The pilot of the little plane must stop his engines
while fifty pounds of sand are lugged into the nose
to balance out our weight. He explains, turns his key
in the ignition—sputter, whine, nothing.
Again: grind and cough, nothing. Ripple of doubt.
Third time: unpromising silence and then the motor
shudders awake, and we taxi till we face
a swath of black pavement bound by rowed lamps
—then race and lift so swiftly our collective weight
seems nothing at all. Over the dim marshland,
a bit of bay, rows of rooftops bordering the shore,
the harbor islands with their lighthouses.
And turning back to look—we all turn back to look—
—what is it these glittering fields are like?
One wants words, but words are wanting,
figures worn: deltas and archipelagoes,
red nerves, coppery rivulets of a freeway’s
arcing ramps. Then further, higher: hot jewels.
Scintillant flakes on a video screen. Better:
holes in black paper, an immense page
held between us and an overwhelming realm,
so that just this clattering glare comes
bursting through, just enough that we can bear to see…
Which seems to prepare us, somehow,
to turn in the other direction, toward the place
we’re headed—nothing now but a tonal,
seamless night, darkness made intimate.
By all the lamps we’ve seen, whose multiplicity
made this warm field seem serene?
Or by the panel of instruments,
plate-glass green beneath the windshield,
the churning engine that faithfully pulls us
into the huge, physical dark.
As if it were all that’s unsaid,
untranslated into the busy syllables of light.
Not afraid. Home in a while. No sign
of the town yet, glowing in its crook
of peninsula, its dim nest of sea.
Lustrous, continuous, unspoken night.
The self isn’t made of language;
the self is made of night.