Heather McHugh

O little root of a dream

you hold me here

undermined by blood,

no longer visible to anyone,

property of death.

Curve a face

that there may be speech, of earth,

of ardor, of

things with eyes, even

here, where you read me blind,

even

here,

where you

refute me,

to the letter.

The sight of the songbirds at dusk,

through a ring of

ungraphed space,

made me promise myself weapons.

The sight of weapons, hands;

the sight of hands, the line

long since described by a flat, sharp

rock,

– you, wave,

carried it here, sharpened it,

you, Un-

losable One, gave yourself to it,

you, beach sand, are the taker,

partaker,

you, shore-grass, drift

your share –

the line, the line

we swim through, twice each

millennium, tied up

in each other,

and not even the sea,

sublime unfathomable sea

that runs alive through us,

can believe

all the singing in our fingers.

Voices, scored into

the waters’ green.

When the kingfisher dives,

the split second whirs:

What stood by you

appears on every shore

mown down

into another image.

* * *

Voices from the nettles:

Come to us on your hands.

All you can read, alone

with a lamp, is your palm.

* * *

Voices, night-knotted, ropes

on which you hang your bell.

Dome yourself over, world:

when death’s shell washes up on shore

a bell will want to ring.

* * *

Voices that make your heart

recoil into your mother’s.

Voices from the hanging tree

where old growth and young growth

exchange rings.

* * *

Voices, guttural, amid the debris,

where even infinity shovels,

runnels of

(cardio-) slime.

Launch here the boats I manned,

my son.

Amidships, when an evil wind takes charge,

the clamps and brackets close.

Jacob’s voice:

The tears.

Tears in the eye of my brother.

One clung. It grew.

We live in there.

Now, breathe –

so it may

fall.

* * *

Voices inside the ark:

Only

the mouths

were saved. Hear us,

o sinking things.

* * *

No

voice –

late noise, stranger to the hour,

gift to your thoughts, born of

wakefulness here in the final

account: a

carpel, large as an eye, and deeply

scored: bleeds

sap, and won’t

heal over.