The Slow Demise of Quiet Things

Let me tell you about the bird —
From a line of soil eaters,
Its mind built brick-by-brick by
Nature, fit to hate the sky,
To yearn deeper with
Its pecking —

On the last quiet day

Two mountains sat over the ocean,

While this fat and hairless bird

Scrabbled up one,

                                            Beaked it.

Its wings had atrophied;
Its wings were claws;
It ate one grain of rock a day;
It had big eyes that did not see.
It had family,

Each year the cousins went off

And one or two would dance,

Every child stillborn — and our poor mountain

Said to her lover “Each day I am
About to be a desert.
Each day I do not care.

I will be carried over the ocean.

I will land somewhere where I’ll grow fruit.”

Two tremendous women in overcoats.
Whether from guilt or from
Roots, long and thousandtoed
In the mantle, the other
Didn’t leave. G-d’s
Two dark temples over the sea,
And a bird that named them.

We are All Alive

It’s a pleasure to be here,

A pleasure to be,

I walked a while, I became the sea,
And I sat my whole shape in a puddle,

The waves of it, elbows,

And I kept up with what was new in life.

Please could you turn off the god damn lights,

The house is cold, the light is in here

And in the rolling desert of a dry night wind

It is dark, it is dark yes, it is dark.

And the wet is here and the light is here,

            Haunched, in my bedclothes, kneeling

            At the kettle of sleep, but she hasn’t sang

            Yet, and there’s time before the sing.

In a few hours we will all be right
All the time.

And when the lights
Are finally out, and
The sun prepares
To come up one
More time, and I
Will greet it, and
Santa, who is red,

                                    Van Gogh with his wings and the bandaged ear,
                                    And the white whale in whose bellies
                                    We all praise.

A Hierophant, Upturned

Is there poison in the rocks and water?
Would there like to be?
This is the sea and the Earth’s decision.
These things are impartial to themselves,
Like telephone rings, like that
“I will hear from you this morning” color of yellow.

The voice in the phones says “this is
Everything.” “There is no world besides
The parking lots and buildings that are built,
The world of lights besides, of course.
That too is real. Realer than real, in fact.”
You would have to be dreaming to disbelieve it.
You would have to have an ass’s head.

They say. I bring my scythe out to the lot for sale
That no one buys. Some plantains grow — sky-scrapers.
The sun is out. I thresh for wheat.
Or no, scratch that. I thresh for something older.  





Noam Hessler is an American poet. They live in New York and Vermont.

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