Phillis Levin, May Day

Phillis Levin, May Day, Penguin Poets, London, 2008

As Reason is a Rebel unto Faith, so Passion unto Reason: As the propositions of Faith seem absurd unto Reason, so the Theorems of Reason unto Passion, and both unto Faith. – Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (page before title)


Acorn

Under its hat
many secrets
asleep
keeping time

Soon it will tell
almost everything

if you wait
long enough
in the grass in the snow

if you look if you listen

and if you do nothing
it will be what it will be
nevertheless

With a hat like that
you could walk the windiest hall
of an endless wood

as the worst and the best rain down
out of nowhere

With a hat like that
you could hide the highest hope
the biggest fear

and appear once a year to disappear [3]

O where is the loom
on which it is woven

How can a tomb
too small for a petal
carry the body of autumn in its hull

Cradle of greenest memory

kernel dreaming
the weight of a starling

cupola cupping the fire of dawn

den of creating
shedding itself
again
for a song

O give me a room to keep a secret
until the leaf is ready
to be lit

and when it is time to go out
into the cold
give me a hat
like that


Born for the Snow

We were born to be blessed, to be torn into being
Alive, to be weary and open and lost,
Carrying ourselves

As the weight of the planet spins us into light.
We were born to say this, beholding,
Beholden to everything here

Before and after fire and water,
Earth and air. We were born for the snow
To fall on us over and over,

Anonymous leaflets
Glimmering far and near, arriving
Without being read, seraphs

Of unrecounted history
Sending an inaudible reply.
We were born for the birth to be borne

To the end of time, to know
It is time, no matter the time, through today
Everything is as it is

Without anything in the world
Covering the door
To things as they are: [5]

Confetti of laughter rising
From a town, a festival
Dying down, floating by,

A field being fed by the snow.

[Note: The prophet Isaiah envisions seraphs as celestial beings possessing six wings. Snow crystals take an infinite variety of shapes, but their structure is always hexagonal.]


On Time

Time can be told in the opening of a flower,
Trumpet of dawn, flugelhorn of the sun
Sinking down. Noiseless explosions
Greet an attentive eye. And the ear

Is a flower, too, a welcome home for echoes,
Kisses, and cackles. Cauldron of starlight,
Tincture and blaring cry, whatever brushes
Your senses unlatches a doorway

Scoured by salt, vanishing as you plunder
The coffers of sleep. So you will know
What it means to be utterly free, floating

Without a hope, floating in hope, a medium
Fit for the being you have become, given
The bed you have made, the race you won.


Boy with a Thorn

[Lo Spinario/ (bronze, late first century BCE)]

A long day, a long run, a long road,
And somewhere on it you felt a pang,
Nothing more. A quiver of lightning,

Nothing to stop for. Only now,
As you sit on the stump of a blasted tree,
Folding one leg over the other,

Drawing it up until your ankle
Strains against your knee, as you study
The sole that is cradled in your hands—

Only now do you notice a small hot rose
Blushing under the skin, where a thorn
Broke into flesh. And you recall

That a sudden twinge: a throb subsiding
In a wave, spurring you on past all
Those ochre hills, daring you to keep

A steady pace though you were tired
Of those hills, of pine after twisted pine
Casting a net of needles in your paths,

Though a droning in your ears said
The city would fall, that the warning
You carried would never arrive.

Once you were caught in a blinding
Torrent of rain, but the sky stayed blue,
Every other patch of land was dry,

And the air surrounding you sharpened
The horizon, though whatever was in reach
Grew obscure. Later, as you crossed

A familiar field, your fingertips
Stirring the tall grass, your limbs
Remembering a power that seemed to flow

From the overturning chalice of the sun,
A surprising coldness seeped
Through your skin, and a sensation

You did not welcome entered in.
You brushed it aside and it was gone,
And you went on. But it didn’t’ go

Anywhere, it was inside you, blooming…
It is easy to remove the thorn, now
That you can rest, easy to miss the valley

You fled, its flock of shadows grazing
On stone. But sometimes everything
Remains hidden, there is nothing more

Than a scene on an empty amphora,
Nothing new, nothing worth nothing,
Until the speed of your body releases

The resin in pine. If this is the first time
You faltered in the middle of everything,
It will not be the last. Today a thorn

Is the cause. Sooner or later,
There will be other things to draw
Out of yourself to recover again

Who you are. It will hurt to pluck it out,
But you will think nothing of it:
See, you are barely wounded.

Later you will long to be that boy
Whose only regret was having to stop
Without wanting to, whose only care

Was a path beaten in the dust
Under his feet: a place where something
Too slight to avoid, too minor

To fear, too random to foresee
Interrupted a journey
Written in the whorls of your skin—

As if your fate, anyone’s fate,
Could be written or read.

[note: “Boy with a Thorn” refers to the Spinario (thorn-puller), a famous Hellenistic statue of a boy pulling a thorn from the sole of his foot. It was thought to be a portrait of the shepherd Marcius, who, according to legend, died of his wound after warning the people of Rome of an impending attack on their city. The bronze statue is in the collection of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Capitoline Museums, Rome; copies are in the Uffizi, the British Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.]


Always the Same Face

[a few days after the autumn equinox]

Full moon. Harvest moon. Late September.
She’s trying to get through.

She cannot see us, we cannot see her
Completely. Only one side is ever the side

We see. However it seems, however she appears,
That is always the case, we are told.

And it is so. She cannot get through.
Her light wells, caught in a gray cocoon.

The night before, she shone so clear and far,
All at once entirely free

Of anything that obscures,
Not a cloud in the way, not a single living thing

Flying high, not a tree reaching a great dark arm
Across the bed of the sky, not a ligament

Tying her to any star. But toady she is milky,
About to awaken, about to be born entire.

Someone is looking up, someone else is beginning
To say what wanted to be said, someone

Is going to stay, under the blue-black blanket,
Confiding a feeling that seeps into the day.

O blinking eye, lid of the deep, mute
Opaline drum, skin on the surface of sight—

Peel away what may, another side,
Another face unseen

Peers at a nameless where, whose time
Will come. The mother of eternity is there:

Holding a cold mirror, she turns to see
How the solar wind undoes her burning hair.