Waking in the Dark

Waking in the Dark

  

1.

The thing that arrests me is

      how we are composed of molecules

      (he showed me the figure in the paving stones)

      arranged without our knowledge and consent

                like the wirephoto composed

                of millions of dots

                in which the man from Bangladesh

                walks starving

                                     on the front page

                                     knowing nothing about it

                which is his presence for the world

 

2.

We are standing in line outside of something

two by two, or alone in pairs, or simply alone

looking into windows full of scissors,

windows full of shoes. The street was closing,

the city was closing, would we be the lucky ones

to make it? They were showing

in a glass case, the Man Without a Country.

We held up our passports in his face, we wept for him.

 

They are dumping animal blood into the sea

to bring up the sharks. Sometimes every

aperture of my body

leaks blood. I don’t know whether

to pretend that this is natural.

Is there a law about this, a law of nature?

You worship the blood

you call it hysterical bleeding

you want to drink it like milk

you dip your finger into it and you write

you faint at the smell of it

you dream of dumping me into the sea.

3.

The tragedy of sex

lies around us, a woodlot

the axes are sharpened for.

The old shelters and huts

stare through the clearing with a certain resolution

– the hermit’s cabin, the hunters’ shack –

scenes of masturbation

and dirty jokes.

A man’s world. But finished.

They themselves have sold it to the machines.

I walk the unconscious forest,

A woman dressed in old army fatigues

that have shrunk to fit her, I am lost

at moments, I feel dazed

by the sun pawing between the trees,

cold in the bog and lichen of the ticket.

Nothing will save this. I am alone,

kicking the last totting logs

with their strange smell of life, not death,

wondering what on earth it all might have become.

4.

Clarity,

                 spray

blinding and purging

spears of sun striking the water

the bodies riding the air

like gliders

the bodies in slow motion

falling

into the pool

at the Berlin Olympics

control; loss of control

the bodies rising

arching back to the tower

time reeling backward

clarity of open air

before the dark chambers

with the shower-heads

the bodies falling again

freely

                              faster than light

the water opening

like air

like realization

A woman made this film

against

the law

of gravity

5.

All night dreaming of a body

space weighs on differently from mine

We are making love in the street

the traffic flows off from us

pouring back like a sheet

the asphalt stirs with tenderness

there is no dismay

we move together like underwater plants

Over and over, starting to wake
I dive back to discover you
still whispering, touch me, we go on
streaming through the slow
citylight forest ocean
stirring our body hair

But this is the saying of a dream
on waking
I wish there were somewhere
actual we could stand
handing the power-glasses back and forth
looking at the earth, the wildwood
where the split began.

             

~ Adrienne Rich, from Diving into the Wreck