Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003

Working

Working in memory of Robert Lowell 1917–1977 Under the high rooms, under the trains, the talk, you kept digging down from life to life to come across earth’s fragments: the child; the century’s children; the ones we do not know yet, because they were flesh— their secret, lifted homevoices , faces caught in lightning. Found there earth’s bone-shadowed eyes; her still life your awkward printing: starvation: light moving down and up through light . . . A ladder of stuff: a soft, gray, broken oar, a feather, a shoe, a child’s pencil case; light drawing us to light, day speaking to day . . . Now, at dusk the man digging saw himself approaching: 136 door in the mountain his half-smile looked past us: past himself: the man chipping, at dusk, under the trains, digging up the dark, prosperous bluestone. Silences: A Dream of Governments From your eyes I thought we could almost move almost speak But the way your face held there, in the yellow air, And that hand, writing down our names— And the way the sun shone right through us Done with us Then the plain astonishment—the air broken open: just ourselves sitting, talking; like always; the kitchen window propped open by the same blue-gray dictionary. August. Rain. A Tuesday. Then, absence. The open room suspended The long street gone off quiet, dark. The ocean floor. Slow shapes glide by Then, day keeps beginning again: the same the messenger 137 ...