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PAVEL K July 2, 1999-May 27, 2000 © Pavel Chichikov

NO WALLS

There’s a beetle, where do you fly?Over the chess board, white pawn high—White pawn, black pawn, king and queenTake them down till none remain

But there will be one king at lastThough eight by eight the board is vast,God, the devil think ahead,One to mate, the other dead

Think before and think behindThere’s a beetle flying blind,Now alighting, walking whereThe pieces are, from square to square

Will you take the little pawnWhose shadow goes from dusk to dawn?White or black—the devil’s guess—The beetle thinks it’s playing chess

Change direction, rank and file,Omnipotence opposes guile,Beetle hurry, darkness fallsEn passant—there are no walls

Pavel ChichikovJuly 2, 1999

1


REVELATION

As at the core of solid mass is spaceSo at the core of all is emptinessIn which the mass of God insinuatesWhat faith may never know although confess

Love who loves and counts a quarter turnFinds a new domain and dispensationWhere nothing was before, will never be—Sees light inside a dark totality

Love who loves and counts a turn by halfFinds what he was looking at and laughs,For as perspective, distance change, rotate.Counterwise the play of love and hate

Love who loves and turns diametersWill find that what he thought to see occurs,Illusion recombines with what can be—Blindness cures a blinded eye and sees

Love of every emptiness invitesMass in which all time and space delights,Mystery is paradox fulfilledRevelation flesh and blood distilled


2


SEVEN DOORS

The sun is beating on the wall,Siege and siege again—fallsAgainst the seven doors,Light against the mind at war

Bending on a pole alightVaulting from the sky,Now in equal night and daylightNadir to the solar high

Now it springs against the forestLeaps again to touch the moon,Shoulder first against the westFire down at noon

We who cower in our roomsHear the sun at war,Eyes ignited and will soonBurn down the seven doors


3


IDLE REGRET

Evil on this earth must twin,Double crack its marrow bone,Be satisfied until the nextHomicide of God transfixed

Use a magnifying lens,See two thousand years go by,Bring the bloody image closeTo the seeing, idle eye

See a human being born,Maybe sixty kilogramsDragged along a street and tornTo pieces by his flock of lambs

While the legate had his lunchHe recalled his consort’s hunch,Shook it off what’s done is done—Offspring of the coliseum

Administrator, leather tough,Head of bronze, heart of lead—To farm the Jews is not enough— A legate must forget the dead

How marvelous to see the earthGet up from dust and walk the sea—How much would a seat be worthIf you could find someone to pay?


4


ANNULMENT

No corpse buried and abscondedIs more anonymous than one of usCommoners, brotherhood of dust

I hear a funeral approaching—Earth on her catafalque of spaceDrawn by horses of the universe

Drums of muffled right ascension,See the elongation of her coffinAnd her sun-illuminated face

Earth oblivion consignedAs to the night she is alignedIn nonrotating hemispheres

From this annulment who’s exempt?Clods and specks of earth awareWhich are her shoveled men and women

Who’s released from burial?Only those for whom God weepsWill be saved from earth, he keeps

As for himself his mother wept,All who love and will acceptHis love for them, he will their nothingness annul


5


WORM

Is there really a worm within?A doodle from the rooster—A rose, an apple, a pear, a plumThe worm within the blister

This will not twist silentlyYet it cannot speak or see,Bite the soul within the meatWhich he who eats the fruit must eat

Mercy on a senseless worm,Within the aril is the germ—Even in the seed itselfA parasite which is the life

A worm inside a neuter thing—The reproductive will take wing,Leave the ruined fruit behind,Brown and bitter in the rind

He who grew it on the treeKnew its ruin knowingly,Yet he left it to be takenBy a savage or by satan

It was his own self that he tookTasted, wasted and mistookUnder the leaves of chaos growThe flowers of Fra Angelico


6


EXORCIST

Under leaves of dying growBabes of Fra Angelico,Mewling in an empty tombSecond childhood’s crawling room

Wipe a wrinkled senile guest,Patch the form he knows the best,Habits of his prejudiceBecome a second childhood twice

Soft as oceans on the moonAgitation flows toward home,Intellect and will undoneEgg tastes yellow in the sun

Nothing lost is all to gainAge relieves itself of pain,Superfluous the name we had,Memory of good and bad

Essential is the eye that’s clear,Glass and humid atmosphere,Away with all we owed to hellThe debt is canceled, lift what fell

O my angel, paint the lightWhose beam of ladders rises up,On my foot a golden stirrup—Run you horses of the night


7


THE MARKET

Trumpet vine around my windowHasn’t very far to go—Fearless fly the little sparrowsWhere the seeds of maples show

Tame, a humid gentle earthGreen as gardens without dearth—Deep and sheltered in a shadeWorms and worming earth in trade

From the bottom to the topMoneyless the creatures shop,Find a dumb economyWhere all is earned and all is free

Up the rooftops, three heads highCabbage, fig and maple tree,Where’s the softness you can buy,Such softness in a liberty?


8


ENGINEER

Throwing nuggets at the cornTheir own selves gold and black,They hardly sway, so lightly borneAnd yet no mass they lack

They bounce along a row of beetsLike metal minus weight,Yellow as the corn is sweetPiccolos that prate

Salad birds the imps were calledBut goldfinch now they are,Bright as pollen marigoldThey swing from thin larkspur

Who would be engineer enoughCould make them from a prayer,Sunlight beaten hard and toughAnd music from the air


9


TRUE FLESH

Death becomes her mistress, soShe stands upon an old ice floe,Her person and her self dissolveThrough an oceanic valve—What seemed to be a hard designA photo-imprint in her mind

Bobby’s dead too, as I hearDied two days ago at four,Bloodstream flooded with morphineTo make him slip away his painInto an ocean made of what?Real deliverance or not?

I too raised up by my sightInto fine and buoyant lightWith infant happiness to be Obscured by coarse infinityWhich comes to blind oblivionFor all that I can see within

By violence, age, senilityDisease then hangs us from a tree,As if we were the yielding fruitGod forbade us then to eat Death permits to finger pluck—Bowels moving into muck

Where to keep when we have madeDoggerel like this, or trade,Science, pleasure and deceit,Good and evil, weed or wheatAll to be dissolved away—As we have been, to never be?

Only one skin I have saved,I loved somewhat or else forgaveAs others have forgiven me—Curtailed immortalityLengthened in the eye of timeNo further than a spring unwinds

10


Here’s Bobby in a suit of earthLife in death for all he’s worthRipe and soft eternallyFalling from a mystery—What species other than his name That we the others also claim?

We have been given something odd:The right to be a plant of GodFarmer, orchard-husbandmanWho studies in the falling sunThe grove and orchard he has madeThe undissolving quiet shade

Let me then walk into thisOblivion or hidden bliss,Leave behind the stunning heatOf opaque sunlight, blinded wheat,For there’s another yield than breadThat is true flesh, true blood undead


11


FATHER MIKE CURTIN

Well, Father Mike, I confessed more than once,Take the pranks with you to paradise,Old donkey tricks, stubborn as ever,Dumb as a hoof but counting on clever

Say, he was sorry, lazy, will mendSome day, waiting from now till the endOf all reparation but one, his own soulWhich he leaves as a ticket, memento, parole

For the Lord to retain with His curios,Deposited faith, faithful in promiseTo bring to the end goings out, comings in—For which you absolved him, sin after sin

You as a priest heard everything, allTo be found behind the delusory wallThat we raise to hide from our love’s distress—Odd since He knows the whole universe


12


ON MOUNT PICO

I stand on Mount Pico, in the north of ImbriumCrevasses, wrinkles set beneath me,Above, the satin of ordination,The counting of chaos, unnumberingAs the moon rotates around its axis

Each star wears a shawl of spaceThe gegenshein of ploughing earthMoves like a blade against infinity—Is someone here to see this with me?Beyond the curve of the world it waits

Have you seen how the moon is alive?It changes color, beams aloftFrom the Apennines, brusquely scythes the continentsOf swollen clusters, dust and rubbleSpinning from the ground to zenith

There’s no greater gladness—watchHow Pico signals, taking lightUp from the gland of the ancient mountain,Pulse on pulse of blue and red,Speaks in the language of the night


13


THE TRANSPOSITIONFor Marlene Campbell

Her clarity will not decay, inside the sameMirror of the child you lost, Marlie-Marlene,Image in your memories by loss confinedNow in her affection brightly leaves its frame

Image dimming by the breath we breathe upon,Crystalline as each devotion bares a sign—Every love made lustrous in the loving one—Shattered, made to live again, reflection shines

That which was a dagger is a sea of glass,Leaves what was reflected and can freely moveBeyond the smoothing flatness of all sacrilege—Child of Christ’s composing who can speak and love

You, and she who loves you, sing a common prayer,Correspondence soaring on an angel stair,The child ascends in loving you, our Christ descends,And in this transposition love will never end


14


DROUGHT

Over the gleaming white dust IWalk, the red beneath is dry—Out of her stall an old white marePokes her nose around the glare

Across the paddock stiffly joltsA horse no bigger than a colt,Girl a-canter, riding cap—Dog in the manger licks his lap

Along the rib of the afternoon,Dog and I two fleas on bone—Lazy lolling earth, her droughtRolls her belly to the south

Rolls her belly to west,Luna fills a summer cusp,Fountains flowing out of sightOverflow the rim of night

Now inside the stable pranceStars of summer, hoof and dance,Stall and stable of the sky,Feed of lightning, summer dry


15


THE JESTER

No one understands the reason whyThis ancient dust and energy is I,Out of always and beyond foreverComes unknowing self the stupid-clever

Glowing, rotting solid-marrow-hollow,Fungus on a life whose death must follow,Obliteration manifest, unsure,Hungry for an appetite to cure

I have seen my friends who die at restLeft for burial inside a chest,Dolls of rubber manikins’ repose,Dressed from front to sideways in their clothes

Otherwise as nude as when they cameSliding from the spillway of the womb,Vacant virus, mask instead of face,Empty of existence as deep space

Colder too, and primal in designWhere once was conscious immanence of mind—Cylinder symbolic of a soul,Geometry, the section of a hole

Yet I knew them living and as realAs I myself who mourn them and can feel—What comedy initiates a heartWhich from inanity must be and start?

And yet who lived we knew as they knew us,In mutuality there is a clueWhich would be lost in perfect loneliness—The jester in the coffin is not you


16


JERICHO

My brain’s on fire and my mindIs not with yours too well aligned,While yours is tilted toward the dayMine is slanted skew-awayInto the faint and horizontalHaze of dreaming, which is truthful

Symbol, since no one can tellUnless interpreted where hellAnd heaven intersect and kiss—Brass of torment and distress,Our dreadful freedom incoheresAnd snakes away in separate fears

When someone knows the knowing tongueOr pidgin-knows it, creoling,Says it piece by piece insideThe tent of abdicated pride—Ark of thunder which descendsOn Jacob’s head to make amends

For what he suffered—then he’ll goFurther off to JerichoShake the wall from stone to coreDown upon a thief and whore,A mayor and the mayor’s son—It will be done when it’s begun

And all this from a mind askewThat listens when the pigeons cooDrowsy in the livid shade,Criss and cross, unmade and madeAs if the sun that crossed the skyCould speak unspeak as it stood by


17


THE TEST

They braced themselves against the door Strong backs too of fishermen,But Jesus could and would come in,The ghost of God—they’d covered himWith resin from the happy shoreOf Arabia—imported myrrhAt great expense and more of troubleBut much too good to preserve a double

The dead don’t come back from a tomb,Why bother else bother to bury themBehind a door of solid stone And leave them well enough alone?They put their backs against the boardRisked a stabbing with a swordBut He walked through as if it wereA bloody public thoroughfare

Ghost, ghost—spook and dust,Uncanny magic, go or wake usUp—no drinking from this cup,Hallucination turning real—But now He says—my wounds, you feelThe flesh of one who lives in spiteOf His interment overnight—Thomas, poke your fingers inAnd prick your forearm with a pinSo that your faithlessness will cease—I do not come from the police

No, the little world we knowOf nets and taxes, hook and plough—Don’t wake us into waking dreamsWe’re satisfied with what God seemsNot this real, exhausted corpseThat’s not a dead man, even worseAs vital, warm as one of us—We would prefer to fall unconsciousNo more to be made to seeThis tested unreality

But I am real and would be yoursWho can transpose himself through doors /Pavel Chichikov—July 22, 1999

18


WHAT LIVED WILL BE

He doesn’t need buildingsShotgun housesMail order businessCherubim concerts

Old cognac, champagne,Oil painting and women, Life in a frameA fond reputation

Locked in their cellsNo angels release,Ambition, themselvesAnd senile caprice

It is the blind smellingInfant on breastWarm mother’s bellyMilk of the blessed

Don’t the old see, The old self’s not wanted,Flesh of the haunted—What lived still will be


19


THE MARES

See in dreams, return by dawn,Unless the envoys come to you,Prepare a message, sometimes dreadWhich opens up the rooms they view,Chambers where the dreaming soulInspects itself while on parole

Messengers come through the gateAlthough their wings can barely squeezeBetween the guarding columnarLime and ashen willow trees—Willow ash, and willow shadeWhere resting horses twitch and graze

The river flowing is the mindAs they stand over, guard the blindInnocence of flowing streamsWhich flooding upward drown what seems,But when they flow again toward seaDrown the mares of mystery


20


O FRIEND

Is there an operation or procedure Which separates soul from body?For see here, one who was aliveWhom we knew, a personality,Who joked and caviled, lovedAnd was amazed, now is nothing, hollow,Expression on an empty head, a doll

Where does it go, the constructOf a personality—disperseInto an aether of despairA cloud of material indifference?Visitor for you Mike, they said,And you, smiling—may I offerYou the solace of confession? Who was it said that? Who was this construct MikeWith faculties to remit my sin?This ever-flowing cascadeWhich though changing stayed the sameIn form, in personality?A human being fills a hollow name

Now, where do we goWhere shall I go?For I am something not gratuitousAnd yet I am a spear of water falling,Keep a shape,As long as do the upland rainsWhich fall upon the highest watershed

No listen, did nothingGive me absolution for a faultCommitted by an spare illusion?Why then charadeOf empty casings shot from birth barrelsInto deep oblivion?Who are we, Michael?

For now you knowAnd will be known, I think,As something less and moreThan what you were—

21


You rough the pool by dyingWhich soothes itself again,A mirror shape

Rain, which is the shapeless form,Keep falling on the upland place,For now we see a twisting streamLeap heedless and unconsciousFrom the ledge of being—Swift recognitionWhich can resolve into a face, o friend


22


IN EACH HEAD

I am made of paperAnd like all good booksTurn yellow and brittleSince I last the longest

For God has taken me downFrom the shelf that He knows bestAnd read me through—Now He will put me back again

Not many have read this storyNo one reallyNot even myself—But still, it is understood

Here is the great anthologyWritten in each head that passes by


23


THE LOW HILL

It’s not as if he came back from the dead—We are one another’s ghosts,I can be a loved one to a widow, sheCan be the same when she meets me,We are for souls the earthly, profane hostsSo I saw my father, now for him I pray

Many forewarnings I would see him,Ordinary, not in my remembered dreamsBut in the signs that we all might readIn books, in odd coincidences,Then himself acknowledged in another’s faceSeen through a window, sent on parole, one of the dead

To see how I have sent his soulAs he sent mine on passage through the profane worldIn poetry, as when the tame lilyShoots its lightning downward through the waterInside a crystal vase that shows the valleyWhere, as if through water, dying moves and lives

The dead, the living are rejoined—refound—Recall his painting where the joyous childrenRun and see the rising sun, its prism, Showing green beneath the low dun hill of his imagination,Then all the flaring colors we had hiddenApproach the tinder sky compressed beneath the ground


24


BINARY

Are you secular or not?Reach beneath the seat of GodPull out the road map and descriptionOf the route you took to get here

Rain came down when you were born,Red clay, and the cabins leanedInto thick edenic mud—Who formed you then along the road?

I am the spirit and the fleshFlood the river’s silver mesh,My scales are mine to fit aroundMy shining flanks to cover wounds

If you are only flesh bewareYou will be lost without a prayer,If you are spirit without boneYou travel sightless, lost, alone

If neither kind of love you lackYou will stoop downward, carry offThe road of Eden on your back,Wheel and axle held aloft


25


WHALE BOULEVARD

I catch a salmon in a lake—Mr. Fish and Mr. HakeCall to sell a lot of cod,Their office: on Whale Boulevard

Mr. Shepherd’s strength is spent,He rests inside a dog-pup tent,Tomorrow climbs and barks his shinsBeneath the howl of the wind

It is not simply synchronousThat all the worlds are rhyming ones—The devil has a role for God:A soldier with a shield and sword

The script of hell He need not heed,The sword He breaks but not the reed,And all that sickens is securedIn cradled rhythm and is cured

If I were now to call your nameAnd every lost one had the same,Would you all not turn around?And yet, it’s true, we would be found


26


EVERY IMAGE ON A THRONE

I saw two men with yellow facesPanting in the desert air(The quill that quivers in your skina lie, a wound that burrows in)

It might be pollen but the heatWill not for night or day abate,And they are grinning, yellow-cheeked,As if they have the flowers eat

Stone of blue and ochre, redBehind the two, above, ahead—On their ankles, underneathFine yellow sand becomes a sheath

Is it merely on the stageOf consciousness, a macrophageOf mind that swallows up the eye—Or will it happen by and by?

No, I see them, and their hairLank and black, their broadly bareFaces grin from ear to ear—And I can see them—they are here

Here inside the membraned domePollen glows like yellow chromeFor there is room between the bonesFor every image on its throne

Regal is the mind, its thought,Where fish of every grace are caught,Red salmon, and the pike of deepCool atmospheres of heavy sleep

Pavel ChichikovAugust 1, 1999

27


BENJAMIN

Here a mirror, here stand IIn self-reflecting apathyWhile mocking and satiric demonsSee my many-colored organs

How do you like yourself that way?We see you always in full play,Inside out, outside inImpious in gross reflection

Every organ hideousSwollen out and tumorous,This is how you are, and willBe for us when you are ill

But as I look I laugh, acceptThe image fashioned as I sleptAs when I wake I will recallBenjamin before the fall


28


SQUARE ROOT OF ONE

You think you’re awake—you’re still asleepA mesh of fine acausal connectionsSettles over the sleeping pondOf the mind, you are the square root of one

But you are dreaming, fitfully,Angrily, the ripples seem to roll awake,Waves an offense to your peace vibrateAs the net with nodes settles around you

Then falls around the curving world—Here and then a friend engagedThat first you thought off, then encountered,Or a song whose title flies onto a page

And then you meet at the corner wallCourteous death who just rememberedYour name and where the appointment fitsInto the blankest calendar

Square root of one, well met, I amYour infinite non-recurrent friendWho has yet to meet you, knowsWhich square of the net your life enclosed

And how the water rises upTo meet the template of the formWhich settles in it to discloseThe random liquid living norm


29


HAMAL

I am hamal, I carry the loadsThe heavy loadsIn this old black market called the world

On my back the semer, the pad which restsOn my rounded shouldersTo keep from being crushed

And what do I carry? I carry you,Your heedlessnessYour self-satisfaction

How heavy you are, you do not knowFor your feet, your feetNever touch the ground, my load

I carry your heedlessness, self-Absorption and the infiniteIgnorance of wise conversation

I watch where I my put my feetBut youNever do since you ride on me, the hamal

And though you might gaze at leisureLeisure, at the shafts of lightYour legs go where I carry them

Where are you going? But noDon’t askFor I know but cannot tell you

I have never seen your proper faceYour faceSince you ride behind me

But I know, I know where you are Heavy oneAnd where you go all bad things go

Which are heavy and uselessBut must be borneBecause my master tells me so /Pavel Chichikov—August 5, 1999

30


TE DEUM

I sleep during Charpentier’s Te DeumEven as the trumpets sound belled glory,Shattering every cloud—

Where do I go? recruit the paradeOf the everlasting golden-blue,Rising in all in unison, unweighted

Where I dream to be again—this dryUnbidden bastard world of summer drought—A stick to its own dead leaves

For all is grain against grain, childless dust,Mummified grotesque, leather and beetle,Lets go its saturated form

To you, o God, who waters every acid fieldWe drink praise of you—come with rain and flood,For the dead are dry and wish to rise


31


THE BRIGHT WORLD

I dreamt of the word that cuts,Cuts like a ruby laser—Yes, I know that wordKnow by analogy

But the world is full of verminWhich scuttle beneath the oceansAnd the white uttering mountains—They are too small to see

Do you think Christ can lift them?With small brown wingsA small black eyeI see one, scuttling

The laser would cut the world like fleshSo with his slipperSoft-padded time—He crushes their soft abdomens

Now use the word of lightBy analogy—As the bird brakes with its wingsAnd lands, and sings

So did the LordSever the branch He had madeWith its boughs of berriesThe bright worlds


32


THE RHYTHM

I went looking for an all-night chapelBut found two hundred GhanaiansDancing the high life

God is locked in tonightBread and wine, light and shadowAt the end of the nave

He is not rum and chickenDrum and beerBut not too far away from here

He listens: At least they’re smilingAnd movingAnd turning their feet to the rhythm


33


DEPTHS

Were you to walk on waterDe-neutralize repulsionElectrostatic chargeWould keep you in suspension

But here another signDesigner and designChanged by one who madeSun and solid, shade

Every law that holdsCreation in its foldsSupports or lets it goInto space like snow


34


BRINDLE BULL

The farmer owns a brindle bull, shoulder height two yardsThat chases us around the barn, bellows cannonadesThe mouth is like a tapir’s mouth, the coat is like a dog’sThey’re not as fierce as you may think, these oxen of the Lord’s

The farmer is hospitable but he’s too busy nowWith goose and rooster, lamb and duck, boar and sow and cowTo interrupt the crazy bull chasing us acrossThe muckle of a barnyard—you wonder who’s the boss

I’m tired of the uproar here—I’ll furlough on the moon,Maybe in the Apennines’ anorthositic gloomUntil I see the sun aloft across the Bay of StormsThe glow of Earth amazing on the Sinus Aestuum

Is it only to his office a farmer can retreatWhen chimeras chew off his nose, leviathans his feet?A little while ago I saw reflections from a creekRipple on the locust boughs—apple-green and weak

Kindly is the moustache, kindly is the smile,He must be off to sweep the barn, initiate the trial—The brindle ox is stabled and the jury has been seatedRise to meet the farmer for the stock has been completed


35


WATCHFUL ONES

To be underneath the locust tree, in the duskWhite temple columns of the poplars outward gleamingEmpty place, no worship here, the aisles are rooflessBut through the columns see the travelers walkingUnaware of who is looking at them, where

Dusk, more shadows than a month ago seep through the filesOf tall rugose poplars leaning upwardNow tell me, who are you who travel there, unseeingWhile I rest here, watching you?Like me, the deer observe you from the covert, and the small

Animals that go to den and nest, awake at duskAnd know you keeping distance in the clear aislesWe know you, see you, understand you and your movementBut we are of the dusk, the night, and keep away—We know. The watchful ones. But you are blind at dusk.

Blind in the day. Blind in everything you doAnd your footfalls blink like eyes through the shadowsWe hear the supple bags of your lungs contract, expandAnd the nostrils drawing air resound like pipesBut you are unaware. Of us. And of your moving selves.


36


EXIT

Apocalypse in coming overdueLate summer curls its frozen cloudy hairInto ringlets thousand meters highBlue forehead of the fictive Jupiter

No hurry, though the oaklet in the shrubAnd all the other groundlings groan and rubTheir limpish leaves together in depressionBetween the feeble breezes’ oscillation

A zephyr-sphere can shift itself and goA zeus-let rolling on his numb elbowPuffing out his lips in little snoresBut I stay here between two swinging doors

For summer is a room as long as daysWith checkerboarded sun and moon parquetWindows from the pavement to the ceilingPaper from the river birches peeling

Until they bark completely from the tree—The room is still, the exit comes to me,So let there be my Christ behind the wall—If He be there, what consequence the fall


37


THE MOUTH OF GOD

They live so far away, these people on other worldsAnd if they signal to usBy radio, by laser lightWe think: how sad

For if they use such primitiveSuch mean technologyIt means they are the same as usThey’ll never reach us

But if they use the means of thoseWho understand the world much more than weThan how are we to read their signalsOr even know that they exist?

Why should they condescend to usOr why should we think them knowable—And yetGod condescends, God speaks

To them as well?Neither microwaves, nor infraredNor even waves of gravity come forthFrom the mouth of God


38


THE BEGINNER

The walnut has four rooms, just fourA narrow hinge instead of doorsTwo floors no ceiling, windows none

In this place they are not tortured,Puzzled: hold and twist a walnut shell—Why does silver music come from there?

Is there light inside the shell, a little room,And do the papery walls divideLike cells, or lead like hallways?

Dead Vladimir holds a shellSmiles and twists it to the lightShadowless that comes from nowhere

He is like an infant here, Newly dead in this bazaarNot customer, proprietor

For here he neither buys nor sellsBut tries to fathom where he isWhat it means to loiter here, and soon

He wonders when to leave—But he has just arrived, the first,The dead are first, and no one else is here

Music sounds inside the shell—A lute in neat and strumming notesWithin the walnut room

Into this chamber he must goTo hear the small musician playInside the tiny walnut shell


39


CALVESI saw the darkness of a cityThe lone confinement povertyAnd every mirror in the palaceAmount to every dirty face

A shoeless child, self-hanged cityChrist ignored, not crucifiedBecause He is omitted, starvedBy fat unnecessary whores

What’s going on? a wind is blowingWarm breezes from the Baltic blowIn February comes a foehnMelts the ice cakes in the sun

Petersburg, you freeze and curseA winter climate, cruel, adverseBut find in this unnatural spellSummer, winter both in hell

Four legged rivers start to gallopThe winter palace melt and runInto the Moyka in a ruinAzure, green and ochre slop

Gallop gallop, Moyka runSweating necks of thunder spillSweating fire on the streetsSwallows us, a bitter pill

To see a melting golden calfMakes the red militia laughAs I have seen a cackling whoreLocking up enchantment’s door

But all the calves confined in goldWill be let loose upon the worldIn streams of melting flowing oreThat come from under magic’s door

Who can lock a Christ insideA universe of suicide?Christ will melt around the hingeThe hair of death itself will singe / Pavel Chichikov—August 13, 1999

40


INSIDE OUT

Inside a tall and handsome ladA dwarf is sitting, going mad—Where the beauty passes byThe stinking feces of the fly

For those whose smooth external skinsHide the hideous withinAre often plausible and neatExternally, unless you wait

Wait until they late divestThe face with which they once impressedSelf-obscuring followers—Those hungry and ambitious curs

Those who once maintained disguiseBy hiding malice in their eyesSqueal on what was inside—outWith tusk and bristle, tail and snout


41


GILLS OF THE YEAR

Old moon, old sunDon’t fall down into the sea we’ve madePrepared for youA trap that can hold youA weir that confines youThe silver salmon and the goldSun and moon—the very oldCome to spawn above the milky sea

I’ll tear a hole in the rotting netI’ll break the pole attached to itTo let the fatty moonlight downInto the skyAnd the scaly sunlight fallInto the seaAnd the gills of the year will mix youBreathe you in and out


42


PERSPECTIVE

Pre-immortals, larva spiritsGrubs with heads as big as boulders You’re a tough guy, I’m a tough guy,Grubs have sections but no shoulders

God, as one of us, gets nothingLock him up inside a pen,We’ll eat him when he’s fat and bloodyA special diet until then

See us squirming in the lymphTurn the skin of it to slime,Feed us soft and gristle both,Quick! We’re running out of time

Then, when we transmogrifyWe’ll play on halteres of joy,Buzzing round, ecstatically,Corpses in a harmony

We delight in carrionHere on earth or there in heaven—Are we arthropod or human?It depends on your perspective


43


VERS LIBREFor Maria Rocco

I wonder if I’m losing my soul, because I haven’t written well—No, the soul is still intact, shabby, functional,But I’ve become a salesman, not an artist

Vers libre is the drum the drummer hammers on,No one should be speaking but mosquitos—Crows sit in the elm tree branches, jeering

I need the stubborn quiet of the river bankWhich now, as black as creeping fleshDies beneath the spoiled milk sky of August

No one speak until the rain comes, now,Says the poor emaciated river in its teethStarving locusts leaning, peeling river birch

Under the stranded duckweed carbon-colored Cicadas red-eyed roll toward seppuku,Impaled on their own sharp elbows

Someone hand me a shovel, I will scoopThe earth from underneath my feet, standIn mid-air gibbering, until the river rises once again


44


TRANSFIGURATION

I’m completely empty, the Spirit leaves—All I know is time the stiff steel rodWhich energy deforms into the active worldAnd makes it resonate between two sockets—The beginning—and the end of everything

It was this which caused TransfigurationOn the hill of Tabor near the townWhere the messenger of God commended us—For His compassion has its tensile strength—She who bent but did not break was Miriam

The stiff steel rod somehow rebounded,Assumed its former shape—became the SaviorWho sprang elasticallyTurned the heavy stone and walked awayInto the morning garden where he met a woman

Who is he, a gardener, a vagrant apparition?He resumed his former shape, wave-length transformedBut not as one might see if one were human stillFor nothing in the retina perceives such changes—And yet she wept and held his sacred feet

Held His sacred feet as I have seen in SpainWhere those who sanctify their own compassionKiss the solid feet of Jesus’ corpus,Who know the Self is made of common oakAnd yet transfer real pity, love by touching it


45


BEASTS’ EYES

They have the eyes of men, these beastsThey mark their own Creator now, too late—Bear men, wolf men, beast men prowlFrom the city and the folk tale wood

Can men turn into animals? they areAlready animals, their eyes belong to beastsAs those wer-beasts had eyes of human beings—Cold prey-hunting holes that search for us

Humanity is something like a document one holdsWhich can be given up, torn in halfThrown away, discarded, left to be destroyed,Renounced—a citizen’s remit from heaven

But can it be returned upon request?Applied for once renounced, resumedUpon submission of a fee or declaration?Can I be a human man once more?

Some do, perhaps, file to be returnedThough heaven’s no bureaucracy, it isThe honeycomb of pity that surrounds the worldWith chambers only those who love can find again

Seek only as the bee which lost above the evening meadowTurns and turns to find the level sun


46


NO DECEPTION

No deception here—We need the transposition of a left right worldTo see our hearts on the rightOur right thumbs on the leftAs they were meant to be beforeCreation fell

So mirror creatures also see a fall from graceIn our reversed chiralityAlways the others fall and not ourselvesWhile we adjust our ruffled hairLike primping hens and flustered roosters

To see ourselves as we really areLook not in the mirror but upsidedown


47


OUROBOUROS

It isn’t a wormIt’s the gut of man ingestingPeristalticallyThe whole worldEverything it seesThe after birth that follows it out of the wombTo the sky itself, clouds and thunderbolts

Only death can satiate this hungerThe cure that God found in the gardenTemporarilyTo still the appetite for fruit

Especially the blue oneIn its nest of blackness


48


THE CRUTCH

Stomach keeps wanting to be fedShut up you old bag, gulper-golliwogNo, no, I won’t for I am hollowGive me meat, give me bread

Well now, I feed you, do you want more?Not for an hour, three or fourBut then in six, not more than sevenI must be fed my daily ration

Don’t you know like me you’re mortalThat something waits beyond death’s portal—No, there’s nothing to discussExcept my stretched esophagus

Yet you live beneath the skinOf my body’s baldachinWhere the world must sacrificeFlesh by gobbet and by slice

Yes, for I am grossly swollenThough I began a modest pouch—You have a brain while I have noneAnd yet I think for you, my crutch


49


NOT OZFor Abigail Tardiff

Tulip, butternut, white oakColumns of the grey poplar,An emerald city wakesAlongside what must expire

Just for a moment when airLets go of its illusion,For this is lit from withinGod is worshiped here

By what? an empty structure—Who has abandoned this placeWhere the loitering intruderWipes the sweat from his face


50


THE PASSFor Richard Greene

If bitter sweetness be inside the heartIt will be rummaged for the lees of artPerry, mead and cherry to the tasteDrunk of all the orchard will not wasteIn touch against a calyx and a petalThere resounds a loud celestial metal

Although there be no palisade or guardBillet for a passage or a wordOnly those whose innocence is shownMay wander through the orchard though aloneThe bell of their fruition will increaseIn resonance till diapason cease

And then in silent ringing of the earsThe unforseen reality appears


51


AND HERE IT ENDS...

Nothing need be done—leave it here or take it awayYour gift is false and useless, a tray of dead nettlesWe won’t accept what you bring, we would rather dieAnd so we do, from the ocean up, from the ocean downOur neck, our blue velvet necklace, our necktie of white foamThe sky is our head and the earth is our shoulder

Sleep, sleep, poor monster, sleep, cummings’ mankindA cloud is coming to visit you by day and nightNo, no, they won’t know who you are, these barbariansBut you will descend around them while they sleepCover their eyes with soft lids of grey condensationAnd when they will awake is no one’s business

Now, as they are sleeping, see, a something great approachesOut of the hallways and columns of the resting fogWhich is a temple of its own, columns indistinct,There’s something there, I can’t see what it is, but dreamA form of majesty, a form of dreadful terror, overwhelmingFrom the ark in this great temple of the sleeping world

From the ark, whose door is open now, someone has opened itOr now by itself the door swings open and the foot descendsThe ball of the foot rests on the flags before the open arkAnd though the bedrock of temple runs as deep as magmaIt will shake and twist, deform with this prophet’s weightAnd the voice will rive and penetrate even to the deepest dream

Poor monster, struggling to be awake and yet unwilling—And here it ends....


52


THE SKULL OF ADAM

He murdered a man in a dream—they arrested himNot in a dream but in real life—How did the men of the law find out? How could they tell what a dream is about?

They brought him before the judge for arraignmentWhom did you kill? I killed the law,A lady in a robe of white and vairSilk from worms and ermine hair

We’ve got you now, you sleeping crookThere was blood on my eminent chair this morningWhere Persephone sleeps when I’m not in sessionWe’ve caught you thanks to your confession

Here in the church of the sleeping MessiahWe keep the boys ready to watch for a dreamThen we send them all out again on patrol—Just then Christ’s bells began to toll

The bells of the churches I’ve heard in my lifeSounded all together at onceAnd the doors of the holy of holies swung open—Revealing the skull of our father Adam


53


GADFLY

Everything forgiven, not forgottenIn grains of schist there is a memory of magnetism,In souls of the offended pain preserved

Who offended you, sickle-jawed black fly,Rubbed cloth against an abdomen of glassSo that you made the back hairs of the faithful rise?

There no written record made, not by penBut in the shapes of waves, curls of foamIn cycloid breezes, in your infamous conceit

Therefore, gadfly, do not boast of bitingNor of a flow of blood against my inner eyeFor where you bite my true blood does not flow


54


THE GRADIENT

Late summer rain rattling the leavesScratching white claws at the silt-gorged riverUnder the sediment the water sinks and flows

If it rains more heavily the river will climbHaul its own skin with brown flippersTear at the tree roots, dig at the burrows

Amorphous ghosts, the rain clouds haunt Revenant and spectral in the southern skySpread and raise soft mittened hands

This mind born sixty years before is also a riverExpressionless, flowing between two eyesBearing a blankness from stone to sea

And yet at night it rises, rebelsFills with nightmare eroded banksEating with acid all the green daylight

Under a bland, impervious tensionWhere nothing shows but a cat’s paw scratch Something runs along the bottom, screams in water soundlessly

Is it my muffled, suppressed soulMy drowned man rising to see the daylightWhich does not exist after full midnight?

God be with us before and behindThe midnight darkness that leads to dawn,For we must fill where the gradient goes, and crawl ashore


55


KING HAROLD’S WHELPS

In JomsvikingsagaKing Harold heard the whelps barkInside the bitches before they were born

Sounds to me like fateAnxious to be up and running,Biting

Can the Blessed VirginOr the white ChristHave anything to do with this?

Let King Harold read what he wantsIn the signs from a bitch’s belly—Our revelation is ended

But the echoes die runningAnd this close-spun hanging skyReels out its multicolored folds

They cover much groundTheir long teeth heavy, sharpAnd those who fall down are devoured

But now to the Blessed Virgin I repairStupidity without hope and yetHer voice somehow restrains the running pack

The truly weak are not cleverEven in their own regardAnd yet she answers, as her own whelp moved


56


CAHOKIA MOUND

A thousand years agoA thousand after ChristThey planted corn and let it growCut it with a sickle made of stoneOffered it up to a God unknownNear the Mississippi in a town below

Cahokia MoundCahokia MoundA temple to the unknown God of cornA hill of heaven above the stormCahokia Mound

A thousand years agoA thousand after ChristPeople of the corn in sun and rainRaised the earth of the fertile plainTo give to a God they did not knowWho makes the corn grow far below

Cahokia MoundCahokia Mound

They killed their useful slavesTo attend them in their gravesInside the hill where they buried the deadWith corn they used to make their breadThey thought that heaven was like the earthWhere corn was the food of the after life

Cahokia MoundCahokia MoundA thousand years agoA thousand after ChristA temple to the unknown God of CornOn a mountain built above the stormCahokia MoundCahokia Mound

The city of the hillWhere slaves were buried and killedGrew big as any that went beforeTen thousand doubled and thousands moreEating as much as they could hold

57


Made by the slaves they bought and sold

Beneath Cahokia MoundCahokia Mound

Rich earth becoming poorFrom the corn that grew beforeDespised the people who grew the cornBent their bones, their teeth were wornBy the stones they used to grind the flourThe honeyed earth became the sour


One by one they leaveLike corn let through a sieveThe town of the hill is left aloneOnly the dead in the mound to mournThe sweetness of the corn they ateAnd there for the grace of God they wait

Cahokia Mound

Now we raise our ownMountains to the moonIn the plain where the Mississippi flowsThe corn and wheat of heaven growsAnd we live beside the moundsOf our cities and our townsJust like Cahokia MoundInside Cahokia MoundBeside Cahokia MoundTen centuries after themA thousand years again


Pavel Chichikov

58


STALIN WAS A GEORGIAN

Some say Stalin was a GeorgianBut I know he was a philistine:A mongrel and a mezzoSang a on a recordWhile he laughed and drank and feasted—Such people rule the world

Such people are the cleverWho rule by their obtusenessPowerful and witless—So let us grow our pumpkinsHanging on a fence—We do not rule the world

Let us grow these squashesWith bright lurid headsAnd many seeds insideHanging by a fuseOf thick green fiberUntil they explode


59


AS I LIVE

His tumor goes from spine to brainO my Jesus, where have you been?Don’t you know the child’s in pain,My gentle one? And for what sin?

Sixteen years old and never harmedAnother soul, a temper sweetAs berry in the sunshine warmed—What blame reduced him to this state?

What fissure in the health of graceSplits him from us, stemming lifeFrom one who may not know the tasteOf darling love—a child, a wife?

Where do you go since curing usOf demons epileptic, deathItself in Lazarus,Willfulness and blindness both?

Why abandon those begunThough wretched agony You chose?Are you not God’s only Son?Let live—why give precocious woes?

Poor thing, he will be treated, leftBy You to other than Your mercy—Not long a baby, now bereftOf any benefit of pity

Or of appeal for those who dieBefore the time there is to live—If there is justice let it lieAnd weigh in favor of Your love

As I spoke I heard Him say:I will be with my child today,And as He suffers so shall I,And as I live he will not die

Pavel ChichikovSeptember 1, 1999

60


EXILES

The Lord has beasts for eyes to see,Wolves for legs against the prey,Nostrils of the wooded deerTo smell, a thicket hare to hear

But in the desert He’s a kiteBracing wings against the weightOf heavy sun and rising air—Azure emptiness His lair

Riding on the waves of spaceLoneliness reveals His face,In the oceans of his eyesExiles swimming in disguise


61


SOME WHO RAGE

Father, brother, Christ be with usFrom our own bleak anger save us

How to save you, child when IWas forced in agony to die?

Can I be a sword and shieldWhen I in meekness had to yield

How to be a steadfast guideWhen God from Herod had to hide?

No violence could I, mild and calmI preached humility, not harm

Nothing roofed, without a cloakI let the rain upon Me soak

Sheltered not by home nor lair—Wet the furrow - I slept there

No power had I over men,They did with Me as they would send

Never blocked nor dodged a blow,Welts and wounds upon Me grew

How then shall I save you childFrom brutal men remorseless, wild?

Then I could not save MyselfNo more than heifer from the knife

But Christ in glory, you are God—Upon a throne you judge the world

Judge I will, but now I sitTo see My world made composite

Some are gentle, some not so,Some who rage I will let go

Pavel Chichikov—September 3, 1999

62


VANITY OF VANITIES

Life has always been as dryUnder the feather comforterAs who are you and who am I

Life beneath a cover sheetThat moistens breath and warms the feetCopulation, food and lies

Or so it seems to those whose foodIs power and its interlude—Self-flattery, deception and amenities

For who is smarter than he thinksOr in his estimation shrinksExcept when faking his humilities?

Is it cynical or fair?That’s neither here and won’t be there—No one else beside you cares

No one else asleep at nightWhen no one hears, a voice, and brightFlashes under eyelids, no insanities

Sane as is the daylight comesClear and lucid, sharp as drums—A voice that cancels your profanities

Negative or positiveInflowing or outflowing love—That is the measurement, not vanity of vanities


63


SHE IS AN ANGEL

If you want to meet an angelGod will make the assignationMake appointment in the woodsWith a queen of spinning harbingers

A woman walking on the trail will know youTake you to a tall and robust poplarHere’s a door in one side of the boleAnd a spider on the tree will see you

Child’s-hand-large she is, mouse greyWith claws the color of tobacco stems,Her black eyes under brows, a broad grey head,Straddled for the meeting, met by chance

Angel, angel, what form of body matters?Mistress runs inside her deep grey houseLeaps between the living and the dead—It is no chance to see her body’s thickness

She is an angel, come to bring good news:The other world is by a chamber fastened,Silk to this unchanceful universe,Sends messengers to be of service—how?

By meeting, meeting in unchanceful placesMore than mortal is the spider in her walnut size,She has whole galaxies in silk to catchWhite stars and meteors, asteroids and grains

So be of cheer the finest, best of cheer,Best of cheer though spider death is close—Here grows hollow poplar and the doorThrough which no sorrow enters, no remorse

Branch of hawthorn, root of oak,Branch of hazel, branch and bud—Scale the bole, the rind and bark, The web that binds the blossom of the world


64


THE QUIET ONESFor Carol

You thought my poetry was sadPerhaps still do, alive in truth’s domainSince what is not resolved in lifeComes afterward to culmination

Then no metaphor existsThere is no simile outside of timeThere is no eloquence like endingNo metric but perfection of the sane

Your taking up of sadness in anotherIs what I know of you—Sensitivity, respect for sadnessMoves me to a wish to know you better

How possibly to know you, Carol?A cosmos seems to separate communion—Yet you knew me from my being’s workAs you by God were known

As you will know Him—as He knew griefWhen as Man he moved among us quiet ones


65


STORMING HEAVEN

Let’s have a round of applause for the deceased, they saidCarol, sit up and take a bow, the case is closed, the lid is liftedAnd as these humans beat their palms together, the angels Dropped their own and leftThe poor dead body, still not resurrected, tried to rise and walk But could not on its own


66


PRIEST IN FLIGHT

The hummingbird, whose sleek long head,Stiletto-beak sips up its bread,Perched or hovering addressesA working fig’s fermenting juices

And if the sun be strong todayIntoxicated will it beWith wine fermented on a tree—Sweet for blessing and to pray

Its whole short life a ritualOf chalices on stems of trees,So if with bread and wine it’s fullThe hummingbird prays where it pleases

A bird as graceful as it floatsAs grace has made its drunken meat,With dotted eyes as black as notesIn psalmody notation sheets

For all is prayer that is alive,That hovers, rises, rolls and dives,Prayer is praise, deserves delight—A church on stems, a priest in flight


67


THE PURE

A larva thicker than my thumbWith scarlet prickles on its head,Segments aqua-turquoise greenFat and idle in the road

Hiker, bend and dumbly stare,No nomenclature names the fiend,Inoffensive, unaware,It lacks the movement to offend

Hideous, green nightmare worm,Too gross a dream of earth to squirm,But where’s the harm in ugliness?The slug’s too pure to leap at us

Though we if we were stared at wouldAttack the squatting, bite the rude


68


ANALOGUE

The forest road goes on, won’t stopAs time itself were dead, corrupt—One thinks: I am chastised in hellWhere seconds into centuries swell

Around this bending, and the nextWhere dusk and morning intersect,The hollow where the path beganHas just behind me started in

This is no senile metaphorBut green perpetual encore—Between the poplar and the oakA thousand mornings died, awoke

Outside of time, inside this hillOf declination of the willI am recruited to the raceThat’s seen but seldom in this place

It is forewarning, only signOf what I may accept, decline—Tremendous travel, never spent,Infinities of increment

There at last I see the up—Ward inclination of the fogInto which I blindly step—Farewell moment, analogue


69


SWEET VENUS

Swift to rise sweet Venus hoversUp against the coming dawnThough shame to those who vision eros—She is above all copulation

One who conquers inner sightWith reverie and bright perfectionEven in the bed of night—Jewel of daylight assignation

She has no speech and yet she speaksCrescent limbs and yet she movesNo face but all attention takesNo self and yet she is beloved


70


LET ME HAVE EYESFor Mark Shea

I’ve always wanted badly to go home, but never had oneEven home was never home, and all I ever had was imitationOf real books, real bed, real window and a veritable viewOf what? Those mountains and their passes had no limitation

That sun which rolled between two cols into a diamond skyItself a diamond lit by facets into which it poured itself—No, but now too gemlike is this metaphor, for diamondsOf this sort are living things, creatures which can laugh

Creatures, living things, all things alive which breatheTheir own thick atmosphere and spread their wingsTo float and rise and circle like the eagles of the earthAbove, around and toward a destination great and blinding

Stars like birds and in their sky another sun to riseInto a morning—Lord of living beings, let me have eyes!


71


ALL ABOVE IS ONEFor Jan Shea

Gentle is the dusk at eveningFuror of the dawn departingSlowly distant darkness growingOnly in the band unblushingSlowly, faintly royal, withdrawingColor of the day is leavingEast is fadingNight upcomingFrom the mountains day is waningFar away the stars are mountingSky of wakefulness upholdingEarth, and all above is one


72


A VISION

The sky is hard, blue-white and dryTwo towers in it, curve-bent, highFrom broadened bases, then thin stems,Then widened stories, segmented

A future, but which one? could theyBe living beings which can swayInto a thin imperial windWith nothing in the air to bend?

Thin atmosphere, a planet sweptOf every living thing exceptTwo geometrical and tallBuildings which may lean, not fall

Who can see it? I can seeThis day lit, sterile scenery,But how? What does it mean, may ITest improbability?

Are they chambered plants which growA thousand meters into now,My clean and sterile hypnogogueIn vision, brightly lit, resolved

Down to the finest line and shade—But what are they? Machines self-made?And is it Earth or some place otherThat I shall in my mind discover?


73


BY PASSION SAVEDFor Maria Rocco

A friend wants to sit on God’s lap, like a baby,In fact, demands her placeYes, to be His child like a human child

O my God, to rest my head against Your chestBut not like a betrayerThat would be a rest indeed, my Lord

Listen to me then, for at the altar I have satLike an infant weepingFor my loneliness without You, at the flame

Which burns forever in the window of Your houseUntil I come to YouWaiting One, sleepless One, my Lord

I will be on a journey, for when the Earth rotatesAnd follows out its orbitI am carried like a star along with You

You are the waiting One, and the travelerThe Father and the homeless OneThe Savior and the One by passion saved


74


UNDER THE VEIL

The further I from homeMore courage to return Venus in the daylightJupiter and Saturn

The sun beneath them lifts A veil of blue and redBut who can bear to seeBeneath, a jeweled head

And yet I must come nearAlthough I will be burned,Fear demands from fearFearlessness unearned

Closer to the greatGlobe of yellow heatIt was my home, my fateMy soul’s ancestral seat

In it I must liveThe center of His eyeWhere all His mercy thrivesBurning though I die


75


THE DEATHLESS STARS

I went back to the old betrayer—A building on 18th street Where KGB used the embassy as a yellow cover

And on the staircase where I’d watchedThe fish Sergei bite a dangling woman bait,I saw again the double image

A slow-motion image of a small bulletPenetrating the skull and brainOf my old drinking buddy, Sergei Motorin

We are the fish in the temporal sea of timeIn the net, on the hook, on the gaffOf that bloody devil called Self-Tempter

Soon Russia will leave its old town house—There will be no more eternal RussiaBut even should she fall to the wrecker’s ball

The staircase still will rise in air—Whatever may replace the shabby carpetThe stupid man will kiss the treacherous woman

As long as I can thinkAs long as I’m aliveLike the Indian net the stairs will rise and fall

Those who climb will still descendInto the basement where the wall is hosedAnd the blood of stupid men is washed away

Appetites will always beGood friends and treacherous betrayers, stillAs if all deathless stars had appetites to burn


76


LIKE US

Christ will take care of meNot because I’m learned, or good, or piousBut because I weep to see Him on the crossAs I weep for myself—One tear will save

One tear is like a thorn pressed downAnother is a nail in the handA third is a spike in the footAnd a fourth is a spear under the ribs

If my flesh turns green in agonyLet it be His fleshAnd if I weep, as He weptLet it be the human tear of pity

Let it be the human tear of pityThe most rare treasure, relic of the death of graceAnd sign of its resurrection,For I weep to see Him suffering like us


77


IN HARD TIMES...

In hard times the human mind goes dead,We only live in sleep—or under growing trees—One who walks can often wander, pixy-ledUnder a rain of butternuts and hickories

Out of time to no where in a green shade, Butternut rains hard and green on dry daysIn early fall to meet white mirrors as they fadeInto images of self-reproachful faces

I might have been alive, was born a live thingBut gave my life away for some forgotten reason,Now I wander out of time—who will hangFalling butternuts back onto their old places?

So fall, you have to fall, there is no other way,O my living Lord, as You descended on your day,As You the sacrifice, so we forgetfullyGave away our living selves and may go free


78


THE ACCUSER

“What to expect from the poor creatures?They lie, they cheat, they kill, they slander—Let them alone, do you slaughter fliesFor sucking the fluid in new lambs’ eyes?”

The accuser now becomes the defenderReversal of roles, but his eyes are holesEither way gazing, fore and behindInto the skull or out of his mind

He’s so affable, friendly, forgivingAs long as *his* interests are well in hand—Emptiness moving, emptiness gallopingHe’s the horizon under the wind

The Good Lord pities, loves, forgivesYet bears the weight of what He knows


79


THE MODEL

The Hickory Horned Devil I saw two weeks agoGreen and fat as my thumb, with scarlet hornsIs now a regal moth, or frozen stiff belowThe poplars in the first of the grey rains of autumn

Accordion segmented pleats, without a sound,Not even a wheeze, it pronged along the groundGreen as sprung leaves, startling pastelHorns defensive bloody—fore, and aft as well

Harmless savage, seeming hideous and weird,Needing to be metamorphosed, fed and fearedLike us, slow sweeping through the poplar and the beech—It had much more of satire in it, much less of reach

Think seventy yards of years from where we’re bornHoping to be bred perhaps, avoided, sticking out our hornsUntil a line slow rain-drawn, wind-drawn in the dustStops beneath some dummy roots, or in the caves of August

We rest in silence, rearranging then our soulful partsInside the silken studio of death—that mightiest of arts


80


BEAUTIFUL TO BEND

A dead hornet blowing on a window sill,Swept-back wings, clot-twisted abdomenPlayer of the wind, the cold wind’s kill,Thick thread of guts, the color of dried venom

Dull carapace, jaws at ease, all facets turned lowYou were the one who hovered and was stillAbove the grey spider in the long shadowsHovered, bow-bent your glossy back to kill

You are, you were more divinely swiftThan all stump-footed, leaning mammals are,To the eye, to all the senses of His grace a giftOf sliding white shadows, death’s avatar

As it will stop above us, see us and descendBow-backed and shining, beautiful to bend


81


BAFFLED

Baffled on the dogwood, dead another season,The downy woodpecker with skull cap scarletAnd the talmud of the beetles in its scrollStudies dead texts of runways under velvetBut comes up no more learned for its work—Rolls its wings and domino bright fuselage

Bird, did you see the sky and last night’s riot?All the clusters crowding to be seen A swan with one bright eye, an eagle and a bull—The pub behind the Milky Way was fullOf drunken hunters, hunters keenTo catch a galaxy, a bear in flight

It is serenely joyful there, they say, if youA bird believe those ancient menStudied in migrations of the famous stellarMonsters, whales and fishy stars—But this is now and parables were thenThat in the sky the large unearthly grew

So big that only in the zodiac could theySchool between the setting and the rising day,Make lacustrine patterns for mnemonics sakeSplash the glossy satin of a cosmic lake—Ripples on the surface and a cat’s paw creaseSturgeons of the chasms of the universe

No, I am prosaic, only hunter of the meekSmall myself to peck and pry the under-bark,I have no business with or interest in the skyNo appetite for lurid pictures, self-completing lies,But see how startling is my glossy black and white—What need have I to glorify my small soul at night?


82


PARABLE OF THE KNIFE

My feet are slashed as if by knivesNo one can tell from where,There is no knife or instrumentOr any person underneath the floor

The smoke alarm went off“It’s just the devil in the basement”No smell of smoke aloftHis smoke is windless yet the fire bends

Beneath us, poking upward fromNo one knows where,He jabs his six-tined pitchforkFrom the basement smoking in the air

Dead space belowAnd if we stamp all his deadness—Didn’t you know this wouldn’t last, he saysYouth and all won’t last

Stamp all you want, I’m coming upI’m coming up the stairs to slash your feet—Cripple now with torment, cripple stepAnd I will cut you down like wheat

Every step I take is running bloodEvery breath I have prepared,Wheat and blood become a foodSo that the world be spared


83


THE FAMINE

Hear the psalms serenely chantedWhat world do they sing, I wonder—Surrendered children lost in hungerFood of love in scarcity

Father, who has been abandoned?Cold and dark the empty fieldYou with us outside forsakenRageful too the weakened child

But where the inner room is warmRage abounding, sorrow, harm,Grief, abandonment—a ploughCuts a furrow in the soul

You who could have been unbornSatisfied above the starsShow your forehead with its scars—Crown of earth and crop of thorns

Where’s the crop of Your salvation?Here’s a famine, wheat and weed,Bring the harvest of compassion,Hungry love we need


84


GOD THE FATHER BREATHING

Vega stands on tip-toe, balancing on Lyra,Not to move dear lady or you’ll tip the scale,But no, she’s overbalanced now and headed south—There she goes, pan dipping toward Australia

Pass Altair on the eagle’s wing, pass Deneb on the swan, round the slippy pole,Giddy as the feathers flap against the zenith—There you go, dipping into ocean’s stream to swim

The Lord weighs every star, finds them good and hot,Heavy, even gold exists in those that bake for long—The swimming whales of space/time pop them in the mouthAnd chew until the crumbs of time fall out

Molten crumbs fall down through space until they lodgeOn plates called planets, where they grow big heads,But no one knows exactly what they’re worth—Hours, seconds, minutes and their fractions

Then some creatures pull them up and brush them off,Classify and segregate by temporal weightThe time they’ve harvested, roll it in a cloth—These are living stories that they tell themselves

Then, at night, before the creatures go to bedThe hungry ones unwrap the fruits of time and show them round,Polish all the shiny ones with steamy breath—Then eat them, this is what the Lord has given for their livelihood

But Vega she’ll be rising soon, tomorrow morning,Hidden from all prying eyes by daylight’s glare,Streaming with the waters of her ocean bath—God the Father breathing, dries her hair


85


HOMELAND

I saw the first swamp maple blushNot in air but in the stream—Scarlet dabbles, garnet fishIn the river, far from homeWhere carp are jade-and-diamond jewels,With fins of ivory, gills of pearl

My home where autumn has been cutBy jewelers of the living trade,Blood of ruby grow the leavesAgate are the deer in rut—All that breathes and moves is madeAnd yet no artifice betrays

Impractical and yet existsThe unbelievable in place,Which does not move and yet evolvesBy evolution of the face—Expression of the mood of blissThat in a looking-stream dissolves

I am an exile as I go,By seeing here I can see far,Into a dish I dip my handInto a cup salvation pours—From it spilling from the brimThe river of my homeland flows


86


MARK, Chapter One

The desert is white, the tent is blackThe lambs are tethered to a peg in front—There are no shadows except insideThe oval entrance to the cave

Who sits within, is it God the Father?No one can see inside His darkness,Yet God is wandering under noonDeep in the sunlight of the dove

Come down the river, in the shallowTepid water, wash your face—Are you a man or the one to come?Bring a lamb, it must be slaughtered

No, not yet, the ewe is waitingMother Israel, suckle, graze—Take your lamb and lead Him outInto the wilderness of the devil


87


MARK, Chapter One—again

Pigeons fly ahead of Him—do they notice?Creatures know the stepsBut do they see the spaces in between?

Do they know the angles where devils live?The caverns in a sleep where seamsOf coal-like evil run cold black and thick

Or like a louse entangled in the hairUncleanly lovelessness makes nits of evilIn the matted head

The fevers and the sweats this Man can healAs easily as someone cards the woolOf a healthy dirty ewe

He compels, but not with force—No force is needed for He knows the passwordThough no tongue articulates His proper name

One who in the garden walked,Let in the creatures he had made beside the river of causalityWith clay of new-born frigid stars


88


MARK, Chapter One, again...

Ugly is the imp of pride A double who can fit insideThe satchel of a human hide

Every self-referring lieAssumes its own identityBy gyrating convulsively

But He, without a shaman’s trick,Thrusts his hand inside the pokeGrips a demon by the neck

Do you think, you hypocrite,It was an epileptic fitAnd not a devil in the brain?

Some have illnesses and someAre tight with devils as a drum—The spirit does the greater harm


89


ASTRONOMICAL UNITSA Spacefarer’s Hymn

Step back a few a.u.’s—you see How far back before you disappearAnd Earth vanishes. Not far...

Calming...isn’t it? To beAnonymous, cosmically,Lost in the sun’s glare

Where ice is hard as frozen steelFind the flesh and bloody mealOf Christ’s epiphany

It lies there, inside the crownWith which the Lord surrounds the sunApogee, invisibly...

Calming to be lost withinThe finite sphere of space—defendUs Lord from the beginning to the end


90


MARK, Chapter one—Simon’s Mother-in-Law

If He were only a physician who would praise Him?The sun makes me dizzy, and at night my dreamsMake a deep silence—the pines are deepAbove Mount Tabor—now the lion and the panther

Smell young sheep inside the shepherd’s cave—aboveMount Carmel red streaks falling in the sunAnd the purple cliffs of Golan turn and walk awayFrom the sinking plain of Jezreel—night from night

Now He lays His warm hand on my neckAnd as he strokes my fright climbs into my eyes—Terror in the corners of the house, sparkling likeDead straw on fire, then my fever goes and I arise

Here my Lord, is fresh bread, here labanHere is the olive and the green rush mat to eat upon

Pavel ChichikovOctober 1, 1999

91


MARK, Chapter One—the leper

He hovered above the sick manWho was a sea running beneath HimAnd from the surface tookAn imperfection, soiling it

A yellow foam called leprosyWax made indissolubleTook it in His own handMolding spray of infirm skin

Into a streamlined fishThen tossed it away into the waves


92


MARK, Chapter One—the school

The sun doesn’t darken where you areIt is yourself against the sun

Leave me here, I will not goThe mud is warm around my feet

My hands are bleeding, dorsal finsOf dying perch make deep long wounds

The knots at the corners of woven cordAre hard to knit with slimy hands

But fish must tear them when they runIn panicked shoals to keep from dying

A thirsty man who sees cold waterFrothing darkly in a pot

I must rise up and stretch my legAcross the gunwale to pursue Him

A kind of thirst—He doesn’t wait—Curls His finger and climbs up

The scales and guts, so light and strong—We are the fearful ones behind Him

Death behind us drives us upLike fish who panic in the net

Up ahead I see the surfaceHere below there is no air

Breathe and jump, you dying ones,Drop your nets and follow Me


93


MARK, Chapter One—The Desert

"I tried to catch Him falling—I was fallingI am always in free fall and always masslessYet I have momentum, always toward the iron wallToward and through the schist, the gravel and the basalt

"Drier than the desert, always thirsty, yet with sharper voiceThan gravel, lungs electrostatic,Reminding Him of what I can afford—O trembling bell of sky, o ringing desperation

"Hurl Yourself away, so I may catch Your spiritAnd be caught like You, before the earth encounters me—I will give you apples grown of dust, but ferrite redAnd kingdoms of the black and eyeless torsos of volcanic plugs

"Christ rejects my banquet without foisson,Empty food and drink, but I will catch Him up—When on Golgotha’s shoulder I will throw Him from the hipFor though I always fall I am a wrestler"


94


MATTHEW

He called me as well as them—They worked with hands, their backs and legsAnd o the furrows in their facesBurnt brown biscuit of their skinsBrown and ruddy from the sunHe called me pale and blind from shadeA fig tree casting netted shadowsAbove the swimming city wall—

Worm of gold, worm of copperMy casting indolence of lifeTube of gold, tube of copper Left behind me as I squirmed

It was my self-revulsion that He changed and changed inside His speech

A racing pulse made slow He came from outside, one of usAnd like this universe itselfHe “just appeared”In quick and shining virtual love—My Christ become, yet now and brieflyJesusWho shakes the dew from off His cloakAnd rises from the harrowed field—Cloudy pearl of morning riseAnd show the picture of His faceInside your round and luminous lens

He has already gone with GodWe hear the starling words he scattered—Peck, peck, peckI pick up coinsThe words He spoke—Matthew, you old counting manHe was the Lord of birds and men


95


MARK—again

The call of crows, black and sureTheir opaque courage will endure—Into the heart of a rotting treeA viper sliding prudently,Latch on latch of locking scales,A fastened wisdom never fails—But we whose souls are falling fastComprise untouchably a caste,Loose inside a rotting soulElusive goes the human moleBlind and eyeless, hungry, slowTo understand what others know:The Lord has set His death againstSpoilers of His innocence,Souls departing from His lapSet the snare of their own trap,Take their own legs in their jawsAnd self-deceiving eat their laws,They will save nothing and no oneUntil self-eating, death is done—Who says this? it is a ManWho skirmishes in Borderland,His future withered, who knows why,And yet he battles recklessly,No one defends his back or flank,He lives for now—his Father thank


96


MARK—chapter two, paralysis

I’m paralyzed and cannot moveThe joy You gave me did not take

Do not bend my limbs, they break—Into a pool a coldness flows

Not so much my sin You healBut every sin—my movements fail

I am the dog with broken backThat shows what broken dogs may lack

No, say You, your muscles healAnd as they mend My own will fail

Whip and bullet, yours for mineBroken teeth and broken mind

I transfixed with spike and hammerGive for you a gift—My horror


97


INTERLUDE—Mark three

His triumph, though I saw no sign—Let’s have a drink or two—that’s only rightOur soul is here, our love, our master

No triumph yet, I looked outsideJust before the falling rain, the dusk—Let them set the table and bring wine

No triumph in the clouds, the north,No triumph in the devil’s dustWhirling in the dry fields, waiting

Light the lamps, bring two or three,Let the olive kiss his young cheekWith soft and burning ardor, light

Bring bread, burned at the edgesBut soft and honey-brown withinThe dark circle, like his eyes

Bring wine, violet as the shadowsAnd the green olive in its brine—He is ours for just a little while

We know his young appearanceBut why is he so old within?No less than some paternity defends him

And yet an old fraternity surrounds him—One of us, but old and indefectibleAs he defends his own, for now

But swiftly falling death around him,Shreds of a caul of deathHang from the workman’s shoulders, long lank hair

No triumph, not to live but certainly to die—It drives us mad To think of him both live and dead

Bring out wine and pour, we will be drunkUntil dark morning fills the autumn rainAnd leaping mud defiles him to the knee /Pavel Chichikov—October 9, 1999

98


CHECK-POINT

It is the deep, fierce breathingOf those who dream and sleep—Why? Where are they going? What do they see?

I dreamed my soul arrested—You have gone too far, they saidAnd you have no documents

Who are you? What are you?Can you prove who you are?But I had nothing, not even a name

But One who knew me, woke meGave me safe passage to a night of rainAnd the soft low noises of the night

My wife sleeping, and her dreaming—Where does she go, and does she flyTo where I have been?

Who brings me there and backIn the confines of my brainClosed now to the living?

It is not here, nor in any mind aloneFor we have shared the long distressOf exile in that place

We have already seenThe place of the deadAnd have returned


99


DEAD FROM BIRTH

When Jesus died so did the universeAnd all the earth refused to see the starsAnd was in turn unseen—black nothingness

Three hours, three minutes, three seconds—Three moments out of time and spaceA round bitch licked her lethal temporal wounds

The universe was dead, in darknessAnd all the dead to their congenial home returned—They felt a phantom sun warm up unburied bones

If He had not seen light again, who knowsWhat static hell would have concealed us here—The dead from birth can never know what corpses lose


100


SO HE DID SPRINGFor Dex Bruyns

Birds are not like us because They fold up air inside their claws, While through the slots of primaries A three space blows infinity

In three dimensions, not our two Birds keep a pinioned sky in view; Below they see the primates plod, Blind and flat in search of God

But even over both exist Dimensions more than physicist, Not three enfolded, nor of four But spaces folded to the core

That yet can open, flower out Above and in all things, without, Wings that fold a skin around Yet skeleton, a crux profound

It was both now and here Our Lord When through His hands and feet we bored, Took refuge in the tree that bends But flowers life which never ends

Sent He by limbering His spread A wind unfolding all the dead, For love did limber every wing And loft with us, so He did spring


101


AN ALPHABET

Elder, birch, oak and willowMaple, locust—scarlet, yellow—Who can read them, let them readA gospel of our Lord, a creed

For these are letters, much as oursExcept they fall from autumn bowers,Although chaotic, cipher-seemingThey mean at first that God is gleaming

But after that, as well, a textOf many different leaves and nests,Mythologies that float on slatesOf rivers falling in their spates

Or did you think that He would writeIn alphabets of twenty-fourLetters of the day and night—And each the vowel of an hour?

No, He writes a book insteadWith every sounding’s accident Of leaves arranged above the bedsOf rivers’ flowing consonants

And if you think that you can readWhat’s written on them from the seedThen tell us of the doctrine’s power—Bud and ovum, pollen, flower


102


POLARIS RISING

Are these dead like passengers gone overboard?Across the rail, caught in a slipstream, into the wakeDown under the running sea, bobbing up againWaving to incapable futility with briny fingers

Headway, into the wave-front, slap slap slapGliding fish across the knife edge of the wave—Polaris drowns below horizons, burning upAnd if a star can resurrect then why not us?

Go north—Polaris burns above the line of sight againOmniscient the look-out watching at the bow—Those of the starboard quarter are the souls who riseOn the port the drowning ones who may not rise again

The closest thing to seeing God since Jesus diedIs going north—Polaris rising is His resurrection


103


THE TREE

I saw someone sitting zazen at the side of a streamOn a grey boulder and a blue pad, in a rust-red robeWatching time inside eternity

For the soul can fill all time inside its own eyePeer out from its small aperture at the wave frontAnd the glinting foam above it

But what is here, now, is all and everywhereInside the maculation made by timeFlowing smoothly across the stream-rubbed stones

But here and there, here and there, I seeAnother self, another world, another shadowFall across the stone—then look

To the right of the sun as it rises, fallsFor there preceding it is Venus, day starAnd the royal sun in train

Just so, even in blue daylight, worlds invisibleTo those who look become the center and the vanguardIn the turning of an eye

We possess reflection, angle, incidenceAre nothing but phenomena of sense and reason—But the white leaves of light are turning

The white leaves of a tree that grows from hereBeneath another sun, shade and peace invisibleTo the boulder, and the blue pad, and the red robe


104


AN ANGEL GUARDIAN

A system crash—no, when last looked atSaturn followed Jupiter like a tame eweBut we are falling

As when the favorite sheep goes downThe ram with chocolate wool or eweWith snow around her

The system is made firm and fullNo error can creep in from the beginningTo when the phase is finished

But when each file is copied hereFatigue trips through lost passages of lightRepeats an erring orbit

This morning at the bedside of my dreamOld and tired but still vigorousAn angel guardian

He’s followed me so long he wearies:Just one more upward stride, then twoThen I will shear your wool

And what you’ve grown I will presentThe cunning and the innocentThe chestnut and the snow


105


TAKE NO CLOTHING

When you travel into the futureThe budget for luggage is nilThe energy budget

Therefore, no clothing to be takenOther than what you walk inAnd no heavy coinage

But as you go you see beside youA desert on one side, salt and smoothA shining skin

On the other see bright high mountains—Snow has fallen thereAs the continent rises

Blue stone, white snow, in the afternoonWhere the shoulder of seas splits the continentsFar in the future

There are certain creatures thereBut what they are can’t be seen exactly—This is forbidden—to see the streets

This is your mission, into the futureUnknown land, unknown timeExcept to you

And what is this? Simply to seeHow the country is strange, and yet the same?Desert and mountains above the Potomac?

Listen old fellow, already ten million,You are still young to understandWhat God is planning


106


IT IS YOU

I’ll go no further, so long a roadThrough countries uncountable, boundaries crossedMemory itself breaks down and weeps

No he said, hold on a bit longer—The elm trees dying, the maples their leavesThe oaks and alders wither, lament

But you will come to a place like othersLong familiar until you cross itAnd then I will see and welcome you

To a place in the world which is held in peaceA meadow lost in a great forestA wilderness made of only a step

And though all else will have been forgottenI will hold you fast in my memory,Which is the world of the world to come

It is you, it is you, come here at lastWaiting so long and yet a momentSince I saw you last, my dearest child


107


AND I WAS STILLFor Andrew Rutherford

How can I equal you in wisdom’s holiness?I’m still fighting, holy fathers, while for youWhatever judgment has been made is over—My God reward your resolute persistence

Meanwhile my folly beats me like a donkeyAnd then ignores me while I bray—How can a donkey withstand its own slaves,Too drunk and mean to find the road?

Sticks of fear, cudgels weighed of emptinessBut nothing can draw blood So much as melancholy—the donkey bawls,Deafens, bucks the rough unraveling rope

Then small hooves against the groundWhile the high priest tears his cloak and says:“What need have we for any further speech,Condemn the son of light” and I am still

Silently to bear the body of the murdered OneTo its interrogation by the darkness—Small stiff-legged bearer of the dead,Stupid and just big enough to move a corpse

But will I have a bladeful of the growing sun, and will I seeA great stone rolling from the aperture of death?Only if I browse beside the limestone tombAll night, without an urge to kick and wander off


108


THE PATHFor J.R.

I saw some one in his roomParkinson’s transfixing himLooking down attentivelyToward a thing I couldn’t see,Perspectives frozen, faded, blocked,His muscles crippled, keyed and locked—And yet released inside the mindWhere paths of pioneers unwind—Always like this, those who ailCan sense a ride beyond the trailWhere green and curving meadows runAlong to vistas flecked with sun

Now some forest, changed and oddGrows traces of the living God,Oak trees falling on his pathBlock accustomed ways of wrathBut show another, letting throughA different passage to the new—As if a forest could impedeBut grow around a brake of weedAnd this, the forest of the soulCould thick and thin and yet be whole,A world that no one might suspectOf tangled grace and intellect

Pavel ChichikovNovember 1, 1999

109


ROSES

Get me flowers, dark roses, dark of mind,Discard the faces, get me flowers, stems aligned,Give me stems, not faces, stiff and narrow,Bend them toward the ground, face of sorrow

They grow crookedly, stems recurvedInto earth again, without their flowering nerves—He said: Bring me flowers without heads,Twist, distort them toward their growing-beds

The dead call sharply as they rise: bring us flowersWithout faces, let the stems curve down,Dark roses, decapitated, necks supine,Limp, for you will bend them straight again

On each stem a rose of darkness, turning towardThe hollow of the sky, the risen Lord


110


SMOKE

A raccoon flat and spraddled in a hollow stumpFace up, stiletto teeth displayed, unboning corpsPuzzles yellow, poplar, hickory and locust leavesJumbled in a problem of an autumn storm

This like us, skin and teeth, black agate eyesBared to bite the chilly jaws of some surpriseAn empty suit of wordlessness, an actor’s weedsDamp with rain the coarsened hair, putrescence feeds

But what impersonation plays, which can showHow many steps were minced and made, forgotten nowDiving beetles, bullfrogs and some flicking fishThe carrion, the turtles in a winter cache

Death without a spirit, yet the soul is strongAnd those white teeth are splinters yet—one late song:A thrush inside a poplar smoke, two notes or threeAnd then like something low and fierce, the notes go free


111


MORE THAN ALL IN ALL

An orange flag atop a grey pole bendingA poplar tries to scratch an azure diamond—The silver cash of maple in NovemberShavings on the pavement of the temple

The whole world sacred, brazen is the riverTurning on the cobbles underneath it—Brazen door, an ever-running windowOn crystal hinges, brave and always bent

What am I? two-legged pole, white tuftFull with sixty years of feeding stuffed,Bending till my face against the skyObserves the flag and facets through an eye

Whose aperture is millimeters small,And yet through this sees more than all in all


112


SAILS

Who are we? we stand in placeUnwalking but the wind conveys us,Steadied by our grain we braceAgainst the seasons that would bear us

Under hill and slope we stretchTendrils that with stubbornnessHold the rugged sides of rain—Our pain is slow, but we feel pain

Life to death a phase transition—We know it well since we decaySlowly yet dissolve, becomeMatrices of cell and clay

Now we come by night and dayTo root ourselves in human dreams—Poisoned is all sanityBy moving loess and loam

We were tall and faced the windLike sails that moved the living groundBut now the forests are unpinnedEarth will come undone and drown


113


EVERYTHING WE ARE...

Everything we are ab ovo Wrapped up on a spoolMade of two united nowOn the spindle of a tube

An angel grasps the micro-handlesShakes out the living scroll—The document begins from cells,Another wrinkled soul

So long a roll of written vellum One goes blind or paralyzedIn trying to decipher—Eternity from here is over-sized

That which starts inside an eggTwists sideways, though immensely longUnrolls itself forever—arm by legBy innocence by song

Thus may not be brokenThough the seven seals be severedBy a stroke of fire, spoken When to Christ’s own hand delivered


114


LIGHT FROST

Frost the ground with a soft-palmed blowChill the cheek of a struggling child—Be still, my dear, you wriggle so,Be still awhile

Be still, don’t move, I’m with you nowYou need not spin from east to west—Fade or brighten, fall or growNow lie and rest

Immobile, white the skin of youInner pens display their sheathOf green and white intaglioStiffened breath

Are you dark? you will be lightDay and night, another year—Are you cold? But I will meltSublime death’s rigid fear


115


SEWN

An angel will repair your jacketBut only if you meekly ask it,Works a needle pierced with threadThat stitches up the holy dead

A jacket to be worn in winter,Warm no longer, yet in summerWarmth is stored inside the soilWhich burns as winter’s holy oil

With this garment of the sunHe makes the soul and body one—Though as angel he is knownHe has the soul to heaven sewn

Let these be fastened, closed aroundThe earth, the seed inside the ground—Let him work, he knows the threadAnd garment of the holy dead


116


THE RAM

I saw a little ram, nibbling on a bushThorns of electrum, yet he wasn’t touchedEyes of lapis lazuli, belly wool of silverGold were the hooves, silver the stomacher

Somebody made him, yet he wasn’t madeSomebody feared him, though not afraidNot what you are but what you must do—Electrum is yellow, lapis is blue

The goat must be sacrificed before he can liveHere is the horn to signal his grave,Abraham the office to take and discharge—Some get the blood and some hemorrhage

We too are things of beauty and lustTo be like electrum melted and cast,Flesh that’s pierced and the piercing knife—We are the artifact that comes to life


117


STONE

I am the stone dropped into waterFor when my soul was given me it sankInto the brown-red river of my life

Where is the bottom of the worldToward which I go, a sinking heavy stone?I sank before you, massive and alone

I am the stone dropped into waterBut as I am eternal light from lightI rose again, from time again, took flight


118


LIKE WALLS AROUND IT

An altar is a simple tableTwo candles at the forward cornersAnd yet it is a vehicleCome from where no one can goA New Jerusalem descending

I saw it as a stranger hereWings of fire now unfoldedTransient, prepared to springInto and beyond the worldA throne, a ship, a massive world alighting

And with it was eternityLike walls around it


119


ANOTHER ALTAR

After the funeralThe women remove the flowersThe ration of flowersFor the coffined dead

The women carry offThe potted white flowersAnd the body envelopedIn a wooden sheath

Is carried offBut the seed is elsewhereTo grow beforeAnother altar


120


RITES UNKNOWN

Do we die like waterTwisting down a drain—Scum and dregs departing?

Or rise like bodies Light and luminous—And does the soul ascend?

I saw my face reflected nowIn Christ’s clear eyesAnd turned away

Why was I born to dieExcept to put this burning selfBefore you?

Soul and bodySmoke and lightDeparture and return

The furniture Of rites unknownCarved in lengths from time


121


CENTIPEDES

Through oak trees once invisible now the dwelling showsAbove the brainless oaks—bright autumn in them—Fortunate to be alive? the used-up woods unshadow

Like the foyers in some bleak unsolemn roomlessTemple—there no chambers only galleriesOne upon the other through the trees

An inward-folding dusk—no meaning hereAll hollow after hollow, birth and death ill-buriedConcentric nights and spirals of the same

Resting states or slowly burning selves—Skin the trees to see the living centipedes,Splayed legs with tiny claws resenting light

Run with spraddled wire props toward safety, darkness—We also inside darkness run Away from light with hundred legged minds

Our simple eyespots, pigments of a soulSee light from light of shadowed godhead,Shapes too far above us, indistinct

And here, unblinded reflex of His charity instinctual,The light remains when I strip off the bark


122


PEGASUS

Crossed like flags the saplings growShadbush red and maple yellowSignals of the riding nightRed and yellow bending bright

Soon it comes, a forest fadesOn scattered oak and maple shades,Now the southern fullmoon risesGrey the forest of horizons

Only two the hooves I seePrinted near a grey oak treeAs if a horse with oars of wingsSettles rampant—then it springs

So does heaven in the duskOf human beings landing thusStand for moments of moonriseSpring uprising in our eyes


123


AVOS

The rotting black-masked corpse I saw Putrefied by morbid lawIs covered with mycelia,Bags of chaos, tooth and claw

Narrow snout and snapping eyesDisorganized, the food of flies,Within a round and porous reteFungous baskets, fruiting meat

Where the ivory pointed teethThe scavenger’s excited breath?Bundled in a ball of death,A reticule of nothing worth

Could timely spatial throws of diceMake a raccoon happen twice?If time were long enough, a gameWhich plays too long to have a name

But Jesus with a bag of tricksCan make a raccoon out of sticks,Foam and ferment, space and timeAnd this a poem out of rhyme


124


THE PIT

Across from the circus maximusA pit ten meters deep

A black stub now, but thenA tenement below the palaces

On the Palatine, white marble cloudsOf the fallible divine

They will find us then, look downOn this forgotten era, underground

Deeper than the tenement, deeperThan the Palatine will be by then

No more the ocean crumping loudOn the landshore, cheering crowd

As the horses break for home,Round the spina toward the finish line

Or the echo on the palace soundWhen the blue or green are crowned

And we like scallop shells or crinoidsA hundred meters underground, our teeth

Impressed in slate and sandstoneNone of us but that forgotten tenement

Where brains and minds once skulled—This is the famous carboniferous below

Who will see or know you there—What will you be when bodies rise in air?

Let the cross of souls grow slowly nowSo that the twig tips of the soul may show

Above the deep and lasting trench of time,That broad scar in the wounds of God

Pavel Chichikov—November 22, 1999

125


THE DOE

He hauled the carcass from the roadDumping in the bush and brambleA signal symbol of humanity:“Get rid of all the evidence”But One came back

A brown doe wandered on the road last night—A big car found her, threw herTo the verge and there her body stayedUntil the morning sunExposed her, guts and belly

Each mind is a hermitage, each soul aloneConfronts itself, a hut of thoughts and prayersA skete inside the skullUntil the doe of God comes nearIn the crystal clearing

Into the court-yard comes the wild deer, deathPeering through the windowOf the minding soulWhich sees a big-eyed dazzled one approachOn dainty hooves


126


FIRST MYSTERY

Her shape is melting in the chair’s shape—She bends like burning glassShe’s eighty-six

More drooping than she was a month agoWho would be eighty-five or ninetyShrinks by inches, blown glass bowl

Bending frail and limpidSoon to shatter, then she’ll break—Is it months or years to live, or weeks

Into which the glass is poured by breath?That which God has sealed is openLight refracted into binding self

Casts a spectrum on the further wall—That which passed and passes throughThe lucid, brittle soul

Still persists, she will not shatter Though the envelope of matterLoses every memory but this:

First mystery of death, first bliss


127


THE CAPTIVE

A scarlet macaw in a cageA flash of blue on yellow wingsA naked quill the pointing tailIn a cage for stripping things

A wrenching beak to rotate onYellow knuckles large to gripThe perch of pinewood where it setsStagnant water where it sips

I too in a cage where ILive and twirl myself and dieThough in close proximityThe bars are blurs and I seem free

There till some One lets me goThis will be the earth I knowA screen of wire called the skyA cage around me I call I


128


LET HIM FINISH

I saw a man with paper skinAll his life was wrinkled thereBoyhood, childhood written in—Let him finish telling more:

I see my dog a street awayShe won’t let me bring him back:Momma I can see him nowBut Momma has to go to work

I love the dog, I’m only fourA collie colored brown and whiteLet him finish telling more:The dog has never left my sight

Something wrinkled in his mindA stylus of the rippled worldMade a pattern he can find:Let him finish telling more


129


VAST AND VISIBLEFor Andrew Rutherford

I always see a crowd and hillLong shadow but no stronger lightInstead a dusk that leaves no corners

All who ever lived stand onThe region of a bordered field As big as runs a sea’s horizon

Every one is standing thereSome with faces toward the skyOthers, darkened, turn away

From that height who can seeA Bethlehem or brazen glow?All sources, suns and moons below

A region never known beforeCrowds of all the living moanExternally, like branches through which wind has blown

Here one sees the stars by dayBut are those stars, and is it lightOr something that resembles light?

It is no time or space, domainOf ruled and ruler waitingThough there is no more duration

I have been, will be there to seeThis unillumined mysteryWhich yet is vast and visible


130


THE DATEOur Sanhedrin, which killed God, a man,Was never brought to trial for murder—How can God be killedAnd who would bring indictment?

Where are all the lawyers, pro and con,The prosecution?Who would be the judge—And are the clerks the pecking ravens?

How long would the process be,And with what witnesses, since allAre gone to dust and wind,To other bodies generated elsewhere?

The murder weapon, would it beA maul and nail,The whisper of a destitute informer,Human nature, sin and folly?

No, we could not bear a voteIn which the losers are the winners,Never will be ready for a kingdomWithout markets white as creosote

Let heaven stay in glory in the skyLet clouds rain justice elsewhere,Here there is a drought of justiceAnd everyone stays dry and sooty

No trial, no publicity, alarms,No sentence and no testimony,No bailiffs, guards or sitting juryNo short-hand versions of the psalms

No guilt or innocence to dread,No corpses walking—This is the only life we haveWho will be wiser when the judge is dead?

The trial of man will never startIf we rip the calendar apartAnd paste the date of yesterdayAcross the number of today /Pavel Chichikov—November 30, 1999

131


THE END OF THE WORLD

A place of secular judgmentThe murderer sits at a table,Like a moon stretched to an ovalFluorescent light above a grill

The judge on a rostrum, clerk beneath himTapping keys to a glowing screen,Lawyers, defense and prosecutionClerk and bailiffs, no proscenium

A ring of seats, a jury boxLaw, the revolver’s hammer cocks,Better than shooting outright, neatIn a raw stone basement or in the street

A knife thrust in, a blade in the chestA fight over drugs, profit and loss,The body missing, how could it sitIn this windowless paneled round cockpit?

But everything else that’s needful here,No light or space we dead require,Only questions, protocolIn a windless, sunless padded hall

Where are we now, where have we gone?Here no day or night or sun,Only a script we write ourselvesTo be read until the end of the world

Pavel ChichikovDecember 1, 1999

132


CAVALCADE

It’s too late to destroy the Church The first and the last attempt a failureAnd now remote from the powerless Beyond the border of dissolutionScintillation named, unnamedTurns and spins dimensionless

A glory seen and called the LightThough light is only outer surfaceBut here a clue to inner meaning:Souls are born but never perish

Beyond the door that covers nightA great procession moves in brillianceThe outline shows in risky splendorAround the edges of our sleepWe at midnight peer aroundThe rough plank that we call the cosmosFaces blinded till we joinThe cavalcade of that bright stable


133


FEVER

God, His Son above the world:Bring each soul of them to MeIn sweating dreams of dusk and turmoil

Down through worlds of time and spaceHomeland, from you notice comesInto every knowing human face

Like a mirror into whichThe image has been burned by fireKindled by a flame of flesh

By their own light lead them upTo where there is a meal preparedServed on paten and in cup

If invited some will riseAnd others hold back from their blissThough I approach them through their eyes

Day by night I will returnIgniting flesh and blood with fireThough all the world may burn

If there be those not proper woodIn which My flame will not take fireOr spurn the heat of gratitude

Bring them cold and dark to meSo that My Son may touch them toHis Crucifix, to light by pity

And if they still will not take flameOr burn with pity for His nameI will release them to a cold immunity


134


THE MOMENT

A tulip poplar leans against a mapleLong neck broken, turgor-lessA brown bush of roots and earth cocked up —A soft pathetic pom pom in the dusk

That which is invisible unrootedHold-fasts of the tall trees By their own weight pulled up

The moment and the windThe fulcrum and the act of fallingWhat will they be?

The lightest seedThe streamlined seedWill not be crushed


135


SOUL’S NESTFor N.

Birds fly past a shuttered windowSeconds passing, lives crossingA field of vision called a human life

The end, so close, is out of reachAn interference pattern, a phase transitionA calculus of both, life and death

As when I almost lost you, found youIn migration—we who cross the oceansTo be bred for paradise, soul’s nest


136


LIGHT FROM CITIES

The vigor of the evergreenTracks of hares passed by unseen,Melting padprints in the snowMarks of claws in mud below

Marks of us in passing mightInvisible in voids of light—The modulated ripples ofOur photons lost in swarms above

Micro-creatures, summer frailLeaving spoor above a trail,Realms imperial insideThe paper buzzing of a hive

Light from cities—flash of dawnOn eastward windows would be goneBefore the passing of the wingsOf planet-pinioned living things


137


SILK

Silken soul that spins a threadFrom the living to the deadAround an immortalityHuman personality

Wraps around the baby mindLight and darkness, unrefined,Adds a layer from the tongueSpittle of a morning song

Spins a loving loyalty Around its immortality,Capsule of a shining stringMade by silken love unwinding

Then in silence love unwindsUncovering the self it finds,Moth of darkness, moth of dayShrivels up or flies away


138


THE INVALID

Come to see a baby wrappedIn loving in its mother’s lapIs it all that it will be?Hunger, thirst and sleep, come see

It growing in complexityAffection, knowledge, love and painGiving, taking, travelingWelcoming, disdain

In the end it will returnTo what before was never earned—Hunger, thirst and sleep, delightIn flying shadows, climbing light

Life that wanders on the wingGiving, taking, traveling—A moth around the dying-bedAmusing to an invalid


139


EVERY MOURNER

The angel of the LordWrote fragments of the skyMixed with salt water

A bill, indictment madeTen thousand years and moreOf bloody slaughter

Not care of home and kinA kind of mortal sinCalled murder

Infants and the oldWomen and the sickWithout quarter

Now for this I bringThe fouling of each springThe poisoning of summer

The cutting of my swordIs chaos and discordUntil the earth returns to order

This he wrote for allTo read within the soulOf every mourner


140


UNTIL FIRST LIGHT The acolyte set fire to my hairLike the candles that burnAt the corners of the altar

I am wax of the beesOf imperishable meadowsImmortal summers

The golden ivoryOf asters and cloverFirmly burning

In the room of a childI will burn all nightA sentinel in sickness

When she wakesI give lightTo the corners of the room

Until first lightI burn and meltAnd burn again


141


SONG BIRDS NOW

Fumbling darkness now is heardWhere once there was a mockingbirdAt song at least three years agoWing a flock of silent crows

Song birds gone, I hear them noneOnly now remains the sunAs from a flowering judas treeThe angry crows, a hawk to flee

Full of many songs in duskIn dawn, the many-throated guestAs sweet and sharp as flute and stringI heard them in the darkness sing

Afterwards these crows will fallAs sick as darkness over allWe as they release the skyAnd like the plumb line fall and die

Will also plummet and be done—Song birds now, I hear them none


142


JOY THE CROWN

Cut out the organs of speech, said the demonsAnd every child was made mute, some were madBut Christ brought their voices to themThey sang new praises, with the angels of GodTo the Holy Throne, with new voices

In heaven the columns are light upholdingYellow and blue as a summer morningThe windows the songs of the praising angelsThe meadows the rolling green melodiesAnd the winds the notes, the intervals—Tall are the calms of the windsAnd love is the green ever growingJoy the crown, the blue and the yellow


143


THE BAND

Far did He come, far and wideBut narrow too, where light can hide—Where does He come from? Hills unseen,Colonies in cloudy screens

His home is up or down or throughA far and near subjective view,Yet objective, real as rainThat runs in droplets down a pane

A lofty place where angels gatherBlue as sky in sunny weatherFull of day and night’s exchange,Sleep for waking, sight for dream

Therein voices praise His faceHis name, His brilliant innocenceIn light as supple and profoundAs pipe and drum and violin sound


144


THE WELCOMINGFor Margaret and Sue

He makes us His. But how, we areFrom any heaven low and far,And what in common can there beBetween known earth and mystery?Here all fails, all love must growInto bread wheat, bending lowThrough its own weight, until the scytheCan steel it down, though green and blithe—What common language, what suave tongueCan speak in heaven’s idiom?What grace of limb can match His graceWhat comely lineaments of face,What charm of gentle welcomingIs like the charm His angels sing?Could any host be so well-bredAs love which welcomes in the dead?There are no dead where heaven seatsAll loved and lovers at its feasts


145


CHORD OF MERCY

The Earth will endWhen empty of hymnsWhen empty of hymnsThe Earth will end

Each staff, each lineBody and mindShape and songRight and wrong

Mass and moteChorus, noteCrescendoAnd diminuendo

Then an answerFrom the deepChord of mercy—Sleep, sleep


146


BRIGHT ONE ON US...

Bright one on usA paneled roomSunlight gathersHis, assume

One foot timelessThe other stirs The bright one changesVision blurs

I’ll wait here, sitUntil He comesEntrance, exitDoorway suns

The long to waitAre not more cleverThe youngest will notWait forever


147


YOUR DOCUMENTS

Heaven’s door is closed, we’ll sit down here and wait—Who knows when the Lord will open up His gate?

Read it in your skin, the membrane on the pondThe silence of the birds, the leaves they sat among

Now in the purchase of every minute spentWe see the price of Nature’s costly armament

See the hinges moving, the wings of it unfurlThere beyond the threshold another, gleaming world

Can we go inside them, not before the warWe started has been ended, forbidden to ignore

Sea against the land, wind against the cloudsWho will give us shelter—who will give us shrouds?

Heaven’s door is moving, come and let us in—First you must be recognized by every searching wind

By every searching wind, your documents are read,The cover of your passport is the skin you had


148


LIGHT ALONE BEGINS

We live on a sea of lightA sea of GalileeA sea of David’s harpA sea of waves and stormsA sea of calmsBrilliant solid seaOn which one walks or drowns

Simon when he walkedOn the rough wavesThought it was a sea of waterBut it was a sea of lightAll things are lightAll things created made of light, duration

People of darknessRule the worldAll drowning one by oneBut a bridge of light is formingOver the sea, to carryLight from darknessAnd on it Christ will walkAnd take us with HimTo where duration endsBut light alone begins


149


IMMORTAL SKIN

In the darkness of the woodThe monkeys’ eyes have understoodSo down the branches lightly slideTwo monkeys closing at my side,Two gnomes in miniature with tailsAnd eyes as small as heads of nails

Every shadow of my wordsSwift about me, hummingbirds,Every folding of my tongueA whistle of the feathered onesAnd every mirror is a treeWhich shows the contour of my body

See my whiskers and my noseTo smell the hunters coming close,Pupils of the eyes of fateWhich in the forest night dilateBut something else, which I aloneMust carry, heavy, on my bones

Immortal skin which they admireAs I their innocent desire


150


TWINS

Not hard to see the land of ghostsNot far, I go this afternoon,Waiting for me, waiting closeSix feet under, soon

Death the minor, death the majorTwins alike yet not the same,One in a bed, one in a chair, Both have one name

One can roll wherever it wishesTo serve the worms or feed the fishes,One can fly and rise aboveThe confines of walled love

Now and then we do not speakFor every word in death is weakBut strong the impulse meant to dieDeath does not lie

There the twin deaths part and findWhat to each was first consigned:One disintegration’s nestIn earth and air—the other’s blest

Which one, which one comes to me?The breath of one is cold and dry,The other one is warm of breath—Take one death or the other


151


TRIPLE KINGS

Hummer fans its deck of cardsOne feather for each wind of heavenOr riffles half a tail of oddsIn case the wind be odd or even

Creatures: gamblers, those aliveMust play a gamble to survive,Pollen, nectar, breed and flyOr hide if need be from the sky

White-breasted hummingbird or hawkFox or wildcat on a stalkBass that sees beneath a lureThe triple kings a virgin pure


152


COW SHED

No one knew about the birth of GodExcept some shepherds and the wise,Who numbered three

At any one time in historyOnly three perhaps, or fourKnow where God is found

Only three or six or nine—As many as will fit insideA small cow shed

The cow shed somehow takes them allAnd fits them inBetween the manger and the stall

Shoulder pressed to shoulder—I was there, saw youAs you saw me, now older

Yes, we recognize the others, thoseWho saw God, praised and livedIf so we chose


153


IT IS THE CHRIST

An infant in the next pew wails—A chorus of them as the priest displaysThe body of the Lord, a thin-voiced praise

It is the Christ Himself who cries,Dismayed to find Himself beneath reality,Abyss around Him, darkened Earth

For God, who is, cares not About the cold and hungry onesHe has created and abandoned here

Empty stomachs, empty soulsEmptiness except for cold and lawful stars,The nuzzling ass and ox

Breath spicy, warmth and ignoranceOf mindless bodies, manes and earsCocked over beastly necks that bow

Small babies, fill your hollow lungsAnd wail for God’s attention,Distracted by His galaxies of gold

Compare the voices of the mindful stars Burning faith and joyThe bearing of this hopeful One

With One who screams for pity at His earthly state,Weak and yet so powerfulThat even God must hear the crying

How could He create us, leave us nowTo see Himself so helpless in a house of woodOn heaven’s outskirts?


154


AND ONE For Thomas Howard

A fish breaks water with its backLeather, copper, burning scales,An angel this, and more

Infinity inscribed on airA hummingbird, as white as frost,An angel this, and more

Tooled on time a pattern wavers,Those who praise God live forever,Praise deserves no less

A stone, a name inscribed on stone,An amulet composed of this:Attributes, not one the same,And One, the Name


155


BURNED WITH SALT

We make the same mistakesOver and overFirst it was a gardenThen a farmA country, now the world

He who liesPuts out his eyesAnd we are well and truly blindBy foresight and hindsightInstinct and practiceForce and complaisanceBy reason of insanity

Listen well or listen badlyAll is noise and rubbish to the hungryGobblers of their own poison

But somewhere there is lightLifting from the sea—And though the sea is huge and footlessIt will be found—Still capable of bearing all the weightOf heaven’s host

Rise upGrasp the rungsRise up and go with angelsStorms ascend behind you,The heels of those who lingerBurned with salt


156


HOLY TRINITYFor Tom Kreitzberg

Magenta, yellow and cyanStorminess and rising mistsDarkness when it should be lightWind, noise and anarchy

This is where the world beginsAnd you begin, from soul to soul,Transferred negative the sunBurning darkness on the skin

No color has it till He strikesThe embryo with roughened breath,No possibility of lifeMaterial or even death

Color has it, motion, heat,Activity, I see it moveThe summer sparrow on the wheatThe hawk, the spirit and the dove


157


VANDALS

Let’s take this big cathedral,Kick in the windowsHammer the choir into splinters

If the windows are too highWe’ll learn to flyAnd break their green veins

And the sparrows in the raftersPoisoned by our breathAnd the font:

The waves will be sterileWhen we piss gasolineAnd shit black oil

For it was reverent And the flutes and hornsAll prayed together

The columns of the ceiba Altar of the rosesPatens of black sand

Candles of camelliasCloth of mare skinHorn of the grey ibex

Here’s the sexton The bishop and the chapterPriests in their dark robes

Who said you were clothedWhen I see you nakedAnd still shameless?

Thunder in the choirWind in the stallsAnd the font uprooted in a black whirlwind


158


THAT’S ALL

The wall between heaven and hellHas a toggle on itPush up for heavenDown for hell

That’s all

In heaven all things are bright and warmAnd meaning spreads in a wave

In hell all things are futile, coldAnd the waves are canceling clouds

That’s all

All things rememberedAll things forgottenFor heaven has a memoryAnd hell forgets itself

That’s all


159


THE HAND

A great wave comes sweeping alongFrom nowhere to nowhereFrom nowhen to nowhenNothing to nothing

And when it comes to a strait Between chaos and chaosIt flows with turbulenceFaster and fasterAnd the turbulence forms particles

Which live and dance in the flowDance and resist the flow of the waveUntil the shapes are destroyed by the sheerOf the wave

Which spreads once again into the void

This is the plausible lieFor the wave is the shape of the handThat dips itself in its own creationAnd swirls the liquid of the formless seaThat takes all shapesBut returns to the hand

Nothing comes from nothingAnd movement from movement


160


THE LOW PLACE

Wild angels on a ridge above the valleyBlue sandstone and a skin of treesWe too must dieSay the weathering facesBut stand us higher, see us further—Still no end of time from hereNo end of death in time we seeReport the crumbling pebbled ledges

As death-prone as the frailest deerThe weakened snow in all our meadowsNo end in sight from highest cliffsOf death in all its oceans, crumbling—Show us who has mastered death, Have you seen death’s limit where you stand?

See Him in the lowest placeIn the grey defile, where snow is deepestDeath’s un-doer lives by lightWild and tame, all know His placeWeak and small, in mother’s armsHe lives so brieflyYet forever

Pavel ChichikovJanuary 1, 2000

161


BURNERS OF WOOD

A flat grey sky, a melting lakeOld hut village, a hemlock groveSteep-pitched, gnarled, grey-skinned, green roofed

What lives there? Nothing but miceAnd under the sky, storeys of fishBeetles in bark, frogs in their towns

We live here, where no one sees usScratching the walls of mild afternoonsUnder the leaves of shag oak streets

The grey sky roof is breaking above usLying in pools on soft grey clouds,Leaves ferment between our houses

If only He’d come to shatter the skyAs promised in winter so long ago, For the burners of wood are burning the world


162


THE CLOAK

I fumble through a self-made mistBecause my sight is unconfessed,Delusion of illusion fadesInto myopic darkness, shade

A lid of arrogance—in brightIllumination more than sightMore visible than vision—pride’sDilated pupil vision hides

Some other sense must blinding pryWhat may not penetrate this eye—Am I unseeing? Sightless SaulBecame as blinded holy Paul

Must my self-estimation stopWith animalcules in a dropWhose tiny world made infiniteBy roundness in a roundness fits?

Then to concede my sightlessnessIs to adopt submissivenessTo what encircles lowliness:True sanity—my soul’s defense

Then will I see what I have missedA glorious umbrageous lightThat like a cloak enfolding nightCovers and defends the blessed


163


SPARROW’S NEST

Always leaving this old cityWhere a voice says: Man, be ready—Here is opulence, decay,Always dusk, and yet delay

Hostels where the travelers stayFade and flake into decay,Streets in steepness change their gradeFrom square to boulevard to shade

Ready always, never leavingTravelers wait for the morningOr the evening when departVehicles of every art

Man be ready, cities dieAnd none the time of rage defyForever—sooner than the wallDelivers to the earth, they fall

But he must wait here till the dayHe falls from sleeping to decay,Companions few and none immuneTo what must come—be ready soon!

Now he seeks a place to restA bed and blanket, sparrow’s nestWhere may be clutched his little treasures:Egg and shell and chick and feathers


164


THE PALACE

Rectify the waterOr wear an iron apron of stupidity—Salts of the waste you’re washing in

Only one cleansingOnly in pure waterOf the everlasting spring

Only in the oldest waterNot from any rock or well artesianBlood temperature

Rectify the water Build with water, set it uprightMake a liquid tabernacle

Only water rectified Is stiff enough to hold the soulIn its receptacle


165


YOU TELL NO SECRETS

A child stands on the other side—“I’m dying, why was I born?”

All are born to die—you are the demonstration—You are the loved one and the loving one

Therefore, come closer to the doorway, seeWho lies beyond—for with no wordsYou tell no secrets


166


VOLCANO

Tiptoe round this quiet, breathing deathSo you see its silent, fleshy breadthLook at death, inspect, walk all around—David and a giant bothBuried in a single mound

That spins a burning thread around a sunYet from the crater dashing one by oneInsects from a hatch beneath the groundUp from underneath they run—Unborn again they siphon to a cold womb

Who’s to know, who would even guessThe odd propinquity of life to this:That to a conscious star they look the same—One burning phosphorousThe other burning up, dark flame

Dark flame, what underground do you light up?There is another light in bread and cupBut taste without another tongue or skin—See from the conical eruptVolcano flame without comparison


167


NOT A DOVE

A leaf-bare tree, a sharp-shinned hawk,Would not every sparrow hush?Into the basket of the woodGoes the hawk in solitude

Nothing small with wings will stir,All that sits and sees in danger—In her optic nerve a glint,Claw and beak her armament

As if the sky had split in twoAnd let a bird of rapture through,Not a dove and yet a sign—The fierce and innocent divine


168


STRAW

Nothing in this world stays newOceans tarnish, and the wind wears downEven evil deeds relax

What keeps us upright for so long?Improbable, we ant-entropic edificesAmbling and shambling until we drop to fermentation

Stiffened by the six days of creationVectors concentrate and then disperseAnd balances exchange their weights, their steelyards bow

And rise again, all living things are pumpsAnd all things live, but few can knowTheir own lives kneeling to the Lord of time

Let us have no fear—I sawA hummingbird withdraw its nectar through a straw—Tongued probe, and hover there

Black eye stationary and awareHovering with buzzing wingbeats in the airAnd so are we, we all are

Hovering in metabolic flight, untilWe know that everything around our selves is hoveringSpace and time are like small birds of will

For now, withdrawing through one straw Pierced through eternityTheir own sweet being


169


PARROT IN A CAGE

A painting in grisailleOr an African Grey,An eye or the painting of an eye

A parrot in a cage,A painting not a beautifulGrey outrage

Grisaille means “grey” —Pigments onlyWill not fly away

No pigments crushed,Colors failingBrush by brush

Away from a riverLight toward the bushGo swift feathers

Painted on a wallOf disappearing treesStill and tall

Heads under wingGold eyes closedSuns unseeing

Moons of their eyes—Grey artifactsNone need apply

Grisaille


170


THE SHARE

Speak to me:Long ago in MississippiThere was a dapple horse named DanWho belonged to everyone

He was rare and smart and tameHe’d listen when I called his nameBow his head and touch my arm—He was the treasure of the farm

When I told him: Dan lie downHe’d fold his legs and touch the groundHis belly sleek against the soil—I’d curry him, he’d shine like oil

But when I had to plow the gardenHe’d pull, but never carry burdens—If I’d put him in a raceHe always would have won first place

Now I’m eighty-eight or nine—Here I’ve lost my place in time,But that’s no loss because I seeThe garden of eternity

Speak to me:And help me plow my memoryWith Dan to pull the share ahead—It will not vanish when I’m dead


171


THE DAM

I saw him basking in the sunThe legless blanket flat upon the stretcherAs if the sun, its white mouth, ringed,Engulfed the convalescent

I would have told him if I could:I wandered by the creekside yesterdayAnd saw the tooth cuts, conicalThat poled the standing river birch

White-fleshed chips, incisoredIn a hungry amputation of the wood,Spread, and in the flood-piled brush the shadowOf a shadow watching

Beavers gnaw the living trees,The sun dismantles us with ivory mouths—The stream below the piled wood rises,So does the river of our heaven


172


ASCENSION

And all there is, is keeping timeWith the beating of the drumConnection and connected oneFormed and fusing to a rhythm

All our illnesses must beOut-of-beat disharmonyAnd health the joining of the beatWith congruent and stamping feet

Then the standing wave must riseInto rhythmic lows and highsThe peak and trough accompanyEach other’s complementary

Drum and stick, foot and floorClapping hand with hand adoreThe One who keeps the rhythm byThe sun’s ascension of the sky

And takes the tide of every tuneFrom declinations of the moonSeek the owl and the doveThe night, the morning and their love


173


THE SCHOOL

The wind of causes will not stopJust like the standing wave of statesThat blows from every ancestorThrough our own transparenciesInto being through our acts and deaths

The wind of causes like a wind of airA wave of oceans or of sounds—Overhead, the north winds shake the knocking treesHot invulnerable spheres stand stillConcentrate their desiccated spaces

Now I see a body, wings and eyePass through between my own eye and the lightRiding on the crests of rolling billows A form of life above the temporal oceans—Liquid, rolling universes

In every hollow some creation swimsThrough each comber Gabriel approachesA sleek sea creature of the universal darknessWho casts himself upon a coast of EarthStreaming with his offering, a seal with sacred brine

Where in every Paschal pool is heAnd in what place and time does he appear?There is no shape we understand Nor do we know ourselves, or what guestsGlistening can float in glory with the Christ

Or that an ever-moving wave is stillShapes that move inside it restAll calm things that brilliant beIlluminate the precious guest—A brightness and a burning globe, a phosphorescent tapestry


174


OARSMEN

Think of them as flocks of mallardsFloating in a turbid pondThese last-breathing ones

They pull their wings back from their breasts These powerfully dying onesAnd rise

Dying makes their pattern from belowA diagram, a vector and an arrowSketched on air

Hurls them overhead, their size diminishedAs they gain their height—Who would not be with them?

A fear of what? The north winds roll,The sting of winter frost is in the cloudsTo which they join themselves

But far ahead, below, the damask scentOf summer rosesMakes them stroke like oarsmen in the air

Do they seem much smaller now? PretendYou are the one who pulls with outstretched wingToward those ahead, the land of summer


175


FREAKS

Stay here—But the child is crippled, let it go

But see how God deforms His plan—Twisted hands, twisted neckEyes in sockets paralyzedTake sideways the unfocused sun

The legs hang limply from the chairThe lungs breathe through a hole and tubeThey barely know who brings them hereAnd what God gives He robs

But here’s a demonstration, seekYour own crude self in what’s deformed,Loved by angels man the freak—Our souls by sin go harmed

Still, let them stay, we love and seeOur own deformity


176


THE FELLS

The car’s combustion engine:Campfires under metal hoodsAttached to rubber wheels and gears

We burn the hydrocarbon wood,Oxides of made of carbon, lead—And squatting by the fire fear

That which in the darkness movesAttracted by obedient flames—Black muzzles burning, burrowing

In the tunnels of our cells—But soaring also overheadAnother darkness, deeper still

Where in the upper forest moveAmong the leaning trees of starsThe clustering galactic groves

Those who left the fire lightTo forage on the sloping fellsIn a darker, greater slash of night


177


A BLIND FRIEND

The crushed and jumbled granite of the gorge—But the guardians of chaos areThe bluebirds and the juncosIn the brave, ragged trees

But there is something else The birds too frail to fill the corners of the world—Our souls are like wasps’ paperFilled with spaces

Anyone could crush them, any thingAnd yet they are immortal, each an egg of chambers—See not and fear notChaos is a blind friend

Even chaos was created out of nothing


178


SNOW

Rough and ruined by the cold,Trees in winter—snow between themFalling in their crooked streets

These broken masts and buildings,Futuristic, then abandoned,Cities of the new made old

Lanes and rows, the stratosphereBeheads them at their topmost tiers—The future is a greywhite storm

All who fail at love will beLike this orphaned future city—Only Christ by dying pays

The deconstruction fees—Into the earth the rotting trees,Slow white flakes of pity


179


A HEAVY FOOT

Like the strider’s footpads on a surface filmSix dimples on the soft and noiseless lake,Weight-dividing dishes on the trampolineOf flexible molecular division:The air, the water and the plane between

A small pond in a wilderness—Who knows or cares what happens here?On the surface scut the insects, us,Who make impressions on a plane, go onTo search the infinitesimal regress

If something with a foot too heavy breaksThe delicate soft membrane of a lakeIt will submerge its cuticle, go downInto the cool submersible and drown—And so we will, some day, put ourselves away

Clumsy and demented water bug,Sun-reflecting vanity the drugThat keeps you grazing with your face beneathYour straddling tip-toeing self, your feet


180


THE NET OF WAVES

There is a township on the seaIbiza to the eastward of it, linesAnd balding knobs of mountains Roll behind it, dusty pines

Upward lift the palms of Elche,Northward toward their elevation Cranes, limp legged fly toward EasterMigrants of the Resurrection

Silver marshes, glaucous date palmsCitrus where the channels run—In the rubble ochre haresScatter from a hunter’s gun

This is Spain, the elder coastThe Punic littoral, the MoorsHeld the black volcanic plugs,The Albuferria, the shore

Running toward the littoralThe little Xucar, on the bankA marble column stubs alone Where once the legionaries clanked

There’s a tower where the watchCalled the raids from Barbary—Bishop Borgia set it up,White sheep of his family

In a chapel near the fortOutlasting the millenniumOur Lady of the Sea looks outOver all the fishermen

Make your way up the hillPast ancient stations of the Cross—For those who recapitulateNo love is old or lost

181


On a long December nightShe herself descendsToward the ever nodding seaThe net of waves to mend


182


A THIN PIPEFor Eric Young

Winter moon, the dog starSpotless white-blue diamondBlazing hot catastropheAnd yet the night is cold

Sirius explodingEight light years above usNot a flake of snowMelting here below

Feel our segregationWith each gust of windChilling every faceNone of it from space

Pupil of the finestBore that can be made Measuring explosionsNinety months delayed

Yet how thin the membraneThe rippling of the skyAnd all the glory of itEntering the eye


183


HOW BOLD YOU ARE...

How bold you are, my memory, you areNo atmosphere, no shiftiness—the starItself outriding every sliding phaseOf lunar maturation, which decays

You contain all pattern, every choice,The vase of speech: within the lover’s voice—The blessing eyes of summer and the faceOf pale depleted winter, time and place

Bearing touch and pendant weight I hold—Lover’s breast, remembrance manifold,Her loving mouth a leaf of many books,Imperishable volumes of her looks

Memory—unlike a buried seedWhich may be clenching flower bud or weed—You are the efflorescence of a plan,Ungated garden and the plot of Man

The gardener who watches from the flowerThe waterer who falls as his own shower


184


MORNING SHINE

I saw the marbled midnight skyHanging in Gethsemane—Can this be death, a flaccid skin,Empty body in the wind?

A strip of clothes, a cover-allTo make a costume and a pall—Where goes the needle goes the threadTo sew the sunrise to the dead

Even death was slit and flayed,Three days and nights it was displayed—But in the morning shining stillEven death by Christ fulfilled


185


TWO CHILDREN

Bright wind, sleek and wildMy childWhen I rise, you begin to run

From dawn to dusk to dawn againYour shining hair on end

When I see you first you blowOn shore,Evening to the sea once more

When glaciers I assaultYou somersaultUp slope and down

When above the fields my fireBrings you higherToward me you rise and yearn

From sea to sea you windAs if you had a mindYet follow me

You are my faithful puppyMy adoredThe sleek edge of my burning sword

And we, both creatures, thin and denseCold and hotGo henceWhen God is through with us


186


SNOW FALL

The snowstorm curls his knuckles whitePunches sideways in delightKnocks the powder from the treesAnd whirls in frozen lunacies

If metaphors are ill deployed,Animistic, humanoid,There is another way to showThe animation of the snow

Call the wind an organism,Snow for blood and cloud for heart—Diffuse the body, synchronismMakes the structure of its parts

We become a snow as well,Bi-forked not hexagonal,Crystalline though we be liars,Soft as diamonds, cold as fires


187


GHOST

I saw one whose vanity still lived—The rest of him was deadSo that his vanity produced a field of dreadAround a hollow core

No, not metaphor, a spirit,Emanation of a soul ungoneWhich gazed across a bafflementIn plain sight of the living

Gazed as if in puzzled reprimandThat I should still be solidThough his doubled phantomSpread as mere refraction

For as he loved himselfHe could not die completely,To completion—Could not manifest another life

And in his puzzled eyesAn infantile completion Scored on that refolded face The flatness of those angry twins

Trapped inside the lens of his own beingHe splits and splits againImage of an imageThrough which a drop of blood can pass


188


THE SOUL—IIFor Max Westrick

Every future is now,Incompressible—Water is yielding in comparison

Above the pondA cloud of insectsStripped away by wind

This nowIs the atom of GodHis clay

He touches clayHis light streams forth—All things visible

But His clayIncompressibleIs the soul

And the soul is now,Forever—Amen


189


CARPENTER

This fourteen year old girlNot more than six months In her mind

She never speaks, will speakBut groans and mouths her tongue—Who has been lost?

Neither can I speakWhat I would say to GodCreator, Master

For either He has cared, will careTo make us wellMake true our flesh, a craftsman’s work

Or else He does not careAnd when the jigs are loosenedThrows the mutilated scraps away

My Lord, I have no wordsWould my obedience be enoughMy patience be sufficient?

I have an adult brain—Who needs my understandingOr compassion?

Then I heard Him speak—All will be knownThis work of Mine

I build together in a houseAnd where I stepThe floors will groan

And where I fit the joistsI use a tongueTo fasten them


190


HARVEST SONG

Like harvest mice we balance onWheat of grace that’s limbersomeUntil the heads of grain are ripeThe kernel sweet and turning white—We nibble on the bending cropNor does the bowing make us stop

For wheat that bows will spring upright,A condensation of the light,The deep and ever turning soilThat presses ages into oil—Though small of self we cannot beShaken from eternity

The grain was made to be our placeHarvest of unending grace


191


TO BE UNWRAPPED

In that cityEzekiel’s wheels are brokenThe girders of the walls stick out

Steel girders, bent by force—From out the flesh of wallsThe compound fractures of the beams

Water floods the lower storeysBut in a district where the ground is dryAn old hotel

Leprous mortar in the corridorsBut from out the darkness, his own candleComes the clerk of night

Cheerful and unworried soulHe gives the guests a giftSweet cake

Confection in a heavy foil Shaped like a fishThe covering is dense, dull metal, unreflecting

The covering’s rest mass could blowThe universe away as if it were a candle flameInside is the flesh of God, to be unwrapped


192


THE MOLE

And have me for Your own?After storing lifetimes in my burrow—And though I hibernate the stores run outHere in the dark runways, the tunnelsWith their root-tails and their centipedes

Everything that’s holy says: I listen—Have me for Your own? I ownSo much of this—my storeOf acorns and the much admiredBulb of lily, and the daisy seed

I am the mole of little eyes,Fur which bends without a stiffened pile—And yet You call me to the surface,To the cold and bright exposedMeadow of the hover clouds, the winds

But I begin to dig, to rise, to surface—Blind I am, and yet I must observeWhat calls me up—where are You?Do You wait for me, are YouThe owl’s talons or the fox’s bite?

Still you call and I obey,Flinching from the terror of Your day,Your death or life, I know not which—I am Your own, the one You catchYour prize, the one You save or slay


193


ORBIT

One hundredth of an A.U. over NeptuneA million plus kilometersTriton to the rightAbove the zodiacal lightThe sun at eight o’clockAbundant spaceAbundant timeIs this what the angels see?

Do the brushy hairs of round magnetic fieldsRolling waves and ripples of gravitic seasLift and let them downAs do the seas of Earth?

Do the planetary systems seem to themAs jellyfish, sargassum seem to us?Have you been there?Yes, before your birthYour new configuration,Manifold constituentsWere sieved among the wandering debris

ExceptThe photoluminescent spark,Foam of every seaThe loveThat lives forever—Orbit and obitAnd resurrection

Pavel ChichikovFebruary 1, 2000

194


THE RIPPLE

He might abolish evil, grief,Unmake malice or deceit—But now the silver minnows school Inside a round quicksilver pool,Startle as a ripple spreadsOver their unshadowed heads—By their movements they themselvesDraw the snapping muskelunge,Long and narrow, brazen scales,Armor which the sun impales

Shrike on wire sitting, sittingWith a sharp beak knitting, knittingAll that it has seen before—Life by life, it can foretellThe two last things: enchantment, hell,For as it flies the universeRipples out a praise and curseUntil such time as time can bendInto rest and peace and endThe silver pool, the fishes caught:The human eye, the human thought


195


THE WEAVING SUN

We old ones here sail little boats on the canals—Above the wings of these the egrets and the ibis stalkSand edges where they stab pink mussels from the chalk

Here and there we puzzled wading birds discussHow these sun-wrinkled humans use the wind and air like usBut uselessly, in two dimensions, not to fly or feed

A great white egret black-umbrella-footed splays and stuntsAlongside blue Louisiana herons, and the cormorantsVoraciously like cobra-necked torpedoes swim and hunt

While toward the shore we gold-ridged wavelets net and runToward disintegration on the speckled limestone sand—Driven by a morning wind whip and the weaving sun


196


TO SEE

Primogenitive, the sunFor whom no custom is corrupt,Shouting by explosions—Tantrums of the dark light up

Robed in gold electric gownsFed on black nutritious dust,He grows in burning of his bounds,Swallows iron lust

One side is his mother time,Joseph there his father space—Sweep aside all veiled debrisSo eyes can see his face

Why need there be any eyesOr Magi to admire?Forerunning is his business,Self-giving is his fire

Why should ever-spinning sunEver stop, go chill?Like metronomes clocks,Coals and flames it will

Coals and flames, all motion,Every spark and mindCrushed in all dimensionsRebound again, divine

Rebound again by orderA wish and a decree,One who is our MakerMade the sun to see


197


DON’T DISTURB...

Don’t disturb—game begun—Pieces run—now they see themCatch them, slide them, turn them overPlace them down again to coverSquares adjacent and apart—Chessmen going through a suiteOf squares to end the move and start Another move, who think they moveBy will and circumstance—above:

Game beginning, pieces runThink they are the only onesWho board the world, the players bareIcicles hung up in airFor while the world of boards is coldThe players burn, have burned of old,Flames above a field of squaresStill expanding everywhereAnd yet they bend above the matchAs luminous they play and watch


198


THE HEADS

See each body and its headBob along self-interested—A universe inside a boundToo small to hold one must astound

A billion heads as multipliedBy two or three or four or fiveYet each hermetic as a tin—Thought and memory sealed in

If there should be only onePlanet where this thinking’s doneThen how peculiar would it be—A universe for you and me

Sharing water, food and gasBut none in full communitas—Drama, zoo or audienceWhich at the last will then commence


199


GUARDIAN

My guardian still with me: “I lead you now aboard”—Good, kind, cheerful—be with me as a guard

“You have a soul—acquire self by suffering through”But now no worry, no anxiety, I am with you

A small ship in the harbor, and a kindly friend,For ships have moats of mirror water rounding them

Now comes one embittered, smiling too:“There will be time enough to stifle you”

Worry and inopportune anxietyBecome a present not a future liability

A real test with this articulate malign opponent comesBut worry on one day alone does not add up by sums

The harbor and the graceful bending boat, white wingsOf hull and sail, reflected deep encouragings

The plank withdrawn, the water is the deepest wallThat will prevent impurity, the dark assault

Active, young and powerful the guardian,But very old as well, as our years run

Active, young and powerful, and full of joyAnd confidence that’s nourished by eternity


200


THEN YOU’LL KNOW

Ask him why he stays awake so late—When the geese fly south in AprilThen you’ll know

Ask him why he dreams of old hotels—When rain falls upwardThen you’ll understand

No, it’s boredom, Too much money without issue,Not enough for what he may misuse

Hunger for disaster disappointsThe famished truth—That nothing matters—bluntly, has a point

One who stays up late,Who watches from a windowMade of bricks, blind of bricks

Can see the geese fly upwardDisappearingIn a cold white stratosphere

Fish go down thick-blooded toward abyssesTill their bladders burst—Birds fly up until they scream for air

And the waters of the deepMeet the waters of the skyIn boiling columns of volcanic sleep


201


SAFE FROM HARM

Suppose that in the sacristy the devil puts on priestly robesSo what? The devil too believes in God, but hates Him(The missionary atheist is worse than hell that holds himTherefore condemnation and the millstone)If Satan abhors God still the flesh and blood appearThough the devil may consume it to destroy

Intending to destroy—but God is indestructible—Everything veers toward Him, even hell is drawnPuts on the robe, holds the chalice and the patenSays the consecrating words intending to defilePlugs the universe inside the swollen bellyBut not God—only fire falls there, burning block

Robes hang on the hook, the meal of consecrationFlesh and blood before the Fall when all was sacredNow in noble yet debased, debasing form lies thereInnocent material indifference lets the garments down in foldsToward the passive ground, toward the center of the worldIn wordless bland repose, things, vessels, means of work

But even there the flexing energy of God And what is done has come to mind from ages old,Blessing, blessing purifying what was godless and defiledWith holy grace, twice blessed: creation, sacrificeSo that the bread can speak and wine can sing in hymnsAnd those who can consume do both, they are anointed

Safe from harm


202


WHITE AND WINGED

The great swan on the hillsideIs a patch of melting snow,Unlike the swan it risesIn loose and shapeless form,But like the swan it risesWhite and winged

Look up, the Spirit passes, In the running creek’s reflection,A shape inside the soulIn every place and form,Changing in the sunlightReturning from the starlight


203


FURIOUSFor E.L.

General WindWhere will he go?This morning was springTomorrow will snow

Beasts in the paddockStallion and mareNuzzle and whinnyWeather is fair

Now in the northAn army appears,Mountains and valleysOf icy black fear

Black as drumskinLeft in the fieldMask of the badgerWinter congealed

Mask of the badgerJaw and a skull—Lead in the stallionDam and her foal

Lead in the horses—Furious foamFear of the winterFollow them home

Furious foamThe rabid can biteAnd swell in the throatOf furious night


204


MEMORYFor Philip Kolin

The paradox—from stillness time and spaceWhere memory retains the world in place,Holds at once the wingspread of the swan,Wing-folded soothes the cygnet when it’s born,Or when, a consort dying, calls and mourns—Knows all times and places wings outspreadBefore the Lord, the fledgling and the dead—All at one they nestle in His restWhere motion finds a thicket and a nest—Who pairs, who flies and who remains alone


205


SOME FRENCH

Slander, theft, adulteryAre not inside a dossier,No number prefix, suffix, code,Confined to covers, even, odd

Now in my cachettes du coeurMy planetary paramours,A wind from here to there I goIn orbit above red Io

Feral splendor, star of starsJupiter’s striped tiger soars,Luminous with satin easeTurns inside a barless cage

Beauty is unfallen, flameSpills from emptiness untamed,Unsexual and yet not chaste,Life resplendent without waste

Greater than the angels? CallUs scandals of the trivial,Parasites of Gog MagogNot in the cosmic catalogue

Sins that damn can yet be pettyNot worth eternal penaltyOr even piety and yetThe small can shine with long regret

Where’s my home? from here to thereNot one atom of despairBut only fields within which bloomBlossoms of the claire de lune


206


IN THE SEA

Full moonNew earthAnd nightTo see a noon

Mindless?Could it be?A mind made itFor eyes to see

Now in the poolIn the hoofAnd the spoorThe moon is round and pure

In the sea’s irisThe moon’s progress,BlindBut on her way

Glancing higherA pupil on fireShe burns in the discOf her black sire


207


BLIND ONE

He doesn’t believe in what—Adding bread?Subtracting demons?Dividing onions?Multiplying by a fish?Arithmetic?

The vole between two fallen logsCan hide between them—It knows the middle from the edgeAnd the owl has two eyes

With an ax cut, and a saw cut,The ash tree falls in two—A vixen captures one mouse for a kitAnd keeps one for herself

Light lizards scut across the surface film—St. Peter sinks and sputters;Distemper kills the sickened pup,Jesus cures a fever

No peasant is innumerateWhen loaves are counted—No fisherman is at a lossWhen merchants count the catch

Shrewd farmers of the mountainsWho slingstone flying birdsFind each fallen sparrowIn a ploughman’s rut

Every loaf of miraclesComes from where the numbers come,Fronds and plaits on which five thousand Hungry peasants fed

It doesn’t happen now?Blind one look and seeHow many leaves can growFrom where there was no tree

Pavel Chichikov—February 21, 2000

208


MONTE

Monte is a stable dogAnd when around the homestead wanders glumly and subduedCircumspect and timid near the iron shoes,But when the woods call out with early celandineHis amber eyes take fire, like the yellow ones

Down to running water where the muskrat and the beaverDig out their caves and tunnels with spring fever—The mongrel with the springy blackened feetYanks up a stick of locust from the muddy creekBedraggled there by last November’s flood,Brandishes his stock of treasure in the tepid air—Kicks up his shaggy leggings like a flag of hair

His playful eyes are amber of intaglioNot like the downcast dullness of a mongrel’s eye,His cavalcade evolves into a crooked rompAround a patch of snow drops and a beaver stump,Who would know such joy was in him when the riders goTo saddle up the chestnut and the dapple-grayWhile Monte shuffles after with his head held low

Or my joy in the vaudeville as I watch the mongrel runAmong the silent locusts with a wagging tongue


209


WALKER

What happened to me? Once I’d runThree times faster than the sun,Made my nights three times as longAs shadows run from dusk to dawn

But slower, slower—though I ranFaster than my shadow can,Now I barely measure makeOf lengthy dreams until I wake

Now I must go carefullySo wonder can catch up with me—Did the young one that we knowGrow so old and wakeful slow?

Yes he did, but now at lastHe’s overtaken by his pastWhich passes by so he can seeIt walking to eternity


210


THE MARK

I met the cat with yellow eyesWithin the forest of surprise,It said: the mark of death on youIs in the grain and runs straight through,As if with color fine as smokeDust and fire, shell and yolk

Yellow eyes, what do you see?Christ is stricken fatally,But on the faces of the restIgnorance, the dyeing guest—I can see it through the stainOf every miracle of Cain

Then ascended through the woodThe beast with eyes that understood


211


UNTIL THE CLOTH IS WOVEN

I wanted to be with her in the mountainsHigh in the mountains, where the stars are pure—Where we live the sky is filthy, and the stars are spoiled,Smeared through dirty glass

I said: “My soul, come with me to the highlands,For even Nazareth, where Christ was bornIs filled with shouting and bewilderment, They quarrel for a sheep’s bloody head”

She said: “I must stay here—my workTo mix black flour with coarse salt, and cloth with tears—I weave my way and yours, mine and yoursIn the dark stall of the market

“Of the alley where the gutter runs,” she said, ‘the narrow thread of stone,Nothing can be made—nothing can be seenOf cleanly stars—I’ll stayUntil the cloth is woven”

Then my soul works hard, each paving block a thread,Each street a bolt of woven cloth,And the pattern is the sky above the hillWhere she and I will go


212


THE LOVER

A sycophant in love?No, lover be plainspoken,A cynic loving much?He loves his disillusion,A liar loving truth?No, truth is his confusion

Therefore is the lover plainTruthful, trustful, clear and sane

Recognize yourself?A lover never seesHis image in a mirror—Never looks to pleaseHimself and like a ghostLikeness never boasts

A ghost but never dead he livesRichly but alone to give

More solid than a stoneHe passes every wallStands when he is proneRises when he fallsHis model is the OneWhose sins were not His own

Who loved even our lovelessnessAnd conquered death through tenderness


213


THE SIDES

An angel showed the soul of me,A square box made of oak and iron wood—The contents were an empty sky,Three crows curve-pinioned flew and then departed

From the right hand corner of that stiff cube—The last black wing tip’s smooth egressAnd then the edges of a cloudy, milky lobeOf space inside which nothing, emptiness

Is this myself, I asked, for whenI look inside a desolate and soundless naught,Nothingness, no thought or love or sense—Is this what Jesus of the Cross has bought?

But look again, it said, and seeThe bounded emptiness of space now caughtFrom side to side with loving deep embroideryAs if the sky itself had woven doubt

Not yet of all dimensions fullInto a rippled web of happiness—And in the snapping tautness of that nullOnce more my bliss appeared from emptiness

And when these sides, it said, He shall remove You will be free to enter in His love


214


NETTERS

What happens on the azure spot?Some have love and some have not—Though from a distance it is lightHalf is day and half is nightNot so well and yet they liveA while before they can forgive

Underneath a dome of cloudSome are humble, some are proudSome can give and some can takeSome are brave although they shakeBut all invisible from hereAre less than brave unless they fear

What do dwellers there confront?Some perceive and others don’tBut we who wait on higher groundCan see their shadows move aroundInside a pointed glare of star—Spots inside a spotted jar

These specimens we may collectIf some can rise to find our netOthers may evade the snareAgainst their instinct fly elsewhereThose inner moths of flame and shadeWhich we can catch but have not made

Collectors are we, connoisseursOf those attracted to our lures


215


THE SPRAY

Witch Hazel’s yellowNow in small sponges soaks in airTo gather up tomorrow’s pollen

Waiting not with hope, without,But needing noneAsperges color, seeds later

Blessing is for it innateBut never comes too soon, too lateIs always fortunate

O lovely oneStir some color from the sunOn to your palette

Then with a dusty palette knifeOf wind and lifeMix yourself a yellow mate

Pavel ChichikovMarch 2, 2000

216


THE CHANNEL

She’s ten years old and old enoughTo know she’ll dieIn six months or a year

She strokes the dog’s coarse furAs if to draw warm lifeThrough five cold fingers to her heart

Irrigation, but her fear has blockedLove’s channels—No blessing now flows through her

But everything is one, thereforeAlthough her fear has lockedHer face, I see the fever there

They will irradiate her marrow,Overflow, thenBlessing not of heartsick sorrow

For once I walked through orange grovesWhere unsweet lanterns glowedThrough dark green leaves

Now is love near-ripened glowing,Seen and not yet plucked,O little face, tear-flushed to overflowing


217


SKETCH

That pond’s dryBefore the tadpoles even hatch—Some March

Small black mummikinsWithout finsThat swim

If the sunCould writeThey would be exclamations

Floating in a page,Or eyesDepending on their age

But now the sun’s defacedBoth upperLower case

Writing with the birdsThe skyHas other words


218


THE SHADOW RISES

In the chant of the Orthodox Great council of angels:Velika Sovieta Angl

The ruler of lands and seas on His throneSets forth the law of life and death—Dust in the sea is humanity

Those who live are glorifiersWho praise the light of God Almighty:What shall we do with the dust called Man?

Silent, silent the council staysUntil the Son of the Lord’s right handWith infinite labor lifts the Cross

And then they rise in a thunder of wingsTo hover above HimAbout Him, beneath Him

His guard, His ownHis flock of heavenHelpless to shield from His own compassion

Bozhe, Gospodi, have mercy on usThey say: lift not that heavy loadBeloved, and yet the shadow rises

They groan and weep, lift not Your deathOur precious Light, and yetThe Christ and His death embrace, depart


219


IT WILL NOT BURN

No flame lights Him—The face of the LordGives light to the candle

What visions to see?The aisle from the altarInto the darkness

Farther and smallerAway from the lightThe altar dwindles

A flame to a starThe star into sadnessWanes and subsides

Who will come with meInto the coldOf the dark unknown?

Then said a voice:Pick up the candle,Carry it with you

Pick it up by the flame—It will not burnThe one who trusts Me


220


THE INVISIBLE

Air full of crowds unseen,And those on earth Multitudes we step on

Some step over usSo as to Unperturb nor crush

Unknowing all the weeWho think:I am alone and lonely

Black beetles Under wood chips—Bees in daffodils

But there’s anotherPresenceNear to buzz and hover:

Vein-winged blurred causality,Six-leggedHarmony

And grace forever madeAbundantly


221


I AM ASH WEDNESDAY

March bare naked, hot as June,White sunlight bounces from the leaves,Siberian squill, a fallen noon,Five-armed flowers, voltage blue,Stars on carpets, celandine

A human future strips the sky,Pouring ultraviolet falls,Flood, as if this could be JuneBut no leaf bud or leaflet grown,Down comes blinding sun

I am ash Wednesday, sight unseen,My skin is grey, my eyes are green,I grow blue flowers on my skinHave a grave to plant them in:There’s an open, empty one


222


THROAT OF THE SEA

He dined on the Earth,A spoonful of mountains,His throat swelling up—Allergic reactions

Oceans of fluidPoured from his nostrils,His eyes turned as humidAs rain-sodden jungles

What have I eatenAnd why do I swell?This allergy threatensTo mildew my metal

The weight of the crustI’ve swallowed and eatenThreatens to ventInside my intestine

I swallow the planetBut it swallows me,Gullet of graniteThroat of the sea


223


ANOTHER WORLD

What business comes is none of mine—North wind, south wind, door half open,Black hat wise man leans against itBlack lightning jumping from his pocket

He says: “Come in, the banquet’s ready,The dish is hot, the soup is muddy,The pie contains four blackbirds twentyThe drunken piper plays unsteady”

In the black star is a whiteIn the daylight prospers night,The cold who shiver will be warmThe queenless bee hive ball and swarm

I was born here, was not of itNew and old to be discovered,Backward summer into fallEnters seeing not at all

Come in, he says, but I must waitUntil the summer evening lateDescends the winding stair of sleepAnd then I follow, dreaming deep

I have been this deep beforeBut long ago, behind the doorWhere lumber still has yet to buildAnother door, another world


224


CATHEDRAL

Have you seen these gargoyles?Some call them cloudsBut look again, the clouds are lids

That shield the casual curious eyesOf bulging aerial indigenes—Patient and long-lived they float

Immaculate above the warring Earth—Listen, underneath the windLow whispering and soft tumult

If we had not been here they would live onAnd if we goThey will remain as long as nitrogen and oxygen

Into the wind, the straining wingsOf one-celled butterflies—Who lives much longer than these things?

But as the sunset clouds disperseDeep hiding placesInto satin empty darkness burst

A lightless energy and consciousnessExcept to thoseWho by humility toward innocence advance

Those who see by self are blind and slow—Disrobed of selfAre one step deep inside the portico


225


BLOODROOT

Bloodroot—stop before you spreadUnderneath the dead man’s head,March uprising from his death,Bitter bloodroot on his breath

Make a pillow bright and warmWith soft spring beauty, trillium,Let the mauve of maple seedDust his coverlet of weed

Let him sink down in the vastReceiving bed of leaf and mastAnd when the suns awake againRemember, be with him, befriend

Earth befriend and Christ upraiseAnd root of glory give him days


226


I AM NEW

Apocalypse, when all are equal,The snapping of God’s string—The wave spreads equally in all directions

In one chord infiniteThe world is ending,Has begun

All who die meet GodAs One familiar—Returning harmony

Note by note, phrase by phraseSong by song—Until the sound remade

And all say:Have I heard that note?For I am new this moment


227


PRIEST RIVER

The young tree nearly undercutLeans out in space above the creek—One root begging mercy fromThat which has no mind or tongue

Moves—slides—speaks—and runsMeasures—breathes—with no sensation—Merciless but never cruel,Stupid, shallow, yet no fool

Now the cold March night comes downAnd in their beds the dying wakeTo hear an equinoctial windOutside the window branches break

They too lean above a streamThat runs inside and out a dream—Young life leaning out to fallInto a water bearing all

There’s a child I met last weekWho deathly sick could barely speakRevealed to me the stream I feared,Hoped was far and yet he neared

The river and its spaciousness,The priestly river, grey of dress,A book of leaves, the reading madeOf ripples where the children wade

From there it is not far to goTo what the dead already knowBeyond the curving and the shore—Which when we fall we shall know more


228


THE GREAT RECRUITMENT

Child in a hospital—dying or not?A death is charged to your accountHas to be paid for—now or later

But what have I to do with thatSmall body on a linen sheet?The white field of surrender

From you the loan, to him the credit,Panoply of love in armorAcquired for a cosmic war

All who die this day or nightTroopers in a boundless fightRecruited by our Savior

You by faith a patron ofThis warrior of Jesus’ love—And in return receive forever

There I see a banner waveIn gusts straight out above the graveThe battle in a fever

What will win and what will lose?Depending on the strength they choose—To love—or to love never


229


FAITHFUL

His body is a stilt of cornThe silk of it a yellow beard—Out of June his body born,His yellow thatch is bared

His brains are sugar turning sweet,His heart is water running upA vein of cellulose, his feetAre in a cool contraction cupped

What can make him twist and turn?A dancing master calling wind—What can make his features burn?Sun but not a shame of sin

Pure and gentle, stiff and strong,Loving light and never wrong,Words a rustle and a creak,Articulate but never speaks

Reaching up before they fall,Hiding me but not a wallOne is many, many oneChildren of the moon and sun

Obdurate upstanding, yieldYet the summer hold the field,Faithful are the stands of corn,Harvested before they’re born


230


SCORPIONS

Once the falling starts it’s hard to stop it—A raindrop from a cloud, a haughty wordWhich ripples out above the universe

Tag a raindrop with four sensitive coordinatesAnd try to catch it in a saucepanOr even in a long transparent tube

You reach beneath the falling cube of spaceBut ripples on the quiet pond already spread—The bullfrog knows the amplitude

Drop the haughty word, the sneer, the leerThe arrogant riposte, the scornful sting—A scorpion that scuttles in a baby’s ear

That will not be recalled like any barking dogBut wild unfree, unbiddable in savagery—Scorpio condensing from the soul

Even now, inside some ranging mindMy words go rushing, unrecallableWhile I confess to having let them go

Only at the end, when all is gathered inWhen kingdoms of the Lord are reconciledWill scorpions forgive the wounded child


231


THE CURE

A woman loved but will not speakHer daughter feeds her with a spoonShe looks away, no food will take,Her brain has locked her up alone

Her brain a cell, her eyes the barsAsylum never, though immured,Into a hermitage she goes—Where are walls but never cures

Yet her daughter dips and bringsA spoonful of a stubborn loveGarnished with sweet whispering:“Here’s something nice’” —she does not move

Listen though, I hear imploreInvisible, that ministerWho feeds the stubborn souls of us—O paralyzed, take up My flesh


232


I AM THE SKY

Get on the battered old bicycleIt’s barely as tall as a donkeyStart rolling down toward the Capitol

Why am I here —or anywhere?Yet there is a self-made mission:To be alive and to be here

But I’m lost, lost and shaken:Where is the road and the streetI need to find my destination?

But here’s an alley leading up,Narrow, cobbled, and a wallLeave the seat and the stirrup

Yes, now, ask anyone, ask himWhere the city is I need—Of every messenger he is the sum

Your Capitol is our Cathedral—See the spire and the jeweled glass?By getting lost you have done well

You are where you meant to goThe wall is not so high—You have gone fast by going slow

No more the bicycle, now arise on footThe wall is not so high—I am the messenger for whom you look

I am the messenger, the guide, the counselorYou find by chance and yet have known—But see the lovely window in the tower

You will be there, the wall is not so highThere is a gate and avenue close byAnd I will lead you there, I am the sky


233


LYRIC

The world was empty, no one thereGod began to pipe an air,Out of midnight He createdPasserines—the couple mated

Shells of nothing, babies bornDay and midnight, dusk and dawnBlue and red, and two were greysAll together sang the days

Dawn and evening, one by one—Venus hovered near the sunTo listen to the singers singMerry music mimicking

Was He lonely to createPerching birds to imitateWhat He whistled for one part?Which is bird and which is art?

Is it they or is it HeSinging from a shady tree?Is it a ventriloquistSinging tunes to “I exist?”


234


THE HIVE

Stop everything, drop everythingYou want to know everythingAlready known

Watch here, there, behind, above—Nothing hidesNothing is hidden

In this placeThe ever knownIs unforgotten

When we were youngWe learned to seeNothing unbidden

The shining eyesOf honey beesCan see an ocean

Waves of wavesFormed of daysUntil Ascension

In that seaThere is a placeWhere Christ is risen

And in that placeThat He has leftThere is a prison

And in that cellWe live aloneUntil the Vision

Sweet the voiceAbove the hive—My honey bees—arise!


235


REQUIEM

When Remy was prepared to dieShe lay down in the yard to watchThe garden, the living things move by

Animals know not death yet she With patience and complaisanceObserved the bright world steadily

With patience and complaisance end—God’s gentle angelDeath, come and enter in

Last time, last day and momentTill Spring dusk comes downHer senses, sight and scent

Drink like rain the falling world,Real water, and baptismOf the sweet unfallen, the unsoiled


236


BLOCKS

Who lives in the snow castle?In what long room of dreamless sleepLies the corpse of frozen time?

Block on block of turbid ice—I see deep tunnels rise and runImpervious to warming sun

Compacted snow the castle’s flesh,Ice black bones to hold it up Against the rigid stubborn ground

In this castle, in the roomsWhat is moving if not time?Did God put out the hot sun’s eye?

The universe itself was iceUntil descending as the ChristHe made the captured water flow

By melting from the inside deathImmobilized by length and breadthHe warmed my soul

Pavel ChichikovApril 6, 2000

237


THE COMB

The look we exchanged remains between us:Sweet girl, how tired, dazed you were—On your forehead a yellow stainOn the comb your hair—Radiation is the scalper of the young

Yet we recognized each otherAnd the smile of recognition was our sign:Suffering is interchangeable, and so is loveAnd those who know them are good comrades—Sentence and remission come together

Therefore, we will meet again, my young companionAnd there will be no pain or lonely sufferingBut joy and peace, wealth of music, starlight and sunlightUncountable and splendidFor each of us to spend and not exhaust

We are and will be friends—Inexhaustible as daylight rising over heavenIs the health of those beloved by God


238


THE CENTER OF THE SUN

She said she’d never be afraid of death againHaving seen the face—a planet that reflectsThe luminous sun

Always turned one way toward GodWho in His massive self has lockedAll things in orbit

It is the other side of us, in darknessHe permits, which is our freedomAnd our death

Turned toward warmth and cold at onceOne face toward Him, one face toward deathUntil He brings us to the center of the sun


239


THE GAME

While waiting for good and evil to make up their mindsTo move their pieces and change their squaresAll we can do is play chess to pass the time

Such a big game, such little men we areAnd the board beyond sight Is more than four horizons

And we take each other en passantWith all the other players And the king is in a corner like the rest

The knight and the castle, the bishop’s diagonalThe pawns edging sideways form a wall—Generations may recur but don’t repeat

Let us play chess, while waiting for the endOf all games with simple rulesAnd infinite variations

The Lord cannot be boredAnd all opponents endWith the game and two sides

The castle turns to snow and meltsThe knight unhorsed is tipped and brokenAnd the bishop is the tipsy taker

Let us play until the game cannot be playedWhen all clocks expire—And all who resign by force majeure

May still win, let them winAs the last games end


240


PIG HEAVEN

As soon as he thinks he has an advantageThe little god mounts his cloudAnd from his throne of cheapened alloyProclaims an age of gold, disdain

Save that one? mount the CrossFor bore and sow enthroned on dross?You’d think there’s something worth the savingDespite the whip, the mad mob’s raving

What is it then? perhaps for this:A love of love, blind mother’s kiss,Blindness as a second sight,To love as blindness to the night

To such trouble Christ did goFor reasons that we do not know


241


TRAVELER BEWARE

Start with me, then stop—Six roads, six crossroadsAnd from those six more

On each a vergeFacing toward the southeastA fox alertStands watching your approach

Traveler, bewareThe rising moonCasts shadows of the foxTo the power of the tenth

And yet again the tenthOf every sixth—All the branching roadsOne moon beneath

And on each road a churchIn whichThe moonlight is the aisleBeneath the tabernacle

And in each boxGod on watchTo see on earth the lightOf every satellite

How many may be splitAnd still be one with it?Divide, and take care—Traveler beware


242


THE LASHING

The old norwegians saidThe world will end with iceWind and snowAnd frost to break the sun in pieces

Yes, and yesterday I sawThe warning stormAs snow in AprilThatched the hemlock huts on Snowshoe mountain

The world of humans,Not the globe, will dieFor that is fixed on stone and sea—Unfreezable near eternity

Yesterday the world flagellum lashed its ropes of iceAnd the sea rushed southwardIn recoil—Elastic is the atmosphere in pain

Now listen, listenWhispering on glassThe six-clawed handsOf a spring storm


243


HOW HEAVY YOU ARE

It is the eleventh of April. Christ is still aliveFor a few weeks more

And as we climbed the hill, the storm came after usFrom below, like a bear

Its brain was fire, and its voice rebounded and roseFrom the valley beneath us

I bore Christ on my back, and He swayedAs a weight that overbalanced

God be with us, we have little timeBefore we are overcome

Then I will let Him fall, and see Him vanishOnto the stones below

But He will come climbing back, the One I failedWith His wounds intact

With His wounds intact, but alive,The burden I let go

It is the eleventh of April, Christ on my shoulders,How heavy You are


244


EIGHTEEN THOUSAND NIGHTS

Not for a second winds of timeStop blowing downwind from a crime,The war’s been over fifty yearsStill he wakes in screams and tears

To see the guns of JapaneseFiring over open sights Tear off the heads of young Marines—Tarawa’s eighteen thousand nights

All can dream and none forgetMaybe even after deathHow the heads of many twistIn agony until they’re blessed

Physical and mental painInsulting to the human brainWaits for sleep but flies awakeFrom alcohol and opiate

Who will smooth away these wavesOf wind, will it be Christ who saves?How like us in His sacrificeTo be so crushed as we crush lice


245


APOCALYPSE

Underneath an apple treeCicadas sleeping fitfullyBetween the cables of the skyEarth without a night or day Seventeen the ages sleepPierced and sucked a flow of sap,Heaven lightless, moist to keepApple rootlets sweet to sip

Silent heaven where they stayUnderneath a wind and thunder,Then the tree is torn awaySky and earth are split asunder

Apocalypse, the sun insideWhere those sleeping insects hideRummages among the clods,Lamentation but no words

Lamentation, as did weWeep to lose an apple tree


246


TEKTONFor Dianne Murphy

Bees in daffodils? What are they doing there?Like painters gone to work on scaffoldsAlthough in leggings colored black,Yellow smocks, and eyes immensely round

They touch, although not blind,With delicate and hairy feetTo smell with sensory vibrissae what they’ve found—And then, with siphons well aligned

They nose the ovaries and brush the anthersOf a single-storey stallAnd paint themselves with yellow pollenOn the pockets of their overalls

God saw it too when He was usThe chrome of daffodils, the purple irisThe legs of wire and the eyes of glossAnd the barely touching, feeling kiss

The workmanship that tektons understoodTo make a bee, or booth of woodIs love of surface, carving and detailAnd patience infinite, God knew it well


247


IN THE DARK

Sometimes I think:Our Lord’s descent from DavidBut our Church is from the philistines—Can God have wed such a coarse maiden?

But then, in the sanctuary of the altarWild flowers grow that few have seenAnd these are sweet and faint of scent—No one has stepped there

Lord, you are never tamedThough scourges beat You blindYou still can see—Craftsman of the infinite

I see Your face before me,The book which is my soulHeld in Your left hand—And You know how to read it

And Your right hand,Two fingers raised in blessing,Your eyes that see what none have seen—Immutable is the cross behind Your sacred head

You complete my prayerYou ignite, put out the altar candleAnd You will see me in the darkWhen I call out for You


248


IN EVERY TREE

The lectionary flew out of his hand and he snatched it back—Did you see it? a bird with golden eyes,A dark form fretting to be let go

Hugged it to his breast, he didBut the head, the beak of brass, curved daggerShone against the chasuble

God breaks free when his blood is poured—Then he dips his beak in His own bloodAnd tears his own flesh to feed His chicks

He is the bird of John, the bird of the airWhose nest is in my soul—He flies to every tree that grows

The congregation is a forest, and He the birdWho returns to His nestIn every tree


249


THE REAL WORM

Creation is puns and anagramsTwenty acids aminoFour bases

Twenty to the twentieth to the fourthPower of a hippopotamus—How God did laugh on the seventh day!

The pocket in His vestHas a wormhole to the pocket in His tailcoatFor real worms

On Judgement DayThe good shall laugh, the wicked shall Just look blank

And the worm shall peer from the pocketOf Gaia’s gown and say:Cuckoo!


250


AND DID NOT SLEEP

I played the tune:I will not go to my bed till I suld die,For the dead

And the dead were smilingAnd some were dancing, and someWere clapping their hands

And they said, we dance for Our LordWho is risen from the tombAnd is joyful

We can play sad songs, we can play dancesAnd we can jumpAnd never come down again

The sad ones, and the happy onesAre dancing here—Pick and pluck the strings

I was the luteAnd the dead were dancing for joyAnd did not sleep


251


KNOWING HOW

Alive or dead—by us not wanted. But desired all the sameThis Fellow who made us, wild and tameNow more, now lessWho is it now? now guess

Little snails who float their bottoms upAgainst the surface of the catchment’s cupKnow who He is—By their very slime and foot confess

And the tadpoles’ exclamation in the pondIs what their shape is—bulb and wandAnd yet they say—no guessThat it is He who succored our distress

And should not we who tread above in airIn wisdom and confession still compareWith those of wetter wildernessIn knowing how to bless?


252


IT IS THE LORD

Thunder fussing and frettingSomething about to be bornTurns and tosses

Was he raised from the dead?They say he was—Eye witnesses

A net full of fishWood smoke risingA dead man come to life

Thunder drums across the lakeAnd that too onlyElectrostasis, or so they say

They knew it was himAnd this is the lesson—No thing is mundane

The scales of the perchAnd sharp white bonesThey stripped with their teeth

Thunder too, That rolls in the morningOn a big kettle drum of waves

It’s all so strangeFor why should there beAny waves at all?

And the cause is thereStirring the coalsOf the driftwood on the beach

As the smoke of the fireRises to thunderLike the fish to the net


253


AN ALTAR

They trim the grass and then they plant a pear tree—An altar without blood and fleshSo let the sacrifice be yours

We did not wish it, ask for itYou might have left yourself in heavenAnd us a peaceful time on softened Earth

To sleep where you have pressed your footIn the garden of GethsemaneIs better than a midnight watch, an anxious piss

Then why are we responsible?We do not ask who made usOr who saved us

And yet above the tomb I seeDroplets of the venous bloodWhich are not poppies planted here

Your sacrifice and cross amaze usHorrify and scareThe grey winged doves, your cooing messengers

No peace for the sinner or the saved—Why then did you make your world so lovelyAnd give us hearts of lead?

And then the answer comes—I love it too and love alsoThe heart that loves what I have made


254


JACK IN THE PULPIT

Isn’t it prettyTo see the terriersRun through brushWith short legs blurs

Jack in the pulpitBull frogs gruntWatch them huntOn a spring afternoon

Sniff at a clumpOf stiffened grassWhere the fox has passedOr roll in scat

They see the blackbirdWatch the wrenYellow cock birdGreyish hen

Then with tonguesOf raspberriesJump in a poolBeneath the trees

Snakes come outCoil the sunNot all quick thingsNeed to run

Not all worshipNeeds a churchNot all seekersNeed to search

Pavel ChichikovMay 2, 2000

255


THE MICROSCOPEFor Len Atwood

The midges rolled their sleeves, began to boxBut were so light that each minuscule blowBounced them backwards by the recoiled shock—Three centimeters and a half or so

A midge’s anger does no earthly good,Too small a midge, it is misunderstood,It is ignored unless its back is wedgedInside an eye, that pricky sticky midge

We too when we disagree, we danceOur tantrums in the middle of the airAnd stamp our tiny feet down to advanceAn argument—not even flies could care

For they, far greater bodies buzz and hum,Ignore a midget microscopic Solomon


256


THE HERD

Horses stamp their feet and speakAbout the bipeds shrewd and weak:Stride and strength and pace they lackScissoring our sweating backs,Crop no grasses yet they layIn plentiful supplies of hay,Separate us in our stalls Keep us from the wind with wallsWhat makes them masters makes us slaves,Power that the bipeds have

But when a round-up shall transformCommon cloudlets into stormsThen will every stallion, marePound its hooves and whinny, rearTo see the bipeds who have pennedUs fly away in mortal windAnd every herdless animalFind in heaven its corral,Transfiguration’s second senseOf wild triumphant innocence


257


THERE

The half-Arabian circles, cantertrot cantertrotPure skin biscuit smooth and brownMane and tail of jetShapely head and eye black glassWeave forever’s time and spaceAround a long green lawn

Not my Eucharistic hereYou will be a communion there,Mare of grace, amazing sunAround my Earth you canter, run


258


WEED

Creatures, flowers, love-in-a-mistSapphire stars in a green skyOur skin is wordless rainWe glisten but do not lie

But watch, for we are sentientAnd slow, the rain has bentUs and we hear and seeDiurnal glory latent

Then at night another starWhich rises but you do not knowWhere or what it is—For you must grow

It shines where others walkInfinity its stalkCharity its seedThe bright world you know its weed


259


ACROSS

There was a bridge, not across waterBut across deathAnd when He met them on the roadWhile they were talking He led them acrossTo where they could see Him At the breaking of bread

If you look down nowYou can see what lies beneath youStinking with the blackness of chaosAnd if you look to the sideYou can see One waitingTo guide you across


260


EAGLE

We’re waiting for the everlasting rain to stopAnd the eagle in the tree has golden eyes,Talons hold an iridescent trout—Come Lord! Spread, take me

With you. He who stocks mortality’sCold waters gave me up—See the swimmers leap,Achieve the less dense air,Death’s atmosphere

He takes them, caught,Prey that blood has bought—An eagleAngel—Eyes of goldLook down and see


261


SWALLOW

Swallow curving in a meadowVelvet brown you are and yellowCutting wings cutting tailLittle boat with narrow sail

The sun of love is yellow-brightBurns your eyes and gives you sightMortal wounds, five are mortalTwo of each a burning portal

Little swallow do not falterFly with me to see the altarScissor wings above the cupDip your head and drink it up


262


FRANCES

When Fritz died his body was in hospitalBut morphine, gliding careful youth with wings, took himWhere he was bound to go—The topmast of the Preussen as she sailedFrom Newcastle to Santiago

Now his wife is dead as wellFlies like a gull above the sea of death,Ticks along the combers as they poundThe steel and black-hulled ship—It sails to Melbourne and beyond

How she suffered as he sufferedSpread her wings alongside as he sailedToward round horizons and the dying sun—Westward, westward over and aboveThe lip of evening, not alone

He saw her once, as he looked down,A bird above the wavetops where the sailors drown,Sees her once again, white dotWhere love and time are twisted in a knot


263


GOD SINGS

A blank, a blank says the yellow-throated warblerI’m inside the undergrowth, you’ll never see me,But I made the world and I wove it with strawAnd sang the old night into day

Didn’t you know that God is a warblerAnd lives in a universe of blackberry bush?You can hear Him every evening singing in the green—Listen to His voice in the hush

Do you think He’s an old man, a young man or a ghost?No He’s a warbler, or a young cock thrush


264


I AM

Be careful, my heart is made of crystalAs she gives back an answer to the sunWhich rolls on massive iron tracksYou can listen, see, I am afraidMay die while still elevenAnd the tubing in my arm is bloodBut fear will not run clear in this transparency

Three books are that lie close to my bedOne has chapters made of tenBright years, one incomplete unfinished isMy diary of lightAnd one is longer, volume of my dreams—I will not shareWhat other reading I have read, beware!

So much control, such courage, dearBut we are all afraid, we all must fear,Come, give me blessing, and I youWe will take comfort from the trueIt is a mystery to die, and to die youngWould frighten any one—I am God’s Son


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NO WALLS€¦ · Web viewI am the dog with broken back That shows what broken dogs may lack No, say...

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