D A V I D    N E E D
_____________________________

VEILS / QUILTS

 

 

 

I

A yellow dawn parts the night effortlessly
           into weights of color, and loosened sky,
and sparrows dart
           their impossible swift and branching

into tangles of briar and quince
           without touching once;
but no such easy show
           appears between us;

even passing on the street
           leaves the faintest
weight of a hunger;

so we do not separate as landscape and cloud,
           and the morning's further is less new distance
than a harrowing that's always due.

 

II

Silently as the deep night turns the hardest
            first blue, the dew
appears, a damp fall along the edges
            of what fails to sublime

after the disappearing stars;
            instead accepts this heavy skirt
of being, in comfort and veils
           of color, a car again or bush or house,

my blue knee, my careful hand,
            covered again
with their ordinary quilts

this rushing day,
            this show
there is never a no to.

 

III

And when the walls of your house are solid
            again, as on other days when a memory
was enough to hold you against
           the day, its colors hidden

as recollection sets all things apart,
            and a dark vein threads across your brow,
its wounded design
           and only that;

never that we knew distance too,
            how the hour kisses open
that no wall held us
           
in our constant spilling,
           our surfacings in the far off
and near at hand.

IV

The deepest lake gives up winter slowly
           if at all
and only where the sun reaches
           to make a green vault in the pooling;

then dark lost things can imagine
           the first hours of the cathedral
and rise along the slanting arms,
            drifting.
           
Oh, to discover drowned sleep
           each hour's breathing written and due,
and lost

and drowned in blooming threads
           and pleurisy rhymes of color,
and speaking.

V

The heavy curtain of the day
           in its bunched throw and wrinkles
does not lift so easily from the bed of my heart
           as a wing or a sheaf

of cascading hair
           which parts so slightly under a prod
falls into braids, lays light on the shoulder's bench.
           Would that I could somehow rise as easily

to this daily order
            as hair falls, with such care
despite the steepness of hours,

despite the weight color lays
           on my arms, so beautiful
a grief and debt.

VI

The skin is not broken nor creased by love
           as much as parsed by the always difference
of day and night, divided into countless layers
           so thick light cannot pass

but breaks instead, blooms
           as the bruise of memory. What love wants
is a rending, a sweet and liquid parting
           of surfaces, lips pursing and lightly tasting,

parting, so that the calico and gingham
           layers, and more beneath suburban silks,
scrap cotton, landscapes of dark wool are revealed

as if a fog had parted briefly
           and from a ridge
the valleys below were seen.

VII

Are there breaks in the day
           a different light comes through
as if the air had opened in many mouths
           so there was space between

space, a tear suddenly
           in the fabric of sky and stone,
so that from beyond the measure of stores
           and facades,

a second cotton shows its edge,
           perhaps blue flowers or,
what drives the heart,

this separation
            of colors and skins
into the manifold caring.

VIII

Is it that there is nowhere light,
           but only covers of color?
Or is there something else too,
           the thinnest glimpse?

Of what? Mouths shouting out light?
           A final design that strides its purpose?
How could we know when body does not end
           at skin's borders

but sleeps a world,
           its further shoulder,
where hills repeat the thigh's tracing care,

and skin answers it knows
           how roots twist through it
and shoots push out their green.

IX

To stand asleep beneath
           the changing quilt of the sky
or later nestle under a nearer
           cloth

where the traces of the sunset's fire
           remain, even in shadowed dimness,
the almost dark of these almost intimate
           rooms

where we are already a stranger;
           to sleep this way the constant day
in pretense or honest art

always deeper into the coverings
           that peal away
from our deserted skin.

X

And when the poem tears at me
           I think, "oh say it as angry
as any angel looking at this commerce
           and selling, and spit

to think belonging is a victory
           when all belongs to these hard hours
anyway. See?
           the sun casts shadows

no matter who stands there.
           What's all this desperation?"
But instead,

all around me my skin is flowering
           and I can hardly think
to say such a departure.

XI

Listen, I had already begun
           to lose everything
before I could name it,
           leaking from the countless

wounds each touch has left,
           staining me the color of things
this bookshelf on my hands
           or the curtain parting in folds

or the sky which covers me
           in such scars
and urgent directions,

a loose sieve of memories
           that spill oil-black
into sound.

XII

How to live in such delicate hours?
           One's heart is too awkward a throat,
too full of cries and the ambitious storms
           of blood to share in this nearer, serene distance

of the body's environs; each day—not only a few—
           full of green teas and blankets
whose transient warmth is never a threat
           never a lie to be uncovered,

these casually proffered hands
           whose cool touch lingers as the better part
of what we endure so fiercely,

and with such repudiation,
           so that we are not shamed
by the sunset's greater brilliance.

 

 

 

back to issue two

 

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