#243

An undead morning. I . . . shuffle my poss’s.

Lashed here, with ears, in the narrows, memoried,

like a remaining man,

he call to him for discomfort blue-black losses,

gin & green girls, drag of the slaying weed.

Just when it began again 

I will remember, soon. All will be, soon.

The little birds are crazed. Survive us, gulls.

A hiss from distant space

homes in the overcast—to their grown tune—

dead on my foaming galley. Feel my pulse.

Is it the hour to replace my face? 

Dance in the gunwales to what they cannot hear

my lorn men. I bear every piece of it.

Often, in the ways to come,

where the sun rises and fulfils their fear,

unlashed, I’ll whistle bits.

Through the mad Pillars we are bound for home.

 

Oh, now this…is what I’m talking about. This poem gives me a chill, to be honest. “Dance in the gunwales to what they cannot hear.” It’s about the vision of the poet, the artist. We celebrate their visions—supposedly. The ones with acuity have whistled for us what they’ve heard. Like: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” Such an insight is thrilling, but not everybody gets it, or wants to get it, or perhaps they wouldn’t value it even if they did. What is it that people want? Some want the thrill of addiction. I tried it. Didn’t stick for me, all yellow fog and nausea. I spent a week in Las Vegas—loud vulgarity, the crazed clink clink clink of coins in metal pans, garish and overbright. Wall Street and McMansions: Boring. How about danger, victory, and adrenaline? Sure, but physiological Las Vegas, finally.

But I do know what it’s like to top out on a mountain with friends and know that we’ve earned this view we’re sharing. I defended my dissertation, another arriving at the peak of a mountain. I looked once into a bear’s eyes and knew he was looking back, and I knew what he wanted: Can I come swimming too? I’ve closed a book on the last page and said, “Yes.” I heard a moment of music once, and understood, and felt a door open. My cat, Mehitabel, would lay her head in my palm and fall asleep, making me know that I was trusted and loved: No other way to read that gesture, from an animal. DaVinci laughed at me in Paris out of his great painting, and we laughed out loud together. I smelled and tasted, alert to keep up, while a bottle of wine, a ’92 Musigny, danced for us. I’ll almost certainly never visit Chauvet or Lascaux, and they’re too precious for my breath to ruin so I don’t need to, but I know what’s there.

Some of us lash ourselves to the mast and hear the sirens’ song, and it drives us crazy. If I tell you about that Musigny the tenth time, maybe you’ll be bored, and perhaps you’ll even resent it, but it’s because I want you to dance with it too. Or if I tell you I laughed out loud in the Louvre, knowing that the more we turned her into an icon, the more tickled Leonardo was, chuckling at us chuckleheads from all the way down the centuries—you’ll look at me, like everyone else did, and think it’s rude, or mad. But I don’t care. I want you to laugh with me. What I’ll do is I’ll look at an emerald jewelwing damselfly, and in a poem or a picture or a plea, I’ll tell you that if you’ll just stop and look, you’ll see a creature so strange and so lovely that your life will never be the same again, if only you’ll look. I’ve not been the same, once I looked. It only happened a couple months ago, but I’m not the same anymore. What a miracle that it’s there, and I’m here, and life and God and evolution and Earth have brought things together just so, so that it’s beauty is truth, and that truth is beauty in return, and they loop into each other, a positive feedback, and the insect flies on it! You could see it too. If you lie on your back in the mountains and stare at the chaotic star-artistry of the sky overhead, you’ll understand that you’re of them. It takes time, but it’s there. Hardy has Tess do it, so he had to have known. That’s helps me overcome my telling myself that I’m crazy, like some others are quick to do. With strength and experience come confidence that these things you feel and discover have meaning beyond vanity. One of these days we’ll all go home, like Odysseus on his ship, but I declare, so help me, that there will be no beeswax in my ears, and I’ll listen for the sirens singing, and if I lose my orthodox mind, then so be it. I’ll whistle bits of the tune for you, if I can, as well as I can, and you can listen or not, but I’ll do it because all I want is to teach what love is: Whistling bits of the siren’s song together in harmony.