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Nothing to Declare

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

    CITY HORSE

    At the end of the road from concept to corpse,
    sucked out to sea and washed up again—
    with uprooted trees, crumpled cars, and collapsed houses—
    facedown in dirt, and tied to a telephone pole,
    as if trying to raise herself still, though one leg is broken,
    to look around at the grotesque unbelievable landscape,
    the color around her eyes, nose, and mane (the dapples of roan,
    a mix of white and red hairs) now powdery gray—
    O, wondrous horse; O, delicate horse—dead, dead—
    with a bridle still buckled around her cheeks—"She was more         smarter than me,
    she just wait," a boy sobs, clutching a hand to his mouth
    and stroking the majestic rowing legs,
    stiff now, that could not outrun
    the heavy, black, frothing water.


    FREE DIRT

    My house is mine:
    the choice of menu,
    the radio and television,
    the unpolished floors,
    the rumpled sheets.

    It's like being inside
    a rolltop desk. I have
    no maid who takes care
    of me. Sometimes,
    during breakfast,

    I speak French with
    a taxidermied wren.
    There is no debt
    between us. We listen
    to language tapes:

    Viens-tu du ciel profond?
    Always, I hear a little oratorio
    inside my head. Moths
    have carried away my carpets,
    like invisible pallbearers.

    I like invisibleness,
    except in the moon's strong,
    broad rays. Some nights,
    I ask her paleness, "Will I be okay?"
    I am weak and fruitless at night,

    like a piece of meat with eyes,
    but in the morning optimistic again,
    like a snowflake that has traveled
    many miles and many years
    to be admired on the kitchen pane.

    Alone, I guzzle
    and litter and urinate
    and shout. Please do not
    wake me from this dream,
    making meals from discrete

    objects—a sweet potato,
    a jar of marmalade,
    a bottle of sauvignon blanc.
    Today, I saw a sign
    in majuscule for FREE DIRT

    and thought, We all have
    chapters we'd rather keep
    unpublished, in which we
    get down with the swirl.
    The little wren perched on my

    finger weighs almost nothing,
    just nails and beak. But it
    gives me tiny moments—
    here at my kitchen table—
    like a diaphanous chorus

    mewling something
    about love, or the haze
    of love, a haze that makes
    me squint-eyed and sick
    if I think too much about it.

    What am I but this flensed
    syntax, sight and sound,
    in which my heart, not
    insulated yet, makes
    ripple effects down the line?


    THE BEE

    For Jamaica Kincaid

    There's a bee
    dying slowly
    outside my
    window.
    He/she

    makes this awful
    buzzing sound,
    which grows
    longer as
    the end nears,

    I suppose.
    The mysterious
    process at work
    within him/her
    is disturbing,

    like a warm
    wet finger.
    Usually,
    when you hear
    a bee,

    the sound dissipates
    as the bee
    flies away,
    but this is constant,
    so constant I think,

    Maybe this bee
    is stupidly in love
    with me.
    Or the buzzing
    is inside

    my head
    and will become,
    over time,
    a friend—
    a new kind

    that doesn't go away,
    even after lots of sex—
    my ear canal
    growing receptive,
    like a hard bud

    to light,
    or a vulva
    to the perfect
    relation.
    Would we know

    each other,
    I wonder,
    if our eyes met across
    a crowded room?
    I did not expect

    to meet this bee.
    What else
    could love be
    but lots of buzzing—
    or hate?


    LIGHTNING TOWARD MORNING

    In a thicket of bayberry
    sowed early in the last
    century, I am thoroughly
    camouflaged. Nearby,
    piping plovers are breeding

    in a nest of fescue;
    they are a rare species
    in these parts, with whistling
    peep-peeps and fine black
    rings around their necks.

    Probably only
    an examiner
    could distinguish
    a raccoon's bones
    from my own.

    Wind, rain, and salt—
    with animal feeding
    and insect infestation—
    have accelerated
    decay. "You cunt,

    you are nothing,"
    he yelped at me
    in that lonely moonscape,
    as he did at the others,
    runaways like me.

    After it was over,
    he auscultated my breast,
    wrapping the whiteness
    in burlap, my mind
    a blown dandelion pod.

    They are closer now,
    wearing protective gloves,
    boots, and coveralls,
    a greenish wall
    of sea tomatoes

    impeding their cadaver dogs.
    Overhead, a helicopter
    films the area as divers
    search west along
    the causeway,

    where in summer,
    toward morning,
    lightning falls
    straight down
    to the earth.


    DANDELIONS

    In the dream,
    a priest said
    it was time
    to be entirely
    adult.

    Mother was bedridden
    because of diabetes,
    and her hands
    had been
    amputated.

    Still, it was Mother
    and not some creature
    with a lolling tongue.
    "Thank you for
    the presents,"

    she said kindly.
    "Come back soon."
    But the elegant
    priest lingered,
    demanding,

    "Tell me
    what you believe,"
    as if it were her time,
    though it plainly wasn't.
    When he repeated,

    "Tell me what
    you believe,
    woman,"
    I grew
    afraid

    and went inside
    my head, where I can
    nearly always find
    some dandelions
    hugging the turf

    with those silvery gray
    stems and lemony
    blossoms
    that transform
    any landscape,

    and then I heard
    Mother lifting her stumps,
    where the hands had been,
    telling him, "I believe
    in these living hands."


    SPHERE

    For Harold Bloom

    "Sir, I don't have no black tea," the waitress replied,
    so I ordered Black Label instead. It was summer and the         fragrant
    white flowers of the black locusts had awakened, like faeries or         obscure matter.

    A black bear clothed in thorns made a mess of the bird feeder where         hungry
    blackcaps were a vision. And the black flies were biting         energetically.

    Billy died of the Black Death (I shouldn't call it that) and         hovered like a
    winged horseman.

    There's nothing so wrong as when young folks die. I smashed my         bike,
    blacked out, and got two black eyes. At the Mayo Clinic,
    Daddy had his arteries cleared, praising the surgeon's fine black         hands.

    After he died, we called everyone in his black book and found
    a black space that couldn't be lifted by impotent wings. Like         me,
    he was the black sheep. There were struggles. Once, driving near         Black Mountain,
    he blurted, "There ain't nothing so good as stolen corn or         watermelon."

    His face was like a smiling black spider's. Questioning the         earth
    from which he came ("Son, you got mixed blood")—and that drew         him back—
    he cleared a way forward into the murky light. Beside the roadside         blacktop,
    a deer, with black diamonds in its eyes, lay in a bed of black         pansies.

    Around us, black ash and black walnuts made a velvety curtain.

    Dead ten years, he visits me often, like a head behind bars, with         that black temper
    and black bile still coming out of his mouth, but tenderness, too,         like black gold.

    Did I love him back, I wonder? If I loved him with all my heart
    and all my liver, why did I spit him into the river?


    LINCOLN AT THE STATE HOUSE

    Columbus, Ohio—April 29, 1865

    People in the rotunda stood
    around transfixed as the undertaker
    unscrewed the walnut coffin
    to make a slight adjustment
    in the position of the body.

    With eyes closed, eyebrows arched,
    and mouth set in the slightest smile,
    he lay on white quilted satin.
    At the autopsy, he lay on planks,
    across two trestles, as a doctor,

    sawing the skull, removed the brain
    down to the track of the ball,
    then not finding it removed the rest.
    Heavy rain washed over the train,
    and bonfires lighted small towns

    along the tracks. The war
    had ended, but people only realized
    what he meant to them
    after he was dead. Six white horses
    pulled the hearse—

    built in Chinese pagoda–style—
    before the throngs waiting
    to say goodbye,
    including thieves,
    whose pockets bulged.

    With guns firing, drums beating,
    and soldiers treading a sad,
    slow march, the great block letters—
    LINCOLN—were unnecessary.
    In the Capitol,

    a plush carpet muffled
    the shoe leather of visitors,
    including the Colored Masons
    and the Colored Benevolent
    Association, who approached timidly.

    The catafalque was
    a low dais, covered
    with moss and leaves,
    exuding the same odor
    as at the Soldiers' Hospital,

    where invalids had drenched
    the street with lilac blooms,
    which the hearse wheels
    crushed. As the blood
    drained from his body

    through the jugular vein,
    a chemical—force-pumped
    into the thigh—hardened it
    into marble. His face shaved,
    except for a tuft at the chin,

    and his brain—a soft gray
    and white substance—
    weighed and washed,
    he was dressed in a low collar,
    with a small black bow tie

    and ivory kid gloves.
    The black under his eyes
    spread throughout his cheeks
    but was not erased. There were relics:
    death-bed sheets cut into squares,

    locks of hair snipped,
    wallpaper scraped with pocket
    scissors, and the candle stub,
    which doctors had held
    lighted near his scalp.

    Though Edwin Booth begged
    for his brother's body, it was sewn
    into a tarpaulin, with a gun case
    for a coffin, and buried under
    a penitentiary's brick floor.


    MOTHER AND CHILD

    Her teats were fat as ticks and her udder was heavy.

    A little pink poked out from her vulva,
    and she grunted softly while making small defecations
    all around the stall. Pacing, pawing, standing up, and lying         down,
    she was waiting for the cover of darkness,
    but when she started to sweat, the baby—perfectly         well-made—
    came quickly, groggy and gleaming from her insides.
    Rubbing him with towels, we bowed our heads
    at the straw where he lay—yeasty and squinting at         us—
    already alone in the bright landscape
    and calling to mind remnants of defeated armies,
    fleeing slaves, and refugees herded across
    all the borders of the earth.


    WAR RUG

    The pony and the deer are trapped by tanks,
    and the lady with the guitar is sad beyond words.
    Hurtling across the sky, a missile has mistaken
    a vehicle for a helicopter, exploding in a ball
    of white flame. Upside-down birds—red specks
    of knotted wool—glow above the sideways trees.
    Hidden among plants, a barefooted boy waits—
    like the divine coroner—aiming his rifle at something,
    enjoying the attentions of a gray doggy, or maybe
    there's a bullet already in his head.


    HAND GRENADE BAG

    This well-used little bag is just the right size
    to carry a copy of the Psalms. Its plain-woven
    flowers and helicopter share the sky with bombs
    falling like turnips—he who makes light of other
    men will be killed by a turnip. A bachelor,
    I wear it across my shoulder—it's easier to be
    a bachelor all my life than a widow for a day.
    On the bag's face, two black shapes appear
    to be crows—be guided by the crow and you
    will come to a body—though they are
    military aircraft. A man who needs fire
    will soon enough hold it in his hands.


    NOT A HAIR OF YOUR HEAD SHALL BE HARMED

    These hairs that the wind used to caress on my nape
    fall from my brush now.
    Let them float across the gardens like ropes
    that once fastened Gulliver to Lilliput
    or those silk walls that entangle insects.
    Soon the rain will trample them into soil
    or the birds will gather them up: straw or hair,
    it's all the same to them, and man himself
    has fabricated lampshades and soap
    out of his own body. Don't worry—
    "Not a hair of your head shall be harmed"—
    nor shall the dead flakes of skin, the dormant neurons,
    the dark ditches of memory.
    Nor the loved and hated words of Hamlet—really just         sounds
    but no less resilient than these hairs
    dispersing in a current of air.

    Claire Malroux (translated from the French)

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Excerpted from Nothing to Declare by Henri Cole. Copyright © 2015 Henri Cole. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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