The Hermit, and: The Fool

The Hermit

As though the nights here hover, as thoughto cover other nights behind them, every word

is the veil for another word, every stepthe future of another step: a lantern,

hung from the hand, just the hintof another lantern, and the hand, too

is the memory of an older hand, itselfa memory, perhaps, of a sculptor's hand,

or a penitent's. For what is workif not the effort to atone? Each step

is the echo of the next steps, the villageasleep with all the echoes, all the names

that hide behind other names. There is the fieldthat covers up another field in which a life

was taken and covered with other, lesser lives.The tree that marks the hovering memory

of another tree. As though the night hovers,as though a name is memory enough for itself.

The Fool

Step out: perennials seething, somethingflickering in the underbrush: a boat breaks

through the ice, choking toward a cityfloating somewhere past what you can see

in the haze. But what could yield itself,numinous: what shimmer through all

the palpable clutter: the threadbare clothyou hold, the knotted wood over which

you stretch it? There are pages missingin the catalogue of the sensible world, pages

gone from its sequel—no matter. Somethingwalks through these streets narrower than God,

something balanced, no attention called to itselfin the late snow fallen on the budding dogwoods.

Step out: what have you missed in this expanseof bodies yearning for the minutest touch,

of shifting eyes, telephone numbers, temporaryaddresses? So many psalms, unwritten,

but opened, lined up to greet you, as thoughto yield is to discover: at first, the road

empty under an inexorably yellowed sky.There's nothing more to welcome, or to gain.