Nigh Clime
Who remembers the waving hinge, how
the spine of a book or elm could limn
the locale of gee and hmm and oh, tingle
with the nom of its genome chill as if Patsy Cline
were at the helm of the angelic galleon, singing
I’m crazy, crazy for feeling so blue.
When the long
is gone and the curtain opens
its glee like leaves in April,
we’ll mingle like scenery and ogle o’er ego and e’en, the glim
of ago.
We still come helloing up the lingo
hill, its chenille lawn aching
with echo: omen, a lien
on our line. Lean your nog
against mine own and lift the hem
of home, not inchmeal but once: your chin
on its agile cello, your leg nigh
in the niche of time.
Afternoon
On the front porch, the mud cups of barn swallows
hold up the eaves, push-up bras the swallows keep
slipping into like boomerangs sliding back
to a hand. My mother taught me how to make
a fist, fingernails tucked inside, how to slip
my hand through nylon stockings
without a snag. At the street light where
someone has thrown a stone and knocked out
a corner of glass, the sparrow enters
her nest as we head into the theater
for a matinee. I knew it was time
to take a break from writing poems
when the woman at the bank asked what kind of
form I needed to have notarized, and I said power
of eternity. So let’s slip into something more
comfortable, like character or your native tongue,
and then later, after dinner, we can slip out
early. But how far can the stargazer lilies walk
in their orange velvet slippers? All the way
to Point Zéro, the point from which all distances
are measured in France, if they are thinking of
Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, leaning
against the door frame in her tight white
slip. The old films often flickered
and skipped, even occasionally slipped in
a blank screen. It’s how the world would look
through the eye of a lizard or bird: some nictitating
membrane swept across like a curtain
at The End as we slip from consciousness into
oblivion—an act of not exactly forgiveness
but an official forgetting that precedes
what’s then forgotten.
How to Know When the Dead Are Dead
Some crimes of early modern Europe were specific
to the night: keeping a public house open
too late, disturbing the peace, lantern smashing, dueling
at dusk or dawn, grave robbing, and walking
without a light. So fireflies, rising like embers
from the earth, members of the family
Lampyridae, Greek for “shining ones,” still blink
their way through the night. Although they obey
God’s first command, when the lights go out
do they stay?
Upon election, the Pope takes
a new name, his old Christian name never
heard in the Vatican again until he lies
dead: the chamberlain then comes to his side
and calls him three times by the name
he once bore.
To be sure the dead are dead,
Greeks would cut off a finger, Slavs rubbed bodies
with warm water for an hour, while Hebrews wait
for putrefaction because even without hands, the dove
still plays her flute. There are other ways,
of course, to know: the dead don’t place bets, leave
their dinner untouched. Then just before the sky goes
dark, bats fly out like a pail of water tossed
from the eaves.
Even and thin but yellow with age, there can be
pleadings, an appeal or trial, a letter, dispatch, or note,
something summarized or abbreviated: brief
which in Scotland is called
a memorial.
Recall
She squeezed the trout until the mouth opened
like a plastic coin purse and held its hollow
in her hand, the mouth of a bottle she might
drink from, said say ah, say a e i o u, as she reached
her fingers down its throat, black patch, galactic
path where the hook curved like the left hook of
a comet or a hangnail of plaque snagged at the branch
of an artery, bent rod of the nibble or strike.
In Purgatory, God trolls his lures
through the heavens, richiamo: Recall the way
a lifeguard twirls his whistle, how stars spin
through space, flipping and flashing
as if they were ricciarelli,
cookies shaped like the almond eyes
of madonnas that keep calling me back
to Siena. As a bird to its lure, as the bird
at its call. Bachelard recalls how
the French baritone said it is impossible
to think the vowel sound ah without
tensing, tightening the vocal chords: we read ah
and the voice is ready to sing.
