New Poetries VII

by Michael Schmidt

  to lose means both to have been defeated and to misplace.

  Maman Maman Maman also answers to Demeter Demeter Demeter.

  Sister, I could stop no one from taking your head,

  although I promise you I fought for it, hand-to-hand

  by the mouth of the bone-house. One day on my mountain,

  I got to thinking about those other peaks. From a cave

  underwater I heard: Find them, like flowers strange

  and never before seen. And so it became true.

  I found mountains covered in smoke-thick fogs,

  and mountains that lied – those were barely hills.

  And then I found them: what the mountains in my visio

  would have looked like had it been summer in that land.

  Summer brought some changes: my body had no orchids

  or lichen, and the crown was not of diamonds, but the reek

  of sewage, wafting over a field – a prairie almost –

  from which rose tens of signal towers, all blinking red.

  The base of mountains was, when I got there, still,

  and in darkness. It was a sky in which every child of every star,

  living or dead, could be heard humming. The peerless

  face of the mountain was cragged rock, dust rock, shadow rock.

  I stayed until day, to watch the birth of a sunbeam

  so I could then see it age. Later in the day an immense heat

  came, like another bone-house. I climbed the ridges, which turned

  to coloured ringlets of cloud and ash at the slightest pressure.

  Sunrise and sunset were scant minutes of shadow-play.

  The prairie grass’s rustle, each blade sang in a different language.

  There I learned the names of four of the lunar mares:

  Catfire, Osiris, Blood Oath, and Early Morning.

  This is who I am. I harbour secret loves, and I do secret work.

  Catfire, Osiris, Blood Oath, and Early Morning are teaching me

  how to finally chart a course through time, how to carve

  journeys in space: they descended from their moon to the crags,

  followed me home to my moonlike mountain. Lover, my body –

  you won’t be able to keep up with it. Soon you’ll have to leave it.

  You’ll have to leave me. Or else I’ll leave you, because my body,

  it invents definitions for the word sadness, like noun, the feathers

  on a bird’s back. You’ll do nothing for me. On my mountain,

  it’s midafternoon, and the wheeling birds are landing

  steadily, even though no stable ground is here to be found.

  When they sing, it is a song that I, who know no prayers,

  imagine to be gospel. A man comes up the mountainside

  and sings along with them as he walks in circles on the rock.

  Robbed, sister, was your breath. Robbed, lover, is yours, too.

  Sister, I wish you could know this feeling: if sung perfectly,

  pressure on each nerve cluster can make bones irrelevant, whether

  those bones are living or dead, whether they are ash or dirt.

  At the base of my mountain is a lake where creatures go to die.

  Water slides into their spiracles and fills their tracheae.

  Their tracheae stretch into bellows fit to extinguish the fires

  in any volcano. When my body showed me sadness

  and began there to outline and diagram the word,

  another definition was noun, a chorus of brass instruments,

  like upward-turned mouths forged of metal, and another was verb,

  to shake like chimes flanking a rock-hewn shore, barely alive

  and almost imperceptible for a flash. Sometimes I picture

  my sister underneath one of the sculptor’s spiders.

  Her head barely reaches the first joint on the spider’s leg,

  and when she looks up, she thinks that the whole sky

  is the spider’s stomach. Maman, she says, I am hungry.

  Food. Food. I am hungry. She runs her shrunken finger

  from one tagma to another. Her stroke makes lava run faster

  in all the volcanoes within the tectonic plate on which she lives,

  and she, unawares, suckles at every ridge she can find.

  She rests both palms flat against the metal, closes her eyes

  and cries. What would the world look like with enough lava

  to fill the Atlantic? I know that the earth’s temperature

  has risen, and I know that all of its ice will melt.

  I know there will be no more purple from the sun, that the spider’s

  iron underside is one of the few things that, like my mother,

  does not sing. At the lake today is a flock of feral cats.

  Though they’re in front of me, their song comes from below,

  so although I can see them, I picture them swimming in a river

  that separates mortals from the planet’s heart. In this river floats

  the phantom of a dead doe. Listen to me now, darlings:

  my sister did not live long enough to see the moon

  turn red, but I did, and despite those who wish otherwise,

  myself included, I will see it again. Sadness’s fourth definition

  is conjunction, bees, forests of them, devotional and thick enough

  to knot together human dreams, or human bodies, even when ghostly,

  or lovelorn. The underground river gives me no passage,

  despite my dreams of the phantom that dropped anchor

  somewhere, and of its amassed pelicans and vultures.

  Each ghost is filled to the brim with flowers whose scents

  describe the places they were born, just like mine does,

  no matter how hard I try to cloak it. On the top of my mountain

  a man says to a woman: I like how there’s just trees. Trees trees trees,

  she replies. Each time she says the word, her voice makes

  a new species. I recently tried another way to die: could I fall

  from a tower filled wall-to-wall with twenty-four thousand

  living flowers, each planted in the soil covering the tower’s floors,

  six inches deep? The flowers would have heavy-branched

  spikes for blooms, and would release a powerful smell

  of bone marrow, and spew a pollen that fills the air until

  it becomes oppressive. When I opened my mouth to sing

  of this, instead of a sound my mouth expelled gnats and fog,

  which is what a spider’s milk is made of. The word Nyx

  tastes like sister and means both night and flower. I worry

  I won’t rest again. Do you know how a naked Titan looks,

  sister? He’s swarmed with shadow, but he holds light deep

  in his stomach, like an electric secret. Dear love,

  I can’t give you what you need from me. All I’ll do is take.

  After my sister died, I learned she always wanted a warm island,

  garlands draped around her neck. There was no mountain

  in her vision. Instead, in it she was singing what she imagined

  was an island song in a language I don’t know. She was dancing

  badly, and breathing with great labour on burnished sands.

  Sand bores me, sister; I need rock and high altitude.

  When I am cold, I hear wolves. I think they live in the carillon

  beside the mountain’s lake. Sister, it was always true

  that I would outlive you. I know exactly how many times

  my family wished me dead. Don’t look up, says a child

  on the top of my mountain. It makes you want to fall.

  It will always be still the dull twilight of early morning with us.

  This is one of the curses of living. In the end, my visio alone

  will sing and dance, breathing heavily. Every d
ay the sunbeams

  in it turn a brighter pink. Dears. Beloveds. All of you.

  Your blood is bewitched, and bade to move into places

  it wasn’t meant to go, steeped deeply in poisons

  it can’t purge. You share the look on your face

  with all the others, whether deer, child, or man.

  If you look deeply enough into any other pair of eyes,

  your heart valves start to change allegiances. Your body’s lakes

  fill with the other’s want, until all you want, in turn,

  is what the other wants, which rises in you like seawater.

  There are species of flowers and invasive weeds that live only

  in another’s gaze, whether lovelorn, hate-filled, hopeless,

  or hungry. I am looking into your eyes right now,

  and in my mind are two girl deer. Sisters. With thin-hooved

  legs steady, digging into grass. They disappear into the woods,

  which are part of a forest in a painting. When the novelist

  saw this painting, he thought that there he could see men

  turning into birds and birds turning into men,

  and those same men turning then into sea creatures,

  and then back into birds. From this final change

  scales and tentacles would linger on their backs

  as they wheeled through the air, as would the dream

  of filling their lungs with the sea, for which they would ache.

  The definition of deer is lost. The definition of beloved

  is dissolution. On the top of my mountain I hear a mother

  call to a faceless child, Where are you? The chattering

  and thin voice of a boy from the top of a tree cries back,

  In the woods. And then, beguilingly: Come into the woods.

  Around the orbs of light in the forest that I still don’t know

  if the Dipper’s children can see, new trees grow beside the pines:

  elms, birches, willows, one strange Western juniper.

  Each creature in this forest was once something, or someone, else –

  the novelist was right. The top of one of the elms

  is a sprig of radiant blood. Sister, I was very young

  when I found out you were cloven-hooved. I did what I could.

  I want to say that you can trust me, that I am listening to you,

  and that you can speak to me and that I will speak to you

  at last. Tell me about the beasts that got you. The beasts

  who carry me when I am too weak to carry my deer alone

  are Catfire, Osiris, Blood Oath, and Early Morning.

  I would like to believe that I carry this deer for you,

  that I’ll be able to tell you what it feels like to have

  a hungry mouth on your lip or nipple. I want to say:

  Sister, I promise. But the definition of myth is noun,

  the idea that any one creature can ever hear another.

  And while I beguile you to betray yourself to me,

  like lovers do in their sleep, I am lying to you. No, death

  did not bring this to us. It has always been true. I, sister,

  am a selfish woman, and you, sister, were a mute one.

  My body invents words and swells with prophecies.

  Its effort shows in insect bites and rashes that don’t heal,

  in my peeled hands, bleeding groin, wistful gut, misaligned jaw,

  mole-like left eye, lump-riddled womb. Dears. Beloveds.

  You’ve been asleep a long time, but we all return

  to the waking world someday. And when you do at last

  come back, you will find me spent and alone, ugly,

  wounded, ungrateful, ill. Shaking and calling to you for aid.

  Loveless. Without a soul or even the memory of pleasure.

  The last lover to desert me will deem me rancid.

  The last thing I hear my sister’s voice from will be dirt.

  Of the mares I will have left only Early Morning,

  who won’t know that I will soon take her hide,

  turn it into an ocean that will, at last, cleave open my skull.

  ANDREW WYNN OWEN

  These poems are, broadly, about love of life and flexibility of perspective. ‘The Mummies’ Chorus’ was prompted by Leopardi’s ‘Dialogo di Federico Ruysch e delle sue mummie’. The mummies wonder what life was and why it has been taken from them. ‘The Kite’ considers two different images of elation, flight and dance, concluding on the side of the latter. ‘What Matters’ explores some ideas about what is important in life and comes to see that even seemingly run-of-the-mill events, like sneezing, can matter very much. ‘The Borderline’ is quizzical: where is the dividing line between things? Often there isn’t one in nature already, so humans impose one arbitrarily. ‘The Ladder’ is about the strange joy of sunsets, the ‘fierce solace’ of that calm. ‘Sand Grains’ finds fascination in intricacy, the fact that zooming in can bring both more and less into view. ‘April Shower’ is again about joy in nature, this time ecstatic. Rain, so often grumbled at, can bring a change in pressure and a sense of relief. ‘The Rowboat’ charts celestial and earthly concerns, the difficulty of choosing between one and the other. ‘The Multiverse’ is the capstone of this sequence.

  With the idea of the multiverse as extended metaphor, it is a reminder of our duty to remember both happiness and sadness, not to neglect the prevalence of suffering or the real good that is in the world. Rationality missteps if it becomes reductive and emotionless: ‘To notice this / Can change one’s spin on life, if not the quantum spin.’ The final poem, ‘Till Next Time’, takes its refrain ‘How could it end in any other way?’ from Robert Browning’s ‘Andrea del Sarto’, a dramatic monologue by a painter whose skilful precision is not matched with human passion. This is a problem not just for artists, but for lots of people: as W. H. Auden writes, ‘I learned why the learned are as despised as they are. / To discover how to be loving now / Is the reason I follow this star.’ These poems are, together, a reflection on how wrong it would be to forget how to be loving. The mind is various and these are attempts to clarify the difficulties and delights that this can present.

  The Kite

  At last it lifts.

  It leaves

  The turf that had no more to offer it,

  And drifts

  Above the eaves

  With every trace of ground-devotion quit.

  Backtrack. Bounce back. Held in

  By thread, simplicity on wings,

  It rumples, thick and thin

  Against its bones,

  And structure sings

  As it disowns

  The fiddliness and pinionedness of Earth,

  In soft rebirth.

  It is a kite,

  A kit

  For getting airborne in pursuit of joy,

  A sight

  Designed to fit

  By being both a triumph and a toy.

  Yet flight is just one answer

  To finding Earth a sapped domain.

  Swivel and see! A dancer

  Shimmies across

  A sunny plain,

  And all the loss

  From time’s interminable fade-to-grey

  Is blown away.

  The Mummies’ Chorus

  a long way after the Italian of Leopardi

  What was that unripe bitter time called life

  When we could shake our limbs

  And hotfoot with the best of them?

  Compressing garlic with a knife

  Or singing harvest hymns,

  Was all that jazz the snagging of a hem?

  What were we then?

  Is it too late to reach that state again?

  Are armoured chariots still raced

  At Karnak, where the makers traced

  Blueprints to craft an automatic car

  For Amun-Ra?

  The sun will soar tomorrow, while we lier />
  In sand-nudged pyramids:

  Sacred shapes that symbolise

  Perfected form, which cannot die.

  Below resplendent lids

  Survive our carven and enduring eyes.

  What Matters

  What matters is the starlight on the rocks,

  The racketeering force

  Of joy,

  Irrumpent and unpent and hoarse

  At every fragile kickshaw that the clocks

  Destroy.

  What matters is the work we vanish in,

  The moments we can be

  Released.

  Incontrovertibility

  Of being absent. Thus we re-begin,

  Re-pieced.

  What matters are the days we rise to share.

  The casual way you sense

  A breeze,

  Which gathers presence, grows immense

  Simply by being free within the air.

  I sneeze

  This morning in the sun because it matters.

  I watch the rush-hour pass

  Through lines

  Of highrise glamour, plated glass.

  A hardy marvel. Even if it shatters,

  It shines.

  The Borderline

  I watch the shadows spread

  Like Petri-dish bacteria across

  The new-mown lawn, as sunbeams toss

  Their tawny mane and all the red

  Corona-rays immerse

  Thick light in cloud, which descants when

  Penumbra run their regimen

  Of self-dissociations, and disperse.

  No borderline between

  The pinkish heights and blood-red sun is clear.

  It is familiar but a scene

  That baffles still, where colours veer

  And coruscate around

  I can’t think what. The evening sky

  Is sceptical of any ground

  For saying what’s divisible, or why.

  And maybe all our task

  (Or much of it) is differentiation.

  The world comes integrated. Ask

  That oak, which with slow concentration

  Collects a crown of air

  And angles for the windy light.

  To be surviving is to care

  For joins and ruptures. Evening, day and night.