Birds, Metals, Stones and Rain. Russell Thornton
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Название: Birds, Metals, Stones and Rain

Автор: Russell Thornton

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Поэзия

Серия:

isbn: 9781550176575

isbn:

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      it dives to, inserts claws into, and clamps large feet on, stomping it

      as if beating time. It splays flesh and flies

      away with it into sunlight. The hawk takes up an owl’s hoot

      and a sparrow’s last chirp, a heron’s bill-snap and a smelt’s silence

      into its disinterested scream. The swan

      glides in beauty in the hawk’s sight, and fills all the hawk sees

      with brilliant, blinding whiteness. Moment by moment,

      the men go back and forth. They search out anything they can trade

      for a full bottle or syringe or pipe. In my room with the lit-up screen,

      I lie and dream my dream. I feel it must also be God’s,

      this dream of the person of persons. Where the dream comes through,

      it punctures me, and I breathe dark air. The air thuds

      into pockets like a plummeted elevator. O monster home. O

      specialty wine outlet. O auto mall. The wild white swan

      is dead. The hawk hunts and kills the swan for love. It will build a new

      nest of the swan’s bones. It will keep this nest unseen.

      I am a person. I soil the cage in which my heart flings

      and flings itself against the bars. I try to own

      the view of every murderer, and yet I try to sing

      the way out through the hawk’s claw-holes to the repose

      in the nest of fire at the tip of the hawk’s wing.

      The Man Who Sleeps in Cemeteries

      Refuse recyclable paper yard-bags. Refuse gloves.

      Collect yard trimmings the way you know how—

      I’ll do likewise. My friend, don’t hurt your head.

      Afternoons, slide down the avenue. At every intersection,

      karate kick crosswalk buttons. Show up mornings

      a very macho character, a little threatening. Show up

      fawning, a little flirtatious. Talking religion, bitches.

      Going on about your lady—in the mirror, lipsticked.

      Gang boy in Colombia. Gang man. You left that life.

      Yes, they found you in Miami. They killed your wife,

      your two kids, they threw you off a balcony. Now lay

      down your head. With strands of yourself off in the trees,

      running quiet and clear in the quick creek water.

      With your arms wrapped around surgical scars.

      With your collection of scars. Miami to Vancouver? I think

      I walked. Lay down your English. Por favor! Scowl

      and explain to me in Spanish that you don’t speak

      Spanish anymore. Or Portuguese. Or the Quebec French

      that jumps out of you. Explain to me that North Vancouver

      has the most beautiful cemetery you’ve ever slept in.

      No landlords, no need to pull a knife. With the different

      parts of your brain in the right places, explain it.

      With your jumble of words, lay down your head.

      With your jumble of words. With your single joint

      per day and the pain gone out of your skull. Let

      the sections of your head click into a proper machined fit.

      Yes, killed so many times, scattered in so many places,

      you can’t say—say a loud Fuck you! in the direction

      of your every past boss. Say it at your every Refugee Board

      hearing, at your every income assistance interview.

      Consult the cemetery’s visiting bear, coyote and deer.

      Consult the community of the dead flowing in unison

      beneath your head. Then make your many decisions

      and rule the parts of your head. My friend, my co-worker,

      here’s a coffee, a set of garden tools and plastic yard-bag.

      Come do your expert work. Whistle all day the songs

      that came to you in the night through the cold clean dirt.

      Greenness

      What am I now that I was then

       —Delmore Schwartz, “Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day”

      I turn to grass tufts and see unsullied

      clear greenness displaying its steel. I see

      what I should see, simple close-mown spring grass

      like that of any suburban house lawn.

      I turn again and decades disappear

      and I see the dark grass all down the block—

      I wake, run out of a basement and go

      reeling across yard after wide yard. Here,

      I unlock a gate. Swing it open. Go

      to a neighbour’s front door. I knock, and ask

      for help. But I am still half in the house

      where I crouch, and we gaze at each other,

      my mother and I, while my father holds

      her so she will burn in the fireplace flames—

      it is only a pretend me who asks.

      Here, a woman blankets me and leaves me

      in a СКАЧАТЬ