The Opposite of Heaven, and: In Fátima, and: Fatigue Fugue

The Opposite of Heaven

Moreover, when the orchestraacross the pond had finishedand the last blast of its trumpetsbounced off the mountain domeand traveled to me across water,I knew that time and distancehad changed the soundthe way the words we useto see each other, cousin,are changed into tombstonesin your cemetery of teeth,every sentence a tunnelyou drive through, back and forth,in a loop, your hair grown thickpast your ears, then clipped,where in this life,this shutter stop-motionexistence we charge into, I amyour archivist, your life not lateralbut horizontal, where the soundof it passing by in yearsis the sound of a hornet strugglingagainst the web, the spider'ssmallest mandibles chewingthrough its head, because even a celldividing into two is a sound,even Cairo pillaged by thievesis a sound, even you storing honey

on the sill of your bay windowsigniting us into gold is a sound,even sound's absence fillingthe spaces between the treeson the opposite shore where youmove through the brush, breakingyour way into a divided clearingis a sound, a place where I wantedthat reverb to last, where between useach year this pond will freezeand thaw, freeze and thaw,change forms, change states,the salmon born down belowby the ice, the sunlight filteringthrough, which might lookto the fish to be strips of heaven,if only captivity were notthe opposite of heaven,if only the fish were not dumbas fuck, if only time were malleable,if only breath could last as longas those loons' in summerthat slip under our boat—each of their bodies a lung—and resurface a mile awayinto a place they did not choose.

In Fátima

In Fátima in 1916, three children saw the sun      turn scarlet and cyan and fuchsia and black,

and fall through the sky and rise back up

      in a circular dance. What was said in the vision(the voice firm and feminine, the Virgin Mary's)

      only confirmed what the children already deemed

to be true—that they were special. And if      they doubted what they saw (which they did not),

they had only to kneel in the Portuguese field,

      which had been wet but now was dry,which had been verdant but now was scorched,

      or to look at the bodies of the three cattle

that lay struck like bales of grain. Lúcia, the oldest,      was just nine, and this woman who once gave birth

to the son of God on her side between two goats

      was asking her to spread a message,and she was afraid to say no. It seemed the miracle

      would be that the townspeople believed the children,

but the truth was they did not, not really,      despite the signs, despite the fact they were sure

that God lived and could speak in direct

      or mysterious ways. When the message changed nothing,after the bombs still blew craters into the earth,

      bludgeoning their way toward its heart,

after the two younger children had died from influenza      and their cast-off bodies were buried sideways,

their ears pressed to the ground, when Lúcia

      had become an old woman, nearly a hundred years old,after a whole history had passed her by,

      she began to doubt the visions, the fever-dream

she shared one afternoon in a moment      of child's ecstasy, the nettle branches

with which they flanked their backs, the boiling water

      with which they scored their skin—Why hadn't the woman ever come back?

      Now Lúcia wonders if these memories

were all merely reflections of herself, changing      like cloud patterns, hands wringing out a damp towel.

That God existed—she never doubted—

      but he watches over us from spacelike a meteor in orbit, or the sad large eye of Jupiter,

      and truth be told, even now she sometimes feels

as important and alone as space...