Impossible to know much, but it seems they thought
heaven was thick. One illustration
shows the cosmos as a kind of metal onion;
heaven is the outer half. A wedge-shaped
section has been lifted out so we can imagine them
traveling sideways and paradise starting
before they know it, before the smoky orbits
of the planets, before the speckled, fixed stars
and the achromatic rope of the leviathan,
that they’ve already arrived
at the outskirts of the kingdom of light.
It’s Friday afternoon, and in bad traffic
little headaches have started among the drivers.
So much of their shapeless need shows then.
Busy with their radios, they hardly notice
right before the bridge the exquisite
slag heaps rise and glitter. These hills
change only slightly from week to week
or change in relation to each other,
like siblings; some shimmer more,
some less, or a particular glint
will be transferred from an eyeless fender
to a sheet of aluminum that frees and cancels
the light with no help from the sun.
All day bright cranes have worked this scene
and not been noticed. One has a flag
on its elbow. The orange, lace-necked one
has a shovel a child could feel at home in.
The sensitively-strung, pinkish lift
with the platformed man at the controls—
oh—so high!—has caliper hands that sense,
in the simple scraps of cars and ships,
what each was meant for, the intransigence
of certain objects, the refusal
of many earthly forms . . . And the workers in boxes
of scratched glass are like the archons
inventing matter, trying to decide what goes where,
should they make categories, or just
be engaged by the steady rhythms of lyrical arms.
And the travelers, stalled in traffic, are talking
about their days, letting the different weights
of information fall as those on the site
grow casual about their mortal work,
not governed by intent or reason . . .
It’s six o’clock. Behind the man’s face
something glistens from a hook. Behind
the woman’s face, all that mild distance.
They talk and talk. They go over
each bent damaged detail of the week,
and in the accreting power of conversation,
as the slag is gently lifted by the magnet,
the broken days begin to seem whole . . .
So when the entrance shines without warning
it’s easy to see why they didn’t notice
fixed as they were on each other’s eyes—
they didn’t realize it would start
before the tollkeepers and the watchhouses
and the storms of knowledge, that the used world
would usher them in with the patience
of metal, the prongs in the dirt all red
and silver, the claw held almost daintily
to show that the brutal, falling thing
was beautiful and welcoming, it was.