The Swan (2 page)

Today is a day of

dark clouds and slow rain.

The little blades of corn

are so happy.

Did you too see it, drifting, all night on the black river?

Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air,

an armful of white blossoms,

a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned

into the bondage of its wings: a snowbank, a bank of lilies,

biting the air with its black beak?

Did you hear it, fluting and whistling

a shrill dark music, like the rain pelting the trees,
like a waterfall

knifing down the black ledges?

And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds—

a white cross streaming across the sky, its feet

like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light
of the river?

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

In fall

it is mushrooms

gathered from dampness

under the pines;

in spring

I have known

the taste of the lamb

full of milk

and spring grass;

today

it is beans green and yellow

and lettuce and basil

from my friends’ garden—

how calmly,

as though it were an ordinary thing,

we eat the blessed earth.

It is early, still the darkest of the dark.

And already I have killed (in exasperation)

two mosquitoes and (inadvertently)

one spider.

All the same, the sun will rise

in its sweeps of pink and red clouds.

Not for me does it rise and not in haste does it rise

but step by step, neither

with exasperation nor inadvertently, and not with

any intended attention to

any one thing, but to all, like a god

that takes its instructions from another, even greater,

whose name, even, we do not know. The one

that made the mosquito, and the spider; the one

that made me as I am: easy to exasperation, then penitent.

How many days I lived and had never used

the holy words.

Tenderly I began them when it came to me

to want to, oh mystery irrefutable!

Then I went out of that place

and into a field and lay down

among the weeds and the grasses,

whispering to them, fast, in order to keep

that world also.

And what did the fox look like?

Like some prince in a fairy tale,
in his secret costume.

What was he looking for?

For a rabbit to fall out of the stars
and into the grass.

Was he combed and curly, did he
wear a prince’s crown?

No, he was rough and smelled of skunk.
But he was beautiful,

and beauty is not to be taken lightly.

Did you stop the car?

No, I kept on going to wherever it was I was going,
which I don’t remember.

Well, what do you remember?

The fox! the fox!

When the Pony Express needed

riders, it advertised

a preference for orphans—

that way, no one was likely

to ask questions when the carriers failed

to arrive, or the frightened ponies

stumbled in with their dead

from the flanks of the prairies.

This detail from our country’s past

has no particular significance—it is only

a footnote. There were plenty

of orphans and the point of course

was to get the mail through, so the theory

was sound. And besides,

think of those rough, lean boys—

how light and hard they would ride

fleeing the great loneliness.

I dreamed

I stood up in class

and I said aloud:

Teacher,

why is algebra important?

Sit down, he said.

Then I dreamed

I stood up

and I said:

Teacher, I’m weary of the turkeys

that we have to draw every fall.

May I draw a fox instead?

Sit down, he said.

Then I dreamed

I stood up once more and said:

Teacher,

my heart is falling asleep

and it wants to wake up.

It needs to be outside.

Sit down, he said.

Not myself,

but Maria,

who, when her work is done,

tunes in the radio,

goes out into the garden,

picks up the front feet of the little dog Ricky,

and dances. She dances.

What do you say, Percy? I am thinking

of sitting out on the sand to watch

the moon rise. Full tonight.

So we go

and the moon rises, so beautiful it

makes me shudder, makes me think about

time and space, makes me take

measure of myself: one iota

pondering heaven. Thus we sit,

I thinking how grateful I am for the moon’s

perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich

it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,

leans against me and gazes up into

my face. As though I were

his perfect moon.

Don’t mind my inexplicable delight
     in knowing your name,
        little Wilson’s Warbler
yellow as a lemon, with a smooth, black cap.

Just do what you do and don’t worry, dipping
     branch by branch down to the fountain
        to sip neatly, then flutter away.

A name
     is not a leash.

Death taps his black wand and something vanishes. Summer,
winter; the thickest branch of an oak tree for which I have a
special love; three just hatched geese. Many trees and thickets of
catbrier as bulldozers widen the bicycle path. The violets down
by the old creek, the flow itself now raveling forward through
an underground tunnel.

Lambs that, only recently, were gamboling in the field. An old
mule, in Alabama, that could take no more of anything. And
then, what follows? Then spring again, summer, and the season
of harvest. More catbrier, almost instantly rising. (No violets,
ever, or song of the old creek.) More lambs and new green grass
in the field, for their happiness
until
. And some kind of yellow
flower whose name I don’t know (but what does that matter?)
rising around and out of the half-buried, half-vulture-eaten,
harness-galled, open-mouthed (its teeth long and blackened),
breathless, holy mule.

I wanted to speak at length about

the happiness of my body and the

delight of my mind for it was

April, night, a

full moon and—

but something in myself or maybe

from somewhere other said: not too

many words, please, in the

muddy shallows the

frogs are singing.

I tore the web
of a black and yellow spider

           in the brash of weeds

and down she came
on her surplus of legs

        each of which

touched me and really
the touch wasn’t much

                  but then the way

if a spider can
she looked at me

             clearly somewhere between

outraged and heartbroken
made me say “I’m sorry

          to have wrecked your home

your nest your larder”
to which she said nothing

              only for an instant

pouched on my wrist

then swung herself off

                 on the thinnest of strings

back into the world.

This pretty, this perilous world.

Is it true that the wind

streaming especially in fall

through the pines

is saying nothing, nothing at all,

or is it just that I don’t yet know the language?

The spirit says:
What gorgeous clouds.

The body says: Good,
the crops need rain.

The spirit says:
Look at the lambs frolicking.

The body says:
When’s the feast?

The spirit says:
What is the lark singing about?

The body says:
Maybe it’s angry.

The spirit says:
I think shadows are trying to say something.

The body says:
I know how to make light.

The spirit says:
My heart is pounding.

The body says:
Take off your clothes.

The spirit says: Body,
how can we live together?

The body says: Bricks and mortar
and a back door.

Now comes Schumann down the scale.
  What a river
       of pleasure!

Where is his riven heart?
  His ruined mind?
       Lying in wait.

Now comes Schumann up the scale
  and around the curly corners
       of just a few absolutely right notes

while the Rhine turges along,
  while the Rhine sparkles in the dark,
       lying in wait.

Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountain, slowly, taking
the rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
that we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
and peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.

Was I lost? No question.

Did I know where I was? Not at all.

Had I ever been happier in my life? Never.

Where is the fox now?

Somewhere, doing his life’s work, which is
living his life.

How many more foxes has he made for the earth?

Many, many.

How many rabbits has he caught so far?

Many, many, many.

This doesn’t sound very important.

What’s of importance? Scalping mountains
or fishing for oil?

I would argue about that.

Ah, you have never heard of the meek and what is
to become of them?

What’s meek about eating rabbits?

It’s better than what’s happening to the
mountains and the ocean.

You know, there’s only one thing to say. I think
you’re a little crazy.

I thank the Lord.

It is a negligence of the mind

not to notice how at dusk

heron comes to the pond and

stands there in his death robes, perfect

servant of the system, hungry, his eyes

full of attention, his wings

pure light.

When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know
any of us, what happens then.

So I try not to miss anything.

I think, in my whole life, I have never missed
the full moon

or the slipper of its coming back.

Or, a kiss.

Well, yes, especially a kiss.

Heaven knows how many

trees I climbed when my body

was still in the climbing way, how

many afternoons, especially

windy ones, I sat

perched on a limb that

rose and fell with every invisible

blow. Each tree was

a green ship in the wind-waves, every

branch a mast, every leafy height

a happiness that came without

even trying. I was that alive

and limber. Now I walk under them—

cool, beloved: the household

of such tall, kind sisters.

The dog, the donkey, surely they know
      they are alive.

Who would argue otherwise?

But now, after years of consideration,
      I am getting beyond that.

What about the sunflowers? What about
      the tulips, and the pines?

Listen, all you have to do is start and
      there’ll be no stopping.

What about mountains? What about water
      slipping over the rocks?

And, speaking of stones, what about
      the little ones you can

hold in your hands, their heartbeats
      so secret, so hidden it may take years

before, finally, you hear them?

I own a house, small but comfortable. In it is a bed, a desk,
a kitchen, a closet, a telephone. And so forth—you know
how it is: things collect.

Outside the summer clouds are drifting by, all of them
with vague and beautiful faces. And there are the pines
that bush out spicy and ambitious, although they do not
even know their names. And there is the mockingbird;
over and over he rises from his thorn-tree and dances—he
actually dances, in the air. And there are days I wish I
owned nothing, like the grass.

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers

flow in the right direction, will the earth turn

as it was taught, and if not, how shall

I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,

can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows

can do it and I am, well,

hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

am I going to get rheumatism,

lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up. And took my old body

and went out into the morning,

and sang.