The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945–1992

Craters

In its fragile green, its rich greens, To be nothing but the great stain ofblankness Changing againGravedigger On Sunday, you come back Monday to the laying-out In squares, ofyour infinite land thefurs ofsnow do not reach us When they should the moon has troubled the sown seed . . . Craters with Michel Leiris Roots out ofthe ground and ongoing The way we are, some ofthemSpokes earth-slats a raft made ofhumped planks Slung down and that's right: wired together By the horiwn: it's what these roads Are growing through: fatal roads, No encounters, the hacked grass burning with battle-songThen when we get our voices together, When we mix in that savage way, in the gully ofthroats Where the fog piles up, and we turn our long cadences loose Over the grooved pastures, the running fence ofsong Will flap and mount straight up for miles Very high, all staring stridulation, Softer than beer-hops: one ofthe days when the wind breathes slackly, Making the lightest perches tremble Like hostile stems interlacing, As in the heart a lock of blond hair knots on itself Suicidally, insolubly someone will plough-out a door, A staircase will dig itselfdown, its haunted spiral Will blacken and come out Craters / 469 Where the ashes ofthose who were once turned to Pompeian lava Will abandon their smouldering silkworks, Their velvet slags, and take on the courtliness Ofghosts: then, then the sky will be gone from us Forever, we wretched ones who can love nothing But light. Such will the craters tell you-any crater Will tell you, dry-heaving and crouching: will tell us we've stumbled Onto one: we're ill one, dry-heaving and crouching. AttemptedDeparture withAndre du Bouchet I come back hoping to leave From these planks; for farewell and for lift-offI am lighting Four walls ofa fire, here. Blank plaster comes alive On me in square gold: my shadow goes giddy with dimension, dropping off The outflanked pious hunger ofthe flat; The damn thing can come at me now Like death, from anywhere but while I stand No side protected, at home, play-penned With holocaust the slashes disappear from this flayed back, like My step on the rammed road, the only thing fleeing. Poem through a French poet, Roland Bouheret, and my running father For having left the birds that left me Better streaks on my eyes than they can make Double-tongue: Collaborations and Rewrites / 470 ...