Second Childhood (4 page)

of the one who works the register

and shakes the bag.

Infinite nesting pushes all matter

towards emptiness:

child-nodes,

tree-droppings

with a root element of null.

None is always included

in every cluster

of children.

Nothing in nothing

prepares us.

Yet a fresh light was shed

on immortality

for me climbing the stairs

firm foot first.

Everything was in the banister:

crows on branches, crickets,

architects, handsaws and democrats.

Red moon at 3 a.m.

Why did I dream of Mohammed today?

Through the folding sheets he expressed his relief

that his words reached no modern critics.

He was, he said, only a poet.

I think I know what he meant

like the Uzbek scenes

that make up that whole trilogy by Ali Khamraev.

The robot that Nebuchadnezzar owned

was hard to pull apart or analyze without ruining

each click.

A series of scenes that could never take place

might drive people to theorize.

I tried the night after

but woke up struggling with machines

a helpless elder with fingers too weak to bend the bits around the neck.

In Anatolia (where I’ve never been) the saffron hills seem to border

an ocean and the orange car lights mime the same in the sky.

A hospital and autopsy room and the body are being ripped apart without respect:

A heart slapped in a bucket: dirt in the trachea and lungs.

A hospital worker was better than a physician to the body.

Good with her hands in a bucket

like a worker at the till in a supermarket.

She said we have everything in reverse.

As an example a red corpuscle flew from the corpse

onto the collar of the detective

who could name the properties in a drop of blood

and this way prove there is no God.

You stand with the rest of the children holding hands.

Your little aunt with a fox-skin on her shoulder is showing you

unicorns in a tapestry and the words:

“Please wash and love me.”

Did she go to heaven when the membranes

of The Book were flipped

by the wind on the hospital roof?

She wanted to, and not.

Smoke from the vent gray sheets on which some days are written

flew apart in entropy’s tendency towards a disorder seemingly insane.

Pulpy islands streak the fog and unify the effect of gray.

Even electric lights have contours of shade

because there’s too much stuff from the recent past,

a gray glassiness behind every lens.

Silver is always weak.

Three church spires in one little city pebbles of rain.

Again, the electric lights: in a strand like citrine.

Globs of errors open for the two

gay guys railing markers over wet piers.

A sick flag buffers in air. Why is the boy dancing?

He’s white and seems to want attention.

But it’s the fatherless children the father follows.

Sometimes a twinkle

gets in my eyes.

It’s like a rhinestone

on a prom dress.

It shoots light

so bright I can’t blink

without tears.

If I pump my temples

with my fists

and close my eyes

it reddens in blood.

This is only one possibility

besides the metaphysical.

Sometimes it’s

a prick of sweat

or a word or a prophet

sweating at a bus stop.

There are gangs

who would kill to know what to name

such a gem because there is none.

Every room is still a mansion to you:

you who wants to live in an Irish hotel!

To sit in a lobby beside the fire with your feet in a chair.

To stare at the other children seeking asylum.

Your brain is a baby.

And all the ancients are in it still.

Your heart is a channel

and a crib for them.

They rarely come down

or out in the light

but steer you awkwardly with their cries.

Your brain is still becoming

an independent being

while your heart always needs air.

I had an infant who was an orphan who lived between my ears.

Its sobs could only be heard

when it circled the pump.

How it hurt!

Another infant lived like an octopus fully exposed

with a skull like a bottle cap inside its thought.

It was the arms of my heart.

A heart is a mind that’s only trying

to think without an unconscious.

The tentacle is a brain too.

And its adaptable jelly’s

just as intelligent as human blood.

Sometimes you look into a baby’s eyes.

“Bless her,” you suggest to passersby

yourself being old and unnecessary.

But no one does.

Please, you beg. The tears of an infant can be bottled and hidden

for special occasions.

One drop on your tongue and you won’t ask for more.

You’ve thought this somewhere before.

Born below a second time.

The shade of the first cast across and down.

Never shakes it off.

Her mouth.

“Don’t smile. It’s ugly. You’ll get lines.”

The shade symbolizes an object in front of the sun:

a blotted person

and subversion.

Her hand over her eyes indicates she herself is blocking the light.

Never the best.

The best has good taste and self-preservation, pride in property.

What will we do with the others?

She grows very little without light but stays weak

(and hangs at the apartment window

lacking attention doesn’t adapt).

She’s a midget in a mighty nation.

An eclipse of the face.

What could be the value of being shaded

in broad daylight.

Of being aged in the night.

Of learning the secular rule of life.

I can only follow one stone through

to its interior: and I do.

An amethyst from Achill.

The stone is transparent violet.

Firelight plays with its color the way eyes play with tears.

It’s cold where east is north and the earth is flat

and a person grows old.

Equivalence—no matter at what distance.

The fluttering snow is at the mercy of

ever-increasing crescents crossing circles

measured by squares, dashes,

fish bladder, almond patterns, placenta.

The folks up higher know everything of illness.

I saw a child rolled in a cloak of snow

to kill his fever.

Irregular heart, aortic stenosis,

rheumatism, atrial fibrillation, vertigo, blood clots,

deafness, colitis and poor eyesight.

Scars on a wrist and internal stitches,

headaches, PTSD from winter accidents,

childbirth. Sorry, this is ordinary

stuff for a cold mother. At the end

she wants to live in comfort like a pearl in an oyster.

She can chill here in peace and suck on ice.

The sun is warm, the northern lights are curtains

blowing across the heavens to which I float.

Every faraway ice floe leads to fairies.

And every boat leads to material sciences.

I know about both of them

and I still believe they’re too much alike.

White icebergs float or sink

under the wings of Aer Lingus.

Bling wobbles on a window:

it’s the sun our beloved.

See the monk on the Skellig squeeze and rub

his frosty eyes

when he spots twelve swans

and a little girl

on a purple amethyst in the ocean foam.

An early scene

innerly seen:

random sprays

of snow across Fresh Pond

(far below freezing

in Fahrenheit)

could be a white man’s torso

who escaped a hospital

and shed his sheet and slid

happily face down on a mud-streaked mass

of ice. Could be cyclamen

with its leaves like violets

or refugee camps in Syria.

I must not lose heart.

It takes sixteen years for

a soul to cross the silvery ice

to the forbidden fields of grace

never knowing if it’s fair

to choose self-starvation over health care.

I was such a cold mother a mineral was a flower.

(for Maureen Owen)

Years ago in a migration

we each carried our own

rug and pillow,

telescope and strings.

Our tent was portable and able

to be dismantled.

It could be rolled

and stuffed very fast.

Flowers and grass

still grew freely and sea-lilac

had already cracked

the tarmac. So there was sustenance.

At the estuary nearby

two continents had split apart

and a curlew

flew alone and crying.

Carefully a book

would be buried

with iodine and wine

and food that doesn’t rot.

The cross is a good marker

for an avenue and white clover,

trampled where little

sweet pea is growing higher.

Down the hill comes a poet

with ginger hair, he puts

violets inside his hat,

herbs and water and says:

There was once music here,

a round table

and gang prayer,

and an exploding glacier.

Women kept each tent clean

until one cried,

I’m going to take care

of myself.

We heard her packing

the woods into her tote

like a nymph

managing a shipwreck.

After that, for us all