Poems, 1957–1967

FALLING

FALLING A 29-year-old stewardess f e l l . . . to her death tonight when she was swept through an emergency door that suddenly sprang open . . . The body . . . was found . . . three hours after the accident. —New York Times The states when they black out and lie there rolling when they turn To something transcontinental move by drawing moonlight out of the great One-sided stone hung off the starboard wingtip some sleeper next to An engine is groaning for coffee and there is faintly coming in Somewhere the vast beast-whistle of space. In the galley with its racks Of trays she rummagesfor a blanket and moves in her slim tailored Uniform to pin it over the cry at the top of the door. As though she blew The door down with a silent blast from her lungs frozen she is black Out finding herself with the plane nowhere and her body taking by the throat The undying cry of the void falling living beginning to be something That no one has ever been and lived through screaming without enough air Still neat lipsticked stockinged girdled by regulation her hat Still on her arms and legs in no world and yet spaced also strangely With utter placid Tightness on thin air taking her time she holds it In many places and now, still thousands of feet from her death she seems To slow she develops interest she turns in her maneuverable body To watch it. She is hung high up in the overwhelming middle of things in her Self in low body-whistling wrapped intensely in all her dark dance-weight Coming down from a marvellous leap with the delaying, dumfounding ease Of a dream of being drawn like endless moonlight to the harvest soil Of a central state of one's country with a great gradual warmth Falling 2 9 3 coming Over her floating finding more and more breath in what she has been using For breath as the levels become more human seeing clouds placed honestly Below her left and right riding slowly toward them she clasps it all To her and can hang her hands and feet in it in peculiar ways and Her eyes opened wide by wind, can open her mouth as wide wider and suck All the heat from the cornfields can go down on her back with a feeling Of stupendous pillows stacked under her and can turn turn as to someone In bed smile, understood in darkness can go away slant slide Off tumbling into the emblem of a bird with its wings half-spread Or whirl madly on herself in endless gymnastics in the growing warmth Of wheatfields rising toward the harvest moon. There is time to live In superhuman health seeing mortal unreachable lights far down seeing An ultimate highway with one late priceless car probing it arriving In a square town and off her starboard arm the glitter of water catches The moon by its one shaken side scaled, roaming silver My God it is good And evil lying in one after another of all the positions for love Making dancing sleeping and now cloud wisps at her no Raincoat no matter all small towns brokenly brighter from inside Cloud she walks over them like rain bursts out to behold a Greyhound Bus shooting light through its sides it is the signal to go straight Down like a glorious diver then feet first her skirt stripped beautifully Up her face in fear-scented cloths her legs deliriously bare then Arms out she slow-rolls over steadies out waits for something great To take control of her trembles near feathers planes head-down The quick movements of bird-necks turning her head gold eyes the insighteyesight of owls blazing into the hencoops a taste for chicken overwhelming 294 Her the long-range vision of hawks enlarging all human lights of cars Freight trains looped bridges enlarging the moon racing slowly Through all the curves of a river all the darks of the midwest blazing From above. A rabbit in a bush turns white the smothering chickens Huddle for over them there is still time for something to live With the streaming half-idea of a long stoop a hurtling a fall That is controlled that plummets as it wills turns gravity Into a new condition, showing its other side like a moon shining New Powers there is...