Porkopolis

Approaching Prayer

• A moment tries to come in
• Through the windows, when one must go
• Beyond what there is in the room,
•  
• But it must come straight down.
• Lord, it is time,
•  
• And I must get up and start
• To circle through my father’s empty house
• Looking for things to put on
• Or to strip myself of
• So that I can fall to my knees
• And produce a word I can’t say
• Until all my reason is slain.
•  
• Here is the gray sweater
• My father wore in the cold,
• The snapped threads growing all over it
• Like his gray body hair.
• The spurs of his gamecocks glimmer
• Also, in my light, dry hand.
• And here is the head of a boar
• I once helped to kill with two arrows:
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• Two things of my father’s
• Wild, Bible–reading life
• And my own best and stillest moment
• In a hog’s head waiting for glory.
•  
• All these I set up in the attic,
• The boar’s head, gaffs, and the sweater
• On a chair, and gaze in the dark
• Up into the boar’s painted gullet.
•  
• Nothing. Perhaps I should feel more foolish,
• Even, than this.
• I put on the ravelled nerves
• And gray hairs of my tall father
• In the dry grave growing like fleece
• Strap his bird spurs to my heels
• And kneel down under the skylight.
• I put on the hollow hog’s head
• Gazing straight up
• With star points in the glass eyes
• That would blind anything that looked in
•  
• And cause it to utter words.
• The night sky fills with a light
•  
• Of hunting: with leaves
• And sweat and the panting of dogs
•  
• Where one tries hard to draw breath,
• A single breath, and hold it.
• I draw the breath of life
• For the dead hog:
• I catch it from the still air,
• Hold it in the boar’s rigid mouth,
• And see
  •  
  • A young aging man with a bow
  • And a green arrow pulled to his cheek
  • Standing deep in a mountain creek bed,
  • Stiller than trees or stones,
  • Waiting and staring
  •  
• Beasts, angels
• I am nearly that motionless now
  •  
  • There is a frantic leaping at my sides
  • Of dogs coming out of the water
•  
• The moon and the stars do not move
  •  
  • I bare my teeth, and my mouth
  • Opens, a foot long, popping with tushes
  •  
• A word goes through my closed lips
  •  
  • I gore a dog, he falls, falls back
  • Still snapping, turns away and dies
  • While swimming. I feel each hair on my back
  • Stand up through the eye of a needle
•  
• Where the hair was
• On my head stands up
• As if it were there
  •  
  • The man is still; he is stiller: still
• Yes.
  •  
  • Something comes out of him
  • Like a shaft of sunlight or starlight.
  • I go forward toward him
•  
• (Beasts, angels)
  •  
  • With light standing through me,
  • Covered with dogs, but the water
  • Tilts to the sound of the bowstring
•  
• The planets attune all their orbits
  •  
  • The sound from his fingers,
  • Like a plucked word, quickly pierces
  • Me again, the trees try to dance
  • Clumsily out of the wood
•  
• I have said something else
  •  
  • And underneath, underwater,
  • In the creek bed are dancing
  • The sleepy pebbles
•  
• The universe is creaking like boards
• Thumping with heartbeats
• And bonebeats
  •  
  • And every image of death
  • In my head turns red with blood.
  • The man of blood does not move
•  
• My father is pale on my body
  •  
  • The dogs of blood
  • Hang to my ears,
  • The shadowy bones of the limbs
  • The sun lays on the water
  • Mass darkly together
•  
• Moonlight, moonlight
  •  
  • The sun mounts my hackles
  • And I fall; I roll
  • In the water;
  • My tongue spills blood
  • Bound for the ocean;
  • It moves away, and I see
  • The trees strain and part, see him
  • Look upward
•  
• Inside the hair helmet
• I look upward out of the total
• Stillness of killing with arrows.
• I have seen the hog see me kill him
• And I was as still as I hoped.
• I am that still now, and now.
• My father’s sweater
• Swarms over me in the dark.
• I see nothing, but for a second
•  
• Something goes through me
• Like an accident, a negligent glance,
• Like the explosion of a star
• Six billion light years off
• Whose light gives out
•  
• Just as it goes straight through me.
• The boar’s blood is sailing through rivers
• Bearing the living image
• Of my most murderous stillness.
• It picks up speed
• And my heart pounds.
• The chicken–blood rust at my heels
• Freshens, as though near a death wound
• Or flight. I nearly lift
• From the floor, from my father’s grave
• Crawling over my chest,
•  
• And then get up
• In the way I usually do.
• I take off the head of the hog
• And the gaffs and the panting sweater
• And go down the dusty stairs
• And never come back.
•  
• I don’t know quite what has happened
• Or that anything has,
•  
• Hoping only that
• The irrelevancies one thinks of
• When trying to pray
• Are the prayer,
•  
• And that I have got by my own
• Means to the hovering place
• Where I can say with any
• Other than the desert fathers —
• Those who saw angels come,
• Their body glow shining on bushes
• And sheep’s wool and animal eyes,
• To answer what questions men asked
• In Heaven’s tongue,
• Using images of earth
• Almightily:
  •  
  • PROPHECIES, FIRE IN THE SINFUL TOWERS,
  • WASTE AND FRUITION IN THE LAND,
  • CORN, LOCUSTS AND ASHES,
  • THE LION’S SKULL PULSING WITH HONEY,
  • THE BLOOD OF THE FIRST–BORN,
  • A GIRL MADE PREGNANT WITH A GLANCE
  • LIKE AN EXPLODING STAR
  • AND A CHILD BORN OF UTTER LIGHT —
•  
• Where I can say only, and truly,
• That my stillness was violent enough,
• That my brain had blood enough,
• That my right hand was steady enough,
• That the warmth of my father’s wool grave
• Imparted love enough
• And the keen heels of feathery slaughter
• Provided lift enough,
• That reason was dead enough
• For something important to be:
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• That, if not heard,
• It may have been somehow said.