Country Music: Selected Early Poems

Northhanger Ridge

Northhanger Ridge Half-bridge over nothingness, White sky of the palette knife; blot orange, Vertical blacks; blue, birdlike, Drifting up from the next life, The heat-waves, like consolation, wince— One cloud, like a trunk, stays shut Above the horizon; off to the left, dream-wires, Hill-snout like a crocodile's. Or so I remember it, Their clenched teeth in their clenched mouths, Their voices like shards of light, Brittle, unnecessary. Ruined shoes, roots, the cabinet of lost tilings: This is the same story, Its lips in flame, its throat a dark water, The page stripped of its meaning. -*Sunday , and Father Dog is turned loose: Up the long road the children's feet Snick in the dust like raindrops; the wind Excuses itself and backs oft"; inside, heat Lies like a hand on each head; Slither and cough. Now Father Dog Addles our misconceptions, points, preens, His finger a white flag, run up, run down. 42 Bow-wow and arf, the Great Light; O, and the Great Yes, and the Great No; Redemption, the cold kiss of release, &c.; sentences, sentences. (Meanwhile, docile as shadows, they stare From their four corners, looks set: No glitter escapes This evangelicalmasonry.) * Candleflame; vigil and waterflow: Like dust in the night the prayers rise: From 6 to 6, under the sick Christ, The children talk to the nothingness, Crossrack and wound; the dark room Burns like a coal, goes Ash to the touch, ash to the tongue's tip; Blood turns in the wheel: Something drops from the leaves; the drugged moon Twists and turns in its sheets; sweet breath In a dry corner, the black widow reknits her dream. Salvation again declines, And sleeps like a skull in the hard ground, Nothing for ears, nothing for eyes; It sleeps as it's always slept, without Shadow, waiting for nothing. Bible Camp, 1949 43 ...