This place is your private part. When I was eight, Chris lay on top of me and the next day asked for his stuffed duck and toy tugboat back. What is private, what is hidden, should be one’s heart, as it becomes more and more diffi-cult to show. All summer, I wanted the outside in; to take that which grows in sacred places is a sin.
August 13 and last year, a bridge in Austin, overcast, high in the upper nineties and zero percent chance of rain. The bats leave the bridge at dusk and return at dawn. The Perseids do not fall here. I think of Elizabeth, of cuttings of newsprint. I don’t know why some people want their water so cold, why they ask for ice. It pains my teeth, is so diffi-cult to drink. The way out of an affair is another affair, a misprint for a misprint. I want to know why it is that I have feet and yet still refuse to flee.
Kafka’s Garden
January 31. Gardening, hopelessness of the future.—Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks
The string beans embracing the lattice will strive toward some sort of heaven, for in every physical being there exists the imaginings of some spiritual equivalent. If the Beautiful, if the Good do not take root in this life, then they sprout in the life that plants itself directly perpendicular to this one. The lattice for the string beans will serve as some sort of ladder, if not for Jacob, then for the small insects that know nowhere else to go.
It is not so much the gardening that surprises but rather gardening in the dead of an already dead European winter. What I see that F. B. cannot, although she is in perpetual leave, is the frost-formed dew, the minute icicles that cling with blue fingernails to the stiff leaves. What F. B. cannot see that I can is how, weeping, I too cling to something long-since dead.
Instead of the Tree of Life, a silver ash and the poor wren that hobbles there. What of the frozen fruit? If anything is tempting, it is not this, not this garden of grasses that shatters underfoot. Perhaps it is not so much the promise of paradise but rather the promise of not paradise that makes me want to uproot radishes, smash the just-buried spring bulbs. A thousand different specimens of lichen have hatched, are roosting upon the stone by the icy gourds. In the mornings, what I see that F. B. does not: myriad red chicks, a splattering rainbow of sitting eggs.
Dreams again of carrots and the red devil claws of rhubarb stalks. Evil must, I know, also have its roots in the garden. I have witnessed the splaying of petals, the curving mounds of earth when new life shies before breaking through. Dreams again of F. B., her white handkerchief fluttering by the frozen fountain, and a snow veiling her visage from me. Evil, I know, must live underground like the badger, the mole, and other animals that take, one by one, those beings I love. Dream of F. B., her frozen mouth, her frozen heart.
It is not the planting that keeps me alive but rather the fear of breaking through the winter ground. How odd that nature too must develop a thick skin in order to survive the cold. Yesterday, a few rocks unearthed and a few potatoes to replace them. Today, a boulder threatens to keep me mad: my shovel impaired, my ungloved hands worked raw. It is not the unearthing that keeps me alive but rather everything that gets substituted, the promise that for every subtraction something living will take its place.
The seed casings remind me of the perplexity of life, how it exists within another perceived life. Come spring, the string beans will, because of my latticing, climb toward infinity; I, possessing the idea of Knowledge, will try through my studies to reach heaven in similar fashion. The perplexity of this life, existing within another life: Hamlet’s nutshell and the almond, not eaten, but to be planted to become a tree. What F. B. cannot see that I see: no matter her leavings, we will be united again whether in this life or the next. What I see that F. B. cannot: the ice-covered moss, the rhododendron’s hidden fire, the pond iris all ashiver.
Six Black-and-White Movies in Which I Do Not Find You
1.
Caught in the belly of a whale within a turgid sea and among me the sorry remains of little fish. There is no color for blood. (You see, the island will be full of strange foreboding.) Even from the inside, I still do not know the structure of this animal’s bones or the location of ambergris. I do not believe that holding the uvula will save me. Already, visions of loneliness, somehow drifting ashore to islands, where I do not find your footprints; already, a yearning for palm leaves with which to build a little shelter. Among me, the sorry remains; high up, the spout, through which I may or may not espy heaven.
2.
This one, a dream: in this movie, they are filming a movie. The church is one whose bells sound the hours, just down the street. Autumn again, and whatever looms, looms large—the passing plane, the overhead crack of poplar trees, the day all drizzle. I think the director wants to convey a scent of chimney smoke and sin. I keep looking back, thinking that I have stolen something.
3.
Your farewell attached to my pillow and the curtains are eyelet and the quilted coverlet is eyelet and the pillowcases are eyelet and the bedding
