Poems, 1957–1967

APPROACHING PRAYER

APPROACHING PRAYER A moment tries to come in Through the windows, when one must go Beyond what there is in the room, But it must come straight down. Lord, it is time, And I must get up and start To circle through my father's empty house Looking for things to put on Or to strip myself of So that I can fall to my knees And produce a word I can't say Until all my reason is slain. Here is the gray sweater My father wore in the cold, The snapped threads growing all over it Like his gray body hair. The spurs of his gamecocks glimmer Also, in my light, dry hand. And here is the head of a boar I once helped to kill with two arrows : Two things of my father's Wild, Bible-reading life And my own best and stillest moment In a hog's head waiting for glory. All these I set up in the attic, The boar's head, gaffs, and the sweater On a chair, and gaze in the dark Up into the boar's painted gullet. Nothing. Perhaps I should feel more foolish, Even, than this. I put on the ravelled nerves Helmets 163 And gray hairs of my tall father In the dry grave growing likefleece, Strap his bird spurs to my heels And kneel down under the skylight. I put on the hollow hog's head Gazing straight up With star points in the glass eyes That would blind anything that looked in And cause it to utter words. The night sky fills with a light Of hunting: with leaves And sweat and the panting of dogs Where one tries hard to draw breath, A single breath, and hold it. I draw the breath of life For the dead hog: I catch it from the still air, Hold it in the boar's rigid mouth, And see A young aging man with a bow And a green arrow pulled to his cheek Standing deep in a mountain creek bed, Stiller than trees or stones, Waiting and staring Beasts, angels I am nearly that motionless now There is a frantic leaping at my sides Of dogs coming out of the water The moon and the stars do not move 7 bare my teeth, and my mouth Opens, a foot long, popping with tushes 164 A word goes through my closed lips / gore a dog, he falls, falls back Still snapping, turns away and dies While swimming. I feel each hair on my hack Stand up through the eye of a needle Where the hair was On my head stands up As if it were there The man is still; he is stiller: still Yes. Something comes out of him Like a shaft of sunlight or starlight. I go forward toward him (Beasts, angels) With light standing through me, Covered with dogs, but the water Tilts to the sound of the bowstring The planets attune all their orbits The sound from his fingers, Like a plucked word, quickly pierces Me again, the trees try to dance Clumsily out of the wood I have said something else And underneath, underwater, In the creek bed are dancing The sleepy pebbles Helmets 165 The universe is creaking like boards Thumping with heartbeats And bonebeats And every image of death In my head turns red with blood. The man of blood does not move My father is pale on my body The dogs of blood Hang to my ears, The shadowy bones of the limbs The sun lays on the water Mass darkly together Moonlight, moonlight The sun mounts my hackles And I fall; I roll In the water; My tongue spills blood Bound for the ocean; It moves away, and I see The trees strain and part, see him Look upward Inside the hair helmet I look upward out of the total Stillness of killing with arrows. I have seen the hog see me kill him And I was as still as I hoped. I am that still now, and now. My father's sweater Swarms over me in the dark. I see nothing, but for a second Something goes through me Like an accident, a negligent glance, 166 Like the explosion of a star Six billion light years off Whose light gives out Just as it goes...