Nine
Confessions in a Lyric Voice--David
Wright
"My
soul is too
cramped for you to enter it—widen it out. It is in disrepair."
St.
Augustine, Confessions,
Book I
In
the eventual
analysis,
I
will be proven wrong:
about
the Divine,
about
the mundane,
about
the nature,
of
language
about
the nature
of
nature.
Though
I will
contend, even then:
that
a thinned out quilt,
a
sun-burned back yard,
a
rotten walnut tree
Formed
the
ground of my being.
In
this
contention, I also, again,
will
be proven wrong (and contentious)
about
both events
and
the eventual,
just
as well.
"For when I call on him I ask him to
come into me. And what place is there in
me
into which my
God can come?"
Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book I
And
how should a
prodigal pick up the phone?
And
what, if
there is an answer, is the proper address
to
the offended: "Hello" sounds rather formal, and given
the
circumstance,
long distance and all, a bit unwise,
rhetorically.
And
we're speaking here not even of the Father,
but
only the
father, who lives in his lost boy
in the merest code,
invisible
ladder of hair loss, helix of
manic sadness and glee.
"Daddy"
seems
best, most pathetic, the desire being,
in
this exchange,
to entice him to accept the charges,
to
fill the
receiver with his most familiar voice.
Confession
III: Godsend
I
To
send, and yet,
keep what is sent
at a
distance, a
length of memory
like
a rope, a
thread teased
farther
and farther
back through
sense—a
son's cry unheard but present
in
the future, in
the mewling need
observed,
then
recalled, cry
in
the image of
another speechless Word.
II
To
acquire, now,
not a solitary sheaf
of
papers but a
congregation—psalms
tugged
across
memory by anticipation,
anticipated
syllables collected
on
this field of
fickle, faithful tongues.
III
All
four nouns I
have given you—
and
others—excrement or heaven—
and
mere—you will have occasion
to
test them in
your mouth. Spit them out,
boy,
or ingest
them, signs becoming
wisdom
or waste,
sinew or loss.
Confession
IV:
Topos
"For
a knowledge
of intimacy, a localization in the spaces of our intimacy is more
urgent than
determination of dates."
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Along
Weaver
Creek
A
beer can woven
into weeds reads Natural Light
and
seems right
in its declaration of dusk,
on
this path by a
creek that funnels to nothing,
then
bends along
a soybean field. I grew up here,
threw
stones off
the bridge, felt older than I was.
Queen
Anne's lace
still grows wild. The beans curve
and
nestle in
their tamed rows. Elm leaves curl
in
the heat,
stretch a version of meaning between them,
like
backlit webs
that, though abandoned, gather prey.
Go
and catch a
shadow. Get with child a lover.
Strain
regret and
memory like gnats. The mourning cloak
is a
red moth,
edged in black and white. The umber
twilight
in her
wings merely another native shade.
Alone
in the Badlands
You
can say
anything: hallelujah; holy shit; my mother
loves
my sister
more than she loves me. Shout it. In French,
if
you like.
Derrida, even, would never contend your utterance:
sharp
as quartz,
sure as the bone stashed in your knapsack
to
take home.
Forbidden speech, stolen fossils: a dissipating
dust
carries away
a whole landscape of transgressions.
It is
the
Badlands, always has been. Sure, a bit of sand
may
lodge beneath
your contact lens, irritant, penance
scratched
thin
across your field of vision, small trace
of
exchange for what you've taken, what you
leave
behind.
I
(My
Face Being
Broken by an Oak Branch is Not an Anecdote)
"The poet rubs his fingers
on old
wounds, makes them burn"
-
Robert Frost
It
was a crushed
cheek bone, an angled gash
that
bloomed
below my left eye, my frigid
frame
bobbing in
a boat, my mouth praying,
throwing
up,
while those two scared boys
paddled
for my
life. If I were a parable,
a
light to the
unblind, I could have ducked.
But
my brittle
skull stopped an arm-thick limb.
Riding
the Sugar
Creek a week before my wedding,
I
said aloud, I
believe I would rather not die.
We
passed covered
wooden bridges overhead, painted red.
In
the ambulance,
I thanked the woman who took off
my
wet clothes.
This will be some story, she said.
It is
a numb lip,
twelve sweet years later.
It is
a slim
scar, hidden by glasses,
a
graceful wound
to stand for nothing else.
II
"A refiner's
fire . . . a fuller's soap."
--Malachi 3
And
here, God,
is my belly—
sucked
in to thinness and covered
all
day by dark cloth.
Look,
here in
the shower, full, filthy,
and
naked, covered
for
now in soap—Oh God,
Be
the blue
soap, great bar of coarse
blue
soap to clean and abrade
this
bared, hairy belly.
Sour
me raw,
Lord, scour the tender
and
the roughest skin.
Scrape
open the
surgical scar—
Hold
open, hold
open the wound.
Be
the sure,
sterile finger to rub
the
old wound.
Make
it burn
clean in the steam.
Confession
VI:
Lacunae
I
Little
Roman boy
on vacation
in
the future
Meets
little
girl from Illinois,
in
the park.
In
Latin, he
tells her of grapes
that
arrive in wagons.
In
English, she
tells him she does not
understand
him, which he, also fails
to
understand.
So
they must
resort to smiling,
to
punching one another in the arm
In
Latin. In
English.
She
hits him
twice to let him know
she
likes his tunic.
He
responds,
painfully, that he's fond
of
her blue jeans.
He
cannot tell
her, though, how he got here,
out
of language, out of time.
Neither
can she.
II
Sitting
Across
from Teilhard de Chardin
I am
drunk,
reading a newspaper,
when
the Pope
walks in and removes
his
miter, orders
a drink, and calls
Chardin
"brother." Le coeur de la matiere,
they
conclude,
after a bottle of Bordeaux:
how
to live
steeped in the burning
layers
of the divine.
I am nearly through
with
the
editorials, with my own taste
for
wine, loose
living. Pauvre petite.
We
get used to
the world as boredom when,
just
then, in
walks his Holiness, or Brother Chardin.
Venite,
adoremus!
The flaming world.
Confession
VII:
Silent Readings
I
Billy
Graham
Reads Augustine
Just
as he is,
one plea
after
another—trope
and
aporia of
sympathy,
paradox,
a
helpless lamb—
all
the address
you'll need.
II
Teresa
of Avila
Reads about Sin
Reminded
of her
own garden,
what
pears she
has opened
her
hands
toward—outside
the
convent
walls—habitual
woman
who knows
ostinato
echoed
by
ostinato—other
habits.
Oh, fruit
of the garden within.
III
Langston
Hughes
Speaks of Augustine
I too
have been
translated badly—
Swing
Mikado, lively blues.
I too
have swum
the viscous stream—
oh
river, divine African river—
I too
want to
remain, to forget—
explosion
of speech into hope.
Confession
VIII: Nature
Confessions
of
an Onion
In
summer, the
evenings
arrive
as wonders
the
air heaves
with rain
The
work of
growth requires
courage,
abstract
strength
to
build an empty
center
Leave
behind all
worry
Urge
shoots into
the night
like
ornamental
grasses
Wear
no coyness
or crime
not
being brash
or vulgar
be
steady: slow
root
Taste
that turns
tender
does
not hurry.
Ripeness,
like
rain, is
timely and plain
A few
possible
blossoms
but
mostly a
swollen bulb
pulled
in season.
Accept,
as
you flange
against the soil:
You
will go dark
earth to dark cellar
all
to flavor an
iron pan or a stew
But
not before
you make men cry.
Bruised
Offering
Here
is my rough
basket of fruit:
apples,
grapes, pears I've grown.
Well,
my plastic
grocery bag of fruit:
apples,
bruised, only grapes I've bought.
My
father was a
vagabond, a fugitive:
preacher
and singer of hymns.
Or, a
restless
man in a rut:
angry
giver of lectures.
I've
been
delivered from bondage:
ushered
into the land of honey and love.
Recently,
I've
been lost with no map:
wandered
into the presence of bees and worry.
And I
am bringing
this basket
or
sorry sack of apples—
Slice
out the
dark bruises and feed me,
imperfect
offering, pressed
To
cider, bitter
at first, sweet as honey,
with
time.
Confession
IX:
Pax
A
Pacifist
Confesses His Love for His Fists
O
God, I've
missed my curled
fist,
its blunt thud
against
another
boy's
body--cheek,
belly,
back of
the head.
How
much I loved
the sting
of my
open hand
on cold days
on
a bare face,
the
print left there,
left
in my pale palm.
To
wrestle and
break another muscled,
elastic
kid on
matted, winter grass
and
hold him down
with my knees--
O
Lord, I loved
this, more than Jacob,
I so
loved the
sudden, crisp snap
of
his voice, my
voice, discovering
why
ÒdamnÓ is a
perfect word.
Forgive
my
damned, remembering
nerves,
closed
hands, curled fists
I
have missed, I
have made,
I
make, even
now.