Too Strong to Stop, Too Sweet to Lose

Too Strong to Stop, Too Sweet to Lose

"What was any art but a mold in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element
which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose." Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark

What marks us?

Small things. A blue bead,
cracked glass, the rivelled trails
of ants. Think of the marks
of history: the hemlock,
the nails, the moon's face
nocked in sticks. None of these
is great. Touched
and touched again,
the body opens. Over and over,
the small hands of the rain.

What things are honest?

Windows. Scissors.
The open throats of orchids.
The polished backs of flies.
The crow's tongue forked
with knowledge. The avalanche
that gives way
like a ripping sail.

What things are wise?

Mirrors. Keys.
The sow that swallows
the runt of her litter. The bees
that sleep in smoke.
The keeper's widow
bending her whisper
to the buzzing mouth
of the hive.

What is the source of power?

Time. Though this far
from obvious. Listen: the waterfall
is powered by its drop, the lightning
by its cliff of charge. Time is the fear
of sliding, masked and strapped,
into the CAT scan, time the lurch
of meeting your own eyes
made sepia in a family photograph.

What is our ancient knowledge?

To track by broken grass,
tell the future
in the moon's fogged mirror.
To cast runes from the hand�
that bowl of bone and leather --
their fall, their scritch
and jumble, the hawk's shift
across a branch of shadow.

What calls?

A call goes out from the hollow earth
and all the underground cities: it's time to sing
the Panis Angelicus, to call up the Angel of Bread,
the Angel of Broken Ground, the angels
shaggy coated, rough as oxen. Even the rooted
long to wander. Hold your hand out
to be read: You will cross water.
Cup it over your ear. What calls? What answers?

What answers?

The ground calls and the bolt
answers. The moon calls
and the salt answers. What did Cain
learn, except that stone calls blood?
Some days the sea is brine and stillness,
the sails limp and the compass spinning.
Then again, the heart is pulled
by every fragment of the earth.

What turns us?

The beauty of the world
is a moon's beauty: shifting,
breathless, mirrored, a beauty
of contradictions. Listen:
We are tender because the light
is spilling out of October,
a low sweep across the cut
fields, the bales. The nameless rises
like a great planet. Tidal,
we turn our faces towards it.

What things protect us?

Salt. Chalk.
Sharpened silver.
Sprigs of mistletoe
carried in secret.
Fish-eyed lenses
set in heavy doors.
Rhymes. Dental records.
Forgetfulness. Distance.

What things are lost?

Many. Most. And those that make it,
spared by chance. Consider
the rune poem, only copy
of a pagan text, bound between
Lucy the martyr and the date of Easter.
What brought it there --
or brought the book
to the burning library?

What things remember?

Sweet Sappho, lady of fragments,
there�s so little left. A few lines saved
by the early plagiarists. A few scraps
of papyrus balled up to bulk
out the scraped hearts
of lesser mummies. Your spangled breath
pulled from the mouths
of crocodiles.

What have we forgotten?

A woman in Bretagne
carries always nine grains
of poison, door out of torture,
the known weight a promise
constant as a ring. Consider:
do oceans remember
the names of rivers? Do shadows
remember? It's possible we've been here
a long time. The ache
in your shoulders is
the imperative of wings.

What do we hold to?

This sweet world�how
we love it. As an old horse loves
the harness, loves the stall,
the drenching smell
of sweat and leather,
rest and hay. How the everyday
slips from us, lost,
or saved, like Pompeii, sealed
in sudden dust.

What ends?

In a trench-cut tunnel of the Athens Metro,
the foreman kneels to a small tomb
while the backhoe settles with a sigh.
A dog's grave, clay stone bones
and blue beads still cuddled
at the throat. What amazes us
about this? The freshness
of the loss, or that tender history has left
the patient jaw arranged
on jumbled paw bones?

What remains?

The clue's in how we're buried:
dates like time dog-eared,
a code for breath that's called
our names. What's left is tags
and outlines: words, a score, a scattering
of genes. That's all, unless loss
has substance -- that slant of light
that makes us turn and look.