Cortège
Do not imagine you can abdicate
Auden
Prologue
If the sea could dream, and if the sea
were dreaming now, the dream
would be the usual one: Of the Flesh.
The letter written in the dream would go
something like: Forgive me—love, Blue.
*
I. The Viewing (A Chorus)
O what, then, did he look like?
He had a good body.
And how came you to know this?
His body was naked.
Say the sound of his body.
His body was quiet.
Say again—quiet?
He was sleeping.
You are sure of this? Sleeping?
Inside it, yes. Inside it.
*
II. Pavilion
Sometimes, a breeze: a canvas
flap will rise and, inside,
someone stirs; a bird? a flower?
One is thinking Should there be
thirst, I have only to reach
for the swollen bag of skin
beside me, I have only to touch
my mouth that is meant for a flower
to it, and drink.
One is for now certain he is
one of those poems that stop only;
they do not end.
One says without actually saying it
I am sometimes a book of such poems,
I am other times a flower and lovely
pressed like so among them, but
always they forget me.
I miss my name.
They are all of them heat-
weary, anxious for evening as for
some beautiful to the bone
messenger to come. They will open
again for him. His hands are good.
His message is a flower.
*
III. The Tasting (A Chorus)
O what, then, did he taste like?
He tasted of sorrow.
And how came you to know this?
My tongue still remembers.
Say the taste that is sorrow.
Game, fallen unfairly.
And yet, you still tasted?
Still, I tasted.
Did you say to him something?
I could not speak, for hunger.
*
IV. Interior
And now,
the candle blooms gorgeously away
from his hand—
and the light has made
blameless all over
the body of him (mystery,
mystery), twelvefold
shining, by grace of twelve
mirrors the moth can’t stop
attending. Singly, in no order,
it flutters against, beats
the glass of each one,
as someone elsewhere
is maybe beating upon
a strange door now,
somebody knocks
and knocks at a new
country, of which
nothing is understood—
no danger occurs
to him, though
danger could be any
of the unusually wild
flowers
that, either side of the road,
spring.
When he slows, bends down and
closer, to see or
to take one—it is as if
he knows something to tell it.
*
V. The Dreaming (A Chorus)
O what, then, did it feel like?
I dreamed of an arrow.
And how came you to know him?
I dreamed he was wanting.
Say the dream of him wanting.
A swan, a wing folding.
Why do you weep now?
I remember.
Tell what else you remember.
The swan was mutilated.
*
Envoi
And I came to where was nothing but drowning
and more drowning, and saw to where the sea—
besides flesh—was, as well, littered with boats,
how each was blue but trimmed with white, to each
a name I didn’t know and then, recalling,
did. And ignoring the flesh that, burning, gives
more stink than heat, I dragged what boats I could
to the shore and piled them severally in a tree-
less space, and lit a fire that didn’t take
at first—the wood was wet—and then, helped by
the wind, became a blaze so high the sea
itself, along with the bodies in it, seemed
to burn. I watched as each boat fell to flame:
Vincent and Matthew and, last, what bore your name.
Copyright Credit: Carl Phillips, “Cortège” from Cortège. Copyright © 2002 by Carl Phillips. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.
Source: Cortège (Graywolf Press, 1995)