Two Poems

Nathaniel Mackey

… that there existed a scout of love from whose effects of grief no one could escape …

—Wilson Harris, Black Marsden

EYE ON THE SCARECROW

      The way we lay

  we mimed a body

    of water. It was

this or that way

   with

        the dead and we

      were them. No

one

    worried which …

      Millet beer made

our legs go weak,

      loosed

    our tongues. “The dead,”

we

      said, “are drowning

    of thirst,” gruff

      summons we muttered

    out loud in our

     sleep …

     It was a journey we

   were on, drawn-out

    scrawl we made a road

of, long huthered hajj

      we

     were on. Raw strip

    of cloth we now rode,

      wishful, letterless

book

    the ride we thumbed …

Harp-headed ghost whose

  head we plucked incessantly.

    Bartered star.     Tethered

    run …

  It was a ride we knew we’d

 wish to return to. Every-

    thing was everything,

nothing no less. No less

    newly

  arrived or ancestral, of

    late having to do with

 the naming of parts …

   Rolling hills rolled

up like a rug, raw sprawl

    of a

    book within a book

  without a name known as

     Namless, not to be

arrived at again …

  It was

  the Book of No Avail we

were in did we dare name

 it, momentary kings and

queens,

  fleet kingdom. Land fell

 away on all sides.

Past

Lag we caught ourselves,

  run weft at last

 adequate, shadowless,

   lit,

  left up Atet Street,

 legs tight, hill after

     hill after hill.

    Had it been a book Book

of Opening the Book it

   would’ve been called,

kept

under lock and key …

Hyperbolic

   arrest. Ra was on the

  box.

  It was after the end of

 the world … To lie on

    our backs looking

   into the dark was all

     there was worth

    doing,

  each the aroused eye

 one another sought,

     swore he or she

 saw,

   we lay where love’s

  pharaonic torso lay

     deepest, wide-eyed

all

night without sleep …

“String

   our heads with straw,” we

  said, half-skulls tied with

    catgut, strummed …

   Scratched

  our strummed heads, memory

made us itch. Walked out

 weightless, air what eye

     was

   left …

Someone said Rome,

   someone said destroy it.

Atlantis, a third shouted

out …

    Low ride among ruins

  notwithstanding we flew.

   Swam, it often seemed,

 underwater, oddly immersed,

bodies

        long since bid goodbye,

we

 lay in wait, remote muses

   kept us afloat. Something

 called pursuit had us by

   the nose. Wafted ether

   blown

low, tilted floor, splintered

     feet. Throated bone …

  Rickety boat we rode …

    As

   though what we wanted

  was to be everywhere at

      once,

an altered life lived on an

       ideal

    coast we’d lay washed up

     on, instancy and elsewhere

         endlessly

   entwined

SOUND AND SEMBLANCE

   A sand-anointed wind spoke of

survival, wood scratched raw,

  scoured bough. And of low sky

    poked at by branches,        blown

 rush,    thrown voice,        legbone

            flute …

   Wind we all filled up with caught

  in the tree we lay underneath …

Tree filled up with wind and more

               wind,

 more than could be said of it said …

   So-called ascendancy of shadow,

  branch, would-be roost, now not

    only a tree, more than a tree …

It was the bending of boughs we’d

  read about, Ibn ‘Arabi’s reft

 ipseity, soon-come condolence,

          thetic

    sough. We saved our breath, barely

                  moved,

   said nothing, soon-come suzerainty

  volubly afoot,         braided what we’d

 read and what we heard and what

 stayed sayless,       giggly wind,

          wood,

   riffling wuh …     A Moroccan

     reed-flute’s desert wheeze took

    our breath,    floor we felt we

      stood on, caustic earth we rode

  across …   It was Egypt or Tennessee

                   we

     were in. No one, eyes exed out,

    could say which. Fleet, millenarian

     we it now was whose arrival the wind

                        an-

nounced

•

  Night found us the far side of

Steal-Away Ridge, eyes crossed

 out, X’s what were left, nameless

     what we saw we not-saw. We ducked

  and ran, rained on by tree-sap,

           dreaming,

chattered at by wind and leaf-stir,

    more than we’d have dreamt or

 thought. We lay on our backs looking

   up at the limbs of the tree we lay

     underneath, leaves our pneumatic

                   book,

    We lay on our backs’ unceased reprise.

North of us was all an emolument,

   more than we’d have otherwise run.

 We worked at crevices, cracks,

    convinced we’d pry love loose,

            wrote

 our names out seven times in dove’s

                   blood,

    kings and queens, crowned ourselves

  in sound. Duke was there,     Pres, Lady,

   Count,      Pharoah came later. The

Soon-Come Congress we’d heard so much

    about, soon come even sooner south …

                           So

     there was a new mood suddenly, blue

                        but uptempo,

  parsed, bitten into,       all of us got our

share … Pecks what had been kisses, beaks

  what once were lips, other than we

 were as we lay under tree limbs, red-beaked

                              birds

    known as muni what we were, heads crowned

                                  in

  sound only in

 sound