To be the sun

(Taught by a sideshow man)

ii

Dead man by the roadside
thrown from the overturning
truck or hit by something, a car, a bullet

On his head the hair glows,
the blood inside ignited,
short blue thorns of flame still flickering over him
Was it worth it? ask him.
(Did you save anyone?)

He gets up and walks away, the fire
growing on him like fur

iii

Here the children have a custom. After the celebration of
evil they take those vacant heads that shone once with such
anguish and glee and throw them over the bridge, watching
the smash, orange, as they hit below. We were standing
underneath when you told it. People do that with them-
selves when they are finished, light scooped out. He landed
here, you said, marking it with your foot.

You wouldn’t do it that way, empty, you wouldn’t wait,
you would jump with the light still in you.

iv

This is your trick or miracle,
to be consumed and rise
intact, over and over, even for myths there is
a limit, the time when you accomplish
failure and return
from the fire minus your skin.

The new eyes are golden and
maniac, a bird’s or lion’s

Through them you see
everything, as you wished,
each object (lake, tree, woman)

transfigured with your love, shining
in its life, its pain, like waves, tears, ice,
like flesh laid open to the bone.

v

To be the sun, moving through space

distant and indifferent, giving
light of a kind for those watching

To learn how to
live this way. or not. to choose

to be also human, the body
mortal and faded, incapable of saving

itself, praying
as it falls, in its own way.

Four auguries

i

Walking by lakeshore, feet in slush, it rains,
no grace you’d say in the dirty
ice or the goose-turd-coloured grass.

Traffic back there, illegible, passive
metal stuffed with muggy life.

Near the fence a fat man with binoculars
waddles backwards, feeding store bread
to a herd of acquiescent birds.

Bathhouse, walls patchy and scribbled over,
unredeemed, stagnant in this winter.

ii

Though your body stowed in its heavy coat
is still a body: the sleeves promise me

arms, the pockets let loose their hands,
the lines on this hand hide a future

I decode only by the sense
of touch, light and urgent

the blind must rely on

iii

Gulls on the breakwater, thin sounds against
the shale-grey lake. Part of us, distinct

from us, This, we say, taking
wet skin, smell of wet cloth, specifies,

I gather you, ear, collar, tuft of damp hair,
creases in your suddenly unfolding face

You are more than I wanted,
this is new, this greed for the real.

iv

Nothing we planned
or have understood this far. No words,
no shelter

Out here
in the open, the sky has released an owl
which drifts down and pauses

now, feathers warm snow,
hooked claws gripping the branch.

With its hooded predator’s
eyes it blesses us: