Field of Skulls

Stare hard enough at the fabric of night,

and if you're predisposed to dark—let’s say

the window you’ve picked is a black

postage stamp you spend hours at,

sleepless, drinking gin after the I Love

Lucy reruns have gone off—stare

like your eyes have force, and behind

any night’s taut scrim will come the forms

you expect pressing from the other side.

For you: a field of skulls, angled jaws

and eye-sockets, a zillion scooped-out crania.

They’re plain once you think to look.

You know such fields exist, for criminals

roam your very block, and even history lists

monsters like Adolf and Uncle Joe

who stalk the earth’s orb, plus minor baby-eaters

unidentified, probably in your very midst. Perhaps

that disgruntled mail clerk from your job

has already scratched your name on a bullet—that’s him

rustling in the azaleas. You caress the thought,

for it proves there’s no better spot for you

than here, your square-yard of chintz sofa, hearing

the bad news piped steady from your head. The night

is black. You stare and furious stare,

confident there are no gods out there. In this way,

you’re blind to your own eye’s intricate machine

and to the light it sees by, to the luck of birth and all

your remembered loves. If the skulls are there—

let’s say they do press toward you

against night’s scrim—could they not stare

with slack jawed envy at the fine flesh

that covers your scalp, the numbered hairs,

at the force your hands hold?

Source: The Devil's Tour (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1993)