"In This Life."
In this life, I have a little shed not far
from a house we live in and far enough not
to be bothered too much by the kids.
And it wasn't built for writing in.
it was a tool shed or a work room of some sort.
And it's pretty sturdy built. But it
wasn't built for comfort.
And the walls don't quite come up to the ceiling.
There's little space of three or four inches
where the cold wind blows in the wintertime
and where birds come in other times a year, all times a year.
And, sometimes, it's a mess.
And birds fly around madly beating at the windows
and shitting all over my books and knocking over things.
And it's trouble to get them out.
I mean, last summer, a couple of finches, California linnets--
the male has a beautiful red throat and breast--
built a nest inside upon a rafter right above my head
where they could fly in and out.
And some eggs were laid in the nest.
And the mother bird sat on them.
And I began to feel very proprietary and paternal
about those eggs.
And at first, when I'd walk in, the bird would fly out.
And when I would walk out, she'd fly in.
And she began to see there was no percentage in that
as she wanted to get her eggs hatch.
So she learned to sit on the nest while I was in there.
And we'd stare at each other for a while.
I go on working sometimes.
I came very fond of what's going on in my little house.
And, well, but the eggs never hatched.
A cat killed her one night.
And we tried to hatch the eggs, but compared to finches,
I'm not very well-educated.
And it was a tremendous blow.
I mean, the cat killed other birds.
It wasn't the same thing.
I wrote a poem in this life in which everyone, everything is
eaten, finally.
We eat, and then we get eaten.
Norman O'Brown says that's the meaning of the crucifixion.
So accept that-- that you get eaten in this life.
Now, the cup of grasses and down is cool.
The eggs, cool.
The throne, empty from which she would step down and growing
still look out long toward the darkness.
One moist and terrible night, it came creeping and tensing
its jaws.
And it too grew still.
And then it had her.
And a small diamond of light opened in her brain.
I remember the eyes closed tight against the final ecstasy
of the teeth.
The weightless blood beaded lump of feathers buried now
under the iris being slowly eaten alive by the air.
Here's the father blossoming on a twig
to sing the song of the bleeding throat on this day of crystal
wind and young sunlight.
He sings the endless song of irises wrinkling and wrinkling
and becoming nothing, rode a fine sand
strewn with fallen wings.
The toad, the mouse, the blind nestling taken in deep grass.
He sings of a diamond, sings of the spokes
flashing brilliance at the center of the ceaselessly
collapsing floor of bone.
And I wish I sang with him.
He sings the only truth in this world where men remember mostly
lies, sings it, and sings it till it breaks at last
into particles of light.
Blossoms of mercy in the midst of the Holocaust.