Dickey, James

Approaching Prayer

1. A moment tries to come in
2. Through the windows, when one must go
3. Beyond what there is in the room,
4.  
5. But it must come straight down.
6. Lord, it is time,
7.  
8. And I must get up and start
9. To circle through my father’s empty house
10. Looking for things to put on
11. Or to strip myself of
12. So that I can fall to my knees
13. And produce a word I can’t say
14. Until all my reason is slain.
15.  
16. Here is the gray sweater
17. My father wore in the cold,
18. The snapped threads growing all over it
19. Like his gray body hair.
20. The spurs of his gamecocks glimmer
21. Also, in my light, dry hand.
22. And here is the head of a boar
23. I once helped to kill with two arrows:
24.  
25. Two things of my father’s
26. Wild, Bible-reading life
27. And my own best and stillest moment
28. In a hog’s head waiting for glory.
29.  
30. All these I set up in the attic,
31. The boar’s head, gaffs, and the sweater
32. On a chair, and gaze in the dark
33. Up into the boar’s painted gullet.
34.  
35. Nothing. Perhaps I should feel more foolish,
36. Even, than this.
37. I put on the ravelled nerves
38. And gray hairs of my tall father
39. In the dry grave growing like fleece
40. Strap his bird spurs to my heels
41. And kneel down under the skylight.
42. I put on the hollow hog’s head
43. Gazing straight up
44. With star points in the glass eyes
45. That would blind anything that looked in
46.  
47. And cause it to utter words.
48. The night sky fills with a light
49.  
50. Of hunting: with leaves
51. And sweat and the panting of dogs
52.  
53. Where one tries hard to draw breath,
54. A single breath, and hold it.
55. I draw the breath of life
56. For the dead hog:
57. I catch it from the still air,
58. Hold it in the boar’s rigid mouth,
59. And see
    1.  
    2. A young aging man with a bow
    3. And a green arrow pulled to his cheek
    4. Standing deep in a mountain creek bed,
    5. Stiller than trees or stones,
    6. Waiting and staring
    7.  
60. Beasts, angels
61. I am nearly that motionless now
    1.  
    2. There is a frantic leaping at my sides
    3. Of dogs coming out of the water
62.  
63. The moon and the stars do not move
    1.  
    2. I bare my teeth, and my mouth
    3. Opens, a foot long, popping with tushes
    4.  
64. A word goes through my closed lips
    1.  
    2. I gore a dog, he falls, falls back
    3. Still snapping, turns away and dies
    4. While swimming. I feel each hair on my back
    5. Stand up through the eye of a needle
65.  
66. Where the hair was
67. On my head stands up
68. As if it were there
    1.  
    2. The man is still; he is stiller: still
69. Yes.
    1.  
    2. Something comes out of him
    3. Like a shaft of sunlight or starlight.
    4. I go forward toward him
70.  
71. (Beasts, angels)
    1.  
    2. With light standing through me,
    3. Covered with dogs, but the water
    4. Tilts to the sound of the bowstring
72.  
73. The planets attune all their orbits
    1.  
    2. The sound from his fingers,
    3. Like a plucked word, quickly pierces
    4. Me again, the trees try to dance
    5. Clumsily out of the wood
74.  
75. I have said something else
    1.  
    2. And underneath, underwater,
    3. In the creek bed are dancing
    4. The sleepy pebbles
76.  
77. The universe is creaking like boards
78. Thumping with heartbeats
79. And bonebeats
    1.  
    2. And every image of death
    3. In my head turns red with blood.
    4. The man of blood does not move
80.  
81. My father is pale on my body
    1.  
    2. The dogs of blood
    3. Hang to my ears,
    4. The shadowy bones of the limbs
    5. The sun lays on the water
    6. Mass darkly together
82.  
83. Moonlight, moonlight
    1.  
    2. The sun mounts my hackles
    3. And I fall; I roll
    4. In the water;
    5. My tongue spills blood
    6. Bound for the ocean;
    7. It moves away, and I see
    8. The trees strain and part, see him
    9. Look upward
84.  
85. Inside the hair helmet
86. I look upward out of the total
87. Stillness of killing with arrows.
88. I have seen the hog see me kill him
89. And I was as still as I hoped.
90. I am that still now, and now.
91. My father’s sweater
92. Swarms over me in the dark.
93. I see nothing, but for a second
94.  
95. Something goes through me
96. Like an accident, a negligent glance,
97. Like the explosion of a star
98. Six billion light years off
99. Whose light gives out
100.  
101. Just as it goes straight through me.
102. The boar’s blood is sailing through rivers
103. Bearing the living image
104. Of my most murderous stillness.
105. It picks up speed
106. And my heart pounds.
107. The chicken-blood rust at my heels
108. Freshens, as though near a death wound
109. Or flight. I nearly lift
110. From the floor, from my father’s grave
111. Crawling over my chest,
112.  
113. And then get up
114. In the way I usually do.
115. I take off the head of the hog
116. And the gaffs and the panting sweater
117. And go down the dusty stairs
118. And never come back.
119.  
120. I don’t know quite what has happened
121. Or that anything has,
122.  
123. Hoping only that
124. The irrelevancies one thinks of
125. When trying to pray
126. Are the prayer,
127.  
128. And that I have got by my own
129. Means to the hovering place
130. Where I can say with any
131. Other than the desert fathers —
132. Those who saw angels come,
133. Their body glow shining on bushes
134. And sheep’s wool and animal eyes,
135. To answer what questions men asked
136. In Heaven’s tongue,
137. Using images of earth
138. Almightily:
     1.  
     2. PROPHECIES, FIRE IN THE SINFUL TOWERS,
     3. WASTE AND FRUITION IN THE LAND,
     4. CORN, LOCUSTS AND ASHES,
     5. THE LION’s SKULL PULSING WITH HONEY,
     6. THE BLOOD OF THE FIRST-BORN,
     7. A GIRL MADE PREGNANT WITH A GLANCE
     8. LIKE AN EXPLODING STAR
     9. AND A CHILD BORN OF UTTER LIGHT —
139.  
140. Where I can say only, and truly,
141. That my stillness was violent enough,
142. That my brain had blood enough,
143. That my right hand was steady enough,
144. That the warmth of my father’s wool grave
145. Imparted love enough
146. And the keen heels of feathery slaughter
147. Provided lift enough,
148. That reason was dead enough
149. For something important to be:
150.  
151. That, if not heard,
152. It may have been somehow said.