Only Bread, Only Light: Poems

Chapter One

Blind Days in Early Youth

No Name for It

Start with a hyphenated word, something Swedish —
Rus-blind; "blind drunk"; blinda-fläcken; "blind spot";

Blind-pipa; "nonentity," "a type of ghost."
En blind höna hittar också ett korn;

"The fool's arrow sometimes hits the mark."
(That's what the Swedish matron said

When I was a boy climbing stairs.)
She pointed with a cane: Tsk tsk,

Barna-blind; "blind child."
Her tone mixed piety and reproof — pure Strindberg!

It echoed on the stairs, barna-blind —
"Blind from birth." En blind höna hittar ...

The blind child's arrow ...

Terra Incognita

When I walked in the yard
Before sunrise,
I made my way among patches of dew —
Those constellations on the darkened grass.

The webs drifted like anemones,
And I thought of lifting them
As if they were skeins of brilliant yarn
That I could give to my mother
Who'd keep them
Until we knew what to make.

I pictured a shirt —
How I'd pull it over my head
And vanish in the sudden light.

Awake All Night

The cabinet radio glowed
With its lighted dial

As I pressed my face to the glass.
My spectacles, thick as dishes,

Were kaleidoscopes of light,
So I'd lean close

To make out numbers,
And the brilliant city of tubes

Just visible through a crevice.
I never heard the music

As I traced those lamp-lit houses
Like a sleepy, mindful ghost

Who looks down out of habit
At the vivid world.

Learning Braille at Thirty-Nine

The dry universe
Gives up its fruit,

Black seeds are raining,
Pascal dreams of a wristwatch,

And heaven help me
The metempsychosis of book

Is upon me. I hunch over it,
The boy in the asylum

Whose fingers leapt for words.
(In the dark books are living things,

Quiescent as cats.)
Each time we lift them

We feel again
The ache of amazement

Under summer stars.
It's a dread thing

To be lonely
Without reason.

My window stays open
And I study late

As quick, musical laughter
Rises from the street

And I rub grains of the moon
In my hands.

Accomplice

It was in the nature of things
That I couldn't see. The nature of things
That the magpie should watch me.

Perpetual strangers
Touch my sleeves,
The steel light of August

Draws me, affirming
Over brilliant and terrible streets,
And the bird looks on —

You'd swear
He's like those wounded gentlemen
From the First World War,

Watchful, innocent,
Hoarding his words
In case someone is lost.

Guess

Because waking, the radio low,
I've heard music by unnamed composers,
The puzzle of melody returns me
To the viola, Kol Nidrei,
Or the oldest songs of the Finns.

The fields are swept by a music
Half-heard when rising,
No sound, blue intervals,
Then the next phrase
While rain streaks the windows
And the vibrato of recurrent wind
Tells of the waning moon
And Mendelssohn's fiddle.

It's a private, chalked-out game
As December collects and snow begins.
All morning I carry other people's words,
Advance the clock, talk through habit,
But early, the music lets me stand —
Freed from opinion into guess,
A place I need as some need ends.
I walk between pillars of silk,
Hear the rhapsody of Solomon.
The Hebraic dawn opens again,
A windfall, and I hesitate.

Dante's Paradiso Read Poorly in Braille

Each morning
I live with less color:
The lawn turns gray,
The great laurel is gravid
With flint — as if it might burn
In the next life.
Even the persimmon tree
Is clear as a wineglass stem.

In Paradiso
A river of hosts
Opens to the poet
Who begs and prays
For an illumined soul.
And I saw light
That took a river's form —
Light flashing,
Reddish-gold,
Between two banks
Painted with wonderful
Spring flowerings....

Finger reading,
A tempered exercise,
I notice how dark
The window has become
Though it's noon
And August
And daylight still resists winter.
I bow my head,
Return to the book.

Poor poet,
He hurries to the river,
And into the river,
His eyes as wide
As a man can make them.
The long sunlight of late summer
Floods the rhododendrons —
This is the light
That pulls him
Under the stream,
Hands, lips, fingers, opening ...

The river
And the gems
Of topaz
Entering and leaving,
And the grasses' laughter —
These are shadows,
Prefaces of their truth....

I strain for color,
The preclusion of sight,
And put aside the book,
Paradiso in braille.

Who the hell is this
Turning again to the window,
His fingers reaching the sill,
Hands still touching
A river that no one can see?