Poems, 1957–1967

THE STRING

THE STRING Except when he enters my son, The same age as he at his death, I cannot bring my brother to myself. I do not have his memory in my life, Yet he is in my mind and on my hands. I weave the trivial string upon a light Dead before I was born. Mark how the brother must live, Who comes through the words of my mother. I have been told he lay In his death-bed singing with fever, Performing with string on his fingers Incredible feats of construction There before he was born. His Jacob's Coffin now Floats deeply between my fingers. The strings with my thin bones shake. My eyes go from me, and down Through my bound, spread hands To the dead, from the kin of the dead, Dead before I was born. The gaze of genius comes back. The rose-window of Chartres is in it, And Diogenes' lines upon sand, And the sun through the Brooklyn Bridge, And, caught in a web, the regard Of a skeletal,blood-sharing child Dead before I was born. I believe in my father and mother Finding no hope in these lines. Out of grief, I was myself Conceived, and brought to life To replace the incredible child Who built on this string in a fever Dead before I was born. Into the Stone 2 1 A man, I make the same forms For my son, that my brother made, Who learnt them going to Heaven: The coffin of light, the bridge, The cup and saucer of pure air, Cradle of Cat, the Foot of a Crow Dead before I was born. I raise up the bridge and the tower. I burn the knit coffin in sunlight For the child who has woven this city: Who loved, doing this, to die: Who thought like a spider, and sang, And completed the maze of my fingers, Dead before I was born. 22 ...