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By Carl Philips (1959- ) CortègeDo not imagine you can abdicate Prologue If the sea could dream, and if the sea were dreaming now, the dream would be the usual one: Of the Flesh. The letter written in the dream would go something like: Forgive me—love, Blue. * I. The Viewing (A Chorus) O what, then, did he look like? He had a good body. And how came you to know this? His body was naked. Say the sound of his body. His body was quiet. Say again—quiet? He was sleeping. You are sure of this? Sleeping? Inside it, yes. Inside it. * II. Pavilion Sometimes, a breeze: a canvas flap will rise and, inside, someone stirs; a bird? a flower? One is thinking Should there be thirst, I have only to reach for the swollen bag of skin beside me, I have only to touch my mouth that is meant for a flower to it, and drink. One is for now certain he is one of those poems that stop only; they do not end. One says without actually saying it I am sometimes a book of such poems, I am other times a flower and lovely pressed like so among them, but always they forget me. I miss my name. They are all of them heat- weary, anxious for evening as for some beautiful to the bone messenger to come. They will open again for him. His hands are good. His message is a flower. * III. The Tasting (A Chorus) O what, then, did he taste like? He tasted of sorrow. And how came you to know this? My tongue still remembers. Say the taste that is sorrow. Game, fallen unfairly. And yet, you still tasted? Still, I tasted. Did you say to him something? I could not speak, for hunger. * IV. Interior And now, the candle blooms gorgeously away from his hand— and the light has made blameless all over the body of him (mystery, mystery), twelvefold shining, by grace of twelve mirrors the moth can’t stop attending. Singly, in no order, it flutters against, beats the glass of each one, as someone elsewhere is maybe beating upon a strange door now, somebody knocks and knocks at a new country, of which nothing is understood— no danger occurs to him, though danger could be any of the unusually wild flowers that, either side of the road, spring. When he slows, bends down and closer, to see or to take one—it is as if he knows something to tell it. * V. The Dreaming (A Chorus) O what, then, did it feel like? I dreamed of an arrow. And how came you to know him? I dreamed he was wanting. Say the dream of him wanting. A swan, a wing folding. Why do you weep now? I remember. Tell what else you remember. The swan was mutilated. * Envoi And I came to where was nothing but drowning and more drowning, and saw to where the sea— besides flesh—was, as well, littered with boats, how each was blue but trimmed with white, to each a name I didn’t know and then, recalling, did. And ignoring the flesh that, burning, gives more stink than heat, I dragged what boats I could to the shore and piled them severally in a tree- less space, and lit a fire that didn’t take at first—the wood was wet—and then, helped by the wind, became a blaze so high the sea itself, along with the bodies in it, seemed to burn. I watched as each boat fell to flame: Vincent and Matthew and, last, what bore your name. Source: Cortège (Graywolf Press, 1995) Luna MothNo eye that sees could fail to remark you: like any leaf the rain leaves fixed to and flat against the barn’s gray shingle. But what leaf, this time of year, is so pale, the pale of leaves when they’ve lost just enough green to become the green that means loss and more loss, approaching? Give up the flesh enough times, and whatever is lost gets forgotten: that was the thought that I woke to, those words in my head. I rose, I did not dress, I left no particular body sleeping and, stepping into the hour, I saw you, strange sign, at once transparent and impossible to entirely see through. and how still: the still of being unmoved, and then the still of no longer being able to be moved. If I think of a heart, his, as I’ve found it.... If I think of, increasingly, my own.... If I look at you now, as from above, and see the diva when she is caught in mid- triumph, arms half-raised, the body as if set at last free of the green sheath that has— how many nights?—held her, it is not without remembering another I once saw: like you, except that something, a bird, some wild and necessary hunger, had gotten to it; and like the diva, but now broken, splayed and torn, the green torn piecemeal from her. I remember the hands, and—how small they seemed, bringing the small ripped thing to me. Source: From the Devotions (Graywolf Press, 1998) CustomThere is a difference it used to make, seeing three swans in this versus four in that quadrant of sky. I am not imagining. It was very large, as its effects were. Declarations of war, the timing fixed upon for a sea- departure; or, about love, a sudden decision not to, to pretend instead to a kind of choice. It was dramatic, as it should be. Without drama, what is ritual? I look for omens everywhere, because they are everywhere to be found. They come to me like strays, like the damaged, something that could know better, and should, therefore—but does not: a form of faith, you've said. I call it sacrifice—an instinct for it, or a habit at first, that becomes required, the way art can become, eventually, all we have of what was true. You shouldn't look at me like that. Like one of those saints on whom the birds once settled freely. Source: The Rest of Love (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC., 2004) Ghost ChoirWhat injures the hive injures the bee, says Marcus Aurelius. I say not wanting to hurt another, this late, should maybe more than count, still, as a form of love. Be wild. Bewilder. Not that they hadn’t, of course, known unkindnesses, and been themselves unkind. When the willow’s leaves, back again, unfold all along their branches, the branches routinely in turn brushing then lifting away from the pond’s face, it’s too late. Last night I doubted as I’ve not doubted myself in years: knowing a thing seemed worthless next to knowing the difference between many things, the fox from the hounds, persuasion from the trust required to fall asleep beside a stranger; who I am, and how I treated you, and how you feel. So that it almost seemed they’d either forgotten or agreed without saying so to pretend they had. Did you know there’s an actual plant called honesty, for its seedpods, how you can see straight through? Though they’d been told the entire grove would die eventually, they refused to believe it. The face in sleep, like a wish wasted. To the wings at first a slight unsteadiness; then barely any. What if forgetting’s not like that—instead, stampeding, panicked, just a ghost choir: of legends, and rumors, of the myths forged from memory—what’s true, and isn’t— that we make of ourselves and, even worse, of others. Not the all-but- muscular ache, the inner sweep of woundedness; no. Not tonight. Say the part again about the bluer flower, black at the edges. I’ve always loved that part. Skull of an ox, from which a smattering of stars keeps rising. How they decided never to use surrender as a word again. Source: Poetry (January 2019) 微信号：wgsgjx
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