Wright - Walking to Marthas Vineyard

ALSO BY FRANZ WRIGHT

Poetry

Tapping the White Cane of Solitude (1976)
The Earth WithoutYou (1980)
8 Poems (1981)
The One Whose Eyes Open When You Close Your Eyes (1982)
Going North in Winter (1986)
Entry in an Unknown Hand (1989)
And Still the Hand Will Sleep in Its Glass Ship (1991)
Midnight Postscript (1992)
The Night World & the Word Night (1993)
Rorschach Test (1995)
Ill Lit: Selected &New Poems (1998)
Knell (1999)
God While Creating the Birds Sees Adam in His Thoughts (2001)
Hell & Other Poems (2001)
The Beforelife (2001)
God's Silence (2006)
Earlier Poems (2007)

Translations

Jarmila. Flies: Ten Prose Poems by Erica Pedretti (1976)
The Life of Mary (Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke) (1981)
The Unknown Rilke (1983)
No Siege Is Absolute (Poems by Ren Char) (1984)
The Unknown Rilke: Expanded Edition (1991)

Dieu crant les oiseaux volt Adam dans sa pense

Cathdrale de Chartres, Portail Nord

I was still standing
on a northern corner.

Moonlit winter clouds the color of the desperation of wolves.

Proof
of Your existence? There is nothing
but.

Resurrection of the little apple tree outside

my window, leaf
light of late
in the April
called her eyes, forget
forget
but how
How does one go
about dying?
Who on earth
is going to teach me
The world
is filled with people
who have never died

It is late afternoon and I have just returned from
the longer version of my walk nobody knows
about. For the first time in nearly a month, and
everything changed. It is the end of March, once
more I have lived. This morning a young woman
described what it's like shooting coke with a baby
in your arms. The astonishing windy and altering light
and clouds and water were, at certain moments,
You.

There is only one heart in my body, have mercy
on me.

The brown leaves buried all winter creatureless feet
running over dead grass beginning to green, the first scentless
violet here and there, returned, the first star noticed all
at once as one stands staring into the black water.

Thank You for letting me live for a little as one of the
sane; thank You for letting me know what this is
like. Thank You for letting me look at your frightening
blue sky without fear, and your terrible world without
terror, and your loveless psychotic and hopelessly
lost

with this love

We were, about as useful as a hammer and nail made of gold

Some woman crying the first thing we heard before our
birth

No people anymore

Oh prayer of night

Who's going to miss you

Voices from the first dark heartshaped green of summer
leaves, rain;
birds'.

What are they called.

I'm leaving here, and still don't know.

I'm going there, though,
where they are
I feel this.

Feel that I was there
before.

I felt this
as a child, and now
I know it.

Like a third set of teeth
or side in a chess match

Thought

and most mysterious
of all, the
matter of thought

The mortal mind thinking
deathless things,
sineine

See it examining
black grains of death
and lifethey are the same
thing
in its open hand

Sweet black green-shadowed grains of soil:
When no one is looking

see it secretly

taste one.

Death, heaven, bread, breath and the sea
here

to scare me

But I too will be fed by
the other food
that I know nothing
of, the breath
the death
the sea of
it

Day
when the almond does not
blossom and the grasshopper drags itself along

But if You can make a star from nothing You can raise me up

Long nights, short years. Forgiving
silence

When morning comes, and pain

no one is a stranger, this whole world is your home.

Oh build a special city
for everyone who wishes

to die, where
they might help one another out

and never feel ashamed
maybe make a friend,
etc.
You

who created the stars and the sea
come down, come down

in spirit, fashion
a new heart

in me, create
me again

Homeless in Manhattan
the winter of your dying

I didn't have a lot of time
to think about it, trying to stay alive

To me

it was just the next interesting thing you would do that is how cold it was

and how often I walked to the edge of the actual river to join you

The street outside
the window says
I don't miss you, and I don't wish you well

Says crocuses
coaxed out of hiding
and killed in the snow

Says six o'clock and a billion black birds
wheeling, and the dusk stars
wait, and the avalanche waits

And have you looked at the paper today

Medical research discloses
that everyone is going to die
of something

Ulterior avenues, I will not take you

Supernaturally articulate pencil, where the heaven of lost objects are you

Beginning summer now, incredibly close
clouds like an illustration
that disturbed you as a child

Appalling and incomprehensible mercy

The seeing see only this world

That glass was it filled with alcohol, water, or light

At ten
I turned you into a religion

The solitary
four-foot priest of you, I kept
the little manger candle
burning, I
kept your black half-inch of
scripture
in the hiding place

Destroyer
of the world

That empty

glass

In which city was it, in fourth or fifth grade, Mother read in the newspaper you'd be appearing and dressed me up in suit
and little tie
and took me
I wanted to run to youwho were all these people?
I sat alone beaming
at you who could not meet my eyes, and after
you shyly approached
and shook my hand

If I'm walking the streets of a city
covering every square inch of the continent
all its lights out
and empty of people,
even then
you are there

If I'm walking the streets
overwhelmed with this love for the living

I will still be a blizzard at sea

Since you left me at eight I have always been lonely

star-far from the person right next to me, but

closer to me than my bones you

you are there

It's 1963 again, the old Minneapolis airport so vast
to me, and I am running
after the long flight alone I am running
into your huge arms
Now
I am forty-five now and I am dreaming
we are together again we are both forty-five
and I have you all to myself this time, and we are walking