I know how to make a bed
While still lying in it, and
Slip out of an imaginary hole
As if I were squeezed out of a tube:
Tug, smooth—the bed is made.
And if resurrections are this easy,
Why then I believe in all of them:
Lazarus rising from his tomb,
Elijah at the vertical—
Though death, I think, has more than clever
Household hints in mind and wants
The bed made, once, and for good.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Tales of a Wayside Inn. Part iii. The Theologian’s Tale: Elizabeth. iv.
On “ships that pass in the night” as an American idiom:
Two big ocean-going ships pass in the night. One is going one way, and the other is going the opposite way. They both have a long distance to go, and they both have a job to do. They come near each other just on that one night. They can flash messages to each other, and they are close enough for radio contact. However, they aren’t coming to that place to see each other. It was all just coincidence. They are both going somewhere else, and maybe they won’t ever pass again. (Source.)
Today, from a distance, I saw you,
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer’s retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.
In the old days, before houses were warm,
people did not sleep alone. Not even
windows went by themselves into
the cold sheets of night. Rooms were
lit with lanterns and children were
encouraged to jump on their beds,
warming themselves, before they
crawled inside. You might sleep with
your cousin or sister, your nose
buried in the summer of their
hair. You might place a baked potato
in your blanket to help it remember
warmth. A fire would be lit but, after
awhile, it would smolder down
to the bone silence of ash. Everything
was cold: the basin where you washed
your face, the wood floor, the windows
where you watched your breath
open over the framed blur of snow.
Your hands and feet were cold
and the trees were cold: naked,
traced in ice. You might take a dog
to bed or two or three, anything to lie
down with life, feel it breathing nearby.
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
Beside you,
lying down at dark,
my waking fits your sleep.
Your turning
flares the slow-banked fire
between our mingled feet,
and there,
curved close and warm
against the nape of love,
held there,
who holds your dreaming
shape, I match my breathing
to your breath;
and sightless, keep my hand
on your heart’s breast, keep
nightwatch
on your sleep to prove
there is no dark, nor death.
Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal
the way you dream, the things you feel.
Deep in your spirit let them rise
akin to stars in crystal skies
that set before the night is blurred:
delight in them and speak no word.
How can a heart expression find?
How should another know your mind?
Will he discern what quickens you?
A thought once uttered is untrue.
Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:
drink at the source and speak no word.
Live in your inner self alone:
within your soul a world has grown,
the magic of veiled thoughts that might
be blinded by the outer light,
drowned in the noise of day, unheard…
take in their song and speak no word.
currently reading: Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry selected and translated by Vladimir Nabokov
O fleece, that down the neck waves to the nape!
O curls! O perfume nonchalant and rare!
O ecstacy! To fill the alcove shape
With memories that in these tresses sleep,
I would shake them like pennons in the air!
The Reunion of the Soul and the Body
Drawn by William Blake
Etched by L. Schiavonetti
London, May 1st 1808
The Body springs from the grave, the Soul descends from an opening cloud; they rush together with inconceivable energy; they meet, never again to part!
After years of marriage, he stands at the foot of the bed and
tells his wife that she will never know him, that for everything
he says there is more that he does not say, that behind each
word he utters there is another word, and hundreds more be-
hind that one. All those unsaid words, he says, contain his true
self, which has been betrayed by the superficial self before her.
“So you see,” he says, kicking off his slippers, “I am more than
what I have led you to believe I am.” “Oh, you silly man,” says
his wife, “of course you are. I find that just thinking of you
having so many selves receding into nothingness is very excit-
ing. That you barely exist as you are couldn’t please me more.”
a panicky pedantic articulation
a familiar frustration:
semantic overcompensation
