit.
The is in he is not. This is my study:
The pale ontology of the dead.
11.
When ghost and bone break
Apart like a wish
And go their separate ways
The ghost becomes ghostlier,
The bone grows in solidity,
Is more and more a stone.
The ghost glides through a world
Where the trees are only
The memory of trees
And the world’s carbon structures
Recede toward their infinitely
Frailer selves.
Enkidu in the Underworld
Cannot bend
A twig.
The twig
Cannot even
Break.
12.
Winter came,
And skeletonized
My breath.
Winter came,
And scattered on windowpanes
Crystals oracular and frail.
Scrimshaw Gospel
Inscribed in frost:
You also name us:
Calvarium, Calvary and crucifix,
Sacrum, sacred osteospicium,
Metartarsal, Paul of Tarsus.
Calvarium, sacrum
And metatarsal:
Our hardness and fragility
Are written
In the crystals, authored
By the stars.
13. Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones
What shall they do, Lord?
You have made them strangers.
They walk into a world that does not know them,
They do not know themselves, they are like shreds
From a torn net, the winds will scatter them,
Exiled from everything but Parable.
14.
I have heard
The bones of my walking
Crack in the jackal’s jaws.
I have seen
The little bones of my hearing
Scatter in the dust.
15.
My soul is a graveyard—
How it hoards the wealth of the dead!
Empty its pockets, Allah the merciful!
My soul is a barren Garden,
Merciful Allah.
Plant the seeds of Resurrection there.
The osteoporotic soil
Crumbles into dust.
The dead rise.
16.
You name us
In your bones
And we stand up and walk.
You lose count
Because we are numerous
As the sands on the shores of the seas.
We are what you promised Noah—
The curse
Of your blessing.
You will forget our names
And this is why
We will cease to be.
17.
Scholar, faithful scribe:
Carve a word into the clay
From which you came,
Into which you are turning.
Write: clay.
Adam, the Hebrews say.
What is the name for these names?
Shamai etzem.
The two-hundred-and-six Names of the Bone.
Name-of-the-Father
Stretched across the sky
Like parchment drying in the sun—
Stretched like the tent
Of the tabernacle
Over the heart’s high places—
Flesh of the calf,
Tattooed
With totem and taboo—
Flesh of the calf,
Branded
By the fiery scribble of the prophets—
Skin of the flayed calf,
Smeared
With Blood of the Lamb—
Name I transgress
In speaking,
Name I must not say:
You breathe
The consonants of praise
Into these syllabary bones.
You breathe the world
And the clouds
And pastures in it,
You send a breeze
Through the dry bonehouse
And the smell of rain is sweet.
You breathe into the nostrils
Of the ox
Who treads the halo
In the mill of our daily bread.
You breathe into house and oxen,
Manger and child…
But why did you breathe
Breath so moist and exhaustible
Into the nostrils of the woman and the man?
18.
Cuneiform bones
Of your Akkadian feet:
Death reads them.
Tongue bone, hyoid bone
Of your tongue, speaking you.
Death is listening.
Tree of Life that dies inside you,
Tree of Death
That will survive you:
They give you Etzem,
Essence of your substance,
Substance of your self.
Shamai etzem,
Solomon.
Shalom.
19.
O beautiful princess,
My wayward priestess,
Atalÿa: I loved you dearly.
In the cool of the night, Atalÿa,
On a bed made of fragrant cedar
I loved you dearly.
The great god Sin, your husband,
My Lord the Moon: he took you from me,
He left me bereft, who loved you dearly.
At evening we met by the temple,
Night was our secret splendor,
You left me too early, whom I loved so dearly.
Early in the morning he took you from me,
Beautiful, wayward Atalÿa,
Whom I loved most dearly.
20.
My dear mother, my dear father,
Where did you go
With your strength and kindness?
How I miss your kindness,
How I need your strength!
I will look for you under the willow tree, by the river.
21.
Empty space haunts me.
The lightness at the center of my bones
Is empty space.
The Buddha
Stands in the center
Of what has no center—
Sees into the hollow
Of my marrow
And out again, into the open.
He is pure Seeing.
He blesses
Space.
22.
Carry your bones around with you
To the place
Where you lay them down.
O Enlightened One:
The air I breathe
Arrived here
From that distant temple
Where it rippled
The flames
Of a thousand candles
Lit in remembrance of you,
O Enlightened One.
It moves over the far pasture
And into the forest
Where it whispers the leaves.
Listen.
Listen.
Emptiness breathes me.
23.
I carry my bones inside me,
Radiant Angel.
I am the guardian of these relics
Till they pass along
To earth
And sky.
I carry my ashes
In my mouth,
O Tongue of Fire.
In me the sun and moon
Grow weary
Of their rounds.
My bones are heavy
And my mouth is dry.
Where shall I find rest?
Earth:
Open a door for me—
A pore in your black flesh.
Winds: polish my remains
And of my shinbone make a flute.
Your strength will return to you as praise.
Earth:
Heal over
And survive me.
24.
The bones of the living
Burn
Like candles on an altar,
Lord—
Like torches
At the bottom of a mine.
Like candles in the window
Of a house that waits in the dark
Our living bones are burning, Lord.
Far into the night
They burn,
They are burning, Lord.
What do you know?
You only move in the shadows
Over the face of the deep,
Powerful and perplexed
Over the oblivious faces of the dead, weeping
Over the sacred litter of the dead.
I saw you last night
Standing at the shrine
You had built in our image,
You reached out your hands
And cupped your palms
And made a great dark valley,
Bone-fires burned
Like flares in the darkness you had made,
A firefly glow
Bled through your fingers
And you reached out your hands to us
And offered us to ourselves, like a gift.
* * *
The bones connected by joints are at once
a unitary whole and not a unitary whole.
--Heraclitus
1.
The immortal scribe
In the palace library,
The Akkadian scholar
Of ancient Sumerian,
Whose eyes were weak,
His vision troubled
By second sight,
Read once again of Ur’s destruction
And the politics of gods,
And his eyes grew weary
And his heart hungered
For the darkness
That in Sumerian
Sounds like bread.
Let darkness
Be my bread,
Prayed the scholar
Alone in torchlight
As the night
Grew vast
Inside him.
In the lap
Of knowledge
Lies this ignorant sleep.
2.
In my dreams I walk the world,
Sleeping Giant,
Picking through your bones.
They float, separate/connected,
Like parts of an exploded
Diagram of bones. They sprawl beyond
The span of my vision,
O Giant full of bones
With my name in your mouth.
Monstrous, but so small at the metacarpal tips
Only a shape
Upheld on a fountain of breath—
A name’s ghostly canopy—
Shelters you
From the idiot wind.
In this we trust: the stubborn
Smoke of our idioms—cloud-sculpture
Of words: Ruach. Rauch.
3.
Let vision grasp
How the bones of the living
Are connected to the bones of the dead—
Grasp how bone
Connects
The living and the dead.
German knochen, gnarled as a Grünewald.
Greek osteon, cool as Parian marble:
Connected.
Hawaiian iwi, light as the honeycreeper’s wing.
The Crow nation’s jubilant hu-re:
Connected.
Asthi, Sanskrit sandscript.
KRS of the glittering tomb, Pharaoh’s curse:
Connected.
Hebrew etzem and Assyrian etsemtu,
Wind-blown bones of the desert:
Connected.
O vocative mouth of the bone,
Voice and vowel
Connected!
4.
Breath in the bone: marrow and air…
Bones in water—
Dispersed or hurled…
Fire in the bone—Jeremiah-fire…
O earth, marked through and through
With our marrow!
Coupled to the scatter
Of galaxies,
Joined to the distance
Between things
Increasing and increasing
Forever and ever amen…
5.
Vast orchestra
Of drums
And flutes
Scared into sacred music
By the winds:
I am listening.
I hear stag thigh.
Red-crowned crane bone.
Eagle ulna.
I hear the whale-bone’s tremolo,
Rippling buoyancy
Of oil that feeds the light.
Nepalese bone flute—monks
Carved it from a human femur:
It whistles and I listen.
I listen to this ghost of a tune
Haunted
By the breath that awakens it—
One half painted red,
Dipped in the lust and anger
Of Illusion as a hand is dyed in blood,
The other half a blank
No-color, nothingness,
Nirvana… And I listen.
Scooped-out bone,
Tunneled through the marrow,
Haunted by the song of itself,
Terror and awe
Of ancient winters
Quivering at the lips,
Mouth of a cave issuing
Cinder and smoke of lament,
Breath filling
The slender tunnel
Of a tibia,
Filling the cave with its song,
Music composed
Of the emptiness echoing inside it,
Space echoing with that burden,
Notches in bone
Carved by firelight… On the walls,
Magic bison startled
Into shape and color. Shadows
Of dancers leaping over flames…
Listen. See.
6.
And I awoke embattled
On all sides
By hopes and fears
Passing from hunger
To hunger
And heat to cold
In this vibrant
Torment of a world
Where you tossed my bones
Like thinking dice.
O novice-god,
Child-god
Of Heraclitus:
How recklessly
You wagered me!
7.
The elephant mother’s trunk
Stretches
Over her baby’s corpse
Like a crosier—
Patiently fails
To coax it to live.
The angels gasp
As she flexes
The ignorant muscle of Religion:
Love’s anger,
Scaring
Flies.
8.
My soul, O sacred whore,
Have you not prostituted yourself
To every god that ever was?
9.
Last night I could not remember
The Sumerian word
For bone. This morning
I dug it out from under the ruins
Of a ziggurat buried deep in my memory:
Gir-paddra.
10.
I wrote a twelfth tablet
For Gilgamesh,
The Great Cycle.
This was to be the happy ending:
Enkidu returns from the world below.
But the word I wrote means wraith.
Not Enkidu: the white smoke of his spirit.
The is in he is not. This is my study:
The pale ontology of the dead.
11.
When ghost and bone break
Apart like a wish
And go their separate ways
The ghost becomes ghostlier,
The bone grows in solidity,
Is more and more a stone.
The ghost glides through a world
Where the trees are only
The memory of trees
And the world’s carbon structures
Recede toward their infinitely
Frailer selves.
Enkidu in the Underworld
Cannot bend
A twig.
The twig
Cannot even
Break.
12.
Winter came,
And skeletonized
My breath.
Winter came,
And scattered on windowpanes
Crystals oracular and frail.
Scrimshaw Gospel
Inscribed in frost:
You also name us:
Calvarium, Calvary and crucifix,
Sacrum, sacred osteospicium,
Metartarsal, Paul of Tarsus.
Calvarium, sacrum
And metatarsal:
Our hardness and fragility
Are written
In the crystals, authored
By the stars.
13. Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones
What shall they do, Lord?
You have made them strangers.
They walk into a world that does not know them,
They do not know themselves, they are like shreds
From a torn net, the winds will scatter them,
Exiled from everything but Parable.
14.
I have heard
The bones of my walking
Crack in the jackal’s jaws.
I have seen
The little bones of my hearing
Scatter in the dust.
15.
My soul is a graveyard—
How it hoards the wealth of the dead!
Empty its pockets, Allah the merciful!
My soul is a barren Garden,
Merciful Allah.
Plant the seeds of Resurrection there.
The osteoporotic soil
Crumbles into dust.
The dead rise.
16.
You name us
In your bones
And we stand up and walk.
You lose count
Because we are numerous
As the sands on the shores of the seas.
We are what you promised Noah—
The curse
Of your blessing.
You will forget our names
And this is why
We will cease to be.
17.
Scholar, faithful scribe:
Carve a word into the clay
From which you came,
Into which you are turning.
Write: clay.
Adam, the Hebrews say.
What is the name for these names?
Shamai etzem.
The two-hundred-and-six Names of the Bone.
Name-of-the-Father
Stretched across the sky
Like parchment drying in the sun—
Stretched like the tent
Of the tabernacle
Over the heart’s high places—
Flesh of the calf,
Tattooed
With totem and taboo—
Flesh of the calf,
Branded
By the fiery scribble of the prophets—
Skin of the flayed calf,
Smeared
With Blood of the Lamb—
Name I transgress
In speaking,
Name I must not say:
You breathe
The consonants of praise
Into these syllabary bones.
You breathe the world
And the clouds
And pastures in it,
You send a breeze
Through the dry bonehouse
And the smell of rain is sweet.
You breathe into the nostrils
Of the ox
Who treads the halo
In the mill of our daily bread.
You breathe into house and oxen,
Manger and child…
But why did you breathe
Breath so moist and exhaustible
Into the nostrils of the woman and the man?
18.
Cuneiform bones
Of your Akkadian feet:
Death reads them.
Tongue bone, hyoid bone
Of your tongue, speaking you.
Death is listening.
Tree of Life that dies inside you,
Tree of Death
That will survive you:
They give you Etzem,
Essence of your substance,
Substance of your self.
Shamai etzem,
Solomon.
Shalom.
19.
O beautiful princess,
My wayward priestess,
Atalÿa: I loved you dearly.
In the cool of the night, Atalÿa,
On a bed made of fragrant cedar
I loved you dearly.
The great god Sin, your husband,
My Lord the Moon: he took you from me,
He left me bereft, who loved you dearly.
At evening we met by the temple,
Night was our secret splendor,
You left me too early, whom I loved so dearly.
Early in the morning he took you from me,
Beautiful, wayward Atalÿa,
Whom I loved most dearly.
20.
My dear mother, my dear father,
Where did you go
With your strength and kindness?
How I miss your kindness,
How I need your strength!
I will look for you under the willow tree, by the river.
21.
Empty space haunts me.
The lightness at the center of my bones
Is empty space.
The Buddha
Stands in the center
Of what has no center—
Sees into the hollow
Of my marrow
And out again, into the open.
He is pure Seeing.
He blesses
Space.
22.
Carry your bones around with you
To the place
Where you lay them down.
O Enlightened One:
The air I breathe
Arrived here
From that distant temple
Where it rippled
The flames
Of a thousand candles
Lit in remembrance of you,
O Enlightened One.
It moves over the far pasture
And into the forest
Where it whispers the leaves.
Listen.
Listen.
Emptiness breathes me.
23.
I carry my bones inside me,
Radiant Angel.
I am the guardian of these relics
Till they pass along
To earth
And sky.
I carry my ashes
In my mouth,
O Tongue of Fire.
In me the sun and moon
Grow weary
Of their rounds.
My bones are heavy
And my mouth is dry.
Where shall I find rest?
Earth:
Open a door for me—
A pore in your black flesh.
Winds: polish my remains
And of my shinbone make a flute.
Your strength will return to you as praise.
Earth:
Heal over
And survive me.
24.
The bones of the living
Burn
Like candles on an altar,
Lord—
Like torches
At the bottom of a mine.
Like candles in the window
Of a house that waits in the dark
Our living bones are burning, Lord.
Far into the night
They burn,
They are burning, Lord.
What do you know?
You only move in the shadows
Over the face of the deep,
Powerful and perplexed
Over the oblivious faces of the dead, weeping
Over the sacred litter of the dead.
I saw you last night
Standing at the shrine
You had built in our image,
You reached out your hands
And cupped your palms
And made a great dark valley,
Bone-fires burned
Like flares in the darkness you had made,
A firefly glow
Bled through your fingers
And you reached out your hands to us
And offered us to ourselves, like a gift.
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