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

What God Said

He Says to Me, In Ireland He says to me, In Ireland you’ve fallen into your destiny. He says the teaching and giving readings night and day keep him from the void. I say, But you write about the void. I say, All these women, your mother, two wives, a lover, have died miserably, and you have lived to write about it your history of the world. Or leave it out. But I want those women’s lives rage constraints the poems they burned in their chimney-throats The History of the World Without Words more than your silver or your gold art. What God Said After she died her son destroyed her paintings: incinerator flames: “She wouldn’t want anyone to see this stuff.” Then killed himself. Do not fear your death, for when it arrives 266 door in the mountain I will draw my breath and your soul will come to me like a needle to a magnet. St. Mechtilde of Magdeburg * 2. Some of the signs suggest that you feel a leaf or other part of a plant. A string leads from the top of the sign to the plant. —Braille sign on the Miwok Trail, Muir Woods * * * She wrote a book. Lost to us. Her lost book said, “Your search to find words that will devour meaning will devour you.” Her lost book said, “I spent, and I earned, too: But my money was no good there.” * * * If my mother was one and my sister was one and my father the cradle of the real life 267 was not one and my brother was not one what was I? I followed the string in the dark. Alone: * * * Before the expected street into town before the ramp Contentment whose handrails budded long before birth and grew ahead of me like arms —I stopped like a horse. * * * Something bad is happening. No one says anything. One by one they get up and walk away. They promised not to know. Generation to generation, bone to bone. Poetry You, poem the string I followed blind to leaf by thick green leaf to your stem milky poem without words world electric with you 268 door in the mountain ...