Читать книгу The Alchemy of Happiness - Marilyn Bowering - Страница 12
ОглавлениеConcerning Self-Examination and the Recollection of God
Self-Examination
You came into this world for one purpose,
and that was to learn
the story of all beings,
but you let the account fade.
You could have asked—they were willing to tell all—
but every hour you neglected dreams
and accumulated regret.
For the whole of your life
you said one thing:
please show me the love in which I reside—
and one day,
in the presence of death,
you saw.
Ah, me.
Shadrach
Sometimes the god
is hanging up laundry
next to a furnace.
He nods, opens the furnace door,
beckons, steps in.
You know who he is,
and his two friends—
sometimes they wash themselves in flames,
sometimes I am washed too,
my skin crisp like gold foil,
sometimes that’s all there is:
just the walking,
and the heart still human, exultant—
for something has been understood
about the flame inside, the flame out,
about thought polished to a
molecule-loosening dagger
that permits all.
Meshack
Sometimes the god watches soap
and water slosh behind glass at a laundromat:
not even he can see who or what
is being cleansed—
he waits, like anyone would,
for an outcome
so he can start over
if he has to, or find some other reason
to link inner and outer,
self and self.
Abednego
No gods are visible,
but people buy groceries,
open and shut car doors beneath
unconscious rain from over the sea.
They are well within the view from my father’s window
where he sits in a chair
to watch a tree yield, light bend, the horizon
flex as darkness tidies itself
into a sharp drumroll.
I mail my letters,
pray he has time to catch that last
glint
of a mast.
Sooner or later I will try
to name that ship.
The Ship
You can choose what form the flame takes
just as I
chose the stone of your white forehead
on which to place my lips,
and that stone, now, entombs me.
I kept from you
my adoration, my passion,
and that you had my heart all along.
A broken cup.
So it is said, so I know
no one enters Heaven
without their father and mother,
some mending,
some rolling away of stones.
North
If the word for a ship means
glacier, even iceberg,
then there are limits to the world:
seven seas slip between
the known world
and its warm shadows,
opposites crack
the planet.
In the Earth’s core—
the fiery furnace.
Inside it, fierce gods
trim their nails,
shape-shift through the hours
it takes to forge a
single silver bangle.
West
Gold straw spikes through
the snow; the horizon
is the next lip of road.
A ball of fire in the sky,
buffalo bones and blue light
in the coulee:
once all the keys are turned
in the lock,
the mountains thin,
the sky tunes itself
to the eye.
All this a gift.
I was not hurt,
just dragging a wing
to lure evil away.
Death
In your heart is a window,
and a furnace in which gods walk, unharmed:
do not accept my word,
follow no one.
The effect of death
is on the heart:
a lamp goes out,
the soul is dismounted.
Don’t listen to me,
don’t run to it.
It sets off and abides.
No vision is necessary,
death is a bridge:
mirror its spaciousness
in the dark wood.
Dark Wood
Hostile to the traveller.
Southeast
Look there: your mother’s hands,
and a latch to reach her;
she understands desire:
how she longed for you.
Longing is a match,
heart with heart.
Look there: a woman and child
draw on the glass I mentioned
(shut or open, broken
or whole)—
snowflake
sun
moon
tree house smoke
fire fire fire
Gold stars on the leaves.
Who?
Someone tells you about serpents
and angels and your heart says:
three friends, a fiery furnace, a stairway,
garden, wood, flight…
Who do you think you are—Dante?
Oh, doubt and mystery. The gods
wash sweaters,
pair socks,
complete the divine between bouts
of carpentry.
The Carpenter
My father says, you cannot tell
the true metal, it is mixed in this world;
he says, let’s make a pact to talk to the dead;
he says, you can’t assess the system you’re in
when you’re in it;
he says, I’m tired of talking to all these spooks.
I crawl out from under the four directions,
to sit with him, on the arm of his recliner,
at a window that looks over a threading willow
to the sea;
we glimpse sails,
and my mother, in the square below,
swishing her skirts against her stockings.
Skirts
You pull my sweater
over my head,
unbutton my kilt,
slip off the pin.
Pajama top,
then bottom,
teeth brushed,
and prayers.
You sit on the bed
and I pleat your skirt
with my fingers;
your kisses pattern my face
like a constellation.
I turn my face toward time:
you step backward, out-of-bounds.
My father and I peer through the fog
that undoes you, feet to eyes,
strands of hair, maybe a ring:
he looks at me, finds you there
as I ready him
trousers, shirt, socks, underwear,
pajama top and bottom
for bed.
Good night
Good night
Here it is.
My friend tells me her dream and I listen fully.
About her son and daughter picking flowers.
They look like little marmots—first, the flowers
and then the children. It is a dream of marmots.
—P. K. Page, “Marmots,” Collected Poems, Volume II
Once, long ago the trees were frozen,
dull winter lowered, there were no flowers or choirs; my mother
still lived—yet the weight of grief, like a sack dully
hoarded, an armful of sad thought and mind
boarded over my eyes. I was an animal
kept warm, but why? Then light bleached the bed,
I sat up from my coffin—
My friend tells me her dream and I listen fully.
Ten dark-robed men stood nearby:
their presence surprised, like the earth mined,
or mountains gullied by time,
ten times the sharp incline and decline of the road.
One helped me step out,
and I stood, in my nightdress, the cold like a shower,
and the coffin folded like a suitcase on a dusty plain;
then the men left for the glacier points, perhaps to cave
or star or even higher.
They’d left her, not with food or water, but a memory—
about her son and daughter picking flowers.
I stood in a bowl of sand with seeds scattered among stones,
mountains on the far rim;
my hands searched the grains,
but change brought tears—and so the watered seeds awakened
until the grey alluvia bloomed,
grass hid the prairie in wind.
I gathered the hum of shortened shadows,
the petal’s face, the turn of hours,
the bees’ rhyme from asphodel to zinnia.
I counted fern-traced stones, sought
the touch of green, its smell…
Sometimes I spied the spill of contents
from that abandoned coffin, left to rot: stained plate and cup,
a faded garment—
then forgot as small animals, born to delight, stirred and crept.
They look like little marmots—first, the flowers
and then the children. It is a dream of marmots.
Then I crept from that rich garden
and stood at the mountain limit, my eyes ached at the sky
and opened to a glimpse of heaven,