| Bulk Prophecies |
Bulk Prophecies
1
Though your thighs are parted, the raising twist
of your lips consent. They receive an equal greeting.
I have remembered and remembered. Teach me
forgetting where the long limbs end.
Where we lay the lashing tongues
lick the wet root,
and a strong urge to forget
compliments the pleasure we desire...
2
When I find the living words there will be
nothing left of a life you could recognize,
not by the measures of your youth and your
second youth. But your third will be hungry.
To the stars, all our errors are described
with the same marvelous characters,
unaware of our days away from station.
We may not pass through the eye of the needle.
But if we can gain mastery and still live, let us
set this course. Our bounty shall be all
that we have imagined.
We set out with our souls newly opened, not only
for the stories and pictures of another country, but
with the hunger gained from so much forsaking.
We shall need the light of the moon
in our brains, for this. And leaves of
beaten gold in our heart.
3
What did the young give us in our youth? It is hard
to recall their gifts. What they gave, they kept and
spent again. Shirts, mother of pearl, confidences;
our bodies, the common market that we traded.
In our youth we leave on boats for open seas;
older, we raise our heads,
pass under bridges
that lead to other lives.
4
If they may never see their greatest hope
let it be true what you say, a poet will show
you something fresh and new. Paid in
earth and every human antiquity
with freshly moistened mouths.
You remember
in my first youth only you had something to
give. That is your strength as a woman.
Yet if a poet ever finds his voice
it is because nothing is left of his life
but gifts.
Who will measure the tension
weighted in the tool?
the few straight lines
made from the little teeth of the bit?
an eddy and a mesmera of discontents,
a moistened pressing from lips.
5
When I find the living words there will be
nothing left of a life you could recognize,
not by the measures of your youth and your
second youth. But your third will be hungry.
To the stars, all our errors are described
with the same marvelous characters,
unaware of our days away from station.
We may not pass through the eye of the needle.
But if we can gain mastery and still live, let us
set this course. Our bounty shall be all
that we have imagined.
We set out with our souls newly opened, not only
for the stories and pictures of another country, but
with the hunger gained from so much forsaking.
We shall need the light of the moon
in our brains, for this. And leaves of
beaten gold in our heart.
6
You say that it lies with me to share with you the inner
mystery of knowledge. After the trial of your own experience
why do you now tell me this?
How should you interpret it
if I tell you secrecy is the most essential
quality of this mystery? Close counsel, introspection,
the word not said.
I've addressed these issues, wondering at the same time,
how to interpret their significance in both our lives.
7
If now no music down wires make a builder's face
that has no house to keep a count of sandbox loss,
not short-haired eyes to see our store-bought hate, all
for the sake of one word behind firewalls, not studded,
not set in stones, no twist or gleam in idea kingdoms,
an essential ore untouched, full powered; yet
by the same cunning they reach to unseen things
I have their craft to ring through us
ringing out in them.
8
You ask me to recognize that there has always been
a goal to your investigations. I acknowledge this.
I believe I have shared with you the same quest
and the same ambition.
In the last sentence of your letter
you despair of a solution to your inquiry.
You regret the loss of faith for the great parent god
of your youth-did you think it was something so small
that it could be lost behind furniture?
It may be that you have fallen among thieves
and someone wise for you has kept it safe for you.
Maybe it was always too large for this little voice
you could just now this moment bear up on hands.
I can tell you he will claim you for his pleasure
where you have hidden your wetness.
Fall into the byways and motions of faith till you
tumble upon it again where he has kept it for you.
Even if for three lives you play on terra cotta instruments
by the fourth you will be the priestess of his cult.
If you have been certain once and had to give up
your certainty, inwardly, let this be your sign.
We all shall be pieced together as broken chants.
9
Already, what you have admitted is much. I share
your confession. It is not salvation you ask for, it is
sanctuary and isolation. Something in itself hard to admit.
Yet the goal you have set for yourself is attainable.
These are heavy burdens
knowing at the same time
no greater work has been within our reach.
Through a labor of dreams,
I seek a more lasting accomplishment.
10
Insofar as you can, do not replace your youth
with middle-age. Surely, that's another youth.
Hold yourself ready for the moment beyond whic
your thoughts and your desires must be confined to
secret communications. In the hour of betrayal
you will recognize it and it will be everything to you.
In the years that ripen the sparrow and the hawk
let them be the elephant's memory of your heart.
11
For the poet there is always the same difficulty:
to which woman shall we carry the news,
summing in a sentence the millennium that has
just passed? does she have god's secret,
that there was just one thing worth having?
For a thousand years we have sought magic, the
jewels of her head, the sudden smile of knowing
no eyes upon all losses.
12
If you were hungry in those days, you will hear shouts.
This was the roof of the mouth before another day,
and when this shout is lost we must all build camps
to hoard a more hungry hour.
Call down to the clenched teeth
that await your fall how
without hope you must raise a yell,
lift all blocks to shouting, already stone
with your own pity, shame, or terror,
how with a pauper's purse of cotton lint,
a hair's shave of old memory,
you stumble, lift, or carry
to the world's edge
your own red sun rising.
13
If we must have satisfactions in other worlds,
and if not only a memory of spouses,
let it be just one day of mastery,
desire's wish, lover's touch, child's trust.
And though already we gain and fall
from spells woven in other worlds,
we will sleep and eat in winters
more cunningly held in store.
14
If our lives are reversed let it also
be an exchange of vitalities.
If by some cunning he has thrown my clay
self made by one degree of separation
himself once for all time find and place,
this same his own still ours by such need
for want in us to know the nail he keeps
so by a stranger's reach and word our script
our form by threads just once his eyes and face.
15
Until then I consent where earths consent, nothing
lost along the path where we listen, trust, and talk;
repeat the charm prepared against this hour,
leave the ground undisturbed where I walk.
In the triple world we meet and converge
to know whether we know or do not know,
whether we are willing or do not will, once
touched and once gathered always flood,
naked, except for desire,
and a little purse
of perfect measures.
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