Alice Notley
From In the Pines
My old friend. Could I call it that, so fierce? A visage in the
orange flash.
It eats you. Because you think that you're people.
I have a necklace of bloody teeth for this cure. Teeth of many
martyrs; the stars above the barren town.
Move in waves. Crickets sing too. See the empty haunt here,
it eats you.
But how many of death's teeth have I stolen? It doesn't have any
left. Pass through the image of death.
He's taken your name. I had no name.
Do not remember me, unreal lord. You are wrong about
everything.
There's a cure
in each instant
if you can keep it
from ending.
Don't think what the songs think now. I hear her hypnotic voice,
the blood on my hair.
Soon be over. Sorrow will have an end. No don't think what the songs think. Just think how they sound.
Don't answer if you can. And he walks with me and he talks with
me. Where the sister dwells, with the flame jaguar.
Is this the debt to beauty? The whole conception was bloody.
Heap of silver and turquoise. My magic.
If you change you
show it indifferently. Crickets
don't change the federales' ways.
Crickets
don't even know the federales.
Cross the silver mesh path there.
Turn off the law.
I'm not part of your growth chart, saying this life is compelled.
I have the unconditioned, in a heap in my pocket. She says in her bloody monotone.
Where is the change?
It's in you.
It's
my magic
no one's.
* * *
I'm wading in shallow water. Wade in the water. Lift your skirt.
I've done this so many times.
How did you learn it?
It's in my genes. It's in my global genes.
There were once jaguars everywhere around here. There will be animals in your deaths, won't there?
I'm talking directly to you.
I'll greet my defect my soul, with this animal, part of the folk.
If I find your soul do you want it?
I see it everywhere, past the death visage.
If I find your soul do you want it? Do you even know? Do you
even know what part of you you are?
* * *
Big medallion
the gold you invested
a precision of sorrow
cut out to be a face
you almost remember.
It floats within.
On the road of the souls, the jaguar and I. Through the deserts
of dying words, and spirits thick as bats.
Plow on through Corolla Pass, to meet my love. See the souls
around me everywhere. One of them is you.
I know who I was, says the soul. I don't try to remember it.
It's the promised line
Not the promised land
What you recall
That's all.
He has a big face; his eyes are closed. I wouldn't want to go back,
he says.
I don't blame you.
What will you return with, then?
A fair deal, I say.
When I died, he says, everything was unresolved. That's always
the case with deaths. There is no official cause of death, is there?
Yes, there is, but it isn't correct.
I had what you have now, he says.
That's not why 1 came. Or is it part? I should bring back a soul.
It's my work, after all.
Shades crowding round the bloody jaguar; shades crowding
round my blood-red hair.
Then I see her. Young, eyes closed.
I see my
own soul.
How do you know?
It stands between
the king and queen
of swords.
There are no rooms here. There are no beds. Where is there rest?
I ask.
That's not the right language, he says. There's plenty of rest here.
As I once told you there'd be.
She's resting, you know. She needed some peace, he says.
I see my
own soul there
heavily guarded
by others.
As always.
This is an ancient procedure. I know that she doesn't want to die. Though her land is condemned. My own soul doesn't want to die.
The hoot owl sings; the jaguar grins.
I'm taking her back, I say. And I reach for her hand and lead her
from between the king and queen.
Then I face my old love, no one.
I gave you the illness, he says.
It doesn't matter, love, I say, leaving.
