The old man:
Awake in the darkness
As in the beginning excluding this:
To hear the rain become another page of knowing
A single thing.
Cars pass in the street.
"Things as they are . . . " become simpler still
Once they are forgotten:
The glass reflects the rain; the sky is a rage
Of order as lines pour down the panes.
And the page. The night itself cannot contain
The sea of the sky of the mind.
Knowing things I cannot see
(Like green plants growing in corners
Wordlessly, the corners of a shadow containing
Many colors,) lying naked within my sphere of influence,
I am one universe among many.
2.
The world is encrusted with words:
Buried in the walls and floors of rooms,
In the deep, narrow crawlspaces of caves,
Layer upon layer,
A scale, a patina over which new words
Are painted, seeping slowly through like stains,
Covering all of nature until at last
All questions are forgotten,
Are finally forgotten
Among the muted whisperings of leaves, the stones
And blades of grass like jewels.
Stooping to peel the skin back from the ground,
Hoping to see the ground finally and for once,
Finding instead more words
And peeling them back and peeling them back
Layer after layer like an artichoke,
Looking for the center of the seed of this rock
Until the rock cries out in pain
That I am peeling off its skin,
That I am skinning it alive,
Until all of nature screams at me to stop,
I am killing everything.
I am skinning everything alive.
In the beginning there was little pain
And everything was bare.
Now the world is fully clothed and covers itself
With life-size pictures of itself,
Like scabs, like a bullet-proof vest,
Like a room which is not a room, but a cocoon,
Spinning itself from the outside in,
Closer and closer,
Until it is warm and comfortable and contains me
Like a seed, like a cross-legged worm
As I metamorphose into something
Rich and new,
Hiding in this room-cocoon,
Hiding from the keen eyes and hungry
Swift beaks of many birds.
3.
Alone and floating in the sea of my own madness,
(Dog-paddling actually),
Pushing and pulling with hands and feet,
Rotating slowly as if to scan the horizon
For distant facts,
As I rise and fall with the waves.
A neighbor walks calmly by on the water,
On the surface of a sea with a deep blue sky,
Calmly pushing a lawnmower,
Cutting off the peaks of waves.
The lawnmower stops and starts and a dog barks
At my head like a minor attraction at a Roman Circus
Dancing on the surface of the sea,
Waiting on a weedeater, a lawnmower or the barking dog
To eat to complete the act.
The wind blows and the pages
Of the dictionary of the world
Separate and drift apart like a million tiny
Islands or lilly pads not big enough to hold one foot.
There are no sharks and there is no hurry
And the sea is red and green and uneven like the walls
And ceiling of a famous night cafe.
It is easy to be inattentive, bobbing like a cork,
Easiest of all to forget
What one is talking about,
To forget one's hands and feet,
To forget everything but one's own head
As the sun beats down and the rain pours down
In uneven sheets on the purely simple and divine soul
Of the sea of the madness of my making.
4.
The cracks in the sidewalk
Are the self-same cracks as the cracks in my brain,
Alive with an inner motion like
Little Holland Tunnels through which
Tiny commuters scurry from one end to the other
Making little leaps of animal faith.
Stepping on or over each of them they roll by
Like frames of film in a Kinetoscope,
Like a fine web of hairs
Stuck on the lens of the projector.
A row of trees rolls by on the right
As divine guidance allows me to walk
In both the luxury and cheap entertainment
Of never having to take my eyes from my feet
As I watch them bob up and down
In two dimensions
Like the twin humps on a camel in a
Terrytoon cartoon.
The birds are orange and the sky hums a familiar
Tune on this bright, clear, architectural morning.
That is what I imagine as I imagine everything
Else except those things that I know
That I know that I know . . .
Like the cracks in my feet and my brain
And the trees and the persistent
Thump-a thump-a thump-a
Of my strait-jacketed heart
And the great "AUM"
Of my lungs singing the only song they know
By heart on this rare and singular occasion of the trees.
5.
The light is inescapable.
It waits in the corners like darkness.
It speaks with a clear voice saying,
"Everything outside myself I touch
With a perfect pain, like the prick of a needle,
Like drinking from a broken glass,
Like the perfect urine stains on the smooth
Tile walls and concrete steps of subway stations,
Like the dying alcoholic lying like a shattered bottle
In the turn of a stairwell,
Shivering and coughing for three days and nights,
Disappearing at last from the sight of those
Who had noticed.
I am a dream of fire
Older than the animals,
Burning away all memory and all revelations
In the perpetual creation of self
Which each new life claims as its own invention.
Nothing changes. Nothing
Changes the perfection of the egrets
Gliding noiselessy as angels
Above the silt, black water beneath cypress trees
In the deep rem sleep of god,
And brightly painted white one by one
By one rising sun after another
In the perfect, wordless mystery of me."
6.
The water stains
On the plaster ceiling are growing
Reminders of life's mythic, archetypal edges:
Amoebas turned blue and squashed flat
Under glass slide covers,
Lost continents painstakenly drawn
Like birthmarks on the dark parchment of Adam's skin,
Bloodstains dried brown
Against the inner thighs of women
As they search for roots in the earth,
Or squat quietly by cooking fires.
Imperceptibly the lines move outward along the ceiling
In widening arcs like a Fourier transform
Made real by lightning and the rain.
They are unformed words, petroglyphs and heiroglyphs
Occupying the ceiling as easily as they would
The burial chamber of a king,
Occupying this hand from which seeps language
As a stain upon the world,
Covering every sign until
There are no more languages,
Only the slow unconscious movement
Of water crossing the page.
7.
At dusk the light peels itself away
From the mirrors and the walls
And finds its way into the dark,
Moving shapes of things:
Two-legged and four-legged
They stand around like dinner guests
At a cocktail party speaking in forgotten languages.
Their words in turn find places in the room
To stand or play on the floor like children,
Having among themselves
Their private conversations.
The queen is knocked out cold, the game is spilled
to the floor in ecstasy
The lesser gods, bored, stuffed with hors d'oeuvres
And slightly drunk, wander from room to room,
Stare dully at the paintings on the walls:
"Isis And Osiris" struggling and sweating together
In the sand, "Apollo At Play" with his flute
Stuck awkwardly in his back pocket, peeling away
The thin blue skin of the world
With a Swiss army knife . . . .
One god says to another over her drink, "Yes, I know,
I know, there are more, always more,
But never enough to see."
Money is no object but the perfect beauty of greed
the poor know
The wind is jealous of her long hair as his feet dance
wildly in the air of her laughter
So no one came to the edge of this easy city of lights,
Of angels waiting patiently inside the TVs saying,
"Hello? Are you there? How will we know you're there
If you don't buy something?
How will we know you're there at all if you don't tell us so?
Talk to us and we'll listen, we'll console,
We know what we're doing. It's our job to know."
It is foolish not to laugh, "Just so!", if it will make
you crazier
Blackbirds discuss among them the many ways of looking
at a poem
The eyelash falls, forgotten between pages of a book
it knows by heart
What is the next sound I will hear?
As simple as I can make it,
My hollow hand touches the page again and again,
Like waves against a still, white shore at night.
The constellations fall and disappear into the sand
Buried like turtle eggs with their small leathery coats.
It is impossible to retreat from the table and the coffee
Cup half-empty and still changing.
(The trees are lined in rows beyond the window.)
For a moment it is easier not to speak than to speak
Not to see than to see the two white hands
Floating under an empty sky
As many colored eggs open noiselessly and
The stars crawl up through the sand and into the sea.
Dishes sink like cities into the white cracks of the sun
There is enough there is always enough never to see
There are no paintings but only ideas of paintings hanging
motionless in an idea of the world
The smooth wooden floor is a forest of men underfoot
The alley's stone wall shares its vertical space
Like a name with the same morning sun and weaving green
Tendrils that have heard and absorbed
The full weight of human voices
From the beginning of time like water:
The "mea culpa" of disbelieving priests,
The constant whimper and whine of the burned, sleeping child,
The tailgate party "Yahoo" of sometimes dangerous
Good old boys,
Carrying them all as always far from their origins,
Deeper and deeper,
Down through the water table
To the taproots and up and up until there is only one voice
Which each of us hears as his own voice
Spoken when one chooses and has no choice but to listen.
In, out and in they both suddenly remember they were
never born
Everything, everything there is is no more than this
The painting hides the inside of itself against the canvas
of itself
The spirit of god wakes up tired, a little cranky and late
for work
The words are hiding in the pencil, afraid of what they might
see
Thin strands of hair hang down like fingers
Barely touching my temples and forehead.
Hands become a place for the face to rest momentarily,
As the inside of the eyelids are a place
For the eyes to rest.
Like changing channels the dark gives way
To a wider field of vision where all images are possible:
Impressionism, surrealism, abstract expressionism;
(Simpler to let the pictures make themselves
As the multi-colored gnats dance wildly,
Coiling like snakes into tondos of perfect geometry
Against a black ground.)
I tilt my head back, back,
And purple becomes red becomes orange
As the white light burns and the parasites dance
In the aqueous humor, coming once again into focus.
Smooth curve of her breast, the nipple stands on its own
two feet
Three, two, or one, tears trickle like laughter down through
the valleys of years
The girl having been told all about the green lizard
motionless in the grass, brushing back her hair forgets
everything to know more
A wall-eyed child, two trees, the leaves singing: four
Shoes, hair, fingernails and a thin film of spittle
He kisses the soft soles of her feet as she smiles at the
moon in the water
The tall grass is its own meaning,
The words, "The tall grass is its own meaning,"
"The words . . . "
No
.
The woman:
I have been through this before.
Deep in the spell of a dream of suited men
I hear a bell. It is the phone ringing
As I struggle from one dream to another.
A hurried ride to the airport and after a long flight
The blinking lights and now
The whisperings of the car,
The silent motions of hands and feet,
As my father lies dying of a stroke once more.
I have been through this before.
The minutes pass as I follow the freeway.
There is nothing more to do.
I reach an exit, glide carefully through several lights
And the hospital emerges from the night
Like a city of hovering stars.
2.
I sit in the chair by the window
Counting the cars in the parking lot
By color, trying to discover the
Hidden meaning of their order
Like a formula.
To be a woman is to live
In a certain, rich understanding
Of life which appears like a hologram
In everything:
A cigarette lighter,
The thin fine hairs of air
In melting ice,
Water, blood and milk.
To be a woman is to understand
That love and sex
Are both the same and separate,
That time is history and history is a memory
Made up to fill the time like loneliness.
To be a woman is to be many women
Moving through a world made cold by men,
To know that my Sister, my friend,
Is also my enemy for no other reason
Than that we both consent to share
The same unnecessary grief.
3.
Standing by my father's bed
With sunlight shining through the window
And separating in a glass of water
Like a prism
It is Easter and I in my beautiful dress.
To be five is to be immortal.
Covered with white lace and bows like a dozen
Angels perched in the front row seat of heaven
Waiting for the show to start.
A breeze is in the air and the sun and the trees
Are dancing.
The yard is a single big surprise
With each and every blade of grass there to see
At once and forever.
The painted eggs are everywhere
Hidden in the most likely of places.
Running madly from one spot to another I collect them
In my basket like the Little Red Hen.
I hear my father say, "Come here, come here."
I run to him.
"What can you see?"
I look around me.
There are no eggs or rabbits but my father only.
"I see you," I say.
He lifts me up and I look into his smiling,
Round face like the Man-In-The-Moon.
"My little Kore," he says,
"Love is forever. It does not come and go."
4.
The doctor came in this morning
And gave me the letters found in my father's desk.
He said he took the liberty of reading them,
That my father had obviously been ill
At the time he wrote them
And that he thought I might like to have them.
That being done he checked the chart
And the drip, wished me a pleasant day
And left the room.
Dear whoever reads this,
I came out to the yard this morning
and found the potatoes ready.
I dig them up easily with my hands.
The dirt is soft and loose and they
are the most patient of all living things.
They are speckled with dirt, rust colored and firm
and their eyes look back at me indifferently.
Having been everywhere, having known everything
I choose this once and for all time:
To live simply, to eat the roots of life,
to stand occasionally in the warm light of a yellow
sun on an abandoned planet.
Dear you are,
I have sent these letters back to you
to that place where I began to be what I am now.
Beginning as a man I lived a rich life and grew old
until one day the different parts of me
began to be replaced by new and perfect machinery.
Beginning with my heart, my lungs, my blood,
I was gradually transformed into some new thing,
until everything was new except my brain
and my half-blind eyes.
I thought my soul remained.
I became immortal. I could never die
except by accident or my own self-will.
I lived on and on and saw a thousand
generations come and go.
I grew foolish and wise by turns and thought
that things would never change.
Then one day, suddenly, I noticed every human thing
was gone. I did not understand until
I found this note:
"We have become as gods. You cannot come with us
for to be a god requires a soul. Goodbye."
These words lie at the foot of my bed.
I read them daily like a prayer.
Dearest of all,
I have forgotten everything I ever knew a hundred times
but this: The simple fact of my own breathing,
purely and completely without meaning, like a secret
word no one can say and live.
5.
I shave him each day with shaving cream and a
Safety razor, cutting carefully around the
Surgical tape that holds the oxygen
Against his face. His face is fallen and his skin
Is wrinkled but very soft. I am careful not to cut him.
That is not to say I never cut him.
Love is not perfect.
I pull the skin tight under his neck and sometimes
Shave him twice, hoping it will help make him
Comfortable in his deep dream of life.
At other times I sit in the chair beside his bed
And read to him.
I have no mother, husband or children
To take away my time.
I have a job I need to keep.
It may only be for a few more days I am told
And then they will unplug him.
He will gather up his soul around him like a coat
And smiling to himself at his own simple humor
Leave without saying a single word,
As if that were the point of everything.
6.
Dear Pen,
My father died today. The funeral is tomorrow
and I should be home by Wednesday.
There is little else to say. He was not in pain
I think, except for the self-made pain
he always carried with him like a good luck charm.
He was a strange man, very loving, very kind
and deliberately foolish. He said that was his gift.
Anyway, he is gone and I will miss him.
Please remember to pay the rent. The check is
under the basket on the kitchen table.
Love,
Sophia