At the Bureau of Divine Music

Eclogue

24 Eclogue The field across the road was beautiful. I won’t describe it. I went walking out just now to see it. There was a huge white bird that settled in the tree beside the fence. Another swooped around on great brown wings. I needed to preach to birds. And, naturally, I had to sneeze, and naturally they flew. The brown one simply vanished, while the white one that had been in the tree slid off behind and was halfway to the river when I saw him, no bigger than a sparrow, disappearing. So that was that. So I came back indoors to watch the sky again out of my window and think of you. I thought about a word I found once in an Irish dictionary, referring to the space between your fingers. It also means the space between your toes. I looked it up: ladhar—a metaphor for the space between two rivers, roads, etc. The problem, obviously, is how to say it. The –dh– in the middle is the trick. It’s the voiced guttural spirant used in English for the common death rattle and little else. You have to try to gargle between the a’s or cough the l around and past the r, being careful not to spit up something foul while trying to caress a certain place with the tip of the tongue. I’m happy to do that and say nothing about it—to keep my peace and let the white bird light between two branches, 25 while the one with brown wings circles out of sight above the field next to the river where I sit helping you free your blouse from your elbows. ...