I wrote a long poem called "Sun Exercises," which
I will spare you eight parts of, but I'll
give you the first three.
It's based on a yoga exercise called Sun Salutation,
and the first three parts don't really get into that much.
What they do is have the poem in microcosm.
In the first part, I simply establish a landscape
by the ocean in England, which serves
as a motif through the poem, references to men in a boat
and the ocean as a kind of a symbol, I guess.
Yes it is.
In the second part, I perform what I would modestly
call an active exorcism on the creepy parts of myself,
and I try and name my weak heartedness.
On the third part, I begin to celebrate,
and I refer to the festival of Easter,
which was a favorite festival for my Catholic boyhood
in England.
Only here it's in Wisconsin, above the Mississippi.
So I read just these first three parts of a long pretentious
poem called "Sun Exercises."
"One: face the sun, fold the hands, legs together,
stand erect.
I'm walking by the sea with my mother.
There is a jail built on the sand at the water's edge.
We hear faint cries from inside.
The jail rocks softly like a box with an animal inside it.
In a small boat, my father goes by.
It is a calm sea.
Rowing with him are his father and his father's father.
As the three men go by, my father
pauses from his rowing and waves to us.
My sister Mary is standing on the beach.
She is staring into the sun.
Her belly swells.
She must lie down.
I ask her why she lies down on the sand.
She says, to give birth to my pain.
After a little while, her belly subsides.
She lies quiet.
My sister Angela stands looking at the waves.
Like a queen she tries to command them, go back, go back.
The tide creeps forward, licks at her feet.
Her hands are resting on a pram.
The pram is filled with fish, small fish of a kind you
can catch in any country.
The tide comes in.
She steps back letting the pram go.
It floats off from her.
How soon do we turn to men who swim in the sea?
And here is my mother, content to sit and watch the water.
She's remembering when she was a girl
and the long, long wrinkled hair of the four sisters.
She is content to be dreaming of them in the long afternoon.
My three women of the sand.
Peter comes up to me.
Evening already, a darker blue.
He has coils of rope on both shoulders.
My brother is prince of ropes.
He says it's time to go.
My brother at home among heights, which I fear.
He says, we must rope up.
Soon we are bound together.
We walk to the base of a steep cliff.
It goes up and up.
I cannot see the top.
Evening already, at night coming down.
We make the first toeholds.
We begin to climb the high stone face of the father.
"To inhale and raise the arms, bend backward."
You, I accuse, you Michael Moon.
Mad moon boy, how mad you are, nobody knows.
You got drunk at dawn.
You ride the spider bare back across the dawn.
You stand on your head on the moon alone, little tomb lover.
Ophelia, Ophelia, drifting along, ah, such a sad song.
When you were small, what was your nightmare?
My nightmare was that the moon rose over the world's edge.
It stared at me.
It climbed.
It smiled, and was mocking me.
If I didn't wake myself up before it climbed too high,
I'd be dead.
What now do you dream?
I feel the shadows of Europe creep over my sheets.
I hear the French.
I hear Agincourt and its arrows.
I see my brain, my brain the potato,
the black three-pound potato in an Irish field.
I hold up my brain caked with the dirt of ancestors.
I wave it.
Do all my thoughts come from this thing?
I rinse it in a stream like an old washroom.
I race through the streets, this moon brain in my hands
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachtani?
My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?
This is the night the dead headmaster turns toward you
with a fresh exam.
This is the night the crucifix clicks
open under the black gloves of the burglar.
This is the night the rat runs out for his free gift.
This is the night the boneless bird flies.
This is the night that children crouch in the stone rocket.
This is the night a mother chains her child
to a dead animal.
Eddie, Eddie, it's my father's name.
Oh, you Moon, you potato man, you toy,
how can we rid the town of this rat?
Moon, I summon you.
Michael Moon, I call you out from your shallow grave,
from your brown bag in the potter's field.
Come forth.
Moon, get up and mend your wounds.
All the children know that song.
See the rocking chair rocks backwards and forwards trying
to rock itself into a man.
Moon, get up and mend your wounds.
See the woman croons a quiet song to the driftwood
she holds in her arms.
Moon, Michael Moon, mend yourself.
Come forth."
Third last part.
"Three: exhale and bend forward, for the hands are in line
with the feet.
Touch the knees with your head.
Easter, again.
I light a candle in the window.
On a hill in Wisconsin I light a hundred candles.
O little prisoners strapped to your wicks but dancing.
I gather dry wood from behind the house.
I pile and light it.
And I remember the vigils, Easter Eve,
the night of the new fire.
The whole church darkened.
The priest breathing on the water of the font.
The priest taking the huge hunk of Paschal candle
and sliding it into the water.
And the kindling of the new fire, the passing from taper
to taper until all God's people stood in a flickering silence.
Each fist flowers with a new fire.
We boys went round with poles, lifting the Lent cloths
off the statues.
Now, the sun sinks into the bluffs behind the lake.
I say to the sun, do you die too?
He tells me, no.
I go down to meet the snake, alone.
Always, I return.
I rub sticks together.
I dance.
I ride the roads.
I run up and down the hills on fire.
The peasants of Europe are marching with torches.
Run, run, over Wisconsin, now with torches
through the abandoned farms.
Roll blazing wheels down hills, let there
be beacons on each height.
Hoist fires like children on their father's shoulders.
I'm the boy of new fire.
I am the King you feast from.
I am the fellow of flares.
I slide down to the lake, still frozen.
I breathe my English breath three times
on this Midwestern water.
And in the pool I make, I dip the moon corpse.
White as the cold Christ, body of the father.
I the moon man, Easter upon myself.
There is my house on the hill and all its lights.
If I could cut a cloth of such flame and all winter wear it.
If I could bless and multiply.
If I could pass out these flames among my friends
and every house, like my castle of many candles,
and every family and friend this night receive new fire."