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The String
- Wesleyan University Press
- Chapter
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An eternal grin, while I In the bright and stunned grass lay And turned to air without age. My first love fingered a page And sang with Campion. The heart in my breast turned green; I entered the words afresh, At one with her singing flesh. But all the time I felt The secret triumph melt Down through the rooted thorn, And the smile I filtered through stone Motionless lie, not murmuring But listening only, and hearing My image ofjoy flow down. I turned from the girl I had found In a song once sung by my mother, And loved my one true brother, The tall cadaver, who Either grew or did not grow, But smiled, with the smile ofsinging, Or a smile ofincredible longing To rise through a circle ofstone, Gazing up at a sky, alone Visible, at the top ofa well, And seeking for years to /deliver His mouth from the endless river Ofmy oil-on-the-water smile, And claim his own grave face That mine might live in its place. I lay at the edge ofa well; And then I smiled, and fell. 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, The String / 5I 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 ofmy mother. I have been told he lay In his death-bed singing with fever, Performing with string on his fingers Incredible feats ofconstruction 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 ofthe dead, Dead before I was born. The gaze ofgenius comes back. The rose-window ofChartres is in it, And Euclid's lines upon sand, And the sun through the Brooklyn Bridge, And, caught in a web, the regard Ofa skeletal, blood-sharing child Dead before I was born. I believe in my father and mother Finding no hope in these lines. Out ofgrief, 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. A man, I make the same forms For my son, that my brother made, Who learnt them going to Heaven: The coffin oflight, the bridge, The cup and saucer ofpure air, Cradle ofCat, the Foot ofa Crow Dead before I was born. Into the Stone / 52 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 ofmy fingers, Dead before I was born. The vegetableI(ing Just after the sun Has closed, I swing the fresh paint ofthe door And have opened the new, green dark. From my house and my silent folk I step, and lay me in ritual down. One night each April I unroll the musty sleeping-bag And beat from it a cloud ofsleeping moths. I leave the house, which leaves Its window-light on the ground In gold frames picturing grass, And lie in the unconsecrated grove Ofsmall, suburban pines, And never move, as the ground not ever shall move, Remembering, remembering to feel The still earth tum my house around the sun Where all is dark, unhoped-for, and undone. I cannot sleep until the lights are out, And the lights ofthe house ofgrass, also, Snap off, from underground. Beneath the gods and animals ofHeaven, Mismade inspiringly, like them, I fall to a colored sleep Enveloping the house, or coming out Ofthe dark side ofthe sun, And begin to believe a dream I never once have had, The Vegetable King / 53 ...