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PAVEL B March 25, 1994–April 5, 1995 © Pavel Chichikov

MUSIC MAKERS

Elderly clowns played music of brassBelow the foot of the swinging cross(States of night were won and lostRealms of moons were built and passed)The starbright shrank to a neuter sphereLeaked to vacuum a sable dustCities were clapped together by lustThen fell apart in applauding airAll of the brightest celestial townsLived not longer than all the clownsBut when the eldest had blown a hornThree days had come, three nights had gone

Pavel ChichikovMarch 25, 1994

1


ON THE SHORE

The white curtain bulging with lightPure, brilliant, a wavefront swellingOverflowing, let us not see, the roomNot a place for dread and awe—Outside, from where the curtain blows The horses still snuff the grainy snowHoofing muck and thawed broken strawAnd the black hills tucked up in blankets

Of white spume—All sleeping, dark stone will never know:Light is a wild spiritAnd a sea of light racesOutside the kitchens of our small dwellings

Our proper places


2


THE THIRD HOUR

I heard him say “it is so painful, child,Stay with me a little, speak no word”The whispering went roughly from the treeThe precious limbs black-bleeding and defiled—Black as empty night the hillside fellA stone unlatched from stone away from heavenFree-falling earth abysmal in its massA blacker angel gathering to hell—Again I heard the whisper of his voiceIn feeble torment rising from the cross “Stay with me, it is so painful childAlone to be in misery impaled”Slow in dying, sunlight fell away,Blackness in the middle of the day


3


THE GARMENT

A wandering preacher once was GodAs he was then and now in heavenHe looked and was a living manHis garment of one piece was wovenHe saw the valley of JezreelHe climbed the hills above SharonThe sea of Peter fed him fishThe lake had boats he sailed uponHe had a voice and hands and feetHe walked and laughed a human waySo when in God we see a manWe see the corpus and we prayThat with him we will seamless beA garment of eternity


4


THE GARDEN

The footsteps pass away—the tomb is sealedAt once an inner darkness is revealedA famished blackness swallowing the childThat Mary’s womb had ripened undefiledSee then protector angels, cherubimAnd swords that dazzle light stand over himThose watchmen sent before where Eden stoodTo keep from dying hands eternal food


5


THE PROPHET

In a low dark place I hear him preachA man who wears a crown of steelForerunner’s voice, forerunner’s speechHe lives in deserts of the real.“You are the last, a human foamOn saline oceans of the StateAnd he before that burst the tombWill come again re-animate.”Those who listen are the lastTo live and see with human eyes—The human age is nearly past—They listen with a cold surpriseTo hear that servants of the endShould have deserved a royal friend

Pavel ChichikovApril 3, 1994

6


PROPHECY

The rolling wave of Easter bringsThe wrack of future founderingsSo great a resurrection breaksThe wall of time the present makes.That which happens later castsA wreckage on the shifting pastAnd some who walk along the shoreMay find the relics cast before;The leavings of the wreck of deathLie scattered on the living breath.


7


VISION

Spider’s silk within the eyeAnd a web discreetly shiningAll to catch the fleshly BirthThe Passion and the SavingBut every other blundering beeMosquito, gnat and crowWill either break the fragile cordsOr small between them go

Rose of Sharon, Ruth of wheatDavid of the beeJoseph of the fragrant woodJesus of the treeCaught within the spider netOf all that I can see


8


CARPENTER BEE

Black-bellied bee, heavily freightedZig-zag in flight, pollen weighted Cell in a tree, God createdSmall in sight, divinely sated

God in a word, sent from farCell in a woman, seabright star Straight as swords, light as prayerKnowing heaven, dying here


9


APRIL

A wind of blood pumps up the ichor in the leavesAnd tulip cups of blood dilate and overflowThe hyacinth and daffodil enlargeAnd rains transfuse a southern imagoBut April is the springing of the windAnaemic wind can veer and veer againPale spurts of rain coagulate to snowAnd compass rose compels the weather vaneBleed the north and let the south flow inDrain out the freezing serum of the spentCadavers of the morgue of ice lie downAnd carcasses of chilling dead relentThe corpses of the dying months are whiteGreen and red the colors of delight


10


THE TABERNACLE

Brother Christ, in your chest, Do you spend the day aloneSprinkled by the hours, blessed,Blood and body, flesh and bone?Assigned a sacramental boxAs if a dog were kenneled in You feed on flame and burning wax—Contempt becomes primeval sin.Flattered by a vulgar hordeA rabble splendid in disdainAnd disregarded by the bored You’re safe at least from wind and rain.


11


NATIVITY

The shepherds’ field is folded upAn altar cloth of rubbled mudMelchisedek defiles the cupThe cow of madness chews her cudWicks of oak compressed by fogSend up a rope of canceled murkAnother birth is catalogedOn human skin by Herod’s clerkA child delivered upside down Reclines on eucharistic strawAstrologers from Babylon,An ox and ass, lay down the lawWhile far above the stars embossThe constellation of the cross


12


THE SCREEN

Don’t think she cannot reach you where you are.A kremlin massive as the worldWeighed down the head of Our Lady of TikhvinBut when I called she piercedA hundred meters of Moscow stoneWith a hymn on a silver flute.Through death itself she hears your voice.


13


THE DESERT

I saw the clotted wounds and flagrant bloodAnd told him I was sorry for his trouble (A confidential tryst of brotherhoodthe two of us together in the chapel)—Not half so bad as yours, I know you well,A bitter childhood’s cruelty and fearA scourge of Roman whips and half of hellAttenuated in a dozen years—But why not interfere since you made meI could have used your help when I was small But when I cried you weren’t there at allWhat good is dying on a bloody tree?And so we stayed discussing for a whileHow life on earth is impotently vile


14


THE GARDENER

Brazen leaves defend the groundStar of Michael bless the gloomAutumn pacifists of oakBaptismal rain anoint the town

Canticle of SimeonConsecration bath of JohnCloud of crucifixion waitHang in silence, failing sun

I saw one live who died as woodAnd though I did not recognizeThe gardener, or even GodThe risen one looked through my eyes:Do not touch me till I rise


15


THE DOG

Just as it had done beforeA dog came through an open doorIn his mouth he held a ropeDoubled in a hangman’s loopBeneath the gibbet was a trapA hood, the garrote and the strapThe guillotine, the grill, the axeThe gouging spoon, the twisting rackThe funnel and the liquid leadElectric chair, electric bedThe whip, the comb, the skinning toolThe boot, the maiden and the stoolPincers, pliers and the fireThe knout, the club, the squeezing wiresThe knuckle, knee and stamping bootThe bullet and the order “shoot”Dagger, sword, the poisoned mealKnife of stone, the knife of steelAll applied historicallyBy genuine authorityThe rope of killing of the dogCan either hang a man or flogBut Romans had a predilectionFor animals and crucifixion


16


HYMN

We see him by the lightBut he is not the lightHe comes to us in darknessBut he is not darknessHe sees what lives and diesHe is not sightHe labors without forceHe is not weaknessHis will cannot be stayedHe is not violenceHe speaks without a wordHe is not silenceHe has no formAnd yet he is a manHe is eternal spiritBut died and rose againHe has all blessings and all qualitiesAnd yet there is no paradox in theseAs pure as loveHe suffered for our sinsHe died to lifeAnd in him life begins


17


WHO ARE WE?

First of all a shifty apeReplete with smutty pride, hungry, sensualThe rounded pupil of the animalNarrowed by a squinting calculationBut self-aware, a grotesque horror of self-knowledgeThe pristine selfishness of nature addressed by shameImperial, adamic, full of blameA conscious carnivore, a freakAn opportunist omnivoric sneakA killer and a savage masterYet weeping with self-pity in disaster

What else, why should there beIn simple flesh emergent property?Some incremental spiral of the brain?Crystals build their towers, ants become a civil racePolymorphic acids float through spaceUnconscious termites build a mindless cityBut only conscious beings palp their souls in painOr disregard self-pity and feel pity.What enigmatic quality bred true?There is not only me but also you


18


PRAISE

God hallow silenceIt is not oblivionMy bones like rafters creakMy blood runs like rainThis is death, not silenceBread of meditationWine of peaceAltar cloth of mercyEye of blessingHomily of cloudsEucharist of colorsCalyx of eternitySilence of the wordless Godf


19


BREATH

Every day a little deathA slowing of the sleeping breathAnd life itself inhales the sunBreathes night the day’s comparisonAnd all the seasons in and outBreathe rain and snow, exhale the drought

So then I would remember howIf all my breaths the glass would blowI’d see my living come and goWith only mist on glass to show


20


THE PRISM

Toy soldiers simulacra of a warA chestnut shell a coach of mice in reinsA praying mantis rampant lion vertA dragonfly a rainbow manticoreAll sympathies that massively existWith mental implications of the sameMake possible devisings of a gameThat may be played by God or atheistFor every object generates a thoughtAnd thoughts themselves objectify in massBoth those I seek and those I find unsoughtMark image and the substance of the glass:The resurrection plays a game of skillWhere light imagines dying on a hill


21


THE SECRET

I saw the Church a cockleshellThe priesthood shrunk to half a dozenThe faithful in a catacombThe civil cult a witches’ covenThe eucharist a hidden crumbThe cup of wine a thimble heavenThe word of God a secret codeThe daily prayer in whispers hidden

But privately the Creed confessedIn blessing to a monstrous guestAnd all the calmness of despairIs cured by deep unfolded prayerA living root, an ancient needThe parable a mustard seed


22


SURSUM CORDA

In hope I lift my heavy heartIn truth it is a faithless partAs you know well

What useless rage is evidentDespite a meekness of intentI need not tell

Too little joy, too much of spiteMore envy than naive delightIn others’ gladness

Often I have mortifiedMy hope in you but not my prideAnd given in to sadness

Loved ones you conferred on meI cherished too inconstantlyAnd then betrayed

Those who summoned me in griefTo comfort them and give reliefI long delayed

Mercy taken of your loveHas feeble strength to lift aboveThis heart in joy

Since I have no other powerExcept the love which you endowerLift this envoi


23


ASCENSION

Arms of dogwood dancing in the windEntranced by shifting nets of sepia shadowsAnd celandine, that loves an early springDrops a fragile batwing in the meadows—Ancient silver days of chilling rainGrown a fibrous stem and filled with greenAnd all the rising suns of morning comeStronger grown than mornings we have seen—White heat commands the parapets of summerLooks down from where it sentries in the skyAnd far away the dragons of JulyStretch their burning innocence and flySo now while shadows catch and hold the lightAscension’s season flames it blinding bright


24


HEALER

I have a wound that will not healThat bleeds and festers without ceaseI cannot see but I can feelAn anguish growing toward releaseI have four less than you had onceYet still as mortal as the fiveAnd though my heart remains aliveMy sin commits my soul’s affrontAlthough I suffer as you didYou suffered by your own consentBoth torment and abandonmentWhile I my freedom forfeitedCould I heal up my injured willI would be whole and near you stillBut since I cannot heal my woundYou come from death and make me sound


25


EMMAUS

Do not think he was invisible.Thirty years before his deathIn time’s infallible remoteness,A fetus in the womb of capricornA golden bullet fastened to the solstice,He fell away from heaven to be bornAnd traveled on his feet to find Emmaus.

Those who traveled with him knew his walk,Familiar gestures, echoes of his talk—It wasn’t necromancy caused an errorBut lack of trusting faith and stone blind terror.


26


HE STOPS

It rained forever on the earthThe seasons washed the land awayThe continents dissolved in saltA virgin to the Lord gave birthHow God divided night from dayI heard an old man say

Peter told the tale to MarkApostle doubling as a clerkOf how he walked upon a lakeTill panic made the surface breakHow Teacher set the demons fleeingAnd made the blind become the seeingRevived the dying and the deadAnd multiplied the fish and breadBut one thing Peter did not seeThe Master killed on CalvaryMother Mary stayed and JohnTwo other women looked uponThe execution of her sonBut of the rest there wasn’t oneSo only four would there remainTo hear the Rabbi groan in painAnd only four of them desiredTo comfort him till he expired

No miracle dispelled the fearThat kept the rest from coming nearAnd though the Lord made time and spaceHe won’t compel the human raceTo wipe the blood from off his face


27


THE MODEL

At 0300 hours, GMTThe 25th of April 1994 ADJupiter and Luna juxtaposedLuna in a golden haze exposedJupiter a brooch above her plump left shoulderAnd all the trees a bodice that did mold herSo beautiful a lady and so lushThat even kingly planets dared not touchBut all who lifted up their eyes could seeA silent and majestic orrery


28


GIFT

Seven leaves I cannot seeFlourished on a holy treeThe crown extended into heavenGrew and dropped the ripened seven

First the chieftain AbrahamWho sacrificed an angel’s ram Hearing God made no delayObedient his child to slayAn offspring and a progenyWas given for his constancy

Moses in the bush had seenEver burning, ever greenThe flaming tongue of God bespokenBurning a celestial tokenSmoke by day and flame by darkLaws of stone, a wooden ark There ran David, swift of footResplendent king, savior’s rootGiant killer, lion’s baneBefriending Saul and JonathanSeed of Israel’s kingdom comeMourning over Absalom

Eliyahu of CarmelSpeaking doom on JezebelThat also burned the dust and stoneFired bullock flesh and boneWas fed by ravens when the lawApostatized for Asherah

Isaiah too received a visionOf God and people in collisionBut saw the crooked road made straightThe mountains leveled, love from hateA servant suffering for the restHeart of Zion, cursed and blessedA leaf of modest MiriamThe mother of the living lambAn angel came to ask her leaveThat she might holiness conceiveHer spotless womb with light to fill

29


And bear it of her own free will

The final leaf that shaded allWide and strong although it fellThe leaf of Jesus of the crossWho took from death what Adam lostAnd gave us back an evergreenThese seven leaves that I have seen


30


AS IF IN A WOMB...

As if in a womb formed of winter and nightMonks said the psalter in heavenly lightWaiting their birth they chanted and prayed“As you were born so may we be made”

Bowing and praying the psalm of the windHomeless and warmless for all who have sinnedDecember the stable without roof or floorMoonlight the angel who stands at the doorTrees are the shepherds and planets the flockBorn is the baby of heavenly stockNo where to live but the earth and the skyStarlight his blanket, the psalms lullaby


31


THE WORD

I cannot remember, remember, rememberAll prayer like a tide ebbs awayHiss of foam, hiss of foamSeastars of memory rigid, splayAnd then the grey sea runs homeOver the channel floor, it will not stay,Nothing will remember moreFormless like water, trapping every hourIn sediment of happenings beforeThe black priesthood of memory’s wayIn a white chasuble, the reflected shoreAnd all of it preserved in the sea’s white cowlThe running wave is the memoryThe wave is what will pray


32


MOTHER AND CHILD

Sometimes an infant sitting on a mother’s lapDandled and awakened from a summer napFine hair curling, wisps arching in a breeze—She wipes away the drool of sleep and lets him sneezeSometimes the infant swelling, bright and highBecomes a dark lacuna of an empty skyFar and unapproachable his precious eyesInconsolable the wisdom of the wounded wiseHis mother of the virginal devoted seaHides him from the clutching of humanityHugs him out of reach, composed and grimNot trusting to our mercy since we slaughtered him

Pavel ChichikovMay 1, 1994

33


DREAM

I wandered through the rooms upstairsWhere once I was a servant and a guestBut though the furnishings had been removedAnd rubbish everywhere lay all about(White dust and grey and crepe of dustA frost of long disuse and precious time)No new inhabitation was installedNo one could live or would live there—In empty rooms white sun came inTo lie as dust lies on the floors and walls

But then I saw, all dressed the same,Those travelers who would go homeBut had no way of reaching homeWho desperately desired to departBut could not leave, could not be helped by anyoneAnd though I had my way I would not startAnd stood there watching helplesslyWhile dreaming broke my homeless heart—My heartless dream would not let goOr take me home again


34


THE TRENCH

I drowned to see Leviathan, that old cadaverCrocodilian, hid inside his latherA corpse, I’d thought before, a mythical offenseAgainst the law of scientific senseBut all us drowned explorers see him onceSleeping in an oceanic trenchShifting through his lapidary flanksStretching out his starry toes and shanksGaping bludgeon jaws half-conscious in his sleepThank goodness for the living world his bed is deepHow long has he been waiting there in oozeWhen will he wake up—and at what news?We drowned ones have no fear of him—or of mistakes—Yet I would not drift as close again—suppose he wakes?Even the immortal drowned and deadPaddle in a silence round his head


35


SACRAMENTS

The bread and wine are not by magic madeNor since transformed by magic into GodNor are his blood and body now displayedBy efficacious posture or by wordNor do the saying of the psalms or lettersBy sonic resonance or length and breadth of waveHave any force transformative on matter—Nor has assent to doctrine potency to save

But only by astonished grace of loveBy which all state of being is devisedAnd only by the sacrament unprovedThat all beyond their perishing shall riseWe know of him who did not come a wraithWhose potent love does not compel our faith


36


MURDER

All killings of convenienceThe civil or in battleno deaths exempt from thisExplicit law of earth-born soulsNo martial rulesOr state’s expedience:

For killing there’s a debt to payFor killing there’s a skullto wear around the neckA skull as heavy as the earthTo drag until rebirthMay take the weight away


37


TREE

Sometimes a sun, a point of lightNo shape or disk, not farAs if the seaRippling in the starlightHeatless, movelessFormless, depthlessOut of timeHad grown a treeI cannot climbAll oneFrom root to star


38


THE WINDFALL

A fallen nest of sticks and mudAn oval couch of twigs and woodTo keep a northern robin warmIn slanting of a late spring stormThe bird-shaped hollow of the nestWith moss and fussy shoots is dressedMade tight enough for birds on eggsWith feathers fluffed to fold their legsThe eggs are speckled grey on blueOval shells, none out of trueAnd snug in nest as nut in shellThe nesting robin warmly dwellsOr dwelled in one I found todayAnd so my soul may fly awayAnd leave my body on the groundAs if an empty nest were found


39


SOULS

Unapproachable dim star above the tabernacleYou bring the dead to us in dreamsThose reconciled to deathTo see we are not reconciledNot knowing that we are signsAnd sacraments to them, the living penitents

The candle burns above us, now behind usWhispering, but when we turn, the darknessTakes its place—Those who are the livingHover and address us in the watch of candlesWhite shadows of the lighted crossAnd we the dead surmise that something presentBut unseen Has spoken words addressed by light:“You are the dead but shall be living,Watching in the night”


40


THE CLOWN

I did not look when paschal bread was brokenAnd portioned to the thirteenth dishOr hear the two commandments spokenOr share the sacramental fishI did not raise the living deadOr sit at Cana when they wedI turned the soil and cultivated shadowsKept my cloak and did not strew the flowersStayed clear of boats, the sudden stormAvoided crowds and all unnecessary harmDid not provoke authoritiesOr cure the ill and maledictedAnd all calamities predictedWere not for me ordained catastrophesBecause I went abroad to Egypt whenVespasian’s legions razed Jerusalem

A clown by grace may yet be savedIf not maliciously depravedUnconscionable fools may never learnBut even sticks do service when they burn


41


MIGRATION

Saints of all the times and places Assembled in Alphonsus’ churchLike doves they occupy their nichesCooing as they show their facesOr perch like eagles on their pulpitsPreening angels’ ivory pinionsOr like the Virgin and her PoppetConveyable they sit on platforms

Fixed with arrows, clutching keysThey huddle griddles to their bosomsEarless listen to the chantsNoseless smell the spreading incenseStill, they linger to advanceFrom chancel and along the naveTo some unvisionable danceA bright migration rising in a wave


42


THE PLEDGE

I now believe and yet do not believeSee and hear my faith and yet do notWalk, run and fly though standing stillLive, breathe and grow while members rotYou know I love as though I broke a stoneAnd know I pray as if a sound were prayerI live in you and willfully aloneI cannot feel your presence and my fear—Where have I come from that you save my lifeWhere die that feel no faithful love of you,Between your heaven and my nothingnessI loathe my falsehood yet reject the true—Though pledges of your flesh my hand has brokenYour word and blood I still receive as token


43


THE DREAM

Before time you were, and after time will beEach day a wall that closes inAnd we remain enveloped by your wings—But did I see a dream, that reach of hillThat droops like flayed skin from Malaya LubyankaWhere God bleeds in sleepTo an arch of pitted chrome?It was a dream in which I sawNovember twilight press down the great squareIn grey half-being—And in that dreamDeath’s temple stood behind my shoulder.There is no precognition, but only youWho know what we have never seen.


44


BENEDICT

I saw Benedict of the white robe—In the garden birds sang clotted songWishful birds sang melodies extemporizedBarriers of roses dropped long thorns of painCloistered Benedict gave morsels to the rainAs if the drops were creatures and would rise

Who would breach that wall to bring him outNo one in or outside could be livingHow see I flames of what has yet to beThough long ago I heard the detonationNo future time exists unless imaginationHas other eyes to see

One or two are left, the others deadTo grow again perhaps in that rose bed


45


MONSTER(after W.W.)

There lies the city blinking at the sunA chimera of beasts just waked from rest,Its limbs stretched out toward nightfall in the westIts eyes already sparkling where dunShadows fill the precincts of the moon—The buildings show the night their milkless breastsAnd bait the sky with sexless barrenness;Beneath the fouled rock it sends oneSolid root, metastasizing greedThat spreads through every organ of the earth;Across the streams it throws a filthy seed,A fruiting body giving mushroom birthTo lumps that make the ailing rivers bleed—And all that mighty bulk expands its girth!


46


TRUCE

High summer is comingThe useful, languid heatLuxurious and enervatingFlowers, treesLudicrously rich in leavesTheir seeds complete

Be unmoved Because of reasonWatch the grey cloudsCow dumb with sleepLean their shouldersOn the white horizon

This heavenOf no rewardPurgatoryOf no blameCuts off my headWith no sword

Undulant far wavesOf bridled heatCome riding inCavalryOf milk white plumesAnd no retreat

We would be wrongTo fight this warPacifistic indolenceAnd short memoryMove littleAnd fight no more

The heat rolls in—Let the creamOf memory congealAnd letThe whey of kindnessRise with the steam

Pavel Chichikov—May 15, 1994

47


THE SPRING

Life is a top which whipping sorrow driveth—Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke

Life’s a top which whipping sorrow spinsA whirling gig of fondness and farewellA torque of death that winds around the stemWhich life releasing runs our anguish wellAt close of life it wobbles and spins down—And that’s as much as any saint has known

Except for those who once invited graceTo eat and drink a fondness and farewellAnd stared instead to see a cherished faceUnperishing, impossible to killAnd that’s as much as any saint has knownWho reads a falling memory set down

Can those denying this deny the painAnd pain denying spring to life again?


48


THE EMPEROR’S CHILD

Crowned griffins rampantMessengers on horsebackSound the hunting hornGallop down the trackOmnipotence is bornLet him nothing lackTo keep him warm

Coldly in the woodUnderneath a willowBedded down in strawBaby on a pillowHerald is a crowHis fanfare is a cawAnnouncing sorrow

Where’s the sacrificeIf sorrow never showsBaby in the woodCovered by the snowsAngels see a faceThat no one knowsIn that dark place—God send your grace


49


THE PULLOUT

“...if any bad results follow, they will be too late to affect the election.”—H.R. Haldeman

A ragged feast of snarling bonesScavenger’s lamentThe carcass was a countryAnd the smell was devil sent

Foraged from the abdomenA foreign insurrectionBolted expeditiouslyTo nourish the election

The closest to the fond remainsWere served the biggest plateAnd those who fell in battleWere the diet of the state


50


APPARITIONS

Mary fell on greyish iceNear St. Pimen’s church on Seleznovskaya—An angel helped her, saying:“There, there, go slowly dear,”And led her to Tikhvinskaya

And then, in summer, I saw her bowingTo the Icon of Our Lady of TikhvinOld and pale and thinWatching near the sanctuaryWhere Jesus lay awake

And in October when I called for helpWhile buried in TaganskayaShe made an angel play the fluteWhile she herself was changing kopeksIn a subway booth


51


THE GREAT PRAYER

White rain changes form to make blue seaAnd light makes fish of many changing scalesEarth of iron builds a wooden treeAnd nitrogen turns diatoms to whalesBut which transforming program gives the cueThat changes shrimp to whale and white to blue?

Sorrow in a thrush can sing to joyAnd dancing in a circle rush to gladnessUnitary stamping marches warAnd murder of a child provokes to madnessBut which transmuting happiness is mootThat animates a sparrow and a flute?

No world of things and substances whirls hereIt is instruction answering a prayer


52


ut potui, non sicut volui

THE BLACK DOOR

Sometimes as blue as cobalt, sometimes green as jadeScintillating diamond stabs the waveletsIf only we could reach the other sideThe side of the sun, we should not fadeAttenuating, we have not long to be aliveWe must achieve the other side before the sunAbandons this long, silent lake—And us, who have not said our final rejectionWe would be deathless utterly forsakenDrifting in the sky above the flat waterDayless and nightless, without true selvesGrim sky fragments, unreachable forever—But who has placed this iron door above the lakeFrom wave to sky, featureless and obdurateWe cannot pass above, below or breakThe cold eclipse of deathWe must go through somehow—Mother of the God of lightLead us through the black door, whose shadow growsThe sun is falling now and will not wait


53


MOTHER

With a large hand the waves push me underNothing moves except the seaAnd nothing breathes but the water

Inside her murmuring wombI am submissive, helpless

Blue-eyed motherRock me back and forthIn the arms of heaven

White birds live in the foldsOf your blue robeWinds comb your wavelet crown


54


SELF-STEERING

The helmsman beats the seaWith foam and milkwhite jadeAnd every wind of torsion Receives the helm’s correction

No twisting or evasionEludes the plunging trackNo providential sinAvoids the chasing wind

Maintaining his directionThe helmsman steers the shipAnd nothing can deflectNot force or intellect

No compass does he needHis rudder is the Creed


55


FIREBIRD

A beat of wingsRock hard and thunder crashesA bird of airSprings up aloftUngrips its talons from the earthAnd lightning flashes

A hundred miles from wing to wingSpread your pinions black as rainAnd beat them, flashing, once again


56


DEATH AS A BROOM

A picture of a landscape made of woodCarved of woodAnd sawed from woodSo all the pieces of the woodIrregular in shape and sizeAre scattered on a table top.A poem is a jigsaw puzzleMade from the worldCarved from the worldAnd sawed from the worldSo when the poet diesAll that remains is dustBeside the poem—Sweep the dust awayBut keep the pieces joined together


57


JOKERS’ HEAVEN

Train butterflies to carry weightsTeach ancient trees to flounce in stepUse centipedes to carry freightsEat jumping beans when oversleptWhen all has come to pass and goneBe singular and carry onFor what care you what others sayAll condemnation goes the wayOf continents and flies of May—Though even crimson hell cools downAnd senile octopuses drownAnd red gardenias rot to brownThe Lord has no redundant clownHe makes his angel jokers kneelOn blessings of banana peel


58


THE HARVEST

On the hillside near the granite stonesDaisies, phlox and honeysuckle growArtificial roses never sowSuch sorrow for these sentimental bones Gathered in a moment in a fieldFaded in the sunlight of an hourMonuments of granite never yieldAffinities of such eternal powerDonations of the grave are such as theseSeed to sun to innocent decayAll dust and nothing left that once was pleasedTo grow and breed and blow all in a dayGlean the mortal flowers for the tombWhere daisy, phlox and honeysuckle bloom


59


THE SOUL’S COMPLAINT TO THE GRAVE

Pack yellow straw about the gravemound.The cold rain seeps and soils the coffinAnd the earth shifts with the downpourOf strong heavy rain on the winter ground.Not yet has the earth been spreadAs the white rain of March turns blackBy nightfall and the tucked graveUnfolds and slides like the shift of a cold bed,Sinks with my coffin. Darkness blends me with the frost.Who will warm this trembling soulAs it lies unburied on the steep hillside;Or is it blind by death and winterlost?Then like a father gathering comes oneWho finds and warms me like the risen sun


60


THE SURPRISE

In the sunrise, inhuman song, black-winged gull and man-of-warAppear as if by sublimation from an eastern regionFloating droplets on a wave of infinite submission Grace in bounded birth, annihilationSoaring, soaring, small heads swivelingTheir eyes more watchful than any star can beInhuman brains, victorious, for nothing hereCan murder or be cheerless or watch for any eucharistOf what already offers up the yellow dawnThe standing wave of the Real Presence.Above the deck, all balancing on moving staves of airNotes that play again, again a round of genesisThey ride the organ fugue of oceans—And those who watch the sky are something freeThose squat and bifurcated blunt immortalsPonderous, they are a form of burdensome divinityWho watch the graceful birds above the deck

Pavel ChichikovJune 2, 1994

61


TABERNACLE

Unlock the door—that is enough—Swing through space the temporal gate—Remove the self that lies withinForever in the immediate,Offer love that sin rebuffed—Burn incense to what has no sin

Sanctify in memoryFlesh and blood that took on form—

Pay what debtors could not pay Offering their sinful harm—One who in His agonyGives up their sin on Passion day

Moves aside the temporal doorOf what will come and came before


62


FROM THE TABERNACLE

One swing pulls out the temporal doorOf what will come and came beforeA sanctum of unleavened breadDisplays a timeless food insteadAnd passions, places and eventsDisplaced by passion’s immanenceStand wide about the altar tableA boundless sphere, unchangeable -

Dressed in robes of endless dayAre courtiers of heaven’s playAnd all of mass and energyReleased by sacrifice go freeAnd all of endless time and spaceAscends in fire from that place


63


THE MEMORY

All joy and peace remembrance —but of what?Between two lemon trees there is a shrineBetween the stem and pistil of a flower – petals of a savage roseAnd fingers of an amber honey clasp magnolia skin;Sunlight pours down from heaven’s crystal jarAnd like an amber fast imprisons death;Watch as if in amber death held fastWhile clouds of blue-winged morphosCover cloud-winged skies;No dream that we are dreaming nowAll clear and wakeful peaceAll pleasure beyond pleasure without ceaseAnd one who is our garden and our allAnd whom before his shrine I do recall


64


THE DWELLING

Where is hell—how am I here?By murder, theft or fornication,Seasoned graft and perjuryRapine, cheating, base extortionTreason, bribing, twisted sexInconstancy, a false sworn oathBlasphemy or sacrilegeSeduction, heresy or both?

Inside a separate dwelling placeEndless antiseptic roomsLike hospitals and mortuariesNo penumbra, night or noonEach spectre has a solid cloneTo each a hell, and each alone


65


CLIMBER

An iron ladder planted in the groundAnd angels scrambling up and down on treadsMaterial they seem when near the earthWhen further up they’ve stars instead of headsThe ladder too is changing as it climbsA ferrous, stained construction down belowBut then it’s silver, aurum and electrumAscending in a stratospheric glowAnd all at once I’m climbing to the skyLaborious and clumsy, limbs asleepThe earth is close and heaven is so highThe angels rise in weightless bound and leapAnd nothing but forever will sufficeUnless a cable falls from paradise


66


GUARDIANS

What is the name of one Who walks so close beside meThe wings of sunrise ochre, gold, and greenHarmonics of the sun

I see the form askanceBut when I turn to speakIt moves beyond my visionRetreats when I advance

Sometimes the warmth of oneWho walks so close beside meThe rippling of my napeAttracts my dull attention

How can I ever knowEternal forms of lifeTransfinite modes of lightUnless my spirit grows

They are for those who seeThat loving companyWithout whose brilliant kindThe lens of sight is blind

Defend us, brilliant onesWho walk so close besideYou no vision seesNo vision hides

Beggars of the sunOur souls concealed in youBut when we turn and lookThe light shines through


67


THE SILENT ONE

Who knows the cenotaphWith many doors of bronzeEach one cold and shiningWith a metallic hinge?

Who knows a secret?Beyond the inner doorNo shining metal there—A square stone floor

Underneath a flagA pentecost of goldTouched by no one’s deathBorn though never old

Who sees the chamberThat never was defiled?Secreted from dangerLives a silent child

One who has the keyOften enters thereKneeling with his earTo the silent square


68


SEVEN SEVEN

Here, take this box old son—See, I’ll pull it apart for you—Violet indigo green and redYellow orange and blue

Seven modules for the compass roseFor the compass rose of starsBinary triplet neutron pulsarBut also planets like Mars

Reality comes from all directionsYou put it together from partsWith help from the maths and sciencesAnd a dozen or two of the arts

I jammed them together roughlyIn a manner of speaking but thenMore of them seemed to be spreading aboutIncreasing by powers of ten

How many colors, how many shapesRecurrent irregular makeBrains and minds and species of thingsThe beautiful ugly and fake

Primary colored spectral sevensSimple in shape in a planeNow generated a double fetchOf infinities over again

Pulsing, endless the pieces cameMaterial mental in oneSee, I’ll put it together for youHere, take this box old son


69


THE WINDOW

Something’s coming, he saidSomething I see in the yellow wallIn the black eye between drifting cloudsOn the edge of the fieldAt the border of the gardenIn the monumental buildingsOutside the railroad stationInside the wheels of the trainSpinning in the iris of the white spirals

An interregnum of wormsYoung forms arise Hatch a government of white grubs—These were human beings, once, he saidBut something’s coming


70


THE HUNT

A she wolf running the black fieldQuartering ground, hunting earthA world is blind with burning laborShe cannot deliver a childDeath expelled from quaking womb—Pinched the foul still born lavaOur nemesis, infected offspringWhat we corrupted, caused to flow

Panting she bitch sniffs the groundFlaming skin of spoiled redemptionGorged the seething afterbirth Red tongue burns in feeble starlightHer nostrils pour out fetid smokeAnd vomit streams from stinking jaws


71


MEDUSA’S HEAD

Medusa had a savage thatchOf writhing serpents, eyes to catch,A face that with a glance aloneCould turn a living thing to stoneEach eye a lost futurityDetached eventualityAnd every serpent in her knotWas what could be and what is notBut knowing Perseus insteadRefused to look, cut off her head


72


THE RACE

I fall behind, my shadow runs And though I am too short to sayThe mockingbird, my double, sees itSliding through the narrow wayThe mockingbird, a chimney spriteKeeps spurting out a smoke of tunesAnd though the sun is ageing fastThe chant prolongs the afternoonA stain of berries on the groundCompletes the darkness of the shadeAnd there my shadow joins the dashOf pigment that the sun has madeSo too our bodies run to earthThe darkness of immortal birth


73


MOON

If above the earth a human headShone as if a moon were hanging thereA spirit drifting, raising out of lustAnd sea a sympathetic mimicry Then what logos moving airWould sing a psalter of creationAnd flood with borrowed light a sterile oceanPulling tides of anguish from its bed

The skull decapitated from its soulHas living eyes diminished to a holeAnd though it shines as ivory does in spaceIt never lights the darkness of its placeAs though a spirit stirring in the deepsWere darker than the chaos where it sleeps


74


EGG

A band of thunder stiffens round earth’s headA brand of lightning flashes in her eyesBlue irises are seas, her brows the landHer nostrils are the forests dilatedShe who once was peaceful spun aloneBetween a sulphur venus and her marsEffulgent blackness of an empty zoneHad fortified the chasteness of her egg But now by force an embryo breaks throughAnd cracks the vast integrity of shellThe continents receding from a woundThat constitutes eruption of a hellAnd all that endless magnitude of wingUnfolds and covers chaos that it brings


75


MOUNTAIN

The sky displays a face of morbid rockThunderclouds raise up rebellious soundCauterizing wire is the lightThat splits the seething ridges from the groundWho scales those cliffs of slow-revolving rainWhat pitons hold the surface of the stormInside the boiling carapace of windDisfigured faces flesh with booming pain,Clamber, kicking, sole of foot on facePanting, rising higher in a raceTo reach the far divine serenity Whose overhanging innocence they seeSo far above, the summit of the storm,Its clean celestial peace an ivory bowAnd all the climbing figures from below—Eternity’s ascent can do no harmAnd yet these angels blustering with prideIn turbulence assault the mountainside


76


SUMMER MASSFor M.C.

Phlox and yarrow on the roadStalks of yarrow thrust their sunsToward one great sun and nacreous Flowers ring the matin fields—Morning censes, genuflects,Sings a hymnal pleasantly,Polyphonic silent wings

Bees of gold if they were heavyPray in lambs’-ears and in lilies,Offerings of feverfew Rise in one tremendous showOf innocent unconscious praise,Even those who never grewWill rise beside his road always


77


POSTERITY

Bee-creatures living in a blue steel hiveRotating sphere of hexagons in sable spaceEach colonist secreting waxen plugs of thoughtAnd honey of the pleasurable presentEach one, no eyes are necessary,Sees through organs of electric senseAnd all together susurrate in mental rhythmAs if translucent wings of stimulation shookIn dry transparent syncopation, and the hiveContains a core in which the queen of queens lays eggs of thoughtHer mental body straining to produce a reason to exist—Which is your descendant—can you tell one from another?No one except the queen has got a sex or brother


78


THE ROAD

Purple clouds of larkspur in the duskA purple ghost upstanding in the darkThere a road runs by the berry bush,Lightning beetles levitate and spark—A highway open only to the fewWho pay the toll of visionary night,Beetles drift with tapers and the viewIs indistinct except for second sight—

Along a road that curves behind a sun,Skirts the building of the polar star,I see a sentry standing and the farTrue road of pilgrims walking one by one—How they go is worth a human pardonBecause they get there walking through the garden


79


NURSES

Last night the ivory petals of magnoliaWhite shavings of a sensual full moonConvolved and fed their heavy sugared milkTo nursling moths and beetle broodIn sunlight now as brown and soft as leatherThey fold themselves like nuns inside their leavesTheir contemplation of the night is overAnd they fold and pray their seeds


80


CROSSROAD

A fine brown spider wandered through my papersHer supple limbs testing for a footholdAnd her palps thrust forward, imaging the contoursOf a rugged fibrous map of ink and whiteness

Where did she come from, did I bring from outsideThis lanky curious stranger—or from another placeTo wrap my inner, apathetic worldWith unseen glory, cryptic energy and form?

Visitants appear and disappear, angels, demonsApparitions, messages and signsAnd then with one bright wave of sunshineAll disappear again, regaining shadows

One night a patient cross stood upright in the hallwayStiff as any monopod or angelBut this one dangles from a string, moves onAs if the world is nothing but a crossroad

Much better that we bless all unseen things.Openly they cross the straight road that we travelOn their way from darkness to the borderlandWhere seldom any human dares to go

Looking neither to the right or leftWe go on blind, nor do we seeBright figures float on spectral wingsAbove immense but unseen trees


81


THE MADMAN PRAYS

I have food—I am unwellI have sleep—I have no restThunder drawls from east to westWhat prayer it is I cannot tellThe moon’s instruction rounds an O Silver words come from her mouthShe strings her beads along the southBut what she says I do not knowDo we pray and hear those words?Do we hymn without a sound?With coronets the moon is crownedShe is the queen of silent birdsYou who live inside my headYou who live outside my heartTell my voices to departSing your melody insteadLift my hands and press the palmsTogether as I meekly pray:Let me sleep and rest todayAnd listen to your psalms


82


MYSTERY

Black-bellied bees that live in senile apple treesAnd dauber wasps that build their nests of mudGolden scarabs bound for the HesperidesAnd rowing bugs, survivors of the FloodAll arthropods that run on many legsHave two or three part shapes with compound eyesTermite queens that lay a billion eggsPredatory ants and dragon fliesLobsters, crabs and scorpions of the seaSpringtails, mites and spiders of the landCicada grubs that lie beneath the treesCrabs of coral reefs that live in sandNoble forms, another sort of planAnd yet he put a soul in woman, man


83


THE FIRE

There is an undertoneGod hears a voiceBut we do not

Not loud enoughYears blow like winds,Restless ones, waves take their print

Roll on—We hear wind Rushing in the duskTo the house at the end of time

Who lives there?A lightA windowAnd nothing more

The wind returnsThe fire blazesYears burn upAnd give their light


84


LOST

Two small rooms, one up, one downWalls of paper, dingy, darkOutside the door I am disowned:“You don’t live here, get out of town.”

But later, coming back I seeAcross the rooftops, walls of goldThe tenement becomes a blockMagnificent and very old

But what’s the street, no way to findThe bottom of the hill I knewAltered, strange the city isA labyrinth without a clue

Golden as the risen sunMassive as another skyAnd like the sun unreachableThe palace always seems close by

Easier to find a placeWith residents who have no pityThan palaces with golden wallsThat disappear, in this strange city


85


SCHISM

A tired tree, some branches deadPuny apples green as jadeWith leopard spots, like watered silk,Cream in color, neatly made

Black and wizened, gnarled and stoopedThe dotard drops the fruit too soonAs if incontinent and beggaredBefore the final week in June

Near the trunk the clover flowersDraw the dancing of the beesAs though a crowd of busy childrenPlayed beneath its senile knees

Cat birds mew from scaling branchesMockingbirds play liquid flutesDeep below the growing grassesLarvae gnaw the ancient roots

Flogging blizzards, shrouds of iceDesiccation of JulyStill the apples fall away,Leave the living tree to die


86


VIRGIN MOONafter Robinson Jeffers

But no flamboyant holocausts appearTo see the race of humans off to after-Life, instead the ageing planet’s jawCollapses, falls and grows another toothReplacing stumps of splintered himalayas;Liquid eyes of oceans close and thenBlink once more to see a virgin moonAnd mouths of canyons long since worn awaySplit wide open, laugh an aeon longAnd nothing will be here to think of usRemember us, or contemplate our citiesThough some of earth delivered will be greenAnd some relapsing soon enough be sterile That now our blemished satellite must pity


87


SHELTER

Upsidedown it sleeps beneath the daisyBack bowbent, the smoke-grey wings are folded,Holding to the green cup of the ovaryStill body striped with yellowblackHow does it sleep?—dreaming of the bergamotA wheel of hornshaped chambers and the nectarSweet and viscid on its long proboscisDipping, stretching, probing in theWells of lavender and ivory, smelling duskyRound it goes, each anther like a towerSomnolent it smells the flowerUnder beams of snowy petalsBut does not move the sleeping wingsOr twitch the claws of sable wire


88


STRIDER

Those iron boots make frightening noisesA giant comes they call JulyHis face an angry cumulusA flash of lightning in his eyeBut on his way the giant goesExposing miles of boiling backAnd leaves a trail of daisy headsAnd bergamot along his trackHe covers ground in giant stepsFrom city park to garden patchAnd where he leaves his sodden footprintsFlowers bloom and insects hatchHis legs are long, he strides a mileThen out to sea to rain a while


89


CLIMBERS

Cats along the alley walkingYellow fangs and eyes of glassMockingbirds detect the movementFinches, starlings watch them passHeavy bellied, striped and tabbyWhite and black and tortoise-shelledPredators although they’re flabbyAnd only one or two are belledGliding through the summer sunlightHugging shade beneath the treesWaiting for the dark of nightTo hunt beneath the PleiadesThen silent, climbing heavenwardsEviscerate the sleeping birds


90


PRAYER

All messengers are angels, and the lesser ones areThermal-riding hawks, foreboding crows and ravensAgile swifts, athletic gulls and plunging pelicansCranes that lumber and the geese like cannon-shotFrom silent catapults, ducks on analeptic wingsAnd furtive, dapple-shadowed wrens and finches

But greater ones ascending from the mindDo not appear in motion but impel our motion—Migrate nowhere, feed nor build a nestNor sing to hold supremacy of trees—They rise through us into our eyesAnd fill the world with sovereign surpriseAnd then with light uncommon they ascendIn ways no bird or human comprehends

Pavel ChichikovJuly 1, 1994

91


THE GATE

Who would drive the dead like swineAcross the cliffs of death to drownDying souls dissolved in fleshRushing to be hurtled down

He guides them gently through a gateOn hinges fastened to the polesOf birth and death—he will not stayOr hurry his beloved soulsAnd there eternity is fixedAnd all whom he will keep exist


92


LIKENESS

Spiteful creature cumbered with a soulClumsy carcass buried in a holeOculars that goggle in surpriseA tongue that gossips, innovates and liesHands that offer sacrifice or killA mind endowed with error and free willHoles for hearing prophecy or slanderThe skill to be a scholar or a panderA body made of gelatin and mudA spirit in rebellion ante-FloodImmortal sick with charity and prideWho let the blood and water from God’s sideAnd if it has no pity on his moansAt least it will forbear to break his bones

Pavel ChichikovJuly 3–4, 1994

93


ABIGAIL’S MIRROR

A hall of mirrors, infinite regress,Each imago to all the others lessThan fully living, fully fleshedAnd each a priest to others, each confessedAll shriven in the sacrament of sightA mutual confessional of lightFor each compels the other to discloseWhat lies behind what mirror image showsThen coming round again presents a host,A eucharistic solid, not a ghost


94


THE PLAY

A tiger has no verb to springBut grips the sambar by the throatViolets pray no quickeningBut genuflect within the shootBeing has no need to beIt is an utterance of hymnsThat start with creeds of mysteryAnd end with amens of the limbsNot fragile or commensurateWith death’s gratuitous designsBeing is inviolateAnd breathlessly it speaks its lines


95


ONE PART HARMONY

Irate because I couldn’t hearForgetting I’d cut off my ear,Angry that I couldn’t seeAlthough I’d plucked my eyes from meI couldn’t touch or smell a roseBecause I had no hands or nose,I hobbled stiffly down the streetImprudent, I’d cut off my feet

But where had I obtained that knifeWith which I had curtailed my life?The answer wasn’t there to findStupid, I’d misplaced my mindSo pray to God who left us heartsTo give again the missing parts


96


ON THE WALL

Humble solar light that turns on wallsOne side toward the day, the other toward nightfallChronometer projected from the sunNoiseless, speechless, comforts everyoneWho watches measured hours of the lightTill time has stopped its counting of the night


97


THE DOVE

Green peppers in the summer garden swellLook but do not sound like emerald bellsAnd butterflies, the kind called cabbage whiteResemble in their color winter lightTomatoes carry parasols of shadeHide coyly from the solar serenadeAll similes that leave in minds a traceLike flickers of emotion on a faceBut what’s inside the simile is hiddenTo farm the fertile soil of God forbidden

Doves of summer gardens that I knowTrees of winter gardens fixed in snowAre metaphors in pentecostal wordsThat painters often show by painting birds


98


A YEAR

Three sparrows on a cherry treeWeigh the springing branches downBlossoms having dropped are freeLeaves begin their dying soon

The clouds of April multiplyAnd send the roots of rain belowBlossoms of the cherry treeAgainst the season fall like snow

A cloud of August cumulatesAnd fattens with a sack of rainThe cherry recapitulatesFruition of the year again

But when the cherry seems to dieThe sparrows never wander farThe complement of birds is threeUnderneath a winter star


99


THE PRESS

When dark-eyed night has proofed the text of starsAnd turned the printed pages of the skyShe presses down the covers of the westAnd blinks the velvet eyelid of her eye,Descends the azure staircase from the dawnThe lamp of Venus held to light her wayAnd disappears below the rim of day—On pages of the night the day is drawn;But when the day has finished with his workAnd set the printed ocean in its bedHe crumples up the colors he has madeAnd drops them in the sunset he has spreadAnd bears them on his shoulder to the nightWho uses them to give the stars their light


100


DAWN

Impetuous, devoted sunWho braves the void of space to knowThe company of spinning earthAnd all that living on her goHow brave a lover to professDevotion with a ray of lightHow faithful to remain with herUntil his love returns from nightAlthough the sun has risen onceHe rises to his noon againIntense, impassioned innocenceThe children of the sun defendsAnd all the singing birds declareA church that rises in the air


101


HERMITAGE

Sad ghost I saw in empty dreams confinedWho wandered through the galleries of the mindThrough endless rooms of sorrows unconfessedThose furnished chambers stagnant and unblessedYou could not find a way to leave them byNot even through the doorway of the eyeBut then there came the footsteps of a guideAlthough unseen approaching from outsideAnd with a breathing air the angel showedWhere moving like a river blessing flowedImmense and brilliant, measureless and deepThat fills the channel of unending sleepAnd carries off the palace of the willIf pride can fall, and sorrow can be still


102


EYES

When dusk pretends to fall for others it is dawnBeetles exit trees, bats extend and yawnPossums blink their eyes and paddle at the moonSolemn is the bear, stentorian the loonMosquitoes hum and hunt for warm mammalian bloodTurtles haunt the stream, sifting through the mudNostrils open wide, wings of darkness spreadEyes are in the moonlight, emerald and red


103


SURPRISE ENDING

IImpressions please?Blue ink in a glass of milky water Sapphire dome with ivory precipitateClear lidless eye with brilliant dust in itMagnetic spectrum of the visibleWithal it doesn’t shield us muchA gas and then, outside, the universeA naked incantation of invisible design.But really?It is a demonstration of the mindA dumb colossal showAnd all the objects in it clowns,The outer darkness filled with seats,An audience invisible That rustles like the northern lights.Yet, who knows what is necessaryWhat could have been, or what is there?Bow to the corners,Bow to the eight windsFanfare of the PleiadesProgram of the seven sinsHorizon in the second rowZenith on the high trapezeOn with the show—The oceans break and sneeze

IIOver and over again we are his imageMirror after mirror in regressAn image dim, receding into darknessNot in form or stride resembling himBut in the lavish gift of willUntil with one long step we enter spaceBreak cleanly from the imageTake up our flesh and follow him

Pavel ChichikovJuly 9–10, 1994

104


THE RIVER

Halfway to the shore of sleepThe barque of dreaming runs agroundAnd there I see the star-reflectedRising of the sometime drowned

Faces turned above the waterBumping gently at the shoalAs if the dead had risen swarmingLarval bodies of the soul

Have I fetched them from a thoughtTo see the dead with second sightOr have they risen now from sleepTo breathe in me the summer night?


105


THE SHIELD

A shadow on the ground Grows a mountain or a seaA seedling in the groundA nestling or a treeBut what becomes of usWhen body as a shellGives spirit its releaseBecause it is immortal?

I see the spirit standLike vapor from the oceanAbove a desert landA shadow its devotionAnd there forever staysTo give the sunlight praise


106


STORM IN A CHURCH

What am I doing here, in this alien place ofIncrustating chapels? in the walls are dovecotsAnd the pigeon saints are cooing, struttingTurning in their niches, bowing, prayingWhereas in heaven they have room to flyWheeling in flocks around the gold, all-seeing eye.

The church is like a roof indoors it letsWhat cannot rain from clouds inside so wetCommunions and the wafer dry of crustsCan mingle in the human mouths of priestsOr dash against the window pane of hellWhich is always someone’s inconvenient shell

I have no business here, the bats of wisdomFlap around my head like vampires of the kingdomBut draw no ichor, blood or salt from meI am the fruitless, bloodless treeThat wicked serpents rattle with their tails When proving paradise is not a jail

Aislewards shuffles priest to light the candlesBut nothing can illuminate these shamblesStretching darkward toward the altar wallWhere everything collected from the FallPiles up against the upright of the cross,So much accumulated from the good is lost

Angels, pigeons, penitents and doves Of charity, the human congregation, moveAnd even serpent cherubim adjournWhere flaming rubbish of unfinished business burnsAnd all the wrong decisions leave no traceNot even ashes in that extramortal place

He lights the candles and goes home againNot priest or saint or angel but a godsendWho whispers from a place above the arkBut whom I cannot see because my face is darkBut someone in his clarity, unholy pain,Sees me through lashings of immortal rain

Pavel Chichikov—July 14, 1994

107


THE VOICE

“You today and me tomorrow” the saying ranIn Kolyma’, Vorku’ta, Magadan’,And ever since our banishment beganIn Eden with a woman and a man“Kick him down before the swine kicks you”Has always been the human moral viewExcept that something twists us in the headEspecially when we’ve been amply fedThat makes us stop with boot poised in the airOr brandishing a crowbar or a chairAnd says by way of providential warning“Tomorrow you’ll regret it the savage morning”Where does it come from, this quixotic voiceTo those who didn’t know they had a choice?


108


THE SQUARE IN MOSCOW

Mechanical story of a winter clock, or a whisper I saw the square of sorrows in the brazen gloomThe Polish horseman riding in the afternoonIn stationary madness on the pedestal of horror,From which I turned away my head to seeAll the homely barracks of the humble deadWhere curds of soil made stiff with blood were bedRain of black November was the cup of tea,Passing out I saw my Russian friendA shadow like a minute on a frozen clockTurn within his coffin as a key secures a lockClose the heavy door that passes to the end—So I inside his memory defend the squareFrom armies of indifference—my eyes were thereThose who witness evil or the vagrant goodShould see as one who strangles on a cross of wood


109


HOME

Stretching with a silken clawThe bumblebee extends her straw,A gleaming tube of ebonyCurves downward from the sucking bee,She fills her gullet with the sweetNectar, and the slender feetPalpate the waiting flower

Her eyes are goggles made to find,Not signals of the soul and mindAll her memory and willDetects the orchard on the hill,The clover and golden hiveThat keeps the race of bees alive—So are we in our final hour


110


CONGREGATION

They are not men, thank GodBut stolid trees, and sodNot sin supports their rootsSupplies the greening of their shoots;No mercy or compassion diesIn acid contact with their liesNor do they use abrasive lawTo rub their neighbor’s branches raw,Nor consciously obliterateThe saplings of another state—They know the pity of the soilThat runs with sanctifying oilOf God’s anointment of the justWho pray not cruelty and lust


111


FLAME

Handsome as roses, high as a houseKnowing as Moses, meek as a mouseA spirit of wisdom coming in flamesBlessing no kingdom, admitting no shameBurns without burning, lights without heatMoves without walking the length of a streetGives to the merciful sense and contentAll that is plentiful though it is spentIn glory it falls, in glory it goesDarker than apathy, whiter than snowsDeeper than oceans. thin as a sailRarified starlight, solid and tallCalm as tomorrow, stronger than windDrawn to the sorrow of those who have sinned


112


THE CAREER

The young man sees himself in heavenInstalled at some celestial bureauScanning documents and passportsStamping visas, checking photosComparing faces with the pastTo vet the value of the blessed

Long the road that goes from deathBrisk the wind along the bridgeAll the crippled dying trudge Face on against a gale of breath

So he thinks, to have the final say,But someone else will read his dossier


113


LEAD YOU WHERE YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO

Never abandoned and never quickHe is a kind of hollow foolUpended on a splintered stickThe plaything of the mindless cruelThey use him as the bane of crowsTo scare them from the growing cornAnd as he gazes down the rowsHe wishes he was never bornBut still this Peter of the graveIngenuous abandonerRetains the potency to saveThrough wonderful imprimaturAlthough his eyes are made of seedThe scarecrow of the Lord can bleed


114


INTRUDER

The rain comes on in black arrayAll cape and cloak and stone the crowsIt hangs like night above the dayAnd pelts the corn with smashing blowsBut all at once it glides awayLike some intruder on his toesIt leaves a trail of glistening clayAnd puddles in the garden rows


115


LADY

How does she earn her fair complexionYellow, white or black or rose?Above her thorns she looks perfectionTakes a face from one of those;Her mind is bent toward burgeoning,Suns of April forcing May,Then she comes in flowering,Awards her pollen cheerfully;A giver of the cheek of colorShapely face and dark perfumeHer crisp and handsome paramourMay her bosom buzz and roam;So generous a lady sheWho shows her shining face to me.


116


EVERYTHING WAITS

Everything waits, cicadas humThe mockingbird sings: come, Lord, comeSun is rising behind the cloudsGrey the morning, sky of shroudsTree of apples, tree of pearsTree of mourning, the cross is thereEarly still, the light comes onThe morning wakes up rows of cornGlory morning, glory dayWho has brought my Lord away?Sing the flying birds and thenChrist above, again, again


117


A PLANNED ECONOMY

Spider maid of many eyesWith which to see the foolish fliesMany strands of spider silkWith which to catch the victim-ninnies’ ilkFor me you also lie in waitWith beetle corpses as a baitBut when in fact you catch my faceIn sticky ropes of spider laceYou run away in grief and rueBecause instead of me it’s youThat’s caught in a disastrous folly—In place of meat there’s melancholy;Those who set a spider-trapMay find a monster in their lap


118


COURT OF LAW

Another path, another way, all innocence and jawsShe climbs with lanky pedicles—the spider of the law;Superb, immense to smaller things—rapid and assuredHer glands are set with medicine, her victims are immuredIn cells of woven fabric whose bars come from her skin,The sunlight cannot penetrate the prison wall within;The sentence is imposed by her precisely to the letterInstinctually punctual, she liquefies their matterShe drinks the potent liquor of the solitary wormSo eggs around her abdomen can maturate to term;Her instinct is to death as blind as oculars can see,She demonstrates the competence of dumb complexity,And when the hatchlings liberate themselves from out of eggsThey launch themselves on mother silk and stretch their lawful legs


119


THE GLASS

The apples give up—The tree is done,Like green headsDrops them one by oneWith a sullen thud.They roll, not far—Where would they goIn a square back yard?An ebb and floodOf human headsFalls from a tree,Self-limited.See forward thenTo a time when treesBind with rootsMany of these,And all the pinsThe plates of glassLie buried deepIn the tall grass.


120


INVASION

Now in darkness flows the humid rainSounds of thunder, hollow and far off,In corridors of cloud the pacing moonStumbles in a passion, far from earth

Trees grow hugely drooping, sag and fillAnd shadows of a black tremendous dayInvade the homely spaces of the mindAnd closely comes the presence of the sky

It comes and stands beneath the swelling treesAnd furnishes the seething in my sight,A never is but posturing might beInhabitant of never ending night


121


THE ORPHANAGE

A whisper far awayNot rain or lightning hissOr even sweepwind cloudsScrape and billow of the atmosphereAnd the sun that desiccates all things

You will not find itAs a calf finds a meadow of sweet grassAnd a bull the white horn of the cowAnd a suckling lamb the ewe’s teatAll in a fine, rich meadow

It resonatesYou will not hear it moveIt has no mass or poiseOr drift of weight on waterNo ship or sacrificial man

No love or recompenseOr sacrifice or incense of the mindOr pendant sorrowOr black silver of harmonyOr innocent estrangement

He gave it when he set the gardenBetween the riversAnd felt the pulse of living mudAnd shocked the stony heart and said:Go where you will, steal or stay

And it roseIt looked aroundIt said but where?To the vacant gaze of the river,Do not make me free, it said, in terror

Gone away, gone awayWhere have you gone to leave me here?Four paths and more to the white meadowAnd the fire seething, ashes and coalsAnd nothing of the God that made me

Pavel Chichikov—July 30, 1994

122


A NARROW TRAIL

A campfire of butterfly weedBurns brightly in daylight nowAnd the sun is also a campfire,But soon the first white frostWill dampen these.TravelersFold their packsAnd scatteredAshes smolder and go out.The weaver spins a webOf flour and rimeWith her fine legs;Her beads of glassine waterMake the stars;All shimmer and breakIn the white morning;Duration soaks with rainAnd the path Through plantains drenched by dew and fireIs the journey of a morning.

Pavel ChichikovAugust 1, 1994

123


THE DROWNED

Was He really one of us?Cowardly, untruthful,Quick to take, not giveLater to be rueful;Or are we more like Him,So knowing yet deceivingOur lonely souls withinUnlistened to and grieving?He sees to Whom we pray—Our Peter who is me—But takes his eyes awaySinks into a sea—Beneath a wave I foundThe grieving soul I drowned.


124


THE WORM

Excuse me little tube of fleshYou rubber vessel filled with earth,The sun that warms and gives me birthFor you is desiccating death;The edges of the spade that fixThe furrow of the pungent rueUnkindly sever all the slackAnd boneless bristling form of you;But when my final seed of breathIs buried in another holeThe spade of God will cleave in twoMy body blind and wriggling soul;And both together join againWhen He shall come and kindly mend.


125


THE HEALING

Time is a short sword,Does not cut deeplyBut sharp, my Lord,You painful wield itAnd my soul removeWith one swift blow So that your mercy provesWhat mercy does not know.

I would have never knownThough filled with suchA splendid graceHow empty was my painUnless with time you touchedAnd cauterized the wounded place.


126


THE CELL

What do I see of them?Two beads for eyesAnd wings like cuticles of airSo beating quick and rareAnd legs that pick and priseThe pollen from the stamen.A waist in armorSlim and strongThe stomach striped with furA dripping tongueTo catch the nectar.But when inside the cellHexagonal and truly hiddenFrom all that I know wellWhat secret then to me forbiddenWhere insects dwell?There live the workers and the queenAnd mysteries I have not seen.


127


ABSOLUTION

Sweet soul that I had lost entire,Who has confessed his life confesses all,And though it burns post-mortum in desireInflamed with love of You it willsItself so living, death no longer killsBut grows to quickened life by fire

Past death I see in heaven rising, brightAnd calm invariable suns,Those apertures of death’s immortal fate,And there pass through the forms of holy onesWho once were burning in their bonesBut now inflamed with love are light

You will compel away by fire’s painThe flesh of death so flesh can live again


128


JIGSAW

What puzzle’s this?Bird in nest?Place it thereSort the rest—Jumbled starsEyes of grace,Sisters sevenRoll in place,Red the robin’sCurving breast,White the waterCrystal’s nest,Blue the oceansTrees are greenBeaks of eaglesPick and preen,Thunder rollingClouds descend,Who is leftWhen puzzles end?Who is thisTo melt the rocks,Replace the piecesIn their box?


129


QUICKLY NOW...

Quickly now, before it goesOn some unfearful trip to deathThe dragonfly in shining clothesWriggles from a single sheathThen in armor, rudder outSlues and wheels among the reedsUntil above the feeding troutFeeds the life on which it feeds


130


CHANCE

It is of course a random meetingStained-glass wings, a midnight keelEmbroidered for an angel’s weddingNicotiana’s nightingale;Sing in color, not in voicesHymn and flutter all in onePraise of Mary has its choicesMorning psalter, midnight calm;All of God’s anointed loversCrown of roses, beads of dew,Butterfly, a halo, hoversAround the head of feverfew;Church of angels, beasts and flowersBread of nectar, wine of rainTake communion from the showersRandomly again, again


131


THE PRICE

Then we come forward joyfullyBut now in pain,As then he reignsBut now in dreadful agonyHangs on the tree.

No way forward to himExcept in sorrow,To be forsaken nowIs then to somehow winRelease from painful sin.

In your bright graveWhere once your birthHad verified our worth,Now you wait to live,By dying life to save.

Once more then confirm:This offering of peaceMay flesh release,No pang will burnIf suffering earn.

Take the placeOf all who grieveAnd painfully receiveThe pang whose graceIs soon to see your face.


132


JUMP

Jump toward the nearest star—How much closer are you?Live a hundred years—How much forever is it?In everything I’m small—My length of life is smallest—Greater than worlds is HeAnd yet my God sees me


133


WHERE

In heaven now and you do not know it?The Lord showed me His fogDamp, rich and stillGlistening in the treesTheir boles and branchesAnd on the grass and ivy—Do You not pleaseThe chorus of angelsWhich are cicadas


134


SWOOP

Like old men monsters hung from wing to wingTheir snouts with bulbous mushrooms burgeoningThese chimeras of mouse and monster rest,Sleeping in the hollow of a tree.Then an evening purple sets them freeTo gobble flickering fauna of the skyWhile flights of arthropods go winging by.

Nothing but an ear can follow closeThe echo of a swift mosquito ghostSo many worlds of senses never sensedAre all the worlds from which we are dispensed,Nothing know, impeccable in flight,Of nightmare-muzzled hunting in the night.


135


SIGNSFor W.P.

As junebugs beat against the screenThe worlds against my ego beatIf one of them an entry gainsAnd clatters dying at my feetIt will rise up and fly againThough worlds in darkness not be seen;Though images in mirrors breakThe Lord of worlds will not forsake,If men be dogs, dogs are not men,And truth is not comparison.


136


THE PANG

Astonishing, that through my pain I find YouThrough pain You won my graceFor though You could have chosen blissNo other bliss but Yours to take my placeAnd yet not bliss, but savage painAnd that to feel so others of us gain.

Where dowries of Your sacrifice are paidThe cancer of the flesh or triple griefOf those Golgotha criminals betrayedA rebel god, a rebel and a thiefThere sit you too my Master and my slaveTo follow You I must betroth my grave.

Then fortunate to feel what You have feltStill then my failing heart must beg Your help.


137


ANCIENT

Dragonfly, before the coal,Abdomen a keel of fireWings like resonating wireFalcon swiftBut long ago,Now through Cenozoic lightI see you softlyTouch the marigoldYou Carboniferous desireOf the infinitely old.


138


FAITHFUL

Speckled worm that clasps our cropOf well-grown August carrot tops,Bands of green, an emerald colorEgg-yolk flecks, black annulars,Tapering tail and bulbous headMoved by inching minipeds,Eating, growing toward cocoonA swallowtail by next full moon,Your brainless head has more of senseThan scientific innocence,Not once resourcefully deniesYour destiny as butterfly.

Pavel ChichikovSeptember 2, 1994

139


JUMP

Like tarnished bronze, a brazen toyGrasshopper caught, a fall alloyOf summer sun and summer leavesIn breastplate armor, narrow greavesSharp claws that prick the human skinOf palms that hold the hopper in,Leaded turrets of its eyesWithout expression or surpriseCalculate the jump away,Instinctively alive, not prey,Exquisite manikin, machineOf art most elegant and cleanNo artifice of brain made you:A cold September proves it true.


140


CALENDAR

Helianthus in SeptemberSpindle neck and heavy headSlumps and sleeps, old pensioner,Last survivor of the bed;Birds, the juveniles of AugustIn mufti now, not fully fledged,Gamblers handicapping autumnBets of August laid unhedged;Balsam flowers, scarlet pokersHide their seeds in springy traps,Clench posterity like jokersSpray it in the beetles’ laps;Wasps in shade-and-sunlight dapplesExcavating mines in apples,Anthropoids, as we are them,All are living, all pro tem.


141


THE CHAPEL

Little dogwood, turning scarletOut of all the leaves are sixBlushing in the death of autumn,Pallid green and scarlet mix.Only yesterday in AprilIvory blossoms floated thereNow the commons of SeptemberSing the chapel of your hair.January bending doubleFell in heaviness of snow,Come another April upright,Tell the little dogwood: Grow!


142


THE TRIAL

A noon of stars would give much lightBut not as great a noon as oneThat shining, shadows overbrightA midnight of a million suns;So here with self-regard impeachedA human wisdom may contriveTo see by sun it cannot reachAnd reaching death remain alive;For all who go by light of dayNo starlight need to see their way.


143


THE MAKER

Specks of dust no one can sweepIn jungles of the grass and tree,Chips of coal with legs that leap Beneath the clover’s canopy,Yet magnified with peering glassA transformation comes to pass:Astonishing complexityAttends a perfect symmetry.

And if I magnify againThe chaos of the leaping throngEach in life, unlawful then,Becomes a pattern of its ownNow leaping on its errands free,Dissolved in perfect mysteryOf chaos, with a greater senseDetermined by its innocence.

And if He comes to sweep them upThen who am I to drink His cup?


144


MELISSA

No sport there is for butterflies to kissWhen spending in the hedge a loving hour,No meeting of the birds is called a trystExcept in human fanciful desire,For all is purposeful, devoid of charmOr sentimental, ministers a harmTo every government of nature’s fire.

And yet poor anthropos has less of thisUnconscious beauty of the beastly bowerThough all his poetry and song insist,Devolving from the symmetry of flowers,And who knows how the buzzing of the swarmEncourages melissa to conformTo all her queenly instincts and desires?


145


AWAKE

Awake, the garden yawns, grows brightHer eyes fold back the lids of nightAnd with a languid stir at sevenShe stretches arms of trees to heavenThe insects of the darkness hushAnd put away the drum and brushWhile birds unlimber silver casesWhere voices kept in velvet placesSymphonize discordant breathAnd all together conquer deathMy lady garden, gracious form,Arises as the sun grows warmShe stands in brightness in her placeA green astonishment of grace


146


FAIR WARNING

A boatman rows while lying on his backHis eyes in compound facets squinting At larvae of mosquitoes and the greenInteguments of turtles in the cracks;Fair silver bubbles cluster at his sidesBuoy up vibrissae on his oars,His abdomen of silver representsA camouflaged surrender to the skies;All he sees is gathering below:A turtle rising upward and a showOf mandibles’ converging undertow—Everything commands the boatman: Row!


147


THE RING

See the way the shadows runA crossword puzzle of the sunThe shorter words are under treesThe greater space has none of theseLong periods stretch out through timeTill breathless day and sunset rhymeWhile underneath a bush of rosesBeetles learn what public prose is:

Sun sing out a chant of wordsUntil the service of the birds,Moon a darker hymn and air,A common book of silver prayer.


148


THE PESTLE

Segmented worm, your wings transparent ice,Black abdomen and ebony deviceOf jointed tongue and sipping straw in flight,Pollen-yellowed, eyes a global night,Voice of iron, spiracles of brass,Durable as leather, hard as glass,Light as sunshine, forthright as the windHovering, alighting and againDesiring although without a heartUntil repletion sweetly fills each part,Miner of the pistil, flower’s friend,A bumblebee—September—summer’s end:Frantic rushing agitates the treesBut mindless, solemn, futureless the bees.


149


IN THE MOUNTAINS

A garden stood between two riversOne flowed backward into timeOne flowed onward out of timeBut nothing in the garden movedAway from sweet divinity,Forever played in simple lightAbove profusions of eternity;But you remember, as I doIt was a place that never sleptAs infants never sleep,As we the comatose who watch themDream we are awakeBut underneath a ruined troubleArch our backs until we break;No option then, we backward runTo find the source and then go on.


150


THE MOLE

Mining time with pick and shovelCrush the hours, scoop the minutesHeave them backward from the rubbleShards of diamond-pointed wreckageShatter, glitter in the passageClear the road to end of troubleNo intention livens meSo I clear away debrisMinor measurement is reckonedNothing presses, nothing beckonsNo way out except to beKnowing not the soul, does he


151


RISING Ascending from the blind fields underseaThose streamlined tesserae of brilliant lightMoon-sided dolphins yellow as the sunGrey, red and cobalt as the morning, trueBut cold, upwelling from uncolored nightAnd heavy twilight of uncertain hue,Emerging, turn their scales to God's desireSurrender as they kindle their cold fire,Feed and then extinguish as they drift below;So we too, dull as any cold abyssWill rise to blessed fire as we rise to blissAnd all we souls enflamed and fed on peaceWill shine but never sink from our releaseSo giving light as sunrise to the Shining One.


152


RISING (version 2)

Ascending from the blind fields underseaThose streamlined tesserae of brilliant lightMoon-sided dolphins yellow as the sunGrey, red and cobalt as the morning, trueBut cold, up welling from uncolored nightHeavy twilight of uncertain hue,Emerging, turning scales to God’s desireSurrender as they kindle fire,Feed, extinguish as they drift below;So we too, dull as ocean’s cold abyssWill rise to fire as we rise to blissSouls enflamed and fed on peaceWill shine but never sink from our releaseGiving light as sunrise to the Shining One.


153


THE INDICTED

Annoyance crouches, cuts me through,A bulb of crocus split and chewedBuried once is now on topOf late September’s flower crop;Those businessmen the squirrels passThe test of profit in the grassThough they fornicate and climbThey cannot fall, commit a crimeCome to justice for transgression,No court for squirrels sits in session;We in summons called shall riseWhen justice holds the last assize,We the charged stand up and waitIn hope He will exonerate.


154


NOTHING YET

The white breeze of autumn, savorless and clear, moves in the garden,Impudent, the black bird struts from hedge to edge to the apple treeNodding a hard and brilliant eye at me, but nothing sees, struts back;The crickets frontward surge and sing three silver notesLeaning toward the chilly night and the coming autumn frosts.Well knit, like a weaver comes the season’s end and all the busy shuttlesWeave and die, weave and finish off a brilliant garment.And we will put it on.The black bird knows, he isn’t long impressed, so to the hedge he goes,Prepares in earth a robe for another guest.My Lord and Master, help me slip it on—the sun has touched the west.


155


SEEDBED

Moonflower, pale guest of autumnTo the white and blinding moonYou are the afterimageFaint, and sweetly scentedAnd as the moths To your unfolding goSo too the starsTo which the darkness is an afterglowAttend the infant moonAnd pollinate with lightThe dark unliving flower


156


MASS

Hosta, flower, host of bellsInvisibly you raise unsinnedA silent blood and sanctifyWith invocations of the wind

Bell and flower, lavenderPurple trumpets royal and frail,Unsounding yet embellishingThe sacrificial summer grail

Bees and pollen, straw of lifeA noise of psalters left unsaid,A virgin’s praise and messengers,Epiphanies to raise the dead


157


BIOTA

Unaware yet disciplinedThe winds rush south, chaotic and in formBlack winged and strong but tenuousBeneath the milkwhite belly of the greater storm,Embodied in its vapor, massiveAs a body in the seaThe front lifts up its flukes and surgesSouthward leaving flotsam of the broken trees.


158


WHO COMES ABROAD?

Light rising weightlesslyPearl dawn a risen red,Departed are the strung and glutinous webs.All sleep the mantids in the bitter leavesAnd larvae swell with coldThat will as butterfliesAs black and yellow swansSpring dawnward in the year.Birds in bushesTucked against the coldIn beds of feathersSleep or whisper Of the melodies complacent in the egg.White breath from all arisingAnimals breathes dawn in spurtsOf fragrant cloudsDrifts as muffled choirTo the equinox.Backward paces dawnAcross the worldAnd who will come with meWhen morning sleepsAnd hears how silent are the trees?


159


THE LESSON

Flushed from berry bushes the frightened grey toad said:“I’ll prove your real existence now before you strike me dead:Omnipotent and wise, my lord, you scarify the groundFlush the sluggish earthworms up, the loaded springtails down.Beetles, caterpillars, slugs and other tasty vermin,Feed and reproduce to fit the schedule you determine.I have adored you from afar although without display,And if you let me go I’ll, pious, quickly hop away.All of life and death is yours, how might it not it be so?Who else would cover up myself with all-concealing snow?When we need a crawl of worms for fattening the broodYou bring a blackened thunder cloud and soon we have our food.”I covered up the toad again, that slimy catechumen,With piety so logical she sounded almost human.


160


IN REFUGE

Above the storm a clear, bright light is burningAnd over that inhuman stars are rumblingHeavy as they turn and turn on iron spindlesNot passionate, or angels in disguiseBut sagging places where the world is heavyBreathes, throws off its lethargy and burns,And we are this, God’s dross.Besides, in some inhuman moodHe grows in humus of a sun the soul,Dross and fire grows toward Him and utters words,Grotesque, and humus falls away in speckled foldsLeaving fire to rejoin another flesh.I cannot say how strange, for being strangeI am another and will see the change.


161


HERALD

Last night, and this not myth but simple truth,We stood together just above the deeply breathing gardenWatching flashes bolt between the cloudsIn ladders, swords and nets, in revelations.And then, one flash that overfilled the skyAnd purged, for seconds, both of us, our humbled retinae.How small, how overwhelmed we are, and this not HeWho passed above us and our apple treeBut running slave who in the showing of her fireSpreads abroad her lord compassion’s hire.She is an omen—other to come soonAs sun to us the brilliance of a noon.


162


FOR THE DROWNED

I saw a yellow barge-horse pullA string of barges, white-cloud fullFleets of sunshine heading southThe gleam of winter in its mouthTarps of azure bent aroundA cargo of the summer-drownedAll the terns and blackwing gullsWere keeping convoy round the hulls


163


LAST DAY

Chilled the garden’s last day of SeptemberBows and paces backward from the springYellow in the air are bits of pollenRowing in the dusk with tiny wingsBlack and yellow caterpillars fattenSteadily in foraging on rueSwaddled in their self-imagined cottonSoon they’ll sleep the coming winter throughNow my ghost is wandering in sleepAlong a road that glimmers in the darkIt sweeps the frost and scuffles with its feetThe stiffened grass that’s finished with its workAnd there my trail is printed in the rimeAs loyal as death, as innocent as time


164


THERE A WOMAN...

There a woman pierced with griefStands beneath a slaughtered thiefAnd if the world will not confessThe mother of a man’s distressAnd if the lancing of his sideWill not a sacrament confideThough sorrowing she stands aloneWhen Roman soldiers break his bonesAnd no one mystifies her lossOr takes the body from the crossAcknowledges the sterile tombAs fertile as a second wombStill equal is in bitter griefThe mother of a slaughtered thief

Pavel ChichikovOctober 1, 1994

165


THE MASK

Sad, depleted, we the ghosts—the filthy onesOur skin is moist and white as molted leatherAll the putrid moltings are the sonsAll the inner leavings are the daughters;At night I dragged behind me in a traceA pumice ball of porous stoneThis indifferent trophy was my faceSin and semblance of the inner bone;Rotting from place, we cannot placeThe weakness of the back, the blood that gleams—This tottering cadaver can’t be usDisintegrating faces must be dreams.


166


BETHLEHEM

Defenseless bodies bleached by darkness,Feeble white and helpless slavesThat masticate the roots of treesTo feed their writhing worms in caves

Their cleverness is not awareTheir spittle takes the place of steelBut nothing needful is disgracedAnd nothing has the need to feel

Like these we will become a raceThat builds the city of the deadOne tower in eternityOne house of pre-digested bread


167


GODCHILDFor A.B.H.

Where she came from that I knowFar beyond the winter snowDeeper than the roots of treesHigher than the PleiadesLong before the birth of starsTranscending all parametersA child whose birth is in OctoberFlying, an immortal plover,Migrating from where I knowFar beyond the winter snow

Tonight beneath my sleeper’s copeDescending on a downward slopeI’ll see the valley of my birthThe lights of upward-seeking earthAnd then to where she comes from goWhen upward falls another snow


168


GEESE

Night of a tired new moonExcept for the eye of the bearBattered old wing of a crowAldeberan caught in his hairBear with a lurch and a coughTouching the eaves of the houseDogs of the hunter aloftSilent the step of the mouseTrios of crickets and fourOnce there were thousands of stringsNow the divisible choirTunes in the holly and singsAnd all of the geese on the lakeNeck to the south as they wake


169


NIGHT

All will be wellBut all may not be well with us,If seeds are blanks who’ll fire springIf God’s a guessWho’ll forfeit everything?

See how (so thin a moving veil)Our hollow ball of gas unseenBetween unfeeling space and frailCompassion intervenes.Remove the handWhose fingers are the lensOf ancient space and clutchingWho will find his mirror in a faceOr love an infinite indifferent grace?


170


THE COURT

The sky was filled with lilac-greyUnearthly color sped the dayAnd all was peace and massive splendorSunless yet, composed and tender,Waiting, but it grew I thoughtToward something that arrives unsoughtNot mystery so much or light:A vast indifferent plebisciteOf all that lives, of all that diesUnsouled, insensate in our eyesIts own, not ours, that holds a courtTo judge a long forgiven tortForgiven once but still to blame:A silence comes and calls our name


171


A PLAY

A sea of molten gold—bright wave,A foam electrum breaking on the crests,Yellow running deeps as dense and braveAs reaches of a globe of roaring wests;Oceans metallic, sprays of silver foamAll flung in air, a filigree that roarsAnd thunders shining metal homeIn silver droplets, liquefied and hoar;Words heavy, shifting, intricately madeAs if a sculptor cast the waves entire,And these to run a massive promenadeAbove the gold abysses of desire;All this in Cleopatra, Antony,But where had Shakespeare found this memory?


172


VALLEY OF THE YALAKOM

Between two mountains a snowy cliff,Raven came, pin feathers stiff,The head an arrow, and a driftOf blackness followed, hushed and deaf; From left to right above the YWhere clefted rivers joined and ranA freezing channel of the sunCast my shadow on the sky;Fortunate the morning thenTo see the bird’s infinity,Me the raven passing by, You would not see me pass again.


173


PRAYER OF GARDENS

Chrysanthemum and dahlia the chrysalis defendBeside the root the caterpillar spins and has an endThen every form disintegrates and dies until the sunLike grace of God unperishing has touched the buried oneThe Resurrection comes before prefigured by the worldAs butterflies engorge with blood transparent wings unfurledA resonance, impermanence that echoes and transcendsThe chrysalis, the dahlia, chrysanthemums—amen.


174


ANGELS

All in the light I saw a greening meadow soft and pureBeside a world degenerate, corrupted and unsure,Four ranks of trees grew crosslike toward an altar on a motteWhere stood in white serenity a lamb without a blot,The breast was pierced and from the wound there leaped a crimson springOf blood that fell unceasingly, a cord of red unfailing—Below the wound a calyx stood, to catch the life of Him,Despite the running of the blood it never flowed the rim,There beside the altar knelt the angels of the wing,Displayed the torment, spike and crown, but never ceased to sing,Also at the altar knelt, ciborium in chainTwo angels of the shining face, the smoke as rising rain,Each the glory of the lamb composed itself in themThe raising of their voices in the choir of the hymn—All glory be, all honor to our sacrificing Life,Lamb that in His passion freely offers to the knife,To Him belongs the meadow where all other lambs may graze,Hosannah in the highest—sing obedience and praise.


175


THE FLOOD

Around the shoulders of a leaperThe crimson mantle of a creeperOne was rising up a treeBut now in Fall a flaming ruby;Setting flowers, dogwood holdsAbeyance till the black unfoldsAnd all the patient dying nowMounts up as much as will allowThe future of the risen sunWhen up from darkness it’s begun;But now I hear the winter comingThundering where frost is runningHigh along the winter wallOf stony skies, forgotten Fall.


176


GOLGOTHA

A cloud the color of a catSmoke grey and yet a yellow eyeDoes not so much as blink,No lightning through the corpus priesNo tails of wind outlash a flankOf stuttering trees

But still above the calm decides,Crouching as a storm of prey,A predator that nothing hidesWhose ambush is the living day,Breath from breath dividesThat takes His breath away

How nearly done the killing isSweat and shallow breathing show,Holding for the squalid peace of HisDisgraced, abandoned letting goThose whose station is belowWill take His cloak as prize

I see a fitful breezlet bendThe feather of a single leaf,The heavy darkness bears no windOr stops the groaning of the thief—Come die my God so we may live,So long your dying,And we have sinned.


177


THE LESSON

Taurus burned AldeberanOrion struck his foot aflameHis Rigel set a burning paceFriction fired Charles’s WainAnd all the stars emitted smoke—The black of space—and then they brokeLike covied geese that fly to ground,Away to westward, out and down.

Light comes up, who would not burnLike stars and leaves—October learn.


178


CANDLES

Said rising sun to dying tree:“Draw up your liquor, grow with me,The hearts of leaves unfold and swellTo feed on light, grow green and full.”

“I will not grow,” said tree to sun,“The frost has come, I am undone,So as you rise my life must fall,And ice and snow must be my pall.”

“Then crimson, ochre, yet some green,Ignite ascendings of my beams,And like the candles of my LordThey’ll sacrifice to light His word.”

Answering, but not the star,The maple rose in morning prayer,“I will obey,” said tree to Him,And held to light a shining limb.


179


MIGRATION

Sideways slanting in the sun,Caught as if on edge, a world,Steel and silver spider’s threadFrom here to heaven comes unfurledAnd drifts, once flashing, then unseenWith spiderbrood like pith on endThe floating hunters of the green.

The lines from here to heaven driftWith spiders of a finer silkThan could be seen except for lightIlluminating spider’s milk.

And what may else inhabit lightIf light to us is dark as night?


180


THE GAME

Four nights ago as full as brassThe moon retired to the south,Now darker grow the nights as sheDistends the blackness of her mouth;Shadows fill her lighted cavesAs floods of sunlight ebb away,All memories forget the daySubmerged in black nocturnal waves;Though nothing vital can be seen, a hatchOf sightless egglings drums the shellOf celebrating seamless dark—The moon swings like a spotted bellAnd then complacent, long she ringsTo baptize black and sightless things:If then I see not by Your graceWhat blind intention moves its place?


181


THE FIRST JUDGMENT

A mockingbird in white-barred wings,A mouse-grey suit, black beads for eyes,Perching, puffing from the coldCocks a smooth head and struts nearby:“An invitation came todayHigh and low to birds in treesExtended from the One who singsWith mockingbirds and chickadees—And you come also, seat yourselfAstride the hollow of my neck,I’ll take you to a sitting ofThe Court of Beasts to hear Him speak.”Growing smaller by the flash ofWhite-barred wings I climb astride,Snapping night-black mandibles And leaping up, it flies, I ride.Up it goes although a MockingBird should never fly so far,Colder, deeper grows the blueUntil I see a daylight star—And still we climb, the sky is black,The sun refulgent in the west,How much higher will we fly?Icy crystals ring its breastThe snap of wings is sharp and thinWhen most of air is left behind,Mockingbird’s trajectoryAttains a height and then declines—We slow and fall, the Earth comes upAs rapidly as silver rainComes down in summer thunderstorms—Soon we’re flying over plainsAnd valleys, rolling countryside,And there ahead I see a copseAnd all the species coming toward it,Emus, snakes and antelopes,Crowds of creatures, mooing, pawing,Crawling, buzzing, fast and slow,Buzzards hopping, lizards leapingCamels bleating as they go—Monkeys swinging, running upright,Hippos trailing steaming weeds,Invertebrates and vertebrates,Tarantulas and centipedes—

182


Down the mockingbird, descending,Gliding forward toward the treesLower makes it all the fasterWhipping branches flog my knees—And then at once, without a warningPitching up and with a squawkThe mockingbird presents its wings—No better lands the perching hawk.

A hush of adoration spreadAlthough I could not see the wholeOf this immense and spreading grove,Filled with beasts, from bird to mole.An everbrilliant presence grew, Not ominous or bleakly strong,It was as if a loving sunHad come on earth to warm this throng.Then all at once I heard a voiceThat seemed to grow within our soulsAnd yet with all-consuming joySpoke from trees—leaf, crown and bole:“Come forward creatures, every kind,Creeping, running, swimming, flying,All My graceful, handsome ones,Now show how beauty is undying.”Up they rose, or crawled, or leaptDisplaying, preening, giving call,Galloped, whinnied, caracoled,Coiled and brachiated, bawled.We saw the judgment growing brightAs if each leaf compelled the sun,Uncurling in the fond delightOf shining for the Splendid One:“The swift composure of the wolfThe stilting of the meek gazelleThe clamber of the climbing goatAll pleasure Me and serve Me well—Stealth of leopard, bulk of whaleWho slips through seas despite her mass,Yet beautiful are ants and beetles,Mantises that haunt the grass—Rotifers in drops of waterSquid in oceans, quail in brakesCamels in the sands of desertsBirds that wade in brackish lakes,All come forward, how I love you,

183


Pattern that I made beforeThe stars quiescent, stars resplendent,Birds in eggs and birds that soar.”And as they came it grew so brightThough yet as calm and cool as trustThat all embellished in the brillianceSeemed as angels of the dust—Though we were on earth the riversFlowed above our bowing heads,Awe the sacrament resounded,Sky above the ocean beds—But then the mockingbird grew restless,Scratched its poll and stretched its wingsDarker grew the teeming forest—“Come, I’ll show you other things.”

Then upward flew the mockingbirdAbove the branches of the treesAnd ever upward till the skyWas bright above its cloudy leesIt soared as high as eagles doThis little bird of grey and blackAnd I as small as any finchGripped the rounding of its backSaw the rolling of the earthAnd as we flew I looked around—There was night from east to westThere the flowing of the dawn—“Now I see the future come,”Explained the mockingbird to me,“Here I know how love is knitAs there we knew it from the tree.”But as we rose the sun held backThe crimson line between the earthAnd sky remained a narrow crack,Announced the day but not its birth,“O Lord,” I prayed, “do not delayBut show us what You mean for us.”I heard a breath of wind give voice:“Not My intention, but your choice.”So then the white-barred bird leapt higher,The light of day came with a rushBeneath us stretched a flashing seaOf blue-white combers—powerfullyThey fell upon a sterile shoreAnd snapping ate and crumbled more—

184


Beyond the coastline rose a landEroded by a sea of sandThough here and there were cities buriedDomed with armor, silent, worried—The air grew colder as we flewThe silent domes transparent grewInside were people, men and womenSome alive and some were riddenBy an elder force of passionAs if an outer soul were fastenedFast to soul that lived within—It fed on blank unconscious sinAnd rode that soul and forced its breathThough this could only give it death—I knew at once the domes were tombsThe living-chambers dying rooms,Then frightened, dizzy with the heightI prayed to God “Give back the night,I am not strong enough to seeEternal tombs of misery,Revive us with Your simple loveReturn us to the brilliant grove.”I was again on Earth, at night,The mockingbird had taken flight.


185


SLEEP

The earth is brown with lassitudeAnd a rogue sleep descends in shrouds of fog—The sky has come to fill the hollows And the earth holds out her arms to the white sleeves,A gown of white, diaphanous and fragile.As daylight comes she wanders, dressed,But soon prepares for dyingIn the white robe. Lies downAnd falls beneath the brazen leaves.The oaks cover her as she turnsAnd dreams of crocus with yellow stamens.But now dark sleep,And the mirror of the sky receives her breathTo show she lives.

Pavel ChichikovNovember 1, 1994

186


THE TOMB

Where do the toads go when the summer’s gone?Down among the granules of the earth’s brown bone—Scooping with her front pads, kicking with the rearSpraying out the soil on the spoor of the deerDarkness and silence the old toad’s tuneSung below a whisper by the dark of the moon.

Now within her chamber, wheezing in her sleep,All around the earthworms rustle as they creepNothing in her dreaming travels very fastWinter’s in the future, summer’s in the past—Buried in confinement, breathing through her skin,Nothing can find her that walks through the wind.


187


DOXOLOGY

Not friendly twinkling stars, but fierce firesBurning through parsecs but not emptiness,His bending, twisting forces of the vacuumBetray the grip and fingers of the infinite—But then His rule, a mind that has no bound,Compelling will, and love that crushes spaceForms and reforms what is and what has beenAnd what will be, all one together being charity—This is the least of God’s ferocity,For dying visible: the tiger starsAre all together less than seizing grace:God beyond our eyes, strong love to seeEndlessly what never ends in you and me.


188


THE BLACK VIRGIN

The Blessed Virgin and her Child are battered—Black Virgin—tracks of tears run down her face,Emaciated, stilled in constant sorrowHer eyes are bloodshot, clouded, not by grace;Her robe, deep blue, a perfect shabby midnightIs moonless and impervious to grief,Embroidered with a flood of golden starsWhite thread shows through degenerate gold leaf;But see the Child, His robe is ruddy red,And see His face, serenely unconstrained—What does her Jesus see to make Him happy:More mystery than Trinities contain.


189


HYMN TO THE WORD

The Son is the WordThe Spirit the LifeThe Father its Reason;Hell is disorder,Heaven a hymnEarth a season;Sing all togetherPraise of the OnePraise of the Three;That all may return,Words to their senseFruit to the tree


190


DAYBREAK

The calm of the morning breaks the dayLike an egg of streaming shadow—Last night the wind, an orphaned childScreamed and howled, wept and mourned:“Come back, Daddy, come back,” But sun had fallen toward CapricornLeaving dark voids in the trees.

Wind scratched and overturned the worldBut all he could find was a pile of leavesAnd the nests of birds that have flown away.

I too feel calm and knowThat I shall see my Sun,Shadows of His nameInscribed behind the trees.


191


VISITOR

A tame heart came to meObedientlyTo flutter and stretch its wings,In such a frameThat every nameContained within my reckoningCould fit inside this fluttering thingAnd yet within my palmDeclare a wordless psalm

The mold of its striationAs perfectlyRefined as any chanted Mass,And in its wingA windowingCompact and yet a glassTo let salvation passSo flying did this churchUpon my finger perch


192


A CLOSED BOOK

I’ve seen the tree of heaven human beings can grow:A woman in a doorway, laughing at the snowMoscow in the darkness of a cold hard frost“The chance to stamp your documents, citizen, is lost”A dark door of oak is shut in his faceThe hardness of laughter obliterates our race,Red shoulder boards and a tunic colored greyGives her authority—so what can he say?“Your permit’s expired, your time has run out,Get your arse out of Moscow, here’s a door in your snout”And what can she say? It’s the office that laughs,Closing time’s official, and so’s our epitaph:“Human race deficient, condemned by a laugh.”

But once I saw an icon with a Virgin dark as woodThe tears on her cheeks were her Son’s dried bloodHer robe the faded blue of a dying afternoonEmaciated mother well-acquainted with doomUnnaturally large and dark her faceLike the sun behind the cloud of a storm taking placeBut the face of the baby that danced on her kneeWas shapely and solemn—how could it be?Peaceful and calm, the infant held a bookWhat would you say if He let you take a look?


193


COMFORTERFor A.B.

Tarns of molten setting sunPoured from burning ducts of nightSeep away, evaporateFrom tundras of the stratosphere(Those empty silver steppes)And leave the winter, miles aboveTo curl and cover all beneath—The stalwart darkness, freezing ponds.

Goddaughters too, Remember YouWho spread This coverletAbove The rocking Earth And cradle—Autumn Sunlight Sets.


194


SMALL HYMNFor A.B.

Pinkscalped baby, Covered with a skinAs smooth as chamoisLamb or puppy-thin,You look insideYour crescent puffy lidsAnd pout, and closeYour fist at what’s within,No dream you seeBut something rareAs common asThe universal air,We might rememberBut have not,Debased by languageAnd our rot,A wordless languageMay beginContrition for Essential sin—If all your milkySong is thereProfoundly somnolentIn prayer,Then cradled lifeThat has no end Within your mother’s armsLet God defend.


195


HE DESCENDED...

So tired that he wore away his faceAnd sorrowful so all the trees bent downLike broken backs that bear a slag of burdensHe came at last to every human place:The Valley of Gehinnom and its boredom—I saw him there, and though an acrid smokeOf burning rubber hid the Lion GateHe shuffled through the ashes of the dimWhere even living angels suffocateAnd brought them up again a second time—The city of the blessed is built with lime.

Once again the prophets fill their lungsAnd while they walk they prophecy in tongues—The Via Dolorosa of the dead Has walls of honey, cornices of lead


196


WHY DREAMS ARE BUSYFor Rachel

Ancient owls working nightsFlying squirrels, cats and miceVoles in honey, restless beesBats of dreams that live in treesSniffing dogs, quick raccoonsSipping milkdust from the moonSnakes in grass that coil in layersVirtuoso cricket playersBarging beetles big as birdsCreeping slugs and rabbit herdsFoxes, lynxes, stepping deerSilent-going pair by pair:Stop to listen to your snoringStart again their dark exploring.


197


IN THE FOREST

“Get back, get back,” the forest said,“And if I meddle with the deadWhat’s that to you? There’s nothing hereThat lives again that you must fear,White violets growing in the snowDon’t resurrect a spring you knowBut flower in another season,Growing for a different reason—Out of caves will come the beesOf Lazarus’ antipodes.Be quiet then and let me think,In timely pools she comes to drinkTo see reflections of a faceThat once disturbed she cannot trace.”

A gentle doe that moves aloneIs all we know and all we own—Be quiet then, and do not move,She steps uncertain of His love.


198


THE GOOSE

The farm dog breaks his chainTrots off into darknessWho called him out and whoWill seize him by the throat?I saw that corpus meltingSlowly into earthNot as far as GodBut only to the springDeep in a cloudy pondBrown as eyes—Carp with brazen sidesSink in mud and sleep.All falling, all melting,Dissolving one by oneAll Souls unhelled.


199


BENEATH THE MIRROR

Catching fish with lumps of breadSmall children watch a shivering lakeAnd no one sees the drifting pikeOr knows the lidless gar’s awake,Ripples like a seamless bellRing reflections of the sun,Above each carapace and scaleAcross the silent lake they run,Then catching dark and rotten limbsThey slap and make the sound of fins.

To ease and let the sounding darkPrepare the daylight for its workIs better than to let the daylightSolute be to those who lurk.


200


THE CHURCH

The bell rings on, in every fieldGrey and brown the day is wildAnd winds that harvest afternoonAre threshing night from flesh to boneSlugs like spotted leopards crawlFrom gardens to the garden wallAnd every swan defends its faceBeneath its wing from winter’s graceThis church without a yard of deathExhales on high its saving breathAnd pentecosts have far to goWhen drafty rooms of winter blowA nave of diamonds rises highTo cross the transept of the sky


201


MARY BRADLEY1766–1883

An adze of headstones scrapes away at timeBut stone itself is blunted on that fist,Angels of the infant dead have armsBut granite falls and breaks above the wrist,Sweet scripture of a century agoMade shallow by the sharp expanding snowIn copper-plated limestone makes an endOf all we ever bury of a friend.Mary, in a bucket made of woodCarried cold spring water from a well,She came to Pennsylvania as a childNot dying till a hundred mountains fell,So heavy were the seasons till released:Her well-beloved son became a priest—As he might pray for me were he aliveSo I for him above his mother’s grave,As One for me may seasonably comeAnd lift away the silence from the sum.


202


TO THE POETS

The mouse’s aim is never to be heard:The cat from ambush kills the calling bird,Spiders building mazes for the fliesChoose the darkest corners to surprise,All weakly things and small can flourish everPersisting in obscurity most clever—Then who would burn a candle in a basket?It is Our Lord Himself who had to ask it.


203


ADVENT

He is nothing elsewhereNothing born,And if I go To frontier darknessAway from the fireWill He be there?

But we are hereSay all the angelsIn crowds and massesWe live in darkness,And when He comesIn all the lightOf trumpet starsWe sing His praise

Holy, holy, holy LordAll emptinessAnd light is Yours

Pavel ChichikovDecember 2, 1994

204


THE RED SQUIRRELFor Rachel

Under a pine tree I woke from a napTo see a red squirrel who wore a red capHer tail was all bushy and fiery redAnd so were feet and her flanks and her headShe moved like the flash of a flame in the darkThe only red squirrel in forest or park—All other squirrels are grey as a cloudThat fills up the barrels and thunders out loudBut this little squirrel as red as a beetSkimpered and scampered on fast little feet.How did I find her? the others were greyOr black as the night when the moon goes awayBut squirrels of redness are rare as a skyWith pumpkins for planets and galaxy pie.

“Where did you come from?” I said to the squirrelBut all she would do was to chitter and quarrel:“None of your business, I travel alone—Away to the forest,” and then she was gone.Where did she go? I hadn’t a clue,But she had her secrets like me and like you.


205


INSIDE THE WALL

Do you think all rain is waterAnd all that flows has form and breadthOr that no man was resurrectedOn the third day of his death?You will see a virgin hornBreak the forehead of your loverYou will see inside a wallA quail chick piping, run from cover.Death will make a fool of lifeInstruments a virgin mother,But never since was resurrectedOne of us for one another.


206


THE UNWALLED FORTRESS

I saw the devil of mistrustMore fiery than any lustIn him all charity defiledWith hope is never reconciled,Each opaque hell contains a nameThat burns with eversmoking flameAnd lightless conflagrates the lie:The garment of my enemy.

Conceive then any place of lightAnd there in place of lies my sightWhere nothing stands except the blessedTranslucence of a hate confessedAnd all the rooms of hell replacedWith one transparent dwelling placeA citadel without a wallA shadowless defending all.


207


WHAT WE MADE...

From the black wool He madeThe night, the dark, the storm clouds—Night is woven when all is light.

We made the dark tones of the fluteAnd thoughts of death.Graves are wovenAnd all the lonely dress in blackness.Death is woven from the coarse black wool.


208


THE GO ROUND

A running horse that’s made of woodMotion of what never livesFlights of wingless, harmless geesePull their chariots of blissDragons breathe a heatless fireUnicorns unvirgin seatInnocently on their saddlesInnocents who swing their feetLights and mirrors suns revolvingMarches bugle, wheeze and thumpCowboys, knights and cavalieriWhip their chargers on the rumpAnd round again on their unrealPerpetually mobile wheel


209


A CLEARING NORTH WIND...

A clearing north wind will allowThe elevation of this hostThe wind chimes ring—Look up and praise the sacramentary of lightSo from the bottom of His church we canSay vigil of AldeberanAt zenith’s end.

Let’s kneel beneath the blessing night Let every blood and body nowTo praise our holy burning frostAnd let communion taste the lipsOf all the buried dead and lost.


210


THE DRIFTS

Arthritic oaks have lost their painTheir bulging knuckles clench and rotDisheveled by November rainThe leafless branches cleave the wetAnd blessed darkness, close the skyUncovers nothing bright and high

Leaves of darkness fall againRevealed in every step of senseAnother season covers mine,Drifts of lifetimes, cold immenseNovembers of eternal hoursFall in neverending showers

All around see lifetimes fall—Let nothing trouble or appall


211


MYSTERY IS BORN

A quiet sea comes up to every door—Stop and wait, a tideless sea has come,Approach from westward, eastward is the sunUprising toward a temporary shore—Quietly, as if a beast were lapping,Waves that lick the cold unfeeling sandStir and wake an infant newly bornMouths a grey immensity of wind—Then bells that move without a tower ringTo make a proclamation of the dawn:“Bow down and pray an honor to the kingOf silent oceans, mystery is born.”Then genuflecting suddenly with meWorship at the everlasting sea.


212


THE LOOK

All created universes, each inside the otherWalk along a thoroughfare, sister after brotherLeaning forward, chins outstretched, pacing heel and toeThoughts like pensive pendulums swinging to and froBobbing heads and weaving shoulders, thoughtful eyes opaqueEvery head contains a cosmic tantalizing snakeEden an unmeasurable place within the mindBurning with expressive fire, angels are confinedGalaxies from ear to ear, nightmares of the browHeavens in a cortical and convoluted nowHyperspatial innocence impervious to blissOpens, effloresces in remembering a kissEvery individual a miracle to praiseUniverse to universe complacent in a gaze


213


FEATHER ROYAL

Feather royal on white-barred wingsThe blue jay floats but never singsWith sable mask and upright crestIt carries ivory on its breastLight as empty songbird shellsA shuttlecock though self-propelledIt levitates from ground to limbAnd cocks an eye as sharp as wind—If I saw an eagle soAstonishingly to and froAs weightless as a fist of grassBut noisy as a bird of brassI’d sing a hymn to AquilaeWere eagles common as the jay


214


THE MOVING

Annunciating angels speakBut only one she sees,Silence in the gardenPerches in the trees

Falling from infinityA messenger appearsResting in a momentLonger than a year

Solemn heat and shimmeringMounting up the wallSummons the infinitiesTo supplicate a girl

Look between the shadowsMary sits and singsNow inside the shadowsThe moving of its wings


215


SCOUT

A tower does not remember where the watchman stands—Agree with me that nothing is remembered here—But when the watchman comes at once recallHow cold the sea wind and the fog of fearThat drifts in as the starlight falls.

He listens, not seeing far, but hearing footfalls—Clawed feet scratching on the shale below—And the sound comes in from seaward, taking stepsAs if on solid ground and smells as thoughWhite brine had covered all the water’s salty lips.

The watchman sees white shoulders rise from there—Upward from the shivering weeds—The saltwhite shape of something never dead:A sterile but voracious mouth that feedsOn motionless and decomposing dread.

Watchman rouse the living, bring upThe living from the mortal sandCall out militias of the drownedBattalions shod in leather—foot to stirrupHow it rides, remembers how to ride the land—The all-dissolving sea is coming.


216


CHRISTMAS PARTYFor A.B.

Time to be quiet nowBaby at peaceWarmed by the nursingThe breath of the beasts

Many the starsThat burn overheadLight for a coverletManger the bed

Close to His cradleCockerels roamSplendid as kingsIn wattles and combs

Sheepdogs the servantsDonkeys the lordsOxen the choristersLowing the words

Now in the silenceModest and weakMouse and her nestlingsRummage and squeak

High in the raftersSwallows have nestsChoirs of pigeonsSing Him to rest

Court of the angelsHeaven has choirsNever more faithfulThan beasts in the byres


217


THE LODGER

I came remembering, drew back the soilLay down on rootlets and a bouncing coilOf castings made by many delving wormsMole mattresses compact and terra firm

A coverlet of stones contained this placeAnd held a down of soil above my faceI stretched my legs and yawned beneath the treesA winter current made the bedclothes freeze

A grave as cold as seven endless wintersYet soon enough the blanket warmed like embersThe pillows of a sleeping maple rootPropped up my neck and grew around my foot

Above through loamy windows in the groundI saw December mauve and grey aroundWhere hills breathe through the centuries of sleepWhile dreaming myriads of cloudy sheep

As good a grave as any bed to tryIs soft enough to rest in when I dieAnd hear the larva and the beetle grubAgainst the living crocus rub and rub

This nether place, a dormitory earthHas much to recommend if death is birthAnd every sleep falls short enough to passWhen summer light comes raining through the glass


218


THE HOST

The cat is intelligent when she sniffsShe is a sacrament of oneHer life the prayer of pouncing monksAt service in the warming sun—Penance never, never neededA nap becomes her antiphonCharity the hard green lookThat blesses what it rests upon.

The cat’s a deacon and not a priestConfession, sorrow will not hearPrecious flesh abiding nowIn whatever host is near.

Through her, with her, in her liesThe salty blood that God transformsWhatever passion’s in her deathChrist breathes in—receives her breath.

Pavel ChichikovUndated

219


THE CHAPEL

There was a chapel heaven brightInside a whitened cell,Round windows twoRevealed one newAnd crucifying hell

Treasures and an altar stoodBehind a wrinkled veil,One vigil flameExtinguished blameThough darkness was its hood

A sanctuary vaulted upContaining wells of thought,Immensely deepTo draw and keepThe quenching of a cup

Beneath, a reliquary cryptReserved a buried sense,Inside the vaultNo mortal faultEffected recompense

The dura mater of His brainThe churches of His eyes,A toughened wallThat covered allHis fleshly sacrifice

He built in us as we in HimNo common flesh or fear,Behind the stoneOf One aloneNo heaven came as near


220


BEASTS

Tassel of the greening hillA poplar sapling growsCold the northern intervalWhere cattle muck and lowBut then begins the rising upAnd twisting of the trailsHemlock and the alder growIn creases of the valesI saw last night above the fieldThe spreading of the deerThat pull the stitching of the nightAnd thread the moonlight airSmooth as needles gleamingSeamless and undreaming


221


END YEAR

No coiling blizzard fearThe worm of snow not writhingInside the streetlight nearA rain is improvising,December is a wetUnfrozen silhouette

Shifting is the doveThe possum gleans the yardsCats in the alleys moveLike sudden leopardsTo find the shaking miceForsaken of the ice

Not once has winter buriedThe crocus in the driftsThe violet is unhurriedIn the black mistsThe flimsy petals drainingDroplets of the raining


222


GALLEY SLAVES

Lost is faith—it is a bride divorcedO herald seaWe are the ancients—future time is lostGod’s plenaryLegends disremembered—This is a sea unlovedO herald seaToday is history—and then mythology God’s plenaryO herald sea

Nothing saved—this ending of all endsO herald seaCompose our will—but take what He amendsGod’s plenaryIntentions fail—but something comes aboutO herald seaThough nothing moves—a wave sieves in and out God’s plenaryO herald sea

We have our names—in languages unsaidO herald seaBenches worn—the mountains to the bedGod’s plenaryThen one more pull—the ship begins to moveO herald seaA forward track—but water fills the grooveGod’s plenaryO herald sea

The ocean rests—but we go on the sameO herald seaAnd nothing moves—the legless ones are lameGod’s plenaryThe heat unseen—there’s nothing of a sunO herald seaAnd no one comes—pull down the golden OneGod’s plenaryO herald sea

223


We pull forever—smaller than the seaO herald seaWaves from somewhere break incessantlyGod’s plenaryO herald seaGod send

Pavel ChichikovJanuary 2, 1995

224


MY NAME

My name is Christopher, and on my backI bore but only once what I have lackedSmall child and yet a bigger one has neverWeighed so much—a burden of foreverMy legs are long, my shoulder bones are wideBut he from breast to hackle rides astrideThe waves come forward surging on my shinsIn all my strength I stride against my sinsDeeper on the bed of stones I sinkAs yet although I thirst I may not drinkUntil the ford of Majesty is wonAnd I have carried through His only SonNo fasting vigil, prayer or penance IHave ever practiced, yet my Lord is dryPraise Him who died for mercy on a treeWho child and man and traveler bore me


225


DEVONIAN WATER

Gelid windows form across the creek,All amber agate, isinglass of frostLocked within, a luminous long roomBut dimly moving, ferrous and antique—Insatiable, the gravid holinessOf time unrationed immanently flows,But which direction, sleeping or awake?Nothing born—this January—knows.Wide mouths, bronze carapaces, fins,Black bodies segmented and jawsOf coal-grey salamanders innocently sleepIn tepid currents, ignorant of sins—As if this giant time below a glassWere living once again behind the pastAnd parasites of some enormous willHad made the frozen water flow uphill.


226


COMMUTATION

Innocent as forest firesDestructive as a fire stormCharity ignites desiresEnds by keeping sinners warm

Corporation rats and magpiesMisers of a frugal daySpend their careful hordes of lies End by giving all away

Charity and death are equalPlus and minus, minus plusOne’s the end of all that’s evilThe other is the end of us


227


THE WEDDING

On the finger of EveAdam spears the iron ring.One winter-blooming daphne budsBut the cruel hooked roseScourges mist with scarlet grapples.All dustAwaits the endOf our incessant brood.Without one wordThe mass of life bears downGives birth to moreThan metal ringsOr wombs of clay.And then how beautifulThese brainless living thingsAnd then how flourishingEach winter day.


228


GOLD, IRON, SULPHUR, LEAD

Beside a wall of massive goldWhich does not weather, age or yieldI see a guard of iron stand Blackened sulphur screen and shield—It has no eyes or any faceA cylinder of lead on endContains the turret of a mindAnd thinks dark charity: defend—The sterile torso has no heartOr looping gut, it does not bleedOr pustulate, respire, rest,And never feels compelled to feed—Disfigured angel at the wallA blackened paradise withinA fortress of impenitenceMetallic pride, unyielding sin


229


ANNUNCIATIONFor J. V. E.

Only one story Comes down the long tube from heavenAnd the breast of a white bird—Pure light pours in

From the whitenessOutside the diamond glass of shadowsThe sky’s white sun—The noon glow

And the Virgin listensShe hears but does not see the wings—Defracted particlesOf light that sing

For in the beingWho laughs invisibly eternal peace Bloodflesh of lightWill never cease

Royal cope of cherriesRobe of the river’s deepest blueAnd a frame of wingsIn every hue

Like passion laughingIn the air of the cool grey churchThe fond petitionThat will not touch

And yet will soundIn the concentrated love of intercessionLike resonance—An angel’s mission

Her eye of seeingNo grasp retains of infinite temptationTo hold the knowingOf annunciation


230


VIRGIL

A sleeper lifts himself by pillowsAs runners by the bootstraps runUntil beneath the sacred willowThat shades his purgatoriumThe guide of intradreaming comesTo lead him from the shadows

Out through open fields of visionVirgil thrusts the sun with handsAnd rises with a deft precisionToward boroughs of the apple landsThe homeland of all indecisionWhere orchards of intention stand

Compression of the dream is upAnd he the root of other treesLike fire blazes step by stepIlluminating loathsome waysFor sleepers rising by degreesFrom rotting flesh to incorrupt

If there I could by harm or griefDiscover apples red by redAnd carry back as if a thiefThe living apples to my bedI would disprove the dead beliefThat nothing rises from the dead


231


IN LOVE

Something in a human love is sorrowful,Pity for the passing self, compassionOr beloved memory, the never Once again of decomposing beauty Yet love of God there is somehow Without the self and pity, grieving painUntouchable remorse or intimate defaultThere is instead engrossed annihilationThat fills all counterfeit of self with joyAnd nothing but the syllable of HimThe cadenced infinite, the WordIn love—the word of God forever—Each phoneme one beloved said and spokenAnd all in Him one syllable unbroken


232


FALSE VERDICT

King Snake supple black and yellow Grid of ebony and morningRound the arm of Adam’s womanYou coiled, a bracelet self-deformingYour beauty smooth and passionlessFlexible reflected light Embraced infatuated EvaSoft and hard you fastened tightCold of eye, expressionlessLucifer of night

Fearless climber, thoughtless hunterEfficient killer of regretYou in forests what you seemInvisible in silhouette—Who would find malevolenceOr dark insatiable intrigueThe impulse of your innocenceTo glide and coil and feed:It was the sin of Adam’s mindTo curse your kind


233


FLORIDA

Shadow government of gracklesParliament of poised egretsSenates of the snake-necked swansAnd ministries of owletsBlack-shelled turtles scrape a quorumSiphon noses ploughing mudBluegills caucus in the shallowsVeto larvae from the floodLittle herons, storks, anhingasAlligators on the shoalLegislate the laws of eonsTurning forests into coalRains of years fall into poolsAnd only men are stately fools


234


THE CAVE

Green python river’s lazy rollingCurved enamel scaled by falling leavesAnd palm trees shedding frizzled coirThe stream uncoils between saw tooth palmettoBream and bluegill floating in its gutsAnd blackshelled turtle siphoning the muckIt flows not monstrously but wiseGreen backed, dim and yielding underneathTime unconstrained and copious with heronsCormorants and serpent eyed egretsHow can it know and yet rememberAll the centuries it has engulfedIn sliding mouths of constant flowing?The warm sun moves this ectothermic streamWhich does not writhe except in faithful contoursPrayerful shrugs against the nether bank—It is godfearing, heavy and prudentialDenning in eternity and coming out.


235


ESCAPE

Death is something that goes in circlesA worm, a snake, a poisoned beeDeath returns to its derivationDeath from mouth to mouth againDeath the archetype of monotony

I did address a grave diversionFour dead men—or the four windsOr the four colors of death’s rainbowWere dumbly eulogized by me

Blue and green, red and black Round they went toward the finish lineAngels fanned with paper wingsAll were tasting death’s white jelly

Insensible the swarms of wordsTwitch their legs like dying beesDeath’s black honey my pilgrim’s shareI went alone toward the dark trees

Pavel ChichikovJanuary 19–21, 1995

236


THE HUMAN MIND

The human mind is less acuteThan larvae gnawing on a shootNo locust, chafer or mosquitoDressed in godlike indignationBlames an earthquake for creationThereby proving innocentInsects more intelligentThan anthropoidal incognitosAnd Adam stupider than beetles


237


PUNCH AND JUDY

All piety infectedBlack prayers of rhetoricGangrenous the swellingOf the wounded derelictWith all our eyes averted

Grey skinned, a mumbling PunchJudy stays her paceHis head is twisted three o’clockWhen six is face to faceAnd all our eyes averted

Foot an oozing sacrament In the calyx of his sockSlime and blood the exudateThe stamen turning blackWith all our eyes averted

See the swollen madnessAs pustular as kindnessOr charity infected withA rheum of common blindnessAnd all our eyes averted

The winter sun is chalkCovering his chairAll of us are passingWho never stop or stareWith all our eyes averted


238


WINTER SUN

Long vibrating sun of January dawnRed still penetrated by the kneeling blackDeeper than the blood of living beastsBlack scarlet, dried carmine, long in waveA tidal necromancy of the soulA flood through naked coral of the treesA massive corpus lifting from the nightA crimson wave ascending from the waterA genuflecting ponderable sunIn prayer and meditation on our nothingYour waves hematic roll, infuse the branchesThe batlike-bodied oak leaves hang and chitterAnd as the sixth and second planets shoutThey fall and briefly meeting gutter outWith all of immortality dispersed in glareThe life unseen suffusing everywhere


239


TRUTH CONFESSOR

Truth Confessor never breaks the sealTall priest whose face is known but never namedAll secrets come to him who never speaksWho yet absolves the wordless of their blameI saw the face of water kneel and flowHe listened to the words erase a stoneAll time confesses variable sinsBy all the many falling into oneHow many sins the appetites confessedAnd yet with hunger swallowed up the blessingThunderstorms anonymously blessedAnd apple trees were ripened with confessing


240


THE MOON-HORNED BEAST

Quarter-moon to crown his headStar of Venus on the crownAnthropoid an almost manGrinding flesh to make his bread

Feeds the yeast of many treesFires ovens with the forestsKneading children water doughGrain of mountains is his harvest

Grinning hot and round of crustLoaves of sacrifice and ashesCooling in amorphous dustSkulls of eucharistic masses

Slaying-murder is his churchCommon blasphemy the priestAltar of uncommon dreadThe table of the moon-horned beast

As if a long-abandoned dogHow your mercy follows meGrimacing and coweringUnrequited loyalty

God the long-mistreated curWears the whip’s imprimaturAnthropoid the moon-horned guestWears the planets on his breast


241


LION FIRE

What do I live for? says the bird,Seeds and gravel, worms and stones,Then wherever I live and dieOther birds will peck my bones

What do I live for? says the snake,Mice and lizards, eggs and birds,Then however I slither homeI cast my garment afterwards

What do I live for? says the beast,Yellow as summer afternoons,Chase and kill the smoking meatLive forever dying soon

What do I live for? says the ape,Walking upright, speaking words,Nothing but my heart’s desire,And that was lost in lion fire

Lion fire rounds the gardenParadise a fence with flameCherubim defend the faithConsumed in agonies of shame


242


TRINITY

With grace digestible as fruitTo make all simpler for youHe built a universe of brickOne room, one sympathy, one view

Outside the window kindly seeOne star, one world, one continentA single house of one room tooYourself return the gaze you sent

And here no time is ever spentEconomy of happenstanceImpedes the holy povertyBefore and after innocence

One person in this universePreserves a double effigyBut never in this lonelinessWill ever be a Trinity


243


THE SHRINE

Ever I had diedThe exits closed on meOn radio proclaimedAs one who’d never be

The parks secured by duskThe birds dismantled nestsIcy were the pasturesGrass packed up in chests

Faint the Father’s PondThe lime trees overcastLittle BronnayaGloomy Moscow vast

Birch in verdigrisClacked their bony cleftsIce the fleece of sheepA warp in winter’s weft

Now the winter ravens Told Her of Tikhvin“Friend of ours in winterLet mortals follow sin”

Then she rose in sweetnessGold and meadow red“Ravens of the riverFollow me instead”

Warm her yellow pathwaySweet the autumn birchFollowing the candleShining in her church

Silver was the frameworkDarkened was her faceBowing were the candlesFlaming in her grace


244


NODAY

The sun is leavingFarewell, farewellAnd where it is goingNo one can tellDim the dayFlaccid the grassDrooping the leavesIn night’s trespassThe stars appearThis afternoonVenus shinesOn the earth too soonBirds retireAnd mice with wingsTwitter and flutterThe crickets singSmaller and smallerBecomes the starWhere is it going?Is it going far?Smaller and smallerA shield then a sparkAnd all the seasClash in the darkColder and biggerThe waves rear highAnd then in silenceStiffen and dieOceans, mountainsCome to the nightStarlight starlightStarlight bright

Pavel ChichikovFebruary 1, 1995

245


BLINDNESS

Behind the altarpiece sits God the FatherAll can see Him yet the crown of graceShines with only commonplace effulgenceMotes of dust obscure His shining faceLappets of the forests touch His shouldersSpume of diamonds hems a mantle seaYet before these polychromic gloriesPenitents compress their miseriesGod the Father sends them light to pray withSolid as the mountain of His throneDispersed between the fountain and the altarNone can see the Father, but the SonPainfully descending from the crossPrays beside the sightless and the lost


246


ADORATION

I went to see you Lord, beneath the crossNot to clack the beads or mutter wordsIndemnify a loss or loss avoidBut there to lose the drift in gentle sleepTo sleep upright and by my sleeping prayWhatever peace might keep of peace todaySo you behind the window of your eyeKept watching silently for silent snowSignificant as psalmodies from ambosFor each long wave of sleet and windIs like the Fall unsinned, a blizzard fateBy harmony contained, hexagonally made,And you from everlasting calmness cameTo one asleep awaking from a dreamAnd smoothed the waving blanket of the stormThe freezing wind to let the corpus warm


247


EYELESS NIGHT

An evening rush toward dark, a milk-blue fieldSnow and ragged alders pollarded by windGrave hemlocks pauperized, by frost revealed,A grey stream turning blacker in the blindDementia of February light—What standing creature moves a human bone?A pine tree moves in motioning the night—Whose breathing strides my footsteps in his fright?The bellows breathing is my ownUneyed serpent runnels of the creekSmooth and probe the barrows of their beds,Alone, decapitated as they seekTheir senseless, blunt triangulated headsNow in Jesus’ name it is the duskWhere nothing finds a motive in the snowNeeding none infatuates a lustFor seeing rage where malice never goes


248


JOSHUA

This morning once I saw his burning bushNot more perhaps than just a solar flare—The wild southeast of winter’s hush—Strong and lurid in a seething prayerMajestic in its solemn sullen rageSpeechless, imageless, unfairAnd far, adored by sycophantic clouds,An omen of a later heatless glareBut still within itself unblamed and proudThat said “see me,” as if it spoke aloud,Exhibitionistic and indifferent starSo great and yet without a brain to bearAn unashamed beauty or despairAll-seeing us without a looking eyeAnd truthful, though not needful of a lie,A self-sufficient comeliness of lightUnconscious in its mockery-delightThat when I once approached to hear it speakIt burned and climbed though lacking any willIn voiceless blazing symmetry stood stillTill Jericho surrendered to the weakAnd Eliyahu mounted on the air


249


PHOENIX

Could the world be set on fire?Only if the world were drier—Flagrantly a hard small sparkPrecedes resumption of the dark—Dry the oceans first before,Wet planets make a tinder poor

Winter forests dry as thatchSupernova for a matchAll of earth should conflagrate—What God creates He uncreates

Molten minerals produceThe daffodil, the oak, the spruce

Permanence is consolation

Still unseen I know a door(Behind the wind I am unsureOf every shape a soul may takeWhen souls and bodies both awake)That leads to where a phoenix burns—The living from the phoenix learnThen as bright as fire’s fleshPass through what they have seen before


250


WALKING HOME

Now in the sleeves of an old white coatThe owl hides and clears her throatThrough the milk of the afternoonShe begs the night to find her soonDeep in the woods where hemlock growBlue and bluer with drifting snowThe empty sockets of the woodGrow eyes of dark incertitudeThe ash and maple bend and groanAnd wind like water roams aloneThe hungry ravens whet their beaksAbove the path the traveler seeksThe drifts are high above the kneeBut up the hill toward home goes heAnd hears the breath come from his mouthUpward, higher, home is south


251


THE FELLING

Beyond the maple-oak tree gladeI hear the knock of startling bladesThe white flesh of the ash tree springsAnd driven steel like sorrow ringsSorrow’s pain is evil’s betterSorrow’s torment our CreatorSorrow’s tree that carries oneCross of wood and then falls downBack and forth the parallaxOf lunar saw and solar axeAs all the men and women fallOne by one so down come allDown they come, their branches breakWhat sorrow needs our God will takeOur sorrow breaks and needs the limbBut no love lost that sorrows Him


252


JACOB

Now he stops and reads his bookAnd nothing passes but the streetFrail and youngish, thin and stoopedAs motionless as walls and trees

His work is to be mad todayThe office of the mute he readsBut what he thinks no one can sayExcept to follow where he leads

Up and down the sky is tallEscaping angels writhe aloftAnd shout like boys who climb a wall“Come up with us, our sky is soft”

If only he could see the place From which the curb goes up like smokeReflecting print returns his faceAnd mirrors are an angel’s joke

Angels in relenting lightReach out their hands to pull him inBut though he feels their appetiteHis madness is a discipline

Cramped and straitened, stunted griefGrows up a tree without a rain,Planted in the morning streetHe will be late for work again


253


PERENNIAL

Suppose all life from clay to clayIs one fine cosmic winter dayThe kind that winter often sproutsWhen crocus pokes its petals out—The sun-devoured dirty snowSinks back to show the grass belowAll withered like a mummy’s headBut green enough, and myriad,To grow when there is equinox And shoots of snowdrop mix with phlox;But then the February thawGrows insolently cold and rawAnd slaps the flowers undergroundA brutal, normal turnaround;There is no other way, perhapsTo see life’s bright uncommon lapseFrom universal desolationThan death’s declined interrogationAnd consciousness a nanotrendBetween two nights of neverend;But if I would see more than thisAnd hope for something more than blissThat gathers like a fattened seedAnd goes to ground a mortal weedI come to nothing more or lessThan what my sacrifices blessThe stubborn will to undelightThe confiscating appetite,To live eternal in one breathThat gives and loves and conquers death.


254


FROM THE TREE

Fat crow and shiny on a ragged oakBow and warn the frozen fields and flocksTorn as rotten sheeting is your throatAnd guttural the sending of your croak—Pliers are your mandibles of blackButtoned are the buttons of your eyesFrostbite the plumage of your breastYour winter-shrunken stomach is a sack—Lanky flap the crutches of your wingsA beggar on a boulevard are youBut then you commandeer a squirrel kitAnd pulley it aloft on spider strings—Heartless and commendable the crowAnd those of us the same, the same we know


255


CORPUS

If God gives, I will assume a nameFloating in a sea, my mother’s womb

If God gives, crawl up and sighSlime of heaven’s heart

If God givesIf God gives

Light my eyes will see, all shadows’ wingsAnd birds of sight disclose my heaven’s lightDescend like spirits, flaming summer bright

And allOne fall

A comingFrom foreverTo my height

Sublime my heartIf God gives

With allHis voicesRisen to

One tombHe sings

If God givesIf God gives


256


WARBLER

A pile of smoky feathers and a headAre all that’s left of what has overwinteredNot even blood or bone depositedInseminates the frost a thaw has splinteredA feral cat, a possum or a ratHas carrioned or killed the grams of meatThat exercised, with black and yellow cap,A song machine arrested by the sleetThe eye that snapped with black is numbly whiteThe insect-pecking mandibles unpinnedAnd plumage that companionated flightAchieves a black annulment from the windNow be deathly innocent of griefDecay the splendid beauty and its thief


257


WINTER’S GLASS

Winter’s glass, transparent frostA lens of night by day is lostAnd rivers flowing brown opaqueAre carried off by duck and drakeSilent paddles are their oarsAs breast to breast they pass the shoresThey disappear behind a bendThe current finds the future’s endAnd there a self I do not ownIs carried swiftly to its homeAll silence is identityThe future, past and now are threeDivisions of a single lawA soul subliming in a thawAnd nothing consequently lostExcept the shining of the frost


258


BASILICA

The first sleep is over, and in the darkThe next sleep begins, and he awakesBeneath the dome of memory, pantocrator—The cherubim and angels of an open doorLook beneath from curving space and timeAnd see the past and future meet as rain,The black floor gives nothing to reflectThe circumstantial shuffling of the intellectWalls lean interpenetrating left and rightBut never meet in curving through the arch of sightThe altar is an exponential apogeeAn apse behind receding to eternityAnd he awakes from recollecting nightWhere living darkness vested in the sacristy


259


SNOWMAN

Heavenly invention of the melting snowAt first the one we built was Adam’s positiveRound head, white heart and frozen through and throughA blood of crystal, moody, hypersensitive—

If covered by the clouds the sun withdrewHe braced himself and postured in the windAnd when the February thaw broke throughHe negatively sagged and melting, sinned—

Even God-expelled our Adam-EveThough weeping did not melt away like snowBut nothing that’s sublimed can be retrievedEvaporating lives the ones we know

Our vapor that’s solidified a seasonCan laugh and speak and exercise its reason


260


GROUP HOME

The swart cough of a sintered lungExpels the mucus from his breathThe one whom we shat forth as dungConsumes a purging cigarette,Even blizzards suck him forthTo occupy a darkling’s porch,Smokes he night, the night smokes himA faceless coprolitic torch,Mad and meagre, singed and signedNot one surprise he ever knows, His indigent dependencyIs only burned but never grows,And we who keep him pass as graceThat never pentecosts his face


261


THE EXECUTION

Endless afternoon’s in placeA wedge of hours limes my glassSummer welds the shadows’ massAgainst the pavement’s carapace

Heat and vodka flick the baitAnd words like piscine flickeringUprise and show the scaly traitOf gossiping and snickering

Drink the drunken afternoonImbibe as if the summer flowedThe sun a punctured ur-balloonIs soon to crumple and unload

Those faces flushed with summer bloodRemembered now as sensitiveDeparted or corrupted woodMy brain their representative

As dreams we thought ourselves aliveWe embryo realitiesOur life too plausible to thriveThe death of sainted sanities

How real were they, are they, those menAnd women of the summer heatThey lived or might be living thenIf ageing memory’s complete

The summer shoots and will shoot yetTo pay a violated debtOblivion that will not restThe sun a bullet in the chest

Who will forgive? no grace Absolves a mimicry of dying wordsBefore and now and after thisWe execute more thieves than gods


262


HOW DEATH APPEARED

An arm recurved and made an armThe first event would be a brave self-harmBefore there was a sympathetic brainAn Abel self-created by a Cain

The block reached forth and carved a reaching selfIts arm extended from the conscious massA cube of solid unforgiving stoneIt was itself creator of itself alone

Then to show it was the self-electIt separated self from self with neckCurls of granite flew away like bloodAnd that is how the stone self-understood

The head emerged by carving self creationGouging eyes to see its own dimensionsWeeping found itself afraid of nightFor comforting the stone created light

After light it stabbed and pulled a mouthNostrils dug for breathing in its worthIn to live and out to speak, it saidI am myself the everliving bread

A torso with immense self-giving painWas murdered out of granite by this CainThen by referent self-making artIt made and set to pumping from its heart

It wasn’t life but self-regarding cloneThat carved itself unmoving from a stoneBut then it caused its walking to beginBy splitting leg from leg and sin from sin

A moving stone would never come to liveUnless it learned the lesson to forgiveThough head and body, heart and moving legIt was a granite self-despising egg

It turned in six directions never seeingAnother carved comparison of being,So pitying the Father on His throneReturned the self-created to the stone

263


Pavel Chichikov—February 24, 1995

264


GOBLIN

Under winter-blackened leavesA pedestal of dirty snowElf-altar, wind-carved tableDwarf that will not melt or grow

A stub of manna, weird tabooPreserved, a capuchin of dirt,Snowfleshed manikin that grewSquatly with a maple shirt

And also in the breast of usA goblin of resistant coldIs buried under rotting leavesProlonged but never old


265


THE SHALLOWS

In the face of water as it flowsThe shoulder it bears to the shoreThe gloss of the feathers of ducksThe shade of green leaves slidingIn the mass of clouds The heavy lean of windsThe gospel comes, good news That all is ending wellThat never ends again

The shallows of His eyesAll the living seekWho nestle in the reeds


266


FIRST FLOWERS

Celandine and bitterwort, Speedwell, veronicaShrug and pull their boggy socksJust above the equinoxFlowerets the size of eyesSquinting in a mole’s surmiseFebruary’s flock unsealedScattered in a soggy fieldFirst to flower and to growPatches like unmelted snowTrue as ikonsEarly yellowUnderneath, a buried fellowBeak and body gnawed uponFebruary’s tomb is iceBuried like a bird is Christ


267


THE INSURRECTION

Barely kindled is the meagre sunWhen all at once the battle is begunA pair of silent ordinary crowsIs having at a hawk above the meadowsFreely in the prairie of the airThe intersecting parabolic pairSlide in almost frictionless attackAgainst the raptor’s talons and its backGlancing at the delta of its rudderThey cause the prince to jink and then to flutterWhile commoners of crows within the treesAre set to common cawing as they pleaseThey chatter in their sub-Edenic talkAbout the sinless hunting of the hawk


268


GREY FLOCKS

The sky says nothing southern and the bentLaryngeal cherry speaks no wordsCommons of the subsoil is our LentEyelids of magnolia buds are blindFor eyes themselves are shuttered by their rind—Tongues of dogwood smother on the curdsOf undigested holly from the birdsAnd March of paralytics makes a monthAs water rain dilutes a rain of turds

The penitential winter has not sent(Though February kneels on mucky knees)A green replacement for the chickadeesThose flying balls of sooty excrement—This cemetery season shovels SpringA corpse digs up itself, uncoffining


269


THE ROOM

When Lord-God opened Adam’s head(Our primal father was in bed)He saw what no one lives to tellAbyssal truth, a somber well,Forever—in a cranial cupFrom which by grace He drew it upA foaming drink of solute timeA mix of mercy, chaos, rhymeAnd then He held the blackened brewIn starbright fingers running throughA fall of everliquid nightThe tendrils of immortal sightAnd this we drink whenever sleepRips off the cover of the deepBut such as we, in footing’s slipTake only one—a mortal sipThough even that upon the tongueMakes vision drunk, senescence young,And so I saw beyond a roomThrough window glass nocturnal gloomAnd there a wolf beside a poolA world wolf waiting, hieroduleOf something old, unsatisfiedThat never lives but never diesAnd we within though dream-enclosedAre still expectant, real, exposed


270


OMNIPOTENS AETERNE DEUS

The throne of judgment is a roomHe can as spirit fit Himself withinIntimate, we two alone, discussWhat particle of good, what of sin,Face to face, a face I can endureDisposes to confession and to cureI am the woven thread, He is loomOmnipotens aeterne Deus

Basilicas of spaceHis chapels range along the naveHazelnut dimensions cover usHe in mercy frank disposed to save,A friend He gazes in my fearful eyesNothing I have done He will despiseA face I can endure, this loving faceOmnipotens aeterne Deus

Every word I warm with loveFor words of His illuminate like sunsDo not be frightened of His gentle syllabusNo hypocritic judge He is like earthly onesThough Lord of finite mindsHe is the loving face and vision of the blindSees within, before, and from aboveOmnipotens aeterne Deus

Though great, as small as IHe is my equal in humility Equal more to every trustFor He returns eternity to lending thievesGives His love, all-creating GodEven them who scourged Him with a rodIf they be gentle now as was the lambOmnipotens aeterne Deus


271


FORTY DAYS

Was it the desert, the Arava, The devil led our Jesus throughThe desert of the earth, the red,The ochre and the distant blue?How terrifying day and nightOne blind of midnight, one of noon,The tent of sunrise blown awayThe tent of David’s sterile crown—Our desert of the endless testHas no escarpment, bedouin,The empty and unlimited Ends nowhere or Jerusalem


272


SAVERS

From the parapet of peaceJerusalem the uterineThe sacred amniopolisI threw myself to spaceAnd he who caught me by the footA saver of the seraphimThen dangled me as once did JohnA fish to show a fishermanAnd said: “I will in future timeAnd many times catch up this foolFor though its Lord was tempted onceIt will be tempted as a rule.”The angel sadly set me down,A bawling urinating clown,That first one of the miracles.


273


ONE BABEL

Late winter rain becomes a seaThe sea a mountain-gulping snakeAnd if the world were small as meI might an eyelid-refuge takeTo build a cabin in a poreAnd use a lash to semaphore

The sea would rise about the noseAnd cast its breakers on the bridgeDisturb my browhung safe reposeA physiognomic sacrilegeAnd there in Babel I’d complainAgainst this disrespectful rain

Still the drowning sea would riseA seacave make of both the earsFlood the skull with cold surpriseA roaring foaming aquasphereSo then amongst the sodden hairI’d find the refuge of despair

But even worlds are smaller than(Compared to everlasting God)A living woman or a man,Sheltered as the peas in podsThey grow in safety on a vineBetween the rain and harvest time


274


THE VISITOR

The wind goes ambling on the earthAnd nudges down his blackthorn caneLight goes lightning down the sideFrom cloud to earth and back againThe wind goes on from place to placeThe clouds like puppies in a trace

He stumbles on a wooden churchWhile rambling south from nervous seasHe rattles windows, shakes the pewsAnd notices by slow degreesHis Lord and Master in a hutchWhom none may see but all may touch

Why have they put you, Jesus, Lord,Inside a house so small and lowCome sit upon me, Master dearAnd travel with me while I blowFrom Cancer south to CapricornTo sound the equinoctial horn

The Lord says nothing in replyBut listens while the fibers snap,The wind sits down in empty pewsAnd sunlight swivels in his lapUntil it’s time to blow againThe vigil ended with his Friend


275


THE WEB

In cords of humid silverArachnids bind and purlTense and pale as platinumMesh adheres to worldsTangled on our buildings Windows shut and sealedWrapping in its glistenAll the sun revealsMasks opaque and tremblingForests held in shroudsTents of smothered flowersStationary cloudsWebs of sterile sackingShrouds of binding liesSpinnerets foreverSecreting from our eyes


276


DYING BIRD

The dying bird spreads out its wingsSphinx of death in life give answerBreast to earth no salvo singsWhat commonplace do you encounter?How much my rigid pity stingsAs if the poison pinned my soulTo see a pretty thing despairInstead of melting into air

I will like you display in deathThe reach and poise of feathered wingsFor since all birds and men lift breathTheir flying speaks and speaking singsAnd both beloved of the OneExalt the rising of His Son


277


THE LAND OF UNLIKENESS

The land of unlikeness where Nazareth seesDisciples sleeping under the treesOil of His blood drips from His heartAnd prayer from His praying without any art:“Let me not go where comfort is blindUnder the olives no comfort to findOnly the meaningless shadow and moonThat I must disperse in beginning at noon—Body and blood is oblivion’s breadTorn and devoured as soon as I’m dead,Pressed in the pressing, oil running outDarkens the ground like a shadow of doubtAnd all that I know has come to this fewWho leave me forsaken and sleep in the dew.”


278


EMPTY TOWN

The little grey dog runs down the streetLost and alone its Lord to seek Frantic eyes and swollen tongueHeaving chest and pumping lungTracking through the compass roseAway from what the mongrel knowsFollowing scents and signs of meatA bloody bone, a bitch’s heatNow it’s dusk, dark to comeIt can’t remember where it’s fromGutters dry and alleys deadEmpty, empty mongrel’s headOnly the thoughts of Kingdom comeGo back again where they came fromPray that mongrel may be foundThat runs alone through Empty Town


279


BUSINESS

The son of Man is takenNot for bread and saltSilver bread is brokenFor which the Man is bought

Snatchers in the shadowsSteal the Child of lifeSoother of the sorrowsButchered with a knife

Chief of all the robbersGibbets improvises,Perjury and slanderSummon the assizes

Commoners and paupersGamble at the crossMerchants and maraudersSell Him at a loss

Watchers and betrayersDenounce their only hopeTorturers and slayersStrangle on their rope

Selling as they borrow They notarize the debtHe the Son of sorrowsPaying for it yet


280


SANCTUARY

Ghost of remorse, and ghost againDissipates in the summer sunWaterfalls around the rocksFall and fall like ticking clocksThe clouds rise up to block the viewOf Edens old and Edens newWalls of cloud with deeps and furrowsCatacombs and goblin burrows

Come along to see the caveOf sanctuary Jesus madeAnd there beside the climbing flameSilence, peace and mercy seem As if a wall of cloud belowReceded infinitely now


281


THE RUBRIC

Magnolia holds its chalice blooms aloftThe outer petals purple, cool and soft,A wine of anthers tightly sacrificedIs drunk within from linings of the white, Kneel and sip the congregating beesThat toward the first of April drink these treesAnd mockingbirds puffed out, with seedling eyes,Begin their nesting, sing and sermonize,Thrushes pull their sacramental wormsFrom pyxes of the earth, the garden bermsAnd starlings on the pavement of the grassAre bowing their responses to the Mass,Sacristans unfolding in the treesPrepare the summer vestments of the breeze


282


SAY I

We’ve always known God, you seeBut we don’t want to talk about himOr look at him—He follows us around with pleading eyes Or sometimes hovers overhead, in the shape of a birdWatching the fallow heat of a midsummer field—In the legs of a large green grasshopperWith a striped bellyHe jumps at our feetAnd buries himself in the tangled stalks of hay—He peers within as the oblong of moonlight windowsAnd pastes the floor with shapeless light—He’s there but never thereAnd always I see him:A dart stuck in the skyOr a quivering bowstring, invisible—Where I am to be when he comes?Just wait, he saysJust waitFor I’ll be there when you need meAnd when you need me, I’ll be there,And I reply:As much as I know, I know,Say I


283


CANTICLE

Mother of mercy to you we cryBanished from Eden your children dieMourning and weeping our tears are rainThat falls from clouds engorged with painBut now this morning the alder’s downBurns the wax of the rising sunAnd buds like tapers burst aflameHeld to a light we cannot nameExiled here we may not singA canticle opposed to springOr see your Son with eyes grown blindOr come to heaven’s gate refinedWe mixtures of a joyful mudRejoice to see the alders bud


284


THE MEADOW

Coreopsis and cinquefoilAround the spring of April coilInseparable from the riseOf light’s ecliptic through the skies

Fields of thirsty springing greenBlades and lobes and spades are seen Nesting circlets holding crownsOf yellow heads above the groundImages of light belowThey vibrate when the breezes blowAnd jangle silently like bellsWithout their clappers or their knells

Trajectories from long agoCast the seeds to where they grow:A Plantsman of the virgin primeThumbing Earth, a seed in timeFertilized the soil of spaceWith some of time and some of grace


285


CREATION

The wind a random signal?Nicodemus, wait, you will hearThe voice of the wind draw nearElijah’s wind, soft, calm and thinChanting hymns of cherubimTurning round their shining wheels All the words the winds’ alleleWhite noise the Lord’s call.

Down by the river the water’s darkFlows from the water’s running workSpreads in the shriveled reeds and spillsFlowing among the April hillsA form like water, thin and blackAnd there the fertile night comes back


286


O MY RIVER

Do I end said the river, running, do I?Showing its shining teeth to the skyOver the edge of a granite shoalWavelets of ivory sparkle and rollMy end a beginning, vapor on highI rain on a mountain and flow from the sky

Do I end? said the woman, lover and friendNever, forever these messages send:Over the edge of dying I fellFlowing like water from heaven to hellBut then like a sun my Lord drew me upAnd drank me like wine from His bottomless cup

Did I end? said my father, where did I go?Over the edge of dying we flowDown to the sea of forever we glideAs rivers of water flowed from His sideWe from the wounds of the present and pastDrink of forever, ocean at last


287


PROPHETS

In daylight the water of speaking and sightBut all revelation depends on the night Those who rise early, when day is asleepKnow of the hour when breathing is deepAnd vision is inward, affixed to a zoneExciting the dreamer beside us to groanDark in the valley of death comes the oneWho gathers the blossoms of kingdoms to comeThose of the past and the future entwineHands of the briar and hands of the vineBlossoms of daylight and blossoms of nightMix with the petals of faith and of frightAll that he gathers he holds in his armsWhile birds of awakening sing their alarms


288


THE SHIPWRECK

An undiscovered island is the One,Rises bluff and forepeak from the sea,Lonely is the shipwreck of a woman,Sons and husband dead, at seventy

Feral empty coast, a land corruptSterile fevers infiltrate their dustSerpents of her memories rear upScales of iron animate their rust

Loneliness consumes the iron dead Loneliness the ribald and the lewdLoneliness unspeakable and sourLoneliness humiliating, shrewd

Abasement of the living left to live—The only panacea is to give


289


PERFORMANCEFor T.R.

You train yourself to grief each dayTo weep and to repineLike dancers letting go the barreYour dead in mortal grand jete,Three weightless griefs who raise themselvesAbove the soul, three greedy starsTo fascinate and shine.

As dead they come: “Do not repine, Therese,Much safer than you living onesWe have no need to glitter griefBut let us living go, releaseAbsolves the soul who makes immortals danceWhen they would be at peace,Your husband and your sons.”


290


REVENANTS

A liter of whiskey every dayAn insult to the brainAnother flings herself through spaceInfatuate, or just insane

As if a door were openedAnd nothing inside to seeEach soul of God who goesTo her impetuous eternity

I can’t listen—let them speakLet them be found and followedReturn them from where dumbDeath has gnashed and swallowed

Would they kill themselvesUnraveled if they knewHow much of love to learn from deathWhen dying let them through

Take them—release themAffirm them with Your nameWe who could not listen longerAccept the blame


291


MUSEUM

I saw the Pharaoh Lucifer Aloft in a dark galleryHis stomach on a pedestalHis skullcap made of ironAnd though he flew in placeHis arms were stretched in flightIron legs awayLong hair streaming out(Waves of metal hair)Traveling through the airOblivious he rodeUnstatic not ecstaticSilent, moving, stillSufficient in his willWhere was he going?

In another hall I sawA throneroom and a throneA king was seated thereEmperor and slaveArrogant of fleshRed with brilliance—But Lucifer departedUnmothlike from the lightI would most thankful beIf he would not see me


292


O BLESSING

Just once to seeO Blessed GodThe flightfeathers of the crowThe droop and twist of the long shaftsThe light rebuffedAnd then from the river scrubA mockingbird, a henRoll her belly sidewaysWing the river thenJust once to see, my Savior Heaven’s shadow


293


SEVEN SONG

Stoop-shouldered PrideSlavering GreedEros the stupidEnvy the weedAnger the swollenGlutton the baseLazy the witlessFalls on his faceAll of them offspringOf Adam the roverWho gave up a kingdomTo scuff the world overRoam the world overTo puzzle and sweatFrom morning to moonriseHe’s doing it yetThose are his childrenHis fatuous CainsIf Eden were hisHe would do it againDo it againHe never will learnThough swords of the angelsWhistle and burnThose are his childrenAlthough he dissembleThe father deniesBut the offspring resemble


294


THE IDIOT

You are old, the dying sun is red and Life recedes, the warmth declines,Spin decrepit world in five times tenHours of the ancient kind—Old world, and you still graceful weaveExhausted sterile seas, immenseTheir saline waves heave up to sieveAnd wash the withered continents—One last human soul their guestThe battered hills his universityAn immigrant from borrowed dustHe lives from sanity to sanity—And still the serpent calls him backUnprofited with old advice:“Take up this fruit and nothing lackAnd be eternal master of this paradise.”


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