Country Music: Selected Early Poems

Skins

Skins 1. Whatever furrow you dig in the red earth, Whatever the tree you hang your lights on, There comes that moment When what you are is what you will be Until the end, no matter What prayer you answer to—a life Of margins, white of the apple, white of the eye, No matter how long you hold your hands out. You glance back and you glance back. Ahead, in the distance, a cry Skreeks like chalk on a blackboard. Through riprap or backfill, sandstone or tidedrift, You go where the landshed takes you, One word at a time, still Counting your money, wearing impermanent clothes. 82 2. In the brushstroke that holds the angel's wing Back from perfection; in The synapse of word to word; in the one note That would strike the infinite ear And save you; and in That last leap, the sure and redeeming edge . . . In all beauty there lies Something inhuman, something you can't know In the pith and marrow of every root Of every bloom; in the blood-seam Of every rock; in the black lung of every cloud The seed, the infinitesimal seed That dooms you, that makes you nothing, Feeds on its self-containment and grows big. 83 3. And here is the ledge, A white ledge on a blue scarp, blue sky Inseparable in the definition; a lens Is tracking inexorably toward you. Your shadow trails like a train For miles down the glacierside, your face into view Obliquely, then not at all, Eyes thumbed, lips like pieces of cut glass: This is the fair print: Take it, eat it, it is your body and blood, Your pose and your sacrifice; it is Your greed and your sustenance . . . The lens rctracks, the shot unmistakable. Take it, and be glad. 84 4. First came geometry, and its dish of sparks, Then the indifferent blue. Then God, Original Dread, Old Voodoo Wool, Lock-step and shadow-sprung, Immense in the oily wind . . . Later, the gatherings: ice, dust and its fiery hair, The seeds in their endless scattering . . . This linkage is nondescript But continuing, the stars drifting into the cold Like the corpses of Borneo Set forth on their own rafts, washing into oblivion; Like the reliquarytears Of prophets, falling and falling away, Back to geometry, back to its dish of ash. 85 5. Nevertheless, the wheel arcs; nevertheless, The mud slides and the arms yearn; Nevertheless, you turn your face Toward the black stone, the hard breath on the lip of God, And fine! cloud, the clot you can't swallow, The wishbone you can't spit out. And move on, to the great fall of water; And the light that moves there, and the click: In the shallows, the insects, Quick kernels of darkness, pale and explain themselves; newts Shuttle their lanterns through the glassy leaves; The crayfish open their doors; The drenched wings of sunclusters rise Like thousands of tiny cathedrals into their new language . . . 86 6. Under the rock, in the sand and the gravel run; In muck bank and weed, at the heart of the river's edge: Instar, and again, instar, The wing cases visible. Then Emergence: leaf drift and detritus; skin split, The image forced from the self. And rests, wings drying, eyes compressed, Legs compressed, constricted Beneath the dun and the watcrshine— Incipient spinner, set for the take-off . . . And does, in clean tear: imago rising out of herself For the last time, slate-winged and many-eyed. And joins, and drops to her destiny, Flesh to the surface, wings flush on the slate film. 87 7. Sucked in and sucked our, tidewash Hustles its razzmatazz across the cut lips Of coral, the thousands of tiny punctures Spewing and disappearing . . . Where is that grain of sand that Blake saw, The starfish that lights the way? Pools and anemones open and close . . . And now, on the sea's black floor, A hand is turning your card, One card, one turn: two dogs bark at the moon; The crab resets her glass clock. The weight of the sea Is killing: you pack it forever. Shift it, sluff it; You pack it, blue mother, forever. 88 8. Something has grazed your cheek, your foot and your fingertips: The tedious scarf of sleep, adrift Through the afternoon. At one end, a lizard Darts...