Birthplace with Buried Stones: Poems

Nocturnal with Ghostly Landscape on St. Lucy’s Day

48 Nocturnal with Ghostly Landscape on St. Lucy’s Day I morning on St. lucy’s day, mist at the mouth of a tea plantation Where a pagoda was built, someone’s dream of China In hills where orchids cling to banyan roots Whose twisting roots surrender To ghosts risen from fields of dark water. a boy comes to his mother, white rose in hand, makes as if to give it to her. But she skips to sounds of an invisible flute, notes that strike rocks by the useless pagoda of the grandparents, Her eyes shut, skirts drawn up and teacup Filled with emptiness. abruptly he reaches out, Then draws back, a push-pull thing, fist with paper cone, masking an exquisite bloom. II In a waking dream the mother hears her boy Slam the door, stride into the street. 49 He stumbles into a pothole packed with shards of bone, Burnt exhaust pipes, stained Kevlar vests. He lies there as another lad, with sharp elbows like her boy’s, But with dripping sandy hair, Floats up from the Tigris river, Unhooks his phantom leg. The wound fills the TV screen, Crimson halo dissolving this chaos of derivatives: Houses foreclosed, stocks tumbling, a candidate who cries out for eden, His slender brown hands Taut, clasped to the arcana of the everyday— That which is all around and will not let us be. also the horror of what we have done Or let be done in our lifetime, a small difference there, necessary for a self to survive more or less sane. III It’s late on St. lucy’s day, darkness pours. Incarnadine the kitchen knife, The tuning fork of despair. a mother reaches for the windowpane, Searching for her son. Clouds soar, she spots the moon, 50 Spun discus glittering on the Hudson river, The swamps of Shatt al arab, a painted pagoda in a lost plantation, The curtain of childhood dropping as St. lucy turns, her throat a column of tears, Part of our planet’s luminous geography: Still clothed in savage reeds, She raises her eyes on a platter. (In memory of Grace Paley, 1922–2007) ...