Anatomy of Melancholy and Other Poems Read Online Free PDF

extend the blade of my hand
    into the wind of our going, and we were passing
    a large trailer-truck loaded with crushed,
    compacted cars—a recognizable Chevrolet emblem
    on one, and from another, a slip of fabric,
    headliner or upholstery, black and pointed
    at its end, resembling, I remember, a necktie.

THE HISTORY OF GODS
    When a lesser species rises among them
    to consume the sun immemorially theirs,
    redwoods will sometimes let go a great limb
    and crush the interloper where it stands,
    implying intent and therefore what we know
    as consciousness. It is theorized they may be able,
    via their massive and elaborate root systems,
    to command the groundwater itself, for the benefit
    only of their kind—a government and fealty of trees.
    Though perhaps what seems intentional
    is simply part of the balance they exemplify,
    the fallen limb afflicted by a disruption
    in the nutrient flow precisely above where a hemlock
    or pine has sprung forth, suggesting the decision
    is no decision at all but simply cause and effect,
    silvicultural machinery, as though it were not the mind
    of a god but a body, reflexive to stimulus and wound,
    actions neither revenge nor damnation nor self-preservation.
    Although the darkness they rise from is their own creation,
    and high in their canopies, lichens not found below,
    delicate as fog, and birds that might as well be angels.

BABEL
    The language he speaks and writes is spoken
    and written by no one but him, which solves,
    for him at least, the problem of audience.
    Unless somehow, against the odds, he believes
    there is someone to whom his alphabet speaks,
    and his words—if they are words and not notes
    of some other sort of singing, a system of clicks
    and impossible vowels, the strange habitats
    in which his bent and prickly syllables live.
    The patience with which he clears his throat
    and nods to us and begins, mild and tentative
    at first, to read, or sing, or ceremonially recite
    the epic of his people or the story of his God
    or the description of his lost beloved’s body,
    moves us so each time, we concentrate and nod
    but understand nothing at all of what he
    has said. When he’s finished, he looks at us
    expectantly, and we, in our own inadequate tongues,
    and often gesticulating wildly, discuss
    the majesty of his accomplishment, which no one
    fathoms any part of, least of all our praise,
    if that’s what it is, since we too are the last
    or perhaps the only ones ever to raise
    into the air such utterances—from the past
    or the future or from this very moment in time,
    when no one knows what anyone means to say or tell,
    not even at night, when we seem to pray, then recline
    on our bunks, each in his own terrible, familiar cell,
    with the toilet and the night-light, with the reams
    of paper, filled and yet to be, that surround us,
    and he goes on speaking through our dreams,
    where everything, making sense, astounds us.

SPRING IS HERE
    The umbrellas misfired, the rain broke down,
    all the seed-white dandelions were bludgeoned
    to a fluffy paste. The bell tower ratcheted
    up its terrible black birds. Negotiations
    broke out between thunder and cell phones
    despite the enormous vee of geese going by.
    Someone whispered the secret of the match
    to a cigarette, and hail commenced
    machine-gunning a delicate wing of smoke.
    Cruel world for bathing beauties, though. The clatter
    of flip-flops rose like an ovation for the nation
    of May, and the Goth boy in his black greatcoat
    pale as the Jesus over Rio and similarly stanced,
    having raised his arms and brought to the air
    not only the wail of the noon whistle
    but also the howl of a hound dog leashed to a hydrant,
    as though it, in the midst of such majesty,
    in the last week of classes, were his wolf.

PART THREE

    DARK BLUE MOUTH

GOLDFINCHES
    He could not, he insisted, take his eyes
    from the pistol’s muzzle, calculating
    as he watched it, from the way it quivered—
    and cocked, as it was, a single action,
    it