The Sparrow’s Gate

And the bird shot through, who, had the stone arms been intact,

would have dashed his small brains out and fallen like a bloody

cloth to the grass—

the bird shot through—

and the absence, the missing arms beneath the beautiful slope of the

woman’s shoulders, her perpetual at ease, the woman not

requiring as the man might the order to relax—

the absence, beneath the beautiful birthright of the woman’s

shoulders, the domes of mosques, or snowy hills, cold

abundant hills,

though now all is hot, the air is hot, the grass is hot, the sweet

stench of stewed greens rising like the savor god feeds on, such

a lot of flesh to make a pleasing smell, bull flesh, and lamb

flesh, and dove flesh, all the steaming pools of blood and flies,

but that was long ago, as the heavy-breasted body, mulled in

sweat and patience that gave birth beneath the scuptor’s hands

to her giant twin above, stood long ago, a thousand plus a

thousand years or more;

beneath the beautiful slouch of the woman’s shoulder, one shoulder

to be exact, just where the shoulder and the upper arm meet,

beside the brimming breast

the bird shot through—

and the absence we had forgotten

came back;

and it was not, as one might expect, an insult, nor a disfigurement,

nor a lack;

not the deflowered sun-stricken bush swamping the broken

fountain, a stone flower thrusting out a long-dead pipe below

the woman’s feet;

not the sparrow’s foolhardy bravura that blasted him safely past the

woman’s breast and into the trees, only to impale him soon

after on the hound’s blunt tooth;

not the newborn rabbit outside the gate, ghastly pink, born too late

and bushwacked by the sudden uprising of the gardener’s

sprinklers that just as quickly dropped back and left the slick

creature trembling like the mayflies that live for one day only,

or like a young deer before a storm;

not an incapacity, nor a short-sightedness,

nor a tunneling of vision, the world narrowing down to this alley

between two rows of rotting trees that leads to a fetid pond,

screened by narrow grasses and blackened by sludge and a half-day’s dream;

not the small girl years ago when her arm went numb after she had

been swung and swung in a circle saying, when her mother

pressed the mute flesh, It is hiding, it is hiding, Mother,

(and what, had the arm been taken altogether, would the girl

have said, To a far country it has gone, Mother, it is lost and cannot find its way back?);

not the terrible draining at the center of the day when the spirit

topples like a statue to the grass, or like a woman who has

given blood and risen too quickly to her narrow feet;

not a shame,

not a word pronounced slowly and then spelled with great care

letter by letter all wrong into the dark beyond the stage, and

the following silence that flies back and attaches itself like a

dark bird to the brain;

not the hound with no sense of smell blundering blindly through

the woods or lying in the sun with his mouth slung open to

catch flies and stray birds;

not the flushed bloom of the ripe marigolds pulled up by the

hundreds and cast onto the gardener’s fire so that new flowers

can be put in and death beaten to the punch, the perfumed

smoke rising acrid as rotting fur;

not the wind butting its head against the garden wall like the boy

who long ago killed the bird or tore the cloth,

nor the remorse of the mother years later when she

remembers locking the door against him and realizes too late

that the fabric of the world—the sky itself, the trees, the garden

and its terrifying colors, the dusky texture of the boy’s hair—is

woven from rebuttals and embraces, takes on its hue, retains its

shape as surely as the patterns on the loom, to which the

woman had given too much importance, mistaking cloth for

flesh;

not the murderous fanfare of the mosquitoes, a visible

derangement, multiplying over the pond’s shallow water;

not the harp dropped into the pond and retrieved years later,

unstrung and warped beyond recognition, good only for the

fire, and not much good for that;

not that;

not a single sheet of paper, a letter whose words no matter how

rearranged are a dark glass held up before the world upon

which one can rap and rap and get no answer;

not that rapping;

none of it, no:

if you lie on the grass in the dead of summer, and sleep, your body

heavier than stone, and wake to the sound of something

tapping and tapping like a sculptor’s tool on stone, and look up

from your dream to see a sparrow hurtling like a missile past

the stone woman’s left breast, right where the arm would have

been,

so that it seems for a moment as if the sparrow has destroyed

the arm or been carried off by it,

but it is hard to tell, everything is so bright, the woman’s body

blinding against the trees, shining like snow just before dusk, or

soiled magnolias, or buttermilk, or aged opals, or darkened ice,

or the full moon, or arms submerged almost to the shoulders

in a tub of water dark as tea or in the steeping pond;

if you wake on the grass to see a sparrow part the waters of the

flesh you had forgotten, the milky flesh that pours back for a

moment after the bird passes—

then the absent arms are heavy;

the arms are so heavy;

not with the dropping down of living arms, falling loosely to the

side, a rest that contains within it the upward motion that will

follow, the fingers moving together to grasp and climb an

unseen rope in the deliberate haphazard way a vine might,

blossoming here and there, fingers and flowers making brief

bright points,

but with the heaviness of something at anchor:

the giant carp, say, grim gold, far gone, who has circled the pond’s

floor for years, lying at last taken on the grass, a creature so

pompous and ornate it looks more like a painted figurehead

than a fish, and so huge it seems to drag the foul pond it will

soon be returned to behind it like some ancient and beautiful

ship;

or heavy as a tapestry carried up from some dark crypt into the light

that will reveal—when the bristling cloth that smells of fox fur

and lilies is unrolled— the still golden image of a swooning

dove, its breast impaled by a silver cross;

or heavy as the bodies of twin deer, frozen in midflight, creatures

small and narrow as overbred dogs, and white as lamb’s wool,

the dreamy fetish of some man rich beyond measure or

purpose raised to such elegant tomfoolery it fills us with

delight, the way the museum’s one prize possession, a life-sized

mechanical silver swan, fills us with delight each time the key is

turned and the bird arches his stiff and handsome neck over

and claps from the mirror that makes his pretty bed a silver

fish, and swallows it, as if he were swallowing a sword, or fire—

making us laugh each time without fail, as if we, too, were fed

on silver fish, or the gardener’s sprinklers had just shot on, or

some fool rabbit were rocketing away from an imaginery

hound for the sheer deranged pleasure of it;

heavy as twin deer, the arms held out as an offering for the stone

woman, who may, for all we know, be a goddess, for all we

know, so old she is, so high above;

or heavy as coffers carved in the shape of deer, full of pearls and

coins, and inlaid with cobalt and ivory patterns, like the

patterns inside the dome of the mosque, mosaics in dark blue,

and lighter blue, and white, or the dome of heaven, dead heavy

with the jewels of heaven, or the Sea of Marmara, the moving

patterns of the waves, the vast mosaic of scent and sound, fish

oil and salt, blood and honey tangled with voices calling people

to prayer and the brutal gulls’ cries and the endless sighs of

shadows slipping across the grass;

heavy the arms, and heavy the arms’ white gleam—

the gleam of snowberries, or eyes veiled over and gifted with second

sight, or smoke from burning roses, or the scrolls of the altar

wrapped in snowy wool, or the fairest flesh of the fairest child,

born to be king, and carried into the dark trees by one brave

and foolish woman who will later be punished as thieves are

punished, but always her smile will hover in the air, as it

hovered over the child, the way we hover over the past, bring it

to life, or find, to our surprise, that it has a life of its own,

turning and turning in space;

all the imaginings, sweet god, the many arms of the mind, the

many-mindedness of the spirit descending upon itself, making

a fullness that seeks entrance and when entrance is found

unable—like water driven up from below—to resist the

opening, and so it shoots out, a blossoming of sparrows gone

mad, making a blessing, the soft spatter of the fountain’s water

upon water in the dead of the afternoon, and one sleeps, and

then wakes, damp, as if bathed in the sweat of the lover, after

dreaming of this or that, a darkness through which something

white floats, a drowned boy, or lilies, or the languid notes of an

ivory harp, or clouds of perfumed incense, or twin fawns

breaking from cover, or the mime dance of arms cut loose

from the body;

one wakes bathed in scented oil to see a sparrow part the waters, or

move a mountain, or open a gate, yes, open twin gates, narrow

walls of stone that lead into this city or that, gates called Eyes of

the World, or Blood Fully Borne, or Morning Waking Unto Morning,

or Garden of Unearthly Delights,

and the mind clears—mayflies, the last fruits of the season,

trembling in the air above, like the air itself made visible—

and something comes through the gates....what?....what is it?....Oh,

yes, it is a woman,

no, it is two women,

and they are laughing and laughing, and carrying on.