Powell - Substrate

ALSO BY JIM POWELL

It Was Fever That Made the World
The Poetry of Sappho

To Carlo Anceschi

TIMON OF PHLIUS:
IN THE MUSES BIRDCAGE

Naked as the day they were born the first time
the newly resurrected blink awake wide-eyed and caper
innocent under heaven
in the final clarity of eternal everyday
like nudists without tennis shoes, unstartled

to resume bodies homely as the first,
lumpish and pointy elbowed, adult but not worn, like a loved coat
remade, a perfect fit
comfortable as an animal, an animal with a soul at home
entirely instinct with uncareful grace

the sting of seasons sated at the feast
where every head is numbered pleasure's instrument and slave
to painluck's buried hook
and fatal barb of riskblunted this time, lost in the blast
this morning from the horn of Israfel.

The air thins and clears
above eight thousand feet and distances
draw nearer: a silver pine snag
falls in the forest and over decades
disintegrates

as layer under layer
the rings of yearly growth break down in fragments,
the fat years and the lean,
fissure and crumble slowly inward
toward heartwood

which also crumbles, fracturing
beneath the pry and wedge of ice and insects,
snow, sunlight, rain,
the slow combustion of decay,
till all that's left

where the thick trunk lay
is a long strip of wood chips making a path
through the encroaching brush,
a strew of cubic segments the size
of finger bones,
the ridges of the grain
still visible on their striated faces
of burnished muted copper.
Come evening, a fading bed
of coals gives back

that brazen tarnished
glow below a grill of gaping rainbow trout
the trout we feast on fattened
on mosquitoes that swarm at dusk
to feed on us.

Down the botanical garden's terraced slope
following where the path
led us among tagged specimens
assembled in neat plots
by family

and ecosystem, local plants and exotics
even a young sequoia
from my native California
each with its skirt of shade
underneath

gathered close in the solstice midday heat,
with sometimes a single leaf
in outline emerging from the tangled
mass of shadows cast
on the level dust,

its boundary describing the unique
silhouette peculiar
to its kind, and all the leaves above
outspread, reveling
in the common sunshine

we strayed into a cool alcove, lingering
where the pharmacopoeia
detained usephedra,
belladonna, one small gray-barked tree
without a label,

a glossy red-orange globe on a long stem
smooth as a persimmon
suspended from a skinny branch
head high, a tin sign
enameled white

hanging on a silver chain beside it
with prim black lettering:
VELENO NON TOCCARE .
Further on, where the slope
flattens out

and widens as the field sweeps gently down
to meet the towering
medieval walla sprawling acre
of tall grass and wildflowers,
thistles, vines,

undifferentiated pagan weeds
promiscuously nestled
against the fortification's brickwork,
the whole expanse of ground
let run wild

as if the circuit of the city wall
were a permeable membrane
admitting the wilderness inside,
wild and tame interpenetrating,

this city's trust in its identity
secure enough to allow
its opposite a place and share.
Just so, the visitor
who climbs slowly

back from the outskirts along narrow lanes
of sun-warmed brick emerging
into Il Campo senses the spreading
plaza's vast expanse
widen around him

the way a mountain meadow greets a hiker
in the wilderness who follows
the thin stripe of a trail through forest
shadows when suddenly
a clearing opens

and gathers him into the broad embrace
of high altitude
cerulean. But ah, Siena,
you are luckiest in the root
and stem whence

your hospitality flowers: each and all
your children trust that within
the encircling shelter of your wall
they will always have a place
at the table, a bed.

Graying chest hair emerging from his apron top in tufts
dusted with a snow of flour
above the swelling rondure of his oven belly,
sleeves rolled, arms folded, at ease on the porch steps
outside the back door of the bakery

in the lively air of the early hour taking a break
while the bread cools on racks inside
and a breeze picks up off the bay: the mist lifts
and the swarming dust of starlight reappears,
the constellations that were given names

beside the hive-domed ovens of Chaldea and of Ur
near first light, thick arms cradling rolls
and crusty loaves, a gift for late-returning revelers,
for the derelict who washes in the creek
under the bridge his daily bread at daybreak.

The lion still rules the barranca

A doe and a pair of yearlings
detach from the shadow of the cliffs
and edge into the open
knees whispering through grass like wisps of tule fog
adrift in the starlit meadow

spectral silhouettes
ashimmer gliding warily creekward
they keep close to covert
yet where the bright thread of the path divides the clearing
one by one cross over

the exposed ground and wait
on the other side, mule ears cocked,
till he joins them and they vanish
into darkness behind the wide rack of the antlers, not hurrying
and not lingering.

Crone,
old meat,
once, this town was your home;
now you're living on the street.
The bottom line has put you there to rot.

You can't
pay the rent.
Every seven years
it doubles. Now shelter is too dear
for you, since who you are is what you've got.

It takes
six weeks to build
a cabin, six months to make
a house, but thirty years won't pay
for either, the banker and the landlord say,

so nightly
in TV dreams
the pyramid of paper
mounts in piles, it gets a purchase
on your back and towers and sprawls and sags

till what
you've got is what
you areyour family
's gone, the neighbors all rank strangers:
a shopping cart of newspapers and rags.

Crone,
caryatid
broken under your stone,
the full weight of the pyramid
crushes down on your shoulders anonymous as brick.

The child riding his father's shoulders
above the crowd
looks down into the whirl of faces swimming at his knees,
king of the world
in his own mind:

at each turn alternate destinies
invite his liking;

he gapes meanwhile, and holds tight, safe on the charmed brink of childhood,

a bubble clinging
at the fall's lip,

delighting to be thus elevated.
Later, learning
to carry his own weight on solid ground he will denounce
the idols riding
his father's back,

curse naked king and paper crown
to make his way,
still not noticing how his choices begin to overtake him,
the water rising
at his heels.