The Book of Endings Read online

  Advance Praise for The Book of Endings

  Leslie Harrison’s truly marvelous new collection The Book of Endings works constantly at the edge of articulation, at the breakdown of language and thought: “what / remains is one person in a box is a system collapse / is sky holding ground holding stone holding hole / holding hands holding on black hole without end / the earth gave us everything took it back again.” In these hauntingly incantatory lines, the Eucharist is elegiacally holding hands with the expanding and contracting universe, eternity with oblivion and recreation. Love, endurance, and the planet are all empty as a hole and yet, like these poems, solid as stone.

  —Andrew Hudgins

  The mother has died, the speaker’s hair silvers in the moonlight, and spring, New Englandy as ever, does not come as promised. But “the sky keeps showing off amusing itself” and the cold ground can be worked into “a blanket.” Comfort is at hand in Leslie Harrison’s The Book of Endings, poems of loss that yet offer uplift, music, words whose meaning, once unpacked, bring relief: “The final absence of air cyanosis,” the speaker reminds us, is “from kyanous which is Greek which just means blue.”

  —Christine Schutt

  AKRON SERIES IN POETRY

  Mary Biddinger, Editor

  Leslie Harrison, The Book of Endings

  Emilia Phillips, Groundspeed

  Philip Metres, Pictures at an Exhibition: A Petersburg Album

  Jennifer Moore, The Veronica Maneuver

  Brittany Cavallaro, Girl-King

  Oliver de la Paz, Post Subject: A Fable

  John Repp, Fat Jersey Blues

  Emilia Phillips, Signaletics

  Seth Abramson, Thievery

  Steve Kistulentz, Little Black Daydream

  Jason Bredle, Carnival

  Emily Rosko, Prop Rockery

  Alison Pelegrin, Hurricane Party

  Matthew Guenette, American Busboy

  Joshua Harmon, Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie

  David Dodd Lee, Orphan, Indiana

  Sarah Perrier, Nothing Fatal

  Oliver de la Paz, Requiem for the Orchard

  Rachel Dilworth, The Wild Rose Asylum

  John Minczeski, A Letter to Serafin

  John Gallaher, Map of the Folded World

  Heather Derr-Smith, The Bride Minaret

  William Greenway, Everywhere at Once

  Brian Brodeur, Other Latitudes

  Titles published since 2008.

  For a complete listing of titles published in the series,

  go to www.uakron.edu/uapress/poetry.

  Leslie Harrison

  The Book

  of Endings

  Copyright © 2017 by The University of Akron Press

  All rights reserved • First Edition 2017 • Manufactured in the United States of America.

  All inquiries and permission requests should be addressed to the Publisher,

  The University of Akron Press, Akron, Ohio 44325-1703.

  21 20 19 18 17 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN: 978-1-629220-63-5 (paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-629220-62-8 (cloth)

  ISBN: 978-1-629220-64-2 (ePDF)

  ISBN: 978-1-629220-65-9 (ePub)

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Harrison, Leslie, 1962– author.

  Title: The book of endings / Leslie Harrison.

  Description: First edition. | Akron, Ohio : University of Akron Press, 2017. | Series: Akron series in poetry

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016026149 (print) | LCCN 2016033470 (ebook) | ISBN 9781629220628 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781629220635 (paperback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781629220642 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781629220659 (ePub)

  Classification: LCC PS3608.A78357 A6 2017 (print) | LCC PS3608.A78357 (ebook) DDC 811/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016026149

  ∞The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  Cover: Raven Feathers by Mike O’Connell, © 2015. Reproduced with permission. Cover design by Amy Freels.

  The Book of Endings was designed and typeset in Garamond with Cooper Hewitt display by Amy Freels. It was printed on sixty-pound natural and bound by Bookmasters of Ashland, Ohio.

  Contents

  [I keep throwing words at the problem because words]

  Left Panel

  [December]

  [God speaks]

  [Summa mathematica]

  [I would drive to your grave]

  [Imagine]

  [There are things you love]

  [Pray]

  [Take eat]

  [The orphan child eats blueberries in Vermont]

  [To say]

  [Practice]

  [Ötzi]

  [Coda]

  [Wilt thou play with him as with a bird]

  Right Panel

  [When trees are dead they are]

  [Carnation lily lily rose]

  [Sisyphus in love]

  [Eve]

  [Stutter]

  [Sirens]

  [Parable]

  [Charm for a spring storm]

  [Landscape with falling birds]

  [That]

  [Venice]

  [The horses]

  [Touch me now]

  [Was it ice]

  [Once]

  [Parable]

  [Epiphany]

  Center Panel

  [Actias luna]

  [Parable]

  [Over]

  [This I know]

  [What I mean]

  [Because in all your life you’ve lived]

  [Snowfields]

  [Let the blue earth spin]

  [Things the realtor will not tell the new owner]

  [Salt]

  [Dear god I ask]

  [Bezoar]

  [Wrong]

  [Invocation]

  [Nest]

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Afford yourself what you can carry out.

  A coward and a coda share a word.

  We get our ugliness from fear.

  We get our danger from the lord.

  —Heather McHugh

  [I keep throwing words at the problem

  because words]

  To list the day full of ravens and crows is to attempt

  meaning as if words could mend themselves the way

  the window eventually cures itself of frost I don’t know

  how to make anything how to make anything better

  the mourning doves on the lines suspect nothing about

  the way machines keep throwing voices how objects

  contain how the wires conduct silence and spark

  to say vessels contain is to attempt again to make

  this storm of trees and sky into prophesy is to advocate

  for an undivided world unfold the dead hawk’s wing

  and ask it about flight ask the killdeer how it came

  to equate love with broken love with panic safety

  with leading with leading the dangerous on

  dear Cassandra the page is funnel pitcher or cloud

  into which I keep pouring the trees the listing birds

  the way they keep refusing to mean the way I want

  to mean anything other than this other than this much

  silence the way the page both contains refuses the stain

  Left Panel

  [December]

  That was the year that ice begot ravens singly in pairs and crows

  a gathering flock fed well of the damaged trees their desperate fruit

  come to trouble what little sleep come to comfort the stoneheavy days

  come to this house locked in ice the stacked snow sealed over so cold

&
nbsp; the owls died off from the branches such delicate flowers falling and

  falling silent no call and no response I think the bones of birds must

  trouble this earth more than most those hollow bore needles fallen

  eventually white on white snow and still the cold thickens strange slow

  tidal sea pierced above by a different falling the Geminids December’s

  bright detritus going down in snowflake fire as if a wake could be

  a lovely thing as if broken were just another glittering season

  into which you bundle the children into which you carry them to stare

  to see a sky quiet and on fire in this winter of no more miracles

  in this season of so much beauty such harm

  [God speaks]

  I laced the world in water water in ice ice in long slow

  nights ancient and faintly aglow I gave you this world

  gave you who are also mostly water into this world

  candled your souls against the ice and the dark matter

  against the fields strewn with artifacts and timothy-

  grass fields deep with creatures with star-shaped with

  star intoxicated flowers I made the heavens and set

  them to rain set the moon like a clock passing often

  into shadow I filled the least and the greatest places

  with secret creatures let you read in stone my own

  book of the dead I gave the serpent a tongue so that

  you might learn to speak I wanted you to love

  his sad machinations his thousand thousand ribs

  like some holy cathedral some architecture of tunnel

  gate and teeth I made your bodies gorgeous made you

  as arrows and fletched your hearts with his sturdy

  circling ribs listen as all my beloved creatures whisper

  and call through the sun through snow listen to the wind

  coming in listen hard and someone will name the bow

  [Summa mathematica]

  —The camera is a kind of clock (Barthes)

  A house like a photograph isolates contains such a small piece

  thin slice of the whole immense place the lens erases with ease

  the Alps Thames Taiga your neighbor your neighborhood

  how much of even the very local gets excluded by frame

  by walls roof and door it is a kind of vanishing an equation

  that returns a tiny private remainder a number quite close

  to nothing inside the house there is no lake no old groaning oak

  no stone or stone marker nor crescent moon of meadow meeting

  shore even the approach road is gone each arrival a mystery of

  the simple arithmetic of increase in this room in this bed I am

  full of babies exactly the way the house returns a nearly null set

  which is to say I lost my mother and never became one either

  which is to say the stacked albums are small museums they’re

  happy set pieces remainders returned from that thing we call

  the past the cakes cheerfully going up in flames the trees too

  festive and on fire the dead still here and all that will come left out

  [I would drive to your grave]

  I would drive to your grave but your grave is the crash

  the froth foam pebbles small rocks the sand smoothed

  soothed each rising each leaving tide you lie in the ocean

  the water in the waves your home the stern the back

  the wake of a boat those curled white lines of leaving

  I would visit your grave but your grave is a single blue

  afternoon of passing isles the green and granite shores

  I would come to your grave but your grave is the fire

  oh mother it is cold tonight and I have no heart

  for this burning for the fine sift of ash which is all

  that comes back all that comes after I would visit

  your house but your things are missing are missing

  your touch as your eyes failed I brought you lights

  and I would see again that brightness I would drive

  to your grave but I am your grave your marker

  oh mother I am your stone

  [Imagine]

  My goals today are modest

  attend the sky for signs of failing falling

  signs the buildings remain at ease

  comfortable abutments guarding against

  so much endless space

  their blank faces intentionally broken open in windows

  such casual such pretty risk

  *

  The blind wear sunglasses

  darkness being one thing

  exempt from multiplication

  objects in mirrors are often

  closer than they appear

  what follows

  does so in ways both intimate and dangerous

  movie stars wear shades

  windows without history

  forgetting the arc lamp of the past forgetting

  recognition

  was never a matter for such tiny disguises

  *

  The sky all day

  the sky keeps showing off amusing itself

  with the usual bag of tricks

  the city stands below stands

  in shadow somewhere small switches are thrown

  and the stars muscle their way into being

  into being seen again

  our ancient coming attractions a million years or more

  in the making and in the dying in the dying night

  we go out into the lighted dark we go over the details

  we make extensive notes excuses amends

  we never needed

  to imagine the past

  but still we do

  [There are things you love]

  There are things you love but they are rarely if ever

  the right things your favorite color that mottled dapple

  that fleeting purpleyellowblackgreen that exists only inside

  skin in the wake of harm the bittern’s upstretched neck

  a gesture you can’t get over its offer of concealment that

  also references danger for years you’ve loved the goose

  found at pond edge found at clouded blueblack daybreak

  its neck curved back head tucked as if risk as if the dark

  were nowhere were nothing to fear but then you saw

  feathers like petals like fasteners fallen open fallen

  to curl and drift in those shallows whatever befell had

  nothing of violence in it rather a quiet fading a still slip

  down or away rocked by ripple by wind feathers and flesh

  coming undone unmended coming into water such a small

  such a slight armada the body given over sanctified

  at almost dawn coming finally almost whole almost safe

  almost to daybreak and to shore

  [Pray]

  I test the reality of this slippery day

  already easing out of reach

  I pick minutes for hours

  in the meadow and this does not

  help me

  the clouds the trees the trees rasp

  like ancient crickets

  phlegmy in the way that old things

  are never really loud

  look at the horses

  look

  at their four fragile knees

  kneel later

  kneel

  kneel when they’ve given you a box

  a closet built of dirt its weighty

  stone handle

  then you can kneel then you can pray

  pray for the rest of your life

  kneeling

  for years

  as the meadow appears

  and falls under snow pray with a voice

  full of dried leaves full of falling water

  voice of new
<
br />   growth new snow

  pray

  pray as hard as you can to the horses

  skittering

  startled

  away

  [Take eat]

  Take eat he said for this is my body and we thought

  he meant us we who are also drawn to the table

  always craving olive mango bread rare flesh and wine

  but it is the earth replies by making way by taking in

  by each endless indifferent yes shaped like one more

  rectilinear hole as if the digging alone could constitute

  a form of prayer or arcane mathematics a series of

  n-dimensional spaces the volume infinite the collapse

  therefore also always ending in infinity ending as a

  zero sum game a dimension into which every thing

  you ever loved is poured like wine blood like some

  kind of sacrament microbes turn fruit potent turn flesh

  to sludge then seed in physics momentum and position

  define degrees of freedom delete momentum and what

  remains is one person in a box is a system collapse

  is sky holding ground holding stone holding hole

  holding hands holding on black hole without end

  the earth gave us everything took it back again

  [The orphan child eats blueberries in Vermont]

  Jeffrey’s Ledge is full of rising full of convection conversion full

  of peculiar geologic detail full of sudden shallows those undersea

  hills a vertical face against which the ocean comes in force in tide

  in wind a long slow grind toward shore full in summer of whales

  come for the krill the fish come with new beings their young

  in tow and taking milk what falls in water is never water is ash

  is death is flesh sent through the fire to fall a year later like rain

  on each slow leviathan is grain by minute grain sunk or gathered

  to be carried was this what you wanted most mother wanted of

  and for all that remains did you want the long slow travel mournful

  song a vast time-lapse failure an extinction colder and more alone

  than anything ought to be did you want finally to be carried off

  by something other something greater than this dis-ease of failing