Part 26 (1/2)

One day it was gone and the east gable Where its trembling corolla had balanced Was starkly a ruin again, with dandelions Blowing high up on the ledges, and moss That slumbered on through its increase. As cameras raked The site from every angle, experts Began their post factum jabber and all of us Crowded in tight for the big explanations.

Just like that, we forgot that the vision was ours, Our one chance to know the incomparable And dive to a future. What might have been origin We dissipated in news. The clarified place Had retrieved neither us nor itself except You could say we survived. So say that, and watch us Who had our chance to be mud-men, convinced and estranged, Figure in our own eyes for the eyes of the world.

The Disappearing Island

Once we presumed to found ourselves for good

Between its blue hills and those sandless sh.o.r.es Where we spent our desperate night in prayer and vigil, Once we had gathered driftwood, made a hearth And hung our cauldron in its firmament, The island broke beneath us like a wave.

The land sustaining us seemed to hold firm Only when we embraced it in extremis.

All I believe that happened there was vision.

The Riddle

You never saw it used but still can hear

The sift and fall of stuff hopped on the mesh, Clods and buds in a little dust-up, The dribbled pile accruing under it.

Which would be better, what sticks or what falls through?

Or does the choice itself create the value?

Legs apart, deft-handed, start a mime To sift the sense of things from what's imagined And work out what was happening in that story Of the man who carried water in a riddle.

Was it culpable ignorance, or was it rather A via negativa through drops and let-downs?

from THE CURE AT TROY (1990) Voices from Lemnos

I.

CHORUS.

Philoctetes.

Hercules.

Odysseus.

Heroes. Victims. G.o.ds and human beings.

All throwing shapes, every one of them Convinced he's in the right, all of them glad To repeat themselves and their every last mistake, No matter what.

People so deep into Their own self-pity self-pity buoys them up.

People so staunch and true, they are pillars of truth, s.h.i.+ning with self-regard like polished stones.

And their whole life spent admiring themselves For their own long-suffering.

Highlighting old scars And flas.h.i.+ng them around like decorations.

I hate it, I always hated it, I am A part of it myself.

II.

PHILOCTETES TO NEOPTOLEMUS.

G.o.ds curse it!

But it's me the G.o.ds have cursed.

They've let my name and story be wiped out.

The real offenders got away with it And I am still here, rotting like a leper.

Tell me, son. Achilles was your father.

Did you ever maybe hear him mentioning A man who had inherited a bow The actual bow and arrows that belonged To Hercules, and that Hercules gave him?

Did you never hear, son, about Philoctetes?

About the snake-bite he got at a shrine When the first fleet was voyaging to Troy?

And then the way he broke out with a sore And was marooned on the commanders' orders?

Let me tell you, son, the way they deserted me.

The sea and the sea-swell had me all worn out So I dozed and fell asleep under a rock Down on the sh.o.r.e.

And there and then, like that, They headed off.

And they were delighted.

And the only thing They left me was a bundle of old rags.

Some day I want them all to waken up The way I did that day. Imagine, son.

The bay all empty. The s.h.i.+ps all disappeared.