Domes

for John Godfrey

1. Animals

Carved—indicated, actually, from solid

Blocks of wood, the copper-, cream-, and chocolate-colored

Cows we bought in Salzburg form a tiny herd.

And in Dr. Gachet’s etching, six

Or seven universal poses are assumed by cats.

Misery, hypocrisy, greed: A dying

Mouse, a cat, and a flock of puzzled blackbirds wearing

Uniforms and frock coats exhibit these traits.

Formally outlasting the motive

Of their creation with a poetry at once too vague

And too precise to do anything with but

Worship, they seem to have just blundered into our lives

By accident, completely comprehending

Everything we find so disturbing

About them; but they never speak. They never even move

From the positions in which Grandville or some

Anonymous movie-poster artist has left them,

A sort of ghostly wolf, a lizard, an ape

And a huge dog. And their eyes, looking

At nothing, manage to see everything invisible

To ours, even with all the time in the world

To see everything we think we have to see. And tell

Of this in the only way we really can:

With a remark as mild as the air

In which it is to be left hanging; or a stiff scream,

Folded like a sheet of paper over all

The horrible memories of everything we were

Going to have. That vanished before our eyes

As we woke up to nothing but these,

Our words, poor animals whose home is in another world.

2. Summer Home

Tiny outbursts of sunlight play

On the tips of waves that look like tacks

Strewn on the surface of the bay.

Up the coast the water backs up

Behind a lofty, wooded island. Here,

According to photographs, it is less

Turbulent and blue; but much clearer.

It seems to exercise the sunlight less

Reflecting it, allowing beaten silver sheets

To roam like water across a kitchen floor.

Having begun gradually, the gravel beach

Ends abruptly in the forest on the shore.

Looked at from a distance, the forest seems

Haunted. But safe within its narrow room

Its light is innocent and green, as though

Emerging from another dream of diminution

We found ourselves of normal, human size,

Attempting to touch the leaves above our heads.

Why couldn’t we have spent our summers here,

Surrounded and growing up again? Or perhaps

Arrive here late at night by car, much later

In life? If only heaven were not too near

For such sadness. And not within this world

Which heaven has finally made clear.

Green lichen fastened to a blue rock

Like a map of the spot; cobwebs crowded with stars

Of water; battalions of small white flowers.

Such clarity, unrelieved except by our

Delight and daily acquiescence in it,

Presumably the effect of a natural setting

Like this one, with all its expectations of ecstasy

And peace, demands a future of forgetting

Everything that sustains it: the dead leaves

Of winter; the new leaves of spring which summer burns

Into different kinds of happiness; for these,

When autumn drops its tear upon them, turn.

3. Domes

“Pleased in proportion to the truth

Depicted by means of familiar images.” That

One was dazed; the other I left in a forest

Surrounded by giant, sobering pines.

For I had to abandon those lives.

Their burden of living had become

Mine and it was like dying: alone,

Huddled under the cold blue dome of the stars,

Still fighting what died and so close to myself I could not even see.

I kept trying to look at myself. It was like looking into the sun and I went blind.

O, to break open that inert light

Like a stone and let the vision slowly sink down

Into the texture of things, like a comb flowing through dark,

Heavy hair; and to continue to be affected much later.

I was getting so tired of that excuse: refusing love

Until it might become so closely mated to its birth in

Acts and words of love; until a soft monstrosity of song

Might fuse these moments of affection with a dream of home;

The cold, prolonged proximity of God long after night

Has come and only starlight trickles through the dome;

And yet I only wanted to be happy.

I wanted rest and innocence; a place

Where I could hide each secret fear by blessing it,

By letting it survive inside those faces I could never understand,

Love, or bear to leave. Because I wanted peace, bruised with prayer

I tried to crawl inside the heavy, slaughtered hands of love

And never move. And then I felt the wound unfold inside me

Like a stab of paradise: explode: and then at last

Exhausted, heal into pain. And that was happiness:

A dream whose ending never ends, a vein

Of blood, a hollow entity

Consumed by consummation, bleeding so.

In the sky our eyes ascend to as they sweep

Upwards into emptiness, the angels sing their listless

Lullabies and children wake up glistening with screams

They left asleep; and the dead are dead. The wounded worship death

And live a little while in love; and then are gone.

Inside the dome the stars assume the outlines of their lives:

Until we know, until we come to recognize as ours,

Those other lives that live within us as our own.

Source: Poetry (November 1970)