The Pack, and: Faces, and: Partial Rose, and: Sieve, and: Forecast

Abstract

The Pack Short the way, but pitiless The need to walk it. –Alkman There is no stream; there is no end in sight. The lonely mountain path winds on and on. Breath catches in the lungs like fine ground glass; The solemn climber gulps it down like wine. Still, his head is light, his muscles burn. The pack he carries drags his body down. Departure was clear morning, dawn itself. A human frankness about the look of things. At least that's what he'd thought, companions round, Drinking coffee, making ready in first light. The pack he carried then was like a sail; The mountains, seas at rest, more merciful. In another poem perhaps there'd be a stream. Perhaps a little clearing in a wood: The climber casts his burdens to the ground And bathes his feet in the waters of the stream. He rests a long time there under the leaves, And going on again, he travels light. In another poem perhaps, but in this one There is no stream; the path winds on and on. And the climber doesn't know just why he climbs Or why he cannot take the path back down. He doesn't know what happened to those friends Or the human frankness in the look of things. [End Page 18] He knows the teeth of winds, the rocks below, The solid purchase, hard-won by his feet. He knows at some point each one climbs alone And that there must be others up ahead. He knows the pack is added to each mile. He knows no prayer to brake or break a fall. Faces She would have sworn summer was the season That she loved, Its lambent light, the length of days in which She could fold two In every one, so that each morning's page Or thought would seem To her, by evening, yesterday's. Sure, She'd have qualified – She hated storms; how suddenly wind could come And fell one of two Loved window-trees, so that where once had been A choir of green, The intimate companions of her days' Slow labor, Now there was only empty sky – blank white, Blank blue, blank gray – And down below, for weeks, that awful stump. Still, sun-drunk and dazzled by blue sky, By the sheer gift of The illusion of time and time to spare, [End Page 19] She'd soon forget The gripe of fear-gripped bowels, storm-shattered nerves, And that's when she would swear that summer was The season of her soul's Expanding. But she knew what summer was, Or else She learned, when new resolves, new friends, fresh hopes, New loves had come Sudden as bloom or summer storm and left Before the leaves Had donned their death masks. Partial Rose We've forced the bud bruised the petals no rose shall ever listen here its choir of mouths cry open to bless us or accuse we chose another life the palest flowers ash, snow, the un cut hair of graves [End Page 20] Sieve Light in autumn that stand of trees in leaf blossom bare, flare Of bone that woman's wing, beneath brief moment fingers splayed your out- stretched palm fraying heart an errant strand, hairbrush mislaid a river braided gray brown gold you catch It up as if to drink quick silver spills from your hand [End Page 21] Forecast On the bank of the Charles inhaling the weather which includes the sun and the sun on water and the long week of rain just past she is thinking of two women, recently met, of startling plumage and names like Mabel or Jane the ache of possibility nothing yet exhausted the endlessness of need to come into the circle of her and her attention how or when she cannot fathom but knows that it must be.