Hangman

My wife's garden was a paradise of flowers.

All the prisoners loved it.

Gold trumpet of daffodils, lilies' white fire,

antediluvian blue of morning glories opening on the vine,

& those glowing black lions, the sunflowers, their beards of bees.

The promise of bulbs in the cellar got us through winter.

During lengthening twilight, sheepgut vibrated from the harp in my

hands. Sometimes, late at night, when the whole earth seemed to me

a vast altar upon which is sacrificed all that is living,

I would seek relief in the stable among my beloved animals.

Mounting my horse, I would whip him round & round the ring

trying to get the terrible pictures out of my head.

I was ashamed of my uniform.

One evening, I stood at the gate

watching our servant girl fold laundry from the line

when a voice in the wind called out my name.

I looked up. No one was there. Yet I heard it, clearly, distinctly

a woman's voice,

soft, undulant, haunting, diaphanous almost, the sheerest fabric

shaken by the wind, & a shiver went through me

as when blood calls to blood its blue tattoo.

It was the hour between the dog & the wolf. Light trembled. .

The great bell of heaven dipped & swelled.

Beyond the compass of the swallow's wing

I could see slowly unraveling ropes of smoke,

the silver quiver of poplars beside the tracks,

& the words came to me, "A dying man hammers the wings of angels,"

& I was for a moment lost & afraid.

Icy tingling

rippled through me, the chill penumbra of, how say it, unfeeling's

feeling,

as though there flowed through phantom fingers

a skein of shocked silk like woven water,

a stocking of skin stripped from the bone,

& a dark caul fell over me & I dropped into bottomless darkness,

darkness of night without measure, night without end,

night with its mud & its merde, hiss of gasses, howls of terror, cries of pain,

night with its crackling black fires & river of worms,

night where no one is more sinned against than the unborn, the forgotten,

where no brother buries his brother in the ashes & cinders of the field,

& the victor, sharpening his sword, strikes stars from stones.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Jul/Aug 1996
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved