The three books that I was writing in self-defense
that I mentioned are the basic three books
that are in this one book.
But at the end, I decided to put in another shorter poem, which
is not really the same sort of thing.
But I thought that for some reason or other sort
of satisfied something that the three volumes hadn't.
And it's a poem that deals with one
of the cemeteries in Providence, in which there are many statues
most of them quite hideous, a few interesting ones and this
is simply a poem about those statues,
and it's called epilogue that was put on after it
got into this book obviously.
Epilogue stone angels and as a subtitle
to clarify that it says, Swan point cemetery
Providence, Rhode Island.
These statues of course are basically of angels.
A few of them seemed to be presumably
statues of the person who's buried,
but basically they're all angels.
And people when they're buried become angels
as soon as you're rid of them.
Angels go.
We merely stray image of a wandering deity searching
for wells or for work.
They scale rungs of air ascending and descending we
are a little lower the grass covers us.
But statues here, they stand simple as horizon statements.
Yes, but what they stand for is long fallen.
Angels of memory, they point to the death of time
not themselves timeless.
And without recall, their strength
is to stand still after glow of an old religion.
One can imagine them sentient.
That is to say we may attribute to stone hardness
one after the other, our own five senses, until it springs
to life and breathe and sneeze and step down among us.
But in fact, they are the opposite of perception.
We bury our gaze in them.
For all my sympathy, I suppose they see nothing at all.
eyeless to indicate our calamity breathless
and graceful above the ruins they inspire.
I could close my eyes now, and evade maybe the blind fear
that their wings hold.
The visible body expresses our body
as a whole, its internal asymmetries, and also,
the broken symmetry we wander through.
With practice, I might regard people and things,
the field around me as lots, objects for fantasy
shadowy but legible.
All these words have other meanings,
a little written maybe far too much to read.
A while and a while and a while after a while
make something like forever.
From ontological bric a brac, and without knowing quite
what they mean, I select my four ambassadors,
my double, my shadow, my shining covering, my name.
The graven names are not their names but ours.
Expectation endlessly engraved is a question to beg.
Blemishes on exposed surfaces perpetual
contusions enlivens features fastened to the stone.
Expecting nothing without struggle,
I come to expect nothing but struggle.
The primal Adam, our archetype light
at his back heavy substance below him glanced down
into uncertain depths fell in love with,
and fell into his own shadow.
Legend or history footprints of passing events.
Lord how our information increases.
I see only a surface complex enough.
Its interruptions of deep blue suggesting
that the Earth is hollow stretched around
what must be all the rest.
My world is parsimonious, a few elements which
combine like tricks of light to sketch the barest outline. /
But my void is lavish, breaking its frame, tempting me always
to turn again.
Again, for each glimpse suggests more and more
in some other farther emptiness.
To reach empty space, think away each object
without destroying its position.
Ghostly then with contents gone, the vacuum will
not as you might expect collapse but hang there vacant, waiting
and in rush of reappointment seven times worse than anything
you know, even seven other dimensions curled
into our three.
But time empties on occasion more quickly than that breathe
in or out no motion, moves.
Trees go down random and planned the way we think.
The artificial, the sacrificial animal is consumed by fire.
Ascends in greasy smoke and offering to the sky.
Earthly refuge assaults heaven as we are contaminated
by notions of eternity.
It is as if a love letter or everything I have written
were to be torn up and the pieces scattered in order
to reach the beloved.
No entrance after sundown under how vast
a night what we call day.
Well, it stands still is merely extended.
What moves is in space.
Immobile figures here in a race with death gloom
about their heads like a dark nimbus.
Still they do while standing.
Go a motion like the flow of water like ice
only slower our time is a river.
There's the glassy sea.
They drift as we do in this garden so swank.
So grandly indiscriminate.
Frail, wings, fingers too fragile.
Their faces freckle weathering.
Pure spirit set the angelic doctor, but not these angels.
Pure visibility hovering, lifting,
horror into the day to cancel and preserve it.
The worst death, worse than death
would be to die leaving nothing unfinished.
Somewhere in my life, there must have been buried now under long
accumulations some extreme joy which never spoken,
cannot be brought to mind.
How else in this unconscious city
could I have such a sense of dwelling?
I would raise-- what's the opposite of Ebenezer?
Night with its gripped.
Its cradle song rage for days end impatience
like a boat in the evening towards the horizon as down
a sounding line barker all, funeral march,
nocturne at high noon.
Thank you.