for Bokara
I. DAMASCUS
Struck dumb midsong, your half-heart hard against the light,
you quail. One of two things will have transpired here:
The future is a five-pointed star pointing down
at you, a nurturing fear. Or the future is
a stun gun, a death ray out of nowhere, or out
of night, if you’re lucky, while you sleep. There’s a street
in your city called Expectation. It crosses
a street called Terrible Witnesses. Follow that
until you reach a large open plaza devoid
of happiness. By then you will probably
recognize the heavy helmet of pain
that accompanies a fall from a great height,
or from a steed, or possibly from some flying
animal. Your vision will be obscured, patches
of dark and light will blur your memory. Some day,
though, you will fight the urge to forget this dark
strum of sky you keep falling asleep under.
II. THE CASE AGAINST WAGNER
Shoulder-deep into the longest century,
during the first Festspiele, I said farewell to you
in my heart: I walked into the sea, lost secure
footing, and finally surrendered to the elements
without reservation. Then, several moments
of suppressed sublimity. Strangest, though, is this:
God and Götterdämmerung demand our belief
in them, their existence depends upon it.
Above all, they are subject to mankind’s
greatest power: to destroy them by forgetting.
My madness doesn’t know forgetting. We are past
remembering, we are past writing it all down.
Espressivo at any price; even music
the slave of men and men’s poses. There’s a danger
in memory we must not exaggerate.
Fiend, foe, my sometime friend, I must contend I breathe
no longer easily. The ringing in my ears
has turned to gold. By midyear it will dawn on me
that I must leave Germany forever.
III. ARIADNE
I believe you when you tell me you are a bird
in your other life.
Follow the water
to where the winding is. It will tell you
what you want to know. Mother has
lost a hand and more
in the chain of things. Father is uneasy opening
umbrellas indoors. You must go quickly.
This long lash will light
your way. Choose paths leading down
and to the right.
Hold tight the narrow
way. What awaits your arrival is central
to the theme.
I’ve been awaiting
your arrival all my life and dreading it.
Press your thumbs
into the iris
of your eye. I will build you a house of string
and the bones of flightless birds.
I will fly to you
breathless, barefoot, your red hair threading back down
into the dark, down the staircase
of least surprise.
IV. THE MADONNA OF PORT LLIGAT
Seasons in Port Lligat were long stretches of beach,
uninterrupted sun. Not a day went by when
I was not cavalier. Once, we rented donkeys and rode
them up and down the coasts of Spain. Good days,
I could peel the water’s prepuce back, bright blue hood
of the Mediterranean. This went on till
I shot myself in the leg after running out
of rouge. You made indecent jokes about the cost
of good cadmium, wanting me to shoot you too.
With the gun or camera? I asked. Just the gun.
I drew a bull’s-eye on your belly, pulled the sea’s veil
over your head like the blessed Virgin. You said.
The gun is too small. I want to feel it. So now
your middle gapes, wide enough for me
to crawl inside, if I were small enough.
V. THE SIDEREAL MESSENGER
Galileo and Kepler
A bird, shuttering through caverns, under cities,
does not comprehend the limitation of sky.
What we see is what is real. There is a finite
number of cities on earth, it is true, you can
count them. There may be a finite number of stars
in the night sky. You imagine sin and peril
reside in all you do, but what of the stars,
the infinite fire? Each spark breathes, consumes.
What of our inventions: the lens, the scope,
the camera obscura. Are these facts?
Inexorable extensions of our body?
As believers, are we aware of the limits
of belief? Admit that the spots are seas.
Admit that the bright areas are land.
I am one of the witnesses. I am one who breathes.
There will be millions of others, I assure you.
By morning’s light you’ll count the bodies.
VI. ALADDIN’S DREAM
There was no bright ladder in my dream.
No angels walking up and down stairs,
no oiled stone
to rest my head on. Only a shout
of many throats under a cavernous
roof. Then the lamp
spoke. I hid my face under its rasping
voice: Make nothing of things that are,
nothing of things
that are not. A stab of white light obscured
the lamp. I saw the dark question take shape:
The glittering
answer, already weary, drew itself
up to great heights. One hour after noon
I woke. Wonder
spread its wings from wall to wall. What was left
of my voice shifted, cracked,
a tongue of rock
thrust out alone and trembling under a
cavernous roof.
VII. ROTHKO
This is the sonnet I survived in. My spirit
descends on you in sections, like God, a triptych
of terrible convections. People arrived in
numbers, clothed in their denominations’ colors,
mimicking their divine—divided in faith but
united in resolute reflections of their
own trinities. Here are no elections. This is
no democracy. This is my city, altar
I have lived in like a madman since the forties.
Do these contortions trouble you?
I am canvas,
primer, paint, the untitled aura of the thing.
I am frame. I cannot deny the Petrarchan
proportions of the body. I’m the only one
not marked by this faint stench staining my sleep.
VIII. THESEUS
I Speak, contort my body
in unkind spaces,
drink poison. I am not harmed.
I thrust a golden
spear into your heart.
A voice in the wind fills me
with new wine. I look up,
into your thrall, your threadbare
loins. Day breaks against
hollow and heat of my thigh.
I have seen you face
to face yet my life
is preserved. My tongue’s a tooth
in God’s ragged jaw.
When I asked your name,
you said time in the desert
is the sun and moon.
There is no labyrinth but one
our bodies build.
I am a man of unclean lips.
Hold me by the thread that found
you. When I look up,
the hem of your robe ravels,
revealing, filling
my temple.
