#life shadow

Whatever furrow you dig in the red earth, Whatever the tree you hang your lights on, There comes that moment When what you are is what you will be Until the end, no matter What prayer you answer to—a life Of margins, white of the apple, white of the eye, No matter how long you hold your hands out. You glance back and you glance back. Ahead, in the  distance, a cry Skreeks like a chalk on a blackboard. Through riprap or backfill, sandstone or tidedrift, You go where the landshed takes you, One word at a time, still Counting your money, wearing impermanent clothes.

In the brush stroke that holds the angel's wing Back from perfection; in The synapse of word to word; in the one note That would strike the infinite ear And save you; and in That last leap, the sure and redeeming edge ... In all beauty there lies Something inhuman, something you can't know: In the pith and marrow of every root Of every bloom; in the blood seam Of every rock; in the black lung of every cloud The seed, the infinitesimal seed That dooms you, that makes you nothing, Feeds on its self-containment and grows big.

And here is the ledge, A white ledge on a blue scarp, blue sky Inseparable in the definition; a lens Is tracking inexorably toward you. Your shadow trails like a train For miles down the glacierside, your face into view Obliquely, then not at all, Eyes thumbed, lips like pieces of cut glass: This is the fair print: Take it, eat it, it is your body and blood, Your pose and your sacrifice; it is Your greed and your sustenance... The lens retracks, the shot unmistakable. Take it, and be glad.

First came geometry, and its dish of sparks, Then the indifferent blue. Then God, Original Dread, Old Voodoo Wool, Lock-step and shadow-sprung, Immense in the oily wind... Later, the gatherings: ice, dust and its fiery hair. The seeds in their endless scattering... This linkage is nondescript But continuing, the stars drifting into the cold Like the corpses of Borneo Set forth on their own rafts, washing into oblivion; Like the reliquary tears Of prophets, falling and falling away, Back to geometry, back to its dish of ash.

Nevertheless, the wheel arcs; nevertheless, The mud slides and the arms yearn; Nevertheless, you turn your face Toward the black stone, the hard breath on the lip of God, And find cloud, the clot you can't swallow, The wishbone you can't spit out. And move on, to the great fall of water; And the light that moves there, and the click: In the shallows, the insects, Quick kernels of darkness, pale and explain themselves;  newts Shuttle their lanterns through the glassy leaves; The crayfish open their doors; The drenched wings of sunclusters rise Like thousands of tiny cathedrals into their new language...

Under the rock, in the sand and the gravel run; In muck bank and weed, at the heart of the river's edge: Instal, and again, instar, The wing cases visible. Then Emergence: leaf drift and detritus; skin split, The image forced from the self. And rests, wings drying, eyes compressed, Legs compressed, constricted Beneath the dun and the watershine-- Incipient spinner, set for the take-off... And does, in clean tear: imago rising out of herself For the last time, slate-winged and many-eyed. And joins, and drops to her destiny, Flesh to the surface, wings flush on the slate film.

Sucked in and sucked out, tidewash Hustles its razzmatazz across the cut lips Of coral, the thousands of tiny punctures Spewing and disappearing... Where is that grain of sand that Blake saw, The starfish that lights the way? Pools and anemones open and close... And now, on the sea's black floor, A hand is turning your card, One card, one turn: two dogs bark at the moon; The crab resets her glass clock. The weight of the sea Is killing: you pack it forever. Shift it, sluff it; You pack it, blue mother, forever.

Something has grazed your cheek, your foot and your  fingertips: The tedious scarf of sleep, adrift Through the afternoon. At one end, a lizard Darts from a red rock into shade; At the other, birds rise in the rank, inveterate blue. July, and the olive is silhouette. The lake Shrugs its shoulders, and goes on Slapping its palms on the wet shale, goes on Washing its laundry. Under The fish-silver flash of the olive leaves, poppies Crane up with their one good eye, and do Nothing; the bees drag their yellow slumber. Small pleasures: the poor man's pickpurse, the rich man's  cutthroat. Grainout . And so what? You're only passing through.

The earth is what salivates, what sticks like a new glue. It is to walk on, it is to lie down in. A sure sheet for the resurrection. The earth is what follows you, Tracing your footsteps, counting your teeth, father And son, father and grandson, A knife, a seed, each planted just deep enough. You start there. The birds from your sleeve burst into  flame; Your shoes catch fire, your good shoes; Your socks sink in the dirt, all pain gone; Your ankles sink in the dirt, your shinbones. your legs ... Necessity's after-breeder, Enflamed like asparagus in the night field, You try for the get-away by the light of yourself

Androgynous tincture, prima materia; The quintessential reprieve And coupling: sod lifting, folly and light In the crucible, and in the air; And in the crosswinds, the details of diffidence ... This is the stung condition, and silencer: To have come this far, to have got the jump, The radiant archipelagos From fog into fog beneath your body streaming— And abstract from this Fabric, this silkscreen that patterns you (The chancelled dawn, vast Surplice and undershine), one glint of the golden stitch, The thread that will lead you home:

Up river, then, past landfall and watertrace, Past wheels, past time and its bufferings... A clearing appears; reed huts Extend from the jungle face, its vinelap and overbite; Out of them step, in cadence—a skip skip slip—, Two men with their six-foot flutes, two women behind  them, Their dance, their song ascending like smoke and light Back to the sky, back to the place it came from ... Of course, it's unworkable. Better to dig a round hole in the earth, be lowered And fixed in the clay in a stranger's arms; Be covered with thick feathers, Your stiff arms stiff at your sides, knees flexed, Marked for the tilt and the blind slide.

Exurgent mottui et ad me cruiser... Midnight, the Christmas Mass; and the host raised, and  the summoned Summoned. And then to the boneyard, eyes eastward, Two bones in the right hand, St Andrew's cross Pathetic against the dawn's skull. Then north, four thousand and nineteen hundred paces, To lie down, outstretched, hands on the legs, Eyes heavenward, unlocked to the quarter moon: Ego sum, to peso et videre queo... And will they step from their dust? Will they sit in their rocking chairs, decayed hands Explaining the maps you must follow? Will circles be explicated, the signs shriven? The land of the chosen has one door; there is no knob...

Naked, spindled, the hand on the chimney mantle, Length-fingered, bud-sprouted bone: The Hand of Glory, spread toward its one address: The right hand, or the left hand, Lopped at the new moon, and fresh from the gibbet; Wrapped in a funeral pall, squeezed, palmed; Then brought, in the dog-days, from its pot, Pumiced by zimat, nitre and long peppers; Then to the oven; vervain And fern imbue its grainlessness; the candle ---Man-fat, wax, ponie and sesame— Forks from its wonder; lighted, It freezes the looker's reach, and locks both The mark and beholder, ghost forms on the negative...

They talk of a city, whose moon-colored battlements Kneel to the traveller, whose Windows, like after-burners, stream Out their chemistry, applying their anodyne. They talk of a river, its waters A balm, an unguent unscrubbable. They talk. And they  talk Of the light that lights the stars Through the five organs, like a wind spread by the rain. They talk of a medicine, a speck —Omnipotent, omnipresent, clogged With the heavy earth and the mind's intractable screen— To be shaken loose, dissolved, and blown Through the veins, becoming celestial. They talk, and nothing appears. They talk and it does not  appear.

And so down river, yourself, and yourself's shadow, All that you bring back. Still, it's enough: sounding board, handhold, Ear rig and in-seeing eye. . . Back from the seven-caved mountain, its cross Where the serpent is nailed; back From the oak-stock and rose, their rivulet Sought by the blind with their dry touch; back From the Innocents, that vat where the sun and the moon Dip to their red bath... The Echo is arbitrary: flame, wind, rainwrack And soil; each a survivor, each one An heir to the fingerprint, the slip of a tongue. Each is where you begin; each one an end in itself. . .

Procedure and process, the one Inalterable circulation. First, cleared ground, swept And unhindered; next, bark moss, pine pitch, Their angles of termination Exact, the boughs that are added exact; then loblolly,  split From the fall felling; then ball bats, blue shoes, All the paraphernalia of past lives: The headrests, the backrests, all the poor furniture. . . As the fire builds, you enter and lie down; You feed the flames; you feed them with all you've got: Finger and forearm, torso, Shoulders and hair... And the sparks That rise, the cinders, Rework you and make you new, burned to an ash.

The wind hauls out its valued baggage in three steps Tonight, and drops it with some relief In the full dark, in the leaves of an avocado tree. The grass rises to meet it. As always, you, too, rise, and meet them half-way, And nod your head, and accept Their leavings, and give thanks, crumbs For the tablecloth, crumbs for the plate, and wolf them  down... The rivers of air you're filtered and rearranged Since birth, and paid no heed to, Surprise you now, and start to take on The acid and eye of what's clear, That milky message of breath on cold mornings— That what you take in is seldom what you let our.

There is a shine you move toward, the shine Of water; you want it to step from, And out of, wearing its strings and slick confetti. You come to the sea, but turn back, its surgy retractions Too slippery, and out of place, Wrecked looking-glass, bundles of grief. And inland, the necklace oflakes—High Lonesome And pendant, the 4os its throat, I ts glint like icicles against the skin...? There's no one to wear it now, or hand it down. The river will have it, shine Of the underlight, shine of the lost quarter; The river, rope of remembering, unbroken shoe, The flushed and unwaivering mirror...

You thought you climbed, and all the while you  descended. Go up and go down; what other work is there For you to do, what other work in this world? The seasons back off. The hills Debase themselves, and keep on growing. Over the land, Your feet touch down like feathers, A brush stroke here, a gouge there, lacking a print Always, and always without direction. Or so it seems. But what, for one meandering man, Is all that, who looks for the willow's change, The drift and slip of smoke through the poplar leaves, The cliff's dance and wind's shift, Alone with the owl and the night crawler Where all is a true turning, and all is growth.

You've talked to the sun and moon, Those idols of stitched skin, bunch grass and twigs Stuck on their poles in the fall rain; You've prayed to Sweet Medicine; You've looked at the Hanging Road, its stars The stepstones and river bed where you hope to cross; You've followed the cricket's horn To sidestep the Lake of Pain... And what does it come to, Pilgrim, This walking to and fro on the earth, knowing That nothing changes, or everything; And only, to tell it, these sad marks, Phrases half-parsed, ellipses and scratches across the dirt? It comes to a point. It comes and it goes.

----

Skins

Charles Wright  (B.1935)

----