Raster. Jaargang 4

[p. 424]

Nathaniel Tarn

for buffy sainte-marie

Suddenly

she

looks

a thousand years old

with just that violence

kick of the wind

her leg gives sideways

her grin breaking from tanned

drum of her face

taut nose

body half-bent

lance jack-knife

howl in the voice

as if the stars had grown violent

suddenly on an impulse

then

sudden as hawk from throne

or wren from hiding

or still small wind of summer

in the nostrils of the dead

her confidence

friendship in ghostly eyes

blue of cut turquoise

no

well of sweet water

no

fish blood

from a very old

very old

sea

[p. 425]

 

black bear comes out of a sigh

 

cloud as small as a paw

 

on the horizon

 

it is the distance

 

not the white not the law

 

not the treaty

 

not the ghosts who walk out of battle

 

with noses to the ground

 

but the walls

 

more dangerous than stone

 

thin as paper

 

meeting back to back

 

the trackless wastes

 

so distanced from each other that they meet

 

now back to back

 

 

 

bears

 

mountain-lions

 

death in their paws

 

in their embrace

 

bigger than we have been

 

 

 

it is November in the month of the dead

 

and the dust begins to rise a little from the roads

 

omen of distant summer

 

it is as if the dead blew on the roads

 

when the rains are over

 

as they walk by looking down hill

 

and the dust responds a little

 

 

 

she stomps in this country

 

and everyone goes native now

 

out to the streets

 

with the smell of our fear on the wind

 

 

 

perhaps we will all get killed soon

[p. 426]

choices

As if to keep

two houses standing

at the selfsame time

were anything a man could do

for any length of time

and let this flower its own way

and that too

give them their independence

balk at no insult

balk at no gossip

that figure

with two heads

perhaps hermaphrodite

more weird than beautiful

torn down the central eye

river of blood

yet I am one

and they each one

but in different places

they'll never conjugate

those rivers

between the gates

and if I

like sucking blood

that time of month

where salt is the usual portion

as the old man who wrote the Witch

did to his glory

[p. 427]

 

is it not

 

because it touches sea

 

with rhyming tides

 

because it dies

 

with rhyming tides

 

and the gates let you in

 

 

 

but this is it

 

to know which blood I'll drink

 

which rythm follow

 

the blood I've fertilized

 

the blood I've left to cool

 

too long

 

till it's gone mad

 

and a little sour

 

in its black hair

 

a little bitch

 

in its surface features

 

technically insane

 

 

 

telling the world

 

for what it's worth

 

it's moving out on me

 

till I can't find it

 

in the tar

 

the pitch

 

it has hardened to

[p. 428]

accidents

Is there something to it

if

that glass goes out of your hand

onto the floor for no known reason

first time it's carried

and you watch

in the long year

it travels

to the ground

and can't recuperate

or

if on first cooking

out of solitude

a sheet of oil leaps from the pan

blisters that meadow twixt thumb and index

or

lights go dead in the night

priorities are lost

the house key lost in a locked case

that case key too

and you

talk to yourself an awful lot

getting words wrong

the syntax wrong

break off just as the explanation

begins to make it

[p. 429]

 

more in the evening than in the morning

 

telling yourself bad times are just the chores

 

running the house of silence

 

returns you to

 

and even

 

not what happens / but reactions to it

 

matter the most

 

while

 

one

 

clean

 

silent

 

knife

 

pares flesh from bone

 

 

 

leaving the spine to stand

 

 

 

a blasted tree

 

 

 

and the suffering is so quiet

© Nathaniel Tarn, 1970.