And on waking we move from the month
of vines to the month of ivy.
From sensing
our own growth relies on support to sensing
heights
and a path we create by ascending.
I
The cloud is caught between worlds. Hovering over the man-made
Lake, tiny people gliding across it in boats and rafts like bugs,
well below other fair weather clouds drifting slowly by
Like a certain type of movie on an old TV in the background
you do not need to watch. It holds a flat gray shadow.
That kind of late arriving family looking for a place to drop
Its giant blanket on the grass leading to the shore
II
Tomas Transtromer, both adult and child, sits in an old church
in his poem “Brief Pause in the Organ Recital” and also in a churchyard
in a dream where he is waiting for someone. The three Transtromers,
One adrift in glowing heather, two sitting in sky blue church pews,
separate into being as the massive church organ pauses and the rumble
of traffic beyond the ancient stone walls fills in the silence. Here they wait
for some additional comprehension, an overheard whisper of an elder
Or a word in permanently capital letters like on a graveyard tombstone, only nothing
so definite as DIED, more like PERHAPS. Death is about to turn up the lights
beneath the heather– I know because I have been here before myself —
but before it can I have to pause to let a small bug wandering across page 163
find its way to the book’s bottom edge. Its legs are so small
I cannot see them but it steps over important words with no effort, doing what it does.
When it is safe I turn the page, though I know death is on the other side.
III
The cloud and the bug. Which is the shadow of the other?
The cloud, hanging around as if it had something to say
But kept changing so the words kept changing?
Or the bug, whose intricate pattern too small for me to see
Was the shape of a new, moving punctuation mark that means pause
While reading a poem about a brief pause that lasts two pages?
A few inches down the next page I walk a snow-covered island
with Transtromer who points out deer tracks, the imprint’s detail
lost in shadow like a blue church pew on Sunday,
like the cloud that comes closer on an overcast day.
At the edge of the house I cannot afford,
Old window open, conscience thin
Black screen barely a mesh between
Two environments. One built to keep
The other out, the other which does not
acknowledge even itself. Behind every
Wall upstairs the cricketsong of heartbeats.
The family’s dreams swirl around me:
These are fierce hunters. Bills and debts
Look for places to hide but the dark wins.
I know I will have to sleep, awake, pay
A daydream down. But tonight
I will enjoy their protection, my fears
Fleeing from the dreamy claws of trust.
For you the music is a stillness. Only what is still
Can walk the two roads. Here is your list
Of things to pack: did you forget the water?
Forget comfort? Forget profit and loss which rub
Against each other behind a tree? There’s a fire
In the woods between the roads. Forgetting
How to run you run without pain. The words
In these lines are here as guests and if you do
Not forget them they will have failed
Like guests who stay too long.
Along one road I found Chuang Tzu’s skull.
I only remember because I wrote what it said:
The ukulele and violin have traded hands.
The nine ordinary openings are closed
And the owl guards the dead rat.
This daughter exists because of what you
Didn’t do. Tell her this: As you play
Your fingers change as things change
And you forget them, and there is music.
Light and shadow leaf out from the same tree
I sit under the roots of the sky grateful for absence
Because I know its shapes make the present
Present itself against this blue sincerity
It is too early for the crickets to give advice
The hornets of time find another corner of wood
As the porch shadow turns east and I sit in my new self
The climbing moon pauses on a mulberry leaf
And later on the neighbor’s roof unnoticed
The pale afternoon ladder has no rungs
But the moon turns slowly until upside
Down it can fall up the sky
Feathery cirrus, as if the sky itself were a wing.
What we see in the sky is the wing.
What we hear in the trees is the burden
Of signals. Darkness, intentions, darkness.
Everything will be defeated
Every thing we thought we needed
Easy enough to call the contraband
Memory but is it? We didn’t mean
To find ourselves at the border
Of the moment with unexplained
Stuff in our bags. Mood altering
Substance. Clouds move away
Inexorable as a tango. The earth
Rolls us forward with everything
Every hour’s hand has held.
Crickets suffice for thunder tonight.
Like a leg rubbing up against another.
At the gate
Emptiness slips you a ticket to the after-party.
Imagine thunder, a year’s worth of it,
Crammed into a high speed second
Of replay: that’s a cricket.
Imagine a summer lawn full of them,
each chirp a year, an entire night
Of it, just below the grass line while
Above it every firefly’s a conflagration
Over territory, driving extinctions
And drawing death from the sky
Like lightning. Imagine standing
In your yard above it all. Oddly at peace.
Away from the lights of your house.
A few minutes go by. That’s the moon.
Translations from the English 