“How can I be distinguished from her? Only if I keep on pressing
through to the other side, if I’m always beyond, because on
this side of the screen of their projections, I can’t live . . .”—Luce Irigaray
“I dreamed god shone—No,
that’s not right. I dreamed God
shone his light
upon us and he was jealous. No:
I dreamed God shone the light of his violent miserable longing
upon us and he was
pleased. For once. But the light
was not.
It was the light that used to come from certain houses
east of here. And God, the pinpoint
into which the light
retracted, held it steady, taking our happiness
back to the secret blackness of his Fame . . .
After that, how could I
believe in freedom? When a group
of sparrows rises from the dust, the whole flock shudders
but one stays,
and that is the only one
that interests us: loneliness
through which the truth passes
to complete itself.”
. . . only half believing in it.
Or half-believing in the female voice,
so that’s one-quarter belief in a way, enough to revive
the dead forms of religion and love . . .
“There appeared unto me this morning a little goat
with angel wings—jagged, sawtoothed wings, you know the kind,
and its face was smashed in . . .
king
solitude,
bright axis,
I have not been like the others—
(No that’s not right, I have been)
king solitude, when they walk by your side
their faces bright with hope,
and you send them back to the miracle of their bodies,
they don’t want those tired miracles:
the problem of the swine
or the issue of blood;
they want their permanent hungers,
they want you . . .
Look here.
It will be written down.
You do not have to write it.”
It should have been quite easy to find her.
I searched a long time.
It should have been quite easy. To find her
in the middle of the night while the rose bush struck
the window with knotted blossoms,
and the moon carried the orange coffin of its former light,
and the free newspaper was hurled from the street:
whack:
like that.
So few women in the text.
I used to run my fingers over the maps in back,
the lands of bondage and wanderings,
those sickly pastels,
being careful not to tear the pages
or she would have to bring the scotch tape,
the yellow kind because it was the fifties,
the kind that cracked like memory and would not
yield with time . . .
Here it is.
The alabaster box.
The Hair.
And they murmured against her.
“I dreamed we were sitting in the garden
and you were pleasing everyone;
your thick wrists made an X over your knee
and I wanted to wash you with my hair . . .
there are those who need everything
and those who can’t be served; that’s
what we are. We’re both whores.”
Think of them sitting in the garden like that.
Now,
take him out.
There. Just leaving her. She has
a bit part shattered by devils.
And the place he was—his shape was where
perfection might have started, if perfection were.
The man is one. The woman is zero. Or two . . .
“So how does it feel when the power leaves your body?
When you give yourself away?
You think you can help them by listening
and you can help them sometimes until you become them,
then the crazy ones start yelling because not
being in their skin hurts them, or having you in there
hurts them—stand up a minute. Let me be you just one second.
I know you are very busy.”
. . . and the woman doesn’t believe in words;
she pulls a thread at the end of the poem
and mutters to herself as it comes undone.
“I dreamed I saw God dead. No,
come on. I dreamed God’s burned body
lay in the desert
and you covered him. But he went on
dying in his obsessive way;
sometimes he raised his head and told anecdotes.
Sometimes he just lay there
hurt and playing God—”
The way everyone is stiff if they haven’t been
to a parade.
Awkward: the not-
knowingness of them. Only a few were told.
The slapping of the palm fronds as he entered town.
I used to imagine him dragging his feet on the ground.
The donkey was too low.
The manger donkey next to the shepherds.
Then the sickening thought of all those clothes
in the dirt . . .
“—and maybe you were waking in that bare little room;
it was time for you to go. A triangle
of light was held by the low
resentful force I called God;
some athletic angels climbed over the ledge
and signaled you to come too: what right
did you have to be inside, they asked; what
was the world’s blunt radiance without you?”