Opened Ground Part 26

One day it was gone and the east gable Where its trembling corolla had balanced Was starkly a ruin again, with dandelions Blowing high up on the ledges, and moss That slumbered on through its increase. As cameras raked The site from every angle, experts Began their post factum jabber and all of us Crowded in tight for the big explanations.

Just like that, we forgot that the vision was ours, Our one chance to know the incomparable And dive to a future. What might have been origin We dissipated in news. The clarified place Had retrieved neither us nor itself except You could say we survived. So say that, and watch us Who had our chance to be mud-men, convinced and estranged, Figure in our own eyes for the eyes of the world.

The Disappearing Island

Once we presumed to found ourselves for good

Between its blue hills and those sandless sh.o.r.es Where we spent our desperate night in prayer and vigil, Once we had gathered driftwood, made a hearth And hung our cauldron in its firmament, The island broke beneath us like a wave.

The land sustaining us seemed to hold firm Only when we embraced it in extremis.

All I believe that happened there was vision.

The Riddle

You never saw it used but still can hear

The sift and fall of stuff hopped on the mesh, Clods and buds in a little dust-up, The dribbled pile accruing under it.

Which would be better, what sticks or what falls through?

Or does the choice itself create the value?

Legs apart, deft-handed, start a mime To sift the sense of things from what's imagined And work out what was happening in that story Of the man who carried water in a riddle.

Was it culpable ignorance, or was it rather A via negativa through drops and let-downs?

from THE CURE AT TROY (1990) Voices from Lemnos

I.

CHORUS.

Philoctetes.

Hercules.

Odysseus.

Heroes. Victims. G.o.ds and human beings.

All throwing shapes, every one of them Convinced he's in the right, all of them glad To repeat themselves and their every last mistake, No matter what.

People so deep into Their own self-pity self-pity buoys them up.

People so staunch and true, they are pillars of truth, Shining with self-regard like polished stones.

And their whole life spent admiring themselves For their own long-suffering.

Highlighting old scars And flashing them around like decorations.

I hate it, I always hated it, I am A part of it myself.

II.

PHILOCTETES TO NEOPTOLEMUS.

G.o.ds curse it!

But it's me the G.o.ds have cursed.

They've let my name and story be wiped out.

The real offenders got away with it And I am still here, rotting like a leper.

Tell me, son. Achilles was your father.

Did you ever maybe hear him mentioning A man who had inherited a bow The actual bow and arrows that belonged To Hercules, and that Hercules gave him?

Did you never hear, son, about Philoctetes?

About the snake-bite he got at a shrine When the first fleet was voyaging to Troy?

And then the way he broke out with a sore And was marooned on the commanders' orders?

Let me tell you, son, the way they deserted me.

The sea and the sea-swell had me all worn out So I dozed and fell asleep under a rock Down on the sh.o.r.e.

And there and then, like that, They headed off.

And they were delighted.

And the only thing They left me was a bundle of old rags.

Some day I want them all to waken up The way I did that day. Imagine, son.

The bay all empty. The ships all disappeared.

Absolute loneliness. Nothing there except The beat of the waves and the beat of my raw wound ...

This island is a nowhere. n.o.body Would ever put in here. There's nothing.

Nothing to attract a lookout's eye.

n.o.body in his right mind would come near it.

And the rare ones that ever did turn up Landed by accident, against their will.

They would take pity on me, naturally.

Share out their supplies and give me clothes.

But not a one of them would ever, ever Take me on board with them to ship me home.

Every day has been a weeping wound For ten years now. Ten years of misery That's all my service ever got for me.

That's what I've got to thank Odysseus for And Menelaus and Agamemnon.

G.o.ds curse them all!

I ask for the retribution I deserve.

III.

PHILOCTETES.

Have you not a sword for me? Or an axe? Or something?

CHORUS.

What for?

PHILOCTETES.

What for? What do you think for?

For foot and head and hand. For the relief Of cutting myself off. I want away.

CHORUS.

Away where?

PHILOCTETES.

Away to the house of death.

To my father, sitting waiting Under the clay roof. I'll come back in to him Out of the light, out of his memory Of the day I left.

We'll be on the riverbank Again, and see the Greeks arriving And me setting out for Troy, in all good faith.

IV.

CHORUS.

Human beings suffer.

They torture one another.

They get hurt and get hard.

No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured.

History says, Don't hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge.

Believe that a farther sh.o.r.e Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing, The utter self-revealing Double-take of feeling.

If there's fire on the mountain And lightning and storm And a G.o.d speaks from the sky That means someone is hearing The outcry and the birth-cry Of new life at its term.

It means once in a lifetime That justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.

PHILOCTETES.

Hercules: I saw him in the fire.

Hercules was shining in the air.

I heard the voice of Hercules in my head.