The Whole Motion: Collected Poems, 1945–1992

The Island

It could be a country where no one Ever has died but oflove. I take the snow's breath and I speak it. What I say has the form ofa flame Going all through the gnats like their spirit, And for a swarming moment they become, Almost, my own drunk face in the air Against the one mountain in Heaven. It is better to wait here quietly, Not for my face to take flight, But for someone to come from the dead Other side ofthe war to this place: Who thinks ofthis ground as his home, Who thinks no one else can be here, And that no one can see him pass His hand through a visage ofinsects, His hand through the cone ofthe mountain To pluck the flower. But will he feel His sobbing be dug like a wellspring Or a deep water grow from his lids To light, and break up the mountain Which sends his last breath from its summit As it dances together again? Can he know that to live at the heart Ofhis saved, shaken life, is to stand Overcome by the enemy's peace? TheIs/and A light come from my head Showed how to give birth to the dead That they might nourish me. In a wink ofthe blinding sea I woke through the eyes, and beheld No change, but what had been, And what cannot be seen The Island / 101 Any place but a burnt-out war: The engines, the wheels, and the gear That bring good men to their backs Nailed down into wooden blocks, With the sun on their faces through sand, And polyps a-building the land Around them ofsenseless stone. The coral and I understood That these could come to no good Without the care I could give, And that I, by them, must live. I clasped every thought in my head That bloomed from the magical dead, And seizing a shovel and rake, Went out by the ocean to take My own sweet time, and start To set a dead army apart. I hammered the coffins together Ofpatience and hobnails and lumber, And gave them names, and hacked Deep holes where they were stacked. Each wooden body, I took In my arms, and singingly shook With its being, which stood for my own More and more, as I laid it down. At the grave's crude, dazzling verge My true selfstrained to emerge From all they could not save And did not know they could give. I buried them where they lay In the brass-bound heat ofthe day, A whole army lying down In animal-lifted sand. And then with rake and spade I curried each place I had stood On their chests and on their faces, And planted the rows ofcrosses Inside the blue wind ofthe shore. I hauled more wood to that ground And a white fence put around Drowning with Others / I02 The soldiers lying in waves In my life-giving graves. And a painless joy came to me When the troopships took to the sea, And left the changed stone free Ofall but my image and me: Ofthe tonsured and perilous green With its great, delighted design Ofutter finality, Whose glowing workman stood In the intricate, knee-high wood In the midst ofthe sea's blind leagues, Kicked offhis old fatigues, Saluted the graves by their rank, Paraded, lamented, and sank Into the intelligent light, And danced, unimagined and free, Like the sun taking place on the sea. The Island / I 03 ...