There he was, Claude Rains, with Margot,
I thought I’d seen that scene before And come to the end of the movie, You know the one, where she’s heartsore, And he is suave and lies gives up lies, Then lies again. It is summer time And here is Hunter Mountain and Its stones, and the same hot climb. Imagine driving all the way To Tennessee, and when you get there, You find yourself back in Chicago. Your shoes Have been placed, toe-in, in the Frigidaire. That’s all right, it wasn’t for nothing, We met the Three Furies, we got to know them, And out there where the field is darkest Are two trumpets. We’re supposed to blow them, It’s the only way to cord your muscles In your old age, that and bending Over a crinkled page of Talmud (Or of Borges?), and comprehending That the Kumrat Valley is not the pass Before the ultimate mountain, there’s no Ultimate mountain. And when we’re tired, We tumble back to the cold and the snow And trees that died before they bore fruit, Burnt black, and a stone hut With the same dirty floor, a hearth but no heat, No way to get the old door shut, Because we didn’t come for the shale Or the sky or the mountain, we came to go, A topography that is not still, A covered bridge and blazing snow.
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I remember every road, also
Every stone, everything I could and couldn’t understand, And see, or think I see, the beginning-- Or the ending?—topographic- Ally speaking. And the bones Themselves become the flesh, the stal- Actites become the sky, groans Themselves become more than a song. Every road is a pilgrim’s road When you are traveling on the pilgrim’s Road, whose adjoining fields are fallowed, That faces a height that we do or do not See. And the more we walk, sometimes Catch a lift, we value the Syrian Thistle, the gray lizard that climbs The gray pine, on the way to the streets Of the capital, which stretch From Montezuma to Betelgeuse. The wind is so soft, so steady, the ketch Barely slides but it slides, It is a wind that contains, If you bend your ear, every Murmur, the roar of airplanes, Ants skritching across terrains, Atoms that make no sound, foul Conversations, mirrors of hope And pain, until the stern Owl Nebula, until the crown Of the tree that makes its own space, Everything looped together, Stumbling to its own place, Nothing is missing, not even a rotten Tooth, an imaginary number, a hurt Too deep to feel, a forgotten blue- Berry, a revelation, a concert, A try at a mustache. Look at The toil of man, the Outerborough Bridge, every urge that wipes Away the mind, every thorough Dedication, the viciousness, The foolishness, the petty anger Or the mix of fury and self-pity, Or in the midst of danger, languor, From the Mongolian plain to the shaded street, When the government cracks, when bitter water Spills, what is the cause of this terrible Spin? Every color, the tauter Nerves, the solace, the texts, the times Of insight with disgrace, they lead Our little bodies to proceed Beyond the truths of Ganymede. Yes, in the middle of the foggy night,
Where the road sign that says west points east, Where you began walking in speculation And gradually, the lies and darkness increased, There are lights that cut through all the grease, Men along the road who should be kings, Whose word should be law and resolution, Whose lungs are lit with living, dazzling Clarities. You can see the same Higher up, you can meet these hidden Men who, inside themselves, are giant, (Only confusion says that it is forbidden To see) the might of humility, They too are yearning to be free, And that freedom comes from the marshy dark, The fibrous tangles, the debris Of brambles and scarp. They can see Holy freedom, and how strong She is, walking on the trail That wraps around the bluff, no wrong Invades that space, behind the pines, Behind the ridges, behind the lakes, Where mountains lived, before life Congealed into laws and aches, And when we roll upon the roads Of holy algorithms, then Holy lampposts radiate the light That tumbles from the first amen. |
Yaacov David Shulman
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October 2019
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