Proclamation of the Great King

I have been long away
from this good city, Babylon,
which is called the center of
the earth, Shinar, where all
peoples gather and exchange
their goods for silver, and their
silver for many goods.

Great has been my solitude,
but greater still my soul, for
gods alone endure much lonesomeness.

And is Nebuchadnezzar not like 
the gods?

                 You may have heard
abroad that some strange god had
sent me out, but pay no mind to
scandal-spreaders. My exile was
my own: I drove my soul - I! -
into the fields to live a life
like oxen live, like many legs
that scuttle in the deep, and
it was not with me as with 
the sons of men. The strongest

man would not dare, as I dared,

to leave aside the blooming world,

the city of all good things, and

seek alone the ragged edge of

lonesomeness.

                            Therefore,
Belteshazzar, in whom many strong
spirits wrestle and contest, proclaim
in the city celebration, for I,
Nebuchadnezzar, am among men again,
and the sons of men may see my splendor.

Heavy June

In a dry and arid land where many 

hands dig ditches and carry 

water over long miles, across 

treacherous places, through manifold

dangers, through 

manifold wonders,

through land inhabited by

strangers who speak in strong

and foreign tongues, hands

bringing water to nurture gardens,

to embellish plots with greenery,

to change the face of earth. And

where, I wonder - I wonder, O

Los Angeles, when your cisterns break

and your water spills, where then

can you turn your painted face?

            We were gathered around

            a fire, gathered and gathering -

more men and more women, fires

encircling fires, until the light 

became perpetual, and the gathered

            fire we have called a city.

In the land of Shinar, in 

the land of Salem, at the

mouth of thin rivers, at

the mouth of the wide

            sea, gathered in the month

            of sowing, at the month of

            harvest, gathered together

            and content to be called

            a city.

In the city of indifference,

the city of acedia,

city of sacrificial love,

the city sprawling under sun,

            we have been gathered here.

Paean

I am falling, stillness notwithstanding,
falling, falling – forever falling down
these stairs, I bruise my shoulders,
bruise my hips, I bear perdition in
my body: endless depths within
the belly
shining in all its parts,
behold!
the heart abyssal, curvum
in se all trembling at the cognizance
and full of scorpions, dear wife:

root-cap finger, influenza influence,
desdichado
désolée, backward bleeding
dissolution, O this blasted hinterland,
this severed creek where deathbirds
fly;
O womb of Carthage, salt-sown
and ravaged,
                     working will insensible, oh
make straight the way!

Christus sub terra
Pantokrator

alone who grades true
make me eager and willing – 
only comfort, only comfort.

Until Shiloh

Oh child, sleep easy, sleep

in the turning to winter, on the

hinge of the rounded year:

Until Shiloh comes,

with his bones made of

sunshine, and coffee grounds

his blood, and his feet

will turn the hills to butter

and he’ll fill the skies with wine.

Yes, when Shiloh comes,

with his mouth of bronze

and his sugared clothes, to melt

the waxen hills—his fleshly tongue

the lightning burst,

his eyes are living coals.

Shiloh comes on back a mount

of gingerbread, peppermint sword

in radiant hand. The

scepter has not passed

from Judah, and now the

tribute enters in, like a lion

if not like a murdered lamb.

Kiss him, this lovely son, lest he be angry—

you will find him wrapped in swaddling-clouts.

Hexenhammer

In the cracked and bleeding winter,

like leaves beneath the lying snow,

I read portents in my father’s

Irish hands.

                        In search of the cord

that binds the severed self, holds

hand to wrist and word to tongue,

keeps up the kissing of bone to bone

and flesh to heart. Keep breath in me,

when blood itself sings out for

dissolution.

I grow tired of your incense mutters

and the way you talk so knowingly

of the alchemy of the soul, preening

psychopomp tracing human destiny

in the palm’s careless lines.

But I heard delusion in the hammered

keys, and behold, my eyes are opened.

On the sidewalk in the bay of bricks,

I saw forms and images where the sky

as sullen silver sits on top of spires

that I have seen and sounded. Quick,

now, the water-song, when it sweeps up

into the wind to writhe and spin. As of old:

            cold-crying summer-slayer,

            Sleet-Spitter, crack crystal—

            come work us to worship.

Not by star-signs and houses of influence,

but by the word’s own time and rhythm,

as dust teaches dust what is meant by

wisdom.

            In the cracked and bleeding winter,

like leaves beneath the lying snow, I

read portents in my father’s Irish hands.

The Shaving of a Beard

The shaving of a beard is our

modern-day memento mori. All growing

things will come to die. Razor-reaper,

apocalypse in Barbasol. Hier ende

ich die Welt. Await the resurrection.

The shaving of a beard is our

self-mortifying penance. Great heroes

wear their beards, we throw ours away.

I am not the kind of man whose

name and face swim unbidden through

the brain. I do not occur to you.

The shaving of a beard is our

confession of dependence, the shame-

faced sigh: I am in need of love.

The beard is a badge of manly

pride, but anathema to woman.

Gone are the bristles from my chin,

the shaggy man no more. For Isaac

loved red Esau; Rebecca, Jacob:

smooth and soft, trickster-hero.

You feel the razor

as it passes,

but you know

not whence, nor

where it goes.

Christ, Consoler

                                           At the shore, a sea-wind ate

                                           my blood, so warm and so red,

                                           reminding me sweetly of you.

                                           Christ the Lord died in a

                                           glory of voices, was raised

                                           to crown the dead. LORD God

                                           of these islands, be my comfort now.

                                           There I saw seaweed black

                                           like hair on driftwood horns—

                                           behold, the beast that cometh

                                           from the sea, the dragon

                                           that is in the deep.

                                          We speak in doubled voice. We

                                           speak in many voices: we speak in

                                           chords. So give us peace, give us

                                           consolation from beyond the doors,

                                           of time and the earthen possible.

                                           O Savior of the sick-ward,

                                           Christ Almighty, crucified

                                           for cancer:

                                                            Christus Consolator,
                                                 In Hoc Signo Vinces.

A Little Christmas

Gather us into one city, roar

and set us flying, from Cairo,

Erbil, London, Prague. A city

of many peoples and one God:

                   and a little child leading.

                                 Lord of the snows and the quiet country 

                                 under frost, we see you rise to tread the

                                 heights of earth. Lord of the snows and

                                              the churning cities, we listen for your 

                                              voice. Infant lion, give forth voice

                                              to bid us come, gathered in one city.

                                 Lord of the snows and the summer heat,

                                 Lord of all great cities, roar and bring us

                                 trembling to the holy hill, where your glory is.

                                              

Rosh ha-Carmel

Tending to the vine in the vineyard—

in God’s own vineyard, the vine—

with slow care, husbandry, skill,

in readiness for the day you fear:

the fire, the bullet, the knife and the bomb;

exhaustion of the body, the hollow in

the belly; fear of insanity, of aneurysm,

dementia, the brain; fear of forgetting

your purposes, and the uses of love.

O Lord, you know well that I

want only to do some work

that will be useful to you, some

pleasing occupation, not shrinking

from labor and want, but eager

to take up plowshare, sickle, shovel, rake:
O Lord, let there be such a thing for me.

Sweeney Defiant

Amid the tables and the chatter of guests

falls a comfortable hush, and deep-despised

Sweeney stands with a glass of stout,

and the oracles

and judgments of his god—lifting glass,

composes self (a crooked smile,

sneering voice), coughs once, begins attack:

                        Boston Brahmin,

                        dressed in black,

                        the nat’ral aristocracy,

                        inherits merit

                        from ancestral bone

                        and transplanted virtue

                        in the earth.

                        Past midnight,

                        with his mistress,

                        professes love:

                        Sounding notes upon your fingers,

                        it is impossible

                        that this body should die, I

                        love you like fire from my atom heart.

                        Impossible to die, yet Beatrice was not

                        beloved for body (Oho! says Sweeney,

                        shining, think’st me unschooled? No, but

                        I have seen your secrets, tender secrets,

                        and I have weighed them slight), and how

                        then shall I love you so while you yet live?

                        How shall a love like ours not flee the

                        fearful summons, the rising light?

                        Adieu, adieu, adieu, je t’aime.

                        So, saith Sweeny, our Brahmin goes

                        out in shadow, fearing like a guilty thing

                        to be taken by the dawn rising on

                        th’Everlasting Day.

                                                          To courtly love!,

Sweeney says, drains his foaming glass.

He sits, in time the moment’s past.

The joke finds no approval in his companions’ eyes,
but Sweeney sits smiling, by many there deeply despised.

Echter Herbst

Northbound through Jersey where the rumble strips

glitter in the evening gloom, I heard Nina

sing apocalyptic. The petrol smell of artifice,

centrifuge Manhattan pulls creation like electron

spin. The inspiration of the semi-truck spirit (keinen

Friede, sondern ein Schwert)—

Bring down power, Lord,

power

Power, Lord,

bring down—

Your high-built walls were too few to keep out

the fox-eyed Christ. Had you not heard?

The kingdom is like a mustard seed.

I watched the long, slow spiral of

martyred leaves glide down over fences

and furrow lines. Like a chastened thing,

I took my rest in shade, matching
minor keys to harvest months.

Meditation after Christian Wiman

Ecstasy—technically—has nothing

to do with the widesmiling,

handclapping feeling of youth.

Ecstasy, technically, is

(to put it gently)

what ancient Sarah felt

delivering a son,

joy tearing at the seams

of you, blessing that

unravels you,

presses,

stretching the flesh of you,

issuing in laughter

if only because the terror
has not come instead.

Nachtmusik for Robert Lowell

Writing only in preacher-words,

we who are the opposite

of beauty level guns at the

fractured, scattered sky.

The hunt is desperation—

I feel the throaty bile

in my soul. All or nothing

now, broke-leg, broke-jawed,

soon to die for want of

whatever makes for the

champagne life, where whiskey

bright as wine turns

the eyes all liquor-lucent,

full of God. The poet

of my own country spoke of

casting worm and hook

for Christ; let that stand,

and yet I will go hunting heaven,
and the Word will strike me dead.

Alles Erdreich Ist Österreich Untertan

They called him Charles the Hexed (hechizado,

verhexte), Carlos the Ill-jawed, the sickle-

souled, the king born from tired soil.

He looked for all the world like a wax man
melting on a throne, a changeling of poor

fortune, the royal imbecile in Spain.

            Charles the Penumbra, the tremble 

            of that long shadow cast by

            the grasping hand, a sick and

            waning moon in a solar house.

           

            AEIOU come down to this, down

            to the drooping point of his

            witchcraft chin. Worse, Percy,

            than what your pious mind

            conceived—say this for him,

            our curse-marked Charlie, that

            he was Ozymandias in ruined flesh,

            the ragged edge where we learn

            that we have sinned.

Austria is so very small compared

with the hallowed earth, and

Charles ended in the way
that small things do.

Valley Green (Fragments)

Walking out in the storm’s tattoo

I saw in the night

Fitzgibbon, smoking by the

laundromat. The cloud he said

was sick and sweet as

burning sugar on

the altar in the house.

                        Let the city be a harpsichord

                       

                        Toccata and fugue

                        in Philadelphia, where

                        I went on like a left-eyed

                        stranger with a sidelong

                        ticking in the brain—whir

                        and wobble, catch and shudder.

Across the street in the late-emptied church,

look, Schwarzwalder at the pulpit,

speaking of the desert, of Horeb

where they studied God in fire

(A God as yet unbodied

A world not yet domestic)

“Comfort were no comfort

now, so I am come with fire

for the wound.”

Once more to home,

and see, here’s St-Etienne

in seat, book in mouth
(“It tastes so bitter—

very bitter, unless perhaps

it’s sweet”) and the

jackhammer heel playing paradiddle

on the floor.

Here is Tolstoy in his dotage,

pilgrim from the long-toothed

city, the sun-beat city, the

city in the air.

                        With these riot eyes

                       

to dazzle and deceive,

in you, by you, I

will get fire—I

will beget fire till

the soil of my soul runs thin.

The Frontier Sermon

The circuit-riding preacher

Came to town on back of

A black horse (“I call him

Evangelion, having shod him

With the Gospel”) and, stepping

Down, he called out for water.

He drank and washed and

Shook his golden head. “I

Come to you, Word of God in

Hand and six-gun on my

Belt, ready to declare to you

All the counsel of God

On high, and the mystery

Of his Son. Gather, children,

Sons and daughters, of God

And of the Devil, and hear that

Heavenly Word. Look around,

Look around, at this broad

And fearsome West, fashioned

By God against all wisdom

Not crucified with Christ.”

And again he paused, and again

He called, for whiskey and

Some bread, and blessed them

In Dakota’s dawn. When

He had drunk and ate, he

Opened up his book, he
Cleared his throat, and preached.

A Prayerbook

Listen for the divided word

in the city where

the policeman said

it was his gun against

the thunder, and two

guns against the storm.

An article of faith:

all who build

cities would build

Jerusalem.

            When you sing, you

            sing the summer,

            and you are always

            singing—

                             as for me,

            ursus rusticanus, I

            have December in

            my teeth,

            will show you why

            I stare this way,

            why the thick-tongued

            mutters, why—

All my bones repent,

and the Kyrie of

all my bones goes

reeling on the wind

When we breathe, we breathe confession.

I recall reading somewhere that

breath is a slow fire

in the body, much like

the name of God.

There is a fine epitaph,

and fine enough for me.

The Hunting Night

The word of your mouth
is a tearing knife;
the word of the Lord
is a severing knife:

O Lord, carve me up.
Walking barefoot

on the broken bodies of apostles

Lord,
tear me to pieces.

It is not without reason
that the prophet
saw in Assyria, and in the land
of Egypt, his God fanged and roaring, lionlike.

Fatuus Profanus

You are dusty vinyl to my soul

I see your image
in a factory Matisse
that hangs over me

like a promised judgment,
a voice emphatic
to remind

the shaggy-bear
                          the
                                lumber-lurcher

          the trip-and-stagger
making clumsy groans
upon the earth

                              You leave me only
                              the broken voice of
                              self-reproach, having
                              learned to speak
                              obscurely but not well.

The Whiskey Priest

I thought of saying,

Look, I will take you through my self,

show you where the laceration is,

where I have been bruised. Come,

come and marvel, be taken

with my pain.

But I have changed, and

the change perhaps is wisdom.

All hearts are wounded, only

not everyone complains.

Instead of asking you to

be smitten by the scars,

I would rather go with you

to look at sunlight on the swell,

or birds flying in the city,

seeming each to be turned

and pointed by

the patient touch of God.