Rock Harbor by Carl Phillips Page B

be—
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â To have
    called it water. “They
    crossed themselves,
    they gave
    utterly themselves over
    to what
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â wasn’t there,
    that it might
    save, or drown them…”

THE CLARITY
    No dream—but as
    if so, moving at first
    with the force of
    idea purely; and
    then of a man convinced
    he has justified
    brilliantly himself to
    himself; and then
    of the yearling that,
    haltered at
    last, remains
    still to be gentled, to be
    broken-to-ride, although
    no yearling, not a horse
    ever, and not dream.
    I turned.
    I could see,
    across the room,
    heaped there like fouled
    linen like memory like
    detritus stepped
    away from, the truth of
    â€”of myself: glintless,
    yes, but no
    more so for my having (how
    long?) disavowed it.
    Suggestive of sorrow,
    or the cool irreversibility that
    attaches commonly to
    larger mistakes
    of judgment—so did it
    lie there: undiminished.
    I take it, in the darkness, to my face.

LOOSE HINGE
    Of the body: most,
    its resilience, have you
    not loved that, its—its
    endingness,
    that too?
    And the unwitting
    prayer getting made
    between them,
    as when we beat at
    what is closed,
    closed against us, and call
    the beating, in time,
    song. To have been
    among the hands
    for which the stone lets go
    its sword,
    or the tree its gold
    crepitating
    bough,
    what must that
    feel like? With what speed
    does the hero grow
    used to—necessarily—
    the world’s surrender
    until—how
    else—how call it
    strange, how
    not inevitable? Heroes,
    in this way at least, resembling
    the damned
    who are damned
    as traitors, some
    singing We could not
    help it, others
    Fate,
    Circumstance,
    X
    made me —as if
    betrayal required more than
    one party, which it
    does not.
    Admit it: you gave
    yourself away. We are
    exactly what
    we are, as you
    suspected, and—
    like that—the world
    obliging with its fair
    examples: rain and,
    under it, the yard
    an overnight field
    of mushrooms,
    the wet of them, the yellow-
    white of, the
    nothing-at-all, outside
    themselves, they
    stood for. You’ve been
    a seeming
    exception only. Hot;
    relentless. Yourself the rule.

THE THRESHING
    A sweetness, say—
    and coming, on me. Or, in
    almost-squares,
    light dismissible at
    first as that which,
    surely— Did I
    dream that?
    Between
    what by now lies far
    behind, and what
    ahead still, gets
    forged a life that,
    whether or not I can
    recall having
    called it mine own
    â€”or say so
    now—will have been
    the case, notwithstanding:
    as when a smaller
    fate, this time, fumbles
    clear of one larger, flies
    free, how the usual
    questions—is this
    nature? design?
    whose?—
    alter none of the
    particulars of escape,
    of the being foiled.
    If the world is
    godless, then
    an absence I am
    always with, and
    it with me. Or
    else the world is
    stitched with gods and
    unavoidably I am
    with them,
    they with me.
    To be reduced to
    nothing, literally, but a life
    to lose; to surrender
    that, also, to those
    whispering Yes, yes,
    that also — Isn’t this
    the idea? To give, even
    full well knowing that
    they might take it,
    they might not, their
    gaze—as if by some
    city more new
    and glittering than
    the last one graced
    briefly then lifted
    out of—their gaze
    distracted.
    Point at which
    who seeks, with the
    swerveless patience that
    hunger, for a time,
    affords, shall find
    his target—stilling,
    stopped. No room
    for wanting. —Was this
    not the idea?
    The hands: as if only
    made for this—
    Should the eyes not
    be, already,
    shut,
    then you must shut them.

THE SILVER AGE
    Naturally, the lawn fills
    in, where you
    repaired it.
    Of the two
    trees left,
    one dying,
    the parts of the tree
    across which disease gets
    laid, like a map,
    out,
    and the other parts,
    putting forth still