Phillips - Heaven: poems

Eppure resta che qualcosa accaduto, forse un niente che tutto. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar EDWARD LEAR Perpetual peace. Perpetual light. From a distance it all seems graffiti. Gold on gold. Iridescent, torqued phosphors.

But still graffiti. Someones smear on space. A name. A neighborhood. X. X was Here.

X in the House. A two-handed engine Of aerosols hissing Thou Shalt Not Pass On fiery ground. A shot-down Aurora Borealis. That raised areola At the tip of the tongue of I or Thou. Benedict Robinson, text me, if you know: If Hell is a crater to a crater To a crater to a crater, what then Is Heaven, aside from its opposite, Which was glorious, known, and obvious? Not knowing the difference between Heaven And Paradise, he called them both Heaven. So when he shrugged at the thought of a god Blanched in the lights of implausible heights, Thumbing the armrests of a throne, that was Heaven.

And when he stared out at the sea, Feeling familiar to himself at last, He called that Heaven, too. And nothing changed About either Paradise or Heaven For it: Paradise retained its earthen Glamour; and Heaven, because it cant stand For anything on its own, like the color Of rice or a bomb, was happy to play Along, was happy just to be happy For once, and not an excuse for mayhem. The soul of swift-soled Achilles, hearing me Praise his son, silvered, and then was gone, His long strides causing him to blend, light-bent, Into the shining, maize-meadow cloudbank Shadowed by that one solitary tree It takes sixteen years for light, let alone A soul, to cross. The other dead, who thrived Though they had died, rejoiced at seeing me And sang, one by one, to me; and I in Turn said back to one after the other That the song that soul sang was a blessing And that I had never heard anything Like it; which was true, but also, I must Admit, they bored me to tears, tears that their Surprisingly still finite knowledge took As tears of pure joy from hearing them sing. Only Ajax Telamoniades Kept away, arms crossed, refusing to speak, Dim-starred and disappearing into his rage. All because of a simple spar of words, A mere speech, and winning Achilles armor.

Athena above and those men at the ships Decided that, not me, although its true He never stood a chance. By custom he Should have been given the matchless metal. How I wish I hadnt won that contest. How the ground closed over his head for it. What a fool I can be. Ajax.

Who knew No equal in action but for the one Man who surpassed him, just-fled Achilles, So capable of happiness despite All that happened because he washed up here, Heaven: this implausible place for us. Strange that Ajax is also in Heaven Despite ending his legendary life. In the end hes won, but he doesnt seem To understand hes won. Poor Ajax As always, I thought I had winning words, And so I said to him with unreturned gaze: Son of great Telamon, mighty Ajax, War tower, shake free of your anger. Theres no one to blame but Zeus, and look He is no longer here, friend. Paradise Has found you and given you an eternal Roof under the one tree of High Heaven.

Zeus treated us so terribly, and you, Whom he should have loved like his strongest son, You worst of all. But thats history Now. Come, my strong brother, lord and deserved Winner of all Achilles wore and was, Come, be with us here; let me hear the light Of Heaven in your voice; and let me know, Because I love you, how you (of all men!) Ended up in the keen of this endless berm. But Ajax, gift-eyed, said nothing to me And took his seat under the rowan tree. Both guitars run trebly. One noodles Over a groove.

The other slushes chords. Then they switch. Its quite an earnest affair. They close my eyes. I close their eyes. A horn Blares its inner air to brass.

A girl shakes Her ass. Some dude does the same. The musics Gone moot. Who doesnt love it when the bass Doesnt hide? When you can feel the trumpet peel Old oil and spit from deep down the empty Pit of a note or none or few? So dont Give up on it yet: the scenario. You know that its just as tired of you As you are of it. Still, theres much more to it Than that.

It does not not get you quite wrong. Wed cut school like knives through butter, the three Of usPeter, Stephen, and Ito play Just about all the music we knew, Which meant that from nine in the morning till Steves parents, the ever-patient Murtaughs, Would get home from work, I played guitar, Peter played bass, and Steve (whod end Up becoming a guitarist by trade When we went separate ways, to separate Schools, in separate states), Steve at this point Played the drums. We dreamed of power trios And powered our way through song after song, Including ones Steve and I wrotelike Hey, Regina and the lamentably Titled String Her Up. Sometimes we tried out Some Yes, a long Hey Joe, the stereo phaser Was my signature sound, and Id bend in And out of notes, imply arpeggios Only to solo over them, tapped, frowned Through anything in a major key, felt My way home on Steves map of snares, Petes rope. Wed play an entire Zeppelin album, Usually the first or second, then stray By chance into the longer, later songs Like bees that float down and drown in a pool. Wed break for lunch and then get back at it, As though we had a gig to get ready for, Or a demo to cut, the cassette deck Rolling its eyes as it whirred round and round.

Peter, as is the nature of bassists, Held the tunes together and kept things light. Years later, I assumed he was dead. My Telecaster glares at me at night now From inside the hard case by my bed And the calluses on my fingertips Have long since softened. The six-minute solos At some point became poems it took two months Minimum to make seem seamless. Steve In the meantime thrived in the Triangle, Became Stevie, married Emily; Pete I know less about. He posts on Facebook Cheerfully about the Light, the Great Light That glows in all of us, sends the occasional White dove in the occasional shared shot, A sun resting on a cloud like a pearl In its mooted gray shell.

Nostalgia courts Me. Im nearing forty, we were boys And I should let us be. But nostalgia Spreads quickly through the ashes of our youth, Making ferned fires out of blue beliefs. When the dark would come, wed show each other Our blisters, the painful white whorls peeling, Our red palms upwards, outstretched and unread. Night frees its collar from around its neck And walks slowly past the two bathing bears Wading in the black stellate subheaven. They know nothing thats happened or that will.

Their implausibly radiant malaise Deepening the starry night and its great Astral ambivalence towards small things Like bread and Bernardos first glimpse of the ghost. And then the doors drew back and I could see, Scaling up the high void, plum and pear-green Parapets, pomegranate balustrades Portioned by molten silver trim that Sizzled as it spiraled up and down The skied poles like boas scoured by lightning. No structure met them there: they just met air; Balustrade and parapet, unseen, seen, Floating where in principle they should be, As though they were the establishment, and Not the embellishments. I touched my face To make sure it, too, was still there. Felt for It as a frightened fish feels for deeper Water. Who the hells Heaven is this? I asked that half of myself I thought Might have recognized some familiar thing Under that star-beleaguered dome, that void, Where giants moved against the blinding backdrop So quickly my mind understood them as Moving slowly as though it were being Lapped on a track.