Raz - Divine Honors

Divine Honors WESLEYAN POETRY Books by Hilda Raz What Is GoodThe Bone Dish HILDA RAZ

Wesleyan University PressPublished by University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 037551997 by Hilda RazAll rights reservedPrinted in the United States of America5 4 3 2 1 CIP data appear at the end of the bookMay I see what I have tried not to see. CYNTHIA MACDONALD ... divine honours will be paid to shallow depressions in the ground, domestic pets, ruined windmills, or malignant tumours. W. H. AUDEN In my house, men tear out the floor: hammering, then wood splits hour on hour.

You almost need safety glasses for this work, the blond says and truly, as I go for the phone, the kitchen is now rubble. Delight a paste bubble in my throat. If anger is tangible here it is, a danger to these men who let fly plaster, the smell of something old letting go. They unmake what I made with my life, or where I made it.

The soaked books lip open in piles. The shelves stoop, slough paint.

The doors, their locks sprung, hinge air open to weather, gulp rain. Something here enters the trees. If we believe in ghosts, white pearl shadows the batten and boards. Rust runs on the shelves. The sounds on air wail, a nail in the thumb. Stickers underfoot poke holes.

In rafters, wings or the suggestion of wings rend air, whoosh of rubbish, burnt rubber hooks for skeleton elbows. Ash, dry sift through moist fingers in a room where everythings mold.

only, the damage, the number of bricks cracked in the passageway, doors swollen by water-rot, frames to pare down, mildew to scour, how much to seal up, or seal out. Lets count, yes, quantify so we can sort the pile of damp clothing, the discarded underwear with stains, the breakfast napkins to hang out, hang on line the number of bodily fluids, mixed, the shrinking lengths of divisions, weights of bias... Now you have a notebook, pages filled with digits, the sweet wise voice of the wire turning, connecting, recommending measure, a count, the quantifying of the salt and the sugar, Well, now you have the damage report, the bottom line, the sum. Consider the lilies of the field, how they sway in wind without reference to your pages, how little they care for laughter or the dour voice, the smile tucked under the chin, the complaint, the whine, howif nothing elseyou have your dear cornea, lungs that puff and inflate their wings, lucky muscle of the calf, the knee, if we could cut an oval and put the celluloid disc in place how we would see movement, the universe shifting and settling down in its elliptical orbit, add the catch in the stars breath makes.

So you are advised to burn the notebook, its pages, the maps and wire measure of damage and move on, move along until what happens is only a measure of forgetting, detaching distress, your upset, your dyspepsia from the air of the orchard. Move ahead and not refer, never refer to anything other than the sweet taste in your mouth of breath, the steady blood beat, the road hot and loud under your feet, infinite.

Here plantsgold and dryrustle up green at soils edge. Music roils in the room where I wait, my chest holding even at the scars edge. Whatever chances I took paid off and now I have only the rest of my life to consider. Once it was a globe, an ocean to cross, at least a desert now a rivulet, or a blowhole.

I remember it was like a story, Rampal said on the radio. He told you the Beethoven concerto. I am telling you cancer. I am telling you like moisture at soils edge after winter, or the bulb of the amaryllis you brought raising stem after stem from cork dirt, one hybrid flower after another unfurling for hours, each copper petal opening its throat so slowly, each shudder of tonemahogany, coral, blood an ache, orgasm, agony, life.

Squeals, groans, chirps and whistles like red birds pinched in the crotches of yews and their pollen song, beaks. Or window on rain, fire thorn tossed down by the instrument of his hand aloft, thumb letting go of the nape, apex a great height, noise like a body breaking on ground.

Hiss, splatter pattern of wave, wire at the nadir holding the blood fan closed, blood fan open as red as a cardinal, an orange, the moon with her blushing face, liquid earphone static through hot bindings where I toss and listen to the breakup, earth forcing flesh into new shapes whir and chitter of arm raising, arm falling, this arm, her name.

Your sweet silence, your hands, skin, your mouth. On the telephone, sleepy, the son of my body. The sun on my body. His alarm clock ringing. His birthday.

She, matter-of-fact, cool, saying what she knows, promising to discover what she doesnt know, at the library. Daughter of my body, Persephone and I Demeter. You with your $125 worth of spring bulbs divided three ways, three friends, three graces. We plant them together, warm earth in the garden where your mother watches, who has cancer too. I make stewyou bring veggies I cook with meatand rice custard. You build onto our patio garden.

The patio is rich and crunchy with acorns. Cat and I stand on the drivewaywarmto find Orion. Now you are naked and sleeping as I write. Dear God, keep us all safe. My breast is healing well. I am supple of body.

My spirit what? Still at home in my body. Cancer is one of the few internal diseases that can be cured. I am a person who has cancer now. You show me fronds of prairie grasses, beige/lavender in sun in your gardensun, sun all dayin high 70son your garden. On ours. scared. scared.

Im still me, same me no matter what he says. Biopsy report shocks me. You say, So you know more than the doctor?you with me all afternoon, read report with me. Necrotic tissue. Adjacent cells abnormal. We go shopping, for a walk.

His nurse says, Recovery is partially dependent... on my attitude. I buy an expensive purse in the shape of a pouch, whats missing in my body, that last years thievery. She speaks about her dream of ribbons and banners, floating upward into light, and her ecstatic sense of losing individual boundaries, losing them and merging into the natural universe. I am fascinated and afraid.

The future is what does not happenColette The euphorbia shot a pale rilled tube toward the light, so all week I have been grieving, pouring deep gutturals into the stone edgings of the back garden, down on my knees, seeming to dig the impatiens.

Nobody heard me but the shade and rain in air. I must have seemed from a distance doubled over a dumbbell (what you call weights) so deeply did I hold my knees to rock minutes at a time, then stop. Then once on Sunday as the sky cleared for an hour I wondered how to say why I couldnt say words had gone in their ashy fans, and only the wrap of my body around loss, stayed.

... the old root giving rise to mystery was mu, with cognates MYSTICAL and MUTE. MYSTERY came from the Greek muein with the meaning of closing the lips, closing the eyes.

Lewis Thomas Misery a block in the head a block I hum mmmm through, the way mother mmmm helps me move to. Umber attaches to shadows in hedge-ribbons. Feet mmmmmmmm, hit-sounds like murder stitched to lips, the miles, hummm, eyes shut shuttered, cement walk studded with dark Im afraid mmmmmo and now I am come alone at midnight onto the pineneedles of the park. I am come to say good-bye in the dark but my mouth wont open. What opens is my eye to the open edge of the metal tunnel under the curve of the spiral slide Im afraid to rise to. Im standing at the base to cry out at midnight Whose children will come down? Who bashes into my arms so we open our mou ths to this cadence no no no no mmm mommy up again to ride the big slide they and I falling into the dark air.

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