Mortal Passages

Tallow

In de la Tour's St. Joseph the carpenterleans over the awl in his hands, his sandalbraced against the block, against the stairthat leads us up the cross of the handle,

up these arms exposed now to realizethe strength in them, up the tourniquetof his sleeve to the human horizonof his shoulders, his head, his silhouette

bowed with power. His body stoops to harborthe meager candlelight his child holds,the red translucence of the child's fingersno less a shelter, their wild flame withheld

from us, though we see it in the father'seye, the way he looks not at his own gripbut at the boy's, the danger there, the firethat smokes above the glowing fingertips.

Always the missing thing to pull the oldgaze away, however slightly, displacedby fear that bathes a child's skin in gold,all things the orphan of some other place.

Even the candle began inside the shadowof some barn, in the meat of the beastthat gave its life to those here, its tallowto their room, their labor, the air they breathe.

As for the man who dipped his paintbrushin the thickening shade—how little we knowof the nights he spent, the weary stretchof cloth he draped across the morning window.

That he was the son of a baker, sure.That, as he aged, his canvases took onthe bread and earth tones of what was near,what lit the quiet of his meditation.

Whatever the history, the painting fallssilent, and so bestows the living spaceto move, bemused, free, the way the awlmoves freely inside the myth it makes.

Close your eyes and you see what stainsthe air against the back of the craftsmanas if he carries there his own gravestonewhere the dates lie down, where they remain.

A shadowy lethargy encroacheson the boy, the cloistered universemade of blood and oil, of red that reachesthrough the char to warm the midnight in us.

In each pupil a bead of black wax,as if sight began in dark, better to bindman to child, the fire to the wick,the blush of tallow to the living hand.

Memento

Beneath your eyelid trembling with sleep,below the fire there, the burning leaveswhere they blindly gesture, move your lip,

flare up beside the father, say, alivenow in the oak grove of your childhood;what you don't see is everything a life

of exhaustion drains away like old blood,how dreaming is the color that takes outthe memory you cannot use, the burden

of hours unredeemed by dread or want.Who wouldn't stare at the brighter phase,hardly breathing, gilded by the cold light?

Not just the force of what these branches raise.Not the mere shine of leaves you see insidethe blighted clearing of a father's face.

It's the appetite of flames you need,how it simplifies the kindling as it breaks,as it crackles like the nearing feet

of an animal drawn out of the dark.To see your father now, you must give awaya piece of something, of you, of him, these oaks

perhaps, the dying embers of the day.It could be grief, this thing that brings you closerto your beginnings. Even as you wake,

it sheds something of its blaze, its power,something of the man who once stirred the graveof light with a stick. 'Til it too caught fire.

Death Mask

And when a panic in them stilled the handthat reached to shroud the head of the composer,the living few who remained summoned

the maker of the casts to lay a plasterover the deep sleep and bell shape of his face,his small face made smooth again, his pallor

drained of character, of thunder and stress.The immortal beloved—that too died,the secret of his dedication we take less

to heart than to a grave, where his odesang something universal, laid its bloom,and...