The Book of Endings Read online

  heart of lungs filling again did you want ease peace a home a place

  in this the swallowing element no breath no longer any need did

  you want finally to be cradled by something benevolent something

  large taken with such strange such falling grace away the body

  mimics the heart stutters says sad sad so sad the body swan dives

  trips the body falls into such far mornings as this your death

  already a year old the tide at slack grief the mist clinging to the fields

  the circling hills the body sits with strangers eats blueberries

  bluer than your ocean blue as the vacancy sign you never meant

  to hang in all our lives the blue of the sky picked up and held

  by the water this predawn leak of light so like the tint of your lips

  the color of oxygen-lack the final absence of air cyanosis they call it

  the heart submerged and drowning the ship of your life going down

  cyanosis for this rising storm cyanosis like cyan the printer’s least

  stable ink cyan from kyanous which is Greek which just means blue

  [To say]

  There are dead creatures all over and under this earth

  to say your heart is broken is to translocate sorrow

  to honor the stutter you carry always in its own cage

  beast of the gaps unrested hesitations to say your heart

  is broken is to say the river never wanted those particular

  dead and is to also say the field full of mice going in fear

  of all that has wings is also full of stubble the grain taken

  dead and leavened by hands by time to say your heart

  is broken is to see inside your mind all that is gone all

  that has become the shadow of wings all that will never

  again appear to say your heart is broken is to wish to end

  the uneven engine mend it into silence or steady purr

  is to say something about the difficulty of repair is to say

  your heart your memories the field the river the bodies

  are all intact and can never be saved no matter what

  [Practice]

  They keep throwing their bodies at all the versions of water

  river lake bath puddle ocean even every snowy hill the children

  remember water the children remember and cry carry me

  with pursed bird mouths with sharp bird voices with faces

  tuned to the looming tide the children practice being creatures

  being creatures again the children have already been taught

  already know how to fold their bones into clothes lean their

  knees into pews their hearts over desks fold hands into attitudes

  like prayer cursive or like a fist released into sleep the children

  curl fetal again soft again cradled by the hammock moon

  the knit mesh of stars nights they write field guides to lairs

  and all the secrets creatures keep

  [Ötzi]

  When the hay wain wound its way across the hill

  you failed to follow because winter meant

  fallow meant cold frozen fields meant then lost

  in the icy heights meant also found means found

  five thousand three hundred years after they knapped

  the blade and you made room for it in your body

  winter means preservation means the soul

  on ice means dead is only one definition means

  geography is only one explanation

  the seasons turn the season turns colder

  the mirrors fog over when I breathe meaning

  I can be visible be present but

  not while yet I live and true north is nothing

  but a lodestone just another sharp implement

  pointing to lost those nearly endless years

  the body retrieved from the ice rope marks

  and scars still visible in the flesh

  and pollen that necessary sturdy fruit

  says head down in a glacier one blade

  in your hand and one in place of your heart

  says when first you were lost the blackthorn

  was in flower as was the larch

  [Coda]

  And it came to pass after this that the chariots broke the hours

  into horses broke them to the rein bit the hackamore the whip

  it was already and still is as if nothing had ever happened and

  the chariots were made of gold of air of geese barking across

  the speckled sky the crows look up order in their dictionary

  of branch and cloud and answers keep not happening for any

  of us beside the river they closed the road so now we walk

  and the river moves and moves on and does not and the cool

  drumskin sky turns gray then grayer still and then the thunder

  comes

  [Wilt thou play with him as with a bird]

  For I have loved the blade with all my crippled

  with all my awkward soul loved it for the shine

  sheen for the ease and grace of doing what it was

  made to do for I have loved the stubborn womb

  its beloved intent have loved the hope and then

  learned to love the lack for I have loved the water

  the way it comes to me comes for me in all its

  liquid mystery for I have loved what the water

  loves its myriad vessels sky basin runnel channel

  and vein for all it claims and contains for I have

  loved its muscular flex its rise coil and fall so like

  Leviathan’s mighty desperate heart for I have loved

  Leviathan for being only for being exactly

  what god hated and what he made for being

  water’s own knife this wild unholy blade

  Right Panel

  [When trees are dead they are]

  When trees are dead they are wood straight-grained

  solid flesh when we die we are of what use what matter

  no shelter is built of our bones of our going such small pieces

  taken instead into soil lair into ground wind sand salt or sea

  the world barely remade in our unfastening these bodies

  so ill-suited to use better suited to waste to want to hunger

  the way our minds attach themselves with claw and teeth

  to such thin things as hope to having met one man once again

  and once again to having invented desire that terrible bludgeon

  that blade so rare to desire the essential simple things

  rice for the table blanket for the bed we want hands instead

  we want whatever we meant by love the bodies’ tectonic

  collision friction the frisson of touch subsumed subducted

  in the plates the wine the meal we are all so practiced

  at falling at coming slowly coming both apart and undone

  skin by limb by falling we gather trees plant them deep

  for love oh love marry me instead to the forest marry

  me please to the fencepost the mast the table or the rack

  [Carnation lily lily rose]

  The trees drop wilting petals this confetti pink and red

  lilac and rose as pollen too drifts and falls turns every

  puddle urinous the drunken bees swerve through

  the ruined afternoon and you keep asking me to believe

  keep calling me an optimist but how can I count on this

  count each happy family by their shuttered windows their

  thoroughly locked doors how can I count smoke as evidence

  of warmth of fire count on the way desire drunk on pollen

  drunk on the season staggers and stings count on the way

  strangers keep wanting to touch my hair make a wish you say

  make a wish but the planets careen on through constellationsr />
  disrupting the given stories then changing them back again

  black holes open and close like the beaks of baby birds

  ravenous and crashing from their nests their naked skin

  the cold pink of furled petals how is it that the world keeps

  coming to this these long spring afternoons how can I count

  them as evidence of anything oh love you think I wanted this

  I never wanted this I didn’t know how to want any of this

  [Sisyphus in love]

  At first it was the stone the rough stubble skin of it the call

  and response the stone’s going its perpetual coming back

  the insistence of the fact of it shaping each piece of his body

  muscle bone rough hands their slow curve toward its weight

  the way it wanted the way it wanted him never farther away

  than the length of his arm the cheek to cheek dance the way

  he wore its dust and scent breathed it in and then it was the hill

  the way he cut his name his story over time the furze worn

  in tracks how it defined his being a tipped horizon the sky

  obscured the way it wore each cloud the world’s difficult

  weather as jewel and costume the myriad ways it refused

  to move be moved seduced or yield he loved it most for that

  and then it was the song those lovely small waves that flutter

  felt against the ear his skin that it could also sometimes be

  like this those pulsing waves such fine such slight adjustments

  it took his breath tuned turned his ear to hear and overhear

  those notes upon his shore his skin and then it was the stone again

  [Eve]

  If the angels came there would be no kindness they are

  after all also without mercy pity they are warriors soldiers

  of wing beak and sword they are griffins of the lord endlessly

  taking sides come unto all of this world to do his bidding

  he has no interest in rescue how obvious that has become he has

  no interest in the seed its vanishing its chance random choice

  of fate either ground cradled or ground down in the bird’s

  churning belly seed is food is blood is muscle is waiting

  to become flesh its own or someone else’s seed is always

  fuel in the metabolic fire the apple a womb encounters

  her teeth she taught herself to eat god taught her to bleed

  [Stutter]

  I said love because it came closest said leave

  because you did we do this peeling off each

  from each each from suddenly other said

  come back but meant don’t go I said dead

  and meant every one of those instances of

  vanishment how the dead swim away from us

  in time their tide their closed wooden boats

  I said tide but tide was never right said tide

  because we have no word for that kind of

  unforgiving away I said tether when I meant

  anchor when I meant stay but when I said stay

  one thing I meant was against confusion

  against yet another loss I meant two-faced

  Janus January’s god of fallen gates of trying

  to look both ways and when I said farewell

  I meant again don’t go but it was too late I was

  here in the hall this tunnel full of mirrors glass

  and strange made-up faces and when I thought

  funhouse I meant its opposite I meant this

  rusty carnival town the men so sad they paint

  their smiles in place they paint their faces

  white paint their eyes wide and full of crying

  [Sirens]

  I’m not Penelope married to faith married to waiting

  bound in fine soft strands of silk dyed and stretched

  in my world longing has teeth and fins has a taste

  for blood longing is a room built entirely of knives

  all edges facing in all points afire and also somehow

  held to the vessel in my world sirens are the town criers

  saying something’s happened and maybe to you saying

  someone got too close to danger sirens are the past tense

  of rescue meaning clean-up in aisle three where

  the glass racks have fallen before the mast where the sea

  rose up between the meat and the waiting where the bed

  refused as usual to become the boat where the dead

  drape and tangle in the rigging the sheets in the loom

  and the sirens gather to wail flicker and shine where they

  gather together to sing of damage to sing us home

  [Parable]

  God the child threw fits threw storms like broken toys

  around his room god the child rested slept as in that old joke

  like a baby waking often to cry for who or what made and fed

  bathed and kept him god the child was already older than any

  thing he caused to be made he left his crib his prison of flesh

  for other states god the child made and loves the master who

  to save the nation clips the wings of ravens chains them into

  the certainties of space and stone no more wingéd oars chewing

  the sky the creak of flight made quiet made deafening by

  its absence the way the stars make the dark into synaesthetic

  noise god the child gathers the clipped feathers broken wings

  sews them into cloak blanket story god the child kills

  the ravenmaster in the fullness in the boredom of his days

  and the black beaks open and silence is stolen into rasping

  speech and this this is where love is born where love comes from

  as the birds are chained to the tower so we are chained

  to each other and god the child makes another ravenmaster

  to love and maim the birds and god grows older grows

  tired rests his sick head on piles and soft piles of broken

  wings hoarse voices of our clipped and necessary feathers

  [Charm for a spring storm]

  I am tamping down the earth I am patting it back

  with the flat side of a blade I am burying you

  with all the other dead because hydrangeas because

  lilacs and tiny cinquefoil stars and when you call

  and when you say you want to meet and I say yes

  but suddenly the snow prevents your arrival I simply

  dig another hole though the ground is unwilling though

  the ground is cold and indifferent and when you called

  I was busy I was combing my hair there in the garden

  I was inventorying the bones saying sacrum saying

  iliac crest saying sternal notch I was watching I was waiting

  for the moon for the moon to turn my hair even more

  silver I never thought I’d get this old and now

  nothing I own has ever smelled of you I was

  in the garden and it was snowing and the whole world

  was on fire it was spring and I was adding stones to

  my pockets trying to teach the ground trying to teach

  the water that this is how you love you don’t give up

  you don’t give back you take the bones hold them tight

  you cut a way in weigh the body down weigh down

  the body with a body you fold the garden in around you

  like a blanket like a prayer you come over here you stay

  [Landscape with falling birds]

  All the voices in the world humming in the radio waves in the wires

  tangle braid and knot and not one is you trying to find me every one

  is the dropped call lost before it sets tongue to bell pulse to pulse

  they sing the voices in the wires in the wave
s in the sky I hear them

  singing all the time operatic and frantic and I cannot sleep for all

  the singing when I wake from not sleeping a hundred thousand birds

  have fallen dead from the wires their branches if someone could gather

  the dead the rain of feathers and flight would drown us all and

  there would be no boat then the boat would come too late the captain

  demanding a payment that payment would be stop trying to forget

  remember all the time for ever the sound of his voice remember

  as if it were the last light before you were blind and I would say

  but wait what is a voice what is light they are uninhabitable

  you cannot live there and he would say yes and he would say

  remember as if it were the only perfect light so what I see is not

  candle star sun incandescent neon acetylene moon no buzz hum

  flicker heat is instead the scent of all that died mixed with time

  and pressure poured into glass and fragile poured against a wick and lit

  [That]

  That this is the morning in which nothing much

  that the sky is still there and the water dresses

  accordingly that only at night does the water rest

  vanish from sight that the stars are too small too far

  to register there that all our names too are writ

  invisibly on water that abiding requires more hope

  than I can possibly acquire that hope is not a thing

  with feathers that hope is a thing with a fist a thin

  crust sketched over oceans that hope is what despair

  uses for bait come in hope says the water’s fine

  that hope is the blood with which you write letters

  that start dear sea dear ocean stop asking so fucking

  much that hope is a telegram delivered by men

  in pairs men in uniform a telegram that says missing

  stop that says once again presumed lost stop

  [Venice]

  It is spring will be soon and Venice is sinking

  into its own ocean the past the places I may