Eye on the Scarecrow
—“mu” twentieth part—
The way we lay
we mimed a body
of water. It was
this or that way
with
the dead and we
were them. No
one
worried which...
Millet beer made
our legs go weak,
loosed
our tongues. “The dead,”
we
said, “are drowning
of thirst,” gruff
summons we muttered
out loud in our
sleep...
It was a journey we
were on, drawn-out
scrawl we made a road
of, long huthered hajj
we
were on. Raw strip
of cloth we now rode,
wishful, letterless
book
the ride we thumbed...
Harp-headed ghost whose
head we plucked incessantly.
Bartered star. Tethered
run...
It was a ride we knew we’d
wish to return to. Every-
thing was everything,
nothing no less. No less
newly
arrived or ancestral, of
late having to do with
the naming of parts...
Rolling hills rolled
up like a rug, raw sprawl
of a
book within a book
without a name known as
Namless, not to be
arrived at again...
It was
the Book of No Avail we
were in did we dare name
it, momentary kings and
queens,
fleet kingdom. Land fell
away on all sides.
Past
Lag we caught ourselves,
run weft at last
adequate, shadowless,
lit,
left up Atet Street,
legs tight, hill after
hill after hill.
Had it been a book Book
of Opening the Book it
would’ve been called,
kept
under lock and key...
Hyperbolic
arrest. Ra was on the
box.
It was after the end of
the world... To lie on
our backs looking
into the dark was all
there was worth
doing,
each the aroused eye
one another sought,
swore he or she
saw
we lay where love’s
pharaonic torso lay
deepest, wide-eyed
all
night without sleep...
“String
our heads with straw,” we
said, half-skulls tied with
catgut, strummed...
Scratched
our strummed heads, memory
made us itch. Walked out
weightless, air what eye
was
left...
Someone said Rome,
someone said destroy it.
Atlantis, a third shouted
out...
Low ride among ruins
notwithstanding we flew.
Swam, if often seemed,
underwater, oddly immersed,
bodies
long since bid goodbye,
we
lay in wait, remote muses
kept us afloat. Something
called pursuit had us by
the nose. Wafted ether
blown
low, tilted floor, splintered
feet. Throated bone...
Rickety boat we rode...
As
though what we wanted
was to be everywhere at
once,
an altered life lived on an
ideal
coast we’d lay washed up
on, instancy and elsewhere
endlessly
entwined
Copyright Credit: Nathaniel Mackey, “Eye on the Scarecrow” from Splay Anthem. Copyright © 2002 by Nathaniel Mackey. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Source: Splay Anthem (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2006)