Elegy Owed (5 page)

Here is where spiders set up shop

during the night, here is where a crow

decided to perch. Then it got up

and perched over there, beside

where another crow perched last week.

It would be peaceful to be a sail

except during the storm.

During the storm, I would like to be

the storm. If you're the storm,

there's nothing frightening

about the storm except when it stops,

then you're dead and the maps

are drowned. Within my heart

is another heart, within that heart,

a man at war writes home:

this is like digging a hole in the rain.

Jesus with amnesia walks

among the dead and wonders

why they don't rise, at least

one of them, as he seems

to recall someone did, and missing

their eyes, kneels and opens them

for hours, until his fingers hurt

and he's tired of the consistency

of how what isn't there

isn't there, like death

has no imagination, and hears

this name being called,
Jesus,

from every direction and begins

calling too, to join

how this valley clearly wants

or needs to sound, that's

an interesting question, the difference

between need and want, he thinks

and thinks it will be dark soon

and where do I live

and is someone

waiting there with water

and to ask

with kisses, where have you been?

The twig in. I'll put the twig in that I carry in my pocket

and my pocket and my eye, my left eye. A cup

of the Ganges and the bacteria from shit

in the Ganges and the anyway ablutions of rainbow-

robed Hindus in the Ganges. The dawnline of the mountain

with contrail above like an accent in a language

too large for my mouth. A mirror

so whoever opens the past will see themselves

in the past and fall back from their face

speaking to them across centuries or hours

or the nearnevers it'll take mirrored someone

to unearth these scraps, these bones.

The word
terror.
I'll bury the word
terror

to be free of the terror of the word
terror.

I'll bury the word
terror
so it will scream

at mirrored someone as he or she falls back. Screams

how afraid we were that we were not afraid

enough. It's the morning of September 11th.

I'll be told all day how to feel about the morning

of September 11th. Told how to mourn the morning

of September 11th. If
terror
is said

seven times in a row, it loses meaning, becomes

humdrum, a mere timpani of ear.

If
terror
is said seven hundred

thousand million trillion times, I am being raped

by a word. I feel it was clever

to fly planes into buildings, that evil

is clever in the way rust is clever, eating itself

as it goes, that peace is clever in the way a stone

is clever, and I'll tuck a stone

from my garden inside a bell

wrapped in a poem about a bell, the poem

wrapped in the makings of a slingshot, the makings

wrapped in the afterbirth of a fox, the afterbirth

wrapped in the budget for the Defense Department.

So mirrored someone will face the question

of what weapons to make and what forgiveness

to perfect and what to honor in nature

and what to abhor in the nature

of what we do. These

are our complicated times

so far, my complicated time capsule

so far. My lament so far, my praise

so far as it takes me: to a hole

it takes me, to a shovel, to putting wind

in, the keen, the mean, but also

the hush, the blush, the dream

of getting along free of froth

and din. Clearly I need, I need, I need

a bigger box.

It's shoot-an-arrow

into-your-ceiling day, I'm out of arrows,

I go to the neighbors

to borrow a cup of arrows, they're making love

on the floor doggy style, in that

she barks then he barks

at her barking, then it's over

and they circle in front of the door

to be let out,
We're trapped,

I tell my lover later

on the phone,
Do you mean us,
she asks, I lie

and tell her
No, I mean every other person

but us, we are free, we

are entirely wings and little bits

of fog and the open windows

of speeding cars and
Carmen

at the end, when the performers

take their bows to the rush of air

from between our palms,
forgetting

she is deaf, that she's heard nothing

I've said, that this is a poem,

that I am out of arrows and more

importantly out of bows

I feel obligated to get a tattoo.

It's how the skin of the species

is evolving. If I continue

living without plumage,

it will be impossible to mate

or hold a conversation

with a banker. My favorite

is strawberry ice cream. Not

average-size scoops, Baskin-

Robbins-size scoops

but three and tiny

I discovered one night

tattooed to a thigh.

It was the possibility

of kissing a private dessert

I so admired. I've decided

to get tattoos of my eyes

on the inside of my eyelids

so I can stare at the oceans

of my dreams. I'll have

muscles tattooed to my chest,

money to my palms, the smell

of honeysuckle to my breath. I want

BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF FIRE

tattooed to my brain, mouths

to the bottom of my feet, you

to me. There is not

enough art in this life.

Tattoo my front door

to my tombstone and place

a key on my tongue

like a mint. It's not for me

to decide whether my return

will be called

breaking out or breaking in.

Rest with me under the linden tree.

I do not have a linden tree.

Come with me to buy a linden tree, stopping first

at the bank, for I need a loan to buy a linden tree.

Stay with me while the linden tree grows.

We can have babies while the linden tree grows,

colorectal cancer while the linden tree grows,

an infestation of ladybugs while the linden tree grows.

Babies sleep on blue blankets in July,

shadows of heart-shaped leaves

brushing their new faces as the linden tree grows.

Let us warn others of the hard work of the linden tree.

Then rest with me beside the knocked-down shed and dream

of the cherry tree.

O pie in the sky.

There was confusion on my end.

I thought Jesus was bringing the five-bean salad.

I thought the war had ended.

I thought I limped on the left side.

I thought the cloud a Lamborghini and got in.

I thought the zoo deserved a hacksaw.

I thought the tree had climbed the boy.

I thought the grenade a potato and ate it.

I thought Francis Bacon was painting my heart.

I thought bears would stop us

from killing the oceans.

I thought pole dancing had made a comeback.

I thought the Decency Party

would offer a full slate of candidates.

I thought the snow fort

a metaphor for the womb

of public housing.

I thought Zen Buddhism

would beat the New York football Giants.

I thought San Francisco

a roller coaster and screamed
whee

into the ear of noon.

I thought you were alive

when I packed an extra pair of socks.

I thought you were alive

when I realized “manumit” was two down

on the plane.

I thought you were alive

when I asked a mutual bartender

how you were.

I thought you were alive

even when I peed Sam Adams a first time

after being told you were dead.

But I thought the war had ended.

I thought the half-moon was winking at me.

I thought cabernet on the roof

with two of your ex-wives a lovely funeral

ten years too late with jumping

at the end into the pool the only way

to prove I'd paid attention

to the jump shot with a second left

you'd always tried to be.

I thought a good, steady rain

would bring us to our senses.

But five thousand years

into the flood, I just don't know.

Thank you Marianne Boruch

When, with the cadaver's skinned face

beside its open skull,

one of the other students

held up a stray left hemisphere

and spoke to this bit of brain

as to a phone, “She's not in

right now, can I take a message,”

I wanted there to be a story

our incursion had to tell

about the woman — that she “liked words —
Aesop's

Fables,
Housman. Frost by heart...

Not Jane Austen, she lied” — or to take

part of her home, nick spleen

or knuckle, and last night

reading your poem

in the almost-dark, with three deaths

on my mind, of who

who cares, the only difference

between my dead and yours

is everything, I got to this

and regretted I didn't —

“That
nothing
on and on, huge

and years, weighs

about nothing like

a whistle's sweet because

it's distant” —

and consider all the jars

I wasted, holding then and still

screws and jams

and more thorough nothings,

when of whomever she gray

and gutted was, there could still

be a smidge in the fridge, in my life, sick

but so are language and memory, which never

let the living let the dead die

I owe the crow, I know. Owe the watch,

the wrist, the swatch, the fist,

the sock, the crow, I know. Without clouds

I'd stand alone, without house

and switch and bomb and lock

and pick, there'd be no boom, no breaking in

to song for the crow, I know.

Owe every needle said
no

to my arm, every leaf said
yes

to the wind in my ear, owe wind

again, wind again

in this poem for the crow, I know.

When I'm dead, I want my head

to be an ashtray

in a bus station, tagged

at will by slugs and mugs

bound for Poughkeepsie and Kankakee,

my hips plunked into your garden

in lieu of my lips, after my kiss

is flown away by the hunger

of the crow, go crow. Owe maggots

for flies, flies for buzz, buzz

for saw, saw for seen, scene for action,

action for cut, cut for cure, cure

for sure, sure for shore, shore

for more, more for moon, moon

for flashlighting the night,

which falls softly

as the word
softly

falls, and is wall-to-wall

crow, you know.

People are having babies. Hoisting their children

to tree limbs on their backs and tying their shoes.

Telling them what the numerator is and why not

to eat one's boogers or not publicly

pee if at all possible to pee in private.

People are mixing their genes after wine

in romantic alleys and London hotels after crossing

a famous bridge. Trying to save for college

and not hit their children like they were hit

and not hit their children differently

than they were hit and failing and succeeding.

People are singing to wombs and playing the Goldberg

variations to fetuses who'll love Glenn Gould

without knowing who Glenn Gould is. I'm driving

along or painting a board or wondering

if we love animals because we can't talk with them

more intimately than we can't talk with God

and the whole time there's this background hum

of sex and devotion and fear, people telling

good-night stories or leaving their babies

in dumpsters but mostly working hard

to feed the future what it needs to grow strong

and prefer sweet over sour, consonance

to dissonance, to be the only creatures who notice

the stars or at least use them metaphorically

to go on and on about the longing we harbor

in such tiny spaces relative to the extent

of our dread that we're in this alone.

Had I only dipped you in amber, only built an ark

and filled it with one of your kind, only been God

or a surgeon who was God or raised an army

of fire ants and bulldozers at the door

against what was coming, they say goldfish

forget immediately the circled bowl, they say elephants

come back to the bones of their dead and lift them

with their trunks, I did none of these things, forget

or lift your bones with my trunk, I like it here

in the fog, being touched by the cool washcloth

of the sky, had I only folded you into a triangle

like a flag that has thrashed all day

inside the monologue of the wind and needs to sleep,

never letting you touch the ground, coming to you

with my hand over my heart, pledging vibrancy

and odors and sunspots, I'm sorry for the snot

at the end, my face full of sheepshank knots

and nails, had I only been an ocean for you,

just a little one, a closet wide, a bedpan deep,

plenty of infinity for your fuse, your hovering,

the truth is I did all of these things, and let go

the steering wheel on the highway until the rumble strip

called me a dumbass, and chopped a tree down

and built a crib for a child, I like it here

when the fog erases itself and says,
I offer you

the world freshly painted,
including the woods

where you walked, if only I could weigh its shade,

would it be larger or smaller by exactly

the size of you, O science, give me such instruments

of knowledge, they are as passionately useless as poems.