The Village on Horseback: Prose and Verse, 2003-2008

by Jesse Ball

  the entire feathered expanse

  shifts in flight.

  Parades

  And when you are finally caught and questioned,

  it is discovered, sadly, that you know

  nothing of use. Your captors exchange glances, nod.

  You are released in the freedom of some afternoon,

  some autumn of the year, your coat, hat, returned

  as if to continue your life. Now it is you

  in the world again. In yellowing rooms, life

  becomes no more than the places where it occurs.

  At the pier in darkness, parades will cross the water,

  visible but once. Or I could say

  I saw the wind coming hard along the river touching all it passed.

  How are things consequent? When they catch you

  again, what will you say? That all things

  may be weighed, may be raised and weighed

  by two human hands?

  A Calico Ascription

  I stand by the pump with a deaf girl.

  She is on the verge of a breakthrough.

  I am very earnest and sedulous.

  I am possibly the best teacher

  who has ever lived. I lever the pump’s

  arm, and water begins to flow.

  Meanwhile, in my days as a

  snake-charmer, a great painter

  is sketching me. He’s on holiday

  and has inserted a slight grin

  onto this quiet face.

  I wasn’t grinning. You mustn’t

  suppose I was grinning.

  I’ve always known day by day

  my real work approaches.

  Not for anything would I grin,

  not even once.

  The work means too much.

  Our Plots, Our Comfort

  By an old mill my father is waiting

  with hundreds of other fathers.

  I would like for them to keep

  each other company,

  but from here it is plain—

  none of them is speaking.

  What’s that in his hand?

  An old leather wallet.

  He’s taking something out of it,

  a picture, I wonder of whom.

  Who next will go to join him,

  walking long there

  in the early places of my life?

  Report from Our Lands

  Nevertheless the war continued

  trembling the cupboards

  where we slept, cracking the long

  stone walkways of the village, as

  if there were no other way to act

  successfully in this foolish place,

  as if were we in its place, this war,

  we had no light but brute gleaming.

  Bestiary 4

  A race of men who can turn themselves into not animals

  but inanimate objects. Europeans reach this tribe

  by boat. What a grand city, they say. What fine broad

  avenues, such as you might see in Paris. How lovely

  the women in their long satin dresses, with their

  fans and shuddering hair. Much feasting goes on.

  Days later, the discovery is made. Orders are sent back

  across the sea to be confirmed by the Queen.

  Orders are confirmed. The populace is brought out

  into a series of aesthetically ideal city squares

  and forced at gunpoint to change directly

  into gold. They object at first, then the King

  changes himself into a large gold vase. His sons

  become a pair of gold grates (for a confessional). Their

  children become lockets. The royal servants

  take the form of forks and spoons. This is general

  throughout the population, and the objects

  become a sort of faux-history, where each object

  fails in its attempt to mimic the life lived.

  Historians today wonder if this was intentional.

  Bestiary 5

  These pregnant methods, cheerful

  and fat, leaning from filthy casements

  in the side of June may yield

  ink-eyed marionettes so lovely

  that their gestures,

  pointedly describing strings,

  mean little even to the adept.

  Mary. Isa. Joan. Celeste.

  Roaming the grounds

  of this quartered preserve.

  Mary lays a lacquered hand

  upon your cheek. Joan’s plain head

  inclines — she is speaking

  but the voice is from above.

  Isa crouches in the near future;

  she will scream at a painted boar

  that bursts from a stand of trees.

  Celeste is absent. Or is Joan

  speaking of her when she says,

  “I knew a matchstick once

  that burned like the hands of a clock.”

  From the scenery then, a wooden creaking

  as of someone’s descent. Applause.

  Applause. And in the front row

  a man’s heart bursts in his chest.

  EAST RIDING

  ONE

  The forest was much larger than anyone had previously thought.

  So large that one couldn’t find one’s way back.

  Luckily there were many lovely clearings and crisp glorious mornings.

  It was therefore possible to live.

  Also there were rose bushes everywhere, each larger than the one before

  (and how we loved to discover the roses, naming them after ourselves).

  And biplanes would pass overhead.

  TWO

  In the period before I entered the forest, I thought

  that there was the world, one small corner of which

  was the forest. Now it has become clear to me—

  there is the forest, and the world is but

  one small corner of it, exceedingly small, humble even.

  For I have seen them meet in the street, and I can tell you

  it is the world that makes the deeper bow, the world

  that goes away, hat in hand, making furtive glances back

  to see if the forest has turned also to look. Which never happens.

  And furthermore, one can’t find one’s way back.

  Luckily there are many lovely clearings and crisp glori ous mornings.

  THREE

  On one such morning I went out looking

  for the clearest of seven streams. Seven there were,

  running through the forest, and all of them clear.

  Which was the clearest?

  I put my hand in the first stream.

  My hand turned the color of the night sky, which is mottled.

  This distressed me, so I put my hand in my pocket.

  On to the next stream.

  I put my other hand in the second stream.

  It soon began to move of its own accord.

  This distressed me further. With a stern act of will

  I put it too in my pocket.

  On again.

  At the third stream, a man was standing.

  Both of his hands were stuck in his pockets also.

  “What do you suppose we do next?” he asked.

  FOUR

  The forest is different than was supposed.

  It is darker in the trees, lighter between them.

  Passing between them is its own skill,

  separate from the skill of being in clearings.

  This is how it goes: you wander for years

  in the world, then you find the edge of the forest.

  You enter, and wander for days in the forest.

  You try to find your way back.

  Instead you find a clearing. Also you find out

  whether or not you can live alone in the forest.

  Many can’t. Others come after, and bury them.

  Hungry little roses grow then from
the ground.

  FIVE

  We of the forest wonder often about the biplanes.

  From where do they take off?

  Where do they land?

  It should be easy to answer this question,

  as there are so many of us asking it and spending time

  wondering and musing.

  The trouble is, only one person ever saw the biplanes.

  He mentioned it in passing. Afterwards,

  he refused to speak of it. Otherwise, he was silent.

  If you happen to see a biplane, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?

  one of my friends asked me.

  Of course I would, I say. But I’m not sure of it.

  I’m not sure I wouldn’t follow the plane alone to the land- ing field

  (which must be a clearing deeper in the forest)

  there to make friends with the aviators, and beg them to take me in.

  Such a life it would be to fly in the air above the forest!

  Distinctly I feel above the forest, luckily it is always gloriously morning.

  And in a plane, one can easily find one’s way,

  though not, of course, back to the world. One could,

  I mean, find one’s way deeper into the forest.

  SIX

  What can I tell you about the forest

  that you can’t read in books? Well,

  our lives here are bared like the trunks of trees.

  We believe fundamentally in things that are

  quite obviously not true. On such things

  our happiness is often based.

  For instance, the allegiance of friends.

  We of the forest are known cowards.

  We make free with each other’s possession,

  make love to each other’s husbands and wives.

  At first it is odd, I know.

  Pierre for instance, has a gorgeous wife.

  She wears a little dress of leaves. People are forever

  pulling at it as she curtsies by on her girlish legs.

  One day she asked me if I would like

  to go and find the Monumental Rose.

  Where is it? I asked.

  Deeper in, she said. We really must be going.

  And so we went. I took Pierre’s name.

  He took mine. We shook hands.

  Have a fine time, he said. Be good.

  The forest is much larger than you think.

  THEN — a rustling of leaves. Cora had gone.

  I’d better go, I said, following into the rustling

  through the glorious light.

  SEVEN

  The philosophers who end up in the forest

  stop writing books and begin instead

  trying to grow herb-gardens. Every time

  it happens the same way. It’s so funny.

  There’s Spinoza. What’s he doing? Pruning oregano.

  There’s William James.

  What are you doing, William James? I inquire.

  But he doesn’t answer, so absorbed is he

  in laying string for vines. I watch for a minute,

  standing fast by his elbow, intent on his progress.

  Before you go, he says absently,

  be sure to take a sprig of parsley for your buttonhole.

  This I do. Need I say it twice?

  We of the forest are terribly dashing.

  EIGHT

  Everyone in the forest has the same dream every night.

  We sleep and are immediately awake again

  in a tiny one-room house. There is a storm

  in the out-of-doors. It is clear to everyone

  that it is the biggest storm there’s ever been.

  The forest, in fact, has been flattened.

  All of a sudden, the storm halts.

  We rush out of the cottage door

  and are standing in the middle of a clearing

  that stretches infinitely in every direction.

  It’s then we realize that the forest

  has not been flattened. Nor was there

  a storm. Merely that

  this is a deeper clearing, one we may

  someday find. We wake then, invigorated,

  and without so much as a by-your-leave,

  rush off into the dew-strewn underbrush.

  NINE

  East Riding. It is the name that the world has

  for the forest. I recall I was a child when I

  heard it first. Still, I felt drawn.

  I would go sometimes to the highest part

  of the farm country and gaze eastward to the sea

  of treetops drowsing in the distance,

  hazy day, the sun’s rays mingling with the dust

  and hanging in the air like the passing of hands.

  I believe, I told the village priest, in East Riding.

  Dismayed, he spoke with my parents,

  counseling them to send me to the part of the world

  farthest from East Riding.

  But my father laughed. I recall this vividly.

  He laughed at the priest, and raised me up

  eye level into the air. He said,

  “I believe you are going to East Riding.

  Already you’ve left us.”

  He took my mother’s hand and stood in the doorway

  looking off into the distance as though watching

  the progress of some traveler on a distant road.

  But I was still in the house. My things weren’t even packed.

  The priest stuck his sharp elbow in my ribs.

  See? he said. So I slipped between my parent’s legs

  and walked and walked and walked.

  When I reached the distant road, I could see

  that they were watching. I waved. They waved back.

  And I followed the road where it went

  beneath a canopy of trees.

  TEN

  On the deeper paths, one can’t know

  for sure if one is welcome, save by clearings.

  If one encounters lovely clearings

  and crisp glorious mornings, then one has

  cannily chosen the right path.

  At other times it’s as dark as the inside

  of a leaded window on an old cloudy block.

  No one visits anymore, and the oldest man

  is older by far than the histories he tells.

  This is his defense, and it’s a keen one.

  So I know to turn back, sometimes.

  Always, it’s then one is given a small but kind

  clearing to sleep in, and a tiny rose in greeting.

  Be thou pleased by the day, and by waking

  to light. From the bottom of a well