Looking for You

I. CALLISTO

She's easy to find--
the woman trapped
in a bear's body--
caught in the sin
that wasn't hers

Spare, skeletal,
All stiffened limbs
And burning joints
Seven bolts glowing
In a rusty frame

Among the others
The catasterized
Pinned like them
To the inside skin
Of the outer sphere

As her rapist's son draws
His bow on her
What does she remember?
The loss, or
The losing?

Is the heat
She recognized
In the caress
Of the false Diana
Burning in her?

Is that knowledge,
The too-late vision
Of the father's teeth
In the daughter's smile
The light she lifts for us,

Does she make the effort
To stay visible
So that, forever, for us,
Zeus Pater, the All-Father,
The criminal, stands
Revealed?

Or is she worn
Into beaten brass?
After his gift,
These milennia
Racked across
The spine of the heavens

Has she forgotten everything
Except that once
She used to wet her muzzle
In the glacial stream
And lurch in spangled arcs
Through flying water
And shake her shaggy fur
Into glittering beads
Lighting the space around her

And now Juno says
She can't?

Twice exiled,
By merciless daughter and
Jealous wife,
Transfixed
At that arid height
She lifts a shaggy head
Toward the polestar.

You taught me to wonder
What she sees;
Even on a cloudy night
Like this one,
With no stars visible.

II. THE CHISWELLS

Blackrock and right angles,
Vertical drop.

The brittle proof of cleavage,
Shear
and thrust.

Stripped monuments to some
Forgotten collision,
They stab,
still angry.

For us these
Edged pillars
Bristle with trauma--

Each impossibly green
Waterless summit
Vaulted up to this

Alien pitch
Spells rending, eruption,
Divorce

Rising from the sea
In murderous sheer
Perpendiculars,

Beachless and bleak,
Foreclosing survival,
They warn us off.

But to the birds
Who fill the air
Around, between them

Who, sprung from
The snare of surface,
Deny altitude,

There is no such thing
As a tower.

Space comes not in columns
But spiralled, full
And liquid.

I, born to planar movement,
Pinned to the flat bottom
Of this sliding boat

See, opened beneath
The eye of flight

The mystery of volume--
The third term--

Cold height blossoming
Into turbulence
And tumbling depth

And bitterness, with its facets
Honed for revenge,
Wreathed with hospitality
And home.

III. GLACIER

Locking the fjord in its frozen clasp
A miracle of stasis, it repels
The change of seasons and the clank and rasp
Of ice on ice. There seem to be no swells.
The bay is chilled, flat, hard. We do not grasp
This scaleless mass of white; no memory tells
Us how to see this. On their own, our eyes
Give up. This place is not a human size.

Something so vastly unremovable
Must bathe in stillness--must be where the race
Of growth and rot stops being meaningful.
Feeling the bite of northern, final days,
Our bodies hope to fight the soil's pull--
Gravid, it conquers flux. It holds in place--
White fingers of God's cold protective hand,
Enamelled seal upon the finished land.

In closer, though, this piled height of hoar
Is striped and buckled with its history.
The shattering crack and ambling, turgid roar
Rebound across the mirrored, sounding sea.
We become infants, pointing, shouting, "More!"
Crying as it gives up its purity,
And, cleft by salt and dirt, the hulks subside,
Crashing the mirror, bulging in the tide.

Nothing is finished here. Splitting in pain,
Salt-stung, the glacier crumbles and retreats;
What used to be a gently sloping plain
Will be a ravine once the river beats
A path to its hard source. Now the moranie,
Dropped where the flight began, already cheats
The depth chart. Other vessels will arrive
One day and find our maps did not survive.

Striated mystery with a crystal heart--
Cold furnace of topography and scape--
Landsmith who renders foolish tools and art,
Whose razing advent cures the human scrape,
Gouger, hill-crusher, you will force apart
The twisted chains of earth and rock we shape,
Then melt in thunder, and the monstrous earth
Will lumber backward toward its second birth.

IV. URSUS ARCTOS

She appeared suddenly,
Pacing the grassy beach
Huge and unconcerned;
Heaving each shoulder
Slowly forward.

It doesn't show up
In the photographs--
Space massed about
Those heavy limbs
And rushing away from her
Through a barless world

How loose, how slack-strung
Her frame is,
Dense muscle swaying
Under her easy hide

No one put her on any lathe
Or potter's wheel;
Lumpen, hand-thrown,
Unfinished
She fords the stream,
Shaggy and blunt.

Is there comfort here,
Could I live happy
In this graceless strength

Or am I well paid
For the itching I do
Inside my fatty skin?

From across the water
Through the lens of distance

Her placid assumption
Of her half-shaped bulk
Is too remote for envy.

Callisto was never
On this coast;
This bear has not
Seen me before.

V. MELVILLE

The other passengers
Had gone back to the lounge; the raw wet air
Dripped constant, and the whales had been in view
Almost an hour. So, then, it was just
The two of us. His blue coat, heavy, wool,
Was darkened with the tracks of raindrops and
Close-cropped gray hair did not completely shield
A square, hard skull. He seemed to want to talk.
I said, "You missed the finbacks. We can keep
Up with them now. But still it seems they are
A special thing to see--larger, more rare.
The staff got all excited. So did I,
Because of the Dutch captain and his can."
He turned his head in weary but still frank
And sharp amazement. Off the starboard bow
The humpbacks rose, quite close. The hissing breath
Exploded early and the spike of steam
Spat itself, hurried. When the flukes turned up
It wasn't in an arc, but in a kind
Of half-done flutter--the collapsed control
That governs tired muscles. At the tips
The fins were crusted with a yellow scum
Of barnacles and clinging parasites,
Scalloped, bitten. "I knew how it would be;
That I would see them through you." He said he
Was sorry for it. "Oh no--it's all right--
You have to see through something." Both whales rose;
Frayed, labored spouts, then stained and heavy flukes
Dragged through the air and down. The boat's prow turned.
After ten minutes' staring at the round
Wrinkled gray palimpsest, I said, "I'm young;
I've never seen a whale before, or crossed
A desert to find out it never was--
That water isn't waste, it's only that
We skitter blind across the tightened skin
Of the meniscus, exiled for our sins.
What are *you* looking for?"

"Something I missed--
The key, the way to show. A burning light
To kill mad Lear inside--no, that's still him;
Not light--not light." He foundered. "I did wrong;
Everything got in but what I saw."
And then, "It doesn't work, what you have planned;
Words don't conduct, like wire. I wish they did."
But when I turned to argue, he was gone.

VI. WITH A PORPOISE

Because it was night
and the fin was
unseen

but the bright
chevron flashed
in water

with the pour
and rip of
a clean

sliced path
and I saw
in faint

prints of light
and their fade
its speed

and the trace
of its parting
made all

that round and dark
world draw itself
toward me

by closing into
its heart
saying

"I am a world
you will not
enter

you are a world
too, see how I keep
my sphere

how it makes your
darkness and silence
alive

see how I keep
my sphere I see how you
keep yours"

Because it was
the last night
I never

told anyone I had
seen the Dahl's
porpoise

let it shoot into its
invisibly figured
distance

brought it back
in silence
home to you.

I. BOTANIC GARDENS

The wide-blown roses
riot in strong sun;
bursting and overripe
with their freight of color
and heavy light.

They say we brought
the weather with us.

Stripped to their shorts,
stretching out pallid limbs,
courting the sting of heat,
the lunch-hour crowd
lies turning a bright
mottled and angry red.

I am wondering why
my mind is full
of lovers forced apart,
internment, separation,
interrogation,
when this good weather
and the cease-fire
hold

what imaginary troubles
did I smuggle here
inside my skull?

of course I miss you,
it's a rose garden;
but you're safe
and I'm coming home--

So I brought with me
another Belfast;
be careful
not to let it loose
here on the mown grass

Of course a blooming
rose tree doesn't
mean anything
is settled--

but of course we're lucky
if it did
wouldn't we all
be up a creek
you can't critique
a rose

Everyone has been
very friendly;
my father says soon
they'll play golf again
in the North

Yes, why not say
we brought the weather
with us,
and the burn.

II. RED, WHITE AND BLUE

In front of the murals
I couldn't feel it--
I know what RUC, UVF,
B specials, stand for,
but I learned it late
and they don't mean

how would they read
FBI, NSC, NRA, LAPD
alphabet soup, a taste
lost in translation

But the painted curbstones,
union jacks and the
flapping bunting--
coincidence maybe
that the fourth is the same
color as the twelfth

Convenient thought for
"The Beaten Docket"
as they decorate the bar--
two birds
with one stone,
stars and stripes
and specials on
American beer which--
--against all odds--
we have convinced them to drink

We wonder, but do not
ask, if they really
know what the Confederate
flag hanging next to the
stars and stripes stands for,
or is it just that it looks
more like England's?

III. NIGHT WATCH

I do not want
this single body
self-enclosed
one-celled

I am not this
any more--
straight, untouched
limbs in a
narrow bed
small room with a
locked door

I want
the walls pierced, I
want the sheets gone
I want the ocean to
fold up and time to
break windows

Now I know why
the Victorians
dreamed of vampires

darkness and lockdown
kindling into flesh and
the bite--to have
in spite of it all
the night visitor

My skin can
almost feel yours
but it isn't right
an eidolon
a changeling
whispered air

I torment myself
with this phantom touch
hoping it will be
the invocation that
brings you here--

O learn to fly,
O come to me
Out of thin air;
Let me wake to find
Your mouth on mine
And your hands in my hair.

IV. DAY TRIP

Instead we went up
cul-de-sacs and
alleys between
new-built row houses,

convinced the place was
so small we'd just
blunder across it

knowing we couldn't
get lost--go
as far as you want
into the Bogside

and you still find the Guildhall
when you look up

but we didn't happen
to want the Guildhall
yet

at the convenience store
they didn't sell maps
but a woman told us
what corners to turn

"anybody down that way
will show it you"

There was nobody out
in this crushing heat
but we finally found
the obelisk

While this happened here, I
was learning to read
from Sesame Street

is that how it started
my failure when faced
with something that's more
than a story

even as I started
to say what had happened and
the lies that got told

I thought I have never seen
an American monument
with the word "murdered" on it

and if this were New York
I would not stand here

because I learned the same
prayers, because my skin
is burning like
theirs in this sun, did I
think this was my
territory

so my ears are blistering,
so I have eaten
the body and blood--

wearing my expertise
my money and safety
what the hell
do I know