The Village on Horseback: Prose and Verse, 2003-2008

1

I will tell you a thing, a thing you know, a thing perhaps you know

I will tell you the skin feat.

That I, of things relating, relate then this:

I was born — and die.

I am in between.

I leap in my skin and sew it to myself

and see how far I can follow

where leading leads

down under closed eyelids.

2

Every dream is startling to the dreamer. Yet when we wake,

we go about unsmiling — things don’t surprise us.

Even when they do, we imagine we prepare.

But the world is sudden — that is its nature.

We must divert ourselves into a fence, into a button, into the ivy,

the grass, the fur of a coat

from which point we can judge and say—

each day I go ashore, and from what ship?

3

The skin feat. .

Did I acquaint myself with it from a book?

Did I find it leaping headlong into water?

The skin feat is like the feeling of another age

in an ancestor, a grandfather’s photograph. But you are not he…

you did not even speak to him.

How heavy arrival falls upon the house of the body.

It must contain every new thing that joins it — must consent.

We think that things are what we see — but our noses,

our ears, we question. Frantic being that glows without any light—

do you not feel it radiating from your face? You are los- ing it;

it is going away.

Those that love you agree — you will soon be bones in a wooden box

and someone else passing by, beyond the gate,

will glance at where you never walked, but lie.

4

The skin feat is an ascension of a ladder one carries in secret.

I speak to a man on the street, a stranger, I speak to him and think:

this is a messenger, a sort of letter that I may open in private,

and so I follow him, and tell no one. I do not document it.

It is not an art; it is for no one’s amusement.

He goes down two streets, three streets, an alley,

a street, to a house. I am far away when he closes the door

but I go with him there, and vanish

and resound in myself returning

out of thoughts like barrel hoops—

like disasters one hears of on the road, and winces,

and in wincing, smiles at one’s plight.

5

Is there a name I go by

if I wish to travel far?

My friend, this skin, like the crow’s

feels the outer air even through locks.

And so we rush, my darling,

again upon the gates and are released, released

when wonder bids us die

and we refuse, and cease.

6

Yes, there are gardens that have been planted, and laid well

with stones for walks, and trellises, and arbors

and someone tends them.

I tell you this because I have seen them from a distance

and like the clockmaker, I do not understand

what grows without help in a place of safe keeping.

7

A house can have only one room. That is its character.

Larger than that, they are all palaces.

I feel I am, you know, like the building in a plague city

that up against a city wall, has, deep within

a door to leave the city.

8

The white scent of the sun cannot wake us, or else we were angels and therefore,

like pain, simply a message.

Our sleep is deeper — we cannot understand when it’s explained — wildness.

we must fear it to feel it. One cannot oneself be wild.

9

Where wheels ring the lake a yellow word is seen at the corner of a child’s mouth.

It is believed that things perceived as indistinct

are clear when seen up close—

but it is not distance that keeps them from us. A hurt mouth

reckons in equations of a thousand variables.

A hurt mouth is like a thicket, and cannot even be photo-

graphed without error.

10

I learn to wear a coat in a particular way. I feel very carefully

the matter of my shoes—

I am setting out this morning for a funeral, my own

at a place not of my choosing,

a funeral as enduring, as patient as the cold beyond a door.

11

The worth of a saint is felt

like the weight of a tree of birds.

Wind learns its calling at the corners of the earth.

Longing so to return there, it never can.

And we — who when called upon,

cannot even leave the room we’re in—

the one we’ve loved is calling from the hall

but we’re helpless — rooted.

Where does a saint begin this freedom

of rising from a chair

to fall dead years later in a strange place

not a moment having passed?

12

Cavalry charges ring the house and grounds.

We learn to play with them, you and I,

in our speaking, our singing of the skin feat,

we learn to call

and have them come.

When you become better at it than I

then I am gone back into my book,

and someone is knocking at the door

of the room you’re standing in.

13

Have you heard of a town baked into a loaf of bread

and given as a gift to one ungrateful?

Yes, streets, houses, squares — young men, women, dogs,

soldiers.

I was told of it too late, and when I tried to retrieve it

I found it had been broken into a flock of birds.

Our dire attentions waver so — I wish for seriousness

and confront it in my sleep. But in the day it can’t hold me.

I am desperate but of a sudden the windows are thrown open

and joy admits itself, like daring, all at once

pressing against me with uncertain gifts.

All these promises—

come with me to the field

come at this hour and then

I want to believe and I do, but all my strength rises from the ground

and when I am best — when I rise in the wind, I am so helpless that I call to my love

like leaves in fear of rain.

14

The skin feat, beyond defying—

It begins as a loosening, a rise of the shoulders

the muscles prepare themselves but cannot be ready,

for the nerves go beyond them — out into the air

and the skin feat resolves as the eyes shut and open

and breath reaches to the horizon, the mouth

drawing in

something of ALL the air in the world

and feeling it there, in those small bottles of the lungs.

15

Red thread, blue thread, black thread, white thread.

I am involved in the thought of sewing, but I do not often sew.

Needles never glance — they are already through, already past

what is about to happen. But we,

obtaining for ourselves some lasting thing — we

are present where pretending has no joy.

What’s childish is done without thought of the future.

Children’s hands — can we call them needles?

Come with me, then, and turn your hands in a lathe,

lay them desperately against a whirring stone.

Out beyond the window there are crowds waiting

and waiting in narrow avenues of stone.

Cleverness is no salve. It wants too much.

It expects that it has won, or will.

You may learn to play an instrument, and carry it with you

and have it be a muscle, and always present.

That’s what’s best about people—

loving the world enough to confuse it for oneself.

But what is a statue? Can a farm be a statue?

Can a city? How long does a thing pause before it’s static?

A camera with an open shutter in a high ceilinged room.

We pass by a hundred times invisibly.

I am invisible, you may say, in that photograph,

just as you say,

my wife is standing over there, behind that wall.

There is a door, and a screen, and then she.

Can you imagine what she’s thinking?

16

The speed of trees must fascinate.

An oak tree on a slope releases acorns

and suddenly surrounds itself with oak trees. Oak trees are running

down to the water, they are running all along with the drive.

They ring a place. They drive from that spot in rings.

An old oak was there. It fell one day, in the midst of its dreaming.

You who write on trees, who carve into them,

be careful—

we must take care—

for, hold up your hand before your face — you cannot even see it,

so dark it has suddenly become.

17

A woman is torn in two by the skin feat. She takes her life.

She was on the edge of it. She felt it there,

but it was rotting. It had a stench.

I wanted to cry to her of the sea,

of wood that is called ash, of gas jets on a stove.

But pregnancy has no shape — that is its secret.

It isn’t round at all — it goes beyond itself.

The sun is wrapped in a blanket — yet you feel it from a hundred feet.

Suicide is a carrying also — a pregnancy also.

One carries a cold word, a thought without shape

until it is possible.

One works as an expression of the limbs. Food is gotten, so too a roof.

But there is no use to dancing

if you are yourself—

isn’t movement a mask? isn’t it a costume?

Are you so poor that you walk in only one way,

that you speak and act from one role?

Learn whole lexicons to people your theatre,

and surely know your audience

is no audience at all — just clatter

from a remembered hallway.

18

A bridge is being built. You may find the approach

a short walk from the place you’re standing in.

There are you know, places where when you go there

no one can be admitted.

There are gardens like this — whole sections

of city parks, low places in forests.

What is it holds in a place like that, what matches

us so well that we, appearing there,

feel gone beyond ourselves, and knowing,

the sight of an empty landscape isn’t human?

For we aren’t human — not when we’re alone.

19

The skin feat reports like a drum. Did I say it was breath?

It isn’t breath at all — it’s blood, the beating of blood.

We hear a drumming in the hills. We are out walking

and the drumming comes to us, and I do not look at you.

I am far too afraid.

20

But grief — are we not giving grief its place?

The skin feat is a wardrobe of costumes, and grief is the softest one,

as soft as a cooking knife.

We must love the dead, and learn to sense their finger- tips that trail

and never leave us.

And so, turning from them, we do not leave them. Grief is,

like age, a visible grain that runs the world’s length,

but cannot be followed.

Violet glass of late afternoon when evening will be riotous.

21

Masts fare so well on ships — and how proud we are of them.

Nothing has ever been admired

as sails are, as masts.

The skin feat unfolds your folded limbs, your legs, hands,

arms, chest.

Raise yourself in all weakness, not despite it, but in it.

We receive because of circumstance — not gifts, that’s why

boasting is foolish. That’s why

passing strangers in the early morning

you are not afraid

to look at their eyes

yes, there, where the light pours out.

22

But can you be covetous

of some costume you have made?

The skin feat does not set itself against things.

We don’t frown on possession.

Who doesn’t love, like a rat,

to fill the house with objects, to reflect our selves

in everything we feel kindred to

and gather that to us?

Only — let there be cycles.

Go one day from your fastness

out with a small sack. Five things you like

and you won’t come back.

23

Am I afraid to be the way I speak?

One’s hopes must always be larger than oneself. One

must always

reach with thoughts where hands can’t go.

The work of a life is to find something indomitable.

I love the color gray, and see,

how fine it would have been

to guess at fire, and to have been right.

The one who did that

had no thought for the future.

24

Be easy, be easy. Feel my paper hand

warm upon your own.

Do I love you? You are reading this book,

a book of my heart, and there are things clouding the air.

I expect that you will be hurt today. That you will be hurt

today, and the next day, the next and the next.

The ones who go through their hurt, they don’t impress

me.

Neither the ones who collapse beneath it.

Show me the ones who embrace it — who tie it tight

like a cravat, but unremarkable.

They cannot say afterwards even what prompted

that day, the necktie.

I am bound, they say, for a funeral, my own,

in a place not of my choosing

where cornflowers have been threaded

into a rope that anyone may carry.

25

We see animals and want what’s theirs,

but are afraid to give up even one thing our own.

Don’t you see? You’re already carrying

as much as can be held. You have always done so.

Becoming does not mean hazarding what you were—

it means letting it fall away.

Each time you cross the room, you will step

delicately over

the skin of your old life.

26

I tie ribbons in my beard, on my wrists, my ankles.

Is it violence you fear? I have fought others and laid them

down

and I have been hurt myself in the same way.

The body is so strong! It is covered in bark. It is poisonous to touch!

I have also been a coward and stood by

and afterwards helped a friend pick up his teeth.

Do you see my tooth? he said.

I said, a bit of it is there. And there’s another piece. He said,

the teeth break when they hit against the other teeth.

The sound of the skin feat is teeth breaking.

Do you feel the preciousness of your teeth?

27

Learning to be alone, well — that’s the bell tower.

A child may have it — and then it goes away. You feel their small hands.

They consume the very air.

But no one blames them. They are children, we say—

as if measuring the distance a body will fall.

28

Stones don’t carry their own weight.

That’s why they’re heavy.

They are like impressions of another’s sadness—

coming with nothing, you leave with nothing,

but we who despair are borne aloft.

Have you taken two knives and tried to cut one in half with the other?

I am like that when I’m hurt. I can’t even

hold the knife-handles — I don’t even recognize them.

I hold the blades and cut with sharpness into sharpness

and into my own hands.

29

We are so fond of our shadows.

There it is, we say when we see it.

There it is, my shadow.

Seeing your shadow is like having a conversation

when someone remembers something you once said.

It’s like getting a letter, like waking on a boat.

We shouldn’t really have shadows. Nothing

explains them, not really—

not why they’re our own.

30

Will you sit with me, braiding?

I learn that tarpaulin is made from scars

and that oil cloth is carded sealskin.

I am always learning and I don’t care very much what’s true.

The skin feat — yes, — fares well without truth.

Unbuttoned like a coat, it fits as well with your best gallantry.

It is out in the sea with the long swimmers,

not when they’re brave, but when they’re weak,

when they’re crying, with water in their mouths,

out of sight of land, despairing, wishing themselves

seals.

But not the safety of a seal, no, the terror of it—

the wholeness of the world like a gray marble.

The sea is rising and yet we swim still deeper.

31

Our houses really are on stilts.

They really run on long legs of chickens.

We smell men hiding in buttons and would devour them—

or are you afraid to eat a human?

Are you so simple? There are crimes,

but that’s not one. To eat a human?

Birds hunt all along the cliffs.

Our mythologies are numberless.

Did someone tell you all the tales were told?

I know another yet unsaid.

Shall I say it — already

another gathers in its place.

Myths are not a swelling of our lives—

they are not gold and lead.

They are sense—

the width of a board that you run along

from roof to roof

the street so far below.

32

Scarves pretend that they are nooses.

For them also the skin feat.

For them a white tinged joy of honeysuckle pressed to the mouth.

How long they wait, through a dozen summers,

through the growth of limbs, through boxes,

wardrobes, cupboards, shelves.

Finally, about the neck.

One can’t imagine what that’s like,

to be tied fast about a neck and gently there

to learn one’s nature.

Were you once the hair on a sheep?

Can you remember so far?

You must behave as if you know what the others know.

But who are they? Did you even see them enter?

33

The skin feat is not a matter of consensus.

About this, no one will agree.

It is in spite of everyone. It is a weak arm that can’t be bent.

Your mother sews you into a blanket.

Your father adjusts his hat.

The town gathers to see you off.

34

While awaiting the skin feat,

the audience convenes in rows and aisles.

But the theatre has been set fire!

It is burning to the ground.

Everyone races out. Six or seven are killed,

and one a child. But were they real?

Can you judge that? I am so slow in judging

who is real.

Perhaps they were just wriggling fish — or puppets.

Never again! the authorities say,

no longer can the skin feat be performed in this town.

They do not see that they are dancing wildly

in their best clothes.

And from atop a statue, a crow observes

and mutters; his beak is amidst feathers of no color.

For there are no colors inside a fire.

35

The elegance of older days is a matter of precedence.

Majesty has nothing to do with being clean!

I could sew a pretty countess into her dress

and myself into my skin

and we could run laughing, pulling

the one upon the other—

and what would it mean?

I should think a manual would be more forthcoming.

The skin feat is all intuition

like the moment of an arrow striking.

No one is shooting arrows—

they are just slamming violently out of the air,

driving into every surface — there’s no shelter.

Barbed arrows — they can’t be pulled out.

36

Life is just that—

emerging into dying. But you knew that—

were your parents not pioneers,

not the children of pioneers, no?

Build a house where there’s no one to help you;

bury children;

or are you confused about the cost?

The skin feat comes only at great cost.

Its veins and nerves are bruises and broken bones

its melody the holes where teeth were.

37

Does it sound like a gray affair?

No — it is all wisps of light.

25,000 mornings, and every one leading promptly into afternoon.

This is the skin feat — to hold yourself so gently

that you do not go to meet a friend you love

because you are remembering

the edge of something, and feel presently it will come.

Each time it happens, the world is wrought

where you are—

bells break in cold air.

Is it so small that you are disappointed?

I think you are not reading

through a noose.

No one is any better at saying what a feast is.

It’s just the days you haven’t eaten

hitting together like the bones of a necklace.

38

Are there really nations? Are there wars?

I had supposed we were all just pinned beneath rocks

on a long sandy coast

with birds to peck out our eyes.

We want so much to rise in the tumult

and feel ourselves grand and helping those who are

hurt—

but we are between the walls of the house

where the world is made—

and can do nothing for the others.

Are you one of those who feels north is north?

Or do you suppose we orbit nothing in a void?

Is meaning itself a cancer — a lesion — a symptom?

Or can we learn to speak in symbols and disguising

our hopefulness

perish truly at the moment of death?

It is a chair that you have often passed

but never think to sit in,

this well-upholstered yellow chair

with thin legs.

It is crouching in its own space,

and counting quietly.

39

The saints who say that birds are angels—

they are so confused!

They themselves ate bread so long,

they have been good to others so long—

well,

we can plainly see the birds eat the bodies

of other birds.

40

Why, I am running so fast in this narrow lane

that I cannot stop.

I cannot even look back — not with my face.

And so, yet again you say, when asked,

I am setting out this morning for a funeral, my own

at a place not of my choosing.

With a telescope, you see from far away

what you will look like after a while,

but this

you cannot see:

for the plot is small, and it rains so soon after.

41

Yes, the skin feat! And my kissing of your hands!

I run out of the house to where you are standing with

your bags.

I embrace you, I raise you up — I am strong

and you are very little.

You are coming to live with me. Everyone you know

has vanished in a plague.

UP and DOWN the halls of the house we go merrily.

I have made you a room, and set you a bed.

I have given you paper for letters — though there’s no

one to write to.

We will eat together and sit with wild thoughts mulling.

My hair is growing longer and so is yours—

my wife will shear it off, will hold us like sheep

and shear us.

I want to show you the town where I play my tricks—

for they are quiet tricks,

yes, quiet tricks

and no one knows I play them.

42

What ends this story of the skin feat? I find

I have explained it badly.

I worry that you will go back along this bridge of hands

and not carry my book with you.

The sun is climbing in the sky—

and out past the fence you can see figures

walking the road’s edge.

I am looking now at the map of your life,

at all the rooms, the roads, the lawns and hallways.

You have dreamed of it, and you will dream of it again.

A light breeze blowing, a season ending—

you find a small house

and the windows lit.

Who is there, waiting, pacing the room?

Is it one, or many — are they saying your name again and

again?

What is violent? What is beautiful?

What aches, what falls?

You are running and you will be caught.

Your very legs will fall apart, and you will still live.

And when you die others will forget you. So soon they

will scour your name.

I tell you this because of my heart

that wakes me and wakes me

and wakes me with its beating.