I know, I know it was necessary
for us to have things of this kind,
which acquiesced in everything
Rainer Maria Rilke
I set you level,
Your eyes like the twin beasts of a wall.
As a child I believed I had grown you,
And I hummed as I mixed the blind nails
Of this house with the light wood of Heaven
The rootless trees there—falling in love
With carpenters—their painted, pure clothes, their flawless
Bagginess, their God-balanced bubbles, their levels.
I am leaving. I have freed the shelves
So that you may burn cleanly, in sheer degrees
Of domestic ascent, unfolding
Boards one after the other, like a fireman
His rungs out of Hell
or some holocaust
whelmed and climbing:
You only now, alone in the stepped, stripped
closet, staring
Out onto me, with the guaranteed kiss
Off-flaking, involvedly smiling,
Cradling and throning,
With the eyes of a wall and two creatures:
Ungainly unbroken hungering
For me, braving and bearing:
Themed, intolerable, born and unborn child
Of this house of table and floorboard and cupboard,
Of stranger and hammering virgin
At the flash-point of makeup I shadow
My own eyes with house-paint, learning
From yours, and the shelves of Heaven-wood
take fire from the roots
Of earth, dust bodies into smoke
The planks of your pulverized high-chair,
Paint blazes on the eyelids
Of the living in all colors, bestowing the power to see
Pure loss, and see it
With infinite force, with sun-force:
you gesture
Limply, with unspeakable aliveness,
Through the kindling of a child’s
Squared mess of an indoor wood-yard
and I level
Stay level
and kneel and disappear slowly
Into Time, as you, with sun-center force, take up the house
In Hell-roaring steps, a Heaven-beaming holocaust
Of slats
and burn burn off
Just once, for good.
Leave a Reply