The Bird that Begins it
In the world-famous night which is already flinging away bits of dark but not
quite yet
there opens
a sound like a
rattle, then a slicing in which even the
blade is
audible, and then again, even though trailing the night-melt, suddenly, again, the
rattle. In the
night of the return of day, of next-on time, of
shape name field
with history flapping
all over it
invisible flags or wings or winds—(victory being exactly
what it says,
the end of night),
(it is not right to enter time it mutters as its tatters
come loose)—in the
return I
think I
am in this body—
I really only think it—this body lying here is
only my thought,
the flat solution
to the sensation/question
of
who is it that is listening, and who is it that is wanting still
to speak to you
out of the vast network
of blooded things,
a huge breath-held, candle-lit, whistling, planet-wide, still blood-flowing,
howling-silent, sentence-driven, last-bridge-pulled-up-behind city of
the human, the expense-
column of place in
place humming….To have
a body. A borderline
of ethics and reason. Here comes the first light in leaf-shaped coins.
They are still being flung at our feet. We could be Judas no
problem. Could be
the wishing-well. Right
here in my open
mouth. The light can toss its wish right down this spinal
cord,
can tumble in
and buy a wakened self….What is the job today my being
asks of
light. Please
tell me my job. It cannot be this headless incessant crossing
of threshold, it cannot be
more purchasing of more
good, it cannot be more sleeplessness—the necklaces of
minutes being tossed
over and over my
shoulders. The snake
goes further into the grass as
first light hits.
The clay
in the soil gleams where dew withdraws. Something we don’t want
any more of
flourishes as never
before. I
feel the gravity
as I sit up
like a leaf growing from the stalk of the unknown
still lying there behind me where sleep just was. Daylight
crackles on the sill. Preparation
of day
everywhere
underfoot. Across
the sill, the hero unfolding in the new light, the
girl who would
not bear the
god a
son, the mother who ate her own grown
flesh, the god
who in exchange
for Time gave as many of his children as need be
to the
abyss. It is
day.
The human does not fit in it.
