St. Melangell’s Day, Eastnor ( I )

The body and its members sway in time with the blood’s beat,

its willing course. I brought the doves to the marketplace

in a wicker basket, to honor the museum’s anniversary.

The shock of recognition effaces the particular, oaks, stones,

each bearing its private inscription. Say a poem is like that,

a bit of silence the world acceded to, for a finite duration.

Say a little bit of everything one takes into one’s hands

remains, the pot smeared with soot, the Mazzolino canvas,

the ripe pear with its pesticide sheen. No other way to play it:

I had begun again, disremarked by the other guests

who stood around the floral displays, talking so animatedly.

Outside it was raining. In my pocket the stub of a ticket,

a pause my fingers idly groped. In the corbels, identical beasts

devoured one another. And I thought, yes, it is like that,

as much as any thing can be like another thing; I thought,

the canon of matter is so vast, it keeps imprinting

its judgments on both guests and hosts. For I was a guest,

as I kept reminding myself, striding away from that dim town.

I copied myself into the legend, not with the strength

of iron gall but such that others, who would come after me,

might scrape the surface and apply their own insignias,

their own ludic anthems fleeing to the skirts of some Welsh

saint, as if she might protect them. As if she understood

their language. And in the negotiations that followed,

the tense exchanges (hollow apart from their brackish rinds),

a tongue precipitates. It is made of flesh, i.e.

it is what I say it is, not merely an image, a trope.

Imagine what a surprise that must have been: a living tongue.

And her gripping half of it, and he gripping the other

half. And the world readjusting all around, as worlds do.