Finals Week, December 1992

We come behind them with our harrow now,
Raking apart their blurry fantasies,
Searching for the impression of the plow
On earth as smooth and seamless as the seas.
We troll the open pages in our scow,
Scooping the flotsam of their mysteries,
And bobbing strained and seasick in the wake
Of Yeats and Coleridge, Dickinson and Blake.

Even the captain dangles, pale and sick,
Over the railing, striving to repress
The weary heave that rises from the thick
And sodden curds that were his breakfast mess.
Digestion fails us as across the slick
We in our flat-hulled, yawing boat digress.
We chew our scraps and say we do not smell
The rotten sweetness of the rising swell.

Down in the murk, the rippling horrors twine
About the salt-encrusted ribboned spars
That Adrienne went down alone to find.
Orc's ruddy flames lick toward the battle-cars
That tumble in the current; and the brine
Runs trickling in between the pulsing stars
That lit the prayers beneath the old oak tree.
Among them, their creators mold the sea.

Dark in a blaze of emeralds and blues,
The ride like hags the fierce, resistant swirls,
Forcing the eddies into shapes they choose
To couple with. Blake slavers for the girls
He fashioned from the bubbling, pearly ooze
Of his infected ego; as he whirls,
He passes Coleridge groping through the brine
The blood-distended breasts of Geraldine.

And fathoms deeper, blacker waters churn
And spumes of grey silt stagger in the clash
Of will against the red desires that burn
The rhyme and beat and rhythm into ash.
The strong here scourge their demons, then return--
As Daisy pants beneath the Master's lash--
The weak here take their demons at their word,
And crazy Yeats grows jealous of a bird.

I will no longer blink what I have seen
Twist in the deep, but drag it dripping slime
Onto the beach, and though it turn me green
About the gills, I'll show the sun, this time,
The foulness writhing underneath the sheen--
The blood that spirals toward the thirsty grime,
The bloating victims of that silent war,
The priestess gang-raped on the bloodied floor.

They had me believing it;
I thought as my teeth broke the skin
That I would die with the juice in my mouth.

I don't know what he said
To make that wax-skinned globe worth death.
I had no practice in decisions.

I expected a crunch, sweetness,
Not this softness melting into juice
Salty warm like my own blood.

The flesh was coarser near the core,
Mealy, texture more than taste,
Rough with little lumps, chafing

My palate, lips and cheeks,
Leaving my empty mouth
Cool and damp, scoured smooth

As the waveworn walls
Of a cavern
The tides have beaten glassy.

My tongue lingered, still lingers over
A fleeting shadowtaste
Not sour, bitter or sweet;

A residue of presence,
Like the scent among trees
After the wind has gone.

I tasted memory;
Tasted my own desire,
My hollow craving for that tasteless fruit.

I wanted more. And then I knew
What death was for--to end desire
For what could not satisfy

That only death could end
This newborn hunger, since neither having
Nor not having would do, now I had chewed

The pasty pulp of knowledge.
I ran my tongue over the lips
That no longer seemed mine.

I saw my children
Leaving tracks in blood
And ink as they struck out

To find time's wellspring
And there the root, the one true name
Of their desire--crazy to know

The shape, the smell, the taste
Of what they thirst obscurely for,
To claw a way to me and my temptation.

I thought, when they dig it up at last
This shriveled core, mother and object
Of all their lusts, and even truth

Cannot glut their cravings,
And they know what I see--
That their splendid awful things,

Bright snapping banners, lance points,
Whirling blades and steam,
Flames, iron, churches--

The children of their burning restlessness--
Are all pale flowers of the wax-leafed tree
Sprouting from the round black seeds

Winking inside the browning core
Left sticky in my hand--
Will they go mad, or die?

I no longer saw, or heard,
Only smelt the rot, felt
His scaly belly slide across my feet.

"If this is what makes God God,
Knowing that there is no water
But only thirst, thirst for

The nothing at the center;
If you get a throne
By staring eons into the abyss

Till you have wrested something,
A soul, a body, from the void,
Then," I said, "God can keep divinity,

And let me have my death."
He must have heard.
The world flooded back into my eyes.

There was the core, beginning now to shrink.
There was the disappearing snake's tailflick.
And there was Adam walking toward me, scared.

Come down with me
Through the back of the cave
To infinity under its basalt roof.

I know all those
Who labor in the not
Quite fallen dusk.

I'll show you
Our entertainments
Here under the shadow.

Charmed, Cerberus sleeps.
Listen. The lament
Is muted, beautiful.

When they first come
They scream
With human throats.

Listen. The voice of the river.
It swells, drowns the plain
Until the loam drinks it.

There, clinging, merging,
The shades. They look to you
Made of water, pooled from

The running rain that drips
From the rock above us
To feed the river.

So they are, drops of
This weeping blackness,
Slowly forgetting shape.

Are you magnanimus?
Are you pius Aeneas?
Come down with me.

Learn the vision.
See the story
In one drop.

See in the flash
Of falling water
Each last brightness;

The word said
That saved something;
One day's vision of

The yellow flower;
The hope seen
And not seized.

Part the waters.
Recover the loss.
Drink their secrets.

Learn the only
Real wisdom,
Real sorrow.

Listen. Look until
Your eyes stare
Wide like mine.

Learn with me. Receive
The forgotten dead, cradle them,
Bear them again.

Come down with me.
The work is hard,
And I am here alone.

Be silent then. I'll find you
Your old Anchises. I forgot.
Above,
Your empire awaits.
Don't worry. I won't keep you.

I sicken daily. I desire death.
I want to cut my own polluted throat.
To him, the words that ride my rotten breath
Are "sweet and pleasant to the taste." The goat
Devours these tales of women--women raped,
Adulteresses tortured, virgins sold
As slaves, and murdered after they've escaped--
All this to save my neck? The wire is cold
And sharp--and Dunyazad--but it's not fear--
It's some corrupted lust that makes me fawn
A prostitute to his discerning ear!
As if this moaning writhing before dawn,
This treason were repaid because somehow
He likes my work. I sicken. Kill me now.

Enough. Tonight I finish it. The ruse
Is long worn out. Those fattening steers below
Have heard the raveling thread at night, and know,
And are content that I decline to choose.
Two years ago I stopped expecting news;
A gull winged out to sea; I watched it go
And my hope rode its feathers. Even so,
I wove and ravelled. They began to lose
Their lust for me--even their lust for gain
Is blunted in them now. The rising noise
Is revelry, not brawling. They remain
Peaceful, red jowl by jowl, the good old boys,
All unsuspecting--may they writhe in pain
When I descend and smite them with my choice!