CONSTANT | RETURN

Tonight I want to say something wonderful

for the sleepwalkers who have so much faith

in their legs, so much faith in the invisible

arrow carved into the carpet, the worn path

that leads to the stairs instead of the window,

the gaping doorway instead of the seamless mirror.

I love the way that sleepwalkers are willing

to step out of their bodies into the night,

to raise their arms and welcome the darkness,

palming the blank spaces, touching everything.

Always they return home safely, like blind men

who know it is morning by feeling shadows.

And always they wake up as themselves again.

That's why I want to say something astonishing

like: our hearts are leaving our bodies.

Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs

flying through the trees at night, soaking up

the darkest beams of moonlight, the music

of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.

And now our hearts are thick black fists

flying back to the glove of our chests.

We have to learn to trust our hearts like that.

We have to learn the desperate faith of sleep-

walkers who rise out of their calm beds

and walk through the skin of another life.

We have to drink the stupefying cup of darkness

It was a place of force— The wind gagging my mouth with my own blown hair, Tearing off my voice, and the sea Blinding me with its lights, the lives of the dead Unreeling in it, spreading like oil.

I tasted the malignity of the gorse, Its black spikes, The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers. They had an efficiency, a great beauty, And were extravagant, like torture.

There was only one place to get to. Simmering, perfumed, The paths narrowed into the hollow. And the snares almost effaced themselves— Zeros, shutting on nothing,

Set close, like birth pangs. The absence of shrieks Made a hole in the hot day, a vacancy. The glassy light was a clear wall, The thickets quiet.

I felt a still busyness, an intent. I felt hands round a tea mug, dull, blunt, Ringing the white china. How they awaited him, those little deaths! They waited like sweethearts. They excited him.

Various stars. Various kings. Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights. Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers, Much cold, much overbearing darkness.

Various long midwinter Glooms. Various Solitary and Terrible Stars. Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers. Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.

More than one North Star, more than one South Star. Several billion elliptical galaxies, bubble nebulae, binary systems, Various dust lanes, various routes through varying thicknesses of Dark, Many tunnels into deep space, minds going back and forth.

Many visions, many digitally enhanced heavens, All kinds of glistenings being gathered into telescopes: Fireworks, gasworks, white-streaked works of Dusk, Works of wonder and/or water, snowflakes, stars of frost . . .

Various dazed astronomers dilating their eyes, Various astronauts setting out into laughterless earthlessness, Various 5,000-year-old moon maps, Various blindmen feeling across the heavens in braille.

Various gods making beautiful works in bronze, Brooches, crowns, triangles, cups and chains, And all sorts of drystone stars put together without mortar. Many Wisemen remarking the irregular weather.

Many exile energies, many low-voiced followers, Watches of wisp of various glowing spindles, Soothsayers, hunters in the High Country of the Zodiac, Seafarers tossing, tied to a star . . .

Now you hear what the house has to say. Pipes clanking, water running in the dark, the mortgaged walls shifting in discomfort, and voices mounting in an endless drone of small complaints like the sounds of a family that year by year you’ve learned how to ignore.

But now you must listen to the things you own, all that you’ve worked for these past years, the murmur of property, of things in disrepair, the moving parts about to come undone, and twisting in the sheets remember all the faces you could not bring yourself to love.

Don't tell me you've never dreamed of this – of waking in a room with a wide open window,

the air clear and ringing after night rain; of needing no other reason than a sky

the unbelievable blue of which sends you flitting deftly through the house

past the year-old jar of nails and flies, the pile of dishes in the sink, and out the back door

where you're caught for an instant in the brightness because the future's so much easier than you'd thought –

slipping your heart under the rosebush like a key, everything you need in the canvas bag

She gives him his eyes, she found them Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her

He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully And sets them in perfect order A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired She leans back twisting this way and that, using it and laughing Incredulous

Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them So that his whole body lights up

And he has fashioned her new hips With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all shiningly oiled He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it

They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily To test each new thing at each new step

And now she smoothes over him the plates of his skull So that the joints are invisible

And now he connects her throat, her breasts and the pit of her stomach With a single wire

She gives him his teeth, tying the the roots to the centrepin of his body

He sets the little circlets on her fingertips

She stiches his body here and there with steely purple silk

He oils the delicate cogs of her mouth

She inlays with deep cut scrolls the nape of his neck

He sinks into place the inside of her thighs

There are cemeteries that are lonely, graves full of bones that do not make a sound, the heart moving through a tunnel, in it darkness, darkness, darkness, like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves, as though we were drowning inside our hearts, as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses, feet made of cold and sticky clay, death is inside the bones, like a barking where there are no dogs, coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere, growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone coffins under sail, embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair, with bakers who are as white as angels, and pensive young girls married to notary publics, caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead, the river of dark purple, moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death, filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it, comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no finger in it, comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no throat. Nevertheless its steps can be heard and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I’m not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see, but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets, of violets that are at home in the earth, because the face of death is green, and the look death gives is green, with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom, lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies, death is inside the broom, the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses, it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Sometimes when I've made the mistake of anger, which sometimes

breeds the mistake of cruelty, I walk

down the rocky slope above the ruined mill on Sope Creek

where sweet gum and hickory weave sunlight

into gauzy screens. And sometimes when I've made the mistake

of cruelty, which always breeds grief,

I remember how, years ago, my uncle led me, a boy,

into a thicket of pines and taught me to kneel

beside a white stone, the way a man had taught him, a boy,

to pray behind a clapboard church.

Sometimes when my heart is as dark as a stone, I weave

between the trees above that crumbling mill

and stumble through those threaded screens of light,

the way an anger must fall

through many stages of remorse.

The young are walking on the riverbank arms around each other’s waist and shoulders, pretending to be looking at the waterlilies and what might be a nest of some kind, over there, which two who are clamped together mouth to mouth have forgotten about. The others, making courteous detours around them, talk, stop talking, kiss. They can see no one older than themselves. It’s their river. They’ve got all day.

Because of a kiss on the forehead

in the long Night's infirmary,

through the red wine let light shine deep.

Because of the thirty-six just men

that so stealthily roam this earth

raise high the glass and do not weep.

Who says the world is not a wedding?

Couples, in their oases, lullabye.

Let a glass be full before they sleep.

Toast all that which seems to vanish

like a rainbow stared at, those bright

truant things that will not keep;

and ignorance of the last night

of our lives, its famished breathing.

When the day-birds have settled

in their creaking trees,

the doors of the forest open

for the flitting

drift of deer

among the bright coziers

of new ferns

and the legible stars;

foxes stream from the earth;

a tawny owl

sweeps the long meadow

in a slink of river-light

the mink's face

is already slippery with yolk,

and the bay's

tiny islands are drops

of solder

under a drogue moon.

The sea's a heavy sleeper,

dreaming in and out with a catch

in each breath, and is not disturbed

by that plowt - the first

in a play of herring, a shoal

silvering open

the sheeted black skin of the sea.

Through the starting rain, the moon

skirrs across the sky dragging

torn shreds of cloud behind.

The fox's call is red

and ribboned

in the snow's white shadow.

The horses watch the sea climb

and climb and walk

towards them on the hill,

hear the vole

crying under the alder,

our children