The
Instance of Water
Some water travels underground, in rivers
that flow for miles
Sometimes only a few feet underground
Then re-surface as a series of ponds,
Or a stretch of stream that disappears in
a marsh or lake.
Flowing through limestone, water hollows,
the ground above
Collapses, the caverns creating new lakes.
Dye has been released in some to determine
The extent of passageways:
Red swirls vanish, then with schools of
bream
And goatfish, surface miles later in another
lake:
Divers try to follow, every summer, those
threads;
Reports of someone lost, the silt stirred,
The cave narrowing until there is no room
To turn, air-tanks empty and narcosis settles.
Schools of fish splinter into light in the
clear water.
Walking across such a terrain,
The ground turns soft, brush turns to marsh
weeds
A blister, where water forms a bubble
And osmotically seeps into light:
Is this how it all began, someone walking,
Then disappearing into the ground, swept
Into an unknown river, carried off
As though on a white bull's back to sea,
garlands
Of flowers left in the wake, washed ashore.
Or in another place, at a ledge, over a
lake
That divers say has no bottom, but find
volcanic shelving
Where gold cups and headbands rest
In the silt, hearts then bodies were thrown
And must have drifted weighted endlessly
downwards:
Leaving the city in retreat.
The horsemen and armored footmen
Were so weighted with gold
They floundered in rivers and canals radiating
From the city, and drownedswept, too,
Away, with the sacrificed whose souls
By then were the swarms of hummingbirds
Above Tenochtitlán, as their hearts
must still be
Drifting toward a molten center.
While walking, if water is flowing close
Underground, why haven't I heard it,
Or will I only when it is too late, the
sound coming
As if from a distant waterfall,
Even as I am pulled in, swallowed alive,
As though by shark, serpent, or crocodile
This is how it could have started,
A story about one disappearing into the
mouth
Of the earth or sea or skyand hearing
the shouts,
Some might turn and watch, only later
Thinking that I might have been pulled
Free, but stood and watched, as though
To prepare for the beginning of guilt,
The denial that such things could happen,
To place the blame elsewhere, the invention
of gods.
Or is the whisper of water underground
That of the gods, their only warning, heard
Like a breath at night on my neck, while
a hawk circled
With no prey in sight, the land below
Stretching dry and soulless below it.
The instance of water, beading up,
A garland of lakes, beyond the curve of
its eye.
This would be the world waiting,
The dry caves without drawings, empty salt-pans,
The rain knotted in the sky, invisible,
for a moment
At the beginning everything absolutely still.
Reading Bashø
to My Daughter
1.
There are characters she says
She'll remember forever: the one for horse,
for world,
The one for fire that looks as if it bursts
Into flame.
But she'd rather read about frogs,
Things still in this world.
2.
What promises are held
no road is the same,
Leaves rush across, ice blackens.
Where we go becomes
Less known as we approach.
The critics retort, "so what's new"
But I can't think of any argument they have
offered
That settles or reassures
The claim things of this world
disappear, the day bends at the horizon,
stars
Shift out of the constellations, their stories
Breaking into pixels to recombine
Into other figures whose stories haven't
arrived
But are already spinning toward us, their
light arcing
From distant prominences, past each heliopause,
the old arrangements
Still flooding past, waiting to be seennothing
Disappears, everything ends,
caught in passage,
Filaments of fire weave into, woven from
mountain, horse, world.
3.
In the night a frog leaps, Bash says, translated,
Into the pond's deep resonance,
Best known of his poems notes the commentator
Everything becomes commentary,
Margins crowded, yet what we look for isn't
there:
the hills were not very far from the highroad,
and scattered
with numerous pools. It was the season of
a certain species
of iris called katsumi. So I went
to look for it. I went from
pool to pool, asking every soul I met on
the way where I could
possibly find it, but strangely enough,
no one had ever heard
of it, and the sun went down before I caught
even a glimpse of it.
The iris wait,
indifferent to us, waiting for
The buds to unfurl, the sun heating the
ponds insects glance off
Ofwe need to be reminded of
This, so little time,
if we have to be
Governed sowhat is the time of iris,
of the frog's leap,
The pond, crusting at its edges by the height
of summer?
4.
Then the screen will go blank, before
A word is entered,
Contact lost. The aspect of metaphors
That provides them with energy is that they
keep
Filling the screenponds dot with duckweed,
The water black with silt in suspension,
clouds,
A heron's shadow.
In mid-winter, I saw one crossing
The ice-locked marsh crossed-hatched in
brown
Teezle and cat-tails, the sky pitted with
starlings
Surging up from a sumac thicket then low
across
A cornfield left unplowed. The heron, single,
A word coming always into the world,
Blue as slate,
as mid-winter
When the world traveled into has wrapped
itself
Inside its old skins, cold mud, leaf-mats.
5.
The world never dormant when you think about
itrhizomes
Spinning leaf-blades in their starchy flesh,
Pond-bottoms in gestation, the mold-black
water sluggish, almost ice.
The wasp at work at the window, out of season,
Tracks across the field's mud and gritty
snow-melt,
Scabs of buds on the hawthornits fruit
black and scattered on the ground
Certain constants with their own variables,
what's known
Always coming undone: the pond's circumference
has no measure,
Its depth no plumb-line
not a representation of uncertainty,
But our own movement, stitched between the
leap and the sudden
Splash, between memory and knowing
if knowing is really only an odds-on gamble
Of recurrence. Winter light curves along
the branches. We're rolling
The dice, coming up short.
6.
Constellations rise through bare trees,
What we wrote
a soft cloth over
The face of things,
Horse
mountain
world
fire
Filaments of each character a stroke of
memory
Assembling again and again on the screen
Your figures
Horse Mountain
World Fire
Everything holds its own beginnings,
Nothing ever leaves
The constellations tracking back,
The pond still
resonant when Bashø left, freshets
of iris
Running up the mountain side no one visits,
in bloom, blue, yellow-ribbed throat,
The same we have, waiting,
Its rhizomes thickening, pearl buds of leaf-whorls,
on the hillside
Where in summer
lights flick
On and off, holding us in that stillness
between.
What is Wanted
Little news could be added except to note
that the steady decline had accelerated,
discussions were failing:
driving from one section
of the city to another where
the bombing had intensified,
but re-routed at the last moment,
the areas of greatest damage
went unseen, though stories
always filter back alongside
the news reports that seldom
mention casualties, nor the instructions
the army carries out in the territories
where special permits are required
prior to any movement if you are
not a citizen, or if you are a resident
but not a citizen, or if you are a
citizen but not an enfranchised citizen,
and even then it is difficult
and explanations are closely
attended to so as to receive
what is wanted, a clean slate
or good review, a report that suggests
everything remains under control,
and such incidents are unremarkable.
It is like driving to the city's
center we know has suffered,
but turned away, and like water
seeping through a roof, driven by gravity,
searches for the path of least resistance
along the rafters and joists,
through the plaster, finally
weeping through, seen at last
along a crooked seam or crack,
flaring out, feathering concertina wire,
that turns us back, to count our own
extremities while looking out
over a field, the grasses whipped
gold by the sun.
* * *
Our own bodies map out the world
that we made for ourselves.
Cratered, the city is my own
heart and I am the gun unloosed.
I am the city of Cain
where Abel was driven from,
and into my heart:
harboring Abel, I search him out
with the eyes of Cain.
The fields are laced and wired.
Birds rise up from them,
then surge down like combers, settling
into the thick grass,
only what is lightest can trespass.
What is wanted is innocence
or what remains of it, buried
in scar tissue so thick it begins
to choke arteries and the air seems
thinner, so thin our breath is pulled
from us before we can swallow.
The city glints in the steep sun,
turning a corner, there are no buildings
only their ruins, and farther,
along the hillside, the corps
is bulldozing a fruit grove,
a house in flames.
All night I will roll in my sleep
shouting for Abel.
* * *
And if he should come,
when the day's heat pressures the city,
flattening the fields
and hillside ruins,
we know what we would do this time,
we would not think this time
will be different,
we will not pause longer and ask
if he is weary from his travels,
we will not forget our jealousy,
we will not forget our desires.
And if he should come,
we know where he has kept his knives,
the whetstone, and block.
We remember how he hoisted the lamb
and drew the blood into vessels,
how he grabbed the young goat
by its first horns with his grass-stained
hand
and sheared the skin off deaf to its cries
and the terror
of the other animals,
while our grain was scattered
and the fruit trees sagged, ripe fruit
unwanted, and if he should come,
would he come this time for our children,
to hoist them above his block.
We were not chosen, except to be
his scapegoat, except to be the prey
of our own rage, even as our fruit
turned gold with the orbits of bees
and the welling up of nectar.
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