you, no one ever finds you. Not in a small grave
dug by a child as a hiding place, nor years
later in the ship’s hold. Not in the shelter, nor high
on the roof as the man beside you leapt, not
in a basket crossing a vineyard, nor in a convent
kitchen on the last night, as a saint soon to be
murdered told you how to live your life,
never found you walking in the ruins of the blown
barracks, wading in the flooded camp, taking cover
in the machinist’s shop, or lighting every votive
in the Cathedral of Saint Just, with its vaulted
choir and transept, a wall of suffering souls.
It was just as Brecht wrote, wasn’t it? “You came
in a time of unrest when hunger reigned.
You came to the people in a time of uprising
and you rose with them. So the time
passed away which on earth was given you.”
Gather in your sleep the ripened plums.
Stay behind in the earth when your name is called.
VISITATION
On the nativity tree, a tiny lute, a French horn and painted egg,
a crèche carved from olive wood, a trumpeting angel. The Cossack
in a red tunic dances between a bird’s nest and some Eiffel Towers.
In the iced window, a cathedral shivers in mist as bits of torn cloud
float toward the spires. There are also boats sailing
in the window, and a city resembling Dresden or Hamburg after the war.
Anna is there, crocheting smoke, not speaking English anymore, as if
English had put out her memory like a broom on a fire. The snows
drift to the roof of the house, so it is no longer possible to open the door.
She tells us that on this night in her village, they would carry home
a live carp wrapped in paper that had just been swimming in a barrel.
The fish would silver the snow and have its life taken by a sharp ax.
The potatoes that had grown eyes in the cellar would be brought up
and baked with the fish, and there would be beet soup, bread, and wine
made from mulberries. Something would be given to each of them,
a thing they needed but didn’t want, and then they would sleep
as if in a boat at sea with the bright carp swimming through the snow
of their thoughts. Then she would be off, tunneling through the drifts
as only a spirit could tunnel, leaving behind a coin purse, a crystal broach,
a holy card with her own birth and death dates so we would know
she hadn’t visited us, that her satin-pillowed coffin lay still in the ground.
Nevertheless, the tinsel flickered as she passed, the lighthouse sent
its signal to the boats, and the sheep bounded over the fir branch
tufted with wool, and in every glass bulb, there we were—
children descended from her on a winter night.
IN TIME OF WAR
And so we stayed, night after night awake
until the moon fell behind the blackened cypress,
and bats returned to their caverns having gorged
on the night air, and all remained still until the hour
of rising, when the headless woman was no longer seen
nor a ghostly drum heard, nor anyone taking
the form of mist or a fiddler, and the box never opened
by itself, nor were there whispers or other sounds, no rustling
dress or pet ape trapped in a secret passage, but there was
labored breathing, and unseen hands leafing through
the pages of a visitor’s book, and above the ruins a girl
in white lace, and five or more candles floating,
and someone did see a white dog bound into a nearby
wood, but there were neither bagpipes nor smiling skull,
no skeletons piled in the oubliette, and there was,
as it turned out, no yellow monkey, no blood
leaking from a slit throat, and no one saw
a woman carrying the severed head,
but there were children standing on their own
graves and there was the distant rumble of cannon.
LOST POEM
I’m searching for a poem I read years ago. It was written by Cavafy, I thought, but reading through Cavafy again I can’t find this poem. I don’t recall the title, but there is a road in the poem, and a bridge, and a city near the sea. There are many souls and hungers, figs, demons, imaginary silence, and hidden phrases that have to do with secret assignations. The poem is said to have been written on the uncut pages of a dream. In one version, the olive trees go up in smoke but the bridge survives. In another, the city itself is lost, and there is no road. It is a war poem then, and that is why it is not to be found in the collected works of Cavafy.
CHARMOLYPI
It begins with a word as small as the cry of Athena’s owl.
An ache in the cage of breath, as when we say can hardly breathe.
In sleep, we see our name on a stone, for instance.
Or while walking in the rain among graves we feel watched.
Others are still coming into our lives. They come, they go out.
Some speak quietly beside us on the bench near where koi swim.
At night, there is a light sound of wings brushing the walls.
Not now is what it sounds like. Or two other words.
But they are the same passerines as live in the stone eaves,
as forage in the air toward night. To see them one must not be looking.
SOUFFRANCE
I think of you in that sea of graves beyond the city,
where many stones have been left, among them,
mine: a little piece of dolomite to weigh down a slip of paper.
I would have put your gloves and umbrella in the coffin,