For Robert Penn Warren
Heavy summer. Heavy. Companion, if we climb our mortal
bodies
High with great effort, we shall find ourselves
Flying with the life
Of the birds of death. We have come up
Under buzzards they face us
Slowly slowly circling and as we watch them they turn us
Around, and you and I spin
Slowly, slowly rounding
Out the hill. We are level
Exactly on this moment: exactly on the same bird
plane with those deaths. They are the salvation of our sense
Of glorious movement. Brother, it is right for us to face
Them every which way, and come to ourselves and come
From every direction
There is. Whirl and stand fast!
Whence cometh death, O Lord?
On the downwind, riding fire,
Of Hogback Ridge.
But listen: what is dead here?
They are not falling but waiting but waiting
Riding, and they may know
The rotten, nervous sweetness of my blood.
Somewhere riding the updraft
Of a far forest fire, they sensed the city sugar
The doctors found in time.
My eyes are green as lettuce with my diet,
My weight is down,
One pocket nailed with needles and injections, the other dragging
With sugar cubes to balance me in life
And hold my blood
Level, level. Tell me, black riders, does this do any good?
Tell me what I need to know about my time
In the world. O out of the fiery
Furnace of pine-woods, in the sap-smoke and crownfire of
needles,
Say when I’ll die. When will the sugar rise boiling
Against me, and my brain be sweetened
To death?
In heavy summer, like this day.
All right! Physicians, witness! I will shoot my veins
Full of insulin. Let the needle burn
In. From your terrible heads
The flight-blood drains and you are falling back
Back to the body-raising
Fire.
Heavy summer. Heavy. My blood is clear
For a time. Is it too clear? Heat waves are rising
Without birds. But something is gone from me,
Friend. This is too sensible. Really it is better
To know when to die better for my blood
To stream with the death-wish of birds.
You know, I had just as soon crush
This doomed syringe
Between two mountain rocks, and bury this needle in needles
Of trees. Companion, open that beer.
How the body works how hard it works
For its medical books is not
Everything everything is how
Much glory is in it: heavy summer is right
For a long drink of beer. Red sugar of my eyeballs
Feels them turn blindly
In the fire rising turning turning
Back to Hogback Ridge, and it is all
Delicious, brother: my body is turning is flashing
unbalanced
Sweetness everywhere, and I am calling my birds.
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