Living

Just one more vintage movie,
Batwings tonight at the Bal Masqué —
Another creature stuffed
By distinguished pedigree.

I get a lot of madcap ideas about sentience,
How knowing has you put down in the book
Forbidden speech recognition —
Else why make such a face?

And now it’ s luck no longer mouth that moves
When fastidious rummage whispers
To divulge a surplus
A clue if not the key.

Prospect my question laps up for good —
I lean to it. Knowing you,
First-person dwindle.
Tweet-tweet. Prick.

On the Gilfillan burial day,
In the Hill o’ Balgay,
It was a most solemn sight to see,
Not fewer than thirty thousand people assembled in Dundee,
All watching the funeral procession of Gilfillan that day,
That death had suddenly taken away,
And was going to be buried in the Hill o’ Balgay.

There were about three thousand people in the procession alone,
And many were shedding tears, and several did moan,
And their bosoms heaved with pain,
Because they knew they would never look upon his like again.

We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don’ t tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of silk dress
and just by accident,

I scissor the stem of the red carnation
and set it in a bowl of water.
It floats the way your head would,
if I cut it off.
But what if I tore you apart
for those afternoons
when I was fifteen
and so like a bird of paradise
slaughtered for its feathers.
Even my name suggested wings,
wicker cages, flight.
Come, sit on my lap, you said.

Blood-drop, lung of fire setting past
the sea bell and wave; why am I separate
from that giant burrowing into further life?

The body breathes and rides
a heavy-netted ocean swollen
by the tide. Under the half-moon

it’ s the lighthouse light that turns
the rest of me to early nightfall,
headland, home. I send it back,

a mirrored flickering across cold waters.
We allow ourselves the crest that breaks
above the surface then re-forms.

Then I was sealed, and like the wintering tree
I stood me locked upon a summer core;
Living, had died a death, and asked no more.
And I lived then, but as enduringly,
And my heart beat, but only as to be.
Ill weathers well, hail, gust and cold I bore,
I held my life as hid, at root, in store:
Thus I lived then, till this air breathed on me.
Till this kind air breathed kindness everywhere,

I close my eyes like a good little boy at night in bed,
as I was told to do by my mother when she lived,
and before bed I brush my teeth and slip on my pajamas,
as I was told, and look forward to tomorrow.

I do all things required of me to make me a citizen of sterling worth.
I keep a job and come home each evening for dinner. I arrive at the
same time on the same train to give my family a sense of order.

I killed a fly
and laid my weapon next to it
as one lays the weapon of a dead hero
beside his body — the fly
that tried to mount the window
to its top; that was born out of a swamp
to die in a bold effort beyond itself,
and I am the one who brought it to an end.
Tired of the day and with night coming on
I lay my body down beside the fly.

I am looking for a past
I can rely on
in order to look to death
with equanimity.
What was given me:
my mother’ s largeness
to protect me,
my father’ s regularity
in coming home from work
at night, his opening the door
silently and smiling,
pleased to be back
and the lights on
in all the rooms