LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

the snow also blew

      and melted, the life

      before this life

      of paint and jubilatio,

      further intervention

      of the shaping hand,

      sanding fine as skin

      to another’s touch,

      strokes of expression

      doweled and ribboned,

      transplanted here.

      She practices her song

      too perfectly to be heard.

      She teaches me to wait,

      to praise with her the traffic

      inching past, attend

      to the song of silence,

      the song of cold

      that brings the fire

      that never is consumed.

      Her wooden cheeks

      never empty of breath

      call us all day.

      The snowy light

      has almost reached

      her shoulders, turning her

      horn silver. The light

      arrives on waves of music.

      Soon it will reach me.

      THIS STABLE GROUND

      Bull, donkey, lamb, goat, cow.

      They share the redemption

      of cell and story, fierce frost searing

      them a little less, yet still palpable

      as this birth, as rich with blood.

      They stand peripheral

      and hear the cries, woman and child.

      They smell the active bringing-forth,

      steaming breath like his. They escape

      eternity together, into this

      cold air where he is caught

      with rough cloth, dried and held

      above dirt, dung, the weight

      upon hoof and sandal so permanent

      in seeming. Everything miraculous

      arrives in the world of breath, cold,

      foul straw, wood rotten with use, oily wool

      and the rush of cow stale onto the ground.

      Crowds fill the narrow alleys and streets

      outside, tallying numbers again,

      birth and death their only kingdom.

      These beasts might as well believe.

      They do. Tethered to one more

      child of billions, they know this short life

      of burden and lash. They feel

      with his growling hungers, wait for

      love to materialize, insistent

      as rut and feed herding us together

      on a date no one agrees upon,

      prepared to sleep on frozen ground,

      the pain over and barely begun,

      mutual breath holding on,

      rhythms of listening instinct, that small

      cry against her cold, warm breast.

      SHEPHERD

      Bones cold as these stones,

      leggings scratching pimpled skin,

      carrying nothing but time,

      a crooked stick and motherless lamb,

      not one of us lucky enough

      to be even half-drunk.

      Stars so many points of ice

      save one glowing through

      an orange shroud, driving

      its crossed spears of light

      into the frozen ground.

      This star seems to move,

      setting small fires to the backs

      of the sheep, their spindly shanks

      and dark eyes too much like ours.

      I grow uneasy. What I knew

      leaves me as mist, breath.

      My body, a dusty window,

      fills with light. I hear singing,

      harmonies like my own voice.

      Hearing of this birth,

      I thought of my father and son,

      myself both son and father.

      One more child of this local dirt.

      I move without moving

      through sheep who stare

      and chew, drift over hills

      I knew once, to a cave’s golden

      mouth, myself a shadow

      thrown against the golden wall,

      slowly entering.

      THE SECOND SHEPHERD

      It is cold. The bull by the door

      has flecks of ice on his nose.

      Sheep wool is stiff bristles.

      Everywhere the breath of animals

      fogs and steams, their visible spirits.

      I am always cold and barely notice.

      Frozen hoof ruts make standing hard.

      Beside the small dung fire the woman

      dries the child, cleans him with wool

      and ice water warmed by her breath.

      One more child, I think again, as I have

      from the first rumors, the whispered portents.

      I am here, doubt alive and well

      as this tiny one, rubbed to a glow

      by the coarse wool and staring blindly around.

      I think of my own four, hungry

      often as not, dirty and loved

      when I have time. One more child.

      As if the one god, Yahweh—I know

      enough to know if there is a god at all,

      he will be one—would inhabit

      with spirit this cold flesh. Messiah

      a man I understand. King. Warrior.

      Our own child. Dung and hoof-dents.

      The song I hear might be

      my mother’s old melody

      that sang me to sleep despite the hunger.

      How well I remember her, dead at 28.

      Now this woman sings, something like it.

      How lovely it is, how it fills.

Скачать книгу