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Blind Huber

Blind Huber

poems by

NICK FLYNN

Graywolf Press

Copyright

Copyright © 2002 by Nick Flynn

Publication of this volume is made possible in part by a grant provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature, a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Significant support has also been provided by the Bush Foundation; Marshall Field’s Project Imagine with support from the Target Foundation; the McKnight Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.

Special funding for this title has been provided by the Jerome Foundation.

Published by Graywolf Press

250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600

Minneapolis, MN 55401

Published in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-55597-373-5

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-55597-933-1

2  4  6  8  9  7  5  3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2002102973

Cover photograph: Morgan Mazzoni, Africanized killer bee’s tail end (Apis mellifera scutellata)

© Tony Stone

Cover design: Scott Sorenson

for F.R.

He already had the water, but he had to discover jars …

—Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Buddhist Teaching

Blind Huber (i)

Opaque glow where my eyes should be,

what remaining light, eyelids

thin against it. Soothing,

as if all I pass were encrusted in wax,

dipped upright—wax bush & wax

bench, wax man, wax tea, waxy cup to waxy

lips, my eyes now more like their eyes,

morning filtered beyond translucence

as the acolytes cover their queen.

By the sound they will soon

swarm, clockwork, the frenzied heat of wings

forms droplets on the walls of

their city, their city softening, now twisting

just out of shape.

Swarm

When you see us swarm—rustle of

wingbeat, collapsed air—your mind

tries to make us one, a common

intelligence, a single spirit un-

tethered. You imagine us merely

searching out the next

vessel, anything

that could contain us, as if the hive

were just another jar. You try

to hold the ending, this

unspooling, make it either

zero or many, lack

or flurry. I was born,

you begin, & already each word

makes you smaller. Look at this field—

Cosmos. Lungwort. Utter each

& break

into a thousand versions of yourself.

You can’t tell your stories fast enough.

The answer is not one, but also

not two.

Blind Huber (ii)

I sit in a body & think of a body, I picture

Burnens’ hands, my words

make them move. I say, plunge them into the hive,

& his hands go in. If I said,

put your head inside,

he would wear it. Think of my body, every day

the same chair, angled

thus, Burnens

every day, think of his body, think of

a hive, each bee, each thought, the hive

brims with thought. Move it into shade, I think,

& the body moves to shade. Whose

fingers, which word, each surges

from inside my head, but always returns

as Burnens.

Workers (attendants)

Nights we lie beside her, our mouths

at her belly, counting

her breaths, the buzz, the gathering, long

done. We all began

inside her, like those lined up

inside her now, mere

idea of ourselves

unborn. We wash her body

ceaselessly, move our tongues

until all her hairs loosen. She

roams the brood, finds

another empty cell

& fills it. Morning comes &

she calms us, keeps us inside

until the dew burns off. This sodden

world. All winter

we huddled around her, kept her

warm. Those on the outside, those

farthest from her, died

first, their legs

gripped the others like a shawl.

Hive

What would you do inside me?

You would be utterly

lost, labyrinthine

comb, each corridor identical, a

funhouse, there, a bridge, worker

knit to worker, a span

you can’t cross. On the other side

the queen, a fortune of honey.

Once we filled an entire house with it,

built the comb between floorboard

& joist, slowly at first, the constant

buzz kept the owners awake, then

louder, until honey began to seep

from the walls, swell

the doorframes. Our gift.

They had to burn the house down

to rid us.

Blind Huber (iii)

Sometimes bees, the glittering

curtain they form, cling to my face,

& the moment before knowing

I can imagine them a leaf, able to be

brushed away, but they

hold on, their tongues

seek each pore,

as if my cheek offered nectar, they move

delicately, caress &

shade, as if not threatening

to flood my eyes.

Queen

Net suit &

smoking cup, you reek fear.

If we fight back, or if there isn’t

enough, you seek me out with gloved fingers

to crush my head. When we sting

you scream. We know why

you carry our white boxes

to the edge of the alfalfa, to the figs

& raspberries. You take our honey

because we let you. We pollinate the fields

because we are the fields.

Workers (guards)

At night skunks come,

crack us in their teeth, oblivious

to the sting. We covered one

& its body jumped & we each died

pumping it with venom. The virgin

flew this morning

as we dragged the old queen

out. A drone

failed to follow, a young one,

gorging himself on honey,

& ten of us surrounded him,

held his mouth shut. We are

infinitely more abundant

& we are all the same.

Blind Huber (iv)

False kingdom, even as a child I knew—

no endpoint, no start—first

the hive creates a queen, so the queen

can create workers, so the workers can

build the hive. I tell Burnens, seal it,

& he seals it, presses his

fist to the opening, becomes

their cage. If the sun breaks through

they will find a way out, made

desperate by the hint of distant nectar,

tear a hole like a thought in their wall.

Virgin Queen

Utterly desired, translucent

body, wings

never tried, wax-sealed until

ready. The nurses feed me from their own

mouths

& I am changed,

made essential. They guard me

with their lives. Around us

comb spirals out, first

the lesser eggs, then stores

of pollen, honey pockets. I hear

a roar, an enormous wind,

twenty thousand

fanning my nectar. I’ll gnaw my

way out, soon, smell

where the other virgins sleep,

trapped

in that perfection forever.

Drones

We are made of waiting—

attendants tend the queen, nurses

nurse the grubs, we roam

the brood, sicken ourselves on honey

we did nothing to produce. Foragers

return with more, we rub against

their sexless bodies, taste

where they’ve been, this outside

coming in. A virgin grows in a guarded

cell, ripening on

rare jelly, we wait for her

to emerge. First she will kill

the other virgins, those

unborn, a spike

to the head, then lead us into a cloud

& fuck us in the air. Spacious

inside her, the root breaks off

to pump forever there. We

wait. The workers—

they would smother us all

if not for her.

Twinned

To exist wholly in another, seamless,

mirrored. Think of the hive,

at each turn we find ourselves, not

a version, not a replica,

but our whole selves. Love,

you claim, comes close to this,

no space

between your words, a hand

over the other’s heart. How do you live

with this distance? I have you, she

thinks, or, I know you,

but she can never say, I am you.

Blind Huber (v)

Before shadows I saw the rose,

saw its thorn,

a bee navigating, never impaled.

I no longer know what is outside my mind

& what is in.

It must be the sun … there wasn’t anything here but the sun in the first place … earth came out of the sun, and we came out of the earth …

—Major Amberson, The Magnificent Ambersons, upon dying

Inside Nothing

A sun-fed engine, the inside

constant, a flower taken

whole. In winter our wings

move faster, to keep the sun

inside, inside nothing

& we fill the nothing with suns,

line them up,

swallow sap, swallow

field, drop by drop, each stem

a pump. Rose to rose to rose to

rose to rose to rose to rose, calyx &

anther, all summer

gone. We move

still faster, fields grow

constant, inside

the color of heat. Clinging we

pull our bodies

across a chain of bodies, become

the chain, climb nothing,

always

up, toward suns, line them up

inside us, a flower taken whole,

a field built inside. It rises.

Each blade, each sun.

Blind Huber (vi)

Our words mingle &

entwine, I say, ambrosia,

he says, night, the visible world &

the invisible, who speaks by now

unimportant. Honey, you imagine,

must fall like rain, to be gathered up

like pig-corn, but you cannot gather it

yourselves. It would be like holding on

to air. Imagine each flower

pulling this ambrosia up, imagine it might,

like us, begin in darkness.

Geometry

Essential,

with heaven nearly empty of

stars, with mountains still

rising from plains,

like music,

only it can’t be heard.

Before wax

we’d use it to build, carve

pine resin into cells,

fields within hollow trees,

hexagons wired into

our sleep. Vein

of amber, ploughed under by ice—

golden lozenge—

we are still inside.

Innocence

Scale the firs with augers,

bore holes for us to enter. Later still

cut the trees down, hollow

the trunks, lay them on the outskirts

in clearings. Once fear

subsides, place the hives outside

the kitchen, say a prayer, reach bare-

handed in, tear off a fistful.

Innocent as cattle,

we whispered, bring us home,

& you brought us home.

Amber

To hover

the imagined center, our tongues

grew long to please it, licking

the walls, a chamber built of scent,

a moment followed by a lesser moment

& a hunger to return. It couldn’t

last, resin

flowed glacially from wounds in the bark,

pinned us in our entering

as the orchids opened wider. First,

liquid, so we swam until we couldn’t.

Then it felt like sleep, the taste of nectar

still inside us. Sometimes a lotus

submerged with us. A million years

went by. A hundred. Swarm of hoverfly,

cockroach, assassin bug, all

trapped, suspended

in that moment of fullness, a

Pompeii, the mother

covering her child’s head forever.

Melitopoles

When a warrior falls in battle,

beloved &

far from home, the melitopoles

sell their finest grade

to suspend his vanquished corpse in honey.

Thus his body will cease

to decay, will last the road

back. Seal him behind glass

& you could gaze upon

his unchanged face, tinted

amber, but glass

will not survive such portage. Even honey

cannot hold him forever,

his mouth forced open, shocked

eyes, every pore

now filled with sweetness.

Wax (Jesus)

Around it you built churches, vaulted

cathedrals, containers of

light. Wax transmogrified

into candle, candle

to his body, the wick his soul. Roses

surround the coffin, wax seals

the lid—thirty pounds burns constantly

under his bleeding hands, votives lit

by anyone with a coin.

Blind Huber (vii)

Endless parade, each thought un-

seen, one pushes onto the

next, replaces what

was, this chain whispered quiet—false

promise that, once under-

stood, it will end, transform to a moment

empty of thought. How

riddled, to sit in a garden, lungs

spooling the sky, the in

& the out, impossible

physics, each plea lined up,

each moment now measured,

weighed, a queen’s limited frenzy

within a glass hive.

Paper Wasp

Because trees grew thick & demon-

full, you felled whole counties,

built walls against the night. Shack

gave way to city, city

to skyscraper, forest to plain. All this time

we’ve been building beside you,

in the eaves, in the trees your axes missed.

Look at the nest in the rafters,

look closely. Those red

streaks are fragments of your barn, paint

chewed to pulp. Everything

passes through us, transformed.

We chew the words off newspapers,

bodies off billboards,

even your clothespins, look at them closely—

each day thinner.

Xenophon’s Soldiers

In enemy country sometimes

you come upon a vessel

waiting in the road, a clay pot

brimming honey, your men weary.

Don’t you wonder

why the village stands empty,

why those who fled

went empty-handed? Why would they leave

these jars behind? In the villages

near Trapezus, after sighting

the longed-for sea, ten thousand soldiers

lay as if dead, foolhardy scavengers

of poisonous honey, essence of rhododendron

& azalea. Three days they staggered thus,

those that could move, purging &

bent, unable to straighten,

& in those three days the battle

& all Persia, lost.

If you were fleeing your enemies,

wouldn’t you load your body with food, strap

the jars to your back, no matter the weight? How else

to begin in a strange land? Remember

the ocean, how it carries a fisherman

year after year,

& one day simply pulls him under.

A man went to Mohammed and told him his brother had violent pains in his body, and the Prophet told him to give the sick man honey. He did as he was told, but soon came back to say his brother was no better. Mohammed answered, “Go back and give him more honey, for God speaks the truth, thy brother’s body lies.”

—Islamic folktale

Without

Without God you rip our bodies

apart, suck the honey

from our tails. With God you cannot trust

what even your own body tells you. In your book

we swarm a house, surround

a boy as he sleeps & lift him, only to set him down

unharmed. You saw us

lift your own son, hang his body

above your head—still

you need a prophet

to tell you what it means.

Pheromone

Sky electric after this midsummer

drought, but a day of rain

won’t be enough. The clover won’t return,

or the nights we slept the fields,

clinging to their petals. The keeper clips

the grass outside the hive,

& the old guard, full of venom,

prods us to attack. We stud his suit with stingers

until we hang dead from the netting,

until he becomes the word enemy, his arms

flailing. Jagged light

surrounds us, his son

waits in their cart, screams. The air

brightens. From this distance

he looks no bigger than a possum

as he mouths the word father.

Blind Huber (viii)

Each letter traced, an alphabet

dimly recalled—which

desk, what hand, to become

these words upon this sheet.

In primary school we got as far as “Hh,”

then the fever came,

sound it out: FEE, FEE, FEE—

the idea of an alphabet

begun, then the idea of a word, then the idea

itself, each bee

its cipher, a tiny letter hanging above the blackboard,

the parade of vowel &

consonant, its own contagious song.

Blind Huber (ix)

Scarlet fever, desperate hush—

as a child, it hurt more

to open my mouth, to ask for the cold

cloth,

than to be still. Unearthly still,

my body hung an inch

over my body, I could feel my heat rise.

To walk away I had to trade my eyes.

They ache at times still

when unexpectantly I come upon myself

sopping beneath a sheet.

Blind Huber (x)

Lilac-drunk, in the garden I will never

see, I wonder about

the queen, her mystery. Burnens

seizes the whole bees of both hives,

searching her out. On the second

of July, the weather being very

fine, numbers of males left,

& we set at liberty a young virgin….

Mere sound, mere

sensation, I put my mouth to the hive, promise

their queen will return, though it’s not

my charge. Each

morning, before the dew lifts, they cover my head—

jeweled statue. The queen

has the answer. What are they doing now? I ask.

Crawling over each other,

walking in circles, Burnens replies.

Wax Father

Each day

the son came for more, scraping comb

freshly laid, kneeling

apologetic. The father had

collapsed, the boy

wasn’t ready, so he built a replica of the old man

in order to save him. When

the legs gave out he fashioned legs,

when the hands began to tremble

he fashioned hands,

& as the fever spread he made a head. At the

bedside, he studied the creases edging

his father’s eyes, the bones pressing up from the cheeks,

the places the skull

turned inward. The lungs filled—

he built a torso. As he finished

each limb, each organ, he carried it to the church

& pinned it above the altar, until nearly

his entire body hung there.

Blind Huber (xi)

Empty box, handful of

bees—in a few days

a city, the exact city in a hundred

boxes. Take your dead

father’s hand, as the shadow of the earth

blots out the sun. A telescope

pulls the planets closer

but aren’t they close enough?

Statuary

Our dying does not fill the hive

with the stench

of dying, our bodies

powder, our bodies

the vessel & the vessel

empties.

Outside

the world hungers.

A cockroach, stung,

can be removed.

A careless child

forced a snail inside with a stick once.

We waxed over the orifice of its shell

sealing the creature in. And here,

the cellar of the comb,

a mouse,

driven in by winter & lack.

Its pawing woke us.

Even twitching it reeked—worse

the moment it stopped.

Now every day

we crawl over it

to pass outside,

the wax form of what was

staring out, its airless sleep,

the mouse we built

to warn the rest from us.

Blind Huber (xii)

Thus transfixed, stare blank at one

immovable thing, ocean

or statue, fifty years thus, to see

if it moves. Burnens

covers the walls with prepressed

comb, factory-punched,

so we can live inside a hive,

my chair dead-center, beside my

queen. Chain after chain

of bodies, a fabric

above, lowering. Forty days

I sat, until the comb began

to press into my chest. Burnens

brought water at first, described their

labors, the tomb being built.

When he could no longer join me

I lived on what honey fell

to my lips. I wanted to see

if the hive moved,

& it did,

but not as much as I had hoped.

Burnens (i)

Never a question of staying, the end

never named. His words

move my hand, he speaks then

listens, the lid pried free, the brood-hum

now open to the sky.

They have a very nice sense of proportion

& the space required

for the movement of bodies. My ruler

measures the gap, I count each worker

& feed him the number. His words

move my hands, but I name

what is seen.

Unquiet

Eyeless he stares into a lamp, bedstraw

left crushed by his falling. They

linger, you say,

to ease your way through, you hold on

empty, white-

knuckled. Look at us now, without

body or box,

the son tangs a pot, begs us

to stay, the hive inside-

out, one mass, we lift,

like the soul as it exits the body,

except you can see us

& we are not quiet.

Q. Can bees be stopped from flying out in the snow in the winter and being lost?

A. No. If you close them up, they will fight themselves to death trying to get out of the hive, and if you put the colony in a building, you will find them all over a window or a door trying to get out. They become confused and are lost.

Q. I have one colony in which the bees have become very mean. How can I get rid of the queen? How can I find her?

A. There is only one sure way to eliminate the old queen and that is to find her and kill her.

Workers (foragers)

After this seven-

month slumber, honey-stupored

& warm, we unfold our

wings, shake off

the hive, set out for buckwheat

& the low flowers of spring. We work

ourselves ragged, each day

going out, to come back heavy

with nectar & pollen. Seconds

collapse. In seven weeks we

fall, dried-out

husks, ravaged lace. Long

winter, we huddled

for warmth, our bodies the lamp,

honey the fuel

that kept us.

Blind Huber (xiii)

Some days

we turn the entrance to face the sun

some days

the queen is invisible one mile above, the queen,

unbeknownst to us, is

dead some days. Catholics pass clutching lilies in

the rain, workers

stagger the fields again, shocked by

each petal. It’s Easter,

& not one of my visitors, learned men of

science, not one

will notice what’s been taken, just a blind

man staring day after day into loud

air, propped before a vision

that can only fail. I point to the hive

& they stare at my hand.

Rain

Devil’s paintbrush &

buttercup, three days of rain—

weeks

till blackberries. High summer

& no

nectar comes in. Pollen

washes off the lips of wildflowers, wastes

in mud. We are

murderous inside, eating our own

bodies, feeding off the winter

stores. Rot stench rises

from below, the

queen sends us out & we can’t find

our way back, our wings

sodden. We crawl over

our sisters’ bodies, lick mold

from their eyes, the hive

strangely silent, nothing to

occupy us. Even a daisy,

wretched housefly food, reeking

of rotting flesh—

I would wrap myself in it.

Mites

wander our bodies

like fog, with each breath

we breathe them in, they crawl inside

& hollow us

out. How to exist without

air, how to itch this deep

without tearing our flesh apart? All

is placed—the sun mid-

sky, meadow

above wetland—vigilant for what is

larger, warding off

vermin, drunken children,

& still

wrack enters us—contagion borne

on reassuring whispers.

Blind Huber (xiv)

Rare orchid, scant pollen—one could

almost number each drop,

heavy on the pistil, unable to reach

the floor. Summer done,

we move the hive into the green-

house, immense palace

of wax, an empire

poured into glass. The orchids ruin their sleep,

Burnens reports, they fight each other

for access. As a boy

other boys would take my arm & wag it,

force my hand to slap my own

face. Once

boys did this to each other, once I had

eyes in my head, I could see them

coming. Burnens raises a finger, one

by one to my lips, sticky with the

harvest. I name each

clover, stargazer, swamp flower.

Queen (failed)

Foulbrood,

the guards let them pass, I

smell them, but no alarm goes

out. Dank

corridors, weird silence, cold air

seeps in at night. Those

whose mouths adored me, soon

they will come, find me

in comb already full, the box

ripped open, the keeper’s fingers

ranging over us. It’s not

how I want to die. I want

my daughters’ mouths on mine,

I want those who began in me

to suck the air out of me.

Workers (robbers)

Your queen stares blank & im-

mobile, her brood thick

with maggot

& mite. Wings &

scat litter the entrance, you

no longer carry your dead

away. The guards let us

pass, unaware who belongs & who

doesn’t. Simply

part of the dismantling,

we bite

holes big enough for our

tongues

& drink each cell dry. Tonight

a possum

will reach a paw in & pull the

rest of you out.

You must be like

candy to them, cracked open, soft

bodies filled with honey.

Worker (lost)

Half-filled mugs of beer

sour in the sun, thick with

corpses. The busboy flings them

into the sewer. We

have scattered far, to city

& market, drunk on

cut watermelon. All I knew

was nectar,

the long tongues of wildflowers, an orchid

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