The Last House Read online

  away and sulk at the treeline or limp

  ahead on the path. You are a faker.

  What happens next has to be made out of

  the rhythm of life. Not the life we’ve left,

  but this experiment in paradise,

  this repository of deficits.

  You’re not listening. Whatever moves is

  alive, destined for wisdom. What is still,

  say death, will be optioned purely as flesh,

  immutable, decay offset by this

  saturated fantasy. The dog who

  drowned, this one alive. Not letting go is

  the same as never starting anything

  new. This is new. This is. And this. And this.

  I never look at you the way you look

  at me. I can never see our palm hut

  beside the beach by the groaning ocean

  without being on the ocean. The sea

  ahead is empty; the dark land behind,

  after an hour’s wait, fills with loud birds.

  The hardest thing to bear is night and cold.

  After Rescue

  And after your own journeys you come to

  my side when I call and curl at night by

  my bed on the street in the doorway, rain

  a river down the sidewalk, passersby

  another weather harder to fathom

  than solitude or family. That’s it

  then. Morning grey in the sky. That’s it then.

  No more voyages. Another beggar

  among beggars all done with stories. No

  need to prove faithfulness, what life itself

  never could prove, no need to look further

  than the tiny waves of illness rolling

  from the horizon, blue and silver, that

  will slowly drown us. And we will go down

  easy, man and dog, red and pale, go down

  into the green following dark, chased light,

  down derry down by all that has and has

  not served, in spite of doom, in spite of lives,

  and together most important, fishes

  quick from our starry shadows blooming

  last pale and last red, last lazy spin slow

  together and dim, each I remember.

  III

  Lost Countryside

  Chimney

  Here is a nice house with the right number

  of bricks and fourteen windows, seven up,

  seven down, one door in and one door out

  and a chimney top left as you face front.

  The west wall is plumb, sheer, perfectly smooth,

  the east a jagged series of platforms.

  A man in the upper storey gazes

  north from the topmost window at nothing.

  He’s interested only in himself.

  The stairs are dark, thick with ghosts. Old questions

  hang in the air with dust from the woodstove.

  The south-facing rooms shimmer with angled

  light that liquifies time and space. His wife

  sweeps through a sun lozenge to the kitchen.

  Manchester

  Mothers weave Lancashire cloth, fathers dig

  the Ship Canal to mix rivers with sea,

  and I slip away down and past the locks,

  hands in pockets, from that epitome,

  caricature of human endeavor,

  institution, before I get a chance

  to read the writing on the wall or jot

  a word or two about the sacrifice.

  I sail away and buy a house and fall

  in love. In a new country you neither

  belong nor don’t but hope to guess your soul’s

  purpose. Maybe a bright stillness, a kind

  water, a safe cave for your flesh and blood,

  a future with history as a slub.

  Cheshire

  Fresh tulips grey with dust on a flat rock,

  sea and sky west, a faint track east all green

  across the continent to the sunrise

  we sailed past, and Liberty into New York,

  a sea path to our teapot home where hours

  old I clung to black fury, dark bruises

  from the forceps that hauled me out, Mum on

  tiptoe on the hospital bed, twenty-

  six and shocked by the garden’s black tulips,

  first she’d seen, an after-shock of Granddad

  in France, a rumble deeper than normal

  trench terror, and here they come together,

  fairy-tale siblings headed home from war

  along the faint road west to this hillside:

  Granddad’s black tanks, mother’s coal-black tulips,

  and my own black fury, the first ever.

  When Hawks Stop Hunting

  When hawks stop hunting the farmland I make

  a cage of my forearms and trap my chest,

  then chest and neck, then chest and neck and skull.

  How pointless to hunt when expectation

  of disappointment dominates the kill.

  I will steal a cabbage and snap flowers

  from the bloody hedge, and on my way home

  will practice what I know – cultivation

  of disappointment – and tonight in bed

  will perfect the cage and trap my life and

  death so none of my soul will leach away

  (the problem is how to spend time and flesh

  until nothing stands between bones and sky),

  and all I ask is you avert your eye.

  Vernacular

  Not a big story, a little one, of

  down into dark, only wind and sun off-

  stage to provoke the heart-shaped flicker

  across a line not to be crossed, quicker

  along the watery path and then deep,

  fast beneath the tremor of yellow leaves,

  end of an era, start of a new phase –

  no story at all but a new species

  of quiet. And so the hills of Dad’s bed

  in September sunshine. Sea at the end

  of the road. Curtains quietly open

  to cottonwoods against the slow green slope.

  No matter. A perfect, perfect blue day.

  He took forever to leave me this tale.

  Lost Countryside

  A springtime of rain and not much sun, one

  death amid thoughts of death, grief a constant

  ache in the throat, the word sing, prefix of

  single, and the walnut in the cracked shell.

  I pry it open with a knife. Hemi-

  spheres. Two halves of something adored for its

  wholeness. Hawk overhead quite curious.

  I taste the crumbs of white flesh, familiar,

  yes, I’ve been here before. The black walnut

  and guardian woodpecker watched me crouch

  to collect nuts while guiding the mower

  with one hand. I filled my pockets each fall.

  A cloud climbs the sky and someone down

  the valley blows a muffler. You know, a thing

  of importance will never end, never

  be final. I forgot the nuts till one

  rolled out of my summer trousers, hung on

  the line at the start of spring.

  Dumpster

  This latest device is for the thin man

  without a home, a surefire public boon

  I dare say, but not mine, not yet. I read

  obituaries as my own although

  a raindrop into sea is more my style

  as I hike the hills of the old man’s farm,

  original fields once woods now slated

  for new housing me and sis will turn to

  profit. Signs nod in September sunshine.

  Unheard sea at the end of the blacktop.

  But the road is no matter. Mum and Dad

  taught us to deflect blame and to save face

  a
nd to stay away from fortune and fame.

  They took forever and left us this place.

  Subdivision

  I’m pinned to the back wall of the room by

  the blast and when the smoke clears there’s a track

  out of all we’ve built. The swamp is foul to

  wade through. Where is the sweet meadow? How do

  we get there? What force but that which flung us

  here will know we sang a garden, sanctus,

  a grapevine at the pivot point. Atom-

  smashers, we hunted the crack in the use

  of it all and forgot the bloody news

  till air exploded. Pissed, we yodelled heart-

  break raw enough to snag the universe.

  Wake up, dizzybones, keep your pecker up –

  it’s too late maybe but you catch the drift.

  Step by stagger by step will find the path.

  Direct Totem

  I’m sorry for the fort we made of steel

  because it will reach and cut children who

  run through years from now when trunks have rotted,

  butterflies gone west, sunlight got lost, and

  grey cinders have replaced leaves, nothing in

  the rock, nothing in the ruins, no one

  to remember how inside metal walls

  we slept, the girl by herself and the man

  by himself, kept from falling by beak and

  talons, our backs to the south wall, heads turned

  right for the sunrise, then backs to the north,

  faces flamed with sunset, night terrors crouched

  amid the shadows of oaks and tigers,

  loosestrife, instinct, quartz hunter, firelight.

  Broken Roof

  In the spring when hedges have leaves again

  I’ll watch for my mum in the wild places

  and look for Dad in faces of strangers,

  every village and town, this winter far

  too cold to try much but shift pots, skins, tools,

  carvings and traps, my library of books,

  into the south barn, only our horses

  for warmth, nothing and no one to stop me

  guiding my life away from damaged ground,

  no covered well anywhere in the land

  but this. Mum grew pale and died. Candlelit,

  Dad sat vigil, then rose up the stone wall

  under the timbers my great-grandfathers

  used to truss our roof when the valley was

  full of trees big enough to fashion masts.

  Tenement

  Mobile Home

  A crick in my left hip as if I need

  to walk and walk into night till sun-up

  paints the island red. This tin caravan

  is full of wind and fire like something wants

  out and I guess it is time for that, time

  even for murder. Stunning low-back pain

  begs the question: Who, me? So from the eyes

  coiled up in my gut, right after the monk

  walks over my grave, erupts the fury,

  cold snake, to curve my body to the spin

  of the well she’s coiled around. From the eyes’

  light comes the shoulder wound. Chrysanthemum.

  From the eyes of those around me comes light.

  And in the nest of light rests fledgling light.

  Cellar

  The bottom dark though starlight above.

  And alone and cold so dying takes

  ages while people up top come and

  go, send down a bucket on a rope,

  send down a question, and are always

  fine with my answer. In time the world

  flips and I’m shucked and start to fall and

  don’t want to go. The stairs corkscrew. Pink

  umbrella opens. Friends are pebbles

  in a stream and it’s over, done. All

  my fast talk. Swallows. The mallard pair

  in the daisy field. Bulrushes. Pond.

  Willow. I used to talk a lot. Bridge.

  The last hot sticky taste of. Yes? Yes?

  Tenement

  What is behind the door but other doors,

  one open, where we see a girl and boy,

  dust and slanting sun, startled oak trees, deep

  forest, river. Change the lock and we’re safe.

  Remove windows, stairs, walls. Stars will outgrow

  all we love because we set and stars

  will always star. They love one another. These

  two love each other, the woman and man

  fast asleep downstairs between streetcars and

  office windows, between sky and pavement,

  and we lose them when we look ahead or

  back at things outside this world, deep forest,

  river. Sleep leaves the impression of words.

  Water drips from green moss into a pool.

  Basement Suite

  Everything looks wet, the barmaid’s belly,

  the drowned trunks of pool tables, her felt skin

  between T-shirt and jeans time and again

  blonde, till Uruguay loses, Sweden wins,

  and the familiar alley comes sooner

  than expected and home too, a grey day

  in June, the rest of the family away

  rehearsing the end of The Winter’s Tale.

  She eclipsed the screen during set pieces

  time and again, the narrow path submerged

  past the drowned pool tables to the back door,

  out into summer still underwater,

  all skies dark and scruffy for an old man,

  a football fan at the end of the world.

  Hotel Garden

  “Hello? Hello? Hello? Are you so far?”

  The fishes in the pond when it empties

  empty themselves and when it fills again

  they fill not as full, not as orange, not

  as bright, yet before it empties again

  invite others in. They’re numerous and

  thin as needles. I call but you don’t hear.

  Again and silence; again, no answer.

  Why do we open the door and invite

  others to enter when the door’s not real?

  They won’t find what we tell them to find, nor

  say in words what they do find. “Hello?

  Are you so far?” And in the quiet night

  a fish answers water: Goodbye, goodbye.

  James Bond Above the Palace Gate

  Lo, la, this tenebrific decline.

  Bojabo! I want to be on top.

  Poof. Daylight. The rest. Stop

  mithering at every cloud-bitten sign

  of trouble. Leap or die –

  whoops, damn – before I’m killed off

  by their worships’ topnots’

  hatjinx. What’s the chance, by

  the by, of falling on your feet when most

  of the scheme is littered with slag,

  pedestal, platform, dais, throne,

  the air clogged with marble dust

  and gravity territorial, in love

  with itself or a rogue moon at best?

  Townhouse

  for Dave and Sue

  Distilled forest, trees around a clearing

  caught inside water’s heart that falls and will

  fall to great water and find in itself

  that which will join and that which will divide;

  and strength-to-meet equals need-to-divide,

  and light shines from a window set in trees,

  a cottage perhaps, a girl at the sill,

  but he can’t tell her purpose, and she sees

  only the drop, a boy at the centre,

  and trees falling in the clearing that each

  supposes a circle, itself complete,

  that includes their new self and body. And

  joy in them looks out at the round falling

  shared
world because it can’t do otherwise.

  The Ruined Cottage

  for Bronwen and Jo

  The sorry way she sits the wall is not

  at all in line with the large history

  of crows who now and then taught carpentry

  to settlers, yet I watch her caw aloft

  in a fresh breeze while my fingers pluck moss,

  a small history, aimless and alive,

  a fist of green, a fist of stars, a hive,

  and so begin, we begin, a clear thought.

  To pray for the Old World that died when I

  was young and my body bobbed along like

  a feather on a stick. To tell stones why

  they house and roof nothing but mortal life.

  Her wings stutter over the burning land

  in a child’s attempt to catch the first wind.

  IV

  Quit This Ground

  1.

  Winter this year has been too cold

  and bright with wind and untold

  snow. My knees are chafed red-raw,

  my nose drips and my hands are sore,

  and all the homestead roofs leak.

  Daughter in her coffin is dressed

  for a spring wedding, at rest,

  they say (I’ll see them goddamned),

  her last word an O, fingers fanned

  like rivers across her breast,

  which I hold, chill egg, the last

  of the clutch, nipple a beak.

  I curried her old horse the night

  of the hurricane in spite

  of demons, then lay perplexed

  all day while flies indulged in sex

  in every cranny and nook.

  2.

  Coffin, bed, lamp and this table

  I carted to the stable.

  Nearly killed me. Now, on the floor,

  I sort my daughter’s ribbons

  from the pinto’s steaming dung,

  and curse every board and rung