From “Hymn”

By Taylor Johnson

Song in secret, Song of  spite and
spirit, Song in the temple, temple of Song
and perpetual farewell. Sudden, O
Song, fallen on me as a passing wind,
naming as the wind names—absence, farewell.

O Shadow Song, whose hill is green and leaving,
right my walk in glory, begin.

When the trees were leafless, I put my voice,
O Tenuous Air, among the barren places, among even the
nothingness of frost. Thinking I knew myself. O Fortifier,
O Hidden-in-the-weeds, going green. A green concert, hollow green.

O Ship, your going on without me is my résumé entire.
Thy keel floats on, O Possibility. If  I anchor as you.
If I set my anchor here. If I can hum through.
The necessary masterpiece. If I can respond in kind
to the loneliness of Wyeth’s Grape Wine, recognizing, turning the corner
in the great museum, that I am the drifter, O River,
with his back turned to his fashioner.


 

How long had I suffered, white-knuckled, anchored to my name, wanting clearly to walk to wide avenues wearing ornate buttons, wishing to be loved by the god of syntax. Had gone mad and gone, tonguing out my name. This nothingness, I’d proved it upon my pulse. Realized the self was daily. One moment into the next, as turning the corner I expect everyone I’ve known to appear with my other name, a coin in the mouth, a rotten tooth. As if I’m nothing when not regarded, as light is, as is the ancient tongue buried below perceivable language, its many tessellations into sound. I want to be called as you call yourself, I say to the unfolding blooms. How they hold perfection and not announce. Do not announce on the wide avenues, the mountain’s grandeur. The bloom takes part in the mountain. The mountain is my true lover who, before the road, humbles me when I set out trying to know. To understand what is below knowing. Love the mountain. Whose blue face I rise toward, who does not betray, who is mist-clothed, whose water I gather as breathing. Who has been one tree. Who has been a seed. Who stills itself in battle. Who cannot ask, “if then thou gavest.” Whose oath to the bloom is unreachable. O Joiner, let me among that private communion. Let me be all as if I had all.



Release me, O Redeemer, from the tyranny of my desire
for that which has been weighed against, has killed my people.

Place in my path, O Architect,
the bitter green medicine that reaches for me,

that leans as I do towards the sun,
that huddles together as my people in praise of you,

your name—a sharp taste in my mouth, a righteous sound
I can lean against. O Transformer, whose blessings multiply
before me as yarrow by the train tracks. I trust in

the givenness of things. I trust in the wind and the ache in my knee.
For it is thy hum at my center, O Witness, that breathes me.
Source: Poetry (December 2021)