That Said Read online

  and still I could not connect.

  I telephoned the Embassy—

  heard, fractured by static,

  “...an old military plane

  crashed in the street,

  skidding into a tap-tap

  jammed with passengers.”

  When the hawk strikes,

  if he doesn’t take feathers

  he takes straw.

  All varieties of blood

  bloom at eye level. Flamboyant.

  Belle Mexicaine. Acres of poinsettia

  flame up the cliffs

  along the Kenscoff Road.

  The last hurricane

  cut the banana plantation down.

  The way an image

  inverts inside the eye,

  bunches of bananas jutted

  like chandeliers out of the ground.

  The palace leveled by jungle,

  accessible only by air.

  Violence civilized

  by machete, jeep, and climate.

  4. Blackout

  Only the knife knows

  what is in the heart

  of the yam.

  A blazing eye

  will not set the house

  on fire.

  All electric power out;

  I swung the shutters

  open and leaned

  over the fretwork

  of the balcony,

  as the city

  sank—tier

  by brilliant tier—

  into the harbor.

  Stumbling toward

  the door, my fingers

  skimmed the Braille plaster

  of the walls, until

  my bare feet

  felt the landing,

  the wooden boxes

  of the steps.

  In my hand,

  my butane lighter

  slid a small circle

  down the stairs,

  and the stairs

  became all motion,

  surfaces angled

  off to surfaces

  I couldn’t see;

  and I, suddenly

  brave among shadows,

  yelled out

  to scare the maid,

  “Esprit! Esprit!”

  thinking it meant

  ghost...

  Save yourself

  from drowning.

  The day a leaf

  falls in the water

  may not be

  the day it sinks.

  5. North: The Fish

  The blind and depigmented fish Amblyopsis spelaea inhabits streams in the dark zones of caves in southern Indiana.

  In the laboratory, the scientist

  explains what I am about to see.

  How, in Huddelson’s cornfield,

  the farmer discovered the cave

  when his pig fell in the hole.

  Lowered by rope into a twilit chamber,

  the scientist landed on a dirt mound

  studded with lost things: a hoe, twisted

  vertebrae, keys, shreds of tinfoil—

  whatever shiny caught the pack rats’ eyes.

  The scientist shuts off the lights

  and guides me one step up, unbolting

  a room of cold and dark so dense

  its clarity shocks instantly—

  as in the nightmare dive, the dreamer

  wakes midair over water.

  In the frozen halo of my iris,

  the dark target widens.

  Total darkness isn’t black,

  but is a deep and pit-like gray

  that draws the eye into its depths.

  The scientist passes me the flashlight

  like a cigarette. Each fish

  looks like a finger’s length of quartz.

  The colorless scales have the sheen

  of silk, silver mesh around the gills.

  The fins, thin undulant fans, quiver.

  Cut one open, its blood runs clear as water.

  Light shines straight through its head.

  I focus on where the eyes should be.

  Skin stretches unbroken over the skull,

  flat and smooth as a thumbnail.

  Eye sockets, shadows trapped in ice.

  I dip my hand into the water

  to touch the glacial head.

  The fish darts away!

  It stuns like current as I jerk back,

  my hand rigid at my side.

  My eye burns beyond its chemicals.

  6.

  Across the garden

  two birds call

  into my sleep.

  What was it

  I was dreaming?

  —a mermaid turning

  in your net

  you wished to make

  human by an act

  of love? Landlocked,

  I was only

  divided by desire.

  In sleep,

  when each has lost

  the enterprise of

  self, and the heart

  no longer steers

  within the body’s

  limits, then

  sun, moon, and skull

  are equal in the mind.

  On a seabed, or bed

  of linen, the same

  skeletal thrash

  in darkness,

  choking on water

  as on air.

  Desire’s

  just the interval

  in birdsong.

  The two call

  across the distance

  of the bed.

  The voices call

  despite weather

  or temperament.

  I let you go.

  But see how my desire

  drew you in.

  7. Trompe l’oeil

  Tonight, the grid

  of trolley wires

  that canopies the street

  sags under

  the sky’s dark weight.

  I glanced out

  the window the moment

  the trolley passed—

  spattering an enormous

  blue-white spark

  that filled my bedroom

  like pistol shot—

  branding trees,

  the house opposite,

  where still cars

  bloomed in points

  of light. Surveying

  the injury, I focused

  on the dark.

  Trees uprooted, cars

  parked in air.

  Everywhere I looked

  their outlines

  shocked the dark

  and floated exactly

  as they were:

  double-exposed on

  the ceiling, the wall,

  burning the back

  of my hand.

  Was I looking

  at tomorrow, daylight

  out of any time,

  or history

  repeating itself

  in waves?

  In seconds,

  the image began

  to fade.

  What the eye cannot

  hold, it holds

  and sharpens

  in memory, when

  a detail overlooked

  ignites

  on the white periphery.

  The glitter of

  things outside

  short-circuit

  beyond sight.

  The spark deepens

  in the brain

  as the dark grows

  more intense,

  when, for an instant,

  light is all

  that’s permanent.

  The Minute Hand

  Even while we speak, the hour passes.

  —Ovid

  For Howard

  A Clock

  Summer twilight tamps down the farmhouse roof.

  Kneeling in his lettuce patch, the farmer

  stares through the wrought-iron bars of the III,

  a rusting harp that heaven plunked down

  beside him, junk too
heavy to haul away.

  He squints at his wife beyond the IX,

  tending even rows of greens.

  Rising and falling between them,

  the steady hands of the Planter’s Clock

  skim the white enamel dial

  that time has turned to cream.

  The sun dips and disappears

  as the moon rises over the minute hand.

  The pageant glides by, on gears.

  Up in thinner air where the moon aspires,

  a cornucopia spills stars and ripening planets—

  a tomato Mars, a turnip Saturn, and four

  greenbean comets whipping their tails.

  A gigantic ear of corn

  floats like a spaceship over the barn.

  Rooted in the ticking rim of earth,

  the farmer and his wife can never touch.

  Bright as the moon, an onion sheds its light

  on their awestruck faces morning, noon, and night.

  If only she could slip inside

  her pretty trapezoid of home

  and cook her husband a good square meal,

  but the farmhouse door is painted shut,

  the curtains drawn—

  hiding the feather bed, the empty crib,

  the cupboard filled with loaves of bread.

  High in that harvested astronomy,

  the onion is incapable of tears.

  Whatever Intelligence placed it

  like a highlight shining in the farm wife’s eye

  also chiseled the lists into the bedrock

  of planting charts on which she stands—

  tables of days and months and seasons,

  killing frosts, auspicious times to sow—

  indelible as the stone tablets of the Law.

  The farm wife casts her vision higher even

  than the moving parts of heaven.

  Do other worlds like hers exist

  in rooms in distant galaxies—

  exact copies of her farm with weathervane,

  weathered barn, and a husband

  on his knees, weeding or praying,

  his face a wrinkled thumbprint?

  It’s like opening a familiar book:

  the illustration always stays the same

  no matter what time of day she looks.

  The same furrows stitch the fields;

  and haystacks, heaps of golden needles,

  dot the farthest pastures, the last of which

  drops neatly into the horizon’s ditch.

  Dig potatoes now. Thin the beets.

  It’s five to nine. Years later than she thinks.

  She feels the earthquake each minute makes

  behind that shaking scenery,

  heartbeats coming from so far away

  she has to cup her ears to hear them.

  Pharaoh

  So as not to be lonely

  in the afterlife

  the boy-king was buried

  with his most cherished things

  items he would need

  on his journey­—

  toys, enough food

  for a lifetime, maybe more

  a golden cage

  on whose perch

  his canary

  still sings like a rusty hinge

  his throne

  his cup

  a spoon or two

  made of solid gold

  urns filled with oil

  urns filled with honey

  some broken dishes

  plenty of wine

  his gold mask

  a perfect likeness

  on which his highness

  crayoned a faint mustache

  his silk tunic

  a supply of papyrus

  an ivory comb

  with no missing teeth

  a mirror on which

  to breathe a cloud—

  the tomb’s only weather

  that, and dust

  his dog

  a golden ball

  two old servants

  curled at his feet

  under the bandages

  pharaoh, a boy,

  buried with his hands

  in his pockets

  a star chart

  carved on the ceiling

  under which

  a deep healing is taking place

  Young Woman on the Flying Trapeze

  Shooting with his Bolex,

  my father kept nature in perspective.

  He caught the trapeze artist catching

  his partner in midair, swinging

  in and out of my line of sight.

  I was five. In nightmares, the body

  falls straight into the dreamer’s eye;

  he wakes before hitting bottom.

  Did I blink then, did I glance away,

  the moment that she tumbled

  like an angel out of heaven?

  I don’t remember, but I saw her fall.

  My father slows the projector down

  frame by frame; the trapeze artist

  aims for her partner, and somersaults.